Memo To The Executives: Robocop

Da da da da da da dadada.........This is 'Think McFly Think', give us five minutes and we'll give you the world (God, I love that opening). 

This week on ‘memo to the executives’ I’ve decided to take a crack at a currently dormant franchise that has been promised a rebirth in the form of Darren Aronofsky’s remake but has recently left us all wondering if we will ever see Robocop on the big screen again.

I want to preface this article by saying that I would be perfectly happy with that.  Robocop is pretty much a perfect film, completely untainted by all of the crap that came afterwards bearing its name and doesn’t need to be remade, rebooted, re-imagined, requeled, re-anything.  But if we are getting one then there are areas of potential to change the character and his origin to make a different picture.  There is no point in making a shot for shot remake of the original film or recycling all of the characters and having them function in exactly the same way.

For a start, I think the character of Robocop needs a slight design overhaul.  Robocop was an action movie but the character wasn’t really suited for the high octane thrills we demand these days.  He was an extremely slow, almost tank like character.  It works perfectly in that first film, particularly in the scene where Robocop blasts through Kurtwood Smith’s drug factory, constantly moving forward towards his target, hundreds of bullets bouncing off his body, taking each criminal down with a slow put perfectly placed shot, an unstoppable force.  The filmmakers also created that wonderful sound effect of Robo’s thunderous footsteps, almost akin to a T-Rex, heard from the criminals perspective as he entered a crime scene; a precursor to let them know that they are now well and truly fucked.

It would be a buzz for nostalgic purposes to see that again but if the new Robocop is truly going to be action packed, the character needs to be redesigned to be more agile and less bulky.  Even as a child, I never bought the ridiculous stuff they had Robo doing in the second and third films like riding a motorbike and flying with a jetpack.  In a new film, he needs to have the ability to actually run after bad guys on foot, dodge incoming fire and react quickly to hostile situations.  A radical redesign is not needed.  After all, if he doesn’t have the helmet he’s not Robocop.  You can even keep the form and colour scheme of the robo-suit; just lose the bulky pieces around the chest and scale down the size of the costume so that it appears more like a second skin than armour.  I think the more Robo blends in with the other police officers in terms of size and similarity to the body armour and helmets they wear, the more effective it will be, the more it will sell the idea to them and to the audience that this is meant to be the next evolution of law enforcement, their eventual replacement.

In the original film, the idea of how the police force really felt about being owned by a corporation and of a robot cop being among them was just one of a zillion concepts it was playing with.  In this new film, though putting on a public face of simply augmenting it with the technology and facilities they have to offer, OCP (Omni Consumer Products), the corporation contracted to run the Old Detroit police department, secretly believes that the Robocop project is simply the first step of an eventual phasing out of traditional human officers being replaced by cyborgs (a theme that played in small part in the first and second films).  But the police officers of Old Detroit aren’t stupid.  They know exactly what is going on and when Robocop joins their ranks, it is akin to having a corporate suit serving (and spying) with them every day.  It would be nice to give the regular police force a little more depth this time around.  Imagine if you policed the worst, most crime ridden city in America, risked your life every day, got horrible pay, no gratitude, no social life, and now a corporation actually buys and owns you and threatens to get rid you simply because no matter how good you are at your job, a machine can do it better.

In the original film Alex Murphy, the cop who will become Robo, had only just transferred to Old Detroit and was murdered his very first day on duty.  This was a brilliant way of showing just how out of control the crime wave in the city was but I would love to see a Murphy in the new film who is a veteran super cop of Old Detroit before he becomes a machine; someone who has a friendship with many of the officers on the force and watch the isolation and ostracization that occurs once he becomes Robocop.  As far as they are concerned, he is a toy designed by the company that wants to eliminate all human cops from the streets, probably filled with recording devices constantly monitoring their conversations and reporting back to his corporate superiors.

I’d like to see the idea of ‘Directive 4’, the secret sub-routine that is programmed into Robo to stop him from arresting any OCP executive, implemented even earlier into the story.  After weeks of successful arrests, of crime being beaten back and the regular police starting to trust Robocop, he would end up confronting some homicidal multiple murderer who turns about to be one of those executives (a cheeky nod to Patrick Bateman).  Just as Robo is about to make the arrest, Directive 4 kicks in paralysing his systems.  The killer makes a break for it and escapes the cops, even fatally wounding one in the process.  This is the beginning of Robo (who has been wrestling between his programmed obligations to OCP and his human instincts)’s realisation that this may only be the start of the corporation’s criminal activities.

One thing I always wondered about in the original film was whether Robocop’s creator Bob Morton had any test subjects prior to Murphy.  How did he know the integration of human tissue and robotics was going to work?  It would be nice to see that developed in this film with Robocop following a bloodsoaked trail which starts at the scene of Alex Murphy’s murder and leads all the way to his creator.  Rather than having Bob Morton be the creator in a new film, I’d actually rather have a Dick Jones type character fill the role; a ruthless villain who has created the robot cop through diabolical means. 

At the start of the film, the city would be plagued by a series of killings by a particular gang who leave no visible trace of the victims bodies.  Murphy becomes one of those unfortunate victims when he tracks them down to their hideout and doesn’t come out.  We wouldn’t actually see Murphy’s murder or the perps who did it.  We would see Murphy enter the crime scene, fade to black and then, just like in the original. He would awake as Robocop thus creating a real sense of mystery as to the background of his creation and the identity of those who killed him.  In the third act, Robocop remembers the traces of his fragmented human memory, in particular the circumstances of his death, and tracks down his killers once more.  Robo discovers that the reason the bodies of their victims were never recovered is that they were being sold to the Dick Jones character and harvested, sometimes whole, sometimes as just body parts, as experiments to create the Robocop prototypes.

With the rest of the Old Detroit police force in tow, Robocop penetrates the secret OCP facility where he was constructed and finds the horrifying left-overs of the victims before him, like some kind of evolutionary chain in cybernetic development culminating with him.  It is a legacy he does not want to be part of and tries to bring his creator to justice who, in turn, unleashes the completed but totally psychotic Robo prototypes to kill Murphy.  You may remember that very funny and twisted scene in Robocop 2 where the old man is shown a video of two prototype successors to their original pride and joy, both of which go crazy and commit suicide.  I think there would be so much potential for the filmmakers to go nuts and create all manner of freakish looking cyborgs for Robocop to fight in the finale.  It would sure trump anything in Terminator: Salvation that’s for sure.

Once the smoke clears from the final battle, Robocop’s creator is dead, the prototypes are destroyed but the lab and the atrocities created there remain.  Unable to dig themselves out of the hole that will be created is the public knows, the top brass at OCP claim ignorance of the actual development of Robocop but strike a bargain with the Old Detroit Police assuring them that Alex Murphy will be the one and only robot cop on the streets and given his work to date, maybe that’s all it will take.

I know, I know, you all think I’m a retard but it could be fun.

But I like I said before chaps, Robocop doesn’t need to be remade and I’m not Darren Aronofsky.  I think I’ve just proven that over the course of this article.  I promise I’ll come up with something better next week.  Till then…..

“Your move creeps”

Memo To the Executives: Superman Whatever

 

Here we go folks, it’s time for the big one.  This week on ‘memo to the executives’ I try in vain to go where so many writers and producers (and Mark Millar) have gone before and pitch the best direction to take the man of steel in his next motion picture outing.

And I don’t blame Warner Bros for not having gotten off their proverbial arses and made another one.  It’s an incredibly hard challenge to meet at this point.  You’re dealing with a character whose origin and mythology are as well known as any piece of literature or historical biography.  He is a character whose origin has been recreated (just off the top of my head) in at least nine film/television properties.  And as the studio try to bring Superman back to life on film, just as it has been for the last decade, an army of geeks wait patiently on the internet, fingers poised at their keyboards ready to pounce on forums and decry every single decision made because EVERYBODY has an opinion about a new Superman movie and EVERYBODY will think that a great one cannot be made until proven otherwise.

Well fuck them, fuck me and fuck EVERYBODY who feels the need to tell WB how shitty their proposed new Superman film is going to be.  As I have said on our podcast, it was listening to us fans that got them in the mess they are in right now.  They burned through treatment after treatment, director after director all to try and please us and when they gave us a Bryan Singer directed Superman, we threw it right back in their face and told them it wasn’t good enough.  The studio needs to stop mulling over potential ideas, afraid to commit because of how the fan community might react and just make a damn film.

Like I say, I know how hard it must be, faced with the challenge of starting from scratch, having to tell Superman part one again.  How do you do that and make it fresh?  The answer is simple in my eyes.  You make a film that is faithful to the character of Superman but you strip away almost all of the familiar, cliché elements that I personally cannot bear to see on screen again just now.  Even without the issue of the current legal entanglements between WB and the estate of creators Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, I don’t want to see Krypton exploding again or Ma & Pa Kent looking after Clark on the farm in Smallville or introductory scenes for Lois, Jimmy and Perry at the Daily Planet.  And I certainly don’t want Lex Luthor as the villain again.  We’ve seen it.  It’s old hat.  You won’t be able to re-energize Superman by going through those motions again.

If a new Superman film is going to be truly great, it has to start of course with theme and character.  Even though it is my favourite film, I will gladly admit that ‘Superman: the movie’ lacks a strong thread of development for the main character sustained through its entirety .  That is to say that, unlike the first Spider-man film or ‘Batman Begins’, Superman assumes his mantle and destiny after the first hour or so of the picture.  Although he still has to fall in love and overcome great obstacles, Superman is the superhero he will always be after his tutoring by Jor-El in the Fortress of Solitude and heads into the second half of the movie without any further moulding to take place.

If we are going to get a new origin story, give us one where Superman takes an entire film to develop into the character we know and love.  The heart of the piece was always that this was a story about an alien whose early life, personality and value system is bestowed, not by his own people but by an all-American couple.  It works wonderfully of course but, on film, it robs you of  the chance to shape the character over a longer stretch of time.  What happens to Kal-El if you take the Kents out of the equation?

