The Gritty Reboot: Gritty Reboots for Zorro, Inspector Gadget & Narnia

Transcript

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Welcome back to No Plotton Only Lore. This week brought to you by HBO.

It's more than you imagined. [ __ ] yeah it is. [ __ ] yeah it is. Uh yeah, not

actually brought to you by HBO. Uh please don't sue us. Um no, I I wanted

to talk about the like gritty premier TV and also gritty reboots today. Okay. So

like the the HBOification of every fantasy franchise.

Yeah, basically because like recently uh one of my favorite fantasy franchises

was turned into a TV show and it was not good.

Which franchise was Oh no. Are we talking about Mr. Jordan's work? Yes, we

are we are once again discussing how bad the TV show for the Wheel of Time was. Yeah. Um cuz like the first season in

particular had a lot of HBOms. Yeah. In it. Like a lot of the changes were made

to make it like more adult and edgy, right? Like Pan Ibara didn't have a wife in The Eye

of the World and certainly didn't kill her. I'll take your word for it. Again, I'm a

person who made it halfway through one book, but yeah, but that halfway through the one book, he killed exactly zero

wives, which is about the amount of time that it took him to kill one wife in the TV show, which is 100% more wives.

It's like a thousand%. I mean, you're talking about going from zero to infinity number of wives being killed.

So, like that didn't do anything to endear me to the character, that's for sure. No. No. And he he's one of my favorites

because he's he's just a big old teddy bear in the books, but big old wife killing teddy bear.

Well, I mean, yeah. One of the coolest things about his character for me is he

has this really interesting dichotomy between

creation and destruction that he struggles with, right? He's a blacksmith. He makes things and so all

of his creative impulses are symbolized by the the work hammer that he carries

with him, right? Like he has a blacksmith's hammer that he keeps with him and he constantly has to make

choices between that and the axe that he created that has killed many people,

right? And that is really interesting and intriguing and fun to be in his point of

view when we're going through that. They they didn't touch on any of that [ __ ] in the show. Um, which is funny because to

me that feels more like gritty and HBO than a lot of the [ __ ] that they did do in the show. Um, yeah, they should have

tried to hammer that home.

He had a good run. I think it's it's close enough to Father's Day that I'm still allowed to

do things like this. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. At the time of recording, it is June 18th. So, yeah,

you get you get you get one shot. So, the way the way I view it, there's like a twoe stretch between Father's Day and

my birthday where I kind of get to do whatever I want for different reasons along the whole way. Okay. Okay. No,

that's fair. That's fair. Um, so yeah, if if you were going to

HBO an IP that isn't already getting an adaptation right now, because I know the

first thing that you would say is Warhammer 40k, but that's already in the works. Yeah.

I mean, in the works is such a strong word for what we know about what's happening. It's like they're they're

developing something and one guy is attached to help out. There is a guy who really really really wants to make this

thing. Yeah. Which like of all the people to make that thing, he's probably one of the best choices both because he

cares a lot about it and because he's shown that he can be that type of character and provide an instant lead

draw. Right. Sure. Sure. But I I want to step away from the stuff that out

already has adaptations coming. Right. So like I don't want to do Superman. I don't want to do like Spider-Man or any

of those. I want to look at like some of the weird [ __ ] Okay. And so I I put Star Wars on here because I think we

need to get it out of the way. Well, I mean, yeah, Star Wars has kind of had its gritty reboot, though, like in a

way. I mean, Andor exists and Andor is very much like a grounded Star Wars

show. I mean, did we see a lightsaber the entire time? I don't actually know because I didn't

finish it. Well, that's what I'm saying. We like we didn't um Oh, okay. And they

kind of tried to give this a similar gritty reboot treatment to the Acolyte

with I think less success. Um, right. But yeah, like

the andor was first of all like widely regarded as some of the best storytelling that has happened in Star

Wars because it's so like it it gets into the the grimy underbelly of what

starting and fueling and you know funding a rebellion actually involves.

um and gets away from like the the generals and leaders and heroes of a

rebellion to like the true like grunt level people that go from, you know,

dissent to outright rebellion. Um it so Star Wars has its HBO version. Yeah. So

it it it did the thing that we're talking about. It it what it didn't do was give it like the full HBOification

where you like well now it's got like tits and sex and cursing for no reason.

