The Ridiculous Remake-Reboot-Adaptation-Sequel betting Pool

It's a whole new year, and with it, sure to come are a whole series of new films based on old shit.  But what else are we going to do with all our loose

Colin Farrels? And so, I have decided to skip to the chase and call out the movies that will destroy our childhoods, as soon as they're being announced and

done and stuff. This are the movies I believe we'll be reading about this year. As such, it is necessary that we give each category of bad idea it's own

section. Here goes nothing.

Live Action-CG abomination based on cartoon.

After the perfectly putrid test footage for Hong Kong Phooey, I realized something: studios just don't care for funny animal universes inhabited by humans.

Hong Kong Phooey HAS to be a toilet water drinking dog, as has to Underdog. What's my bet? I've two.

Pinky and the Brain


Pinky and the Brain is going to be announced this year. However, by the time it's on screens it'll be more about a guy that has to learn a lesson from these megalomaniac mice. WB did everything it could to bury the franchise forever, but perhaps it's time to drag the proverbial corpse out of it's proverbial grave  and humiliate it some more. Taking the name and designs, yet utterly ignoring the show's original attitude and heart.

Also Secret Squirrel.

Secret Squirrel is one of those franchises that was never important enought to bring out but to the most all inclusive company wide events. Essentially

Inspector Gadget, but a squirrel and with a racially offensive sidekick, Secret squirrel is needed to come back by no one. So expect this one in 3D soon.

Perfectly fine stand alone film redone

Gritted up Children's story.

Well, we're all children on the inside? So gimme a story for kids, but make it really morbid for me and my graying beard.

The Christmas Toy

A fairly obscure movie that may or may not have inspired Toy story, the movie followed on the premise of sentient living toys with a catch: if humans saw them, they died. So obviously it was already gritty. That's why they'll remake it extra gritty, with the toys hatching  a plan to blind all the humans in the house with a laser.

Old dormant franchise given a sequel

Sometimes a decade just doesn't feel like a decade. When a film franchise spends  more than a decade out of theaters, the idea of directly continuing it is

almost always a bad one. But this is the year when they announce:

Lethal Weapon 5

Lethal Weapon both belongs to a genre that's not on vogue (buddy cop stories) and has a cast member who's not allowed into big movies anymore on account of being a terrible person. It's also on double digits since the last movie came out. This is the year when the sequel is announced. Or should I say prequel?

Lethal Weapon 0: The Early Years starring Donald Glover and Sam Witwer!

Readapted, this time less bad:

Yo, last time we tried to make a movie about this, it turns out we ruined everything. Let's only ruin most of it now.

Tomb Raider

While I think it's kind of cheating, since this is one of those thing's that gets mentioned every once in a while, this is the year when it goes somewhere.

And since Hunger Games "proved" that you can make a movie with a woman lead and it might sell(you know, if it doesn't suck and the marketing isn't bad and it's got a strong word of mouth for the source material. Like every other movie, stupid executives.) it's just as well that Tomb Raider might finally get out of Dev-Hell.

Wait, what the hell?

Ha! Your hubris will be your undoing! Just when you think I can't get any more dumb ideas, I'll announce:

Sailor Moon: The Movie

With maybe even an Asian or two in there! It IS a team, after all. And they'll need plenty of bad guys to fight.

The Arnold Schawrzennegger "dragging out an old man to pretend he's an action star again" award

I'm not too old for this kids! Watch me reactivate an old franchise and shame myself!

"Escape From" series.

Kurt Russel hasn't been seen in a while in anything big. So let's drag him, almost 30 years older than he was, put him in a tank top and an eye patch and a mullet, and pretend he doesn't  start gasping for air if he talks too loud. See where it gets ya.

Announced, yet unlikely to exist:

Oh, this movies totally for sure gonna come out soon. I was just talking to Roberto Zemeckis's and he's totally letting me do it.


Justice League

:D :) {:]{3| {:[ {;C...

Just kidding(except for the emoticons)

E.T. 2

Spieldberg will finally be ready to free himself from  2 decade's worth of writers block and finally get on with that sequel to E.T. he's always wanted to do. The answers to your questions are CG, In 3D and  May 15, 20NO.

What are your guesses? Let's come back her enext year and compare notes.

