Back in 2012, movie director Scott Derrickson and his Sinister collaborator C. Robert Cargill were working on the script for a movie adaptation of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. If you’re not familiar with the game, it tells the story of Adam Jensen, a former cop-turned security specialist for a biotech firm. He’s injured on duty, to the point where he wouldn’t have survived without life-saving mechanical augmentations. His broken limbs are lopped off, replaced with military-grade chrome and high-tech infiltration tech. He becomes a killing machine.
In this world, augmentations aren’t uncommon. Some, like Jensen, are forced into using them due to health issues. Others carve off parts of themselves and replace them with mechanical pieces as a fashion statement. This creates tension between the ‘augs’ and the ‘pure’ humans. The augs also have to rely on a drug that stops the body from rejecting their implants, often creating addicts in the process.
With a Blade Runner-esque cyberpunk style and plenty of room for stylish action sequences, it could have been a winner. Unfortunately, Derrickson was forced to step away to direct Doctor Strange.
“We made really good progress on that script, and it’s an incredible property,” he told Empire Online at the time. “The folks over at CBS Films hired myself and C. Robert Cargill, I love them, they’re great people. It was a really positive process that was going on, and it was a little heartbreaking. Getting on Doctor Strange, this was the biggest downside of it. The fact that I needed to step off Deus Ex. I couldn’t expect them to wait for two years for me.”
Without Derrickson, however, the project fell apart.
“I don’t think I really understood the studio’s reasoning at the time,” Scott Kinney, development executive for Prime Universe Productions, says. “They communicated that Deus Ex wasn’t the kind of film they wanted to make or felt comfortable making, that their overall strategy was shifting from action films like Dwayne Johnson’s Faster, which they had previously financed, to films more like The Duff. Of course, Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill left the project for Doctor Strange and it just died.”
Working for the Hollywood production company that optioned the movie rights to Deus Ex, Kinney was initially in charge of writing the treatments to get the studio executives onboard. Once they were, he helped to find the right scriptwriters for the job.
“After identifying writers we thought would be right for the project based on their previous work, a smaller number of candidates were selected to come in and pitch their take on the story,” Kinney explains. “I was sold on the writing team of Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill, who were a hot duo after the success of their film, Sinister, from day one. They just understood the world of Deus Ex and had the vision to bring it to life. Of course, Scott was hired to write and direct as well.
“I’m really, really sad CBS Films fumbled the ball on this project because I believe Scott would have knocked Deus Ex out of the park to finally make the first great video game film adaptation. Their amazing work on Marvel’s Doctor Strange film, which should have/could have been the Deus Ex movie, shared a ‘more than human’ theme in a deft way that translated well into an action-adventure film for a mass audience. Replace the mysticism of Doctor Strange with the transhumanism theme of Deus Ex and we felt like we had all the ingredients for a film that could have been memorable, or at worst, ahead of its time.”
Thanks to Kinney, we have access to the 2014 script draft, so we can at least take a quick look at what we missed out on.
It all starts with an Albert Einstein quote and a workout montage.
“Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
Albert Einstein.
FADE IN:
The sound of deep and controlled breaths, like a metronome, set against the POUNDING of feet on asphalt.
EXT. RUNNING PATH – PRE DAWN
The sun’s penumbra illuminates a slow moving river. Light refracts off of dew covered grass. A drop… quivers, and falls as a pair of running shoes, moves by, fast. We go with them.
PULL UP to reveal the owner. His sweat soaked running shorts and a tank top cover an athlete’s body — long and lean, with well-defined muscles.
He angles off the running path, towards an open air workout area — pull up bars, free weights, an obstacle course, etc. As he slows, we see his face: 30’s [sic], handsome, with a full head of dark hair. This is a man in his prime. But its [sic] not his appearance that grabs you. It’s his eyes. There’s an intensity and intelligence to them that speak to a complicated mind.
This is ADAM JENSEN.
EXT. OUTDOOR WORKOUT AREA – PRE DAWN
Jensen angles for the pull up bars, grabs them, and pulls his body up, over and over again. Muscles start to twitch and he slows.
He drops to the ground and down, landing on his hands. Push ups are next. Lots of them.
