Full Throttle was amazing. It was from an era of gaming where “cinematic” was a design goal. Games aspired to be movie-like because movies were the gold standard of entertainment. We even got Mark Hamill playing Ripburger in Full Throttle. At the same time, game studios were self-consciously minnows in comparison to the glitz and money and celebrity of Hollywood, and the target market skewed heavily adolescent, which often gave an excuse to strike a comedic tone in an otherwise-serious plot.
I think it’s the moments of comedy that hold Full Throttle back from getting a mainstream Hollywood adaption. Writing comedy is really, really hard, and jokes that came across as clever in the game, such as the repeated parodies of Hollywood cliches, risk translating into mere cliches on the big screen. What would Full Throttle be without the jokes? A Mad Max ripoff? And what if the jokes fall flat? Wild Hogs?
Hollywood in general struggles with comedy. You can’t write it on demand. But I’m not saying it’s impossible. The right writer could do it, and with the right script I’d even let Dwayne Johnson be Ben.
Whenever I think of Full Throttle, I think of two things: movies, and comedy.