Earlier this week, Christopher Judge, who plays Kratos in the new God of War series, raised questions about the upcoming Amazon Prime Video live-action series. At FanExpo, he expressed his core dissatisfaction with game adaptations: "When you have a mature and successful IP, the first step of adaptation is to discard all practitioners associated with the original work."
Many viewers speculated that Judge's dissatisfaction stemmed from not being cast as the live-action Kratos—after the originally scheduled actor, Ryan Hurst, was injured, the production team was proceeding with recasting, leading people to believe he wanted to take over the role. "I really liked Pedro (Pascal) in The Last of Us live-action adaptation, but is his performance really better than the original voice actors from the game?" Judge said. "I watched one of their script readings, and it was amazing. I really can't understand why they didn't just use the game's actors and writing team, especially when the series plans to recreate the game's plot shot by shot."
However, Judge later clarified on X that he has no interest in playing the live-action Kratos. What he truly cares about is that the writers and development team who created these games were not involved in the adaptation project.
"Kids always say I'm too old. I sincerely hope the production team can find an actor as good as Ryan," Judge said. "My previous comments were more about speaking up for the game's writers and developers. I hope they get the recognition and respect they deserve. All the creators of the games we love should receive this attention. I never intended to offend TV writers; when I worked on Stargate, I collaborated with many top TV writers."
In fact, Judge's initial statement clearly pointed to the behind-the-scenes creators—Amazon's live-action series did not include the core team that built the game's world and storyline. "They didn't even hire a single God of War game writer... How did they think this through? These people have been deeply involved in this world for 20 years. Do outsiders really understand this IP better than they do?"
Although the series is not written by the game's writers, Cory Barlog, a key figure in the franchise, serves as an executive producer. Barlog was the lead animator for the original God of War and later directed God of War II, the 2018 soft reboot, and God of War Ragnarök. His deep understanding of the IP will support the series adaptation. Additionally, Ryan Hurst, who was originally cast as Kratos, also voiced Thor in the games, so there is some connection between the film/TV version and the game version.
Indeed, if the adaptation project could directly involve the original writers—such as Matt Sophos and Richard Zangrande Gaubert, who led the narrative of the Norse saga—it would undoubtedly better ensure the work stays true to the core of the original. In that case, perhaps we could avoid adaptations going off the rails like Borderlands and Halo, right?