Voltron Headed For The Big Screen 283
An anonymous reader writes "Following the success of the Transformers movie, Hollywood is preparing to make another live-action film featuring giant robots from the 1980s: 'Voltron: Defender of the Universe'. The script, by Justin Marks, is described as '...a post-apocalyptic tale set in New York City and Mexico. Five ragtag survivors of an alien attack band together and end up piloting the five lion-shaped robots that combine and form the massive sword-wielding Voltron that helps battle Earth's invaders.' Let's go, Voltron force!"
Let there be lions. (Score:1, Interesting)
Wonder how he's going to address the creation of the lions?
just stop (Score:4, Interesting)
One would hope that they at least write a decent script this time.
From the summary though, I doubt it.
Sorry to be a downer. I just find that this trend of ransacking all our 80's childhood memories is starting to get on my nerves. It feels like they've just made some kind of list, with $$ next to each item, and they will continue down that list until the $$ gets lower than the expenses of creating CG effects. (And the latter is constantly getting lower.)
They don't pick these movies to make based on good scripts, good ideas, or good director/writers, they are just knocking them down one after the other because people will go see something they have good memories of. They're completely taking advantage of everyone's misplaced hope that the next one will be better, because "that was sooo awesome when I was a kid." (Perhaps they have the right to do so... you can only vote with your wallet.) I went to see Transformers hoping it would be something decent, but these movies are constantly disappointing. (X-Men wasn't bad to be completely honest..)
I think, this time around, at the very least I'll wait and heed the reviews instead of going to see it on opening day. (The hard part is finding a reviewer that usually agrees with you.)
Re:Good old Holywood (Score:5, Interesting)
Volt-who? (Score:3, Interesting)
Going by the YouTube link to the 80s Voltron cartoon in the summary, it looks almost exactly like someone created carbon copies of the Transformers cartoon and Battle of the Planets and welded them together.
Transformers were massive in the UK when I was about 10, so it's obviously going to benefit from nostalgic parents and thirtysomething media types. By contrast, I don't know how big Voltron was in the US and Japan, but it's pretty unknown here, so I doubt it's going to get the same free pass. It can't even have been *that* big elsewhere, because I'm sure I'd have come across more about it on the net if it had been.
Something to think about... (Score:2, Interesting)
Yea, these guys see nothing but dollar signs with these things. They're not trying to bring a childhood memory to the big screen to make us happy. However, lets remember the scripts the original writers of these shows used to throw at us and realize that maybe the script that went along with Transformers wasn't so bad. In this day and age, people need realism and all that and they *tried* to do that with Transformers. But, come on, how many plausible ideas can you think of for the creation of a talking semi?
I for one am going to see this movie and I'll probably be pleased by the special effects and the nostalgia that will come to mind from my childhood. Let them strip mine my memories... I for one think that awesome explosions, great advances in CGI, and fight scenes are a decent trade-off. Let's not forget Underdog was from our childhood as well. At least they didn't do *that* to Transformers...
Re:just stop (Score:1, Interesting)
Another interpretation is that it is not the same people responding in each story. I'm convinced the comments for a given article show the subset of the Slashdot readership who most want to bitch about the topic in question.
Feel free to cry "Hypocrisy!" when individuals contradict themselves, but a series of self-selected samples which are a tiny fraction of the readership will not be at all representative or having anything like a consistent opinion.
The Man Who Just... Wasn't (Score:3, Interesting)
Marks on imdb.com [imdb.com]:
Writer:
Producer:
Miscellaneous Crew:
Editorial Department:
Basically, Marks self-produced a couple of indy shorts early in the decade, then there's a big gap where he fell off the radar. Hard to say if he was script doctoring, working the business side of the industry, or just had enough money to bum around Hollywood bugging people to read his screenplays. Suddenly he reappears screenwriting two big (the studios hope) franchise relaunches.
I have to wish him all the luck personally, but resumés like this don't fill me with confidence about the final product.
What we really need is the Patlabor 2 movie (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the best Anime films ever made. In this cereberal political triller, a series of carefully calibrated terrorist attacks with possible military links pushes the civilian goverment of Japan to the verge of collapse. As the Self Defense Forces take to the streets of Tokoyo a small group of police desparately atempt to unravel the secret behind the attacks before a military takeover and near certian American intervention. Made well before 9/11 this film has remarkable resonance today. Giant Robot Alert: Strangely enough there are giant robots (well thought out rescue and crowd control robots, as well as a praticularly neat traffic control robot) at the beginning and end of the movie (if you really don't like robots, just jump ahead to the third chapter, it won't take away from the plot). The robots function in the same manner as the witches in Macbeth: as plot devices which move along the story (what Hitchcock would call a McGuffin), and just as Macbeth is not a story about Witches, this is not a story about robots. If you like Patlabor 2 you may also enjoy Patlabor 1 and Patlabor WXIII.