- Film adaptation concept

Based on the video game by

VERY EARLY PLOT DRAFT:

 Movie begins with the original videogame's introduction screen, fully voiced ("Long time ago, two races ruled the earth, humans and monsters. One day, war broke out between the two races. Etc..."), but stopping when "Many years later..." appears on screen. Music then switches from chip tune to orchestrated (piano and subtle violin). Style similar to : youtu.be/Kt4bamcs5cw  (Song : Undertale - Once upon a time) Opening credits fade in and out on a black background, with simplistic sketches/8-bit representations of locations and characters from the film. Visual style similar to the opening credits from Disney's Alice in Wonderland (youtu.be/eZW_TJJSJb8) or Peter Pan (youtu.be/kReGp7v4vG4). Ends with a black screen as the music fades off.  Off-screen voice: "Howdy! I'm an off-screen speaker! Are you liking today's show so far? Golly, you truly seem to LOVE it! Oh well... perhaps those opening credits were a bit too boring. ...at least for my taste, don't get me wrong! But don't worry, I'm here to spice things up for you in a minute!"  Sudden cut to an intense animated sequence of a little child desperately running through mountainside woods in a rainy night. Exhausted, they hide themselves in a cave, where they find a big hole in the ground, dimly lit by moonlight. The child tries to look into the hole, but trips over a root and falls down screaming.  Sudden cut to black. Then fade to the same child laying on the ground, in a patch of grass. They wake up, stand up a bit, and start crying. Same off-screen voice mocks the previously seen child, saying that "the little idiot didn't even notice the obvious danger of looming down a hole!". The voice then asks the audience if they "liked this better", or if the scene was too tragic for them. "Oh I bet their friends must be around, somewhere. Movies often have good endings, don't they? Well, in my story, it really seems that nobody came! How unfair for the poor little fool!"  Slowly fade back into black, as the voice continues to address the audience: "And don't think you could take him out of that cave either! Just laugh it off, like I do, and consider it just a very bad dream."  Cut to a live action sequence of a similar looking child waking up in a bed in shock. An alarm clock is ringing, and they turn it off. Just then, a second child's voice is heard: "Yo! Frisk! You're awake yet? C'mon, Frisk! Dude get out of that bed, it's almost seven!" As the second child draws some curtains, the room is seen more clearly. It's a small old boarding school bedroom with beds, a drawer, and a small TV. The first child (Frisk) gets out of the bed and asks his roommate (Leonard) to "please call down a bit, will you?". Leonard talks excitedly about how "it's the last day before Christmas break, and they're making a COOL breakfast at the lunchroom".

 Leonard continues talking as Frisk and him get out of their room. (Song : Friends with a Frisk - Uwa!!) Frisk sings about how lonely they are in the boarding school, and how not many children play with them. Aside from Leonard, in fact, Frisk doesn't have any true friends. They also miss their bigger sister Suzy, who would give them company until she also departed to a boarding school.

 During the musical scene, Frisk goes through most of their day. They first go have breakfast with Leonard, but a group of children take all the pastries, and there is only one cinnamon roll left, which they share together. Frisk is then seen during morning classes, where they're falling asleep when a bully throws a paper plane at them from a back seat and laughs. Afterwards, Frisk is seen walking through one of the school's long hallways, (it's where they remember the moments with their sister Suzy). In the end, Frisk steps out into the playground, where the boarding school children are having a snowball fight. The exterior is reminiscent of that of the Snow Wood Boarding School in the SNES videogame EarthBound.

 A bully (Joey) and her pals are seen cornering a white stray pomeranian dog, teasing it and throwing snowballs at it. Frisk is a bit further away opening a lunchbox. Frisk is a bit further away opening a lunchbox. They suddenly see the bullies and hide behind a corner in fear, but then whisper to themselves to "stay determined". Frisk confronts the bullies, who start picking on them (Joey makes puns here, like "Well it sure seems someone is feeling Frisky today!"). Frisk teases the dog with a stick, and then throws it away. The dog pauses, looks at the stick for a moment, then bites Frisk's lunchbox instead and runs away with it.

 Frisk runs after the dog, and the bullies run after both throwing snowballs. The dog jumps over the boarding school's wall, and runs through the nearby village, plunging into a videogame rental store through a window. Frisk is then seen entering the store, where the dog finally drops the box and jumps out of the building. After Frisk picks up the lunchbox, they look at the many video games in the shelves, some old and some new. A moment passes before suddenly a shop clerk kindly asks "Are you looking for something?"

 The dorky shop clerk gets Frisk's attention, asking if they want to rent a game, and a small chat about videogames ensues. The shop clerk talks about how great videogames are, but Frisk thinks they're a bit violent, and says that they prefer books. The shop clerk seems pensive for a moment, then he says that he thinks he knows just the game Frisk might like.

