It seems Universal Studios has won the highly sought-after movie rights to the 1979 Atari game Asteroids. Disney's Matthew Lopez will be writing the adaptation, having previously worked on the scripts for Bedtime Stories, The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Race to Witch Mountain. The NY Times is skeptical about Hollywood's ability to do right by the 30-year-old game, already imagining what a director like Michael Bay would do with it: "In this $300 million, three-and-a-half hour spectacle, loud and expensive computer simulations of large boulders crashing into one another are briefly interrupted by the hilarious antics of Chip and Gravel, two living rocks with gold teeth who speak in hip-hop slang, and the nonstop shouting of John Turturro."
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Michael Bay would do with it: "In this $300 million, three-and-a-half hour spectacle, loud and expensive computer simulations of large boulders crashing into one another...
Asteroids crashing into each other... possibly causing BAYSPLOSIONS [youtube.com]!?
P.S. I feel a little guilty re-using the same thing [slashdot.org] from last week but you know what they say--fight fire with fire!
Everybody seems to be hating on the new Transformers movie, but really, the critics have it wrong. In actuality, Michael Bay finally made an art movie [io9.com].
Man, I was seriously just thinking about how great/stupid it would be to make a game out of asteroids last night. Seriously, the game had no story line, so you could be as creative as you wanted, but the movie would likely have NOTHING to do with the game other than the title and a few really crappy circumstances to call for a ship blowing up asteroids.
Multiple rocks really. They had a small fleet flying around with lasers, breaking up any rocks that got through the shield. In other words, Asteroids. They could basically take the first half of Stellvia and rename it Asteroids: The Movie.
When was the last time a creative movie came from Hollywood? A regurgitation of a tired cliches with spectacular effects and spin-off trinkits is more likely. The hero, a (wo)?man who overcame unjust adversity, saves the day by combining natural talent with dogged individuality while wearing ray-bans and drinking red bull.
Well, among other things if you want to stay true to the original game, every time a character disappears off one edge of the screen, they must immediately reappear at the opposite edge of the screen.
Well, among other things if you want to stay true to the original game, every time a character disappears off one edge of the screen, they must immediately reappear at the opposite edge of the screen.
And the following must happen at least once:
CAPTAIN: "Fire!"
CREWMAN: "Sir, we can't - our last shot hasn't hit anything yet!"
I don't really understand what you need to license. Asteroids had two concepts:
There is a ship piloted by a human.
The ship needs to destroy asteroids and not crash into them.
In some versions there were also aliens you could shoot for more points. Was it ever explained in the game why the ship was shooting asteroids? Or who the aliens were? Or where the asteroid field was? Or, indeed, anything back-story related? Surely you don't need to license anyone's IP to make a film which involves a ship shooting at asteroids.
I mean, really, really lame? Even an action scene where they're having to blast oncoming rocks for any time longer than 10 seconds will be overkill. It's not that I have no appreciation for the game, I played it in the 80's (the home version I rolled over the score twice in the same game while I had chicken pox).
There are many better games to make movies from. (Deus Ex, Thief, Zelda, Golden Axe, heck - even Pitfall or Pac Man would be better).
"There are many better games to make movies from. (Deus Ex, Thief, Zelda, Golden Axe, heck - even Pitfall or Pac Man would be better)."
Dude, you're forgetting one thing - this is Hollywood making a movie out of a game. It matters little how good the original game was, the result will always be bad.
I've not seen a lot of them, but in the world of game-to-movie conversions I think that Mortal Kombat was the only half decent effort; and even that still made for eye watering viewing throughout most of it.
Once upon a time, a game could be just A Game. It didn't need a story or characters, just an entertaining activity. Like checkers or poker or tag. That was Asteroids, another classic.
What baffles me is that anybody paid money for the rights.... to what, exactly? There's no plot, no characters. Just a premise (aka "idea", which cannot be copyrighted), and a trademark: "Asteroids". All they're getting for their money is pile of middle-aged goodwill/nostalgia attached to the name.
The good news is that this movie has the potential to be far better than the new Mighty Transformin' Power Rangers film TFA is making fun of, because there's so much room to add a story. The bad news is that they probably won't, or the one they add will suck.
