Tim Miller on his video game-inspired animated series ‘Secret Level’
Amazon’s “Secret Level,” the animated anthology series from “Deadpool” director and “Love, Death & Robots” creator Tim Miller, takes popular (mostly video) games and tells short stories set in their universes. Miller sat down Variety at the Lucca Comic and Games convention, his first visit to the Italian fest.
What do you think of Lucca?
How much better is it to walk through ancient streets than through a convention center? As much as I love San Diego, this is great. It’s great to see the culture blossoming. It used to be a little secret in dirty rooms, and now the whole world likes the same things I do. And you see these mothers, fathers and children dressed up. An entire generation grew up in this culture.
What is the inspiration behind “Secret Level”?
It seems like a simple idea: take video game characters and tell original stories. That’s what my company Blur has been doing for almost 30 years now. When I sold “Love, Death & Robots” to Netflix, I played a video game animation from Blur Studio and said, “Give us some money and we’ll give you more like this.” Here we have 15 different games, and so we get the fanbase of all those games, from ‘Warhammer’ to ‘Sifu’. It’s a high tide that will lift all boats in this harbor.
How difficult is it to adapt games?
You want to honor the game, but you also don’t want to make the material so niche that it doesn’t include people who haven’t played the game. We work closely with the developers. They give us the knowledge and tell us what the fans find interesting. We approached these writers of ‘Love, Death & Robots’. Many play games, so they had affinities with specific games. They pitch us stories that take place in these worlds. We choose the best. They write a prose version of the story, actually a short story. John Scalzi wrote one, and Peter Watt wrote the episode “Armored Core.” He is one of the most interesting science fiction writers out there. They are diverse voices from a wide variety of genders, ethnicities and backgrounds. It’s not just two white men sitting in a room.
What affects the appearance of the animation?
The feel of individual episodes is a refined version of what you see when you play the game. But with, say, ‘Mega Man’ or ‘Pac Man’ the door is open to do anything, because there’s not one look. Next we move into ‘Love, Death & Robots’ mode and what’s the coolest way we can tell a story?
“Dungeons & Dragons” recently received a film treatment.
We weren’t afraid to get over that. Here the developer told us that the focus should be on this five-headed dragon. They said, “We want a dragon like you’ve never seen fucking dragons before.” That was the purpose of the short.
Do you watch other video game movies for inspiration?
No, honestly not. In the past, Hollywood didn’t understand the game or try to cater to the fan base. It was the same problem with ‘Deadpool’. I always have a lot of confidence in that, because I’m a nerd, so I try to do what I would like to see as a nerd. Now my ‘Terminator’ movie didn’t exactly set the world on fire, even though I approached it with that principle, which shows…
How did that feel?
No one intends to ignore anyone’s childhood dreams. It is not a cause for vitriol. A lot of people didn’t like “Terminator: Dark Fate” for reasons that had nothing to do with me. One because it was the sixth film and another because we killed off John Connor at the beginning, but if Jim Cameron wants that to happen – which I agree with, by the way – then that’s what you do.
What’s the next level?
The game developers said: “We have enjoyed this process so much. What do you want to do next?” So hopefully Amazon sees the potential to give this gaming audience a new way to enjoy their characters and worlds.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