I would pitch that a new Superman film borrow one of the messages from the recently rebooted Star Trek and show us a story where, even if a single event occurs differently and changes the entire history of events, the outcome can still end up exactly the same.  I’m not suggesting that Earth’s timeline be altered or that Brandon Routh should encounter the new actor playing Superman to warn him about the plot here.  What I am pitching is that the film open with Kal-El’s spacecraft approaching Earth’s orbit (you can take for granted that the audience know of past events on Krypton) and just as we think it will land in Kansas as it always does, the ship is knocked off its current trajectory by an unknown force and crashes in the one place that will take the audience complete by surprise (and provide a slam-bam, eye popping opening sequence in the process); the middle of Metropolis.

In the recent comic book ‘Superman: Last Son’ which paired Richard Donner with Geoff Johns, a small boy of apparent Kryptonian origin crash lands in Metropolis and is immediately seized and contained in a US government facility leaving the man of steel to ponder how different his own upbringing would have been if his ship had landed anywhere other than a wheatfield in Smallville.  Well here is the chance to make that happen.  By showing terrified little Kal-El sealed in a government lab, being endlessly studied, prodded and analysed, you immediately make the audience uneasy (we can even call the lab ‘Cadmus’ for you real fans out there).  Everything they know about Superman’s origin is now wrong and anything is possible.  As Kal-El grows into adulthood, his powers gradually develop but his knowledge about his past remains almost non-existent.  He swears he can remember a voice, the voice of an old man telling him of a great destiny which lies ahead; his earliest memory.  Kal-El would give anything to hear it again but the scientists who tear apart his spaceship find no trace of any recording or distinguishable remnant of the child’s home world.

What’s more, the audience knows that with his incredible strength it is only a matter of time before Superman decides he has had enough of being a pet, breaks out of containment and goes on the run, or on the fly if you will.  One of my main disappointments with ‘Superman Returns’ was that I never soared with the character in his flying scenes.  They didn’t provide the goosebumps of the original film or the test flight in ‘Iron Man’.  When Superman first takes flight in this film, the audience has to recognise it as an emotionally powerful moment.  In such a confined space, he has been unable to fully test his entire range of powers up to this point but once armed with the knowledge that he can defy gravity, Superman knocks the walls of the facility down, looks out to the world he has never seen before, takes a deep breath and launches himself into the sky for the first time; the ultimate symbolism of freedom.

Despite this small triumph though, Kal-El is still totally alone.  He has no idea where he came from or how he is so much more powerful than the people around him.  He has no knowledge of the planet he inhabits despite having lived here for many years.  His years in confinement have created a feeling of complete and utter mistrust and fear of other life forms.  Little does he or anyone realise that this has all been planned and orchestrated by a supremely powerful being observing all of this from the heavens.; the one who knocked Kal-El’s spaceship off course in the first place; the only being who can provide a link to his past; Brainiac.

I’ve been waiting to see Brainiac on film since Superman III (where we got Richard Pryor and his supercomputer instead) and I think he makes the perfect villain for any new Superman film.  For one thing, Brainiac has no set definable look.  The character has gone through many different incarnations over the years, most of them doable in live action and you are unlikely to get an army of nerds demanding that he look a specific way.  Secondly, by the very nature of being a machine like character, you can make Brainiac both the intellectual villain and a physical match for Superman as well; somebody he can actually fight, which is the one criteria every single fan has stipulated by a requirement of the next film.

I always preferred the revised origin that was created for Brainiac on the mid 90’s Superman animated series where the character was actually the A.I. supercomputer and watch guard of the entire planet Krypton, who assures its council that Jor-El’s prediction of its complete destruction is a mistake, shortly before he downloads himself to a satellite and leaves them all to die.  I would want to keep that origin for the new film.  Brainiac escapes Krypton, having assimilated all of its data but observes the small rocket ship containing baby Kal-El and tracks its progress through the galaxy, seeing the perfect opportunity to use the last son of Krypton as his own cipher to obtain data on, and conquer another planet teeming with completely unique life and civilization.

Brainiac’s spaceship intercepts Kal-El’s craft before it arrives on Earth, stripping it of the memory modules that Jor-El meant for his son to use to discover his past and his future, and throws it back into space ensuring that it will catapult the child into an immediately hostile environment, creating a feeling of mistrust around humans and making it much easier to convince him to side with the supervillain.  Having escaped from the government facility, Brainiac rescues Kal-El and on-board his ship, shows the last son of Krypton the data finally revealing his home world and his past.  Brainiac also shows Kal-El part of the memory modules that he remembers from childhood, finally being able to hear the voice of his father.  Assuring Kal-El that the rest of planet Earth is no more eager to embrace him than the scientists and military who captured him all those years ago, Brainiac offers a proposal.  If Kal-El will return to Earth and collate as much date on Earth as he can (in reality just a prelude to invasion), Brainiac will give him the full knowledge he has longed for, and essentially return the love of his father to him.

The idea of a conflicted Superman, a being actually out for himself, and with the power to easily conquer us all is a nice wink back to Siegel & Shuster’s original short story ‘Reign of the Superman’ which cast the Nietzschean figure in a villainous light before they revised the concept and created the character we all know and love.  It provides Superman with a journey to go on through the film.  Rather than being told to be a good guy by Jor-El, you cut him off from that guiding hand and have the character discover the goodness in the human race all by himself and actually make the choice to be our protector.  As Superman returns to Earth on Brainiac’s edict, he sees and hears the chaos of a million and one problems in the world and decides, knowing he has the power, to do something about it.  In spite of the fact that he will be fully exposed to the people who captured him in the first place, he makes that choice.  He also learns to trust the human race, not from any grand gesture but from a single Earth woman called Lois Lane.

Yes, we can take liberties with the story but we still need Lois and her relationship with the man of steel which brings all of this spectacle and epicness right back down to a human level.  I do think that it would be interesting to see her on film for once, not as the feisty fully formed reporter, but as a woman who wants to be that more than anything.  She has tried to get her foot in the door of the Daily Planet but to no avail.  When she meets Superman, she has the perfect story dropped right into her lap, the one that will get her the career she so desperately wants.  Despite his heroic deeds though, Superman wants as little attention from the media as possible.  He moves so fast that nobody can snap a clear photo of him and he certainly doesn’t want to give an interview.  So here, Lois faces the same kind of temptation and choice that Superman does.  As they grow closer, does she keep in confidence all the things he confesses to her about his powers, his weaknesses and Brainiac or does she think about her own needs and turn over the hottest story of the century to a major metropolitan newspaper?

Well what do you think she does?  Of course she keeps his secrets and as such, Superman unconditionally trusts his first human friend and wonders if it is possible to be something more with her.  With no concrete media coverage, Superman becomes a mythic figure shrouded in secrecy with some even doubting his existence.  He is talked about by people in the same way they discuss the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.  But nothing escapes Brainiac’s attention.  Realising that the son of Krypton will not now betray the people of Earth, he decides to take the planet by force himself but has to get Superman out of the way.  Brainiac appears before the scientists at Cadmus and gives them the tools to take Superman back and permanently contain him.

Now I will concede that it is hard to have a Superman story without some Kryptonite.  Just make its introduction into this story feel organic and not overly built up.  Everybody in the audience knows what Kryptonite is and they will know how Brainiac, being present at the destruction of Krypton, will have obtained it.  And rather than presenting it as the usual green rock, have Brainiac mould it into bullets for the Cadmus personal to use.  The supervillain the lands his spaceship on Earth, luring Kal-El to walk right into his trap and before he knows it, Superman is back in his old cell from childhood.

Before Cadmus can realise their folly, Brainiac takes over the planet and Superman, weakened into submission, sees no way to save it.  Using those wits that will serve her so well over her future career, Lois tracks Superman to Cadmus and breaks in.  Just as the man of steel is ready to succumb to his weakened condition and accept his fate, he sees Lois through the glass of his cell, the one human that he would risk everything and endure anything to save.  He finds the strength he needs to break out once again, only this time he doesn’t run into the unknown.  He has a purpose and a destiny.  With Lois as an advocate, Superman persuades his former captors at Cadmus to help him defeat Brainiac.  Transmitting unquantifiable amounts of government data to Brainiac’s computers, Cadmus is able to distract the computers on the ship long enough for Superman to get onboard and face his nemesis in a final showdown to determine which alien life form will preside over the planet Earth, the protector or the tyrant.

Once Brainiac is destroyed (sorry did you think he was going to win?), his ship crashes down in the Artic, out of sight of the people of Earth leaving them to ponder whether Superman has perished with it.  He hasn’t of course and retrieving the memory modules of his father and combining them with what remains of the Kryptonian technology on Brainiac’s ship, Superman is able to create his true home on Earth; the Fortress of Solitude.  Finally having earned the reward he longed for, Superman is able to speak to his long dead father, truly learn his past and understand why he was sent here in the first place.

Superman returns to Metropolis and before announcing his presence to anyone else, stops by Lois Lane’s apartment to give her that story which will, on top of everything she herself has witnessed, give her that job at the Daily Planet and firmly announce his existence to the entire world.  After promising Lois that he will never be far away, Superman flies off and literally keeps true to his word, arriving at his own apartment a few blocks away.  There we see an open suitcase containing smart but dull looking civvies, a pair of square rimmed glasses and a rough article containing a first hand account of Superman’s battle with Brainiac written by a certain Clark Kent.  As the sun rises in Metropolis, the populace awaken to find their favourite newspaper proudly proclaiming:

“Superman Lives”

And with that, the man of steel himself flies through the city so they can see for themselves that their guardian is watching over them, now and forever.

So hopefully you can see that, though liberties have been taken with the traditional origin, there is nothing to say that those familiar elements cannot be brought back in a sequel.  I just firmly believe that a chance needs to be taken at making a different kind of film, with much more of a conflicted central character, a real science fiction orientated villain and a propulsive plot full of action.  Then again, as I said at the start of the article, Warner Bros shouldn’t even be listening to me or any of us; they should just make SOMETHING.  Once again good friends, my eternal thanks for reading these articles.  I appreciate all the comments very much, whether you agree or not.