I mean there could be more tits in Star Wars. There's

there's enough tits in Star Wars that the the fan base for that stuff is fully

fueled for the next couple of decades. That is fair. I guess I'm Yeah. the the

Twilight Slave Girl series went yeah you got you got X number of golden bikinis

that have been spread out throughout the franchise and then you got that like weird six boob chick from Jaba's Palace

and that pretty much covers everyone like if you want to ruin your day go look at the Wikipedia entry for breasts

and it I didn't know there was one and I am thrilled you have to read it it is

insane but I'm glad that it is based purely on like the love of the game and

not any fuel that Lucasfilm has put into this fire.

All right. Um, so I just threw out like a bunch of old IPs and like some some

newer IPs as well that I I think would be interesting to get a HBO version put

together. Y So, I'm not going to be doing them in order. I'm just going to throw one out there. You can throw out any that you're thinking of as well.

Yeah, I see a a big glaring obvious miss on here that I'm going to toss out after

your first one. All right, so the the first one that I'm going to talk about is let's do Space Above and Beyond. Did

you ever watch Space Above and Beyond? Not even for a second. I have never heard of it until now. Okay. It was a

series on like the early early versions of sci-fi

where like they were just starting to try and do like premier TV stuff. a little bit, right? Like it's the same

network that did like the Dune miniseries, okay, back in the day and about the same time frame, too. Okay.

And it was Starship Troopers. If Starship Troopers took itself real serious, okay? It was a group of Marines

who like went to boot together. They were serving on the same ship and they

were fighting a war against an alien menace that had attacked a colony, like

an Earth colony. Um, just kind of out of nowhere. Yeah.

And it was already like about as dark as you could be for sci-fi in the 1990s,

early 2000s. Yeah. But having room to work in that with like the

ability to do the levels of violence that you see in HBO stuff, the ability

to get like really into the like characters heads and like get into the the mental toll of a space war would be

awesome. Also, they had like a really cool plot line where one of the characters, two of the characters Yeah.

um were clones and there was like a bunch of like clone racism. Yeah. this

where Go ahead. Does this sound very familiar? Well, just it sounds like it

sounds like just kind of a different take on the newest Battlestar Galactica.

It was before Battlestar Galactica, right? No, right. I'm saying the greedy reboot sounds like a a slightly skewed

Battlestar Galactica. Just replace toasters with clones.

Well, um Okay. So, one of the things that we would have to change is the name of the aliens, right? Um, and that is

because the aliens were named after an Earth bug,

um, named Chiggers. Oh, no. Yep. So, I

don't think that's going to fly. Um, also, we should change the name of Chiggers.

We should absolutely change the name of those bugs. It is an uncomfortable name

for those bugs. Um, and me. And me. Yeah. Um, anyway, so th those were the

bad guys. So, I don't think we're going to get a reboot with that name attached to it. Um, but yeah, it sounds a lot

like Battlestar Galactica um meets Starship Troopers, which

like give me two things that I want more on the same plate, please, because god damn. Yeah. Yeah, that does sound spicy.

I would actually just take that show. If you gave me a show that was just Starship Troopers, but like given the

Battlestar Galactica treatment, Yeah. I'm in. Yeah. No, I'm I'm a big Starship Troopers fan. So, I want to see I want

to see more people take a crack at it. It's due for I like I have to imagine

there's someone out there trying to do the movie reboot, but just take it take it to Paramount, you know, do it on

Paramount Plus or something like that. They did an animated series not too long ago that I've heard was really good, but

I couldn't get past the animation style. Oh, that's fair. That'll throw you out. Yeah, it was it was 3D stuff and it like

everybody looked kind of plastic. Like I I don't blame the the animators for that. It's really hard to do TV 3D that

Clone Wars type animation. Um like a little more uncanny valley.

