These fan-made Helldivers 2 cinematics have convinced me a movie could work

I originally had a good deal of skepticism when Sony announced a film based on Helldivers 2, simply because it’s hard to imagine how the game can translate into a movie. Someone’s already made Starship Troopers, after all, and it’s hard to imagine the antics that emerge from your typical match translating to the big screen. Over time, my position has softened, and a large part of that is because of the phenomenal work fans are doing in creating their own cinematics inspired by Arrowhead’s work.

One fan, posting on Reddit under the name Sad-Needleworker-590, posted his own trailer using a few clips of in-game cutscenes, voice lines from the game, and footage filmed from his own games. The end result is chilling; some of the shots of a lone Helldiver jogging through a blood-red sunset or preparing to face off against an Automaton Factory Strider genuinely gave me goosebumps. There are also some great action scenes, cut short enough to provide thrilling glimpses into the action-packed, lethal life of a Helldiver.

The trailer took about four days to put together. “I like Helldivers because it brought back to me that forgotten feeling of a good video game,” Sad-Needleworker-590 told Polygon via direct messages. “Even if it uses same game mechanic in every mission it still really fun to play with random people, or friends. And the game looks really good, each shot is cinematic masterpiece itself.”

I’ve also enjoyed following Martechi on YouTube, who creates works in the Warhammer 40K and Helldivers 2 universes alongside his own setting. Martechi creates videos that look like they could exist in some theoretical, wildly ambitious update from Arrowhead themselves. Using the mechanical context of his user ID and the Super Destroyer HUD, this cinematic space battle between Automatons and Illuminate looks real enough to fool the unwary observer.

While some fans don’t care to fight the Illuminate, YouTuber EPG-6 created an animation called “Showdown” in which a Helldiver uses a hatchet and a shield to go head-to-head with an Illuminate Overlord. I, for one, absolutely hate fighting the Overlords because they can take so many shots, so it’s satisfying to see one in such a tense tussle with a Helldiver.

Lumis Entertainment is another YouTube channel with some intriguing teasers for upcoming projects. One video is called Helldivers 2 – Teaser and shows glimpses of an upcoming animated fan film. In a longer crossover animation called Helldivers 40,000, a Helldiver is on the rocks against an oncoming Terminid swarm. Just when hope is lost, drop pods arrive, bringing Space Marines. As a fan of both franchises, I feel comfortable agreeing that these two would get along famously.

There’s no news on the upcoming film, besides knowing that Arrowhead itself won’t be too involved in the production. “We’re not Hollywood people, and we don’t know what it takes to take a movie,” Arrowhead Game Studios creative director Johan Pilestedt said back in January. PlayStation Productions and Sony Pictures will be at the helm, but if these fan creations prove anything, it’s that the gameplay can nicely translate into cinematic snippets.