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Undertale - Film Adaptation Concept

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Undertale - Film Adaptation Concept Undertale - Film adaptation concept Based on the video game by Toby Fox 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 Flowey 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 : Toriel, 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).
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