Masters of the Universe
So here's what we're gonna do. Take one kick-ass children's cartoon show, or, for the more cynical among you, take one long advertisement for a kick-ass action figure toy range, and throw out most everything except for the very basics: He-Man. The Sorceress. Skeletor. Greyskull. Now look around at fantasy type films that are popular with the kiddies and appropriate all their best parts into the script. Hey that Star Wars flick did a bit of all right, didn't it? Skeletor can still look like a skeleton, but basically make him Darth Vader. No, Vader AND the Emperor, all in one. He will even get thrown down a big hole at the end EXACTLY like the Emperor does in Jedi. And give him storm troopers, loads of ‘em. But make them black instead of white so we can't be accused of ripping them off. Now we need a phrase the kids'll love…something to put on t-shirts…let's see, "May The Power Be With You"? Nah, too obvious, even for us. "Let Greyskull Live Long and Prosper"? Bit dorky. How about we make it something bland and meaningless like "Good Journey", but have them make some kind of sign when they say it, so it looks like they have their own special language on Eternia, even though they speak perfect English. What's that? The guy we got for He-Man can't speak English? Crap. Pass me that pen. There we go, he's only got four lines now. Problem solved. And we'll hire him a speech coach, because God knows “I Have The Power” is one of the hardest phrases in the English language to wrap your tongue around. Now we've got some other killer lines in here too, so make sure every time something important is said the actor looks right down the camera when delivering it – as if they're speaking directly to the audience! The kids will be so giddy they'll shit themselves. I know we've thrown out 95% of the source material, but make sure we keep He-Man looking EXCATLY as he did in the cartoon. We can't mess with that. I'm talking full mullet and skimpy shorts. He needs to look like he should be leading a float in Mardi Gras. Well if he has a problem with it we'll just extradite him back to Sweden or Germania or wherever the fuck he's from. Oh – and I've looked over the sketches for Eternia and you know how it looks? Fucking expensive. Let's make it that they spend most of the time on Earth so we don't have to build many sets. It'll be one of those fish out of water things. We'll have them eat chicken and they're all "what is this chick-en?" because they don't know what chicken is! It'll be hilarious! Write that down. Now what else do we need? Ahh, yes, music. Films have music don't they? Well everyone liked that Superman theme song, right? Take it, change three notes, they won't notice. In fact just get me a poor man's John Williams. And hire a first-time director that's not gonna bitch about all of this, and if he does, we'll just stop the shooting and let him sort out the mess in the editing suite. Excellent, I think we have ourselves a motion picture people! Good work everyone. See you all on Tuesday.