Till next time………UP, UP AND AWAY!

Memo To The Executives: Thundercats

Ok just pipe down for a second, just be quiet……..I SAID SHAD UP!

I know some, if not all of you reading this let out a groan as soon as you ready the title but on this week’s instalment of ‘memo to the executives’ I’d like to take a look at a potential motion picture franchise rather than one that already exists.  When the first Transformers film became a hit, all of us nostalgic dreamers, us children of the 80’s pondered which of our favourite cartoons might hit the big screen but I have to take the blinders off and be honest about this.  I really don’t believe another He-Man movie is ever going to get made (or Voltron or Robotech for that matter).  I’m not even sure it’s possible to make a great film adaptation of He-Man or that today’s audiences would buy into it.

But I honestly do believe that Thundercats could make an awesome film.  It has a classic story (albeit pilfered from many other sources), great characters both male and female, a scary villain, swords, gadgets, vehicles and a world completely separate from our own where anything can happen.  Most importantly, you could adapt all that makes Thundercats work into one film rather than telling a two hour set up movie in the hope that it will make enough money to turn into a franchise which will gradually get to the stuff the fans really want to see (I‘m looking at you G.I.Joe).

Now we have heard that a computer animated Thundercats movie was in development at Warner Bros. but it’s been several years since that announcement and not a peep since.  Besides, it’s going to be much more exciting to see this in live action, to see real actors covered head to toe in furry prosthetics.  I think, even knowing nothing about Thundercats, if you saw a trailer where the cast were cat people (done well of course), you would be interested.  Unlike He-Man, the tricksy subject of the characters wearing barely any clothes can be partly deflected by the fact that these are animals/human hybrids.  For once, the idea of our heroic ensemble wearing black leather outfits would be less plausible and far more horrific than seeing them wear their original costumes from the show.

For those not in the know, the story begins on our main characters home planet of Thundera where a small band of elite warriors known as the Thundercats preside and protect the population from a band of mutant pirates who seek to destroy them.  But they are unable to save their planet from the forces of nature and abandon it just before it’s destruction.  Their trip in deep space to find a suitable new home takes so long that they are forced to sleep in suspension capsules with the exception of their leader Jaga who sacrifices himself to pilot the ship until old age and death take him.  Arriving on a mysterious planet known as Third Earth, the Thundercats try to rebuild their lives only to be relentlessly persued by the mutants who have tracked them down and the planet’s own embodiment of evil; Mumm-Ra the ever living. 

The team might be ready for the challenge save for the fact that  Lion-O, destined by tradition and lineage to be the lord and master of the Thundercats is in no way equipped for the task.  Due to a malfunction in his suspension capsule, Lion-O, only a child when his planet was destroyed, has now grown up possessing a man’s body but the mind of the innocent young boy he essentially still is.

Maybe that sounds pretty similar to the Tom Hanks film ‘Big’ (which came after Thundercats just so you know) but, to me, that’s the heart of the concept right there.  You are able to give the Thundercats movie a focus and a theme by making it about a boy’s right of passage to becoming a man, with the irony being that he already is one in all but spirit.  If you do that then Lion-O becomes anything but the boring, one note, perfect hero we were used to seeing in these shows.  Children can relate to him because he is technically a child, older guys can relate to him because we all do immature things and feel younger than we are, and, shallow as it sounds, if you cast a really hot guy then you have the ladies hooked too.

One way you can improve upon the show, and thereby giving the other Thundercats some individual personalities, is to create some antagonism between them and Lion-O.  In the series, all of them were eager to accept him as their leader just because dem’s da rules of the code of Thundera.  That isn’t going to work on film.  You have to remember that these people are the last survivors of their race, they witness the destruction of their planet with their own eyes and now they are alone, stranded on an unknown world, still being hunted by the mutants and unsure if they can survive.  The one who is supposed to lead, protect and ensure their survival is a naive man-child.  How would you be coping?

Well the film should have each character cope in a different way.  Tygra, the oldest of the group and probably the least popular of the heroic characters on the show (save one furry fucker I’ll get to in a few moments), would be the most cynical.  Given the circumstances, why should the Thundercats hold to tradition and let Lion-O lead when Tygra is the most experienced and qualified?  He’s not an asshole.  On the contrary, he’d die to protect the rest of the group but he’s terrified that Lion-O will get them all killed.  There are the young twins Wilykat & Wilykit, who easily feel a sudden distance between themselves and Lion-O as he used to be just a kid like them, who played alongside them and is now a hulking warrior charged with leading the team.  They are at once envious of his new power and unable to relate anymore to the Lion-O they knew before.

And just when Lion-O feels like nobody is on his side, you make the obligatory hot female warrior character be his support;  the only one who believes in his potential.  Rather than being the token romance (the technical age difference between them makes this a shady concept anyhow), Cheetara is Lion-O’s mentor.

Now I know what you’re going to say.  In the cartoon, Jaga was Lion-O’s mentor.  Even after his death Jaga appeared, just as Lion-O was about to do something stupid, to correct his error in the guise of a ghostly blue visage.  An old wise mentor with a snowy white beard, speaking perfectly eloquent English and appearing as a blue ghost?  Get out of town, that’ll never work.  And sadly (even though you could change his colour so it wasn’t so blatant) I think the inevitable comparison to Obi-Wan Kenobi makes Jaga the ghost a no-go in the film version.  Maybe he could show up in a sequel but story wise, the first film will have enough characters as it is and it makes Lion-O’s isolation seem more palpable if Jaga isn’t there.  So leave Jaga out of the first film.

That goes double for Snarf.  I don’t think anyone is going to disagree with me on that.  You can’t spend all the time and effort on make-up, sets, and costumes to make Thundercats really come alive in live action, only to destroy all that coolness by throwing in a CGI comic relief red and yellow cat who is Lion-O’s nanny.  Be gone Snarf; I didn’t actually hate you on the cartoon but there is no place for you here.

Then there is Panthro, the mechanic, the gadget man, the Lucius Fox with nunchuks, the cat version of Mr. T, the coolest Thundercat of them all.  Panthro should be a closed up character, using words sparingly so you never really know what he thinks about the situation.   He’s just waiting to see how it turns out and in the meantime sticking to what he knows best; building awesome stuff to fight the mutants with……..like the Thundertank.  You might debate certain areas where other cartoons had the edge over Thundercats but I don’t think any child of that time can deny that the Thundertank was the coolest vehicle of any 80’s kids show and the film version has to be the coolest film vehicle since the Batman 89 batmobile.  And it has to have the same power when it appears on screen.  There would be several scenes in the film where we see Panthro working on some kind of machinery but keeping it to himself, building up the suspense.  Then in one scene where the rest of the team are trapped against overwhelming odds, the Thundertank suddenly smashes into view, blowing our minds.  You could even be cheeky and have Panthro say “get in the car” in a gruff Michael Keaton voice.

But what about our villains?  I always found the mutants rather boring characters on the show.  I never actually understood why they were after the Thundercats.  I think it was to get their hands on the sword of omens but they learned pretty quickly that they couldn’t wield it so after that, they just wanted to kill the heroes for no particular reason at all.  I think it would be worth taking a little licence with these guys.  Why not make then actual Thunderians themselves, descendants of a long line of dissenters and rebels who have tried to take over the planet for centuries.  Finally, the current regime sees fit to do the one thing the Thundercats could never have predicted and obliterate Thundera so no-one may rule over it.  While the Thundercats have kept restrictions on technological advancement, the mutants have no such qualms.  They have bombs and guns while our heroes only have hand to hand weapons (which is why it would be such an awesome pay-off when the Thundertank appears for the first time showing that the Thundercats are ready to shake up their traditions a little).  The only weapon the mutants don’t have in their arsenal is sorcery.  That is, until they meet Mumm-Ra.

It goes without saying that a live action Mumm-Ra should thoroughly creep out adults and genuinely frighten children.  If Mumm-Ra isn’t scary, he doesn’t work.  In fact, for once, I don’t think it is too much of a problem to have a main villain who is a little one dimensional.  I mean, he is supposed to be the personification of evil.  All he has to do is look like something out of our nightmares.  Again, in the cartoon I could never understand why Mumm-Ra wanted to destroy the Thundercats so that would need to be expanded upon.  The character didn’t really rule Third Earth on the show but I think to really emphasise the odds against our heroes, Mumm-Ra has to be the tyrant dictator of the planet.  He actually has no army at his command to keep the population enslaved.  His rule is based entirely on the fear of his supposed powers which, of course, would be fully unleashed at the end of the film as the character transforms from his shrivelled, emaciated form into a muscular ten foot hell spawned freak.  It may seem like a silly comparison but you do need to treat this character in the same way they did the Hulk on the 70’s TV show; have two different actors play the part for each of Mumm-Ra’s two forms.

While in possession of unbelievable strength and power, Mumm-Ra knows that the people of Third Earth could band together and overthrow him and this becomes a definite possibility with the arrival of the Thundercats.  Mumm-Ra strikes an alliance with the mutants because he needs their numbers to build an actual army that didn’t exist before then.  Since their alliance is based on a foundation of utter lies and mistrust, it is eventually doomed to failure.  Even though our heroes rally the peoples of Third Earth to fight back against the mutant army and converge on Mumm-Ra’s pyramid, it will be Lion-O alone who will have to face the horrors inside and become the true lord of the Thundercats by sending the ever living monster back to the pharaohs.

Ok, I think I’ve talked enough about Thundercats to seriously consider going into therapy.  Hopefully, you agree that all the elements are there to make an extremely well crafted blockbuster with a proper story, rather than just a tiresome special effects parade enjoyed only by those with nostalgic blinders on.

Till next time…….thunder, thunder, thunder, THUNDERCATS HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Memo To The Executives: Spider-man 4

In spite of having a cold, it is time for yet another round of ‘memo to the executives’ where I try to pitch the best direction to take the film franchises of today, tomorrow and yesteryear…..

