Thursday, January 22, 2009

This Just Seems . . . Wrong

Tom and Jerry head to the bigscreen - Entertainment News, Film News, Media - Variety: "Warner Bros. is turning to Tom and Jerry to create its own 'Alvin and the Chipmunks'-like family franchise.

Plans are to bring the constantly warring cat and mouse to life as CG characters that run around in live-action settings.

Studio-based Dan Lin, currently producing the upcoming 'Sherlock Holmes' and exec producer on 'Terminator: Salvation,' will adapt the classic Hanna-Barbera property as an origin story that reveals how Tom and Jerry first meet and form their rivalry before getting lost in Chicago and reluctantly working together during an arduous journey home."

4 comments:

Fred Blosser said...

How many cliches and stale ideas are packed into those three sentences? I see six offhand.

Scott D. Parker said...

This is what I wrote on EW.com:
My biggest concern: voices. T&J don't talk, as a rule (broken, occasionally, back in the original 114). The 1992 movie was horrible b/c Tom's voice was an adult and Jerry's was a kid. T&J are both adults and, as such, should have adult voices. Now, I didn't think we needed Jim Carrey's Grinch (which needed a backstory to fill 90 minutes) but I've come to appreciate it. I don't care how T&J met...but it might have possibilities. I just hope they have Spike, Tyke, Butch, and the other cats along the way. And, I hope, they'll take the 114 as gospel and refer back to them, like the recent Tales of T&J cartoons did.

Cap'n Bob said...

Hanna-Barbera? I remember them being from MGM when I saw them in the movie theater.

In the words of Seinfeld, this has disaster written all over it.

Jayme Lynn Blaschke said...

Show of hands of all those sick of contrived origin stories.

Right.

Tom & Jerry should have no origin. They are Eternal Archetypes, feline and rodent personifications of the Platonic ideal of chaos incarnate. The Yin and Yang of mayhem. Any successful Tom & Jerry adaptation MUST NOT lose sight of this core fact, and rather than schmaltzy bonding, there must be destruction and carnage for 90 glorious minutes.

Plus, Tom's zoot suit would help. And Spike & Tyke. Can't do a proper Tom & Jerry without Spike & Tyke.