For those of you who are unaware, The Lego Movie has been killing it at the box office, and with good reason. The amazing film (from the team that brought us the short-lived but amazing cartoon Clone High USA) is hilarious, charming and sends a great message to little kids. The film has dominated the box office so successfully that it has already been approved for a sequel.
In the next week we will also see the release of Peabody and Mr. Sherman, a film based on the beloved Rocky & Bulwinkle characters. It looks more entertaining than 2003’s disappointing The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle; it’s also been announced that sometime next year we will be seeing a film inspired by R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series.
It’s not uncommon for you to hear people complaining about how Hollywood is out of ideas. The box office tends to be limited on original films, instead favoring remakes, reboots, sequels and adaptations. Right now it seems Hollywood’s favorite thing to adapt is our childhood. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing though. In fact, if all the adaptations are as entertaining as The Lego Movie than this is actually a very good thing.
So let’s take a look through the things that made childhood so great. Nothing was better than growing up in the 90‘s. Let’s remember the toys, games, books and TV shows that made growing up so great. There was a time that we loved the idea of dinosaurs with guns on their heads, teenagers who could turn into animals and a worm in a supersuit. Let’s get excited that maybe, just maybe, one of them will be the next big Hollywood franchise.
10. Toxic Crusaders
The late 80s/early 90s were a weird time for kids’ cartoons. For some unexplainable reason, TV programmers took a look at hard R movies like Robocop, Rambo and Police Academy and thought “we could totally make this into a cartoon for kids.” It was during these cocaine-fueled pitch meetings that someone saw the potential of Troma’s Toxic Avenger.
Toxic Avengers (or Toxie to his fans) is the face of Troma Pictures, a company with such colorful film titles as Surf Nazis Must Die and Chopper Chicks in Zombietown. The first superhero from New Jersey made his debut in 1985’s Toxic Avenger, a film filled with sex, drugs and a ten-year-old’s head being crushed by a tire. Despite it’s dark origins, The Toxic Crusaders ended up being one of the better cartoons of the 90s.
They took the wackiness of Toxic Avenger, added a bunch of great new characters like NoZone (who has a giant nose) and Headbanger (a two headed man), and tied it together with a “save the environment” message. Basically it was Captain Planet, if the Planeteers were sideshow freaks and their rings brought a green blob of a man (who fights crime with a talking mop).
In Toxie, creator Lloyd Kaufman’s book “All I Needed To Know About Filmmaking I Learned From The Toxic Avenger” Kaufman reveals that New Line had signed a contract to make a Crusaders’ film but (according to Kaufman) it was simply to scare the owners of TNMT to give them rights to make a third film at a cheaper price.
Kaufman has discussed putting some of the characters in the upcoming Toxic Avenger 5 but I’d much rather see them make a feature film (or even hand it off to someone like James Gunn).
9. The Noid
The 90’s was a very strange time to be a kid but a great time to be in advertising. For whatever unexplainable reason, the 90’s was this magical time where advertisements could somehow turn into products themselves. The California Raisins had multiple TV specials, a cartoon and tons of action figures, Kool-Aid Man got a video game, and 7-Up’s Cool Spot inspired two different video games. But my personal favorite mascot was always Domino’s Noid.
“Avoid the Noid” was not only a slogan for the popular mascot but the name of a video game (released in 1989) where you delivered pizzas in 30 minutes or less to buildings filled with Noids trying to steal your pizza. This game was popular enough for a sequel, released in 1990. Even more confusing was that just two years ago a third video game was released.
In 2011 the Noid made a few re-emergences on T-shirts and on Domino’s Facebook. The time has never been better to bring the bunny-eared character back for a film. While it’s obvious that studios will want to do a computer animated film, the Noid has always been Claymation and should stay that way.
8. Street Sharks
It seemed that immediately after Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles became a mega smash hit every company tried to find some way to jump on with any ideas to try to get a hit toy-line. The best show was the pretty obvious rip-off Street Sharks.
The show must have been pitched by someone going “Shark Week is almost as popular as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles… let’s play with that idea.”
