Tom and Jerry
Tonight it was announced that Warner Bros was developing a live-action/CG hybrid film around Tom and Jerry. In other words, Tom and Jerry are getting the Garfield and Alvin and the Chipmunks treatment where they’ll be computer-generated characters running around real sets. That’s disturbing enough, but it’s also mentioned that it’ll be “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.” That’s right, an origin story for Tom and Jerry. What exactly is it that anyone needs to know? One’s a cat and the other is a mouse. I think everyone knows the basis of their rivalry! Why does everything need an explanation, an actually laid out history? Not everything benefits, and Tom and Jerry are most certainly way beyond requiring a setup.
On a similar note, Disney recently revealed that it was fast-tracking 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo with McG at the helm and yes, it’s an origin story. I know that there was a brief recitation of Nemo’s history in The Mysterious Island but even if given by Jules Verne himself, it always struck me as lame and an anticlimactic reveal. For a character as enigmatic as Nemo is throughout 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (and the Disney adaptation), virtually any history would be disappointing. The beauty is in that mystery and in letting readers and viewers try to get to know him with what little he provides through his actions and politics. If you throw his life story and psychology out there in the open, it gets distinctly less interesting in my view.
Oh, and the title 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo is even worse than X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It sounds like a one-shot spin-off from a comic line.
