METAL GEAR 2: KASHMIR

A Treatment by Joseph C. Jukic

Logline: Aging legend Solid Snake is pulled out of retirement for one last, impossible mission: infiltrate the war-torn Himalayas to paint a nuclear missile with a laser target designator to prevent a holy apocalypse, all while wrestling with the philosophies of war, peace, and his own damned soul.

Tone: A philosophical espionage thriller meets gritty, hyper-kinetic action. Think the metaphysical weight of Metal Gear Solid 3 meets the stylish, snappy chaos of a Guy Ritchie film.

Director: Guy Ritchie
Starring:

  • Joseph C. Jukicย as Solid Snake
  • Aishwarya Rai Bachchanย as AMMA

ACT I: THE CALL TO DHARMA

OPENING: A montage of global chaos. News clips show border skirmishes between India and Pakistan escalating to a terrifying brink. The catalyst: a charismatic, enigmatic Indian guru known only as AMMA. She preaches a radical, militant Hinduism from a fortified ashram deep in the Kashmir mountains. She claims to be the Goddess Kalki, the final avatar of Vishnu, come to cleanse the world of evil (which, to her, is the entire modern world).

COLONEL CAMPBELL (via Codec, voice grim): โ€œSnake, weโ€™re not facing a nation-state. Weโ€™re facing a divine wrath made flesh. Her influence is absolute.โ€

Snake, older, wearier, but with eyes that have seen too much to ever truly rest, is found in a remote Alaskan cabin. Heโ€™s trying to forget. Otaconโ€™s plea is the one he canโ€™t refuse. AMMA has constructed “Vajra,” a monstrous successor to Metal Gear. Itโ€™s a mobile launch platform larger and more advanced than anything before, capable of traversing the Himalayan terrain and firing its payload from an impossible-to-pin-down location. She aims to launch a nuclear strike on Islamabad, triggering a full-scale nuclear exchange that will, in her words, “burn the field so a new world may grow.”

The only solution: Operation: Skypoker. A secret US “Rod from God” kinetic weapon systemโ€”a tungsten telephone pole dropped from orbitโ€”can destroy the Vajra. But it needs a laser paint on the target for terminal guidance. Snake must get inside the heart of AMMA’s fortress, find the Vajra after itโ€™s been armed and raised for launch, and paint the warhead itself.

As he gears up, Snake mutters to himself, a quote from his dog-eared copy of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations:

โ€œThe object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.โ€

THE INFILTRATION: Snake parachutes into the frozen, conflict-ravaged landscape of Kashmir. Ritchieโ€™s direction shines here: freeze-frames introducing packs of mercenaries (The “Kashmir Jackals”), quick-whip pans following Snakeโ€™s stealthy movements, and sharp, cynical voiceover from Snake.

He avoids patrols using classic CQC, his body complaining with every move. He quotes Sun Tzu to himself as he plans his route:

โ€œAppear at points which the enemy must hasten to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected.โ€

He witnesses the fanaticism of AMMAโ€™s followers firsthand. They are not just soldiers; they are zealots, believing they are enacting divine will.


ACT II: THE ILLUSION OF MAYA

INSIDE THE ASHRAM: The fortress is a bizarre blend of ancient temple and cutting-edge military tech. Snake navigates prayer halls filled with armed sadhus and server rooms humming with data. He learns AMMAโ€™s backstory through intercepted comms and data files: a figure of immense beauty and intellect, a former quantum physicist disillusioned by global corruption, who weaponized her otherworldly presence to become a living goddess.

He encounters AMMA (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan) herself, addressing her followers via hologram. Rai brings an unparalleled, ethereal intensity to the roleโ€”her iconic eyes are both profoundly compassionate and utterly terrifying. She is serenity and annihilation personified. She speaks of the coming fire not with hatred, but with a chilling, maternal pity, her voice a hypnotic blend of softness and steel. She quotes from the Bhagavad Gita:

โ€œTherefore, stand up now, and win glory! Conquer your foes, and enjoy a flourishing kingdom! I have already doomed them to destruction. Be merely the instrument of my work, O Archer.โ€

Snake, hiding in the shadows, feels a familiar dread. This isn’t about power; it’s about ideology. Itโ€™s a ghost heโ€™s fought before. He radios Otacon, his voice heavy, quoting Revelation:

โ€œAnd the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire.โ€

THE PAINT: The climax of Act II is a virtuoso stealth sequence. The Vajra is revealed in a massive silo carved into the mountain, being raised to the surface for launch. Snake must navigate the gantries and platforms swarming with technicians and guards. Itโ€™s a race against time as the launch countdown begins.

