Can I take the Matrix Sequels as one, and then option it off to Mike for one dollar? I have no strong opinion on this one, and I'm sure there's something else he'd love to do, so he can have two. Additionally, he'd knock it out of the park and I want to see those/that movie.

Nice topic. For me, it's a toss-up between a slight re-do of Sunshine (specifically its third act) and a full on remake of Pathfinder, because the world needs more viking movies.

I would think you could get more then a dollar out of him.

This would probably be my first choice too. I'll take something else though to keep the thread going.

The most iconic movie monster of all-time with a gigantic effects budget? Yes please.

The Last Airbender. That should have been such an awesome movie. It's a testament to Shyamalan's skill as a film maker that he was able to suck anything interesting out of that thing in the transition from show to film. The only explanation I can think of is that his goal was to make it unwatchable.

See:  Bean, Magic

I haven't seen that movie and have no opinion as to whether it's good or not.   But from what I know about it, I gather that's the central premise.   It's fine to just not buy that premise if it doesn't suit you, but if you're going in with that attitude there's not much reason to watch the movie in the first place.

It'd be the same as spending the last ninety minutes of Back To The Future saying "This movie sucks! Time travel isn't real!"   It's your business if you feel that way, but why waste the ninety minutes? 

Anyway, I'd remake I Am Legend.  In fact, I can remake I Am Legend right now - all I need to do is take the Special Feature original ending and put it back where it belongs, and take the theatrical release ending and bury it in a salt mine.

If Emma Thompson had traded the family cow for the magic typewriter at the beginning, that would have been AWESOME.

Or an old Asian man could have told her not to get it wet or feed it after midnight. Or Harrison Ford could have explained it and simultaneously scoffed at it three or four ways. Or Morpheus... Or Spock Prime... Or Optimus Prime... Or Casper Gutman... Or Doc Brown... Or a video of a clone of Emma Thompson... Or a legend at the beginning... Or Superman's dad... Or an e-mail that Emma Thompson only skimmed... Or...

I have absolutely no trouble with Magic Beans; I love Up, despite its debatable use of them, for example.

You really need to see StF to understand why they get the use of Thompsons' Typewriter so wrong. The whole thing is set in the real world of today, with apparently normal people who know the kinds of things we do  After an hour or so of stuff, there is a scene where she is writing about her fictional character making a phone call to her, and as she types 'RING...' on her typewriter, her own phone rings.  Thompson's character thinks this is an odd coincidence. She types it again, and her phone rings again, and it scares the crap out of her.  She waits a long time, her phone doesn't ring; she convinces herself she's being silly, types 'RING...' again and her phone rings again.  At which point, she freaks out. It's clear that, to the character who owns the typewriter, its magical behaviour is unexpected and terrifying. Despite this, and similar events, such as the existence in reality of a fictional character she made up and brought into existence by typing on the typewriter, the story then proceeds to forget about this revelation: Thompson's character continues to use the typewriter, no-one in the story makes any attempt to do anything with it beyond typing fiction, and everyone blithely accepts that Will Ferrell's character, previously considered to be a regular human being, and throughly established as desperate to save his own life, is now expendable in the name of literature, including by Will Ferrell's character himself.

IMHO, the story breaks the Bean Wall, and makes the characters aware of the Magic Bean's Bean Nature, which is an error that the story doesn't recover from.

Last edited by fcw (2011-06-19 00:18:47)

You know, it'd be interesting to do a massive XKCD style flowchart doing sets of magic beans, and then subsets, and then subsets, and then subsets, until you arrive at basically any movie you can think of.

I think I might get crazy and try that.

Welp, I did it. This is a first run at organizing information, depending on if I do anything more with this I might tweak categories and presentation.

A lot of movies will have a bean that applies, or correlates, to multiple categories. I listed movies under the category that they most fundamentally "need," subject to debate, but I had to start somewhere.

So, the fundamental requirements of a movie's magic bean decide where it falls in the general category and subcategory, and the related bean-qualities are linked by color coded lines.

I've left out "Wonderland" movies (Riddick, Scott Pilgrim, Hitchhiker's Guide and Nightmare) and "Muggle" movies, IE movies without magic. Brian suggested there could be a fifth main-category, which is "magic coincidence." That would fit the currently unlisted movies Pulp Fiction, Die Hard, and Silence of the Lambs.

The remaining unlisted "Muggle" movies are Mulholland Drive, Karate Kid, Reservoir Dogs, Chinatown, Dr. Strangelove, Master and Commander, The Hurt Locker, Titanic, Team America, Full Metal Jacket, Apollo 13, and Seven.

Click to enlarge.

The Fictional History magic bean is "it takes place in another time on our plausible timeline." For instance, the requisite magic bean of V for Vendetta and Children of Men is "with general minor advances in technology, this is our near future, and it's fucked up." Frankly, The Truman Show shouldn't be there, it should be somewhere else...but "fantasy universe" is the closest alternative, and that doesn't seem right either.

A fantasy universe is just a fantasy universe, an invented universe, but similar physically to our own. A Wonderland is a universe with an abundance of rules that don't apply to our universe. It's a subtle line, subject to opinion, on where the distinction lies.

And Moby Dick is an alien as much as Edward Cullen is an alien, just a magical not-human. Probably could have found a better term.

For the purposes of seeing how I was thinking, replace "magic" with "does not exist this way."