Children of my generation should either be feeling very nostalgic or very pissed. In the past few years, we have had cinematic resurrections of once popular entities such as Transformers and G.I. Joe, both to rather lukewarm (or downright angry) reception. It was reported a couple of years ago that toymaker Hasbro had partnered with Universal Studios to create up to four movies based on existing toys. Now, as a sign of the coming apocalypse, Taylor Lautner (aka one half of the Team Edward/Team Jacob battle) has signed on to portray Stretch Armstrong. Yes, you read that right. I’ll let it sink in.
Now, in fairness, Hasbro and Universal look to be giving these horrible abominations of film a fighting chance with some decent talent behind the camera. Ridley Scott is in the process of developing a film based on Monopoly (which I would assume will be six hours long and end with everyone just walking away in anger) while Peter Berg is set to go sailing on a Battleship all while Stretch’s adventures are being produced by Brian Grazer. Frankly, that’s a lot of high-powered muscle on the stupidest concept of a movie. Admittedly, during production people dismissed Pirates of the Caribbean which turned out to be a fairly successful franchise but I would argue that was the exception to the rule. While Transformers made a billion dollars or so between two movies and turned out better than I had personally expected, it was still just a series of action set-pieces and a paper-thin plot to get to robot destruction.
It was bad enough when Hollywood was focused on milking every single bit of originality out of filmmaking with previous movies, but to cross into the sacred territory of the building blocks of my childhood is unforgivable. What will come next? The Play-Doh Chronicles? NERF Wars? Lincoln Logs vs. Tinkertoys: Requiem? At least when toys were legitimately featured in films, there was a damn good reason as the movie was called Toy Story!
So, this is a simple message is to film producers in Southern California: Since you apparently refuse to create any real ideas or enlist the vast resources of people who can, please stick to bastardizing existing properties. Eventually, the diminishing returns at the box office might force you to reconsider at some point and go back to the drawing board. But, I do not want to see a Hungry Hungry Hippos or Candyland movie. That’s just too disgraceful.
