“While the original game dives right in after Kratos has lost his family, the movie will apparently tell his backstory. We’ll see him battle as a Spartan captain and get tricked by Ares, with the screenwriters comparing their characterization of Kratos to Batman Begins.

Marcus Dunstan, one of the movie’s writers, said, “In the same way that Batman was grounded with Christopher Nolan’s rendition, we were attempting to do that with Kratos, so that when we meet him…we’re seeing him before he became the Ghost of Sparta, when he was just a Spartan warrior and he had family and kids.”

Usually, when a film studio is spending a lot of money on something, they have executives peering over the writers’ shoulders to make sure they’re not using that money for anything too outlandish.

But according to Marcus Dunstan, one of the writers hired to work on the God of War movie, the studio execs have been encouraging the more outlandish stuff: “God of War was turned in last week, and by God, the reason I cannot wait for you guys to see that is because…the door was left wide open to be bold, and that is why that movie…I really hope it sees the light of day and comes out charging, because it’s a lightning strike.””