I'm a big believer in the "use it or lose it" school of creative aptitude, and that concerns me as I find myself (or, at least, feel like I've found myself) with less and less time for creative experimentation when it comes to writing.
Sure, my movie reviews (back again!), REALLY THAT GOOD, the re-launch of GAME OVERTHINKER (coming soon!) and a few other projects that can't be announced yet are all keeping me sharp in terms of analysis and critical-thinking, but I'm feeling like I stand to put in more practice-time on fiction, particularly screenwriting. On the other hand, it's not like I feel comfortable putting effort into "just for kicks" experiments when I should be busting ass (relatively speaking) here and elsewhere on behalf of my exceptionally generous Patreon backers, who expect (and should expect!) some entertainment and interaction.
So! Here's how I'm going to combine the two for a bit:
Okay, here's the basic idea:
This post from awhile back, laying out a hypothetical Hollywood pitch for a (proper) live-action SUPER MARIO BROS* movie, turned out to be pretty popular. Since I'm always thinking about this kind of stuff anyway (and since this is the age where we're officially making movies out of fucking anything) I've since worked out the basic outlines of a few other "if I had to pitch _____" scenarios on similar lines as thought experiments. I'm going to list four of them below, and ask anyone who wants to to vote in the comments (Blogger has no good option for putting polls into posts) either for which one they'd like to see an actual full pitch for OR rank all four (1 being highest, 4 being lowest) on a scale of most to least want to see pitched. I'll keep the poll open for a week (so you've got until 4/10 at 11:59pm) and then I'll start posting the actual pitches in the order decided by the votes (schedule yet to be determined as consensus emerges)
The four possible pitches are:
MEGA MAN
X-MEN (hypothetical near-future Marvel Cinematic Universe version)
CAPTAIN PLANET
CARE BEARS
Okay. Get down into the comments and get to voting. You're also welcome to toss out other ideas as well, but these four are going first no matter what. Yes, even if like 300 people all demand STREET SHARKS.
*Since I'm sure plenty of people are wondering, the reason ZELDA isn't among the choices is that the lore there is so rigid yet also so loose mapping it out in detail doesn't hold that much appeal to me. But if you want a quickie: Trilogy of films based loosely on OCARINA but with the "quest" streamlined. PART I: Young Link, end on Master Sword aquisition and time-jump. PART II: Adult Link, Tri-Force quest in ruined "future" Hyrule with Sheik, end on Sheik/Zelda reveal and realization that key past mistakes make victory impossible. PART III: Final battle against Ganon, with time-jumping between kid and adult eras to ensure defeat of evil.
In