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Unlicensed Lawyer: Punisher(2004)

The Punisher has had more reboots than Batman. In the movies at least. Despite being decades younger than Batman, Marvel's gritty, lethal vigilante has been tried by studios more times than DC's gritty, less lethal vigilante. And oddly enough, it never has been as succesfull as to actually justify more. It's going on the fifth now, a T.V. series that has Frank Castle being a cop by day, and the Punisher by night.

Fans are never satisfied with these Punisher Movies. But studios just can't stop welcoming back Frank into our multimedia screens. This discrepancy is easilly explainable.

The Punisher is an 80s movie. You remember those. It's about the toughest motherfucker in the world, forced into taking justice into his own hands by that 80s Crime wave. Movies like Death Wish and Cobra sort of defined the genre. If you want to make Punisher right, you make an old Steven Seagal Movie and paint a skull insignia on his chest.

Thus, studios love the Punisher. A known franchise, with a built in base that only costs as much as your average squibs and explosions actioneer. No expensive customs or computer effects. No "getting the costume right". You don't even need a big action star name.You use the name "Punisher" to draw fans and the curious to your moderately budgeted action movie.



However, fans hate them, because, by and large, we aren't making that movie. The Punisher movies where certainly each something other than that core Punisher story where he hates crime and shoots people. I mean, yeah, he does that, but there's always a catch. The early 90s Dolph Lundgren movies completely ignored the title character's costume and had him ally with criminals. And I heard the latest one was an extremely weird and campy movie. But in my opinion, the 2004 movie starring Thomas Jane gets too much shit.

The movie changes Frank Catle's main setting from New York to Tampa, Florida, and the setting to his family's death from getting into a shootout unrelated to them in Central Park to getting a hit put on them on Puerto Rico(though I'm guessing that was also filmed in Tampa). Punisher's skull shirt is bought by his son on my Home Island, allegedly told it had some kind of mystical protective force. The guy who runs Hot Topic was just playing with you, kid.

Further on, the sound bite, sort to speak, is that a criminal is fake tortured by Punisher, and let go. The method, a pretend skin melting involving a blowtorch, an icicle pop, and a steak, is as unbelievable as it is silly, lead many to say:" hey, this isn't what Punisher would do! He would actually smelt the guy and then kill him!"

Now, I don't argue that this sillyness is not really what Punisher would do in most core Punisher stories. When Punisher gets silly, it usually involved Frankenstein, Eminem, or Archie. But the fact that it's not a page by page of a Marvel Knights book does not in fact make it a bad movie.

You see, way, I see it, whoever gets the writer or director job to Punisher usually goes: "Pfft! Why do we pay for a comic license for an 80s movie? I'm not making no 80s movie!". However, Punisher 2004 actually has a lot of that. It has a montage of Punisher getting himself ready and prepping his base.The Punisher's vehicle of choice is a big American Muscle car. Punisher actually fights "El Mariachi" and "Ivan Drago" in them!

The Punisher's method is less "Death Wish" and more " Count of Monte Cristo", as the Punisher, rather than try and get vengeance on a poorly cast John Travolta directly by shooting him in the head, let's the vices of the criminal family destroy him morally first. Sure, it's not very Punisherey, but he does push him into a skull shaped series of explosions at the end.



You see, you KNOW that the criminals aren't gonna kill Frank Castle. They aren't. The tension of the movie needed to be something other than whether The Punisher could take down the crime family, because indeed, that part of it seemed patently easy. But this movie examines the fact that Frank Castle is eternally grieving. That's a point most of this kinds of movies avoid. In most of these "avenge my family" movies, the guy walks off more badass and more complete after achieving their goal. Here, Castle puts a gun under his chin.

It's not an adventure, being the Punisher. He lost his family, and he can't fucking get over it. And he's decided he's not gonna get over it. He's gonna get even. But you're kiddin' yourself if you think he's not in intense agony.

So, yeah, it's not a perfect movie, and certainly not the blue print for a Punisher adaptation. And yeah, the villains are pretty bland and forgettable. And yes, he lets that one guy go. It's a silly action movie with some interesting characterization, peppered with homages. That makes it...what, the best Punisher movie so far?

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8 franchises that became fighting games (and quickly regretted it)

Big deal, Persona. So you're ditching your RPG roots for a little one on one 2d fighter Combat. Pfft. I'm tired of you lording over everyone how cool and new you are because of it.  You know what? You're not even the first.  This here franchises entered the cage with triumphant smiles, and left the genre with their tails between their legs, never knowing what happened.