Then he moves to the racked weights. Must be 180 pounds. He starts to bench. As he does, his biceps quiver — fourteen reps, fifteen… If the body is a machine, he is pushing his to its limits, and fine tuning it. Muscles fail. He re racks the weights.
He lies on the bench, breathing hard. The first rays of the sun wash over him as it crests the horizon, its light refracting off of nearby flowers.
After this, we move to Jensen’s apartment where he’s talking to his girlfriend, Dr. Megan Reed. The script describes her as “beautiful and bookish”, which I assume means she looks intelligent and not like some ancient tome. They talk and share a tender moment, but they’re disrupted by a news report about a terrorist incident. A group called Purity First has attacked Sarif Industries’ manufacturing facility. Megan asks Jensen if he agrees with them about augmentation being inhuman.
“I understand them,” he says. “There’s a difference.”
Megan crosses to him, staring at the burning building.
MEGAN
Augments help people.
He takes her in, beautiful, then he reaches out and puts his hand on her heart.
MEGAN (CONT’D)
What are you doing?
JENSEN
Feeling you.
MEGAN
(smiling)
…And you think a cybernetic hand
can’t?
JENSEN
Not like this.
MEGAN
Augs don’t change who you are,
Adam.
JENSEN
No. But they change what you are.
You want me to augment, I will.
For you. But I don’t want to stop
feeling this, ever.
On the way to Sarif Industries, a pop-up advert reminds Jensen that he hasn’t taken advantage of his company perks yet – free augmentations. He strides through the hologram, ignoring it. He also tries to stop Megan from giving an augmented addict some change.
When they reach their workspace at Sarif Industries, we’re introduced to all the key players, including David Sarif, founder of the company.
Shortly after, we’re introduced to the primary antagonists: Yelena Fedorova, Jaron Namir, and Lawrence Barrett. All are mercenaries who are seemingly working for Purity First. They’re gearing up to hit the building Jensen is in.
INT. LOBBY – SARIF BUILDING – CONTINUOUS
Lights flash and an alarm sounds. A dozen armed Sarif SECURITY OFFICERS — tactical vests and helmets, military grade hardware — flood in as the lobby GUARDS usher employees towards elevators. ONE reacts as an alloy case slides by his feet, towards the guards. A beat and it EXPLODES!
Concussive force blows Guards back. Others raise their weapons, panning, pushing through the smoky silence. And one is BLOWN back, a hole where his chest had been. Security Officers FIRE as Barrett appears out of the smoke.
His coat is gone, revealing the big man beneath, or at least what had been a man. Now, he’s entirely something else — a six foot six, four hundred pound pitbull mean metal m**********r with a human head. Everything from the neck down — chest, arms, legs, everything — is augmented with chromed out cutting edge military grade cybernetic augmentations.
His face is scarred from fire and battle, his temples home to jacks and plugs, and what used to be his eyes are now glossy black digital displays.
If anything on God’s green earth should give you pause, if anything should make you consider the morality of augmentation, Barrett is it.
According to Kinney, Stephen Lang (Avatar) would have been his choice for the role. Bradley Cooper (A Star is Born) would have been his Adam Jensen. However, the project never got as far as casting.
The action sequences such as the one above sound violent and frantic on paper, with augmentations used liberally to rip, tear, and, in the case of cloaking devices, defy audience expectations. Jensen thinks the mercs are here for Typhoon, a secret weapon that’s in R&D at Sarif, but they’re actually here for something called Daedalus.
BARRETT
Daedalus. Where is it?
Megan shakes her head. Barrett’s eyes shift to Yelena.
A razor sharp blade extends from one of Yelena’s hands. It glides down Megan’s chest, to her stomach, and crotch, lingering on her thigh. A thin trail of blood rises in its wake.
BARRETT (CONT’D)
I respect your conviction, Doctor,
I really do. But nothing David
Sarif owns is worth dying for.
Megan just stares hate at the big man.
BARRETT (CONT’D)
But maybe that’s just me.
(to Yelena)
Bleed her.
Yelena’s applying pressure when–
Automatic FIRE tears through the labs. Slugs SMASH into Yelena, knocking her off her feet. As Barrett and Janus swing around–
–Jensen FIRES on a cooling tank — a vat of super-cooled liquid used to cool equipment. The liquid vaporizes on contact with air, creating a thick white mist, obscuring vision.
