I’ve had problems with the Homeward Bound movies since I saw them as kids. The first one is an absolutely beautiful movie that still can make me weep as a nearly forty year old man. The scene where Shadow falls in the hole and then gives up. Then they fake you out that he didn’t get out of the hole and died down there. This movie was hardwired to wound me. Oh and even before this, they send a cat down a waterfall! So, hey even if you’re more of a cat person, they’re going to harm you too.
Chance, Shadow and Sassy and the sound of me sobbing
Homeward Bound 2: Lost in San Francisco introduces three of cinema’s greatest monsters. If you’ve never seen this movie that’s over thirty years old at this point, the pets from the first movie are lost again but now instead of the wilderness, they’re in San Francisco. They’re befriended by a group of dogs led by Riley.
Who’s a good boy?
Riley has a deep distrust of humans because he was given as a Christmas gift to a little boy. But for some reason the little boy was born with evil in his heart and ignores the beautiful puppy before him.
Look at his little bow!
The parents have already made the dumb mistake of giving the boy an animal as a gift without discussing it with him first. But they further show why they raised a monster because they’re monsters themselves! Instead of taking the dog back to where they got him and admitting they’re fucking idiots, they make him a customized box to dump him in the gutter on the coldest and rainiest night of the year according to the narration.
Go fuck yourselves.
I could have posted a pic of Riley in the box with his bow still on but hey, you don’t need to cry today. I had to carry that burden. These people would cut funding for Mr. Freeze’s wife if they got the chance. They make supervillains. If Riley went White God on the city of San Francisco, I wouldn’t like it for the innocent citizens of that beautiful city but I would get it.
A slew of trailers have been released to showcase the exceptional dumb sequel ideas that are coming through. And I’m here for it. Now when I say that they’re dumb ideas, that isn’t to call them out. I love something that is dumb fun. So, let’s go through them.
M3GAN 2.0
This is probably the one I’m most excited for. I thought that the first one was so much fun and I really enjoyed the PG-13 version. It didn’t need to be R. The concept we’re dealing with on this one is that after M3gan getting killed by Gemma in the first movie, M3gan is on a kind of parole. They find out that someone made a new robot off of Gemma’s design and it’s coming to kill Cady and Gemma. M3gan demands a new, taller body so that she can bring the noise to this robot and protect Cady.
It looks like they switched it up in the same way they did between Terminator and T2: Judgement Day. Going from straight up horror to action/horror. You have shots of M3gan in a goddamn wingsuit. It’s looks so fun.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2
This looks to be more of the same from the first one. Josh Hutcherson fighting Freddy Fazbear and the rest of the robots. Apparently they can still sneak around throughout the world despite being giant robots. Once again trying to save a small girl from robots. Starting to sense a theme. This is the one I’m least excited for but I’ll probably see it for the podcast.
Jurassic World Rebirth
This is the Jurassic Park movie I’ve been waiting for since the Lost World. A bunch of people have to go to the original islands to get DNA from three different eggs. That’s a straight up video game plotline. If this was a video game though Scarlett would be climbing up towers to open up parts of the map. I love dinosaurs. I love the fact that they went there with hybrid dinosaurs and then they’re like you thought that that indomitus rex was bad, get ready for an even scarier looking dinosaur. The D Rex! I can’t wait for them to get through the other 23 letters.
You might have thought that I would have ended that sentence with the words as they run it into the ground.
NOPE!
They can make Jurassic Park movies until the heat death of the universe. I love these movies so much. I love dinosaurs. I love dinosaurs wrecking shit. There’s not a bad dinosaur at all.
Ankylosaur
Hell yeah!
T-Rex!
Amazing!
Oh, they were actually covered in feathers?
They use them little wings to flap around their prey so that they can puncture them with their foot claws and then bite them. Badass as fuck.
Okay, so I know that everyone is at their best during the Lord of the Rings movies. The visual effects artists, writers, directors, actors, extras, costume and prop designers, everyone. Especially that person that made the one orc that looked like Harvey Weinstein that disgusting pervert.
It’s like I’m seeing double!
But my favorite performance in the first movie is Sean Bean as Boromir. He slays through the whole movie. He sells you on his desperation and though there isn’t a huge amount of dialogue for all the characters, he shows you his entire backstory in what few lines he has.
He’s a man, tired of so many things. He has to fight against Mordor constantly and he gets no help and pushed aside even here among his friends. Suddenly, he sees a treasure that he has heard tales about that could make his life so much easier. Anyone would take it. The fact that he made it as far as he did was a thing of wonder.
