Would Silent Hill work as a TV series/miniseries?

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KingCrimson
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Would Silent Hill work as a TV series/miniseries?

Post by KingCrimson »

I'm thinking something along the lines of the old Stephen King serials, like Kingdom Hospital etc. where things were given more time to stretch out than a movie, but maybe not multiple seasons.

But it would be cool to have multiple seasons, each representing a game in the series, kind of like how every season of American Horror Story is a separate narrative entity.

TV is becoming a viable medium to tell great stories with impressive production values, and the stakes of appealing to a mass audience are (maybe) not quite so high. I could imagine a series that started with Silent Hill 2's story, then went back to the Alessa arc to show how everything got that way, and ended with The Room before introducing new characters and stories.

I just feel like it's a shame that we may never see an honest portrayal of the actual storyline of the Silent Hill games in theaters anytime soon. I could see a TV series getting more traction if there was enough interest in it.
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Re: Would Silent Hill work as a TV series/miniseries?

Post by Pastucci »

Absolutely I agree..

As long as they start from Origins, and then even added bits of canon info from the comics..
And if they did a bit for Shattered Memories of course!
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Re: Would Silent Hill work as a TV series/miniseries?

Post by phantomess »

I could've sworn this topic already existed, but if so, the thread is being quite elusive.

I'd be pretty skeptical about it turning out well, but would be willing to give it a chance- as long as the episodes were connected to tell a story over the course of at least a season, as you said. Trying to make each episode about a different story would be terrible. I think I remember that being suggested before. :?

They should make a really well done show-version of SH2. Although SH1 has always been my top favorite and I also defended new game installments involving the cult a number of times, I'm sick of seeing the bad cult portrayals in the movies and don't really feel like watching anything else about the cult in a movie or TV show. I still would, but.... the idea of a nicely done SH2 show makes me more giddy.

But I'd think it's probably more likely they'd come up with a new story.
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Re: Would Silent Hill work as a TV series/miniseries?

Post by KingCrimson »

I think the toughest part would be how to make the protagonist's reactions convincing. Other than a few cutscenes, there aren't many times in the Silent Hill games where the main character reacts the way a normal person would, upon seeing these monstrosities. The nurses, for example, just show up in most of the games without any fanfare. One room is empty, the next one has a nurse with a medicine ball for a face wielding a pipe, so kill it to progress. Probably, this is by design--since the gamer is controlling the main character, we transfer our own fear and revulsion onto our on-screen avatar. If the player and the character are simultaneously quivering and cursing about how fucked up the hospital basement is, it can be overkill. Giving the player room to insert their own thoughts and feelings helps with the immersion. But in a show, we're passively watching events unfold, and a TV audience probably wouldn't accept characters who don't have much to say about the shambling horrors that have replaced the town's inhabitants. As the series goes on, there would be progressively less reason to maintain that level of shock (a la Walking Dead, for example).

In Silent Hill 2, everything is so dreamlike and atmospheric that the implausibility of the dialogue doesn't really intrude. Translated to a show, there could be some problems. For one thing, any rational human being would immediately start every conversation with another living person with "what in the world is going on, where is everyone, what's up with these monsters, this fog, why can't I escape, I almost died like a dozen times back there, do you have any ammo?" So, the first time James encounters Laura would maybe have to be tweaked a bit. He just escaped certain death at the tip of a blade the length of a grown man. Two minutes later, he finds an 8 year-old girl dangling her legs off a high wall like nothing's the matter, and all he can say is "you stepped on my hand back there!" The same goes for Maria, a few blocks away. Again, since we as players are filling in the blanks of emotional response upon seeing a doppleganger of Mary accompanying us on our journey, James himself only briefly remarks on the resemblance. In a dramatic setting, this might need to be drawn out a bit more.

Gaming tropes, like how easily everybody learns how to use firearms and finds ammo lying around everywhere, would stick out like a sore thumb if not handled properly. A movie is short enough to get away with tossing in a line with a wink-wink and moving on, but a TV series would have to deal with it all the time. If the show is supposed to span anything more than a day in its entirety, people gotta eat. It would be annoying to have to worry about it in the games, but it's probably pretty tiring to traverse a big place like that on foot. To reinforce what I said earlier, part of the gaming experience is to give the player a way to fight off the challenges that are presented. But in actuality, most people probably wouldn't be okay with beating something to death with a wooden plank, even if it were a monster. We do this dozens of times in the course of a playthrough because it's an accepted part of gaming.

These changes would help make the characters more believable while simultaneously making them less similar to their game counterparts. Maria doesn't react to any of the monsters in the hospital or on the street, she just keeps her distance and waits for you to dispatch them. This was probably due to technical limitations of the software, but it adds a certain creepiness to her character. In a show, she might be screaming and clinging to James, which is more realistic but less like the Maria we know. We have an image of James as an emotionally muted individual because we don't see him expressing strong emotions until the end, yet even the most aloof individual would have to break down sobbing after enduring even a fraction of what James goes through. He would be visibly frightened, clumsy with his weapons, constantly asking himself if any of this is really happening... all while keeping the truth about his wife from himself and the audience. This would be a character very unlike the James we control in the game, but necessarily so in my opinion.
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Re: Would Silent Hill work as a TV series/miniseries?

