Slashdot Mirror
Space Invaders: The Movie
rainmouse writes "Hollywood, clearly after witnessing the staggering success and endless critical acclaim of other computer game adaptations with their typically engrossing story line and deep, believable character development, have now apparently picked up the rights to make a film based upon Space Invaders. 'The classic 1980s arcade game from Taito and Midway, which is ranked as the top arcade game of all time by Guinness World Records, is heading to the big screen courtesy of producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Odd Lot Entertainment's Gigi Pritzker.'" Please help out by providing appropriate plot-lines and character sketches below.
Drop Down, Reverse Direction, and Increase Speed!
and that Tetris film
The name 'Space Invaders' rings a bell for a lot of people. It has no meaning in regard to the story apart from alien invasion, but the name 'Space Invaders' has deep ties in popular culture, meaning much more people will go see the movie because of the it, even if it has little or nothing to do with the game.
The pacing starts out a little slow, but by the ending it really flies with a back-and-forth recklessness that is thrilling.
It was about the struggle for woman's rights. You see, it was all symbolism for male oppression. You see, the phallic flack tank shot down the dreams of the the feminine invaders while skirting their attempts of rebuttal using the previously established male-bias structures in society. Very deep stuff.
...for Megan Fox to exhibit her thespian excellence.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Hollywood is out of second-tier comic book superheroes and the plastic-toy genre has been well covered. As for remakes, "Police Academy 8" has been green-lighted, so the bottom of the barrel has been reached there. Some major franchises have reached end of life. The final Harry Potter movie, and what's probably the final Bond movie, are about to come out.
On the video game front, Rockstar won't let a studio make a GTA game; they think it would devalue the franchise. So Hollywood has to go through the bargain bin of video game rights.
The state of the industry is pathetic. Warner Bros. is doing so badly that only one of their movies last year made the top 100. (It was "Hot Tub Time Machine".) There's a backlash against bad 3D movies.
The desperate attempts to insure a hit on a big budget by redoing something that worked before are backfiring.
Bad Guys come, threaten the safety and well being of all loving earthlings - especially a Young Hero and his Unconsummated Love. Young Hero gets the shit kicked out of him. Unconsummated Love somehow placed in mortal danger. Young Hero finds a way to overcome the Bad Guys, rejoin his Unconsummated Love and save the entire world. Mix in oodles of special effects magic. $8 please, or whatever it is they charge for movie tickets nowadays.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
All right. It's Saturday night, I have no date, a two-liter bottle of Shasta and my all-Rush mix-tape... Let's rock.
Futurama S3 E18.
Who needs anything else?
Todd: I hope it proves as delicious as the farmers that grew them
Frankly, this seems like a very pragmatic move on the studio's part: If all you can do is create two-dimensional characters, a classic arcade game is perfect source material...
I'll base the plot here on what I've seen in other movies like Independence Day and War of the Worlds (the Tom Cruise version).
Aliens attack earth to steal our water on account of its amazingly high specific heat capacity which they need for cooling their interstellar space drives. Despite the ability to travel interstellar space easily, the aliens somehow failed to read Sun Tzu's "the Art of War" and, assembling in a highly primitive phalanx formation reminiscent of the techniques of Ancient Romans, they are slaughtered wholesale by Global Hawks and F-22/F-35's manned by a people's army of inspiring ethnic diversity.
So starting with nothing they came up with a witty plot and some great acting, and they had a legitimate hit. Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow is an inspired character and he and Geoffrey Rush make the movie. Keira Knightley is no slouch either. It is a classic, and will be appreciated by generations of movie goers.
This success brought the 'Dark Side' of the Hollywood machine into play. Producers realized that they could look for movie concepts where there was no plot to begin with. From their point of view all they need is a recognizable concept/title. Think Alvin and the Chipmunks, Marmaduke, etc. So we are now facing the dreadful reality of the Space Invaders move. In 3D.
Why is Snark Required?
Dear Hollywood: Fuck you.
