See this? This is what I was talking about.
Some lady named Paige MacGregor over at a website called Film School Rejects posted an article a little bit ago about why a Thundercats movie must absolutely be made. Remember a while ago how I told you to stop thinking that everything made in the 80s was the height of entertainment? Yeah, here's a great example of that. It's so bad, in fact, that I'm not entirely sure it's not supposed to be satire. Somebody please tell me if it's supposed to be satire.
Go ahead over there and check out the article then come on back and read the rest of mine. I'm gonna be a mean horrible person and completely deconstruct and destroy her reasons. Why? Hello, and welcome to the Internet. That's what we do here. Also, feuds are good for generating traffic.
Here are her 5 points:
#1 - There is no way, under any circumstances, that the Thundercats movie could possibly be worse than X2 or X-Men: The Last Stand.
What the hell? What the bloody hell? Ok, I'll give you that X3 was pretty much universally panned, but X2? Where where you when this movie was playing? You sure weren't in the theater because X2 was amazingly good. Most people would even tell you that it was better than the first one. I would be one of those people.
She goes on to say that "with the potential earning power of a Thundercats movie on the line, I just don’t think Warner Bros. has it in them to screw this movie up to that degree." I think perhaps she is forgetting a couple of Warner Bros. movies called Batman Forever and Batman & Robin.
Oh, and as far as a licensed movie being worse than X3? I could name quite a few, but all I need is one. Catwoman. So yes, it is VERY possible to make a worse movie than X3.
#2 - We have the CGI technology to pull this off. It’s really as simple as that.
As we state time and time again on this podcast-o-blog, just because you CAN doing something with technology, doesn't mean that you SHOULD. So many movies suffer from this. Miniatures and puppetry and make up and other such FX techniques are not obsolete and should not be completely replaced by CG. Thundercats, if it ever is made, should rely on CG only for large or fancy special effects that would otherwise be impossible to create. The Thundercats signal shooting into the sky for instance. Hell, as far as the Thundertank is concerned, the Tumbler in Batman Begins proves that we don't need CG or hokey plastic shells to make operational and awesome looking vehicles.
But this Paige person says that "Realistically turning Kate Beckinsale into Cheetarah, or even making Jake Gyllenhaal into the orange and white, emotionally conflicted leader of the Thundercats, Lion-O, is far from difficult...While it may very well have been the technology that stalled and ultimately prevented the release of a Thundercats movie back in the late 1990s, that certainly shouldn’t be a problem today."
Are you kidding me? If they do make a movie out of this awful, horrible old cartoon, the characters should not be created via CG. This is a job for make-up and costume experts. No one else. CG still hasn't 100% conquered the uncanny valley, and slapping some computer effects onto live actors just to get the effect of making them look like cats would be a gigantic mistake.
#3 - Timing.
This is the only point that even half makes sense. Yeah, licensed and retro-nostalgia movies are all the rage right now, but if you go to that well too often and too close together, it's gonna dry up in no time at all. And it's not like every movie made from an old property is going great guns here. But I'll get to that a bit later.
#4 - The choice is no longer in Warner Bros.' hands.
If you've read the article, you know what she said about this point and so you should be able to see why I'm not even gonna dignify this point with a response.
#5 - A Thundercats movie would fucking rock. Period.
No, no it wouldn't. At least, not just because you say it will. This is the "omg I loved it as a kid and so it must be awesome now too!" reasoning that really, REALLY grinds my gears. Look, I loved cartoons when I was growing up, too. I still love cartoons. The difference between me and Paige is that I can look back and realize that not everything I watched when I was growing up was touched by the hand of Midas. It takes a significant amount of work and love and care to take an old franchise that sucked in the first place and make it not suck any more. There are few examples of this ever working out. The newer incarnation of He-Man is one. That show stayed true to the source material, yet updated the characters, writing, and animation to make a fantastic show. You could tell it was a labor of love. How often can you say that about big budget Hollywood remake movies? Even less.
Hell, even if Thundercats wasn't horrible to start with, it's still a crapshoot if the movie is gonna be good. And let me tell you, the odds highly favor the house in this dice game. Underdog, Inspector Gadget, Catwoman, Garfield. The list goes on and on. It takes a special touch to take an old franchise and make it good, regardless of whether or not the old version was good at all.
Look, I don't have nearly the critical eye that my co-host does. I can enjoy hokey things and let plot holes slip sometimes. But I will not abide some one saying that a movie version of a long (and deservedly) dead franchise will be awesome just because he or she enjoyed it as a kid. It doesn't work that way. Ever.
Also, Thundercats is way too close to furries for my comfort.
What say you?!