It’s no secret that I am a huge Mass Effect fan. And guess what! They’re making a Mass Effect movie. We all know that video game movies suck as a rule, but do they really have to?

I’m not an expert on filmmaking (oh, so very far from it), but nonetheless I have some ideas that could help the ME movie not suck and I wanted to get them down in text before any real details are revealed.

First off, it’s great that Casey Hudson is involved in some capacity. I doubt anyone knows the universe better than he does, and he’s been there behind Shepard the whole way. That doesn’t mean to make the movie about Shepard. They’ve done well not picking any particular Shepard for any of the non-game media, simply referring to “Shepard” and not using pronouns in the comics and novels. But if they are going to break that, certainly don’t make it Shepard vs the Reapers, that story is just too big to tell in a 2 hour movie. Picking one of the “early service” options from ME1 character creation is pretty much the only decent choice, but then people will want the other two fleshed out as well. So really, just avoid Shepard. It’ll be better that way.

If they’re going to adapt an existing story, maybe pick the first novel; make the movie about Anderson working with and against Saren trying to find Kahlee Sanders and figure out why a top secret Alliance base was attacked. On the plus side, it’s a good introduction to the universe with some important characters’ backgrounds revealed and can even feature the prologue as a “pre-opening credits” to showcase a little bit of humanity’s first contact with the turians similar to J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek. It also allows for a couple of young attractive stars like Hollywood likes in the roles of Anderson and Kahlee.

On the downside, Keith David is too old to play a young Anderson and anyone else in the role wouldn’t seem quite right. It’s also still not a totally new story for those who read Revelation, but I’m pretty sure that’s not a very large number of people.

I don’t think any of the other novels or the comics would translate well, so they could do also something different, and just come up with a new story optimized for the new medium. They can get the fan service factor by including cameos of, say, Garrus working C-Sec or something but overall it should be new. In this case it shouldn’t take place any later than 2183, when the first game happened. Showing humanity struggling to fit in is a big part and being set after Sovereign’s attack diminishes that. I can only imagine setting it after the end of ME3 would do so even more, assuming there’s civilization left to even have a story about.

The Mass Effect movie shouldn’t have to suck, and I pray desperately that it won’t. Not literally pray, but you know what I mean. Either way, I’ll be at the earliest possible showing because I’m a fanboy and it’s just what we do.