That series started going downhill when he expanded 'Enders game' from an excellent short story (in one of the Pornelle 'There Will be War' collections) into a long winded and pretentious book.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
on the dark side of this planet. this ugly, misbegotten planet. another hole in space to make, another sphere full of screaming, dying blobs of flesh.
i try not to think about it, but it gets to you after a while. last week lenni went crazy. he started writing on the wall with his blood and his shit mixed together... sort of like an 'outline font'. he wrote something about the 'last coming of the jesus lizard'. i couldnt read the rest of it. they closed off his bunker and hosed it down so nobody was really sure what happened to him, exactly. someone said they heard a shot, a loud shot in the night. but i dont think that was like lenni. lenni was more into knots and ropes. although i guess a plasma burst would be a hell of a lot faster and more painless.
i wonder what he was thinking, those last seconds before he pulled the trigger. probably nothing. thats what this job does to you. a hundred years of extermination. a hundred years of terror. a hundred years of making way for civilization - a civilization that you will never get to take part in. sure, maybe if you retire, but how many make it that far? out of my first squad class, there are only 3 left. 3 out of 50. all of the rest are dead or insane.
so why do i keep doing it, you ask? and who are you, i wonder? im writing this in a secret code in an ancient form of communication, called 'paper'. i picked it up on beta star seven stroke 6, alpha quadrant. some dead rat had a whole room full of the stuff, and a long cylindrical object that you use to scratch with onto the surface. it leaves an impression and a marking. its kind of fun once you get the hang of it really.
but im just avoiding your first question. why keep doing it? this shit hole fuck up of a job? no life, no future, no responsibilities, no nothing. actually thats kind of the good part. the bad part, the nightmares, the voices, the memories. the emptiness. you fill it up. the ship has an endless supply of drugs, of joues, of fake anthropods from every species upon which you simulate procreation. they even got simulated babies and families if you want it. dont know why you would, sick fuckers who do that shit are the ones you have to watch out for. they are the ones that really got nuts - they dont just off themselves in the privacy of their own cube hole. no. they take out an entire squad with them. they rain down parts onto whatever shit hole we are invading, like some kind of kid throwing candy from a pinata. they laugh, like corricks, that guy, he just started laughing and killing everyone. friend, enemy, commander, didn't matter. base lost 4 of its top ribbons, each with 200 years planet clearing experience... wives, pensions, families.
they tell us we arent supposed to mention his name. they killed a guy last week for doing it. actually it wasnt 'they', it was this shit hard sergeant named dooley. he's about as fucked up as lenni was, but dooley would never off himself. he loves pain too much - seeing other people in pain. he keeps them like that for weeks, keeping them barely alive so he can listen to them scream. then he offs them right as he ejaculates. dont ask me how i know this.
i would like to chop his dick off, though. just to see the look on his face. and then what? id become like him i guess. whatever. thats just a way to stay alive - either go crazy and off yourself, or go crazy and off everyone else. where is the middle ground here? go crazy and write into a little secret book, that nobody can find. hide it under your sleeper, train yourself to pass the mind-scanning test they do every week. become expert at logic twists and bending diagrams, to explain that 'no, you have no contraband information on your person or in your thoughts' because, well, technically, they dont even know that 'paper' exists... and so how can it be contraband?
anyways. another mission up. some shit fuck ass planet called 'earth'. it looks blue with smears of brown all over it, some green. and white all over the place. the inhabitants are like little blood pustules, stubby
Thinking about it though, after the third one in the series though it does start to go downhill fast. I wonder if Card himself has Hollywood-itis, the tendency to beat a dead horse until money stops falling out.
How about this then?
Scene 1:
Han Sparrow - a scrappy, self interested, but charismatic space pirate makes landfall on a backwater planet. He has a brief confrontation with some blond guy, who is obviously keen on the princess of this planet (who wishes to return his affections, but is already promised to another). All is interrupted when the horribly warped "Space Invaders", led by Captain Vadar attack, kidnapping the princess; believing that her DNA contains the code to unlock the curse of their mutations. Actually, it's the blond guy's DNA they need, due to some kind of mix-up.