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Tech

Surprisingly, this 11-Minute 'Metroid' Fan Movie Doesn't Suck

Maybe a feature film about the bounty hunter isn't such a terrible idea.

Nintendo's Metroid is one of those great games that on paper doesn't seem like it would make for a great movie. The sci-fi exploration series starring one of video games' first heroines, Samus Aran, is all about isolation, as the bounty hunter solves mysteries on faraway planets. She's almost like an alien archaeologist, if an archaeologist's go-to tool was an arm cannon.

However, a fan-made short movie called Metroid: The Sky Calls shows that a Metroid movie might not be such a terrible idea.

The 11-minute video, directed by Sam Balcomb and starring The Nerdist's Jessica Chobot, works because it gets the mood right. It has the sci-fi horror vibe of Ridley Scott's Alien, but with all the sound effects and iconography of the Metroid games, specifically the GameCube-era Metroid Prime games. The ship, the power suit, Aran's signature move of turning into a speedy ball, even that eery feeling of being alone on an alien planet—the short movie just nails that Metroid feeling. I don't know if I'd watch 90 minutes of Aran alone in space, but I could definitely watch more.

The special effects are also pretty good for a small production, but really, the most amazing thing about it is that Chobot is able to say lines like "It's a Chozo signal" with a straight face.