ANGLE ON Megan, staring. And suddenly Jensen’s there, grabbing her arm.
JENSEN
Come on!
Together, they RUN.
Barrett steps through the fog and mist, staring at nothing. Yelena and Jaron appear to his left, like wraiths.
And BARRETT’S POV shifts. Walls fall away, leaving only the outline of studs and wires. And suddenly, he’s looking through the wall at the two running heat signatures.
BARRETT
(to Yelena and Jaron, cold)
Run ‘em down.
The mercs eventually catch up with Jensen and beat him to a pulp, taunting him about them being faster, stronger, and smarter than he is, thanks to the augments. They throw him through a plate-glass window, leaving shards of glass sticking out of his skin.
Deus Ex’s action scenes sound brutal, but it was never planned to be an R-rated movie. “Most studios at the time – this was before Deadpool was such a huge hit with an ‘R’ rating in the US – were not interested in making big budget films intended for adult audiences only,” Kinney says. “I think it could and should be an R-rated film if made today and that wouldn’t be a hindrance.”
This part of the script is where it veers from the games in a big way. According to Kinney, the movie team was in constant conversation with Eidos Montreal, who were making Deus Ex: Human Revolution at the same time as the movie was being planned out.
“Every treatment we ever wrote to pitch to studio execs was sent to the game developers for input,” Kinney says. “The same with the screenplay, we received their notes on every version of the script. Everyone seemed happy with the final result. Everyone. And that’s the tragedy of it.”
At this point in the movie, Jensen wakes up in a hospital. He’s not augmented against his will like in the game – he’s still very much human. He’s angry about losing Megan, who he believes is dead, and has flashbacks to their conversation about augmentations, as well as to Barrett taunting him. He asks David Sariff to kit him out with Typhoon tech so he can get revenge. He literally asks for this.
INT. CLEAN ROOM – SARIF TECH FACILITY – TIME UNKNOWN
Jensen, eyes closed, lies in a bed, sheet [sic] covering his body. He looks normal enough, save a hexagon carved into the left side of his forehead, and two metal crescents flanking his eyes.
Jensen’s eyes SNAP open. He sits up, quick, confused and disoriented. As he does, the sheet falls away to reveal his legs and torso. He looks like a man, and more. His chest and arms are covered in titanium-infused sheets grafted to his natural skin. His arms are entirely cybernetic, as are his hands which are now black and shiny.
He looks around, and when he does, his world is one of sensory overload — colors too bright, sounds too loud, like his mind is some kind of perverse echo chamber.
JENSEN’S CYBERNETICALLY ENHANCED POV:
He’s in a large lab filled with medical and scientific machines, and devoid of life. Megan’s necklace rests on a small table, and everything is in ultra high definition — no shadow can hide you from him. He blinks and a tactical grid manifests over his POV. Microprocessors record everything he’s seeing, as every item is identified as a possible weapon and/or threat. All in less time than it takes you to blink.
Jensen stands, abruptly. He’s naked. Seen from the back, we note that his spinal column has been replaced with an alloy frame that attaches to all four limbs, and that the lower half of each leg has been replaced with cybernetics.
Soon after, Jensen escapes from the hospital and heads out into the world, which he now sees through augmented eyes. He heads back to the park in the opening scene and we get another workout montage that mimics the opening shots to show how much he has evolved. Then there’s a Jason Bourne-esque action sequence where he’s set upon by three augmentation harvesters.
–Punk #2 SWINGS a crowbar at Jensen’s head. Jensen catches it with his left hand, easily, and DRIVES his right fist into the Punk’s solar plexus. Bones break and the man’s body is PROPELLED back–
JENSEN’S POV:
A mix of sensory overload as Punks move, fast. Then suddenly, the world seems to slow. Punk #2 is mid air. The Girl is shouting. Punk #3 is drawing a knife. Punk #1 is extending his hand, a taser in it, angling for Jensen’s chest. And imposed over it all, lines and numbers indicating angle of attack, force, potential damage, assailant strengths and weaknesses. All of it in a fraction of a second.
