Imagine Hollywood as the mad doctor in some sort of horror movie, crafting homogenous monsters that exist only to create suffering and pain. Yet, these monsters wear paper masks resembling the appearance of pop culture icons so as to integrate themselves into society. Yet, everyone can recognize that underneath the Mickey Mouse mask is a ten-foot tall abomination and so they stay far away. And then Dr. Hollywood shakes his fist in rage, completely oblivious to how anyone could possibly see past the brilliant disguises his monsters wear. Dr. Hollywood then comes to the conclusion that the faces on the paper masks his monsters hide under just aren't popular enough with the modern audiences so he just keeps making lousy paper masks based on IPs like The Fantastic Four and Peter Pan. Much to his surprise, the masks don't work and his evil plan to infiltrate his creations into society fails over and over. And yet, Dr. Hollywood just keeps trying to hide his horrible monsters underneath the look of recognizable characters and properties, but people keep avoiding them because they can clearly recognize that each creature is just the same old crap Dr. Hollywood keeps making.

And now, Dr. Hollywood plans on releasing even more monsters and is disguising them with the following IPs.

The Lion King

Disney doesn't even respect its own intellectual property, so they're squeezing 1994's The Lion King for the last few drops of money that might still be inside. The success of the live action remake of The Jungle Book has convinced Disney that their old cartoons are still profitable. Rinse and repeat is the only thing that Hollywood knows how to do, so this time they're doing it with what was at one time their most prolific films. K̶i̶m̶b̶a̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶W̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ ̶L̶i̶o̶n̶ The Lion King is being helmed by Jon Favreau, who was behind the earlier Jungle Book adaptation.

While The Jungle Book wasn't a bad movie, it completely missed the point of the original Jungle Book cartoon. Spoiler warnings if you missed it in theaters and still care to watch it. While the original book by Rudyard Kipling was about the relationship between man and animal, the Disney classic was about a young boy growing into maturity. Here's a hint about metaphors, any time there's a story about a boy having to make a journey through a mysterious or magical world, it almost always represents puberty. Mowgli is forced to leave the jungle, discovering just what it means to be “man” instead of the animal he's been raised to view himself as. Despite his insistence on staying in the jungle (which represents childhood,) Bagheera (who represents responsibility) pushes him to go to the “man village” (which represents maturity.) Along the way, he meets Baloo (who represents the carelessness of youth) who encourages Mowgli to stay with him, until Mowgli is kidnapped by King Louie who tries to imitate humanity but fails to understand what that truly means and only wants fire (which represents power.) In the end, Shere Kahn attacks Baloo (the carelessness of youth) only to be defeated by Mowgli using that which can only be created by man: fire (power.) In the end, Mowgli himself leaves the jungle (childhood) behind after gaining the attention of a female human, thus finally reaching maturity. Mowgli is supposed to leave the jungle to signify his growing up.

The remake throws that out the window and after killing Shere Kahn, Mowgli decides to stay with his wolf family. It completely contradicts the rest of the story. What's even worse is the fact that the remake even enforces Mowgli's humanity much more than the cartoon- in the remake he uses tools unlike the animals. And the animals find themselves threatened by Mowgli's “tricks” to show that Mowgli's human nature is alienating him from his animal friends! Why would they put that in the movie if they were just going to forget about all of it in the film's resolution? It'd be like if Simba defeated Scar and then decided to go back to Timon and Pumba because he doesn't want to be king.

And I wouldn't be surprised if that's what Disney does with this Lion King remake. Or if they make Christopher Walken voice one of the characters and then make him sing “Hakuna Matata” out of absolutely nowhere for no reason.

I'm not against the concept of a live action Lion King, but that would mean sacrificing some of the cartoonish elements of the original film. Timon and Pumba would probably take up a lot less screen time and the musical numbers would interrupt the more realistic tone that live action would bring. But if they can't get James Earl Jones to voice Mufasa like in the original, they should just abandon the project alltogether.

Portal

Damn you, J.J. Abrams! You already smeared Star Trek and Star Wars with your greasy paws! On top of that, you revived the atrocious beast that was the hand-held footage genre! What more could you possibly take from us? Leave Portal alone! You have no place in the realm of video game adaptation! Go back to making pilots for successful TV shows!

According to recent news, Abrams is in talks with Valve- the game company that sits on a platinum throne made from smelted “Best Game Company of All Time” trophies. There's talk of both the Half-Life series and the Portal series becoming films. Adaptation of video games has never, ever resulted in a movie that was any better than “alright, I guess.” So taking one of gaming's biggest titles and adapting it to film has to be a very cautious and meticulous process.

The thing about Half-Life and Portal is that besides being ground breaking and unique in their design, they had stories that told exclusively through the eyes of a protagonist that doesn't speak. The story was also integrated with the design, cutscenes were integrated into the gameplay so it was seldom ever interrupted and the player could be fully immersed.

Film has a saying- show don't tell. This means that the audience should be shown physically what is happening rather than having it explained to them via dialogue. Movies, ideally, would have as little dialogue as possible. Similarly, video games have their own version of this rule- do don't show. In other words, when it comes to gaming, the player should feel in control of the action going on rather than having the controls taken away from them to show them something to carry the plot along. In Portal 2, rather than simply showing the protagonist (Chell) pushing the button that awakens the villain (Glados) the game has the player physically make Chell press the button to progress.

Movies can't do that. Movies have characters who talk so that they can build relationships with other characters and they show things because the audience can't control the characters themselves. That element of personal inclusion will be lost on any film that tries to capture that story. Half-Life and Portal work as well as they do because they are games! Great level design does not translate into film!

And why J.J. Abrams of all directors? Were there no other directors who wanted to take on this extremely lucrative franchise? Wasn't anyone able to get Joss Whedon or James Gunn? Were they too busy with Marvel? Did anyone ask Zemeckis if he was up for the task- he's known for his contributions to geek culture and technical know-how. Both Whedon and Gunn are directors are known for their ability to inject the kind of tongue-in-cheek humor with fast paced action and character like the games are known for. Abrams isn't exactly a bad director, but he's never exactly been good either. He has no trademark style beyond his moronic concept of “The Mystery Box” and his best works have all just been imitations of what better directors have already done.

Also, what the hell happened to Shane Acker's project with Valve? They were supposed to be finished with “Deep” ages ago!

The Dark Tower

Fans everywhere rejoiced when this Stephan King series was finally coming to film after years and years of demanding for it. Some huge names are in it as well, like Idris Elba who is playing the main character himself. Directors have been trying for ages to get this project off the ground. The demand is high, and there are big names who obviously want to make this movie. There are big plans for it! What could possibly go wrong?

They're releasing it in February.