 He takes from the shelve an old Super Nintendo videogame in a dusty box, which reads "Undertale, the Friendly Videogame where Nobody has to Die!" (Dialogue : "This is a very special game, I give it to you for free. It's a bit old, but I think there's still a console in your school where you can play this..."). The clerk advises them to finish it all the way, and treat everyone they find in the game as a friend. "You would never hurt a friend, would you? But... I don't think I need to tell you this. You seem to have a kind heart." Frisk agrees, smiling, but looking puzzled.  RUINS  In their school bedroom, we see Frisk boot the console and start playing the game. The intro starts playing on the TV as the surroundings subtly fade away. Frisk becomes slowly immersed in an animated sequence. Similar to the first scene, Frisk runs through the mountainside woods under the rain, finds the cave, falls down the hole, etc.

 Frisk then stands up and walks for a bit inside the cave. Soon they find the Flower, who tricks them into trusting him only to hurt them with his attack bullets, calling them "friendliness pellets". When Flowey is threatening the character with a circle-pattern bullet formation, a big moving flame pushes the flower away, casted by an unseen character (later revealed to be is saved by an unseen character (later revealed to be a friendly "mother goat"-like she-monster : , guardian of the Ruins).  Cut to a live-action shot of the room as Leonard gets inside, breaking their immersion with a "Yo Frisk! What's up?". Leonard asks Frisk where did they found the game. Frisk turns towards him, and explains that "it's from the game retail. They just gave it to me... for free?". Meanwhile Toriel introduces herself on the TV screen. Leonard says that it looks like "one of those weird old Japanese games... I've heard most of those never made it here. They say it's because you can get nightmares from them or something... but otherwise they're awesome!". He also says he bets the shop clerk gave Frisk the game "because the main character looks like you. Which is kinda cool! But a bit creepy too... Anyway, you're really lucky dude! This game looks neat!". A few children from the other rooms overhear the chatting, and ask to play along.  A musical scene ensues (Song : Old Lady Toriel - Ruins, Home Sweet Home) where Toriel takes the character through the ruins, and kids take turns to play, solving various puzzles and meeting some friendly monsters along the way, including a shy ghost called Napstablook. Together, the children take the character to Toriel's house, where she offers them a piece of Butterscotch-Cinnamon Pie she just baked, and a guest bedroom with a comfortable bed to sleep in. The musical scene ends with Toriel and the character in the living room, as the camera slowly zooms out through a window.  At this point it's Joey's turn to play. She says that "this game is for babies" and is "looking for some REAL action now". Joey makes the character fight Toriel and kills her ("We've had enough of your tuToriels, old hag!"). General turmoil : some children gasp, some groan, some laugh. Frisk angrily shuts down the TV, crying and saying that this was not the way the game had to be played. Joey gets her pals to kick Frisk out of the bedroom, together with the console, but Leonard gets out and offers them to stay in a spare room his parents have set (they're part of the cleaning staff).  A scene follows where, in the evening, Frisk is sitting on the spare room's bed. They try to forget about the incident, and their loneliness. They finally get in the bed, saying the dreaded phrase "I wish I had never been born in the first place..." as they fall asleep.  NOTE: What the script calls "the dreaded phrase", or a variation of it, is going to be very important in this film. As of now, the plan is to reveal further in the movie that it's through this wish that children fall into the world of Undertale, which is how Suzy disappeared. The rest of the world seems to forget that they ever existed, except for a very close friend or relative, which would be the next child to fall. The cycle breaks when Asgore, the king of the monsters, gathers seven human S.O.U.L.s in crystal jars. This would break the barrier trapping monsters underground, and "unlock a good ending" for monsters. In this case, perhaps Leonard would fall next if Asgore hasn't already gathered seven S.O.U.L.s by then, i.e. because some other monster took Frisk's S.O.U.L. instead.  In a pitch black sequence, Frisk dreams of the voice of a man, telling them to wake up ("Frisk! You have to stay determined! You can’t give up… You are the future of humans and monsters…"). Cut to an animated sequence, Frisk wakes up inside the game world, in Toriel's house. Terrified, they go to the kitchen where Toriel is still alive, and ask her to go home. Like in the original game, she leads her to the basement's secret passage, and a brief fight ensues. Seeing that Frisk doesn't want to fight, Toriel hugs them and waves them goodbye.  Frisk walks down a dark hallway, until they see a bright purple door appear in front of them. They walk towards it. Suddenly, Flowey emerges from the ground between Frisk and the door. He mock-congratulates Frisk on saving a single life, but reveals that he's aware that Toriel was killed before ("I know what you did. You murdered her. And then you went back, because you regretted it."), recognizing that he once had the power to reset time (most of the dialogue is the same as in the game).

