Failing to Succeed

As an inspiring writer and a fan of most pop-culture a recent major pet peeve of mine is Hollywood’s ability to fail spectacularly at the simplest of tasks, making a movie or television series based on a long standing pre-existing property.

Movies based on pre-existing properties, stories and characters that have been well established in the media for years, should be ridiculously easy to make in a way that will appease almost everyone. The formula and characters are already are there, all you have to do is translate it to a 2-3 hour screenplay (as the case is these days). Now I understand the need to modernize things, maybe give it updated little twists, but what you shouldn’t do is change everything but the most basic of things like names. At that point it’s no longer a re-imaging; it’s a new idea that simply plagiarizes some characters and story elements.

This past summer of 2007 we were given the big one, Transformers. I will admit that I have not seen this movie yet, but it’s because nothing other than the name appeals to me. The story; almost completely different from the cartoon. The characters; almost completely unrecognizable as the characters I loved as a child. As robots, they no longer look like they should transform into cars and trucks, which was one of the greatest appeals of the show. And the worst part, Michael Bay could not stop talking about how he was a huge fan of Transformers. Saying this has become a warning sign that the movie will have little to do with the source material, just look at Aliens Vs Predator. In recent months I’ve discovered that Bay’s incompetence went deeper than just making the Transformers look stupid. Originally none of them were going to be able to speak English, just beep and what not to communicate with each other (apparently this idea was kept for Bumblebee) and Optimus Prime’s trademark windshield chest plate was no where to be seen, leaving only his head to make him recognizable as Optimus Prime (though eventually they got Peter Cullen to do the voice, the only saving grace for my part). Fortunately Hasbro/Takara (the toy company that owns the rights to the Transformers universe) put a stop to this.

The reviews I’ve read have relaxed my apprehension about this movie being remembered as an outstanding action flick as they ring with the all too familiar feelings of reviews of Star Wars Episode I after it came out. Where even when talking about the things they liked about the movie it is all stuff that’s related to insignificant things that have nothing to do with the actual story, and even then are hollow and defensive. So with any luck like Star Wars Episode I, in about two years people who loved it will start to realize that it actually is terribly flawed in the exact same ways.

Now because of Transformers we’re getting a GI Joe movie. The idea of GI Joe has been around long before I was born (1942). And what is the full title for GI Joe, boys and girls? It’s “GI Joe: A Real American Hero.” My putting “American” in bold should give you an idea of what the main idea for the movie is: GI Joe is now a multi national task force based in Brussels. And so far that’s all we really know about the movie. There are a few rumors that make it seem like they’re combining Cobra Commander and Destro into one character, but that’s just a rumor for now, but that doesn’t matter since already they took a basic concept and absolutely ruined it in the simplest way possible, just to make it appeal to a worldwide market more. So at this point even if Steven Sommers wasn’t directing it (he wrote and directed Van Helsing, the first movie that I can ever remember turning off because it was so bad), I do not want to see it because it will not be GI Joe in anyway other than the name.

Now a note on television series. I have not seen it yet, but I hear that aside from some down time now and then, Battlestar Galactica got it right (I saw the pilot/movie and was very unimpressed so I didn’t hop on the series that apparently got really good really fast). This opened up doors and now we’re getting things like Flash Gordon and The Bionic Woman. While the pilot of Bionic Woman is out there, I haven’t seen that yet, but already the head writer/producer has quit due to the network and other producers ruining his vision. Not a good sign. But the main thing I wanted to address if Flash Gordon.

Flash Gordon is another property that’s been around longer than I have (1934) and was a great adventure series involving space ships, aliens, alien worlds, and heroes fighting odds far greater than themselves. So a remake using the same formula as Battlestar Galactica would be awesome, right? Yeah, that would’ve worked if they did that. Instead we get a story about a long distance runner in a small town who randomly jumps back and forth to a planet called Mongo via a very Sliders like mechanism. No space ships. No huge laser gun fights. And the main villain just does not have the presence to be called Ming the Merciless. Just average looking blond guy, no Machiavellian appearance at all! I will say this, the acting is very good, it’s everything else that sucks.

So Hollywood I’m going to give you something free of charge. Go ahead and take the idea and run with it. And keep in mind I’m writing this as I think about it, I originally planned to write something about the A-Team but came up with this just now.

Knight Rider: The Movie. Michael Knight and his wife, Katie “Kitt” Knight, are scientists working on a massive AI program that uses pre-existing brain patterns of a living person. The company funding them is actually a front for a massive illegal arms merchant specializing in high tech weaponry, hoping that the Knights’ new computer system will be their biggest money maker ever. After stumbling on this, the Knights’ try to escape with their research, only to be killed, or so it would seem. They barely survive the explosion designed to kill them in an “accident,” but Kitt is barely breathing, but gives Michael enough time to transfer her thought patterns into the onboard computer of a prototype car they originally thought was being designed for police. Together again now as a man thought dead and a car with sophisticated machinery and non-lethal weapons, they set out to get bring down the corporation that tried to kill them, and who’s very existence threatens the American way. Just think about it: Car chases, techno babble, a non-lethal weapons system on the hero making it more marketable to younger viewers.

It’ll be a gold mine. And for the grown-ups there’ll be a tender moment in the movie where they stop thinking about their mission and give into their deep, true love that they still have for each other, expressing it in the most pure and beautiful physical way possible; Michael fucks the car (this has to be done with implication shots since it will be PG-13). It has to be edgy, you know.