….and boy have I been dreading this one, but it has to be done.  I’ve been dreading it because, unlike X-Men where I’m still energised enough to think it can be saved, Spider-man 3 screwed up that series and left such a bad taste in my mouth, that just trying to discuss any hope for a fourth outing literally saps the energy from me.  Yet I cannot take the easy way out and pitch a reboot this time.  We are getting a Spider-man 4 whether we like it or not and I have to try and figure out what I would like to see that could excite me again.

Which in itself is such a hard task as the entire team is returning, and despite the fact that they have been hiring new, and very talented writers, and that Sam Raimi is still a great director, Tobey ‘I just don’t care anymore’ Maguire will be back, Kirsten ‘he should have a spider baby with MJ’ Dunst will be back, and I keep hearing these rumours that Uncle Ben will be back, as will Uncle Ben’s killer, and both Osborns will probably be haunting Peter Parker in large mirrors.

It has to stop; following the formula of the first two films to the letter would have made Spider-man 3 a poor film even if they hadn’t screwed up the symbiote saga so much.  I was so bored of seeing CGI Spidey swinging through the city to that goddamn theme music again and again.  They could have shaved 30 minutes minimum from the third film if they didn’t feel the need to bring back every single supporting character.  Spider-man 4 is going to have change a hell of a lot to convert the fans who have turned their backs on the series.

And I don’t think most of the changes would be that hard to implement.  Let’s start from the beginning.  Each of the three films has begun with an impressive title sequence quickly retelling the story of the previous film for the benefit of the two people in the audience who haven’t seen it.  The problem this time is that people don’t want to be reminded of Spider-man 3 or anything that happened in it.  The tone needs to be set from the start that changes have been made, in the right direction.  The film needs to start with a bang and not the “look how great my life is/oh shit these pizzas are gonna be late” kind of bang.  Spider-man 4 needs to start immediately after the logos with Spidey in an action sequence, in the grand tradition of James Bond.  There are so many villains in the Spidey Universe that are not interesting enough to carry a full motion picture by themselves.  What better way to use them, to almost instantly re-convert the disillusioned fans, and to get the general audience hooked and in sync with the film than to have them act as an opening sequence villain; Scorpion, Rhino, Mysterio, Chameleon, Shocker, Prowler, Hobgoblin, Vulture, the list is endless.

The scenes of Spidey swinging through New York need a drastic overhaul (or a new special effects crew at least).  If we are to get a kinetic rush as our hero does his thing, we need to at least partially believe that the character is actually interacting with the environment.  Parts of Spider-man 2 succeeded at that brilliantly, the train sequence in particular.  It would be so great if they could shoot real stuntmen swinging in blue screen and integrate them with live action plates of the city.  It doesn’t matter if Spidey isn’t doing as spectacular a jump or swing as he can when computer generated; the audience will actually feel a rush.

Get new theme music; I’m sick to death of Danny Elfman’s theme.  It isn’t that it’s not a good piece of music but it has been used in the series now to the point of overkill.  Getting a completely fresh composer and fresh theme will help tremendously to make the fourth film………erm, fresh.

Don’t bring back every single character.  Mary Jane and Aunt May can’t just vanish without a word but everyone else can leave without anyone missing them.  Though if Aunt May is going to be in the next one, make it count.  Integrate her into the plot, make her a driving force.  There is, of course, one major piece of character development left for her to go through and that is to discover that Peter is Spider-man.  There is one particular moment in J. Michael Straczynski’s comic run where Aunt May  comes into Peter’s room to find him collapsed on his bed, still wearing his costume which Marvel President Kevin Feige has sworn to put on the big screen in a future film.  I guess now is as good a time as any.

Remember how Spider-man 2 was about Spider-man no more?  Well the fourth film needs to be about Peter Parker no more.  I would like to see a story where Peter, desperate to atone for his actions in the third film, actually sacrifices one half of his double life in order to be Spider-man 24/7.  He is commitment to his responsibility.  He’s terrified of letting the city down again.  He has left school, he’s quit the Bugle, and say 80% of the time we see the character on screen, he’s in the suit.  He doesn’t sleep without it.  He barely sleeps at all and he has moved out of that shitty apartment and back in with Aunt May.  You get rid of that landlord and his dorky daughter and you integrate Aunt May into the story.  Surprise the audience and have her discover Peter is Spider-man early in the film.  Have her confess it to Peter about halfway through and have them deal with it together.  Just give her something to do.

MJ on the other hand, is hampered with the problem that I (and I assume you as well) cannot possibly fathom why she and Peter would still be in a relationship.  So answer that problem for all our sakes and separate them.  They still care for one another but Peter has committed himself to his Spider-man persona and MJ just does not fit in with that plan anymore.  They have reconciled, she will keep his secret and she will still protect him but no more than that.  A decision which will have tragic consequences.

I know it’s cliché to kill her off but, who are we kidding, it’s the death scene everybody wants and there is no reason that it can’t be done well.  Rather than have her kidnapped (AGAIN) and die at the hands of a loony villain like a Green Goblin, do something different, which brings us to our villain.

We have been told that Spider-man 4’s villain will have close ties to the city of New York and many have been wishfully thinking that this could mean the Kingpin.  Apart from the fact that this is not possible due to the character being retained by 20th Century Fox for the moment, I think that’s the right way to go.  Rather than giving us a lead villain with a funky suit and power, as isolated and on his own as Spidey, give us a bad guy with real power, real muscle (both literally and metaphorically), and an army at his command.  For once, make the odds against Spidey seem insurmountable.  For once (and this is really important) don’t feel the need to have a villain who has a close connection to Peter Parker and finds out his identity at the end of the film.  Don’t have a villain who is totally psychologically justified in his actions; give us an evil, ruthless shit.  Transfer the personality and status of Kingpin to another character.  Either create a brand new Kingpin of crime just for the film or use a character from the comics like Hammerhead, the mafia hood whose head contained a massive steel plate.

Imagine a villain who literally controls all crime in New York but is smart enough to personally regulate his operation so things don’t get out of his control.  His men are unswervingly loyal and he has portions of the police and state in collusion to ensure what crime there is, can go off without a hitch in return for whatever favours he can grant them.  Spider-man is potentially a huge problem to this otherwise immaculate operation as a do-gooder with no agenda other than to protect the people of the city and see justice done.  Our Kingpin will try to convert Spidey to his way of thinking of course.  After all, he can provide money, he can supply information on his competition, and he can buy off the press that criticise him such as the Daily Bugle.  Spidey won’t accept of course and thus our villain begins a smear campaign and brings the law down on our hero (a plot device which was thrown into the first film but seemed like an underbaked afterthought).  For one thing, much good as he has done, Spider-man has now been indirectly involved with the murders of both Norman Osborn and his son, something which could be easily twisted to make the public believe he is an unhinged sociopath (not to mention his activities whilst in the black costume - none of which will have been explained to the people or the police).

A premise such as this gives us the opportunity to see set pieces such as a massive city wide police pursuit of Spidey through the alleys and rooftops with every member of New York’s finest on his tail, an enemy he must evade but cannot fight.  After all, Spidey can dodge tentacles and sand but try evading guns and helicopters, lots of them.  Imagine Mary Jane being arrested for her association with Spider-man, interrogated by crooked cops, tortured by Hammerhead’s, and all through it showing her devotion to Peter and not giving them anything they want to know; a decision which naturally costs her life.  Such a final act might even endear her to the fans when all is said and done (though just like Rachael Dawes, they’ll really just be glad she’s dead).  Imagine after all this high action, spectacle and drama, at the end of the day Spidey comes home, drained and unable to fend for himself any longer, where his Aunt May is ready to protect him until he can regain is strength.

And since they already did a complete 180% reversal on Peter’s love life with MJ coming first and Gwen Stacy after her, I see no reason why Gwen shouldn’t become the Black Cat (queue reader groaning).  She may be one character too many for this story but since we are talking about a plot with a lot of underworld crime and where Peter is Spider-man all of the time, she makes a perfect fit; a woman that Spidey can be with and not give up his commitment to Uncle Ben. 

I would also love to see (though the positions would be reversed), my personal favourite moment in Spider-man comics brought to the screen.  Occurring on the last page of issue 122 where Norman Osborn’s Green Goblin pays the price for murdering Gwen Stacey by being killed himself, Mary Jane tells a distraught Peter how sorry she is about Gwen’s death and is verbally assaulted with Parker assuming that she doesn’t really give a damn and is too busy being her usual care free party girl self.  With tears in her eyes,  Mary Jane closes the door she was about to leave through and stays to be by Peter’s side, thus beginning the relationship that will define them both.  It would be great to see Gwen in that place at the end of Spider-man 4, standing over a distraught Peter who mourns Mary Jane’s death and being rebuked by him for faking that she cares.  As Peter yells, Gwen (who has been living her own double life as Black Cat) realises that he is Spider-man and, no matter how harsh his words, does not leave the room.  She stays, now a rock for Peter in both of the lives he leads.

So that is enough rambling for another week.  Hopefully you agree that at least one small idea in this piece has the potential to breath life into this horse which, if not already dead, really is on life support right now.  And the great thing is, this time next year we should know enough about the film to see if I guessed right about any of it.

Till then.............EXCELSIOR!

Memo To The Executives: Bond 23

It’s time for a slight change of pace in my weekly opinion piece where I try and pitch the best direction for the film franchises that are currently thriving, and those on death’s door.  This time we are tackling a property which needs no do-over, is raking in the cash, and they’re taking their time to craft the next instalment rather than rushing it out; James Bond.

As excited as I am for Bond 23, the franchise cannot afford to be complacent.  As we hear rumblings of Bourne 4, Mission Impossible 4 and another outing for Jack Ryan, Bond has to stay ahead of the game.  There is no reason not to keep shaking up tired old conventions and giving us something we haven’t seen before, and believe me, if you’re a Bond fan one of the suggestions I am going to make in this article is pretty outside the box.

The best way to address where the next Bond film should go is to look at the previous outing ‘Quantum of Solace’, a film which (for me) got so much right and a fair few things wrong.  I want Bond 23 to be a film which provides pretty much the opposite of  everything we got in Quantum.