 As he talks, Flowey's face slowly grows into a large creepy grimace. He makes a loud cackle as Frisk runs to the door, opens it and crosses it. He's finally seen alone before the door, as he tells the audience that he'll be watching.

 SNOWDIN  [TO BE CONTINUED]

SUPER LIGHNING-SHORT POORLY WRITTEN RESUME OF WHAT TO EXPECT NEXT:

 A self-aware videogame within a self-aware movie. Long time ago, two races ruled the earth, humans and monsters. One day, war broke out between the two races, and after a long battle, humans were victorious. They sealed the monsters in the Underground, with a magic spell (Song : Undertale - Once upon a time). Many years later, we see a kid finding shelter from rain in a mountain cave and falling into a hole, then starting to cry as an a--hole narrator voice comments. It turns out to be just a nightmare!  In the real world, a lonely kid called Frisk who lives in a boarding school is constantly bullied (Song : Friends with a Frisk - Uwa!!), but after an incident involving a white dog and stolen lunch they are gifted a strange old SNES videogame. In the game they meet a seemingly friendly flower creature called Flowey, who is the a--hole narrator voice! You see, despite the looks, Flowey's kinda evil, so he tries to kill the game's character for fun (sadistic as heck). They are saved by another game monster, an overprotective "mother goat" known as Toriel, the guardian of the Ruins, and the game's tutorial. Just then, the other kids in the school find out about the game.  An evening of group gameplay (Song : Old Lady Toriel - Ruins) ensues, but the other kids end up fighting and killing Toriel. Frisk is sad and angry at them for this, and she is locked out of the room. They go to sleep in a spare room and try to forget about their loneliness, wishing they "had never existed in the first place" (depressing stuff, man) as they fall asleep. Briefly afterwards, they mysteriously wake up inside Undertale's (the game) world, where Toriel is still alive (it seems the other kids had forgot to save the game).  After peacefully solving a quarrel with an angry Toriel, who believes Frisk is not prepared to leave on their own, and being confronted by Flowey (who knows what happened in the previous gameplay) for a second time, Frisk exits the Ruins and departs on a quest to return to the real world, or at least leave the Underground. Note that inside Undertale's world, the film can show videogame elements, such as text boxes that narrate some actions, that only Frisk notices.  In the next area, an underground forest filled with snow, Frisk meets , a lazy comedian skeleton who constantly makes bad puns, and his enthusiastic brother Papyrus, who's dream is to capture a human to become popular. While Papyrus goes to calibrate the required puzzles to properly capture Frisk, the human kid explores the forest with Sans (Song : Close From Home and Far Away - Snowy, Snowdin Town). They encounter a few dog-like monsters, and fight a fierce looking guardian called Greater Dog, who becomes tame by just playing fetch with him. As they arrive in a town called Snowdin, a group of local monster children remind Frisk of their own schoolmates, most notably Snowdrake aka "Snowy", who reminds them of the school's main bully Josephine aka "Joey", and Monster Kid, who reminds them of their roommate Leonard. The latter will then join Frisk for about half of the journey.  At the outskirts of the village, Frisk, Sans and Monster Kid meet Papyrus again, who is now ready to properly capture Frisk. He takes Frisk through a collection of puzzles (Song : The Bonetrousle - Bonetrousle) and even challenges them to a fight. After losing his special attack to a white dog, and seeing Frisk endure his "regular but very cool attack" he notices that befriending Frisk is all that he needed to be happy. He gives them his phone number, and invites them to have lunch at Grillby's (a pub in Snowdin town).  At Grillby's, after a small talk about echo flowers (that can repeat words spoken close to them), Sans shows Frisk a secret shortcut (a grey door to a dark corridor) that leads to a further, marsh-themed area called Waterfall. In the shadows, Papyrus is talking to a figure in a suit of armour (Undyne, head of the monsters' royal guard), who seems to notice Frisk but walks away.  Monster Kid appears, excited because they've just met their favourite heroine. Frisk and them walk through a room full of echo flowers (that sound like a choir), where Monster Kid starts singing about the legends of the Underground, and the exploits of Undyne (Song : Undyne Spear of Justice - Quiet Water, Spear of Justice). Most importantly, they mention that only after obtaining a human SOULs can a monster leave the Underground. In the end, Undyne DOES hear both kids, and chases Frisk through a wooden platform that ends up breaking, making Frisk fall down.  After hearing a strange voice, Frisk wakes up in a garbage dump, where they meet a ghost who lives inside a dummy, [TO BE CONTINUED].