Even beyond that, there’s just so much to like. He spars with Merry and Pippin and is concerned when he might have hurt them, he puts a comforting hand on Gimli’s shoulder when Gimli finds his relative dead and has to inform Gandalf that continuing over the mountain will kill the hobbits. When Gandalf is gone, he comforts Frodo and asks that they have a moment to grieve. He treats them a bit like children because maybe that’s how he sees them. It makes you wish he had some of his own…
It’s not just in these moments of kindness that Sean Bean shines. There’s a moment when they’re defending the Mines of Moria where he goes to look out the doors when they hear the orcs approaching. He reports back to the others that they have a cave troll. But he does it in a tone that’s almost like “They have a cave troll, fits perfectly in my week, I tell ya.”
When he gives into the ring’s corruption, it’s not even evil or megalomaniacal. He’s desperate. He immediately regrets it and does his best to save Merry and Pippin. Several arrows thud into him and he dies with his king, Aragorn.
It’s easy to see how this got him Ned Stark in Game of Thrones. They’re similar roles and characters though I think that Boromir is a bit better person.
This is how you write a sympathetic character. This is how you write a betrayal that hurts. You weep for Boromir. You wish he could see home again. To lie among his people. But he won’t. One final heartbreak for a hero.
For some reason, I got on an Adam Sandler kick this weekend and it got me thinking about his characters in the golden age of his movies. Now, I want to say his nineties comedies are classics in and of themselves. But how are their characters? Where does Billy Madison stand on the moral hierarchy? Well, no one asked and I’m going to figure that out.
Billy Madison
Born rich, privileged and listless. Immediately that are huge points against him. Batman was born rich and privileged and he’s saved the world multiple times. Even if he didn’t want to put on a costume and fight injustice, he could have done something. Least of all get an education. Plus, he was generally an asshole before he got some learning in him.
So, I’m going to say that he’s a scumbag.
Happy Gilmore
Okay, Happy is an interesting case. Of the Adam Sandlers on this list, he’s probably the most morally grey. He was a working man trying to chase a dream. He found out that he had an affinity for a different sport that he didn’t like and gave that up to help his grandmother. That sacrifice means a lot.
Still, he had an anger problem. Anger can be good, it can drive you forward to make changes in your life and the world for the better. It can also be a destructive force that harms people. Happy when he’s Angry Gilmore often lashes out at people such as Bob Barker and the clown at the mini golf course.
“He lead to Chubs’ death!” I hear you cry. That was an accident. Pure and simple. Nobody said that Happy was a perfect guy. I certainly didn’t.
While his anger can be destructive, I fully advocate for him throwing Ben Stiller out of that window. Anyone who abuses the elderly deserves far worst than that.
Mr. Deeds
He really just came up with characters and then built a whole movie around them in the 90s, didn’t he?
Mr. Deeds is a pure soul. Humble working man that was elevated to the height of luxury and didn’t let it change him. Oh, he has servants now? You bet your ass he’s going to be nice and joke around with them.
Are some of his morals a little outdated? Sure, I think he made a bigger deal about cursing in front of ladies than might need to be and it led to a sequence where we’re making fun of child abuse but his heart was in the right place.
But then he also helped protect Winona Ryder from a potential mugger. He gave up that money just as easily. He’s a kind and generous person. Good for him.
Big Daddy
Sonny Koufax straight up sucks. I mean, it could be said that he took in a child that no one cared about.
A brief tangent about how fucked the life of the child is in this movie. His dying mother sends him to go find his father that he doesn’t. Someone puts this child on a train or plane to NYC. Maybe there was someone that was supposed to lead him the rest of the way to his father. I don’t know because the teenager that drops him off at the apartment is just like “I don’t know someone paid me to drop him here.” Then without asking for any identification or anything, Sonny claims the child as his own. Way to go fictional child services.
(I know that actual child service workers work very hard to do their best for their charges. I’m calling out the worker in this movie. God bless those who do that work.)
Anyway, Sonny. Sonny is irresponsible, terrible at his job and raises the child at first with the care someone would a feral dog. The child is violent, disgusting and probably has lice at a certain point in the film.
But you might think that that’s the worst thing he’s done. Oh, no, no. The worst thing is that he made the child believe that he was his father. Not biological but still a father figure. When Jon Stewart, suddenly reappears, the boy has to realize that he has to go to a man that didn’t want him or believed that he was his father in the first place.
I can forgive the shitty things that Billy Madison did and most of the things that Sonny did in his personal life. However, when you bring a child into the equation, the only thing that should be done are things to ensure the care and happiness of said child.
The thing with comic book characters is that their interpretation switches from author to author. What one person thinks can cause others define them in a certain way down the line. They bring their ideals and concepts to them.
So, what tone do I think is best for the Batman? Well, for me it’s a man that’s deeply hurt and wanting to do his best to help people. He can get angry but he’s not angry all the time. He’s done work on himself to deal with things throughout the years. He can crack jokes and smile.
