The Lego Movie proved that just because a movie is basically a toy commercial, it doesn’t have to be bad. The Transformers franchise, two out of three live action G.I. Joe movies, and 2011’s Battleship proved that not everything is The Lego Movie.
But darn it all, that won’t stop Hasbro from branching out into the cinematic universe market, a tactic which, over the last 20 years, has gone famously well for franchises including Marvel and that’s the end of the list. The final moments of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts beckoned in a new era in which Autobots and G.I. Joes stand side by side. Fun? Sure. But is it enough?
Never. Nothing is ever enough. It’s time for Hasbro Entertainment to dump its Rubbermaid tub of action figures on the carpet and give us the billion-dollar CGI nonsense battle royale of intellectual properties that we earned, as a society, the second we stuck Chris Pratt on a motorcycle with velociraptors. Let’s get the Russo Brothers directing a three-part Scrabble crossover with the Weebles, and weep as a nation when, in a moment of heroic self sacrifice, the letter K falls down. Let’s see what life looks like through the eyes of a Go-Bot raised in a town made of Lincoln Logs. The question isn’t where to start, the question is where to stop. The answer is “never.” Here are some jumping off points, pulled straight from Wikipedia’s list of Hasbro properties.
6: Rock Lords
Based on what we’ve seen so far, it goes without saying that the higher-ups at Hasbro would sooner die choking on a Mighty Max than let the GoBots brand go un-adapted. It’s a movie about rocks that turn into robots, or maybe the other way around. It’s not important, the writers can figure that part out.
What is important is that, at the end of the movie, an enigmatic gentleman approaches Boulder, the fearsome tungsten leader of the heroic Rock Lords. This stranger says that he could use the help of a rock that turns into something, or maybe the other way around – again, that’s the writers’ problem. He hands Boulder a business card, identifying himself as Alpine, the expert mountain climber from the elite covert special operations unit known as G.I. Joe. Social media flips its lid.
5: Zack Snyder’s Littlest Pet Shop v My Little Pony: Friendship Was Never an Option
Okay, so here’s the elevator pitch: There’s this pet shop, right? A really little one. They specialize in unnaturally small pets with very large eyes. They’re on the brink of fiscal insolvency, on account of how all living things get terrifying when you shrink them down to a fraction of their regular size and give them giant eyeballs. It’s what scientists call “The Kristin Chenoweth Effect.”
Then, a breakthrough. The proprietor of the pet shop – which is little, maybe even the most little – discovers a species of sentient horses, also small. Customers go crazy for these things. The supply simply can’t keep up with the demand. The pet shop employees organize a raid on Equestria a la that scene from The Lost World where the corporation goes on dinosaur safari. The ponies, in direct contradiction to their edict regarding the magic of friendship, must go to war to protect their freedom. An hour and 45 minutes of speed-ramped, desaturated, blood-soaked action commences.
In the aftermath of the battle, the Littlest Pet Shop is visited by a mysterious figure, accompanied by his pet rottweiler, who says that he could make use of the business’s obviously war-ready creatures. In tandem, he and the dog hand over their business cards, identifying them as Mutt and Junkyard from the elite covert special operations unit known as G.I. Joe. The internet goes crazy.
4: Bop It: Chapter One
A CGI animated feature. The citizens of Bop Town live a simple, blissful life, bopping rocks in the bop mines to the rhythm of the all-encompassing voice in the sky. “Bop It!” the voice shouts, and they do, never stopping to think of what life might be like if they didn’t bop it.
But one little boy from Bop Town isn’t content to spend his life bopping things. He dreams of a world with two, maybe as many as four other options. Misunderstood and alone, he runs from his home, embarking on a journey that will take him to the Village of Twist and through Pull Valley, making friends along the way. Through the power of teamwork and turn-taking, he and his found family will face off against the villainous wizard Lord Not-Bopping-Or-Pulling-Or-Twisting-It-Fast-Enough. Celebrity voices are going to do a lot of the heavy lifting here in terms of drumming up audience interest.
Duke from the elite covert special operations unit known as G.I. Joe makes a cameo at the end – something about how he could use some help bopping Cobra. There’s a business card involved. It’s not Hasbro’s best crossover.
3: A direct, unflinching big-budget adaptation of Beetleborgs
‘90s kids will remember Big Bad Beetleborgs as the thing that their aunts got them for their birthday by accident instead of Power Rangers. If you’re not familiar, this show was stop-me-before-I-kill-again crazy. It was about three kids who got beetle-based super powers from a Jay Leno impersonator in a house full of Universal movie monsters. It lasted 88 episodes. None of this is a lie.
And Hasbro needs to embrace that. Don’t change a thing. Kids – especially contemporary kids – love Jay Leno, beetles, and Boris Karloff references. This movie needs to take the oversaturated second-string prepubescent Power Rangers and change them not one iota. Script to screen, tell the story of the Beetleborgs exactly the way it was told on Fox Kids back in 1996, only make it cost $235 million.
Epilogue: During the credits, Bumblebee from Transformers approaches the Beetleborgs. He explains that bumblebees and beetles are both bugs, so there’s a conceptual throughline here. Then he tells the Beetleborgs about these cool guys he just met from G.I. Joe, and he shows them the cool business card that they gave him. Film twitter messes its britches.
2: Potato Headwig
Chasing the heated, inescapable controversy from a couple of years ago RE: whether or not potatoes are boys, this shot-for-shot remake of Hedwig and the Angry Inch explores the complex nuances of gender identity as viewed through the lens of a plastic root vegetable that you can stick a mustache on.
At the end, after Potato Head has transcended societal expectations and ceded their stage persona to their long-suffering partner and guitarist, a Tonka truck, they are approached by a mysterious figure. He provides Potato Head with a business card, identifying himself as Zartan, Cobra’s resident master of disguise. He has work for a chameleonic potato, he says. Roll credits. The message boards lose their minds.
1: Tiger Electronics LCD Handheld Games in 3D
For an hour and a half, audiences watch a single, static wide shot of Mainframe from G.I. Joe, wordlessly playing through a stack of LCD handheld games by Tiger Electronics – Aladdin, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, Electronic Football. After beating the final game, he stands up, wipes his nose, and looks directly into the camera. “Well, now I know how to beat all those games,” he says.
He shuffles his feet self consciously for a full minute, then looks back at the camera.
“And knowing is–” and before he can finish, he’s cut off by the credits.