Yeah. But like you see, and I that's so of all the Star Wars stuff that's out there, I have had the hardest time in

the world getting into Clone Wars, Rebels, Bad Batch, all that stuff because of the animation style, right?

Like I I can't watch it. Now, funnily enough, there's been these short ones that were done as like Tales from the

Underworld or something that have like characters like Cad Bane and stuff in there. I found those more watchable

because there's way less humans. Yeah. No, that tracks. Um, I think like

part of it is that they're trying really hard to take the style of the cartoons

that um, is it Gendi? Gendy Tardarovski was

doing like the the first Clone Wars series. Oh, that came out 2D and those

were Yeah, I think they tried Yeah, I think they tried to take that style and apply it to 3D and it came out weird.

Yeah. No, those I remember watching those like seeing Mace Wu absolutely beat ass in that one of those shorts was

like, "Oh god, I I want I want all of this and I found out it was like one season. It was just a bunch of like clips and I was like, oh yeah, so much

wasted potential." But anyways, Andy's so good though. Anyway, uh yeah, so that that's my first one is Space Above and

Beyond. Um a series that myself and my family and literally no one else

watched. Yeah. So, I'm going to talk about a series that people have heard of that isn't on here. Uh, okay. I think

you could do a very good, gritty reboot of The Chronicles of Narnia.

And Oh, yeah. So, people forget that Narnia is so much more than just like

The Lion, the Witch, in the Wardrobe, and like maybe the Silver Chair. There's like it's nine books with a whole arc

from like creation myth all the way to like the end of the world and yeah but

everybody falls off in Prince Caspian. Um, yeah, but there like, okay,

you I think you could hook people from the start with like, you know, the origins of the lamp post and and all the

way through to like the big final battle with Tal and all these points along the way. If you

if you take the time to make something good way before you get to Caspian and

Silverchair and and right all that stuff where you know the movies that people know there's a lot of content like from

you know horse and his boy type eraser like could you imagine like a borderline

like gritty buddy cop show of a guy and his talking horse. I mean, I have horse fear. So, you sold

me the worst thing. Yeah. But I mean, if you want gritty,

like scary is gritty. So, um, so, so you would want to do it like

more chronological. Oh, yeah. Rather than like publication order. Okay. Nope. I I want to do it full chronological.

Um, for a couple of reasons. one to like I think I think you ditch using like

kids per se, maybe like teenagers. Um, but it gives you a great opportunity to

update the language for like the first few books, which was like the biggest

sticking point for my kids getting into the series is that like the English that they used was borderline indecipherable

for them. Um, right. So, I'm not saying you have to make it American, but you

definitely just need to update the language and put it in a setting that

makes sense. Kids don't understand like horsedrawn carriages in London, you

know. Um, so there's plenty of that to to be updated. And then like in the first few books, some of their trips

like through those um there's that that that that plane of like pawns that you can fall through. like there's just some

really cool visual ideas that are spelled out in like the first few books that nothing ever comes back to. Um,

right. So, I think if you're going to spend a bunch of money on a CGI, then

you're going to be really well rewarded going into CS Lewis's works.

Okay. Um, yeah. Once we're going chronological, I think I'm I'm following you better. Yeah. Um cuz like the the

biggest stumbling point for that entire series for me is that the

the first two books set up the quartet as being the main characters. Yeah. And

they're super not and then abandons them. Yeah. And that is fine when you're

doing an anthology series and it's fine when those people haven't already been established as main characters, right?

Like if you've already got anthology stuff going on. Yeah. But the way that it was put together, it feels like

you've got these four people that are going to be your main characters throughout like a a through line and then it just pieces them out for the

rest of the series and you're like, "But I what what about that guy?" Yeah. I

want to know more about Susan. when when you realize that they're more meant to be like Harry Seldon or like some of the

characters from Foundation like oh oh I understand now that it's like these are

snapshots in time because so much time passes in Narnia and the story is really

about Narnia not about any individual group of kids that happen to go there. Yeah. It just it sets it up weird. Yeah.

