Thursday, April 12, 2018

Geekly Oddcast: The Prequels Nobody Wanted

I'm not a regular participant in The Geekly Oddcast the way I am with Myopia: Defend Your Childhood, but I do show up from time to time. The last episode I appeared in was another game like turning children's stories into horror movies, making animated children's films into live-action movies (I'm holding out for Bart the Bear in costume as Little John), and casting a 1970s version of The Avengers. For this, one, the focus was on prequels nobody wanted. The idea was that we'd agree on one film and then "Rogue One" it, plotting out a full story and actually try to make it good.

The film we ultimately chose was Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Time travel gets put to all sorts of interesting uses in that one, plus I annoy everybody by bringing up Denver the Last Dinosaur. Here's the full episode if you want to hear more, including some thoughts about a prequel to Friday the 13th featuring Pamela Voorhees in the vein of Cher in the film Mask (if Cher's son had died due to camp-counselor negligence and Cher went violently insane). However, it was my understanding we were to come with a few ideas already. Here're the two I provided for the podcast itself:

Highlander-A prequel focused on the Kurgan or Ramirez would have been pretty cool without much effort, but making one about young Connor would be tricky. Maybe a back-story of the feud between the Macleods and the Frasers, with the Kurgan making a dramatic entrance by killing a bunch of people in the vein of Vader's appearance in Rogue One? You could have the love story between Connor and Kate (you know, the one who later demanded he be burned at the stake) and perhaps go with the fan theory that Dugal "comforted" Kate after Connor's death and their insistence Connor was demon-possessed or a witch was driven by guilt.

Since the ultimate goal is potentially making this into a good film, it could be some kind of semi-Braveheart, possibly with a teen love triangle thrown in for good measure, and an occasional appearance by the Kurgan to remind us that this is actually a Highlander film.

The Guyver-The protagonist could be Tetsu Segawa, the scientist father of love interest Mitzi Segawa from the original film. We see how he got involves with the Chronos Corporation, how he became a Zoanoid, and how he ultimately attempted to steal a Guyver unit and defect to the CIA. You could get an early appearance by the Zoanoid gangbangers of the first film and even the dragon-like monstrous form of evil CEO Fulton Balcus much like how Rogue One gives us some of the pre-Alderaan outings of the Death Star. It could give Mark Hamill a chance to reprise his role as the CIA agent Max, although he's aged so much since the movie was made that this really wouldn't be a good idea unless they CGI de-aged him a la Tony Stark in Captain America Civil War or Rachael in Blade Runner 2049 or went full-blown Tarkin or Leia like in Rogue One.

(Granted, you could do an all-new cast, but including Mark Hamill might be the only way to get this off the ground.)

I never really got the chance to contribute any more ideas, but other notions I had included expanding the 1970s opening of Master of Disguise into a full movie, making a prequel to That's My Boy that's basically a Lifetime Original Movie about creepy teachers with the genders swapped, making a prequel to Stargate about how Kurt Russell's character's son killed himself with his dad's gun (basically an "issues movie" about accidental shootings), and making a prequel to Gigli (probably one of the worst movies ever made) following Ben Affleck or Jennifer Lopez's characters before the kidnapping that dominates the film's plot.

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