How to destroy classic movies: Gone With the Wind, take four

It’s Friday night, what’s more it’s the last Friday in May, which means it’s the fourth and last time we’re redoing Gone With the Wind.
We’ve remade it as a storm chasing movie, a future apocalyptic movie and a sci fi epic, this week we’re going to do a period piece… but it’s not going to be a direct remake.
Let’s get started.

The plot:

The basics of the plot we need to remember for our remake:

1: The main actress is named Scarlet and her romantic counter in Rhett Butler.
2: The one phrase Scarlet says that everyone remembers is in the scene where she is standing on a hill saying “As god is my witness, I’ll never go hungry again.”
3: Rhett’s most memorable phrase is “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
4: Civil War.

Due to how we’re going to redo the movie, we won’t be able to destroy Alanta, however I believe we can find another city to destroy to please viewers.

Our story:

Set in revolutionary France, we find our heroine, Marie ‘Scarlet’ , being romanced by the Marque Rhett de Butler.
Scarlet is a peasant, of course, while Rhett is an aristocrat, so we have the knowledge that nothing good can come from this relationship, this is reinforced when Scarlet is introduced to the French queen, Marie Antoinette, who keeps talking about cake every time she’s seen.
There should be some filler scenes added next, say horse riding, hunting, ect.
For dramatic purposes we should have Rhett married to someone besides Scarlet, it also sets up the next part of the movie.
Now we come to the revolution, starting with the storming of the Bastille, where Scarlet’s brother and father are being held.
We see the battle, including Scarlet being injured, either by a sword or being shot, the added blood gives the viewers something to worry about.
The scene zooms in on a delirious Scarlet, who mutters “As god is my witness, I’ll never eat cake again!” before blacking out.
We then see the nobles being captured and killed (note: if you want to add horror movie amounts of gore you can show the guillotine at work… Remember that the fake blood companies need to stay in business).
After Scarlet recovers, she discovers Rhett hiding, he begs her to keep his presence a secret and to help him escape, she agrees when he offers to take her to England and marry her (his wife died by guillotine he tells her).
With Rhett’s escape comes an opportunity for action, we should have a runaway carriage, the driver killed by an arrow, a daring attempt by Rhett to bring it to a stop (it doesn’t matter if he secedes or not, just so he and Scarlet both live through it), a sword fight between Napoleonic troops and Rhett, even Rhett running through gunfire (he’d escape without a scratch, of course.), finishing with Rhett swimming the English Channel.
Right before Rhett makes good his escape (leaving Scarlet on the shore), he has a scene with Scarlet: she begs Rhett to take her with him, he kisses her tenderly, than says “I only needed you to get the guards, my wife is in London.”
Scarlet says something along the lines of “What am I to do? You’ve ruined me!”
Rhett gives his famous,”Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” line right before jumping into the English Channel just in time to escape the guards chasing him.

This is a good chance to take a change of viewpoint, we can show scenes of Napoleon conquering parts of Europe, this is where we have cities burning, true they aren’t Atlanta but this is the best we can do.
Next we see Waterloo, the defeat and retreat of Napoleon and his army.
We begin to end our movie seeing the triumphant allied armies marching into France to restore the French monarchy.
Rhett enters Paris in the wake of the army, Scarlet is waiting for him at his former residence, she confronts him and fatally shoots him. As he lays there, dying, he asks her why. Scarlet laughs hysterically and shouts “Frankly, Rhett my dear, I don’t give a damn anymore!
Fade to black.

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing four ways to remake Gone With the Wind, I’ve enjoyed writing them, however frankly my dear readers, I don’t think there’s a damn way we could do a fifth remake.
Thanks for reading and please feel free to add your thoughts. I hope you got a chuckle or two from this.

How to destroy classic movies: Gone With the Wind, take two

It’s Friday night and that means we’re going to remake yet another classic movie.
Remember each remaining Friday in May I’ll show you another way that Gone With the Wind could be remade.
Last week we remade it using only three key parts of the plot and adding in a tornado, tonight we’ll be doing something entirely different.
Let’s get started.