‘Quantum of Solace’ was a relentless 100 minute chase film as dark, cold and gritty as Bond was at that point.  It was a film with a concrete theme about the nature of trust but had little time for character development.  It had an interesting but underdeveloped female lead and villain.  It had huge scope and great locations but spent so little time in each place that it felt like a waste, and don’t get me started on the action sequences.

‘Casino Royale’ proved that quality not quantity is what counts with action sequences.  That’s what we  need to return to in Bond 23.  I also think that we’ve been missing the lush travelogue of the Connery and Moore films for a long time.  True that it is much harder to take an audience to places they have never seen before these days but I don’t think that’s an excuse to not take us to those places.  Hell, in today’s world more than ever, we want escapism.  We want to see Bond take on the forces of Quantum in the most stunning locales.

And Quantum have been established as the foe that defines Daniel Craig’s Bond and will define his run of films as this character so I see no reason to shirk away from that in the next film.  I just think we can do better with the lead villain this time around.  I enjoyed the slimy Dominic Greene but there just wasn’t enough character there.  Greene joined a long tradition of the Bond villains that I love, the legitimate businessmen, richer than God, powerfully connected, practically untouchable.  Yet once Bond knows that this man is the bad guy, he will not stop in the face of overwhelming odds to fuck this person’s life up at every turn, building up the antagonism between the two and coming to a head in the climax.

The problem with ‘Quantum of Solace’ is that by the time Bond and Greene went to head to head, there hadn’t been any antagonism built between them.  Their mano a mano fight meant nothing to us as Greene was just a target for Bond, a man he needed to get information from.  I think we should have another villain in the vein of Greene, just one who has more on screen time with Bond.  One of the things I loved about the last film was the portrayal of Quantum as a modern day SPECTRE as it probably would exist today; an organization whose members hold the highest positions of state across the world and actually play ball with the world powers in order to achieve their goals.  Given that potential, there are so many villains you could choose as Bond’s nemesis this time around.  You could use that guy who one of the UK Prime Minister’s top aides.  Heck, go for broke and have the villain by the President of a country.  It’ll have to be a smaller one so as not to piss anybody off though.  Try Switzerland, they never seem to get upset about anything.

Tonally, I think we need something lighter this time around.  I don’t people left the last film feeling tired of Daniel Craig’s Bond being pissed off at the world, an uncontrollable killing machine unable to relax or crack a full smile until his mission is accomplished, but they will get tired of it if he keeps playing on the exact same note he did in Quantum of Solace.  Since his mission to enact revenge on Quantum was completed (though there is still work to be done) and he clearly let go of Vesper’s memory and his need to avenge her, Bond can afford to be a little looser in the next film and not so tortured.  It’s the perfect opportunity for Craig as an actor to prove that he can.

I think we need a film in the style of ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’, a witty, truly romantic Bond film where the scope and the stakes are high, and where the crux of the film is the relationship between James and his leading lady rather than just a obligatory ingredient.  True enough that in the last film Bond and Camille quite rightly didn’t have a romantic relationship as they were kindred spirits still hurting to much from the loved ones they lost to love again, but now it’s time for James to find some comfort in another woman……..an ordinary woman.

One of the things I’m getting tired of seeing in the Bond films is the endless parade of female action heroes and super spies that have been Bond’s female companions for what seems like forever.  Camille was an undercover agent, Vesper was a double agent, Jinx was CIA, Christmas Jones as a nuclear physicist, Wai Ling was a Chinese super agent.  The last time we got a normal leading lady was Natalya in ‘Goldeneye’ and even she was a computer programmer for a top secret Russian installation.  Of course it all has to do with this incessant need to make Bond women ‘strong’, whatever that means.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t but I really wonder how many woman who go to the Bond movies actually relate to any of these characters.

What I’d really like to see as the next Bond woman IS somebody that the audience can relate to.  An ordinary (though beautiful of course) girl with an ordinary job and an ordinary life who, due to being in the wrong place and the wrong time, gets swept up into 007’s world and actually ends up falling in love with him.  Now we can debate whether Bond himself should fall in love with her given what happened to him with Vesper, but I see no reason why he can’t open his heart to her a little bit.  Her love for Bond would serve a very specific purpose in the story.  It would be, like the two films before it, a film with a theme, with a point.  I am not saying that Bond should be light headed and romantic from the opening minute of the new film.  He should grow into it as the movie progresses, his cold heart softened by this ordinary and yet extraordinary woman that has come into his life.  My fellow Bond acolyte Jamie Williams has often discussed with me how ‘Casino Royale’ was a film about the loss of a man’s soul.  This film would be about putting it back together again.  Even though Bond put his past behind him in ‘Quantum of Solace’, I still feel we are one piece away from 007 becoming the fully formed hero we all remember from the Connery and Moore days.

Jamie and myself have had many a fun debate about whether Moneypenny or Q should be anywhere near a Daniel Craig Bond film.  I do agree that Q should be kept out of it.  The perfunctory scene at the start of a Bond film where he visits the Q workshop and is given in depth introductions to the various equipment which will be shoehorned into his latest adventure at some point, along with the trademark quips regarding the prototype gadgets we see in the background is a firm trademark of the Roger Moore era and does not belong in a film starring Craig, even one of a lighter tone.  Not to mention one of the best qualities about Craig’s Bond is his ability to think on his feet and improvise in dangerous situations.  If he has a utility belt with gadgets that can get him out of any situation then you lose any sense of jeopardy.

But Moneypenny is another story.  There is one particular element of the Bond movie mythos which has never been explained or explored that I want to see.  How did Bond meet Moneypenny?  How did their relationship begin?  Did they ever even have a proper relationship?  How did it become the flirty, yet distant one that we knew from the films?

Well here’s the bit that knocks you fellow Bond fans out.  I propose that Bond 23 tell that story.   I propose that the ‘ordinary woman’ who gets swept up into Bond’s latest adventure is none other than the girl who will become Moneypenny.  I often wondered what happened to Bond’s female conquests after each film (the ones who weren’t killed anyway).  None of them were ever mentioned again giving the impression that each one was disposable to him.  Imagine that at the end of the film, despite the feelings they have for each other, Bond and Moneypenny are resigned to the fact that a relationship is not going to be practical in his line of work.  They part and Bond laments that this stable force in his life will be gone only to return to Mi6 in London the following week and find that she is its brand new employee.  Bond triumphantly returns to the field, reassured that whatever challenges lie ahead, and however bad the job might get, Moneypenny will be there when he gets back, unswervingly loyal to him.  It’s a touching ending, totally different to anything we’ve seen in a Bond film and I think audiences could really respond to it.

Yes, maybe it’s a shake up too far but those are the risks you have to take with a film franchise which will be approaching it’s 50th anniversary by the time Bond 23 comes out.  You stay ahead of what the audience are expecting and you get them talking.  Now it is time to get you talking.  Please berate me in the comments section below.  I am dying to hear you tell me how stupid this idea is.

Oh, and please give the theme song to someone who can play a tune.  Just a give us a Bond song that's a friggin melody with lyrics, it’s not that hard.  Get Sting to sing it.

'The Princess And The Frog' Trailer Makes Me Want To Believe

I'm not going to pretend to know how well Disney's return to traditional animation is going to do at the box office (the particular person whose words you're reading now thought 'Enchanted' would flop - that's how bad his instincts are) but there is certainly a lot riding on it.  'The Princess and the Frog' is the start of Disney's new dynasty of animated films, if all goes to plan.

If, in the worst case scenario, this film does bomb, I don't think it will mean that Disney does abandon 2D animation again but it could very well mean the end of telling this particular kind of story.  We know that the studio have an adaptation of 'Rapunzel' in production right now but they could very well pull the plug on it, such is the nature of animation.

If 'The Princess and the Frog' is as good as I hope it is, then Disney really needs to take an aggressive marketing approach with it, just like 'Star Trek'.  They need to start screening the film and getting the word out.  Right now, all we have to go on is the new trailer.  I can't really tell how good the film is going to be but one thing is for sure; it looks absolutely gorgeous and it doesn't need gimmicks like digital or 3D to make it so.  Just watch it below and see what I mean.

'The Princess and the Frog' opens in Los Angeles and New York on November 25th, opens wide across America on December 11th and, sigh, opens in the UK on February 12th.

Memo To the Executives - The Fantastic Four

Hello folks, time for another round of ‘memo to the executives’ where I, in a bout of supreme arrogance worthy of Doctor Doom himself, try to pitch some ideas about where ‘The Fantastic Four’ should go next as a franchise.

I wasn’t planning on tackling ‘Fantastic Four’ this week but upon hearing the news that the anti-Christ of comic book movie making Akiva Goldsman (whose track record ranges, in my opinion, from abysmal to barely passable) is taking the producing reigns on the new film, I decided to give him a hand and give you all an idea of how I think we could yield much better results from a do-over.

The one nice thing about it is that, as opposed to last week’s piece on X-Men, I don’t have to try and convince you to start this franchise from scratch and reboot it, because they’ve already decided to do that.  It does seem like some kind of record though, to reboot a franchise literally two years after the previous film came out.  Clearly, even Fox can admit that mistakes were made last time around.

After waiting so long for an epic Fantastic Four movie, it was very disappointing to see something on what felt like such a small scale.  Instead of epic battles with a Latverian monarch determined to conquer the world, we got a not terribly epic battle with a jealous boyfriend who wants to kill the F4 because one of them was his ex-girlfriend.  Also, though in their purest form Fantastic Four really is a product of the 60’s, a film version should not feel dated in any particular period.  People will look back on that 2005 film with its rock soundtrack, snowboarding and dirt bike stunt shows and think of it is a product of the decade in which it was made.  And since it feels like nothing more than a cheap way to appeal to teenagers and sell soundtracks, that needs to be gone from any new film.

We need something that follows the formula of ‘Superman: the movie’; something on a large scale with charm, wit, romance, optimism, heroes to really root for, a villain who means business and a classic score.

