If They Got A Movie: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

Call of Duty is the famous first-person shooter video game franchise will 11 main titles, featuring 3 trilogies, with more presumably on the way.COD is sort of the 'apple' of the video game industry, releasing a product each year, however it is only a slightly different variation of the last with a new but not ground breaking feature. The games are basically modern versions of 80's action movies. Full of guns, explosions, men being menly men, fighting foreigners who are a threat to America and most of all freedom.

However what Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was a standout in the series. Before this point the franchise was based in World War 2, in the American's hour of glory, but Modern Warfare did exactly as it said on the tin. It was based in the not too distant future of 2011, game was released in 2007, follow two seperate protagonists and moved away from cliched Nazi villians to the more recent cliche of Russians and Middle-Eastern people. The game followed Sergeant Paul Jackson of the US Marine Corp as he and his unit move through the unnamed middle-eastern country (Iraq) firing blindly and blowing up whatever was in their way. The second and more important protagonist in the game is Sergeant John "Soap" MacTavish of the British Special Air Service. MacTavish and is his band of dark and morally questionable SAS soldier sneak their way across Russia. The overarching story of the story is the search for nuclear weapons, which spans across the globe and interweaves between the two protagonists.

Firstly, who plays who

The Cast

John MacTavish:

While in the 1st game you never see MacTavish's face you do however see him in the two sequels. A Scotsman and new recruit to Bravo team, he is relatively young. Hence why I have chosen Kit Harrington (Game of Thrones, Spooks: The Greater Good) My first pick would of been Ewan McGregor, how as he is in his forties he wouldn't of really worked. Having Harrington as one of the leads is particularly useful as he would be able to attract audience thanks to his role as Jon Snow in the HBO series Game of Thrones.

John Price

Captain John Price is the leader of the SAS Bravo team. One of the few characters that appear in the entire series, making him one of the most important characters. While the character is voiced by actor Billy Murray, for the screen I feel Gary Oldman (The Dark Knight, Leon: The Professional) would be best suited for the role

Gaz

Gaz is another member of the SAS team and Price's unofficial second in command. I believe British actor Toby Kebbell (RocknRolla, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) would play the role well

Nikolai

Nikolai is one of Price's alley in Russia who acts as a pilot for the team when required it. For this I picked Danish-American actor Viggo Mortensen (Lord of the Ring, Eastern Promises)

Imran Zakhaev

Zakhaev is the main antagonist of the game. The Head of the Russian Ultranationalists who has controls of the nuclear missiles. Czech actor Karel Roden (Hellboy, Bourne Supremacy) is my choice

I've not cast the Americans because if the story was turned into a movie, would the Marines really feature in it?

The Story

Your standard action movie nowadays lasts between 2-3 hours. An awful lot of stuff happens in Modern Warfare, too much to fit into one film. So obviously certain things would have to be cut, one of which probably being Paul Jackson's story. Obviously there could be cuts to the Middle East for narrative but many of Jackson's mission could be left out

• Charlie Don't Surf
• The Bog
• War Pig
• Most of 'Shock and Awe'

The film could cut back and forth  Jackson to give perspective to what is going on, especially to the moment the nuke is detonated. This would be important to include as the nuke was one of defining moments in the entire trilogy.

The film would follow MacTavish and his team for most of the story, however would skip or shorten down mission for time

• F.N.G
• Hunted
• Death From Above
• All Ghillied Up
• Most of "One Shot, One Kill"
• Ultimatum

Hopefully after trimming these events off you could fit the story into a normal feature film.

What do you think? who would you want cast in what role?