Um like taking the Chronicles of Narnia, not the the Chronicles of Edmond and

Susan. Yeah, but like again the the setup has them very clearly as the main characters

for the first couple of books. And like I I don't blame people for being a little like put off by that sudden

change. But if you do it chronologically, then you already have that like anthology style built into it.

So by the time you hit Lion, the Witch in the Wardrobe, you already have a bunch of main characters who aren't the

quartet and now you have the quartet. Well, and it makes it easier to re like especially in a TV series, it make it a

lot easier to reestablish that the main character of this is actually Alan, right? Yeah. Um,

how do you feel about dragons taking over the earth? Uh, big fan. There have

been, I think, two movies that I loved that were about that. Uh, was one of them Rain of Fire. One of them was Rain

of Fire. good because I really like Rain of Fire despite recognizing that it is not a

good movie. It is very very subpar, but I it has like a lot of heart. Like I I

think the budget just kind of disappeared halfway through for them, but there's a lot of people there trying

really hard to do something cool. The budget and I feel like the vision as well, right? Like the the first half of

Reign of Fire Yeah. is a really good post-apocalyptic movie. Yeah. And the

second half of Rain of Fire is a kind of mediocre dragon hunting movie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And I want to lean in

really heavy into the post-apocalyptic Yeah. side of it where dragons are just

here to [ __ ] you up. Yeah. It's it's Cormack McCarthy's The Road but with dragons.

Yes. It is a post-apocalyptic wasteland where every once in a while death swoops

in on silent wings and steals your children. Yeah, right. [ __ ]

brilliant. Everything about that is great to me. Like just imagining the the

city of Atlanta entirely on fire with like a dragon standing on one of the the skyscrapers like screaming into the air

as people are trying to run away, right? like the Eiffel Tower, a flame with like

dragons swooping around it. Everything about that is just [ __ ] magical to me. Yeah. I want I want to see a dragon

crawl out the other side of the Chrysler building. And I like I love

um Matthew McConna's dragon hunter character. Yeah. And I'm really happy about how they

played him out over the course of that movie. I want to see more characters like that in the world for sure. But

like I don't want that to be the focus. No. Right. I want I want it to be like walking dead,

but the walking dead are hulking flying lizards that breathe fire, right?

And like every once in a while like the main gang finds like I don't know a wyvern's nest and it's like oh my god

there's an egg. Like oh right. And like you don't want to do like the biggest

problem with The Walking Dead for me was that the apocalypse stopped being

interesting. Yeah. Right. Like it just it stopped being about zombies and started being about how bad people be.

Yeah. Which is great when you're in a comic book series and you have time to

like really delve into those things and like get into people's heads and their perspectives and stuff. when you're

doing it in a TV show, especially a TV show that has to like maintain a cast of characters and some of those people

don't want to get paid the amount that you're paying them. Um, [ __ ] gets weird. Yeah. Well, you know, you run into that

like it's it's kind of that old thing where it's like, oh, the real monster were

men. And it's like, no, no, the real monster are monsters. Yes, still zombies. They will eat you.

They're going to make no bones about that. Like, yes, people may also eat you. They are also terrible. But let's

like chill on the fact that like zombies are still [ __ ] awful. Um and it's a lot easier to recognize that they are

[ __ ] awful when they swoop in on silent wings and steal your children and then leave a fiery inferno behind them

in their wake. Yeah. A a you know, it makes it kind of reminds me of like it's

the difference between like the Walking Dead zombies and like 28 Days Later zombies, right? where it's like, oh man,

those zombies are a good real godamn problem. And I understand rage virus, whatever, but like they are a persistent

and deadly threat. The zombies in The Walking Dead are the same kind of threat

where it's like, "Hey, um, don't walk near train tracks cuz you might fall in

and touch the third rail or whatever." Like, it's one of those things. You deal with the problem with a knife through a

fence. Yeah. It's not a problem. No. If if a if a chain link fence will last for

a long time against the problem, it's not a problem. Yeah. You you have a

chore, you do not have an apocalypse. Yeah. If if the same device that I use to corral chickens can be used to corral

my apocalypse, it's not an apocalypse. Yeah. On the other side though, Darens.

