Land of the Lost movie

[Murat, Esq.]

For a while now I've been aware that LAND OF THE LOST was being made into a feature film. Only recently did I find out it was going to be (a) a comedy, (b) starring Will Ferrell, and (c) have no child characters.

Grrr.

Okay, I've got nothing against Ferrell, and a few of his movies I've liked. There is also a certain cute inside-jokeyness to making the man who played Marshall Willenholly in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back as the star of a LotL movie, and I think he could probably play it straight and do adequately.

But no -- its not going to be straight.

The original LotL from 1974 was hard SF compressed into a format just comprehensible enough to blow the top of the head off a reasonably intelligent child in the 6-12 year old range, which is exactly what it did to me. As cheesy as it was-- and it was very cheesy indeed -- that show was hardcore SF in a fashion almost nothing else I've seen ever has approach.

The writers on the original LotL included David Gerrold and D.C. Fontana of classic Star Trek fame; Ben Bova, Theodore Sturgeon, Larry Niven and more. Although the really bad special effects and shots of Holly riding Dopey the Dinosaur make one vaguely remember it as camp or kitsch, it really wasn't done for laughs at all. In its own way, LotL was more serious SF than any incarnation of the Star Trek franchise.

But even more annoying to me than the let's-play-it-for-laughs is the exclusion of children. How much SF has been produced for children that didn't make the equation Child = Stupid? I'll tell you: what Madeleine l'Engle wrote, what Robert Heinlein wrote before he became obsessed with Free Love and incest, and the original Land of the Lost.

So now they are taking children out of the equation.

Grrr.

[Berin Kinsman]

>The Land was almost certainly better categorized as an artificial pocket universe removed from our own space-time.

Oh, yeah.

Like LOST.

[Lon Sarver]

Hm. "Land of the..."

You don't suppose...

Nah. We haven't seen any Sleestak living in the DHARMA hatches.

Yet.

[Berin Kinsman]

Are you sure? Because Ethan had them bug eyes. And I think a shaved Chaka would look a lot like Ben...

[Lon Sarver]

Dude! Lostzilla could be a mutated form of Grumpy the Tyrannosaur!

[Sir Golgotha, KEoPS]

"We haven't seen any Sleestak living in the DHARMA hatches."

And you won't. They wouldn't have survived in a world of Humans for hundreds of millions of years (or just hundreds of years, depending), without being very clever at hiding. And if they were able to escape from a pocket dimension, then they must be really very clever.

[Berin Kinsman]

Four words:

Clint

Howard

As

Chaka.

He'd work for scale and wouldn't need much makeup.

[Sir Golgotha, KEoPS]

Or Clint Eastwood as Grumpy?

[Deidzoeb]

Good news in the war against crappy remakes:

"The film ended up costing an estimated $100 million and earned only $65 million at the worldwide box office. Universal studio heads Marc Shmuger and David Linde were subsequently fired."

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/hollywoods-overpaid-stars/story?id=9...

That'll learn 'em!

[Sir Golgotha, KEoPS]

That's doubtful. Higher-ups in an organisation tend to be remembered more for the scale ($100 million movie) than for the disaster itself (losing $35 million). They will likely profit from this in the long-run.