Aloha yall,
Tex Hula
As a young kid if you would have asked me if I could choose any superhero's powers to have, I would've picked Spider-Man's powers. The thought of fighting crime and helping people in need seemed like a fun and noble cause. Later in life, during my angsty teen years, I wanted to have mutant powers. I also wanted all my friends to have different mutant powers and we would go on adventures together fighting injustice. I wanted to belong to a special group of people outside the norm. In my adult life I've realized fighting crime is unrealistic and exhauting. Also my friends are all assholes that shouldn't be trusted with superpowers. If I could pick any superpower now, I would choose something that I could profit from, and let me pursue my interests. Yeah, I guess I'm kind of an asshole that shouldn't be trusted with superpowers either.
For my power I would choose to be a master of the mother 'effin Mystic Arts.
The first thing I would do with my knowledge of the Mystic Arts would be to set myself up for life. I'm going to peek into the future and find out some winning lottery numbers. My second act as Sorcerer Supreme would be to rent the largest theater I can find. Then I would search the multiverse pulling out movies to screen. Not just any movies, these are movies that were almost made in our reality. Movies that were cancelled for some reason or other. I'm traveling to many different realities to pluck out these curiosities. Then I'm going to have a marathon screening. Everyone's invited. I'm calling it my:
MOVIE MARATHON FROM THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS!
First off I need to make some ground rules. Only movies that were in some form of production are allowed. I'm not going traipsing all over the damn multiverse looking for half baked ideas. If a director, writer, or actor were involved or considered for a film, I'm going to say that's doable.
There is so much to choose from here I'll be showing trailers before each movie. Not all of them will be good. I really want to check out some of these trainwrecks. I'm going to divide these up by genre. Enjoy the shows. Please no talking during the screenings. Violators will be teleported to the Realm of Rape. Trust me, that place is not as fun as it sounds.
ANIMATION
TRAILER: Chris Farley as SHREK
This isn't just an instance of a voice actor being replaced. This was an entirely different movie. Farley's version saw Shrek as an ogre who didn't want to go into his family's business of scaring travelers, he had dreams of becoming a knight in shining armor and rescuing a princess. At the time of his death Farley had recorded around ninety percent of the dialog. Mike Meyers was reluctant to come in and redo Farley's lines, so the movie was rebuilt from the ground up. I'm happy with what we got, I'm saddened by what we missed.
TRAILER: YELLOW SUBMARINE (2012)
If you need any proof The Beatles did acid back in the sixties just remember they let their drummer sing a song about living in a yellow submarine.
This was going to be a Robert Zemekis' 3D motion capture CGI re-make of the original movie. I never really understood Zemekis' obsession with photo realistic CGI animation. As realistic and impressive as the films were, I always felt like I was watching a bunch of dead-eyed mannequins acting out a story. This is more like it. A stylized, psychedilic, 3D movie that sounds like it would be a blast to watch under the influence of questionably legal substances. However, I can understand why Disney would cancel it, it would probably cost a fortune, and it doesn't seem like something families would flock to theaters to see.
MOVIE: Disney's THE GREMLINS
Before Mogwais, Stripe, and Rand Peltzer's Bathroom Buddy, gremlins were originally a legend that began in World War I in the British Royal Air Force. The servicemen would blame inexplicable accidents and mechanical problems on "gremlins", little trickster creatures that loved causing mischief by sabotaging aircraft. During his time with the British Royal Air Force in World War II, the little creatures captured the imagination of Roald Dahl who wrote a manuscript, at the suggestion of a friend he sent it to Walt Disney. Uncle Walt loved it so much he published it as a picture book, and production began on a feature length film.
Problems began to arise, one of the major ones was that Disney couldn't copyright the name gremlins or their characteristics. So when word got out that Warner Brothers was making an animated short featuring Bugs Bunny and gremlins, Disney in a panic used everyone of their characters and put them in a Lifesavers candy ad in Life magazine in order to secure their likeness's. This pissed Roald Dahl off to no end. He was furious his creations were being used to peddle candy to children. He even wrote a scathing letter to Walt Disney. Another major problem Disney had was that the Royal Air Force wanted to look over and approve every aspect of production. Eventually the headaches of the whole situation caused Disney to walk away from the project.
The story sounds cool as hell. When the British Air force invades their peaceful forest homeland, the gremlins begin sabotaging and causing mechanical failures to their planes. Our main human protagonist Gus, crashes his sabotaged plane onto a deserted island with a gremlin in tow. Like HELL IN THE PACIFIC, they're forced into an uneasy friendship. Eventually Gus convinces the gremlins to help fight their common enemy, the Nazis. This sounds unlike anything Disney has done before or since, and I can't wait to watch it.
In 1984 when Warner Brothers made GREMLINS, apparently Disney didn't hold any grudges because they gave them permission to use footage from SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES. I think this was mainly because Disney really wanted to work with Spielberg and get in on some of that E.T. money.
Speaking of Spielberg, Disney, World War II, and Toons fighting Nazis, I think we need to make this a double feature.
MOVIE: ROGER RABBIT 2: THE TOON PLATOON
WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT is one of my absolute all time favorite movies. I've watched it hundreds of times, more than any other movie in my life. One of the biggest crimes in cinematic history is that aside from a few brilliant shorts, we've never had a proper return of Roger Rabbit to the big screen. Quite a few attemps have been made. There was WHO DISCOVERED ROGER RABBIT, a prequel about Roger's early Broadway career and eventual rise to stardom. A sequel set in the 1950's, and a movie called THE STOOGE which would have teamed him with Mickey Mouse in a musical re-make of the Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin movie of the same name.
Out of all of them I think this one is the most interesting. It's also a prequel. It starts with Roger living on a farm with a human family. To his shock he finds out that he was adopted, and that he was dropped off on their doorstep in a basket. So Roger heads to Hollywood to find his birth mother. On his way there he meets Richie Davenport, a young aspiring actor heading to Hollywood that basically becomes the Eddie Valiant of the movie. When they arrive in Hollywood, they meet their respective love interests. For Richie it's Wendy a human, for Roger it's his future wife, now named Jessica Krupnick. Wendy and Jessica both work at a radio station as voice performers.
The boss at the radio station, Otto Green is basically the Judge Doom of this movie. He's in league with the Nazis. He also keeps a pair of toon panthers by his side at all times named Bambi and Thumper. Otto kidnaps Jessica and Wendy and takes them to Germany where he makes Jessica star in pro-Nazi propaganda films under the name Axis Annie. To rescue their girls Roger and Richie enlist in the service. Luckily for Roger, toons have their own special division. Thanks to their indestructible nature, toons are being put on the front lines. Some of the toons in Roger Rabbit's platoon are: Yosemite Sam, Tasmanian Devil, Speedy Gonzales, Dumbo, Woody Woodpecker, and Pepe Le Pew.
Am I crazy or does this sound cool as hell? Because that really seems like a fun, solid premise. The first movie worked so well because it was a mash up of Tex Avery cartoons meeting dectective noir. This is Tex Avery cartoons meeting WWII films. The main reason this movie was cancelled was because Spielberg was beginning production on SCHINDLER'S LIST and didn't want to portray Nazis as cartoonish. The script was re-written to exclude World War II and became WHO DISCOVERED ROGER RABBIT.
For the next installment I'm going to focus on one filmmaker who has dozens of interesting project scattered across the multiverse.
By the eye of Agamotto pardners,
Tex Hula