Are we talking about the game where you had a little ship and you blew up computerized rocks? This would be the game with absolutely no back story, no plot, no "end game"....
On second thought, this sounds exactly like a Hollywood classic.
Somebody buying the right, or someone concern about doing "right by the 30-year-old game,".
Seriously, doing right? it's a fucking shoot the rocks line drawn game. Don't get me wrong, I dropped plenty of money in the machine and had a good time playing it, but please.
I wuold love to see Bay do this movie. Maybe a story about a team that's supposed to clear the way for the minug crew. ON the way some bad ass aliens decide to blow them up, and they ahve to outsmart them.
They'd have to change their revenue model, though. Instead of walking up to the movie theater and paving $10 (or more) for a ticket to watch ALL of the movie, you pay $.25 and then get to watch the first 3 minutes of the movie. Want more movie? Pay another quarter. And another. And another. And another.
There, that'd REALLY replicate the experience of Asteroids on the big-screen.
If this gets made into a movie before something like Enders Game, I'm giving up completely on HollyWood.
I'm tired of seeing horrible movie after horrible movie come out, when there are fantastic stories waiting to be made into great movies (or, be done horribly, I'll concede).
Hollywood is really stuck for ideas. They've used up all the classic fables. They've used up the better cartoon characters. They've gone though the action figures. ("Transformers 2?" Coming up next, "GI Joe") The better video games have been done.
Every once in a while there's a successful original ("Up" being the latest example) but that's rare.
Mainstream Hollywood ran out of original ideas for movies quite some time ago. When? When they started turning to old, bad TV sitcoms and video games for movie ideas. This one? Got to be bottom of the barrel. I loved playing Asteroids and all, but this is NOT movie plot material! What's worse? It'll probably have the living SHIT marketed out of it, and they'll push for an Imax 3D release of it. I'm going to go puke now..
Instead of Asteroids, they should do Star Raiders, or maybe think outside of the "lets turn a video game into a movie" box that they're in, and make a movie of an actual story. The Ruum, or Gottlos could make a decent movie. Perhaps some of Saberhagen's Berserker stuff, or LeGuin's Dragonriders of Pern, or Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
I guess the problem is that today's movie executives grew up watching TV, playing video games, and reading comic books, instead of visiting a library.
Ok. Try to come up with a video game - any video game - that would have a dumber movie premise. Go ahead. There are plenty of posts about this with people saying "no way this has to be a joke". So let's try to top Hollywood here. Let's try to come up with something even dumber. Classic arcade or modern game, doesn't matter.
We've already seen Pong in this thread. That's a good one. Post more like that. Something dumber than Asteroids: The Movie.
Imagine what Kubrick, rest his soul, could do with these rights. There would be wide shots of asteroid fields, set to Strauss - with a 4 and a half hour run time, all of it filmed in natural light, where the asteroids hitting each other come to represent the extensional angst of human interaction with each other, where the main characters fracture and come apart slightly, just like the rocks.
The end could be a 20 minute pyrotechnic hallucination, where we - the viewer - no longer understand if the little ship or the rocks themselves are the protgaganist - Haley Joel Osment could stand in as a lost teenager, piloting the ship - never knowing why he is shooting the rocks, or even if he is human. On the side of his ship is painted the words "Me love you long time...", being both a metaphor and a literal phrase of what the ship is doing to the rocks.
Later, we found out that a secret sex cult has arranged the rocks to bang into each other for the pleasure of its sadistic members, who wear masks shaped like big asteroids. Lee Ermey marches in and screams "what is your major malfunction, did mommy and daddy not show you enough love?" to the cult. and of course, the movie ends with a Malcom McDowell voiceover while we see Jack Nicholson frozen in place on the asteroid surface.
The story is told from the point-of-view of the spacecraft's pilot. But it's a two-dimensional universe, so the pilot sees nothing, because the lines he's looking at have no depth.
Let's grant some creative license and assume that the lines can be seen by the pilot. His field of view is just a line, with line segments on it. He needs to rotate around, looking at line segments. If a line segment appears to be getting longer over time, it could mean that an asteroid is approaching, or it could be that the larger part of an asteroid is just rotating into view. He fires at it, and the line segment breaks into two line segments, one of which is getting bigger, but drifting to the right, while the other gets smaller and smaller, apparently receding. Or, maybe they're entirely different objects, it's hard to tell.