But actually, I think they got some things right last time around.  In preparation for this article I re-watched the two hour (and much better) extended version of the first film and reminded myself of the horror of the second.  I think there are a couple of good scenes in that first film.  I think they came up with a good explanation for where their costumes came from (being special astronaut suits).  Most importantly, the characters of the four and the chemistry between the actors was pretty good.  I felt the family dynamic that makes this comic book so unique was present and correct.  It was just disheartening to see that family’s biggest problem was stopping Johnny Storm from participating in the dirt bike rally.

It wasn’t so much the characters of the F4 themselves that got screwed up; it was Doctor Doom.

Now I am a huge fan of Doom.  I love so much about him.  There is so much that makes him unique in villainy.  He has the kind of wealth, power and resources that so many of his ilk can only dream of.  Though he, like so many others, wants to take over the world, at least he isn’t some under-qualified lunatic with no actual reason for conquest beyond a one note thirst for power.  Doom has the qualifications for the job.  He is the ruler of his own country.   He only wants to progress to what he sees to be the natural progression of his life.  With his intellect (and ego), one country isn’t enough for this monarch.  And the best thing is, Doom may actually do a better job at running our planet than the ones who are in charge right now.

What was he reduced to, as played by Julian McMahon?  Perving at Jessica Alba through security monitors, that’s what.  It will not do.  We need to see a film where Doctor Doom initiates a plot worthy of himself and actually pulls it off.  Now that I look back, one element that has been missing from many of the recent Marvel films is getting to see the supervillain defeat the heroes.   The way your superhero characters earn their stripes is to be knocked down, let the world go to pieces, pick themselves up and overcome overwhelming odds to defeat their enemy and put the planet back together again.  The only enemy that knocked Spider-man down for three movies were his own personal demons.  The Fantastic Four are not about subtlety or internal battles.  They need to be defeated by Doom.  Doom needs to take over the world and then our heroes need to make a comeback and kick his ass.

I’ve had this one image in particular burned into my brain for nigh on twenty years now ever since I first saw it in the Spider-man animated series from the early 80’s.  In one particular episode, Doctor Doom utilises the usual slew of robots and mind control to dissolve the United Nations Council and become ‘master of the world’.  Towards the climax of the episode we head inside the U.N. Building to find Doom in the council chamber completely alone, just standing there, his dream of conquest fulfilled and pondering where to go from here.  Now I’m not trying to convince you of any mind-blowing allegory that generates from an 80’s cartoon but that scene has always fascinated me and is something I’ve been longing to see in live action.

I mean think about the potential of scenes in a new Fantastic Four movie that would show the world ruled by Doctor Doom.  There are a hundred different ways you could write a wonderfully satirical scene where he makes his initial amendments to the US constitution.  I can think of one right now.

“If you suspect any subject of Doom to own or admit to having enjoyed a Rob Zombie film, please report them to your nearest Doom robot patrol for re-education.”

One of the most fascinating things to do with villains who have clear goals is to see what would become of them if they accomplished those goals.  Just think back to that wonderful scene in Superman II where General Zod, having conquered the world and with no man of steel to stop him, sits in the oval office completely bored out of his mind having total control over a planet but no clue what to do with it.  Doom does know what he’s doing.

Another theme which was explored partially in Superman II and that I would carry into the first new Fantastic Four movie would be the concept of how super powers are abused, not by the people who possess them but by the people who depend upon them.  I would actually pitch that in our story, once the Fantastic Four have settled into their powers and their roles as superheroes (which would happen by the second act), crime would become virtually non-existent in the U.S.  Like a crime fighting team of Santa Clauses, the F4 are able to zip around the country in their Fantasticar and defeat it’s scum with relative ease.  In the mind of the public, the answer to all their problems has quickly become ‘The Fantastic Four’.  The American people actually start to question the need for any other sort of defence or deterrent.

One thing I very rarely see superheroes do in either comic books or the films based on them is try to share their power with others who could truly benefit from them.  Did it ever occur to Daredevil that throwing radioactive waste in the faces of other blind people would really help them out?  I’m joking of course but in this film, Dr. Reed Richards possesses the scientific know-how and feels obligated and compelled to discover the root of the F4’s powers and how the effects can be replicated to benefit the people of the world.  Reed is so blinded by his ambitions, that he become oblivious to the concerns of Sue, Johnny and Ben who frankly don’t want to spend the rest of their lives being America’s no.1 crime fighters.  Neither can Reed see the forest for the trees and it doesn’t yet occur to him how badly this power will certainly be abused.  And neither can the public, so gracious for the job the F4 have done cleaning up the country, they demand whatever, now redundant, amount of money is being spent on national defence, be allocated to Richards to continue his research.

And observing all of this from the country of Latveria is Doctor Doom, the man who began Reed’s research with him all those years ago.  We don’t need to tell Doom’s full origin in this first film (fascinating though I find it) but what must be told is the past, the rivalry and the hatred he has for Richards.  They are not polar opposites.  Their drive for results is the same and yet Doom seethes with fury over how different their lives have become.  Reed’s drive landed him the title of “greatest mind of the 20th century”, the luxurious Baxter Building as a home, Sue Storm as a wife, fame, fortune and super powers.  Doom’s drive landed him with a disfigured face.

But now it seems that fortune smiles on Doom.  He lures the F4 to his castle in Latveria, not through any subterfuge but simply by revealing that Victor Von Doom is alive and well, not burned to a cinder as Reed feared all those years ago, and that he has made a major breakthrough in their research.  Reed blindly takes the bait and the four are defeated.  Now Doom can invade the now defenceless United States with his army of Doombots, not only achieving his goals of conquest but enacting a humiliating revenge against the one man he hates with every fibre of his being.  The F4 escape just as the United States of Doom are about to be recognised by the United Nations and return to save the day in an epic showdown.  Though defeated, Doom cannot be indicted for his actions as he has diplomatic immunity.  His gravely injured body is returned to Latveria where his people, rather than nailing him to a cross, embrace their beloved leader and return him to his castle to recover.  The only words Doom can weakly mumble are “Richards……Richards……..Richaaaaaards”.  Some wounds will clearly never heal.  The Fantastic Four are heroes once more but the world has learned an important lesson not to place it’s safety entirely on their shoulders.

Once again, I’m one for comic book films that stand on their own two feet without the need for cliffhangers or unresolved stories to be told in sequels, and that deal with powerful themes.  One of the problems with the Fantastic Four movies we got was that they weren’t about anything.  This film that I pitch to you would be about the very thing that get scientists in movies into trouble all the time; ambition and obsession.  And the lesson learned by the end of the film would be that ambition even exceeds the grasp of a man who can stretch the farthest.

And the theme of the second film would be that clouds cannot eat planets….but Aliens in purple costumes can.

Now don’t go telling me that literal Galactus cannot work on screen.  You have no proof of that and neither do I have evidence to the contrary.  What I will say is that I’ve seen some animated versions of the Galactus saga where the planet eating behemoth is about ten times the size of the Thing, wears that silly costume and threatens to eat the planet and THAT WILL DEFINITELY NOT WORK.  But I think if you made Galactus so huge that we could only see parts of him in frame or just his outline in the clouds (no not a storm cloud), it would be worth a try.

The original Galactus storyline from Fantastic Four issues 48-50 is a cracking doomsday tale that deserves to be told.  All those people who cried in agony after watching ‘Rise of the Silver Surfer’ (I was one of them) weren’t doing it because they had nothing better to moan about.  It was because we are talking about one of the defining Marvel Universe storylines right up there with ‘The Dark Phoenix Saga’ from the X-Men.  The most appealing thing about the story to me is the idea of Galactus’ herald the Silver Surfer coming to Earth to prepare for his master’s arrival but discovering a world worth protecting, seeing the best of humanity through the eyes of a blind girl, and being prepared at the end to sacrifice himself and his home world (which Galactus has only spared from destruction due to the Surfer’s servitude) to save us.

They touched briefly on some of this in the film we got but the story was so half-baked that it never achieved anything close to the drama and pathos we should feel.  Galactus needs to arrive on Earth by the mid point of the film.  We can’t feel the jeopardy of Earth’s destruction unless the destructor is there, staring our heroes in the face.  And this is the story that separates the Fantastic Four from all the other superheroes.  They have to face a challenge on a totally different scale; they have to save the entire world from an enemy they cannot possibly defeat physically. 

And if you contrast that by bringing in Alicia Masters and developing a touching romance between her and the Silver Surfer and between her and Ben Grimm (a romance he has to earn through the film) and you’ll have something moving on screen.

And in the third film, do an alien invasion movie with the Skrulls.  Only instead of them being run of the mill aggressors conquering our planet for the sake of it, make them desperate refugees whose own planet has been destroyed by Galactus and now need a new world to call their own.  They just don’t care if somebody else happens to live there already.

Ok, I’m just spit-balling now and it doesn’t make for good reading.  Hopefully though, you can see the potential to really make a Fantastic Four series work if the studio are willing to invest the money to make a gigantic scale science fiction fantasy that could make its audience feel high as a kite; something magical.

That is my pitch for this evening, I now invite you to either compliment or throw things at me.

Memo To the Executives: The Uncanny X-Men

Hey folks, Phil Gee here with a brand new series of weekly articles for Think Mcfly Think called ‘memo to the executives’.  Inspired by Gene Siskel & Rogert Ebert (as is so much of what Jamie and I do), these opinion pieces are designed to cast a look at the future of the blockbuster franchises of today (or maybe of yesteryear) and try to pitch the best direction to take them next.  These musings are in no way what I believe WILL happen but simply what I would want to see.

We actually did this for a few weeks on our weekly pod cast ‘movie-moan’ but a) there’s way too much movie news to cover each week and b) by the time I’m done yakking about American films that have been given delayed UK release dates, I’m too tired to say anything coherent on the subject.  So let me use the power of the written word to pitch to you and let me start this week with probably the best example of a franchise which defines ‘wasted potential’.