Of note: I'm not including fan-made games in this list. I like M.U.G.E.N too, but no.

Dynasty Warriors

But where is my Dynasty fighitng game?

As far as "historical games", I've never understood the Dynasty Warriors series.  Crazy dance numbers and supersoldiers bursting through 1000s of troops aside, shouldn't one warlord just win the war and get it over with? How long WAS this unification war? Either way, the series carries on, even spinning off into Samurai and Weird Anime Pirate spinoffs.

What you may not know, is that really early on the series, they tried branching off into fighting with...Dynasty Warriors, the first in the long list of DW games. Because the only thing more realistic than one guy killing  hordes to  decide which family will rule the crown is solving it  in round based one on one deathmatches with spears and  swords.  However, after just one entry, Koei went back to slashemup action with the series.

Now, I'm not saying the franchise doesn't have enough characters for a fighting game. They're on, what, the 16th game? But even with that, the Dynasty crew seems a bit bare compared to what I'm guessing is the closest peer on that age: Soul Edge. Sure, Koei spiced up some guy from Chinese history. He's  still not as cool as mostly made up characters like Mitsurugi or Sophitia.

Final Fight

Serve it cold. To the dogs.

Final Fight was supposed to be a sequel to Street Fighter, but things turned out differently and  the game became a beatemup. However, the series has become inexorably linked to Capcom's  main fighting franchise through numerous cameos and even a cancelled crossover game.

That said, Final Fight had it's own attempt at the genre with  Final Fight Revenge, a game that brought  most of the crew back for  sort of a fighting game, only you could use weapon pickups. It would probably be considered the worst in the series, if Streetwise didn't have it's back.

Star Wars

I like how the name of the obscure martial arts is subdued. Star Wars: Masters is a good name, anyway.

Before Episode 1, there weren't  a gazillion known Jedi in Star Wars movies. There was Luke and Darth Vader. Even the Emperor wasn't a Jedi yet. Which is why, when Star Wars: Masters of Terras Kasi rolled around, it just did what any one of us would have done: put most of the main characters in the franchise in there to fight  you know, Han Solo, Princess Leia, one of those pig guys...

Awkwardness of the concept aside, it's the execution that has earned this game it's infamy. What's sadder is that apparently Capcom had  been commissioned to make  a Star Wars  fighting game, but when the license was taken away, Capcom went on to make Star Gladiator, a game that you don't have to squint too hard to see the Star Wars influence. Also, people don't  vomit expletives furiously when they remember it.

Sonic the Hedgehog

The gloves are off. Except they're not.

Sonic has always, be it on purpose or accidentally, followed on whatever the Mario franchise is doing, but usually with less success. Mario had a successful racing series, Sonic had 3 serieses. Mario had Tennis, Sonic got on that a couple years later.  Mario had a party series, and Sonic had a ... a thing. It's the nature of a company mascot to be in this kinds of games.

On the other hand, on  one thing Sonic had the jump on over  the mustachioed menace is having a fighting game. It wasn't even a party fighter, you fucking purists. It was straight one on one fighting title called Sonic The Fighters.

However, since Virtua Fighter had just met great success, Sega decided a 3D game that benefited from the finest polygons the mid 90s could offer was in order. By my estimation it should have been some kind of fast paced 2D fighter. But I guess that's why I  am not a big shot Sega executive.

The results are unseemly, as Sonic's familiar crew(who back then could fit in a living room) and some fresh new faces(now buried forever) sidestepped, punched and bored each other.

That said, because Sonic gets to try everything twice, there was a 2d party style fighter for the Game Boy Advance called Sonic Battle.  Kind of not the right console for a party fighter, eh?

Jurassic Park

Try a sick combo!

Look,  I'm a fan of dinosaurs fighting. When I rented Turok, I spent most of it trying to get dinosaurs to fight each other. I watch Jurassic Fight Club more than  regular Fight Club. I popped some quarters in that shitty Primal Rage game. But there's no way I can pretend that a  Jurassic Park fighting game makes sense. Just...no.

However, rather than settling the feud between Dennis Nedry and  Samuel L Jackson via dragon  punching, Jurassic Park: Warpath follows several dinosaurs with a grudge to bear in a fight...to the deth!  Fans of actual dinosaurs need not apply, as even the Raptors are roided up to huge size so their fights with the Rexes make more sense. Even plant eaters become killing machines!