The pilot pushes the thrust button. Some of the line segments shift their positions, some get longer, some get shorter. He realizes that moving around just makes things more difficult to keep track of, and that it's better to stay in one place and rotate quickly. But it's a lesson that's come too late; he's moving, and it's hard to stop. He could spin around 180 degrees and try to slowly thrust to a stop, but that means losing vision in the direction he's moving for too long. So he lays into the rotation control and starts firing blindly. That, too, is a bad move; soon the line segments are everywhere. And now, because there is so much variety in their absolute sizes, it's impossible to tell how close each one actually is. It might be a small one about to smash into him, or it might be a big one far away.
Suddenly, two line segments of about equal size converge. But they don't appear to be a threat because the converged segment is moving harmlessly to the right. Suddenly, the segment becomes two, and the truth becomes sickeningly clear: an asteroid moving laterally past his field of vision was concealing another asteroid coming right at him. He tries to rotate into firing position, but it's too late. He's only been on the board for ten excruciating seconds, but at last his mission is over.
Black & White goodness (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like a winner to me!!!
Re:Black & White goodness (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
blowing up aliased circles
Fixed that for you.
Re:Black & White goodness (Score:5, Funny)
I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Fixed that for you.
Parent
Bay Splosions! (Score:4, Funny)
Michael Bay would do with it: "In this $300 million, three-and-a-half hour spectacle, loud and expensive computer simulations of large boulders crashing into one another ...
Asteroids crashing into each other ... possibly causing BAYSPLOSIONS [youtube.com]!?
P.S. I feel a little guilty re-using the same thing [slashdot.org] from last week but you know what they say--fight fire with fire!
Re:Bay Splosions! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
I was seriously just thinking about that. (Score:4, Insightful)
Man, I was seriously just thinking about how great/stupid it would be to make a game out of asteroids last night. Seriously, the game had no story line, so you could be as creative as you wanted, but the movie would likely have NOTHING to do with the game other than the title and a few really crappy circumstances to call for a ship blowing up asteroids.
Re:I was seriously just thinking about that. (Score:5, Insightful)
So in other words, they already made this movie and it was called Armageddon.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
creativity? (Score:3, Interesting)
When was the last time a creative movie came from Hollywood? A regurgitation of a tired cliches with spectacular effects and spin-off trinkits is more likely. The hero, a (wo)?man who overcame unjust adversity, saves the day by combining natural talent with dogged individuality while wearing ray-bans and drinking red bull.
sigh.
Re:I was seriously just thinking about that. (Score:5, Funny)
Well, among other things if you want to stay true to the original game, every time a character disappears off one edge of the screen, they must immediately reappear at the opposite edge of the screen.
Parent
Re:I was seriously just thinking about that. (Score:5, Funny)
Well, among other things if you want to stay true to the original game, every time a character disappears off one edge of the screen, they must immediately reappear at the opposite edge of the screen.
And the following must happen at least once:
CAPTAIN: "Fire!"
CREWMAN: "Sir, we can't - our last shot hasn't hit anything yet!"
Parent
Re:I was seriously just thinking about that. (Score:4, Insightful)
In some versions there were also aliens you could shoot for more points. Was it ever explained in the game why the ship was shooting asteroids? Or who the aliens were? Or where the asteroid field was? Or, indeed, anything back-story related? Surely you don't need to license anyone's IP to make a film which involves a ship shooting at asteroids.
Parent
How can this be anything but lame? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are many better games to make movies from. (Deus Ex, Thief, Zelda, Golden Axe, heck - even Pitfall or Pac Man would be better).
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
You just want to see the male protagonist walk into the womens restroom and then get quietly chided by his boss.
Re:How can this be anything but lame? (Score:4, Informative)
heck - even Pitfall or Pac Man would be better
Uh oh, now you've done it. Here's the preview for Pac Man [collegehumor.com]. Although, personally I liked minesweeper [youtube.com] more.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"There are many better games to make movies from. (Deus Ex, Thief, Zelda, Golden Axe, heck - even Pitfall or Pac Man would be better)."
