By Jason Apuzzo. EA has released a new 12-minute trailer (featuring extensive game play) for Battlefield 3, depicting U.S. Marines involved in intense urban warfare in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq against Iranian-backed insurgents along the Iran/Iraq border (the game is set in 2014). See the full 12-minute trailer above. The trailer is gripping and intense, and astonishingly realistic in its imagery. NOTE: THIS NSFW TRAILER FEATURES VIOLENCE AND STRONG LANGUAGE. The trailer was posted at YouTube on Thursday, and as of the writing of this post already has over 1.3 millions views.
Battlefield 3 is a first-person shooter game, and a follow-up to EA’s popular Battlefield series. The game is set to debut on November 2nd, and will apparently feature battlefields in Sulaymaniyah, Tehran, Paris and New York.
Watching the trailer, I’m left with the usual questions: namely, why can’t Hollywood do something like this? I mean, fighting space aliens in downtown Los Angeles is great, but why must stories about these real world, epochal military conflicts of ours be relegated to the (admittedly large) ghetto of video gaming? The imagery in this trailer is astonishing in its detail and subtlety, and thoroughly ‘cinematic’ in its execution – to the point that I actually felt like I was watching a war documentary for much of it. And yet a full eight years after the invasion of Iraq, we’re still waiting on any sort of large-scale Hollywood effort to depict the war, while the gaming industry proves each year that there is a massive market for this kind of material.
Does EA have a movie division? They might want to consider starting one.
Posted on April 18th, 2011 at 11:55am.
Amazing Video. it looks better than Infinity Ward’s versions of Call of Duty Modern Warefare I & II(Not Treyarch’s versions which are weak, and that includes Black Ops)
When it comes to our War against Terror (24 excluded) it’s not that Hollywood lacks the conviction to portray war it’s that the conviction is to manipulate the audience into their PC version of the war. It’s so over the top obvious that audiences have avoided these type of movies with extreme prejudice. That’s why Hollywood has switched to aliens. Although it’s not stopped them from trying. Latest example is The Conspirator by Robert Redford. I laughed out loud when he said (paraphrasing) that if the audience saw a parallel in this movie to certain current political events (Guantánamo Bay) it was not intentional!
The thing that amazes me is how much money is being left on the table here. These games are basically out-grossing some of the major Hollywood tentpoles right now, and it’s as if the industry doesn’t even notice – or does notice, but is too beholden to the Baby Boomers and their ridiculous ideological agenda to do anything.
“Does EA have a movie division? They might want to consider starting one.”
Please, no. Today’s Electronic Arts is the video gaming equivalent of contemporary Hollywood. They are a huge reason why video games are very unoriginal, play the same, and lack creative risk-taking and art direction unlike video games developed only ten years ago.
EA acquires smaller game developers then shuts them down or forces them to drastically change their ideas to conform to “market research”, leading to the lack of variety of genre, gameplay styles, storylines and characterization, and general creativity and “heart”. The games are often soullessly churned out on draconian one- and-a-half year development cycles. They don’t care if the games are unpolished as long as they sell (a truly great game would sell many, many more copies for years to come than a mediocre title for much more money than the extra development costs, but that requires higher-level, capitalistic thought).
Furthermore, EA is mainly a publisher. They do have in-house game development, but they are not developing “Battlefield 3”. “Battlefield 3” is being developed by Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment (DICE), now EA DICE, a Swedish game developer now owned by EA. You should recommend they start their own movie studio.
I’m not angry at you, Mr. Apuzzo, I just can’t let the bad guys take the credit. I love Libertas Film Magazine for the intelligent movie previews and reviews, and commentary that have perspective and superb writing (my writing is terrible so I don’t write much). I like that the writers here are conservative/conservatarian/libertarian, but not Republican, unlike Big Hollywood (the “other site”?, which, I, ironically, found LFM on that site back when the writing and content was better). The writers here do not review movies (and television shows) simply based on ideology, but as critics should review movies. It’s also nice not the see ten movie reviews by ten different writers from a limited staff on “Battle of Los Angeles” or “Avatar”. There’s also nice coverage of mainstream and independent films that I don’t see anywhere else like “Kisses”, “Disorder”, “The Devil’s Double”, and so many more films, old and new, mentioned over the months. Keep up the great work!
Centrist, your remarks are exceptionally kind and appreciated. It’s also obvious that you know much more about the gaming scene than I do. I’m not really a gamer, I just like to pay attention to this stuff because I find it interesting – especially as these games increasingly become ‘cinematic’ in the overall quality and scale of their vision. To me, it’s a really fascinating development that more people should be talking about.
I appreciate your readership and please continue to stop in.
That looks pretty awesome, but I have to say that I’m getting tired of the military shooter.
Homefront may’ve been a bit underdeveloped, but I got a huge rush from playing a citizen defending his home.
This new game LA Noir looks pretty incredible — I think I’ll give that a run after I finish Mass Effect 2.
You’re a busy man!
Not really — I only play a little. It takes me forever to finish one of these because I kinda suck at them. I just think some have good tales, and I like the interactive storytelling. Also, there’s just no space opera out there, so I eat up Halo and Mass Effect.
By the way, I saw Amazon has a listing for Farewell on Blu, but the pic looks like a DVD, and it says it ships in 10 days. Do you know what’s going on with that?
First of all, thanks for alerting me about the Farewell DVD – that’s great news! I’ll put it in the LFM Store. Otherwise, knock on wood, I wouldn’t worry about the Blu-ray image being the same as the DVD. If it’s got a different product code and price, it should be a different format.
Hey, Jason, I know this post is only tangentially related, but I thought you might want to know this story, if you don’t already: http://www.businessinsider.com/tim-hetherington-oscar-libya-restrepo-2011-4
The director of Restrepo was killed today in Libya, apparently from shelling by Qaddafi forces.
By the way, you might want to set up an email or post-space or something where people can send you tips. I see “Write for LFM” and “Tell LFM About Your Film” buttons, and you’re obviously highly connected in the industry so you probably here about things pretty quick. But letting readers send you stuff can’t hurt, right? and it also might foster little more sense of community on the blog.
Stephen, thanks for that. Yes, I was aware of the Tim Hetherington story – I’ve just been so swamped with other matters that I haven’t had time to get to it. It’s very tragic news.
People use those buttons all the time to send me things, so feel free to use it yourself. Perhaps I’ll set up another button as a tip line.
I enjoy playing the first person shooters and was amazed at the cinematic quality of the above trailer…I’m a casual gamer…don’t know much about the industry but have thought the same thing at times, after playing thru Call of Duty Modern Warfare 1 and 2 and Black Ops and more recently EA’s Medal of Honor, that it’s almost like watching a movie but being in it as well. I appreciate the level of quality and true-to-lifeness of these video games and the respect shown to the soldiers portrayed.
That said, Black Hawk Down or Tears of the Sun watch like some of the cinematic interludes included in modern FPS games.
Thanks for your thoughts, Voz. Basically I can’t believe how good this stuff looks all of a sudden – and it’s obvious that the politically-correct restrictions that govern so much of Hollywood cinema don’t apply in these games, which is refreshing.