A little while ago, I read an article online about how there were plans to make a movie based on the toy Stretch Armstrong. The jist of the article was that Twilight star Taylor Lautner, who had previously been attached to the project, was now no longer going to be playing the elastic superhero. My first thought was that we had really dodged a bullet on that one. My second thought was, why the fuck do I care about who plays Stretch fucking Armstrong?
Do I have some sort of special attachment to this character or any reason whatsoever to invest emotionally in this production? Do I have cause to hold as sacred the vast and complicated mythology and canon of the storyline from the commercials for this fucking toy? Did I even have this toy growing up? My weird and arbitrary overreaction aside, this thought process eventually led me to start thinking about what other toys I'd like to see made into movies. Then I couldn't think of anything, so I went on Wikipedia and found some at random. Enjoy!
1: Monsters In My Pocket
Two armies of supernatural creatures, many based on classic movie monsters, do battle right under our noses, one side led by Frankenstein (the monster, not the scientist), the other by Dracula. At least I think that was the basic plot. If I remember correctly, there was a cartoon that went along with this, but I don't quite recall all the details. I'd scrap the original mythos and tie it in even more closely to the Universal series by expanding on their origin, making the monsters once normal sized, until they were shrunk down and locked away for decades by Dr. Pretorious in order to save the world from the collateral damage caused by their war. Now awakened in the present day in the home of a suburban family, they continue their feud. It would be like Small Soldiers, only smaller, and bloodier.
2: Sky Dancers
I never actually had these toys growing up, and never would have admitted to wanting them, what with them being so girly and all, but fuck it, now that I'm confident enough in my masculinity as an adult, I can honestly say that Sky Dancers are fucking awesome. My Little Pony style marketing campaign aside, these chicks fly via fucking magical helicopter blades welded to their arms! I don't know what the story is, but in my Sky Dancers movie, they're an elite squad of flying femme fatale assassins who sexily murder their victims with their giant helicopter blade arms, then fly away, also via their giant helicopter blade arms. Man or woman, I defy you not to have an erection at the prospect of this movie.
3: Gator Golf
Also a toy I didn't have, mostly because it combined the thing I find most boring in the world with the thing I find most terrifying (Alligators do nothing for me, while golf fills me with fear). My pitch, Happy Gilmore meets Lake Placid. Its the last game of an epic tournament in which some bullshit community center budget or mortgage payment plot device is at stake, but Oh No! The entire course has been infested with ferocious ball eating Alligators! For some reason, they can't stop playing or just move to another course as would be the rational thing to do, so it becomes the most dangerous game of their lives. The winner gets a nice jacket, and also the joy of not being eaten alive by gators.
4: Tamagotchi
This one would have to be weird and kind of a little meta. If you don't remember these things, Tamagotchis were the first real mainstream virtual pet that would eventually lead to the Digimon craze a few years later. You'd feed them and clean up their poop, and they would either grow up or die (mostly, die, because fuck we were kids and couldn't be responsible for a life). My idea would be that these devices exist in the real world, then come to life, building larger and larger bodies for themselves by assimilating the technology around them. You would soon have every kid on the block interacting with giant robotic animals made of living amalgams of household appliances, some with loving pets who protect them from danger, others being hunted by the bitter beasts that they abandoned. There isn't enough robot on child violence in movies for my tastes.
5: Rock Lords
I almost went with The Infacables for this last one, but I couldn't find enough information on them. I never had Rock Lords growing up, not only because they were before my time, but also because they are an incredibly stupid concept for a toy. I get vehicles or animals that transform into robots, as there is at least the chance for some variety in the characters, but these are rocks. I guess you can have different colored rocks, but that's about it. Still, in movie form, I think it could work. You suddenly go from the least marketable toy since the Pet Rock (ironically a strange merging of this idea and #4), and introduce a scenario in which everything around us can turn into a monster and kill us. Rocks are everywhere, even more ubiquitous than cars. The Earth itself is just one big rock, as is the Moon, which only leads me to an even more awesome concept of the Earth and the Moon turning into giant robots and fighting each other.
Okay, screw Rock Lords, I just want Earth Vs. Moon: The Movie to be a thing. Can we make that happen?
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| "I see you. It's on motherfucker." - The Earth |
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