Dude, you're forgetting one thing - this is Hollywood making a movie out of a game. It matters little how good the original game was, the result will always be bad.
I've not seen a lot of them, but in the world of game-to-movie conversions I think that Mortal Kombat was the only half decent effort; and even that still made for eye watering viewing throughout most of it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:How can this be anything but lame? (Score:4, Insightful)
What baffles me is that anybody paid money for the rights.... to what, exactly? There's no plot, no characters. Just a premise (aka "idea", which cannot be copyrighted), and a trademark: "Asteroids". All they're getting for their money is pile of middle-aged goodwill/nostalgia attached to the name.
The good news is that this movie has the potential to be far better than the new Mighty Transformin' Power Rangers film TFA is making fun of, because there's so much room to add a story. The bad news is that they probably won't, or the one they add will suck.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Backyard Movie Director.... (Score:5, Funny)
I could make a box office killing filming myself getting rid of centipedes in my backyard, using a BB gun.
Now to go and secure the rights.....
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Backyard Movie Director.... (Score:4, Funny)
Dig Dug: The Movie
In a world of passion, intrigue, cold steel and compressed air, there can be only one question:
DO YOU DIG IT?
Parent
David Spade mode on (Score:4, Funny)
Wait, astroids? (Score:5, Interesting)
Are we talking about the game where you had a little ship and you blew up computerized rocks? This would be the game with absolutely no back story, no plot, no "end game"....
On second thought, this sounds exactly like a Hollywood classic.
For max score shoot the Saucers (Score:2)
You reduce the rocks to a minimal interference then shoot as many UFO's as you can.
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Asteroids/Walkthrough [strategywiki.org]
So this is going to be a space battle movie.
Actualy, I think they are going to blow it. Make space really small and have a dense set of rocks and lots of collisions.
Real money (Score:5, Funny)
I bet the real money's gonna come from the iPhone app based on the movie.
Coming soon: Tetris, the movie! (Score:4, Interesting)
Hey, if it's half as good as Tetris: The Movie [youtube.com] I'll probably go see it.
I don't know what is more ludicrous (Score:2, Redundant)
Somebody buying the right, or someone concern about doing "right by the 30-year-old game,".
Seriously, doing right? it's a fucking shoot the rocks line drawn game. Don't get me wrong, I dropped plenty of money in the machine and had a good time playing it, but please.
I wuold love to see Bay do this movie. Maybe a story about a team that's supposed to clear the way for the minug crew. ON the way some bad ass aliens decide to blow them up, and they ahve to outsmart them.
It could just eb an alien shoot em up; w
No, wait, this could work (Score:5, Funny)
They'd have to change their revenue model, though. Instead of walking up to the movie theater and paving $10 (or more) for a ticket to watch ALL of the movie, you pay $.25 and then get to watch the first 3 minutes of the movie. Want more movie? Pay another quarter. And another. And another. And another.
There, that'd REALLY replicate the experience of Asteroids on the big-screen.
This Enders Game (etc)?? (Score:3, Insightful)
If this gets made into a movie before something like Enders Game, I'm giving up completely on HollyWood.
I'm tired of seeing horrible movie after horrible movie come out, when there are fantastic stories waiting to be made into great movies (or, be done horribly, I'll concede).
Video game movies just don't work.
ET? (Score:5, Funny)
Just as long as they don't make a movie out of that ET the Extra-Terrestrial Atari game. That one sucked!
Why rip John Turtorro? (Score:2)
Pong the Movie! (Score:4, Funny)
Bruce Willis: More english! More english! Yeeeeaaaahh....
[Bruce leaps to safety as paddle explodes in fireball]
Re:Pong the Movie! (Score:5, Funny)
The Preview:
"In a world gone mad..."
Bruce: There are two sides to this!
Samuel L. Jackson: Dammit, I know how to play the game!
"People cry out for justice..."
Vin Diesel: When it comes at you, you better be ready.
Uma Thurman: I'll send it right back at them!
"and there is only one way to turn..."
Patrick Stewart: Is there any point to this back and forth?
Joe Pesci: The point is to win, and I hate to lose.