The mask is off and the truth is that I think that the best tone for Batman is the one from the DCAU. From the picture above, this is his reaction to the Joker hanging from a catwalk over an inferno. The Joker is screaming for help and Bats is just casually looking down at him. Bemused above all things.
When he gets angry though, it’s chilling to see and that’s of course part of the wonder of the late and great Kevin Conroy. There’s one episode where Batman encounters this cruel man that uses children as his slaves to steal for him. When he eventually captures the man, Batman says that he took an oath to never become judge, jury and executioner but he sorely wishes that he was.
How does he handle his villains? He constantly seeks their rehabilitation and to help them. There’s an episode where the Ventriloquist gets released and tries to go straight. Batman spends a great number of nights hanging outside of his apartment to make sure that he doesn’t get dragged back into the underworld. As Bruce Wayne, he gives him a job working as a mail clerk in Wayne Enterprises.
It’s been said that if you can’t write a scene with Batman comforting a child, then you’re just writing the Punisher in a cape. And that brings us to the greatest scene with this Batman.
A dying psychic child has caused damage to a city and when she goes it becomes permanent and will essentially become a nuke affecting a huge swath of the city. Amanda Waller, who I’ll eventually give an entire post to, has a device that will kill her. Batman states that he’ll be the one to use it on her.
Ace has had encounters with him before and lets him into her hiding place. He finds her swinging on a swing set. She tells him that she read his mind and knows two things: that she will soon die and that he isn’t going to use the device on her.
She asks him to sit with her and he sits down on the swing with her and offers her his hand. She dies peacefully and the damage is reversed.
Perfection.
You have to keep the main things intact with Batman, the sorrow at the loss of his parents. The anger at the world for it but he should never be a monster. He should always be someone who is trying his best in an unstoppable war on crime.
This might be a controversial topic as video game movies are largely loathed and have only recently gotten good. Looking at you, Sonic the Hedgehog trilogy, thanks for holding up the side. I don’t think those movies were a fluke but we saw how bad it could have been with the ugly sonic from the first trailers.
AHHHHH!
The reason I say it’s a tossup is because there is so much history behind Sonic and the expectations are going to be so high. But there’s the kicker. There are a lot of different video games that you could turn into movies with their much less well known plotlines and hell they aren’t even known that well in the video game world. Let’s look at the five that I think would really work.
Blast Corps
Speed was an enormous hit. A bus that can’t slow down and if it does, it’s not going to just kill the people on it but people around them. That’s a hell of a pitch and idea.
What if you changed it that it’s a nuclear missile truck that can kill thousands, millions of people if it crashes into something in the wrong place. Enter the Blast Corps, a group of pilots and drivers that have access to a bunch of vehicles such as robots, giant dump trucks, bulldozers and cars. They need to destroy everything in the truck’s path to make sure that it doesn’t detonate.
That concept also rules. It’s high octane, ready to go for a blockbuster disaster movie. Roland Emmerich would salivate over the idea of making this movie. Also, you could make so many toys if you make it PG. Kids would love a big playset with collapsible buildings.
The tone could be kind of silly(because it’s a silly concept) and you could just have so much fun with it. You could make some of the most wild and out there characters. Just let the actors go broad and get nuts.
You could start off with them using those construction vehicles and “they’re like, we’re not going to be able to break through in time” and all of a sudden the mech comes busting through is like. “Kept you waiting, hunh?”
Get on this one, Hollywood.
Also before I move on, in the past, I’ve heard so many people give Roland Emmerich flack for making big dumb popcorn movies. Okay, the man has a skill for making good looking popcorn movies.
Look at that, that could be a painting. The main has a niche and has mastered it.
Wild Guns
A forgotten SNES game that deserves some love because it’s so much fun. It’s a western where Annie has hired Clint to help her get revenge for her father’s murder. The two of them head out and start gunning down anything in their path.
“Frank, you charismatically handsome devil, that’s been done to death!”
It has. BUT HAS IT BEEN DONE WITH GIANT ROBOTS?
Fuck yeah
There are dinosaur skeletons. There are high tech trains. There’s a giant robot crab. It is insane. Once more you can do so much with this.
You could write such good banter between Annie, who Clint thinks is this like simple rich southern belle until she grabs her guns and proves herself to him. Meanwhile, he becomes much more understanding.
Just imagine the action scenes. The two of them running around a town as robots open fire on them. The fire dying down as they gun down the robots. And with robots, you can make it PG as well, once again bringing in the kids. That’s why the foot soldiers in Ninja Turtles should always be robots cos you can go nuts on them without worry.
Also in the remake they added two more characters.
Doris that cool lady in green and Bullet that little gunslinging dog on a Green Goblin glider. This is made to be a hit.