Darens. And Darens like that's just it. Like if if the zombies had like a

cannon, then that would be like, oh [ __ ] you know? So if you're flying [ __ ]

wrecker, and that's that's the thing that makes, you know, dragons survivable, right? Is that there's like not a lot of them, so you got to like

really avoid them. Mhm. So it it's I I don't like, you know, jump scare

tactics really, but like that's what these things are going to be the whole series. You can absolutely. Okay. Like

I'm I'm even seeing like scenes in my head of like a crew of people who are

walking because you don't want to drive because it makes too much noise and it brings the dragons, right? Down an

abandoned highway in middle America somewhere. Yeah. And just like the

absolute terror of watching that shadow go across the ground. Yeah.

And it's a cloud. Yeah. Right. Like just you see a shadow and fear. Yeah. Right.

I want I want the apocalypse to just be like a thousand% devastating. And I think that rain of fire is a great

option for that. Yeah. I think I think the dragons should be the kind of like like like a a paragan falcon of terror

where it's like they're they're above the clouds and they are going to divebomb you to grab somebody. I was

thinking owls. Oh, okay. Right. Like the something about the way that they fly,

like they fly slow, they fly deliberate, they fly silent, and they sneak up on

you. Yeah. Right. Like they're just there to like swoop down and grab somebody. And it's only when they're

threatened or when they're having a bad time that they start throwing down with like the fire, which is where you get

like entire cities burning, right? Very, very quickly, right? Like you shoot a dragon and it itches and they get mad

and they light everything on fire. Right. H both interesting ways to

approach the Predator Dragon. Yes. And I love it and I need to make this series

immediately. Uh what do you got next? Um let's see. So I was eyeing up Pitch

Black just because I feel that it needs more build on it, but Pitch Black is already trying to be a gritty reboot of

some other stuff. So yeah, I think

Okay, maybe it's not Pitch Black that I'm trying to reboot. Maybe it's Chronicles of Ritic that I'm trying to reboot. Yeah, that might be it. Like

Chronicles of Riddic had so much potential, but they built a very stupid

world. Um I like the idea. So first of all, I don't think Boondock Saints needs

a gritty reboot. It's already a gritty movie. Um you just kind of do more of it

for a longer time. Yeah. I just want a TV series of it with like Breaking Bad that turns into John

Wick every once in a while. Yeah. Uh so the two that I'm drawn to right now are

either Zoro or Inspector Gadget. Um fantastic.

So I love both of those options. Yeah, they're they're both in a similar like crime fighter vein. Um,

Zoro, I feel like it's not even like a gritty reboot. It's just like a modernization.

Um, but the fact that he like you could almost treat him like the Punisher if

you wanted to. And he just like maybe not a sword, but he definitely chooses to use some sort of like melee physical

object that leaves behind a mark of his presence. whether it's like a baseball

bat or something like Yeah. The thing that I was thinking about with Zoro was

um it is rife with potential for political commentary, right? Um and it

already has like a swashbuckling in it. Yeah. Right. Like like buckles

are going to swash whether we want them to or not in a Zoro thing. Yeah. There's no option. What we can what we have the

opportunity to do with Zoro is like pull back and focus on like the people. Okay.

The interactions of the people with the world that Zoro supposedly inhabits

which is like colonial America when we're still rolling with swords.

Nope. Uh you want to know where I went with it? Where'd you go with it? Zoro is set tomorrow. Uh, the American

government is trying to oppress disscent within the city of Los Angeles. And Zoro

is a local LA like gang adjacent member

who has decided that he needs to stand up for his people, you know, Mexican

immigrants or whatever and is now actively like pursuing

like ICE members and you know bad actors within the National Guard with I don't

know a pipe like I love both of these. Why Why are they

both so good? I think it's just because Zoro is good. Like, yeah, the

Yeah, your idea is really solid. Um, I wouldn't even necessarily go a pipe.