As he finally gets a visual on the gleaming nuclear tip of the missile, he arms the laser designator. A guard spots him. A frantic firefight erupts on the gantry high above the abyss. Ritchie uses slow-motion to highlight the brutal, close-quarters combat, contrasted with the frantic, real-time chaos. Snake is wounded but succeeds, painting the target.

Just as he finishes, AMMAโ€™s voice, calm and clear, echoes through the silo. Sheโ€™s been aware of him the entire time. She wanted a witness. She confronts him personally, not with soldiers, but with words.

THE BATTLE OF IDEAS: AMMA and Snake have a philosophical standoff. She is celestial and absolute, a vision of divine fury and grace. Snake, battered and bleeding, argues back not with eloquence, but with raw, weary experience. He doesn’t quote scripture at her; he lives it. He is the flawed, enduring soldier, the man who has seen “the end” too many times to believe in it.

He finally responds to her Gita quote with one from Proverbs, his voice a low gravel against her melodic certainty:

โ€œPride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.โ€

For the first time, a flicker of doubt crosses the faces of her inner circle. They see not a demon, but a manโ€”a tired, wounded, yet unbroken man standing against their divine wrath. The seed of mutiny is planted.


ACT III: THE ROD AND THE WRATH

THE KINETIC STRIKE: High above, the Rod from God is released. AMMA, confident in her divinity, continues the launch sequence, believing no man-made weapon can touch her. The scene cuts between the descending rod, the Vajraโ€™s missile preparing to launch, Snake fighting his way out, and AMMAโ€™s followers watching the skies.

The impact is not an explosion, but an act of God. A streak of light, a sound like the sky tearing in half, and the Vajra is simply obliterated from existence, transformed into a crater of molten metal and rock. The shockwave is seismic.

THE MUTINY: The miracle AMMA promised was her survival. Her failure is absolute. Her followers, their faith shattered, see her not as Kalki, but as a mortal woman who nearly doomed them all. The mutiny is swift and brutal. Led by her former most devout disciple, they turn on her. Aishwarya Rai portrays the downfall with tragic, operatic grandeurโ€”the goddess’s mask shatters to reveal a terrifying, vulnerable, and furious woman beneath. She is overthrown not by Snake, but by the very ideology she created.

Snake watches from a ridge as the ashram consumes itself in civil war. He has no more fight left. He quotes King Davidโ€™s Psalms, a whisper lost in the Himalayan wind:

โ€œThe heathen are sunk down in the pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken.โ€

ESCAPE & DENOUEMENT: Wounded and alone, Snake limps through the snow towards the exfiltration point. The geopolitical crisis is averted, but the human cost is immense. In the final scene, heโ€™s on a transport plane, staring at his bloodied hands. Campbell radios, offering a medal, a pension, a thank you from a world that will never know he saved it.

Snake cuts him off. He opens a well-worn copy of Shakespeare, his finger finding a line from Macbeth:

โ€œI have lived long enough: my way of life Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf…โ€

He closes the book and looks out at the endless mountains below. The mission is over. But the war within him continues. Fade to black.

FINAL LINE (On Screen):
โ€œThe metal gear was destroyed. The goddess was unmade. But the weaponโ€ฆ was just a man.โ€

METAL GEAR: APOCALYPSE

METAL GEAR: APOCALYPSE

A Treatment by Joseph C. Jukic

Logline: An aging Solid Snake is pulled from exile for one last mission: infiltrate North Korea and, from a precarious vantage point, paint a nuclear EMP missile with his rifle’s laser designator, calling down a kinetic strike to destroy it without triggering a global blackout.

Director: Guy Ritchie
Starring: Joseph C. Jukic as Solid Snake
Voice Cast: Troy Baker as Otacon, Cillian Murphy as Kim Jong Un

TONE: A tense, psychological sniper thriller fused with Guy Ritchie’s hyper-stylized, non-linear action. The majority of the climax is a battle of wills and steady hands, underscored by philosophical voiceover.


SYNOPSIS

ACT I: THE CALL TO ARMS

FADE IN:

A remote monastery in the mountains of NEPAL. SOLID SNAKE (Joseph C. Jukic), weathered and weary, sharpens a blade with monastic focus. He reads from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations“You have power over your mindโ€”not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

His peace is obliterated by a stealth drone. A hologram of OTACON materializes. “Snake. The world’s about to go dark.”