'The Uncanny X-Men'

To be fair, X-Men has definitely had a better run on the silver screen than some of the other Marvel Comics creations both in terms of quality and longitude.  The first film validated the comic book movie as a legitimate genre, the second was the best wet dream you could have given to a comic book nerd, the third (if you ignore how it destroyed the potential of so many storylines that had been set up in the first two) was a big dumb but admittedly fun tub of popcorn.  I despised the Wolverine spin-off film with every fibre of my being but the fact that it made over $80 million dollars in its opening weekend despite the biggest movie piracy breach I can remember just the month before is a testament to the popularity of this series.

But now we hear the constant rumours of a sequel to Wolverine, the Magneto prequel, and an outing for the younger generation of X-Men called ‘First Class’.  I find it hard to actually say that the ‘X-Men’ franchise is still up and running when we’re not actually getting any official sequels here.  I doubt we actually will.  I do believe that one far off and happy day, Marvel Studios is going to retain the rights to fully produce and finance the X-Men films themselves and integrate them into the Marvel film universe it is currently building.  But by the time we get to that point there will be little point making ‘X-Men Returns’.  There will only be one logical choice:

REEEEEEEEEEEEEBOOOOOOOOOOOT (insert your own choice of a dramatic musical sting here)!

It is a word we are all sick of hearing but, in the case of X-Men, I feel it is the right thing to do and it could turn into something incredibly exciting.  While Bryan Singer gave us the version of X-Men where everything had a logic, a reason for being and the reality of it felt just one small step beyond the world we know, there is another version out there.  This version contains just as much allegory to the real world problems of race and prejudice, just as richly defined characters, just as much pathos, just as much fun but it is also an epic on a gigantic scale previously unobtainable given the limited budgets of the first few films.

I am talking about the literal translation of Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s ‘The Uncanny X-Men’ being brought to the screen.

This is the version where Magneto lives on an asteroid and hijacks nuclear weapons to throw right back at the human governments who persecute mutant kind.  Where he is so unbelievably powerful that the X-Men, even functioning as a team, have never been able to defeat him in combat.

This is the version where Cyclops really is the leader, Storm is a Goddess and Wolverine is short, stumpy and ugly.

This is the version where, to tactfully deal with the mutant problem, giant robots are sent to capture and kill them.

This is the version where Jean Grey is possessed by a malevolent alien life form and brought to justice by an interstellar empire known as the Shi’ar for having already consumed a star and killed billions in the process.

And this is the version where the X-Men where those multi-coloured uniforms.

You probably think I’m crazy but in an effort, if nothing else, to get away from that tired old solution of putting comic book characters in insipid black leather outfits just because the filmmakers can’t figure out any other way to translate them to the screen (which even happened to the poor G.I.Joe’s this year), I say that you can make the original X-Men outfits work on screen.  I admit that it is extremely challenging but our only point of reference for assuming it cannot work is the fan made costumes we see at comic conventions.   I remember my heart almost jumping out of my chest the first time I saw an actual on-set image of Spider-man from the first Sam Raimi directed film and realising that they had actually brought that not too subtle costume to the screen and made it work.  You can do it you know.  You can make these things a little larger than life (maybe a lot larger than life) as long as you are true to what makes the piece work.  It will take an extremely talented costume designer to pull it off but I think it is possible to create, not a literal translation, but something which really adheres to the colour and energy found in the panels of those Claremont stories. 

And by God, if you pull those costumes off and the fans get a look on the internet, the anticipation for this new version of X-Men will immediately be on their radar.  It seems to be one of those things proven by the history of the genre that nothing will get the fans foaming at the mouth more than a look which is 100% faithful to what they know and love.  Iron Man, Sin City, and Hellboy are just some examples which prove that.  The black leather costumes were fine for the first series of films but this reboot would be a completely different animal.  A science fiction epic where the conflict for acceptance and tolerance is played out on the largest canvas possible.

If the original X-Men trilogy nailed anything it was the casting (pretty much, cough, Halle, cough, Berry, cough cough), assembling an ensemble of actors who not only nailed their characters individually but developed that rare kind of chemistry that makes the audience really care about what happens to them and be ever eager to catch their next outing (something which propelled the original Star Trek crew to the still incredible achievement of six films).  That is going to be hard to replicate when starting from scratch but it does give us a chance to see an even truer version of the characters than we got.

For however good the actors were, we got a weak Storm, an underutilised Cyclops who gets taken out like a punk before the Phoenix story even kicks off, a Rogue who never really got the chance to blossom into a sassy Southern belle, a not very physically intimidating Magneto and a Wolverine that was just too damn handsome and tall.

This time around, Cyclops needs to be the tall, handsome, commanding one.  He may clash with Wolverine but when he puts the boot in, the team should be under no illusion as to who is in charge (which you never believed in the films we got).  They certainly nailed that Cyclopes loves Jean Grey unconditionally last time but she has to love him the same way back because there is no man in the world more awesome than him.  Wolverine does not have a chance with her.  He’s a hunched over, craggy faced, feral animal.  He’s a loner till the end, completely closed off from others and he cannot ever possibly lead the X-Men.  Wolverine may be the fan favourite but he is not the star of the show, it’s an ensemble piece, just like Watchmen.  And just like Watchmen I think, lazy comparison though it is, a Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach is what we need from a Wolverine this time.  Someone as far away from a hunky Australian as we can get.

As far as the actual line-up goes, I don’t think you can go wrong with Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, Jean Grey, Beast, Gambit and Rogue.  Maybe it is my conditioning having grown up with that particular ensemble on the 90’s animated series but those characters really do cover all the bases.  You’ve got the leader, the renegade, the soul, the love, the intellect, the scoundrel and the hot chick that every guy wants to be with.  I’d have a hard time seeing Nightcrawler in the team for the only reason that the character was done so perfectly in X2 that there would be no point having him here.  It would just be a retread of what we’ve already seen.

Now why don’t I throw a few ideas about actual plots for this new series of films.

Obviously, the first film should be the X-Men versus Magneto but rather than a battle spread over a couple of movies, this should be the definitive cinematic representation of their conflict.  As I mentioned before, in the comics I grew up reading, the X-Men never actually defeated Maggie as he was just too powerful for them.  In one of my favourite stories called ‘I Magneto’, the mutant terrorist demands that the homosapien governments of the world turn total control of the planet over to him or he will destroy them.  The X-Men head to Magneto’s private island fortress to stop him but find it surrounded by an inhibitor field which suppresses their mutant powers.  Given that they have never been able to defeat him with their powers, they enter into a suicidal mission facing him without them.  Of course, despite his many battles with them, Professor Xavier has always been the only one that could pose a threat to Magneto.  For all his powers, he cannot protect his mind from the world’s most powerful telepath, his old and probably only friend who now finds himself on the extreme other side of the fence regarding how mutants can survive in a world of bigotry.  That wonderful iconography of the world’s most deadly and powerful mutant meeting his match in a humble cripple is something we still are waiting to see on the big screen.

And in Magneto’s threat to the world, we see both exactly what the X-Men have trained for and why humanity fears mutants in the first place.  Imagine that as the climate of fear and hostility grows, the Mutant Registration Act (which was little more than a footnote in the original Bryan Singer film) is about to be brought into fruition.  Magneto retaliates in the only way he knows how, with violence, threats and repercussion and while he thinks he is the self appointed saviour of mutant kind, all he is doing is strengthening the argument that mutants are too dangerous and powerful to simply be accepted into society.  In an ironic ending to the first film, the X-Men would defeat Magneto and save the world but thanks to his actions, the Mutant Registration Act is passed and the future of their race seems more tenuous than ever before.

If you can really emphasize the hatred of humans to mutants while at the same time emphasizing the incredible odds against the X-Men surviving their fight against Magneto then you will have something very moving on the screen I think.  They could very well have sat back and let Magneto take over the world, perhaps make the world safer for mutants while enslaving the humans who despise them.  That they choose to risk everything to stop him is what makes them the wonderful creations they are.  Not to mention, on the surface, we’re talking about a team superhero movie on a scale we haven’t seen before.  I can’t see anybody not being excited to see this in the theatre.

Now where do you go after that?  Giant friggin robots of course.

After the registration act is passed, it is a practical certainty that a lot of mutants will not come quietly and will have to be hunted down, and since many posses unbelievable powers, only the mechanical might of the Sentinels can do the job.  I also think the second film might be a great time to bring in Genosha, the fictional country off the coast of Africa whose economy depends on its enslaved mutant population and where the entire mutant race could be deposited.  If you think that sounds far fetched then just remember that there are some retarded bigots out there in our world who do think the solution to purging homosexuality would be to round up all the gay people from across the world and dump them on their own private island where they can practise their immorality away from the sight of normal people.  Maybe the second Uncanny X-Men film could be a clever metaphor for the insane solutions prejudice people come up with to deal with problems of race and sexuality both in the past and the present.

And then you do the Dark Phoenix Saga in film three.  There is no way around this folks.  We did not get the Phoenix Saga in X-Men: The Last Stand.  We got some sequences where Jean goes crazy and blows shit up (and it looked very nice too) but did not feel the real implications of this team of friends going through the agony of trying to save someone they loved from an impossible situation, of the cosmic scale of it and the final tragedy of Jean accepting the terrible fate which she did not deserve and her love Cyclops being powerless to stop it.  It’s the ultimate soap opera, one of the defining stories in comic books and deserves to be on the screen, Shi’ar Empire and all.

And coming right back down to Earth for film four, you can’t go wrong with ‘Days of Future Past’ where the sole surviving X-Men try to change history in order to prevent a nightmarish future which leaves both homosapien and homosuperior races virtually wiped out as a result of the assassination of  a US senator by mutant terrorists.  It would make a great story coming off the Dark Phoenix Saga, with the X-Men despondent over Jean Grey’s death and questioning what the point of continuing their mission is, to be thrust into a situation which shows them the consequences of giving up, of what the world will become if they fail.

I would throw a further twist in there at the end of the story by having the future be altered not only by stopping the assassination, but by having Professor Xavier take the bullet and die, moving the world a huge step forward to peaceful co-existence between humans and mutants and converting Magneto to the side of the X-Men.  Claremont himself stated that the ultimate fulfilment of Xavier’s dream would be represented by someone as hardcore adversarial as Magneto being redeemed by it.