However, since this IS using the Jurassic Park license, you  should know that even thought dinosaur accuracy is gone fishing , the game has several nice depictions(PS1 standard) of Jurassic Park places, including Islas Nublar and Sorna, and even San Diego! If you're wondering how this is canon to the movies, you should go out and get some fresh air.

Lobo

Lobo is the Deadpool of the 90s(I know: wait until I make my point!): An attempt at satirizing dynamics of the  comics market that got out of control in a very good way for the company that made him. Also, he was an insane gun for hire who got into crazy adventures and got under everyone's skin, just like Deadpool.

However, one must wonder what element of the murderous, gun toting, space Hawg riding, cigar chomping crazy exploits of a space bounty hunter lent themselves to a fighting game. But Ubisoft certainly must have felt they had the answers, as they developed the game for the SNES near the end of it's run.

How was it? It wasn't. Then game was cancelled, even though it was basically done. The system works!

Castlevania

Oh, my go! This series is so fat...

Konami, whose biggest success in the genre is a non-series of multi-console licensed titles about the Ninja Turtles, must have been having some kind of mid-life crisis when they decided to take Vampire whipping simulator  Castlevania through that crossover bridge that leads to the arena, where I'd like to imagine they met with Soul Calibur and Guilty gear going the other way, but headed for the same place: failure.

Castlevania's Fighting game has been called many things, but good isn't one of them. Boasting undead demons, breast obsessed little girls, succubi and those lovable vampire slayer Belmonts, the Wii fighter is looked back at with disgust and regret by fans of the series. Everyone else just didn't look.

Batman Forever:

Harveeey!

No, Batman Forever wasn't really a Fighting game. It was just a shitty Beat Em Up that tried to apply the old Mortal Kombat controls to an adventure game.

That said, the training mode had Batman/Robin face up against holographic goons in a mat in the Batcave. Or you could actually use most of the bad guys from the game as holograms beating each other up as well, in what I'm guessing is some sort of Batman masturbation aid. You could even play 2 player vs! I think that covers most of the requirements, right?

In my mind, what happened was, they planned to make a fighting game from the get go, until someone  told them making a fighting game based on the Batman Forever license was a terrible idea. Unwilling to scrap all that awesome mocap work, and with a deadline to meet, they quickly built a retarded, badly controlled adventure beatemup around what they had. See? The system fails!

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Movie news: Danger Girl,Wonder Woman, CG Yoda

Been a busy week, and I wanted to touch on some of the news that have been going around.

Latino Review, the site I go to for movie news now that Cinematical got offed, is reporting that a movie based on Chromium Era adventure comics Danger Girl is already looking to nab Sofia Vergara, Milla Jovovich, and Kate Beckinsale.

Even though it sounds unlikely, I do have to disagree. First off, Danger Girl is about breasts going on adventures.I mean, it's not like this is gonna be a deep study on the human condition or anything. If you ask for a ticket to Danger Girl, you are asking for a ticket to breasts.We're not dealing with  thought provoking documentaries about the Black War, here.

Not The Cove, here.

Why would anyone would associate breasts and Milla Jovovich? Secondly, both Milla Jovovich and Kate Beckinsale seem a bit...well, old to pull of this team. I mean, look at the images of the girls. Now look at Images of Kate and Milla. See? They should have brought some Michelle Rodriguez.

Sofia Vergara, however, does have the range to play boobs.

But really, they should have gotten Denise Richards to play all 3 girls. All the girls look just like she did when she was young, anyway.

The new 6 movie Star Wars box set is not going to be without itty bitty bitchy changes, apparently, as the Puppet Yoda from the Phantom Menace is set to be replaced with the CG version the other prequels had. Watch for yourself in this memorable scene and compare to the old one.

Now, maybe it's me, but I feel the puppet moved with more emotion and concern than the CG one, and it's not some "CG ruined everything" crap. It's the difference 'tween this

and
this.

Animation is an artform, and this was just badly animated. You'd think in one of the better, iconic scenes of the prequels they'd put more of an effort. It's not just putting it on the computer and setting the bump maps at max, damn you!

