This is just a bad idea. Now, Shawn Ryan is a fantastic storyteller, and The Shield is a masterpiece of televised storytelling. Sure, Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy are all the talk now, but The Shield set the table for both of them (I know The Shield owes a lot to The Sopranos, but I loved The Shield more). Now, a Shield movie pitch is being thrown around.
Here is why this is wrong: The Shield ended perfectly. Vic Mackey did not go to jail, but he either killed, caused the death of, or ruined the life of everyone who trusted or cared about him. And, in the end, he has to live with himself knowing what he caused.
The reason that The Shield movie won’t work is because Shane isn’t there. Lem isn’t there. Ronnie might be there if he ever gets out of jail. Vic’s wife and kids are long gone, escaping his evil clutches. The thing that made The Shield great was the group dynamic.
Now, the Shield movie pitch sounds promising:
“After the series ended, I came up with an idea and pitched it to Jim Gianopulos and Alex Young at Fox,” Shawn Ryan said. “The idea was about a young cop who enters the drug gang culture of L.A. and becomes frustrated by his inability to take it down. He becomes obsessed with the idea of bringing some justice to the situation. He then starts hearing whispers of somebody who used to be a cop and might be of service to him. And that’s Vic Mackey.”
The idea does sound interesting, and it would be cool to see Michael Chiklis back in Vic Mackey’s skin once again. Chiklis said he would do it too. The problem is that it would water down that brilliant ending. The Shield movie would damage the TV shows perfect conclusion.
By the way, this came from a BRILLIANT oral history of The Shield, with all the cast members and creative team (including The Walking Dead’s Glen Mazzura and Sons of Anarchy’s Kurt Sutter). Read the entire oral history of The Shield here.
