With "Transformers" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" ruling the box office and bringing adaptations of a variety of beloved cartoons and toy lines in the works at Hollywood, I took a moment to think about which ones would make good movies. Specifically I thought about what would be good additions to the film landscape now, so as much as I love “Gundam” and “Voltron” we already have "Transformers," "Pacific Rim" and the new “Power Rangers” reboot to give us our giant robot fix. I'm also disqualifying movies that have already been made into movies but were terrible (i.e., “Masters of the Universe,” “The Last Airbender” and “Dragonball Evolution”) because that is worth a whole article all to itself. Even with these movies there is always the chance they are not made well and could be extremely stupid. However, I do think that there is a chance that these movies could be great if done right. So without further ado, here is my list of potentially awesome cartoon movies:
"Megas XLR"
OK, I know I said I didn't want to add to the list of giant robot movies, but this one is different. The basic idea is that in the future humanity is losing a war against aliens but has developed this super powerful giant robot called Megas. Something goes wrong and the robot, the female pilot and some assorted aliens all go back in time to present day earth. A slacker named Coop finds Megas at a junkyard, replaces the head with a car and starts fighting aliens and monsters in it. If that sounds ridiculous it is entirely intentional. This series was one of my all-time favorite cartoons and it mostly boiled down to just how hilarious it was. With so many overly serious giant robot movies out there, I think this could be a breath of fresh air and be a welcome parody of the genre.
"Gargoyles"
This show is just plain cool. The basic concept, if you don't know, is that while the statues of the gargoyles in New York are stone during the day they turn into actual gargoyles at night to protect the city. Think like if the gargoyles from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" turned into Hellboy during the day. This could be a very interesting movie visually and is quite different than any other film in development right now. My dream would be for Guillermo del Toro to get his hands on this, fingers crossed!
"ThunderCats"
I for one am surprised that this movie hasn't even tried to get a script written, seeing as how this was one of the more popular cartoons in the 80s. Seeing the advances in CGI we've made, I think a movie with special effects like the latest "Planet of the Apes" movies would do the characters justice. Given what has been done to the Ninja Turtles and Transformers in live-action, I am a little hesitant but I think this could be a fun action adventure that could be safe enough for the whole family.
"The Jetsons"
I was hesitant about including this after seeing "The Flinstones," but I think this movie could be highly entertaining if it was approached as a satire of modern society, kind of like "Wall-E," but with less obese people. It would be funny to show a family of the future suffering from technology overload and could provide a good moral about what is really important. While another approach could still be good I would be interested for this particular style of movie.
"Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends"
In case you haven't heard about this cartoon before the title kind of explains it all. Seeing how well the concept of imaginary friends was handled in "Inside Out" gets me excited about the possibility of this adaptation. It could be visually interesting and heart-warming, and also provide unique avenues for humor. I would be interested to see how the visuals would be incorporated as well because given the nature of the characters they don't have to go for any form of realism. I could even see it working like "Who Framed Roget Rabbit" where you mix in animated characters.
"Samurai Jack"
The basic premise of this cartoon is Jack is a samurai (go figure) that is about to stop a demon called Aku from taking over the world. Right before he kills him, Aku opens a time portal that sends Jack into the future where Aku has already won and Jack is trying to get back to the past to stop Aku from winning. Along the way he fights all kinds of cool monsters and robots and barely talks. Admittedly that would be a hard thing to adapt for film since the show is all about its unique visual style and fight scenes, so making a story out of that would be difficult but this show is so legitimately cool that a live-action version could be awesome. It doesn't even have to be that big of a budget, I would almost like it to be done like the "Sin City" or "300" films where they are mostly green screen and highly stylized.
So those are my ideas for six cartoon adaptations that could be amazing. Do you agree? What other cartoons would you like to see movies of?
