I know why Avatar is good. And I know a kid's show can have that much fightin g and still stay a kid's show. I wasn't trying to say Avatar isn't similar. You didn't understand what I meant.
I'm sorry if you felt slighted by my comments, I wasn't trying to imply that you were ignorant of
anything. I
perceived what you said to mean that you wanted an Animorphs movie to be more like Avatar than it already is, I simply explained why, in my opinion, that wouldn't be possible if one remained true to the source material. They weren't adventurers, and they didn't have that option; there was no army, no shield, yet for what they went through there were plenty of times that they just screwed around with their morphing power. They played on the thermals, swam with the dolphins, ate trash as flies and ran through mazes as rats.
In any event when expressing my opinion I tend to trail off and say whatever it occurs to me to say when I think whatever I think (this is why I utterly fail and staying on topic most of the time) so I may have just been ranting in general more than missing the point of your post, for that I again appologize. Also this post ended up being something of a rant, that's just who I am I guess
Now I've considered that any Animorphs movie wouldn't contain the final arc, which to me was the only one that got truly gruesome, a good first movie for Animorphs would either be one of the chronicles, or cover the first (maybe first few) books and with the exception of Elfangor's death, the sharks turning on each other, nothing in books 1 through 5 seemed
that gruesome, book 2 was fairly tame, book 4 had some exploding taxxons, in book 6 they do boil those Yeerks, something the Yeerks themselves didn't seem properly concerned about in the TV show, but the harshest thing in the early books seems to be Tobias' suicide attempt, which would be downplayed in the movie if it even made it in there so really I don't see any Animorphs movie being the
Saving Private Ryan of kids' cinema, we're probably in for a fairly tame ride.
Animorphs can be better than the TV show, but it doesn't need to be as bad as the books.
There can still be the great charactarization of the team. There can still be good battles and dark times. But it doesn't need to be as gruesome as the books, or push some message that most people aren't going to care about.
As I've already said I don't see what's so gruesome about the books on the whole since they screw around more than they actually fight and no movie would show the details of Elfangor's death, would be really unlikely to show Tobias attempted suicide, and would handle the boiling of the yeerks as the killing of pests rather than the slaughter of living, thinking individuals.
When it comes to messages though if you mean environmentalist messages and animal conservation most people
do care actually, I know there are plenty of people who don't care that Cheetahs and Tigers are pretty much about to go extinct, or that the whales are still being hunted, or about deforestation and all that but a lot of people
do care, this probably
isn't what you meant but the message
I felt was pushed on me most from Animorphs was environmentalism. You can have an environmentalist message in Animorphs while still being subtle, just show off some neat animals and do something to imply that kids should maybe try looking up information on the animals they liked, might even get some of the movie going kids reading.
Now if you mean the whole "war is hell" and "it only ends in pain" message then . . . sadly you're very correct, the average person
doesn't care about the reality of war simply because it's too terrible to
want to think about. That's why we have actors screaming "This . . . is . . . SPARTA!" instead of actual historically accurate movies. People need the BS of
300 because the real battle would have been really horrifying, would have left a lot of movie goers shaking their heads and leaving the theater early. War just isn't entertaining and people go to movies to be entertained.
That's why historically accurate war movies are few, far in between, and generally not well received. The animorphs movie will likely either be aimed at little kids and therefore contain nothing more violent than what you'd see in Inspector Gadget (which wasn't a bad show, I'm just saying it wasn't very violent . . . not that it needed to be) aimed at older kids and so contain milder violence where nobody dies or bleeds, like the early edited episodes of Naruto,
or it might just be aimed at the people most likely to make it successful (young adults who read the books growing up and would show up just for nostalgia) and be about as violent as a Star Wars movie, just one or two actual action scenes with for the most part no blood, but fast paced and intense combat. Frankly I'm rooting for the last one, but I'd settle for any of the three as long as the movie itself is actually good.
You don't have to worry about gore, guts and such, no one would green light an Animorphs movie like that. The sad thing is that while Animorphs isn't based on a real war it could be treated like a war movie, it could be one of the better fictional war movies, but it
won't be. Whoever takes it up, if they do, will want to make money, not art, no studio these days seems all that interested in art so much as how much money they can make off the ticket sales, if the film just happens to be good well that's peachy, if it makes more money than it cost them they're satisfied.
So I think it'll be an adventure story, no one dies, no one bleeds, the story will be overly simplified not just so new viewers can understand it but to the point where they can understand it without actually paying attention, and I'll be mocked by everyone I know for going to see it. As long as it's worth the money I spend on the ticket though, I guess I really won't care.
So if the movie is an adventure story, and in the spirit of trying to force myself back on topic, I say get Tim Curry for Visser Three, he won't need to be menacing but he can act like he
thinks he is, get Jason Bateman for Chapman, he can pull off a convincing two-faced assistant principal, but if you're going to show the flip/flop freak out of book 2 then Bill Murry might actually be the better choice because I utterly believe he can do that, though for overall villain's right hand man I think Bateman could look more menacing.
I still say get unknowns for the kids just because even in a not-so-violent Animorphs film you just cannot cast any actor I know of who'd be the right age, and perfect for the role, but whoever you get make them read no less than two of the actual books, The Invasion and one that has their character narrating (in the case of the actor playing Jake, he may
not simply read The Invasion twice
) but I still think it needs to be animated, rendering the age of the cast irrelevant anyway.
And if it gets far enough let the Olsen twins play Taylor and Tobias in Taylor morph, that way they can look the part and
I at least would totally buy that one of them is insane
