A Thundarr The Barbarian movie?

M

Mr.Dude.Man

New member
If you had the chance to make a film based on Thundarr The Barbarian, who would you get to cast in the film? If you ask me, I know who could make a great Princess Ariel.....................EVA LONGORIA!
 
Well I know how I WOULDN'T make it.

Anybody who has seen the show knows that there was an apocalyptic event that devastated much of the Earth; the opening talks about it. If I was making a Thundarr movie, I would downplay that aspect in favor of the action-adventure elements...just like the TV show does. Besides, there's too much "There's no hope, we're all going to die"-type dark melodrama in movies as it is; I would be going for something that reflects that there is always hope. That said, I would be going for at least a PG rating without any swearing or "grown-up talk" (i.e., no "romantic tension" between Thundarr and Ariel). In other words, I wouldn't be going for a PG-13 rated Transformers-type movie that appeals more to teenage-or-older fans, and/or focuses more on superficial production values such as "big-budget" SFX (there's more to it than this, but that's another story).

Also, I wouldn't make a "tribute/parody" film either, because then it wouldn't a remake, it would be sarcasm.

As for casting, I would focus on developing the script and the concept, etc first before even considering that. I may even decide to cast total unknowns into the roles. Although for Ookla, I would try to talk to the family of Henry Corden (best known as the second voice of Fred Flintstone) in order to use his vocal effects for the character.

In all, I would be staying true to how Ruby and Spears idealized and produced their show, but if I could, I would try to add to it w/o compromising their original vision.
 
A Thundarr movie?! What next?:D :p ;)

I second the motion to contract with the Corden family to reuse Henry Corden's original vocal effects for Ookla, though Ookla himself would be CGI, methinks.

Thundarr: I'm not sure Christian Bale would be a good choice. Had someone thought of it, say, 10 years ago, you'd probably have gotten Kevin Sorbo, who's already done Hercules & Kull. Someone must've gotten to his agent, since Kevin's in "Meet The Spartans". Gerard Butler, maybe?

Ariel: Eva Longoria Parker? Fuhgeddaboutit! Her new movie laid an egg, didn't it? Swamped by Hannah Montana, right? Have Sarah Michelle Gellar dye her hair black, then fit her into Ariel's blue leotards and yellow boots.
 
Nathan Jones as Thundarr (He was in Jet Li's Fearless.)
Zhang Ziyi as Ariel (Ariel is Chinese)
Lou Ferrigno voice of CGI OOKla The Mok

Marc Singer as Gemini the wizard

Directed by Don Coscarelli ( The Beastmaster)
 
Master Toon, One episode of Thundarr was set in China Town, and Ariel started talking about her family. I am not sure it was explicitly stated Ariel is Chinese, but I do think it is implied.
 
Thundarr The Barbarian would make a great movie! I've actually started a very similar thread on another website. Here's who I think should play each character...

Thundarr The Barbarian

Kevin Sorbo: He has the right size, build, and look. He also did quite a good job in Kull The Conqueror and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. His hair's the wrong colour, but it can be dyed.

Tyler Mane: Also the righ size, build, and look, he has the added advantage of having blonde hair. While his roles in X-Men, Halloween, and The Black Mask 2, weren't all that challenging, he did quite well as Hardcore in How To Make A Monster. I think he's ready to take the next step in his career.

Bottom Of The Barrel: Dulph Lundgren (He-Man in Masters Of The Universe), Vin Diesel (XXX in XXX), Kane Hodder (Jason Voorhees in Friday The 13th Part VII - X), Bill Goldberg (one of the UniSols in Universal Soldier 2), "Big Poppa Pump" Scott Steiner (former WCW World Heavyweight Champion), and Carrot Top. All of these guys are the right size, build, and have the right look for the role. Unfortunately they're all either too old or/and have questionable acting abilities.

Princess Ariel The Sorceress

Tia Carere: She's beautiful. She's Asian. She's athletic. She's played both a scholar (on Relic Hunter) and a sorceress (in Kull The Conqueror), and played them both very convincingly. I think she'd make a great Ariel.

Lucy Liu: Just as beautiful, Asian, and athletic as Tia Carere, she's also slightly better known due to her more successful film and TV career. I think Tia Carere looks more like Ariel, but Lucy Liu would probably draw a larger fanbase.

Kristin Kruek: She's beautiful, she's Asian (half white/half Chinese), and a good actress. She's played Lana Lang on Smallville for years, as well as Fiona on Eurotrip. I think she'd be great in the role.

