It’s fair to say that William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Grand Theft Auto wouldn’t appear to be likely bedfellows, at least on face value. One is a text that has been adapted and studied for centuries, with everyone from Kenneth Branagh to The Simpsons taking a stab at it. The other is the biggest and arguably most controversial video game franchise in the world, having been brought to life in 1997 by the Scottish game developers at Rockstar North. Gamers are essentially free to do anything they want in its expansive open world, including untold amounts of chaos and crimes. And even, as recounted in a new documentary, putting on a production of Hamlet itself.
“It was a very appropriate environment for it,” says Pinny Grylls, one of the co-directors of Grand Theft Hamlet. The documentary follows two out-of-work actors, Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen, who attempt to mount a production of the play in the online version of GTA.
Crane, who is also Grylls’s co-director, thinks both works share surprising parallels. “When I was first going around the game, I’d see things like an incredibly beautiful sunset,” he explains. “It reminded me of Hamlet when he says: ‘this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire’. GTA is an equally horrific and beautiful place, and I think that gets to the heart of how Hamlet sees the world.”
It should be stressed that Grand Theft Auto is not a game solely built around mindless violence. Players are essentially allowed to do anything, from climbing a mountain to journeying out into the middle of the sea. You can even perform an incredibly mundane task, such as holding a work meeting. The world of Grand Theft Auto is a virtual oyster for gamers, who can adapt how their characters look, too. This, Grylls and Crane explain, laid the groundwork for their vision of Shakespeare.
“Hamlet is about artifice,” says Grylls. “It’s about people pretending to be something they’re not. It’s about people wearing masks.”
Crane adds: “If you think about it, Shakespeare was recreating the world of medieval Denmark inside Elizabethan England. In a similar way, you could say that GTA recreates a perspective of Los Angeles through the lens of a Scottish gaming company.”
It was very, very moving – seeing people put down their weapons and listen to 500-year-old poetry
Grand Theft Hamlet is a form of “machinima”, or the art of making movies using video game engines, which began back in the 1980s. Since its inception, the device has been used to produce numerous scenes and short films within games as diverse as Quake, The Sims 2 and Minecraft. It’s probably not what Martin Scorsese would define as “cinema”, but Grylls and Crane were conscious that they had to make a film that would appeal to a wide audience, not just gamers and Shakespeare aficionados.
“I really wanted it to be emotional,” says Grylls. “I found an in-game phone, which has a camera on it. You can do close-ups of the avatars, which allows them to come to life. You get a sense of what they would imagine, feel and think. We could also capture the non-playable characters that populate the game as well, picturing them almost as witnesses to our story.”
Like any great Shakespeare production, the film has moments of comedy. A scene where the actor’s avatars attempt to jump onto a blimp, hundreds of feet in the air, has a slapstick quality that lovers of Buster Keaton or Johnny Knoxville would appreciate. It’s also arguably the only interpretation of Hamlet in which the titular character dies while an alien makes a very rude thrusting gesture in the background.
Beyond the humour, though, the film is awash in emotion: at the heart of the movie is a celebration of the human spirit and the inherent goodness of people. While the planet was in lockdown because of the pandemic, Crane, Grylls and Oosterveen managed to meet people from all over the globe, from different nations, faiths and identities, many of whom wanted to help them achieve their goal of putting on a show.
“It was very, very moving,” Grylls says. “Seeing people put down their weapons and listen to 500-year-old poetry.”
“I think we’ve learned a lot about online communities in gaming spaces, how surprising and varied they are,” says Crane. “We kept coming across these people in the game who surprisingly did want to help us put on this production.”
“It kind of gives you hope for humanity,” he continues. “In a world where violence is so de rigueur, you can still find kindness and compassion.”
‘Grand Theft Hamlet’ is in UK and Irish cinemas via Tull Stories and will stream globally on Mubi in early 2025
