HOLLYWOOD (CAP) - Anticipation over the release of Marvel's The Avengers has studios
scrambling to bring other superhero properties to the big screen,
including a live-action film featuring Wendy and Marvin from the Super Friends TV series.
"These are some of the most beloved characters in the history of the
comics, or at least the Saturday morning television versions of the
comics," said producer Martin Shafer. "Who will ever forget their
adventures doing, you know, all those things they did with the Super
Friends?"
In the series, neither character seemed to have any special abilities to
speak of, and no reason was ever given as to why they apparently lived
with the Super Friends in the Hall of Justice.
"But in the movie you'll learn a lot more about them," said Shafer,
pointing to a picture of the duo from the 1970s series. "You'll learn
why Marvin had this big M on his shirt, and you'll see the origins of
their torrid romance ... um, unless they're brother and sister, in which
case, not so much. Also, I'm pretty sure that's a dog."
Asked point blank if he knew anything about the Marvin and Wendy
characters beyond what was shown in the picture, Shafer paused for
several seconds and then admitted that didn't. "But I do know that the
rights to the characters had lapsed, so I bought them," he added.
Shafer, who also plans to direct the film, says he had hoped to cast Zac
Efron, most recently of The Lucky One,
and Jennifer Lawrence of The Hunger
Games as Marvin and Wendy, but negotiations have proven
difficult, given that he did not know who their agents were. However, he
said, "I do have tentative agreements from The Situation
and Tara Reid," the latter of whom appeared in Shafer's Human Centipede sequel.
Shafer noted that Reid would satisfy his investors' concerns that the
movie's Wendy be sufficiently well-endowed so as to fit in among the
more modern, improbably
busty superheroines. "We will not be making the same mistake as the
Superman reboot, which critics and fanboys agreed suffered from a lack of bosoms,"
he said.
When I was a kid, our family went to the movies a lot. But I don’t think my parents did this to foster a love of the cinema, or else they wouldn’t have taken us t a Disney double feature of “Song of the South” (one of the few films to achieve the elusive combination of being both racist and boring) and “Condorman” (you can Google it).
No, they did it because movies were something you could do with a family of five and still have enough money left to buy groceries and electricity. This was back when you could go to a family film with less than $50 in your pocket — today you could only do that if you left the kids in the car, which is frowned upon. Still, until recently you could still get away with not spending a fortune if you took certain steps, such as going to an early matinee, and sneaking in the candy in plastic baggies taped to your torso.
But keeping costs down is about to get harder, with the news that admission for 3-D movies has just gone up 20 percent. And I’m sure this will soon apply to all movies, since apparently if you don’t make your movie in 3-D these days, James Cameron will come to your house and kick you in the knees.
In fact, the Wall Street Journal just cited a theater I’ve been to often — the AMC in Danvers, Mass. — as the poster child for the price increases, with 3-D tickets shooting up to $17.50. (That would be for one.) So if we do the math, we’re talking a good $70 ($70!) just for admission, and an easy $30-plus for popcorn, nachos and a Coke that strains the sides of the cup holder like Kevin Smith in a coach seat.
But surely the modern 3-D movie is worth the $100-plus you’ll drop during those two hours at the cinema? Well, let’s see what Roger Ebert had to say about it on Twitter: “3-D,” wrote Ebert, “is a distracting, annoying, anti-realistic, juvenile abomination to use as an excuse for higher prices.” Hmm … Maybe he’s just saying that because he got cheated out of seeing the fish pâté pop off the table in “My Dinner with Andre.”
It’s tempting to dismiss Ebert as some Luddite traditionalist, but that’s hard to argue about a guy who’s on Twitter 24 hours a day. Besides, I know that if I had paid $17.50 to see “G-Force,” which is basically a 90-minute demonstration (in three dimensions) of how gerbils have bowel problems just like the rest of us, I would have returned my 3-D glasses stained with my own tears, had I not hidden them in my coat so I could wear them to the beach this summer.
It wouldn’t be as depressing if movies weren’t just one of many formerly economical pastimes soon to be out of reach of people with incomes still in the five figures. Like bowling, where they now charge you by the hour so they can factor in the 10 minutes it takes you to get the knots out of your shoelaces, or video arcades, where you have to spend $20 just to bribe the carnies not to kidnap you.
Still, not every theater has gone over to the dark side — I just took my son to Cinema 95 in Salisbury, Mass., which appears to be owned by actual humans, and two tickets for “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” came to just $13. It was in glorious 2-D, which means none of the boogers flew out of the screen at me. I’d have been willing to pay extra for that.
But if eventually all movies are 3-D and charge so much for the privilege that we only get to go once or twice a year, I guess it will be time to find something else to do, like stand in Best Buy and watch whatever’s showing on the display models. Or maybe just joining Netflix for $8.99 and watching whatever they send us at home.
At least there we can keep the gerbils at a safe distance.
This column appeared originally in North Shore Sunday. Peter Chianca is a managing editor for GateHouse Media New England. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/pchianca. To receive At Large by e-mail, write to info@chianca-at-large.com, with the subject line “SUBSCRIBE.”