Ookla The Mok

I wouldn't make Ookla a CGI character, that would just suck. I would find a really large actor and put him in a mok suit, much like what was done for Chewbacca in the Star Wars saga. Here are my choices for Ookla...

"The Big Show" Paul White: He's 7'2", weighs 500 lbs, and acted in Adam Sandler's The Water Boy (as Captain Insano), and Star Trek: Enterprise (as an alien). Also, he was a fan of Thundarr when he was a kid.

"The Geat Khali" Dalib Singh: He's 7'4", weighs 425 lbs, acted in Adam Sandler's remake of The Longest Yard and Steve Carels Get Smart. His English is atroacious, but that will only help the other actors during filming.

"El Gigante" Jose Gonsalez: He's 7'7", weghs about 450 lbs, and he's acted in Hercules In The Underworld and on an episode of TV's Baywatch. When he used to wrestle for the WWE as The Giant Gonsalez he used to have to dress up like a sasquatch. His English is almost as bad as The Great Khali's, but again that might be a good thing. Only real problem is I heard he retired from wrestling because of bad knees, so that might interfere with any action scenes.

Gemini or Sabien The Wizard

Gary Oldman: He played an excellent villain in both The Professional and Bram Stokers Dracula. He's very good at being sinister.

Michael Ironside: Playing villains is pretty much Michael Ironside's bread & butter. He's been the villain in The Watcher, Scanners, Highlander 2: The Quickening, Young Blades, just to name a few. Even his good guy characters have a somewhat sinister edge to them, like his character Tyler on V: The Miniseries and V: The Final Battle.

Kevin Spacey: A brilliant actor, he did a great job as John Doe in SE7EN, and as Kaizer Sosser/The Gimp in The Usual Suspects, as well as Lex Luthor in Superman Returns. He doesn't quite have the perfect look for the role the way Michael Ironside does, but he's close.

Writers

John Milius & Buzz Dixon: Buzz Dixon wrote the scripts for many of the episodes of Thundarr, and I understand he's already written a script for a feature length Thundarr movie. John Milius wrote and directed Conan The Barbarian, and did an awsome job too.

Oliver Stone: He cowrote Conan with John Milius. They were a great team then, they could be a great team again.

Directors

Peter Jackson: The reason? Five words. The Lord Of The Rings. 'Nuff said.

Steven Spielberg: The reason? Two words. Jurassic Park. 'Nuff said.

John Milius: The Reason? Three words. Conan The Barbarian. 'Nuff said.

Jerry Bruckheimer: The reason? Five words, The Pirates Of The Caribbean. 'Nuff said.

Other Directors: Ron Howard (Willow), and Rob Reiner (The Princess Bride). Both would do a more than adequate job. The one person who should never, ever,EVER, direct Thundarr is George Lucas. He'd just stick our three heroes, the chief villain, and a handful of extras in front of a green screen and add everything else with CGI. After the monumental failure of the Star Wars prequals, you'd think he'd learn his lesson. But he still insists that they're the best work he'd ever done.

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

I only have one choice for this one... George Lucas. I don't want him directing the movie, he would be perfect to bankroll the project. First of all, the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises have made him into a multibillionaire. Secondly, as his crappy Star Wars prequels prove, he'd be willing to finance just about anything. Third, with the similarities between Sun Swords and lightsabers, as well as wookiees and moks, any copy right arguments will be averted. Also any sound effects from the Star Wars archives could be used in the movies (lightsabre sound effects and wookiee speak).
 
I've got some Thundarr info for you guys if any of you are interested.

(EDIT: Items 1 and 2 removed for Toon Zone rule violations)

3) If you want to read more about Thundarr, fan fiction, fun facts, the Joe Ruby & Ken Spears interview, etc, you can log onto www.thundarr.com

4) If you want to play the Thundarr The Barbarian Role Playing Game Under The Broken Moon, log onto www.rpglibrary.org/settings/thundarr/

5) If you want to order the Thundarr action figures, log onto...
www.toynami.com.thundarr.html

6) If you want to see Teletoon Retro add Thundarr The Barbarian to their line up, email them at [email protected] and tell them so. If enough of us write in, there's a good chance that they'll listen.
 
The episode you're referring to is Battle Of The Barbarians. She tells Ookla that her ancestors likely lived in a place much like the Ancient Earth Chinatown they had just arrived at. As you said, they never openly reveal her racial heritage, but they do imply it. In my unofficial back story on Ariel for the fan fiction I'm working on, she's Japanese not Chinese. Still Asian though.
 