Real time: Jensen pivots, grabbing Punk #1’s hand and twisting it back. Punk #1 SCREAMS as bones snap. Punk #3 convulses as Jensen drives the taser into his chest. Both drop.
Jensen stares down at the broken bodies. Three seconds and three men down. Just like that.
While a lot of these are new scenes created specifically for the movie adaptation, it’s done with a real love for the source material for the most part. We even get a scene of Jensen sitting and drinking whiskey from a tumbler, topless. But here he also has a dog called Kubrick.
Tong Si Hung, the owner of The Hive nightclub, plays a much larger role in the movie. Jensen dupes him for some information and ends up getting a hit put out on him for his hubris. Later, after a high-speed car chase, Jensen tricks Tong into coming to the final showdown, where he uses him again, this time as a distraction.
The rest of the story sticks closely to the games. The news reporter is revealed to be an AI propaganda machine, Sarif’s dirty secrets are unearthed, and Daedalus is triggered, causing the augmented to lose their minds. Jensen and Megan put a stop to it. Oh, and he gets to use the Typhoon system.
Jensen TWISTS, SPINS, DROPS TO ONE KNEE and bends each arm on either side of him, like a kung fu stance. Small HOLES pop open along his arms.
WHOOOOOOSH! THE TYPHOON FIRES
A SHOCK WAVE from his arms launches SMALL EXPLOSIVE DEVICES in a 360 degree wave.
Explosive ball bearings tear over the hostages [sic] heads, impacting the seven Mercs and DETONATING! Mercs are BLASTED back VIOLENTLY. The remaining charges pepper the walls, blowing great holes into them.
Jensen stares at the aftermath in awe — he had no idea how powerful Typhoon was. When he looks at the hostages, they’re staring at him with mouths agape.
There’s one bit in the script that made me laugh like The Joker, however, and I’m going to share it with you now, so you, too, can laugh like The Joker.
INT. CASSAN MAINFRAME – PICTUS BUILDING – CONTINUOUS
Megan hears Jensen’s voice through her earbud. Her eyes land on a sense of code shimmering as Yelena approaches.
MEGAN
(To Jensen and to herself)
Get up!
JENSEN (V.O./COMMS)
I can’t. My systems are failing.
Megan’s eyes flit to the gun, lying a few feet away.
MEGAN
You’re not a machine…
INT. STUDIO – PICTUS BUILDING – CONTINUOUS
On Jensen, eyes on Barrett who jams a clip into his mini-gun.
MEGAN (V.O./COMMS)
You’re a man.
And a calm we haven’t seen suffuses Jensen, the kind that comes with that ultimately liberating realization that everything you’ve believed about yourself is somehow wrong, and now you understand the truth.
JENSEN
(low, to self)
…Get up, Jensen.
BARRETT
(lining the mini-gun)
Was it!?
JENSEN
…I’m not like you, Barrett.
BARRETT
You’re a f****** Aug!
JENSEN
Yeah, I am. But–
BARRETT
But what?
And Jensen MOVES, running right at Barrett!
Barrett’s depressing the trigger when Jensen LEAPS, a blade extending from his right arm, and CUTTING Barrett’s arm clean off. Barrett ROARS as arm and gun fall. He swings at Jensen
with the other. Jensen rolls, grabbing the arm/mini-gat, lines it–
JENSEN
I never asked for this.
–and Jensen FIRES!
Rounds blow into Barrett’s head. He falls with a THUD.
It’s incredibly jarring considering the quality of the rest of the script, which was revised most recently by Predators writer Michael Finch. It’s clearly a bit of fan service, but he literally did ask for this – in this version of the story, the augmentations weren’t forced on him.
“That seems like a Hollywood one-liner that was added in a revised draft to me,” Kinney says. “It’s hard to totally avoid stuff like that.”
Even with that line, there’s a lot of potential in the script. Sure, some of it is a bit cliche, and it’s a shame it wasn’t planned to be R-rated at the time, but this world is perfect for an on-screen adaptation – it’s such a visually interesting place, and they could have even played around with the black and gold color grading to reinforce the physical and mental journey Jensen takes.
For now, though, we’ll just have to make do with this.
Written by Kirk McKeand on behalf of GLHF.