Post by ashatteredmemory »

I thought of this a while ago, especially while watching The Walking Dead.
Parts of it is just them going through location A, killing x zombies, reacting in horror to Y, have some discussion or fight about something, go to location B, etc. The thing with The Walking Dead is that it gets horribly tedious (everybody reacts in shock to zombies again and again after million of times), but actually gets away with it. For a decent SH-experience, monsters do have to appear and characters have to deal with them, and seeing The Walking Dead can do it, a SH-series must be able to do the same. But have too much of the monsters, and they can become tedious. And god save us all if it degrades in some kind of anime-stuff where the protagonist thinks he can't defeat the monster, and then by the power of friendship/love/trust/*insert other anime trope* can defeat it.

Another problem is that characters in SH are mostly alone, reading exposition on their own, dealing with problems on their own, ... While books and games are extremely well in dealing with lone characters, movies mostly are not. There's something odd about someone trying to figure something out on his own, he would almost continuously have to talk out loud, or have his thoughts narrated to us. Storytelling in movies relies heavily on dialogue, not on monologue.
Though there are some really well done exceptions: the Doctor Who series 9 features an episode where the Doctor is almost exclusively talking to himself. However he does this in a form of having a one-sided conversation, or some kind of letter to his absent companion. It's wonderfully done, because we know the Doctor, we know his companion, we know their feelings towards each other before this episode. We understand how the Doctor is and we can understand the way he is thinking.
But this is just for one episode, not a complete series.
Room 1408 is a mostly *sole experience* but it's more of a haunted-house experience. Just a whole heap of scary stuff chucked to the protagonist, and as SH-fans, we're not fans of plain jumpscares.


P.S.: I just noticed KingCrimson had the same thoughts about monsters and the notion about The Walking Dead, he wrote it better than me :P
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Re: Would Silent Hill work as a TV series/miniseries?

Post by ShadowBaby »

I haven't read the previous posts, but I will go back later.

I had an idea for a Silent Hill series. Kind of an anthology series where each story arc involves different characters who cross each others' paths.

For instance;
The first story follows Harry. The town is introduced and the basic concept. At some point Harry crosses paths with James. The encounter is brief and Harry continues on.
The next story arc goes back and follows James and his experiences in the town. At some point he meets Heather.
The next arc follows her, and so on.

I was thinking something like 15-minute webisodes, 5 to 7 episode story arcs. That kind of thing.
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Re: Would Silent Hill work as a TV series/miniseries?

Post by KingCrimson »

I like the story arc idea, but I don't know if it would make sense chronologically for Harry to cross paths with James, and then James with Heather, since there's 17 years between Harry's and Heather's experiences in Silent Hill.

Personally, I'd be in favor of putting James' story first. That way, non-SH fans watching the show wouldn't already be aware of why the town was like that, so it would increase the mystery factor a la Lost. Then the next season could be a "prequel" that shows Harry and Cheryl's story, and back to the present for Heather.
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Re: Would Silent Hill work as a TV series/miniseries?

Post by ashatteredmemory »

Hmmm, I do like the idea of having Heather's story with flashbacks to Harry and Cheryl. I can see that work.
James' story would work for a whole season if Angela's and Eddie's stories are fleshed out, with each of them having a more complete story than the snippets we get to see in SH2. Possibly have them interact more. Maria only needs her Born from a Wish scenario as form of backstory for obvious reasons.
SH4 and Homecoming could be somewhat tied together due to SH's influence reaching other places.
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Re: Would Silent Hill work as a TV series/miniseries?

Post by ShadowBaby »

KingCrimson wrote:I like the story arc idea, but I don't know if it would make sense chronologically for Harry to cross paths with James, and then James with Heather, since there's 17 years between Harry's and Heather's experiences in Silent Hill.
I just used that as an example. I think that a series would need a new set of characters.
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Re: Would Silent Hill work as a TV series/miniseries?

Post by Tabris »

I would love to see this and I think it could work pretty damn well.

I could see season 1 being SH1 and season 2 being SH3. They'd obviously have to revamp the script and I doubt each could go on for a full 13 episodes each but it could do maybe 8 or 10. Then maybe a prequel of Origins.

SH2 would probably be the best for a stand alone season. The rest of the series could work for that as well.

Probably the best idea would just be original stand alone seasons though. A fan can dream but I doubt any of this would ever happen unfortunately.

Konami would probably just have a 13 episode season of some dude playing blowing all his money on a pachinko machine and then getting drunk and dying.
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