The plot:

Tonight we’re going to focus on another aspect of the movie… The war, the only key part of the movie we didn’t use last week, the rest of the plot will remain the same to allow for the most artistic license.
The five points:

1: The main actress is named Scarlet and her romantic counter in Rhett Butler.
2: The one phrase Scarlet says that everyone remembers is in the scene where she is standing on a hill saying “As god is my witness, I’ll never go hungry again.”
3: Rhett’s most memorable phrase is “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
4: The burning of Atlanta.
5: Civil War.

Our movie:

We start with a burst of gun fire and several explosions, along with the date, which is sometime in the distant (or not so distant) future.
A bit of background gets established next:
1: This is a future USA.
2: This civil war began as a series of protests.
3: The protests began after the government ruled that tomatoes could no longer be used in preparing pizzas.
4: A number of states ruled that the Feds couldn’t regulate tomato usage.
5: A number of states declared themselves neutral and refused to send troops into the pro tomato states.
6: Further complicating things was that the ‘1 percent’ hired mercenaries for protection and became a third front in the war.
7: A forth front broke out as the pro tomato states became divided on the issue of goat cheese on pizzas.

These should be outlined as new stories, battle scenes, ect.
With those fact fully outlined, we realize that this is going to be a long movie, cue product placement with a gusto (which is not a pizza topping).
Next we see our heroine, Major Scarlet, talking at a peace conference with her mother’s ex butler, Rhett, whom Scarlet nearly married before learning that he supported goat cheese on pizzas (Scarlet is an anti-goat cheese, pro tomato rebel).

Talks break down, the war continues. Fronts move back and forth with no one gaining my ground, until the key battle, near (where else?) Atlanta.
All four sides invade and destroy all of Atlanta.

Another peace conference ensues after Atlanta is abandoned.
Rhett and Scarlet meet again, again they disagree about pizza.
Rhett says “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn… about pizza unless it has anchovies on it.”
Suddenly the peace conference is under attack. Scarlet takes cover, pulling out her cell phone to order air support, looks at it a curses, “As god is my witness, my next phone will be a (product placement opportunity)!” She shouts as the building is leveled.

Somehow Scarlet survives, as does Rhett, but the war is over, all sides lost as English troops invaded and reclaimed the colonies and everything else, becoming a super power with practically no losses and declare that they put down the revolution after all… Also that if you like your pizza, you can keep your pizza.

Scarlet and Rhett marry, argue over which British tv show is the best.
The end.

So what do you think? Do you think this plot is better than last weeks? Did I end it too quickly? Let me know what you think.

How to destroy classic movies: Gone With the Wind

It’s Friday night and that means we’re going to remake yet another classic movie. Tonight I’m going to start something a bit different, I’m going to make this movie the movie we’re going to redo for the rest of the month, each remaining Friday in May I’ll show you another way that Gone With the Wind could be remade, I hope you’ll enjoy them.
Let’s get started.

Plot:
While the original movie and the book that started everything has a detailed plot, we’re not worrying about any of that, we’re just sticking to a few key parts of the plot form the original movie:

1: The main actress is named Scarlet and her romantic counter in Rhett Butler.
2: The one phrase Scarlet says that everyone remembers is in the scene where she is standing on a hill saying “As god is my witness, I’ll never go hungry again.”
3: Rhett’s most memorable phrase is “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
4: The burning of Atlanta.

With those four key parts we can build a great movie without a plot.

Our movie:

A group of storm chasers are following a tornado, the only two we really care about are Scarlet and Rhett. It’s just an ordinary day… Until the tornado merges with four others and becomes the worst tornado ever seen on Earth.
It takes out a nuclear power plant and rains radioactive debris down on Atlanta, sparking fires galore.
As the storm chasers arrive in Atlanta, one of them, an unimportant one, stumbles into a pile of radioactive waste and dies.
As the tornado is continuing along its devastating path toward the sea, the remaining storm chasers follow it, ignoring the danger and their lost comrade.
Rhett drives into the outskirts of the wind, Scarlet tries to get a hold of officials to warn them, but she doesn’t have a single. In her annoyance, Scarlet shakes her phone and declares, “As god is my witness, I’ll never go without wifi again!”
They get ahead of the storm, they think they are safe, but the last spare storm chaser dies somehow, it doesn’t much matter how, only he has to die and Scarlet must be broken up over his death while Rhett isn’t.
Scarlet demands an answer to why Rhett isn’t saddened by the loss of their friends, he replies “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give… A dam!” The last two words come in a shout as he realizes that the tornado caught up to them and just destroyed a dam, sending a wall of water at them.
The wall of water draws close, horror is plain on both Scarlet and Rhett’s faces… Fade to black, the end.