Director of movie I-have,-but-haven't-got-to-watching Valhalla Rising  Nicholas Winding Refn says if his upcoming remake of old, weird movie Logan's Run is a success, he's been promised to be let to make his Teta positive Wonder Woman movie. I am highly conflicted between how much I want it to be true and how little I think it is possible. Still, just a crappy remake and then we get our Wonder Woman. How's it going with those remakes, boys? Can we get the Starred panties now?

Hollywood is a funny place. They can find a concept and remove the charm out of it like no other. Eddie Murphy(Norbit, Pluto Nash, The Haunted Mansion, and the good movies they successful buried as well) is set to voice the titular character of Hong Kong Phooey in the new Live Action, CG hybrid. Invariably this will stupidly be about a dog who somehow acquires powers and has to prance around New York.

And invariably feature dated references.

What bothers me is, I know Hollywood has had it for putting CG animals/creatures in New York ever since Stuart Little. But why take something featuring anthropomorphic animals and ruin the charm by making them "real" animals. In a cartoon world, Top Cat is a cat that is also pretty much a person. We don't need that, but with the cat being an actual (crappy CG)cat.  We don't need actual CG gorilla Maguilla Gorilla, we don't need actual CG squirrel Inspector Squirrel.  If you HAVE to get your CG creature on New York bug on, at least pick franchises that lend  themselves to that.

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The day the prayers ended

Come on! What about THIS KING?

It happened last week. It was an otherwise completely normal morning, except for one exceptional detail: All religion ceased to exist in every part of the planet.

And it was as beautiful as you'd imagine: The birds where singing(except for those birds that whern't.) the sun was shining(except those places on the other side of the planet) and life carried on(except where it wasn't able to).

No longer did Crescent Moons, Crosses, or Pentagons represent any belief at all. No one said "Oh my God" anymore, as no one knew what that meant, but they yelled "Oh my Gosh"! which they didn't really know what meant either.

 And the preachers, the pastors, the orishas...they where gone! No one was going to mislead people into any religious ideology.

It was Sunday, I think. Feeling this brave new world, I turned on the news. It seems the religious conflict between Muslims and Jews in Palestine was over. It apparently was now a straightforward "We want all the good land, you take the shit land" conflict. No longer driven by any sense that the divine was leading them to claim land for themselves, they banked on years of respective recrimination and ethno-social differences to continue their endless struggle for the most resources. But at least is wasn't a religious battle anymore.

I put on the channel where my favorite televangelist used to be on, only to find Jenny McCarthy in a big podium, yelling about how vaccines caused every disease under the sun. The crowd watched intently as McCarthy yelled and condemned and welcomed and scorned. She was clearly a very charismatic woman, despite having the IQ and the medical knowledge of  a Playboy Model. Good to see her using it on things that aren't Religious. She clearly had a following.

She Blinded me with (pseudo)science!

When I changed it, I beheld a well dressed man who was telling a crowd that America had destroyed it's own economy in a devastating attack on itself to start war on several middle eastern countries. He had a pretty big following, too. Which is pretty amazing, for a guy whose theories are that things that aren't supposed to happen happening means the U.S. government is involved somehow.

But oh, the sciences! Without religion around anymore, nobody was able to stop wondrous scientific achievements. I mean, aside from petty bickering between scientists. And lack of funding. And competition. And...you know, the stuff that stops science today. That isn't religion.

And people loved, yet they also still hated. And people cried, yet where also known to laugh. And people where people, and corporations where people, too. Aren't human rights wonderful with religion out of the picture?

And I realized this new world was much different than mine. The names where different.  The Statue of Liberty was no longer based on "Libertas". And everyone acknowledged how awesome the Ancient Greeks where for being gay, and not just for subjugating most of the known world to a xenophobic regime in which only Greek Men had rights. I mean, gayness makes imperialism and slavery ok.

Aww, I can't stay mad at you for subjugating us, you saucy Greek Queen, you!

I get the appeal of a world like this, where changing one detail makes everything better, regardless of where everything came from. I used to have that, but of religion. I guess that's over now. I guess I can want anything to make the world better. Marijuana? Karate? Breast Augmentations? Dinosaucers? Hey, and even if claiming the world will be better if everyone watches Dinosaucers is pretty much ridiculously optimistic at best an outright fabrication at worst, at least I'll get more people to watch Dinosaucers with me. More people doing what I do and believing what I believe is good. For me.

It was a bold new world, so I wondered what I should do now for a while. Then I figured it out.

I'll do what I planned to do from yesterday.

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