By Robert Scucci
| Printed
In the event you grew up within the 90s taking part in first-person shooters on MS-DOS, you in all probability have fond recollections of sneaking in classes of Duke Nukem 3D. Whereas we by no means had gaming consoles in my family, my mother and father had no qualms about me taking part in PC video games like Doom, Quakeand Wolfenstein. For causes I’ll by no means absolutely perceive, Tremendous Mario Bros. was forbidden fare, however blasting area demons and zombies with rocket launchers and mowing down Nazis with machine weapons was thought-about a wonderfully acceptable approach to spend a wet afternoon.
I believe the actual purpose was that my mother and father didn’t wish to spend cash on a console after we already had a wonderfully good pc sitting within the household room. On reflection, I sort of respect that call. It meant I had entry to journey puzzle video games like The Seventh Visitor and Mysttogether with the above-mentioned shooters that have been completely not meant for teenagers my age.
In 1996, Duke Nukem 3D was in every single place, and I keep in mind watching my dad get hooked on it one weekend in his workplace. I may hear explosions and laughter by the door, which naturally made me curious. That was my introduction to a sport that was wildly inappropriate for a child, however I used to be fortunate sufficient to have mother and father who let me watch R-rated motion films so long as we talked about why sure behaviors on display weren’t meant to be copied in actual life.
That brings me to the actual coronary heart of this text. Why, within the yr 2026, can we nonetheless not have a Duke Nukem film? The property feels tailored for an R-rated motion comedy. It’s violent, self-aware, and ridiculous. There are strippers and aliens, pigs dressed as cops, lizard troopers, and catchphrases pulled straight from movies like Aliens, Soiled Harry, They Stay, Jawsand Pulp Fiction. Duke Nukem 3D is routinely cited as one of many biggest video video games ever made, and the franchise reportedly generated properly over a billion {dollars} by the early 2000s. A devoted adaptation would go completely gangbusters.
A Easy But Efficient Motion Hero
A film based mostly on the Duke Nukem character wouldn’t be tough to drag off as a result of the story is deliberately lean. Duke arrives in Los Angeles aboard his area cruiser, prepared for a much-needed trip. His ship will get shot down by aliens who’ve invaded and brought over town, and he’s understandably irritated about having to scrub up their mess. Armed along with his Mighty Foot and an arsenal that features shotguns, triple-barrelled chain weapons, grenade launchers, and pipe bombs, Duke tears by Assault Troopers, Pig Cops, Battlelord Sentries, and Enforcers.
What actually units Duke Nukem 3D other than its contemporaries is how interactive the environments are. Duke crawls by air vents, blows aside buildings by hitting detonation switches which are simply laying round willy-nilly, kicks hearth hydrants and drinks from water fountains to energy up, and even suggestions strippers for a fast present earlier than getting again to work. It’s juvenile, extreme, and fully unapologetic. When Duke says he’s right here to kick ass and chew bubblegum, a quote attributed to Roddy Piper in They Stay!he means it.
The quantity of controversy the sport attracted from particular curiosity teams over its content material is precisely why Duke Nukem would thrive as an R-rated motion comedy in the present day. With the suitable inventive workforce connected, the tone doesn’t must be reinvented or overhauled in any respect.
Makes an attempt Have Been Made
There has by no means been a scarcity of curiosity in bringing Duke Nukem to the massive display. As early as 2001, when the franchise was using excessive, Threshold Leisure tried to get a function movie off the bottom, but it surely by no means made it out of improvement. One other effort surfaced in 2008 from Max Payne producer Scott Faye, although that model stalled simply as rapidly.
The closest we got here to a Duke Nukem film was in 2018, when Paramount Footage and Platinum Dunes have been having discussions with John Cena to tackle the lead position. It was a near-perfect casting alternative, however the rights have been in transition on the time, and the mission was quietly shelved.
The latest improvement got here in 2022, when Legendary Leisure introduced that it had acquired the rights to provide a Duke Nukem movie, with Cobra Kai creators Josh Heald and Jon Hurwitz connected. Since then, updates have been scarce, which sadly feels par for the course for this franchise.
If it takes one other 5 years for something concrete to occur, so be it. I simply hope Cena continues to be capable of step into the position. Initiatives like Ricky Stanicky have already confirmed that his comedic timing is an ideal match for a personality like Duke Nukem. The picture of him kicking a hearth hydrant for well being earlier than tossing a pipe bomb right into a movie show and getting frisky with the women deserves to exist exterior of my creativeness.
What this film wants is easy. Enemies that respawn endlessly, one-liners delivered with out restraint, and waves of an identical henchmen getting obliterated as Duke reluctantly fights his means again to trip. This doesn’t must be excessive artwork. It must be an ultra-violent alien invasion, solved by the good online game character to ever seem on a pc display.