Totally Random Animorphs Thoughts

[itw2009]

i'd buy it.

there's a lot to explore with that, too. hrmmm. have you seen any satisfactory fanfics on that note?

[pallosalama]

Unfortunately no. Maybe someone comes up with one sometime... though I would prefer author making it 

[NothingFromSomething]

i could barely tolerate 'the host'. how does this get screen time and animorphs doesn't?

Um, The Host is able to be mass-marketed and Animorphs involved 13 year olds basically in "Vietnam with Aliens"?  It's a no-brainer, something like The Host isn't going to incur the wrath of angry parents.  The target audience probably skews a little older too by a couple of years, so anything controversial in it's going to be diluted in terms of backlash.  That being said, I haven't seen it, been meaning to though.  Even if it is from the Twilight writer, the director's good and Saoirse Ronan's always pretty awesome in stuff.

It's just...yeah, even though they share similar themes the whole tone of The Host seems way less subversive and cause for "won't somebody think of the CHILDREN?!" reactions among the folks.

[itw2009]

well, i'll take that logic and apply it to animorphs.

i've read the host; i haven't seen the movie. you admit that a great director and great actors can alter the contents of a book when translating to the screen - for better (or worse). i'd submit to you, then, that a cast and crew could take the contents of animorphs and make the movie something palatable for a broader audience. ...if that is, indeed, what's stopping hollywood from making this happen.

anyway- side tangent!

[Stephquiem]

It is definitely true that a great cast can alter your perception of a movie. XD I saw The Book Thief awhile ago, which is based on one of my favorite books, and it took me a while after seeing it to decide I didn't like it because the acting was really good. It was just that the acting was all I liked. XD As a stand alone thing it was kind of blah run of the mill WWII flick. As an adaptation it cut out most of what made the book stand out. Like leaving out some of the most interesting aspects of its main characters o.o

...It's things like this that make me not overly optimistic about an Animorphs movie, even if we got one.

[itw2009]

four words. avatar: the last airbender.

[Stephquiem]

Why would you bring that up? We're never to speak of that.

[itw2009]

moohahahaha... er... put that grenade launcher down, eh?


but i think that it Can Be Done. animorphs: the movie. done. i offer lorde's 'everybody wants to rule the world' for soundtrack consideration.

[DinosaurNothlit]

Did you know there's a species of worm that requires below-freezing temperatures to survive?  For those who don't care to read the whole article, it notes that at temperatures above freezing, the worm's tissues start to fall apart and they basically melt.

. . . Perhaps the Venber were carbon-based, after all.

[donut]

I don't think an Animorphs movie can be done, for a lot of reasons.  First, I think it would take too much material to develop the characters and the conflict to cut into even a 3 hour movie.  But I also think it can't be done because of how much of the series is the character's thoughts.  Take away the internal thoughts and struggles, and it's just a kids book.  The internal struggle about what line the characters are willing to cross and how the characters behaved externally was a lot of times a bit different than how they thought internally.   Besides just the moral dilemmas there were how they believed they needed to look to others, Jake, Marco, and Rachel all were very aware of an image they needed to present to the group even if they didn't always feel that way.

Those internal struggles and the differences between what the characters are feeling and what they're showing can be done on screen, but it's hard, and it takes a lot of time to do.  A series might be able to if it had hour long episodes and a decent budget.  Homeland and Game of Thrones I think are some decent examples of showing the internal worlds of the characters, especially Homeland.  But I don't think anyone would sign off on doing that for something aimed at kids.

[NothingFromSomething]

Monologues and voiceover can be done, it's there a lot in noir type stuff.  But I think the way to go with that would just be as an opener to the story, a little "My name is.... ______ 30 seconds or so of monologue" at the start, kind of like the first Raimi Spiderman.

I've always thought maybe the best way to do Animorphs would be segmenting it a little, the "big event books" with some significant development and reasonably large scale would be movies, with an animated miniseries sort of bridging them.  But then you'd get a situation of people having to view the show between movies, and so many people wouldn't bother.

It's more just a combination of the special effects (live-action living things aren't quite there yet with CG, Avatar's close but even that's aliens, made up things where we're not intimately familiar with what they actually should look like) and more importantly content with Animorphs.  You've basically got two options: sanitize it so it's acceptable, or don't make it.  You don't get to do this the way the books were, not in reality.

[pallosalama]

I think that we can all pretty much agree that movie or few movies out of whole series wouldn't be good idea.
Series with episode of every books would be best choice if it was to ever happen.
I do have to say that animation might be better in terms of price and feasibility

[NothingFromSomething]

Right.  A high-quality, traditional/hand-drawn animated series, something like the '92-'98 Batman series, or the 90s Spawn show, with a PG-13 rating and the freedom that comes with it.  Would be the best way to go.

Even that, though, how do you justify it?  Anything Animorphs at this point would have to be going after a new audience, as the built-in fanbase isn't really large enough to substantiate it.  So in terms of just selling the thing, a movie's the way to go, chase the new people.  An animated show is costly, and the audience just isn't there.

[pallosalama]

I was thinking more about small project- Where group of skilled animators with animorphs interest would do it. I honestly don't think that many people outside existing fans would be interested about such, so it would work better in small scale.

[NothingFromSomething]

Yeah, it's been tried a couple of times, a series and various comics and stuff.  Never seems to eventuate, a little more ambitious than what's there to back it up or whatever.