[action music, explosions, car chases, screen fades to black]
Pong! (comming this summer to a theater near you)
[boop... boop... be-boop...]
Parent
Really scraping the bottom of the barrel here (Score:2)
Hollywood is really stuck for ideas. They've used up all the classic fables. They've used up the better cartoon characters. They've gone though the action figures. ("Transformers 2?" Coming up next, "GI Joe") The better video games have been done.
Every once in a while there's a successful original ("Up" being the latest example) but that's rare.
Top 10 Game To Movies Film (Rotten Tomatoes) (Score:5, Informative)
You know, with odds like this the popcorn fun will come from watching how badly it bombs at box office.
LORD would make a better movie (Score:3, Funny)
Legend of the Red Dragon, of course. It could be the only movie where the badass hero gets a vd from the babe.
Actually, maybe that wouldn't make a good movie either.
If you've been in denial all this time: (Score:2)
Instead of Asteroids (Score:2)
I guess the problem is that today's movie executives grew up watching TV, playing video games, and reading comic books, instead of visiting a library.
I don't know... (Score:2)
Let's make this into a game (Score:2)
Ok. Try to come up with a video game - any video game - that would have a dumber movie premise. Go ahead. There are plenty of posts about this with people saying "no way this has to be a joke". So let's try to top Hollywood here. Let's try to come up with something even dumber. Classic arcade or modern game, doesn't matter.
We've already seen Pong in this thread. That's a good one. Post more like that. Something dumber than Asteroids: The Movie.
If you can.
I'll start the bidding with Marble Ma
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Frogger. There's just no way to make that movie that doesn't involve a frog.
Stanley Kubrick (Score:5, Funny)
The end could be a 20 minute pyrotechnic hallucination, where we - the viewer - no longer understand if the little ship or the rocks themselves are the protgaganist - Haley Joel Osment could stand in as a lost teenager, piloting the ship - never knowing why he is shooting the rocks, or even if he is human. On the side of his ship is painted the words "Me love you long time...", being both a metaphor and a literal phrase of what the ship is doing to the rocks.
Later, we found out that a secret sex cult has arranged the rocks to bang into each other for the pleasure of its sadistic members, who wear masks shaped like big asteroids. Lee Ermey marches in and screams "what is your major malfunction, did mommy and daddy not show you enough love?" to the cult. and of course, the movie ends with a Malcom McDowell voiceover while we see Jack Nicholson frozen in place on the asteroid surface.
Oh Stanley - had you only been here to do it!
2D (Score:5, Interesting)
The story is told from the point-of-view of the spacecraft's pilot. But it's a two-dimensional universe, so the pilot sees nothing, because the lines he's looking at have no depth.
Let's grant some creative license and assume that the lines can be seen by the pilot. His field of view is just a line, with line segments on it. He needs to rotate around, looking at line segments. If a line segment appears to be getting longer over time, it could mean that an asteroid is approaching, or it could be that the larger part of an asteroid is just rotating into view. He fires at it, and the line segment breaks into two line segments, one of which is getting bigger, but drifting to the right, while the other gets smaller and smaller, apparently receding. Or, maybe they're entirely different objects, it's hard to tell.
The pilot pushes the thrust button. Some of the line segments shift their positions, some get longer, some get shorter. He realizes that moving around just makes things more difficult to keep track of, and that it's better to stay in one place and rotate quickly. But it's a lesson that's come too late; he's moving, and it's hard to stop. He could spin around 180 degrees and try to slowly thrust to a stop, but that means losing vision in the direction he's moving for too long. So he lays into the rotation control and starts firing blindly. That, too, is a bad move; soon the line segments are everywhere. And now, because there is so much variety in their absolute sizes, it's impossible to tell how close each one actually is. It might be a small one about to smash into him, or it might be a big one far away.
Suddenly, two line segments of about equal size converge. But they don't appear to be a threat because the converged segment is moving harmlessly to the right. Suddenly, the segment becomes two, and the truth becomes sickeningly clear: an asteroid moving laterally past his field of vision was concealing another asteroid coming right at him. He tries to rotate into firing position, but it's too late. He's only been on the board for ten excruciating seconds, but at last his mission is over.
Re:What's next? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, it's just your post that is affected by the dangling sarcasm.