MurderousToaster said:
and if people just can't handle the film's main character not being the same gender as the one they're playing in the game they probably need to rethink how they critique movies
Absolutely this. Someone's going to be disappointed no matter HOW they approach this. If the main character, who has to be portrayed in one way or the other in a movie situation but not both, not being shown as the same one you chose to play them as in a game which offers several choices that you're free to take, is enough to make you want to boycott the film (or be "alienated" by it - protip, you're going to be anyway, as it's a movie and you're not in control the same way you are in the game) then you've got serious issues you need to work out.
Maybe consider is as a movie about an alternate universe version of you, who is actually a space marine, may or may not be a different gender/race/general appearance, and may not behave the same way either? But as it's on celluloid you can't change that?
Ngh.
Perhaps they could have a twin brother/sister pair, and the gimmick is that hardly anyone in the army knows this because they always operate in such widely divided theatres - both doing epic, legendary things such as to get their surname universally known - that very, very few people are ever likely to run across both of them in their lifetime. And most of them will be aliens who aren't hugely brilliant at telling the difference between humans of different genders/races...
Or Shep gets hit by some alien virus that allows him/her (presumably he would start the movie as the bodytype representative of what the largest minority of players choose) to shapeshift, maybe even forcing randomised shifting during the early stages depending on what his subconcious desires at that point. Feeling horny... becomes a hot girl... needs extra strength... turns into a cartoonish strongman... gets hungry... turns into a steak. That sort of thing. Until the ability can be controlled and used to tactical advantage.
Now if you guys are up in arms about this sort of thing, imagine how the jobbing anime fanboys amongst us feel about how Akira looks like it's going to be treated (there's a fixed storyline, fixed setting, fixed cast list with fixed characters with fixed names, genders, racial type, etc... but they're basically chucking that lot in the bin and keeping a/ the name, b/ a vaguely post apocalyptic cityscape setting. There may or not be bikes, or a couple guys called Tetsuo and Kaneda, or a creepy government ESP-kid-weapon scheme going on, it's almost certainly not going to be set in Neo Tokyo, and said Neo Neo York is unlikely to E*X*P*L*O*D*E). Or about what happened to Avat... er, the Last Airbender. Or Dragonball.
Man, fuck hollywood... Let's just make a fan-movie instead.
(though tomb raider was at least "alright", it must be said