Now that is our first try at remaking Gone With the Wind, I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I’ve got another, completely different idea for remaking it, I hope you’ll join me next Friday for it.
Thanks for read and please leave you thoughts below.

How to destroy a classic movie: In Search of the Castaways

It’s Friday night, time to apply Hollywood logic to a classic movie and see what happens.
Tonight we’re going to take the 1962 adaptation of Jules Verne’s classic In Search of the Castaways, we’re going to update it slightly, add some explosions, product placement and to save even more money, we can use scenes cut from other movies, which is something Hollywood has been doing for decades, let’s get started, shall we?

The Plot:

The original movie and the novel it came from features the young children of a sea captain who was lost at sea, a message in a bottle, adventures in foreign lands and a gunrunner.
That’s just a short description, you can read the full description on Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_the_Castaways_(film)
A much better way to learn more about the movie would be to watch it of course, or to read Jules Verne’s classic itself.

Our story:

First off we’ve got to update it, or at least parts of it, it would be quite easy to turn this into a sci fi epic, have them visit other planets in search of where a distress signal originated, add in a smuggler, maybe even a zombie planet to escape from, but I’m not going to take that track tonight.
Instead we’re going to set it during WWII.

However we need to slightly change the name, we’ll call this In Search of the Prisoners.
Now that we’ve got that done, let’s dive into the new plot.

1937: A test pilot is flying an experimental cargo plane he built himself over the Pacific Ocean when he vanishes, leaving no trace behind.
November 22nd, 1941: A water bottle made by a famous company (product placement!), washes up in Hawaii, it contains a message from the test pilot, it’s been damaged by mold, but a single coordinate remains, as well as the startling revelation that he had been captured by Nazis and held on an isle.
His younger brother, now a Marine, is assigned to lead a small team to rescue him. It’s a matter of national security as the test pilot might know something about enemy movements.
The next scene shows Pearl Harbor being bombed, this is a great place to use footage from other movies, if it’s done in black and white, with footage from all movies dealing with the attack on Pearl Harbor, there could be nearly a half hour of explosions and action.
Now the younger bother is on his way, via a submarine, to the isle that they suspect the test pilot is being held on. This would be a great spot for a battle between subs, or for depth charges to be dropped on the sub with our hero inside. Great action scene, the sub nearly sinking, but just making it to its destination.
The destination turns out to be an overgrown isle with nothing but a single fisherman on it, they are forced to move on to another likely island a hundred miles away.
As they arrive at the next island, the sub sinks, most of the crew survives, finds an abandoned yacht, a burned out hut and a handful of bodies, but not the test pilot.
While sailing to the next isle, add a bit of humor, none of the sailors from the sub is very skilled with sailing a yacht, they could also pick up an enemy survivor from a plane.
The next island has an enemy encampment, but it doesn’t hold the captive test pilot, but they do manage to steal a better boat, a few of the spare crew can be killed off here in a gun battle, it can be heroic, they could volunteer to hold off the enemy while the rest gets away.
One more island remains to be searched, morale is low, the young Marine wonders if they’ll ever find his brother.
However this last island is the correct one! The test pilot is alive and being forced to work on enemy planes.
Making contact with a local tribe that is supposed to be friendly, the would be rescuers get captured by Nazis.
Making a bold escape (after being interrogated of course), the rescuers turned prisoners manage to reach the test pilot, who was being rescued already by the survivors from the sub who were told to remain in hiding, together all of them make their way to an experimental air plane, as the test pilot starts warming up the plane, a handful go out and rigs explosives on the other planes.
As the experimental plane starts taxiing down the runway, the soldiers start firing at it, doing little, if any, damage.
As the plane gains the air, the other planes on the ground all explode. Cheers erupt on board the escaping plane and it fades to black.

That’s the movie, enough action to be a blockbuster, enough explosions to be a blockbuster and a war movie, everything modern Hollywood wants.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this rewriting of a classic, I know I have.
Feel free to comment.