Street Sharks is actually quite dark compared to TMNT. In Turtles it’s four regular turtles that get slime on them and they transform into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In Street Sharks, four kids are transformed into the half-man/half-shark creations. I’m not sure why but that’s more unsettling.
These teenage shark kids fight against the evil Dr. Piranoid (a scientist who’s genes were spliced with a Piranha) and his mutant lobster and marlin henchmen.
The Street Sharks did lead to various action figures, comic books and an arcade wack-a-mole game to name a few things, but it never got a movie. For a brief period of time there was even a few catch phrases that caught on at the recess yard. How totally Jawesome would it be to see a film about four half man/half shark creators battling a man with a piranha face shoot with practical effects.
7. Are You Afraid Of The Dark
It’s been reported that a Goosebumps movie is in the works. From what most reports have stated though this movie adaptation will be mostly inspired by the books but not a direct adaptation of any of the novels. If you were to re-read the original Goosebumps books you’ll notice that most of them do not hold up for readers over the age of ten, so depending on their demographic this could be a good or bad thing.
The real shame is that Goosebumps could have worked as a decent anthology film. In fact, the only other way to do a decent Goosebumps movie would be to adapt Night of the Living Dummy into a feature… beyond that most of the books aren’t very memorable (as stated earlier).
Are you Afraid of the Dark?, on the other hand, had a fair amount of genuinely eerie tales. Plus the general premise of the show lends itself beautifully to the anthology film format.
If you’re not familiar with this classic SNICK series each episode began with members of the Midnight Society (a group of high school horror writers) gathering around a campfire in the woods telling scary stories. Each week a different person told a story of horror. You can easily do three or four decent scary stories in that exact format.
Even if producers didn’t want to do an anthology film there’s still a ton of great episodes that would translate to film beautifully (the classic Zeebo the Clown episode comes to mind).
As crazy as this might sound you could pull of the movie with an R-rating. Since this film was a big introduction to horror films for kids in the 90’s the key demographic would be horror fans in their late 20’s.
6. The Tick
Few cartoons went over my head as a kid more than The Tick. I thought it was just a bizarre cartoon about a dumb superhero. It wasn’t until years later when reruns began to appear on Comedy Central late at night that I figured out the appeal.
The Tick began in 1986 as a satire of the cliche comic book hero. The character remained mostly underground as a strictly indie comic. That all changed in 1994. FOX adapted the anarchic comic book parody into a Saturday Morning cartoon series which put The Tick on the radar for tons of kids. It had a successful three season run before cancellation.
In 2001, FOX again adapted the Blue Bug of Justice with the absolute perfect casting of Patrick Warburton. The show was far from perfect but it definitely deserved a longer life than the eight episodes that FOX gave it.
A movie adaptation of The Tick would be incredible. Patrick Warburton could even still play the titular character. With the popularity of comic book movies right now there’s never been a better time to try to do The Tick correctly.
5. Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past
Without competition, Link is the second most recognized Nintendo mascot. There are few things more exciting then when Nintendo releases a new Zelda game but for me (and many others) it’s impossible not to mention Link to the Past as one of best video games ever made.
The popular series was adapted to everything from comic books to a tv series and a collection of soundtrack albums. But it never had a film adaptation. In the 90s there was a huge movement of video game film adaptations, everything from side scrollers like Double Dragon and Super Mario Bros. to fighting games like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. Every single one of those adaptations was a failure on either a critical or financial standpoint (and sometimes both). It’s because of these bad experiences (specifically with Super Mario Bros.) that NES has constantly been against any attempts at a Legend of Zelda movie.
This is flawed logic since Zelda has more of a plot drive game than any of those films that were adapted. A Link to the Past has a fantastic plot and could easily be split into two separate films (and we all know Hollywood loves when they can split something into two movies).
When I was a kid I always wanted to make a movie inspired by the game. Since my father raised me on the films of Ray Harryhausen so I always dreamed that it would be a live-action movie with claymation monsters (as unlikely as that would be). Regardless I think it’s time Nintendo allowed a Zelda game to be made and hopefully show the world it is possible to make the occasionally good Video-Game Film Adaptation.
