If you've never seen Once Upon a Time in America, you should check it out the next time you have a spare 3 hours and 49 minutes. Even by Sergio Leone's standards, it's a long boi, but it’s also a crucial piece of cinema not to be missed. Not only a contender for Leone's best work, it's also probably composer Ennio Morricone's best, and has one of Robert De Niro's best performances. It's also James Woods' best turn, and the cinematic debut of Jennifer Connelly, with fantastic supporting performances from legends like Burt Young, Joe Pesci, and Danny Aiello. It's long, but it's worth your time - a lot like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Grand Theft Auto.
Once Upon a Time in America pays tribute to classic gangster films, and so to boil it down to its𝔍 most basic storyline makes it feel tropey. Two street kids, Noodles and Max, try to make it big in the world in the 1920s. After a gang clash sees Noodles sent to jail for ten years, the film then picks up in the early 1930s, where Noodles is played by De Niro and Max by Woods. As if to underscore how long this film is, Woods is one of the stars a🃏nd it takes 91 minutes for him to show up. After Noodles leaves prison, the two remain partners, but have gone in very different directions with their criminal enterprises.
Max accuses Noodles of having "the stink of the street" on him, because he thinks small time. Just like when he was a boy, all he wants to do is make enough money to get by. Max, who becomes more of a white collar criminal working for politicians and moving diamonds in shady deals, has a million dollars in the bank - in the 1930s, meaning he has around $16 million - and still isn't satisfied. He wants 20 million. 50 million. The money no longer matters. He wants to be on top, however he can.
Without wanting to spoil OUATIA, the story picks up again in the 1960s, where Noodles' life has changed further, and nothing is quite what it seems. I don't think it makes any kind of sense for GTA to just 'do' Once Upon a Time and have us play as, say, Noodles, but Rockstar has the scope to tell an epic story of these proportions. GTA 5 gave us three very different characters, who occasionally intertwined in the game's early stages then became wrapped up in the same story as the game went on. The series has also dabbled with period pieces before, exploring the glitz of the 1980s.
GTA has all the ingredients. It likely wouldn't be as melancholic, or as contemplative, as Once Upon a Time, but it doesn't need to be. GTA is very good at what it does, but the problem is GTA's whole deal is that it satirises. Our modern world often feels beyond satirisation, and another period GTA feels like the best fit. I'm not the first to suggest it, but rather than just 'Vice City, but '90s', Rockstar has the budget to tell a story of Once Upon a Time in America's proportions.
It wouldn't need to be '20s, '30s, '60s - in fact, just ripping off Once Upon a Time is probably the worst thing GTA could do. But rather than stick to one era and twist it up into parody, GTA could freshen things up by focusing on journeys across eras, using satire to highlight the gulf between two characters who grow apart.
We could start in the '90s and move up to the modern day, avoiding the need to hyper-focus on the impossible to parody times we live in. We could even start in the '50s or '60s, in a very un-GTA style, while the game still has space to modernise into its comfort zone as the runtime goes on. GTA games are often static pictures of their eras, or show very immediate changes. Spanning decades allows them to take a look at gentrification, displacement, and the changing face of communities.
Maybe we could even ride a💞 garbage tr🦄uck. If you know, you know.