Like the the only thing that you really need to do with Zoro is make the mark

more deliberate. Yeah. Right. Like give him a Bowie knife and have him carve it

into people. Right. Right. Like you you you set down like Al

Aldo Rain in In Glorious Bastards like Yeah. Yeah. A little bit. Right. Like you have him do that to like gang

members that are negatively affecting his neighborhood and No, no. I I think

he reforms the gang members and it's literally him versus Ice and And you

know, like Oh, I want both though, right? Like I I I want him to be going like after everybody that is going to be

like wrecking his neighborhood. So yes, if you can reform them, reform them.

Right now the LA gangs have called like a truce to turn back and like push back

against this like quelling of of public disscent against like extrajudicial, you

know, uh uh death squads capturing people and and throwing them out of the country for no good reason, even, you

know, if they're citizens. Um, I think you you lean into that. You have some

cheeky nods to roof Koreans and

and Yeah. Yeah. Like I think he has to be based in like a Korean like

convenience store somehow. Yeah. Um, and you even have him go up against like,

you know, neofascist groups like Patriot Front and Proud Boys and stuff like that. Oh yeah, for sure. Like there's

there's enough of them that are adjacent to Ice and like

Yeah. It it's just go full like too soon with it like this like

Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. That's fair. Um like and and just to my final point on

it, I think Pete Heesg is like primed to just play himself as a super villain.

Oh, you know who I want to play him though? Danny Devita. I can't remember his name. No. Um,

the guy the bad guy from the Crow. Which Crow? The new Crow. The first one.

Oh, the first one. The original. Yeah. Just like that guy that has like a voice made of like gravel and a face to match.

Oh, yeah. Old gravel face McGillicuetti there. Yeah. Now I need to look him up.

Um, we'll figure it out. Yeah. Okay. So, anyway, I think it'd be perfect. And

then let's let's talk about Inspector Gadget. Yeah. Yeah. We got to talk about Inspector Gadget. God. Yeah. So,

Inspector Gadget, I've actually seen some like gritty fan art of Inspector

Gadget of just like him being a horrific mechanical monstrosity

on top of like he's got the the hat and the the long coat.

Um I I feel like there is a lot of room in that. Like if if you take the

bumbling idiot thing out of his character, right? If you make him even a

little bit competent, you make Penny more competent than he is. Yeah. Because you need to maintain

that dynamic, but then you also make him an inhuman thing. Right. Right. like

Robocop meets like uh Knives Out. Okay. So, my thought was

in a similar vein to yours. Um he is like violently competent. Uh but she is

like the the tech and brain side of things in the back. He is like essentially a weapon aimed at the

underworld. Um, all like I want to say like the $6

million man but like taken to an extreme like did you ever play the game DSX?

Um, I didn't but I have watched people play it. Okay. So, one of the more recent ones, Human Evolution, he there's

like augments that you can get to your body that will, you know, let you leap

huge bounds and and hack things and blades will come out of your elbows that

you can assassinate people with. Like, imagine imagine Inspector Gadget is just

a mobile Swiss Army knife of death. You could also maybe run in like a

cyberpunk direction with it. Yeah. Where like the

physical enhancements that you get in Cyberpunk will slowly drive you crazy. Yeah.

And so like he has all of these enhancements that were made and we we don't know what his origin story is.

Like we we don't have a a clear reason for why this was done to him. No, they

never explained it. But like having all of this gear in his body at all times is

[ __ ] with his head. Yeah, right. Like he he is a god and also less than human.

And how do you reconcile that while trying to fight terrorists? Yeah,

that's fair. So good. Okay, I want to circle back for one second to uh to

Zoro. Were you thinking of Michael Wcott as the villain? I was. Yeah. Did you

know he's from Scar Bro? No. Yeah.

Let's Yeah, let's let's get him to play Pete Hegs. But no, that made me think,

what if what if we just shift the setting to Canada?

We don't need to. We don't have an ICE that's like sending people to El Salvador, but we could for plausible

deniability. Hey, thanks for making it all the way through this episode of Noplotonly Lore.

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