Zombies Ate My Neighbors
Another game with a paper thin plot and a great title. Two teens, Julia and Zeke, find themselves protecting their idiot neighbors from an onslaught of a variety of monsters. They’re oblivious and keep cheerleading and barbecuing in the midst of this apocalypse.
There are zombies, you nerds! Leave the burgers
They use weapons like squirt guns, soda cans, weed whackers and bazookas to fight off zombies, blobs, evil plant monsters, killer dolls, mummies, vampires and sea monsters. You can have so much fun with all of that.
In the game you have to collect your neighbors before you can move on. Boom, a scientist invented a teleporter and it allows them to tap their neighbors and send them off. It would have a Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle vibe.
If you kept it moving with the run and gun vibe from the game it would kill as an action comedy. Sean of the Dead proved that you can do it already.
It Takes Two
What’s this? A modern game!? This would be great to be a more adult oriented video game movie. In it, two parents who are on the verge of divorce are magically turned into their daughter’s dolls. They are trying their best to get her to notice them so that they can get turned back into humans. But eventually another character named Hakim forces them to overcome obstacles to fix things between them and show how they’ve been neglecting their daughter.
This would be a fun family film that turns into a tearjerker towards the end. It would be like Up or Inside Out. Heartbreaking and wonderful. It could lead to so many great discussions.
I saw Inside Out with some parents and they openly wept. It was the discovery that they realized that they couldn’t make their children happy all the time. This builds on that with allowing them to check in with one another to make sure that they’re doing the best for each other and their kids.
Plus, you can add so much humor to it. A nice light in the darkness.
Bubble Bobble
Bubble Bobble is about two dragons that shoot bubbles that encase robots and other monsters before turning them into food. They are ready and waiting to become mascots and big as the minions. Look at how cute he is.
Just give them cute personalities and you are ready to go. Make a land of the dragons that they have to protect and them using their bubbles to fight back.
You would need to do a little more worldbuilding on this one though. The levels for Bubble Bobble weren’t exactly detailed.
Think of it as a blank canvas
Hell, you could do a crossover movie with the Yoshis! That would be super cute.
Summary
So those are my choices for the next video game movies. There are so many games out there that I might have to do this again and still never reach the bottom of the barrel. But who cares. This was fun.
Something that has always bothered me about being a podcaster is when we cover a bad movie that doesn’t have the advantages of its big budget contemporaries. It makes me feel like I’m punching down, which doesn’t make for good comedy. Comedians should always punch up at those in power. Even someone making a piece of trash is still putting themselves out there. And if it’s good, I’ll give the piece its roses.
But then there are the works that are just so bad and are the little engine that could that decided to just slam through a town at full speed. Leaving a wake of destruction in their path.
I mainly write about the Lifetime movies that we cover. They’re clearly cheaply made and seemingly mass produced so that all of them are roughly the same except for the part where the crazed killer character decides to go nuts for some reason or another. They have their own charm to them but there’s a part of me that always wishes they were a bit better.
The problem is that I know they could be. There’s always a lesser light in the world to show that it could be done for even cheaper. That’s not an excuse for these people to pay their people less, it’s for them to try harder.
Paranormal Activity is a horror movie that was made for 15,000 dollars and grossed about 194 million in 2007. Adjusted for inflation that’s 294 million today. It was made with a few cameras on tripods, about five unknown actors and just was well made from the jump.
Godzilla Minus One was made for ten million dollars. That is a drop in the bucket for studios like Marvel and Warner Bros and yet it’s stunning and well made. Look at the below image. You can tell they cared and wanted to make the best movie that they could.
It’s because these movies understood something. That poverty isn’t the death of creativity but where it’s born. There is a long tradition of this throughout the world of media. Monty Python wanted to make a movie making fun of the middle ages and Arthurian legends but couldn’t afford horses. What would be the funniest way to handle this? Have every knight have a squire that bonks two coconuts together. Have characters comment on it to make one of the funniest exchanges in comedy history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqtS9xyl0f4&ab_channel=3qui1i6riM
Mystery Science Theater 3000(MST3K), had to constantly make a nearly two hour show on a minuscule budget. Their puppets and set were clearly made of found objects. The puppets could barely move on their own. How did they make up for all of this? With excellent writing that was clearly positioned in their own Midwest slice of life.
And that’s what it all comes down to. The money in the end doesn’t matter. Passion can make up for it. If you believe in your piece of media and you want it to be the best it can be, it will be. That’s what I’m attacking. The fact that the filmmakers don’t care. I want to love their movie but the fact that they turned in something that’s only worth a C+ at best is going to stop me from doing so and I’m not going to stop myself from calling it out.
Franklin Cota, an author and podcaster 