"THU Storytelling 2025" Hideo Kojima's Concerns Over the Disappearance of "Storytellers" [CINEMORE ACADEMY Vol.40]

First comes the worldview

Q: There are many people around the world who are fascinated by the world that Director Kojima has created, but how do you create that world and story?

Kojima: For me, it's the world first. A place that has depth and reality, a place that makes you want to be there. Even if that place is Inferno, I want to depict the drama of the people writhing about there. One approach might be to try to depict a Shakespearean-style human drama and choose the end of the century as the container for it, but I don't do things in that order; I always come up with a worldview first.

Q: Is there a reason why the worldview is such a high priority?

Kojima: What impressed me about " Mad Max " (1979), including the characters, was first and foremost the world it created. That's true of most of my favorite movies. I love films like " 2001: A Space Odyssey " (1968) and " Blade Runner " (1982), where the world view and storytelling are beautifully combined.

Q: This was also mentioned in the session you attended, but could you tell us more about telling stories through visuals and video?

Kojima: In novels, you can understand a character's background if it's written in words. But The Game are all about images and sound. There are also methods like monologue and narration, but I don't want to do that. People today tend to watch movies at double speed, so I tend to dislike them. There's also the technique of starting with a Cliffhanger and then rewinding the scene to an earlier time, but that, too, feels anachronistic. As we discussed in the session, Hollywood movies often explain the events between the protagonist's morning wake-up and the day they leave the house through photos on the wall, props, and the clothes they're wearing. Japanese anime is even more amazing, sometimes featuring two characters walking down a hallway in the first shot, revealing their pasts. This is really uncool (laughs). Animation can't always accommodate a large number of frames, so everything is explained through dialogue. Having a character say, "I'm sad," to express emotion, is just so lame, isn't it? (laughs) I want to show how sad they are through their facial expressions and body movements. I try to do that as much as possible.

I think that's why " Mad Max " was such a big hit. There's a mysterious character called "Humungus" whose background and real name are completely unknown (laughs), but even just yelling makes him stand out. Characters like that are hard to find these days.

There were no textbooks on The Game development.