I agree with everything you said except for making the movie PG. It should deffinately be at the very least PG-13. Ruby & Spears original vision for the show was to push the envelope as much as the networks would allow. That was the key to the show's success, and I think part of the reason it was cancelled prematurely. It was as dark and as violent as they could get away with making it. If you're going to make a live action movie version of the show, you have to also make it as dark and as violent as you can get away with. The action, the sexual tension between Thundarr and Ariel, everything should be bumped up to appeal to the target age demographic (which is the teen and higher crowd). Look at the Conan movies. Conan The Barbarian was rated R for sex & violence and was an awsome movie. Then Dino De Laurentis made the awful decision to hire someone other than John Milius (who wrote & drirected the first Conan) to write and direct Conan The Destroyer. And what happenned? The movie sucked! It sucked so bad they never bothered to make the third installment in the trilogy. I don't want to see that happen to Thundarr too. There are other examples too, like The Rock's remake of Walking Tall. The original was rated R for sex & violence, The Rock made a PG-13 version and it stunk up the theatre. There's an old saying, and it applies to this subject very well. "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than to beg for permission". Make the movie as violent and dirty and sexual as you can get it, then tone it down for the theatrical release. The added benefit of doing this is when it's released on DVD you can release an unrated director's cut as well and make even more money.
 
If it were to go animated, I'd go with a Motion Capture Animation film (like Polar Express or Beowulf) rather than traditional or CGI animation (like the original Thundarr series or the Star Wars: Clone Wars movie).
 
Like I said, I would be avoiding superficial production values. I also disagree about Ruby and Spears trying to "push the envelope". I've seen the show many times, and personally, I think they were just being themselves. It didn't feel any more "dark" or "light" then any other show they had done at the time, even though their previous show Fangface was a comedy, and that I think is a good thing. Also, I wouldn't be trying to please/kiss up to anybody. I would be doing a film that stays true to the what the show originally was: an animated series that aired on Saturday mornings. That said, I wouldn't be focusing on a specific "demographic"; that wouldn't be fair to the other viewers. I would be making this movie in the hopes that it will appeal to the widest audience possible. You mentioned the Conan movies, however, this isn't Conan the Barbarian we're talking about, it's Thundarr the Barbarian. That said, I would be focusing on that, because believe it or not, not everyone wants to see a "dark and violent" PG-13 rated movie with generic "Hollywood" writing, and the "grown-up talk" I mentioned (in the show, the "relationship", if any, between Thundarr and Ariel was never the point; they were just traveling companions). Anyone can do that. Obviously, there would be fighting at the very least, and thus I would be going for at least a PG rating like I said. In my honest opinion, to make the movie any other way, or even the way you suggest, would be--with all due respect--derivative from the original source material. Joe Ruby and Ken Spears were the original creators, and we really need to respect that.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the way you would make it--again, with all due respect--is the way everybody else would do it. I would personally seek to break the mold. Again, I wouldn't be doing this just please certain people, because you are never going please everybody. People often talk about "realism" in movies (and/or the lack of it). However, there's nothing "realistic" about the aforementioned generic "Hollywood" writing. IMPO, making a movie dark and violent with grown-up talk just for the sake of doing so isn't making a movie "realistic". There's a difference between realistic and superficial. Also, not everyone is easily impressed by flashy SFX, gritty production values, "grown-up talk" or other superficial production values. Thundarr the Barbarian doesn't have any of that, not because it was a SatAM animated series, and not because it was 1980, but because that was how Ruby and Spears operated; that's just how they were, and if I was making a Thundarr movie, while it obviously wouldn't be a carbon copy, I would nonetheless try to respect and preserve that.

Anyhow, none of this really matters because whether or not any Thundarr movie is made is at the discretion of Warner Bros., who owns most of the Ruby-Spears catalog.
 
If there could be a Thundarr movie, without Joe Ruby and Ken Spears involved, it won't work. Back to the movie, it should be in the same format of the TV show, science fiction, fantasy and mainstream action. Thundarr was clearly an action program, much like Flash Gordon and He-Man. If the movie could be made, it would be big budget or mostly shot in wreckage areas, and at the same time, there's still a matter of the horses- can they walk or run on wreckage areas without injuring their hooves? A Thundarr movie is a nice thought, but there are risks involved in making it.
 
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