4. The Head
There are few things from the 90’s more insanely unique than MTV’s animation. Despite being the king of music videos in the 80’s, by the 90’s they were beginning to expand into various other TV shows. They had game shows, they had reality TV and even their own animation branch. Some of the more popular shows were Beavis & Butthead, Daria and Aeon Flux but one of the most bizarre shows was MTV Oddities.
Oddities had two series. One was the comic-book inspired The Maxx but the one I always connected with was The Head.
The Head was created by Eric Fogel and told the story of a college student named Jim who wakes up one morning with his head grown to massive proportions. After desperately trying to figure out why this has happened, he discovers a purple alien named Roy has turned his head into his home. Roy is out to stop another alien sent to destroy the human race.
It’s only with the help of a support group for “Human Anomalies” that Jim and Roy are able to destroy the other alien and save the world.
Recently, Alex Winter has come back after spending almost two decades out of the public spotlight after the failure of the cult classic Freaked. I would love to see the entire creative team behind Freaked got back to make a Hard-R film adaptation of this gritty MTV cult classic.
3. Animorphs
There were two massive book series’ aimed at kids in the 90‘s. The first one was Goosebumps, the other was K.A. Applegate’s sci-fi action series Animorphs. The series told the tale of five teenagers who discover a dying alien in an abandoned lot. The alien informs them of another alien race that parasitically takes control of creatures on planets leading to their ultimate domination. Just before dying the alien gives them all the power to morph into any creature from which they ‘acquire’ the DNA.
The series eventually became a TV series on Nickelodeon and while it was a decent enough adaptation it was shot on such a low budget (being on a TV series for kids) that the special effects come off laughable now. It’s a mediocre presentation of a well-written book series.
The book series has a lot of dark moments throughout it which Nickelodeon was only willing to slightly touch upon. In this day and age films like The Hunger Games aren’t afraid to tackle dark themes like children literally fighting for their lives. The time has never been better than right now to relaunch the Animorphs series and what better outlet than a film franchise.
2. Mighty Max
In 1992, one of the greatest toys for a young male ever was released. Mighty Max was the male counterpoint of Polly Pocket. They mostly involved minature playsets referred to as “Horror Heads” and “Doom Zones”. When you opened up these playsets each one had a uniquely different world of secret passageways and various creatures.
Mighty Max was depicted as a small child in a white shirt and red hat with a giant M on it. He was constantly fighting monsters and other horror-themed creatures. The toy line became so popular that it launched a TV series as well a SNES and Sega video game.
In this day and age kids action films have lost their sense of danger. Growing up as kids in the 80’s and 90’s we had movies and TV shows where if our main characters screwed up they would die. In 2014, the worst thing to happen to the lead character in a kids movie/TV show that means they might not be popular in school. A Mighty Max movie would be an awesome throwback to the films we grew up on like The Goonies and Monster Squad. It’s time this generation of kids gets something even half as awesome as the things our generation had.
1. Earthworm Jim
In 1994, the world was given a gift from a man named Doug TenNapel. That gift was an acid trip in the form of a video game named Earthworm Jim.
Earthworm Jim was the story of of an earthworm named Jim (go figure) who finds a robotic super suit and begins fighting evil. Every level is so brilliant, bizarre and fun that it was impossible for the game to not be a success. Critics adored the game (and it’s sequel) while praising its humor, designs and platforms. Audiences also loved it.
The video game was so insanely popular that it got multiple video game sequels, it’s own cartoon series (which ran two seasons), a toy line and two one-shot comic books. As recently as 2008 there was even talk of a new TV series, but that has yet to move into pre-production.
Earthworm Jim is that right mix of anarchic comedy, bizarre backdrops and hilarious characters like Psy-Crow and The Evil Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-filled, Malformed Slug-for-a-Butt that would make a great CGI film. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs & The Lego Movie) could be the perfect comedy team to deliver a memorable film experience that you’d want to repeat again and again.