A Christmas Wish List

A Christmas Wish List
Posted by: Marcus

First and foremost, my apologies to my readers and watchers. I haven't updated in a while because I recently turned twenty-four years young, and I've been either spending time playing new video games, preparing for final exams, or trying out a new short story that I'm writing. Either way, not much time has been devoted to thinking about media, other than what I'm going to watch, listen to, or play next. However, I now find myself with a little bit of a breather. This week, I've decided to write about a couple of films that I'm hoping will be made in the future, or what I believe need to be made. Since it's Christmas, I'm hoping Santa delivers at some point in the future.

1. At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow over Innsmouth.

I'm including the two together simply because I don't believe you can make one without the other. Both of these stories are considered classics in horror literature, and the Cthulhu mythos is one of the more noticable in fiction. However, why is it that these films have never been greenlit? Though I'm only vaguely familiar with Shadow, I recently was able to read Mountains, and found myself enthralled with Lovecraft's storytelling. He has this odd ability to give enough description to give you a great mental picture, but doesn't over-explain like I think Tolkien had a tendency to do. It's a chilling story of an expedition gone horribly wrong, and it simply does the story of finding an unimaginable horror better than anything I've ever encountered. So, with all of this going for the story, why on earth won't someone allow gifted director Guillermo Del Toro write and direct it? According to him, it's simply because there is neither a love story nor a happy ending, which to me sounds like a cop out. There are several films out there that have no semblance of a happy ending, such as The Godfather, Goodfellas, The Silence of the Lambs, American History X, and so forth. Del Toro should be allowed to make this film, simply because with his rare talent for filmmaking, it could easily be his greatest achievement, or achievements if he were allowed to follow it up with Shadow over Innsmouth.


2. Predator 3

Truthfully, I think this is a true sequel that is long, long overdue. Though there have been numerous crossovers across different forms of media (and most of it horrible), it has been nearly twenty years since the second film in the franchise. However, I think the question would simply remain as to how you can take a film franchise that seems to have been recently bogged down in muck, and make it the same caliber of the previous two films. I think that the first step is simply to get the project an incredibly solid director. Though the obvious choice would be John McTiernan (who directed the original) I think a newer director could be a wiser idea, simply to get a fresh perspective. My thoughts go to Paul Greengrass, Len Wiseman, or Antoine Fuqua, simply becuase they're directors who could bring in something new. Or, I've always wanted to see how directors Ridley Scott and James Cameron would take on the series. As for the cast, I've always wanted to see what would happen if you took the risk of putting Sly Stallone in a lead role, or possibly Bruce Willis. When it comes to Predator, it seems like the lead role almost has a necessity to have an experienced action star like Glover or Schwarzenegger in the lead for it to work, simply because the larger than life actor works much better as a foil to a great movie monster like the Predator. I also think a military style film in a place like Iraq, or possibly Afghanistan would work well, simply because a desert area is another great area with a constant feeling of hostility, like the jungles of South America. With a big name cast, I'd also like to see a sort of parallel to Jesse Ventura and Carl Weathers' roles in the first film, simply to have more larger-than-life personalities to make the movie more fun. It would be interesting to see a couple of men like Sam Worthington or Dwayne Johnson in a film like this.

3. Another James Cameron Terminator film.

Though many think me crazy for it, I did enjoy the last two Terminator films. However, as many have pointed out, there is an element missing from both of them, and thus the films have had easily spotted flaws to them. The third film in the franchise had far too much levity that came down far too heavy for a movie that was so steeped in the idea of a global apocalypse brought on by a race of sentient machines. The fourth film, in my opinion, was much better, but had a few inconsistencies in it that I blame for simply having a fairly green director attached to the film. Though Christian Bale didn't put on as much of a performance that he has in past projects like American Psycho or Equilibrium, I wouldn't say he did poorly either. I think, truly, that this is where James Cameron needs to come in again. When a single director makes not only establishes a series as being good, but establishes it as one of the greatest film sagas in a single genre, removing that director takes a crucial element from the storytelling. Now that Cameron is finished with Avatar, I believe that he should very much consider returning to the franchise. Though Arnold would no longer be attached, I think that the storyline has come to a point where his presence isn't necessary. Now it's time for the character of John Connor to step up a bit more, and I think that Cameron can put him there.