The threat: KIM JONG UN, a tactical genius with a messiah complex, has unveiled METAL GEAR CHลŽLLIMA, a colossal mobile launch platform. Its payload is a Super-EMP missile. One high-altitude detonation would not just cripple a cityโ€”it would erase the global electronic age forever. A permanent apocalypse.

The solution: OPERATION: SLEEPING GIANT. A clandestine kinetic bombardment satellite, a “Rod from God,” is in orbit. Its tungsten rod can destroy the missile in its fortified hangar without an EMP backlash. But its targeting systems are blind to the mountain’s alloyed rock.

Someone must get inside, find a direct line of sight, and paint the target with a ground-based laser. It requires a marksman of impossible skill, operating under unimaginable pressure.

Snake refuses. He’s done. Otacon plays his final card: the AI core of Metal Gear Chลllima is built from the remnants of LIQUID SNAKE’s psyche. This is the final ghost of his past.

Snake closes his book. He whispers, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” He takes the mission.

ACT II: THE INFILTRATION

Snake HALO jumps into North Korea. The infiltration is a Guy Ritchie montage: split-screens show thermal views, radar sweeps, and Snake’s silent, brutal takedowns of patrols set to a pounding, eclectic score.

He links with a desperate resistance cell. The intel is clear: the only vantage point with a possible line of sight to the missile is a maintenance gantry high in the cavernous ceiling of the mountain hangar. It’s a sniper’s nest with no escape.

His journey to the nest is a masterclass in tactical espionage:

  • Creating a diversion by sabotaging a generator, he quotes Sun Tzu“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”
  • When forced to kill a young, fanatical guard, he crouches in the shadows, the weight heavy on him. He recites a line from Psalms“Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: defend me from them that rise up against me.”
  • Discovering a trap set by the elite “Sons of the Sun” guards, he doesn’t flinch. He remembers Aurelius“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” He bypasses them entirely, leaving them confused and fighting each other.

He reaches the control center and has a cold, holographic comms confrontation with Kim Jong Un. Kim rants about his divine right to cleanse a corrupt world. Snake listens, then cuts him off with a verse from Revelation“โ€ฆand I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death.” He severs the link.

ACT III: THE SHOT

Snake ascends to the gantry. It’s a narrow, rusting latticework of metal, 200 feet above the cavern floor. Below him, the monstrous METAL GEAR CHลŽLLIMA powers up, its movements causing the entire structure to shudder. The EMP missile is raised into launch position.

He assembles his custom sniper rifle, the SOCOM “Divine Right,” and attaches the high-power laser designator. He lies prone. The crosshairs dance over the missile’s nose cone. The distance is extreme, the air in the cavern thick with heat haze and dust.

Otacon’s voice is tense in his ear. “I have your link! Signal is weak, Snake. You need a steadier lock. They’re initiating launch sequence!”

The Sons of the Sun, alerted to his position, pour onto adjacent gantries, opening fire. Bullets ricochet around him. He cannot move. He is the tripod. The mission is the shot.

His breathing slows. The world narrows to the circle of his scope. The echoing gunfire, Otacon’s frantic warnings, Kim’s triumphant countdown over the PA systemโ€”all fade into a dull roar.

In this moment of ultimate pressure, his mind turns to his texts. It’s not panic, but focus.

“He maketh my feet like hinds’ feet, and setteth me upon my high places.” (Psalms)
“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” (Shakespeare)
“The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting.” (Aurelius)

His finger rests beside the trigger. He is not going to pull it. He is going to hold it. He activates the laser.

A tiny, invisible dot appears on the warhead.

On the satellite, a light turns green.

TARGET LOCK CONFIRMED. KINETIC PAYLOAD RELEASED.

A guard’s round tears into Snake’s shoulder. He grunts, but his hold on the rifle doesn’t waver. The laser dot remains perfectly steady.

Kim’s voice crackles, screaming, “NO!

FINAL SHOT: From Snake’s POV through the scope. We see the missile, the laser dot burning on its tip. Then, from directly above, the Rod from God slams into it with impossible, silent speed. The screen erupts in a blinding white light, then instantly cuts to black and silence.

POST-CREDITS SCENE:

Blackness. The sound of labored breathing. Rubble shifts. A single beam of sunlight pierces the dustโ€”the hole blown open in the mountain roof. A bloody hand, Snake’s, reaches into the light.

A boot steps into frame beside it. A familiar, gravelly voice speaks:

Not quite the hell you expected, is it, little brother?

FADE OUT.