So there are four out of a hundred possible stories for a new X-Men franchise.  I think the important thing is that each X-Men cinematic outing from here on take a cue from the Nolan Batman movies in that rather than being a simple continuation of the story of the previous film, stand as individual stories that work by themselves and deal with individual themes.  You may think that I am being too faithful to the source material, refusing to acknowledge how adaptation works.  I assure you that I am in no way a comic book purist who will only accept a literal translation of the comic books.  I just believe, having been given the ‘adapted’ version, X-Men really is a property that could be transferred without a frame or line of comic book dialogue out of line and work wonderfully well.

And hey, if a literal translation of the costumes doesn’t work, we’ll just end up with this…

…and it will be hilarious and I’ll still go see it.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is my pitch for this evening.  I will now graciously accept your feedback.

Phil Gee Has Been to Pandora Tonight

Hey folks, I just got back from the 15 minute IMAX 3D preview of Thunderca.....I mean Avatar and I thought I’d share my thoughts having entered the world of Pandora with completely fresh eyes tonight.

Avatar already represents something quite unique for me in its marketing in that it is virtually impossible these days to keep a big budget blockbuster, something that is meant to be a feast for the eyes and experienced on the big screen, from being experienced first on a dinky little computer monitor. I’d love to see, crazy thought it sounds, a sure fire hit that everyone is going to see like a Harry Potter have zero marketing before release. For them to release no footage, no trailers, just the posters and the release date. The idea of going into a film like that having absolutely no concept of what it’s going to look like even as you are waiting in line on opening weekend would jazz the hell out of me. Avatar’s marketing, critical though we have been of it from a business and audience awareness standpoint, has come as close to that feeling for me as I think anything could today.

I did not watch the trailer yesterday. Despite plenty of descriptions and one or two still images, I had no concept of what this film was going to look like. The first time I would see any footage from Avatar was on a giant IMAX screen in 3D. I think that’s how James Cameron would have wanted it for us all.

And until you put on those 3D glasses I really don’t think you can appreciate what Cameron is trying to achieve here. Until I saw the preview, neither did I. But after I walked out of the screening, I said to myself “I get it”. Avatar has been meticulously designed, shot and edited to create the most immersive film experience you have ever seen. Is it a film based around a gimmick rather than a great story? Almost certainly but that didn’t stop me from being extremely impressed with what I saw, with some reservations.

The scenes contained in the preview were:

1. Some kind of briefing scene by a military hard-ass preparing the soldier arrivals to planet Pandora on the incredibly hostile and deadly environment which awaits them. He assures that plenty of them will die. This was a simple dialogue piece which demonstrated the 3D effect in the simplest of scenes. It works very nicely though the dialogue is a little cheesy.

2. Our main character Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) being placed into a pod where upon his mind his placed into the avatar that will allow this former paraplegic to walk around Pandora as a 10 foot tall alien with legs very much active. Once inside the new body, Jake gets so excited the scientists try to tranquilise him but to no avail. First of all, I love the production design of the science base. It’s quite minimalist which gives it a grounding in reality. You do get a flashback to ‘Total Recall’ as Jake gets put inside the Avatar pod but there is some nice dialogue between Sigourney Weaver and Worthington.

As I saw the avatar Na’vi for the first time though I got a much worse flashback, to ‘Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within’. I remember being so impressed with the initial images of the characters in that film, their skin, eyes, hair, movement........and then I watched them talk and realised they had spent $200 million for nothing because it was so awfully jarring that it destroyed any performance those character could give. The same thing happens in this early scene. The skin texture, the movement and the way the Na’vi are integrated into the scene with real sets and actors is superb but as Jake stumbles around in his new body with a goofy expression on his face before exclaiming “this is great”, it looked dumb. I really did not like the faces on these particular Na’vi. They really did look gormless and I began to get worried.

3. An expedition party of avatars including Jake and Sigourney Weaver’s character encounter a pissed off multi-coloured Rhino type creature in the forests of Pandora which gets scared off, not by Jake as he assumes, but by an even larger nastier cat like creature which chases him into the jungle. Oh boy, we’ve seen this scene a billion times before and to make it worse, Jake insists on taunting the rhino creature he thinks is scared of him with “yeah, that’s what I’m talking about, you don’t wanna mess with me........bitch”. If I wanted to hear that sort of dialogue I’d watch Transformers 2 thank you very much.

On the positives, Sigourney Weaver’s avatar looked really great; spookily like her. Also, the chase through the jungle has put my fears to rest about a particular part of the 3D process that I have been concerned about ever since I saw Henry Selick’s ‘Coraline’. In that film, there were plenty of instances where the images were moving so quickly that the 3D just became an annoying blurred effect. I wondered whether this was simply because the human eye cannot process the image fast enough for it to become clear and since so many of these upcoming 3D movies will involve fast paced action and quick moving things, if the whole process was flawed. Cameron has convinced me with this scene that it is not. Either the technology has improved or he directs the scene at exactly the right pace but the chase is clear as crystal at all times and pretty exhilarating to boot as we wizz through the thick jungle in a single long shot following Jake.

4. Jake’s life is saved from the animals by Zoe Saldana’s character (who I will just call Cheetara for the benefit of this article). Now here’s where something interesting happened and I started to get comfortable with the look of the Na’vi. Jake suddenly doesn’t look as goofy anymore though I’m still not crazy about his appearance and Saldana looks fantastic, a totally convincing character. She has an electric presence to her from the moment she appears and commands the screen. I’m pretty sure she’s going to be the star of this show folks.

5. Cheetara walks off back into the jungle, now bathed in a beautiful multi-coloured twilight, and Jake follows to try and thank her for saving his life. She proceeds to lambaste him, comparing him to a baby trouncing around in his ignorance having no clue what to do or where to go and that the animals she killed need not have died were it not for his actions. Did I mention Saldana fucking rocks as this character? I’m sure I must have. My only concern about the scenes between these two is whether she’ll start singing ‘colours of the wind’ from Pocahontas at some point in the film. It sure looks like it’s going that way.

6. In the final scene, Jake and Cheetara are accompanied by a pack of other Na’vi as they traverse a cliff face to round up some bird like species to ride out on. The other aliens watch with glee as Jake tries to tame this one particular animal which he finally does while he’s in mid flight. A pretty cliché scene from a story perspective but a stunning one technically. The cliff, waterfall and the valley beyond look stunning and the 3D works best here out of all the scenes. You are on that cliff with them. In fact, one of the biggest compliments I can give to the footage is that I already have a real grasp of Pandora as a full realised world. I have a sense of the geography and from just 15 minutes footage, that is impressive.

7. There was a final montage of scenes, most of which focus on the gigantic battle between the Na’vi and the human soldiers in their exo-suits.

8. This was followed by a subliminal message which flashed across the screen saying “praise be to Cameron”.......

.....ok, I made that last part up. So having seen the preview, I’ve come away extremely excited to experience the film the way it is meant to be seen. I have no problem with the aliens not looking ‘photo-realistic’. In fact, I wish studios (and us) would stop using the term to describe computer generated characters. I simply do not think it is possible to create an other-worldly creature that can fool us into thinking it’s real. What makes computer generated characters real is what makes live action characters real, the performance of the actor and the writing. If you watch Lord of the Rings now, the character of Gollum does not seamlessly integrate with the sets and actors. He is real because is a wonderful character and that’s what we will need to see from the Na’vi.

If I don’t believe in their cause and care about those aliens when they start battling for their lives against the humans, 3D or not, it will mean nothing. Cameron and Fox also need to realise that eventually, I’m going to watch this film on my inky dinky DVD player, without 3D, without the immersion and it will have to rely totally on its story. Otherwise, it’s just another Beowulf. I do hope the film can make up for its apparent lack of originality with great characters that we can get involved with.

Nevertheless, I am no cynic after tonight. £12 British pounds right here Mr Cameron, I’m sold.

Ps. Having watched the regular teaser trailer afterwards, I think it's fantastic. I think it really sells the tone and the concept of the film. By all means disagree with me folks. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

G.I. Joe Is Not This Year's 'Speed Racer'

As Roadblock (he was the Joe who talked in rhyme) might say:

"Those box office numbers fill Paramount with glee, I think Phil Gee owes us an apology"

And indeed I do.  Although I was not alone, I was absolutely adamant that G.I.Joe, regardless of the quality of the film, would be the summer's big blockbuster bomb.  Peter has the box office specifics for the weekend in our box office section and it's clear to me at least that given the awful marketing campaign and the bad buzz throughout the year, a weekend hoard of $56 million is a very impressive achievement for the film.  I therefore feel compelled to apologise for my lack of faith.

My only guess as to how the film pulled in such an impressive number is due either to the large number of G.I.Joe fans out there who were going to see it no matter how bad the buzz was (count me in that crowd) or the lack of any other action orientated films this month.

Now I have no idea how much the film will gross from here but I think it's fair to say that a worldwide haul of $200 million is achievable meaning the film will have made back its $170 million budget and then some.  It's hard to say how word of mouth will affect its chances because the word is all over the place.  I had a thoroughly good time with the film and there are plenty of other people who feel the same.  Then again, there are plenty of people who really thought it sucked, and there are even some people who stayed away from the film because the buzz was so bad (or maybe because it wasn't screened for critics).  Will they give the film a chance this coming weekend?

And do we have the beginnings of a series here?  The film has a long way to go before a sequel gets the greenlight but I'd be game for one.  Not because I think they'll pull off an X-Men 2 (ha ha ha, let's all laugh for a second, ha ha ha) but because I want to see Joseph Gordon Levitt & Christopher Eccleston prance around in those ridiculous masks they wear at the end of the film for a full 2 hours.  I want the Crimson twins Tomax & Xamot, Kevin J O'Connor in full Doctor Mindbender garb, Shipwreck and Roadblock joining the Joes, Sgt Slaughter played by himself and Hugo Weaving as Serpentor... 

....And then I want Cobra-La in the third movie because that's the kind of card you pull when you want to go completely off the rails and destroy the franchise.

Here's to the next few years.