Michael J. Fox is heading Back To The Future for a fourth time-traveling movie. The actor, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, admits he's in negotiations for a final film in the series - but only if they make his character as old as he is in real life. The former Spin City star wants to take over Christopher Lloyd's eccentric scientist character, Doc, in the sequel. He tells movie website Moviehole.net, "The only way it would work would be if I played Doc. I'm 44-years-old now and I'm not interested in running around on skateboards! I think after 1, 2 and 3 we all kind of felt we had done it. And I think if they did it again now they would do it with a younger cast and just do a different realisation of it, which would be fun."Chez Althouse, we love Michael J. Fox and the "Back to the Future" movies. Though, I must say that I can't stand any recent Robert Zemeckis movies. That is, I hated "Contact" and have avoided everything else. You know, I don't even like to write out the words "I hated 'Contact'" because it makes me have to think about it again. Ugh!!
December 21, 2005
"The only way it would work would be if I played Doc."
I'd like to see this work out:
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12 comments:
Outta Time [the license plate of the BTTF DeLorean]: Meshes nicely with your previous post.
A theme, perhaps?
How can you not like the bad science and the bad acting of Contact, its the new Plan 9 from Outer Space. Besides, with the lamentable Gothikia, Ghost Ship and House of Wax, Mr Zemeckis has in the last five years made three films worse than Contact. There I said it again.
Contact was a great concept and plot, poorly executed.
At least he didn't direct the three crappy films Pat Patterson cites, just produced them. Of his subsequent directorial efforts, "Cast Away" was OK, if nothing special.
And while I wouldn't watch "The Polar Express" without being very well compensated, I'm very curious to see what Zemeckis does with the similarly motion-capture "Beowulf," adapted for the screen by Neil Gaiman, who assures us that the technology's come a long way since "Polar Express."
He's produced tons of films, but he hasn't directed much lately.
Since 1994 his directing credits according to IMDB consists of Forest Gump (uggggh, Worst Academy Award winning picture EVER), Contact (enough said), Cast Away (see, by making it two words he's making a profound statement about the need to pull back from our consumerist society, oh and Tom Hanks talks to a volleyball!), What Lies Beneath (can't think of a snarky parenthetical statement to go along with this one, I've failed you all, I'm sorry), The Polar Express (the children from uncanny valley meet Santa Claus) and the future has him doing Beowulf (Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman scripted, Crispin Glover as Grendel, Angelina Jolie as Queen of Darkness?!?), and The Corrections (for your consideration no doubt, Judi Dench is the only attached cast so far)
Steve Ely beat me to the correcting of the record (I was too busy crafting snarky parenthetical asides about each of his films since 1994, I should say that Used Cars was a great film, Roger Rabbit was terrific, and all the Back to the Futures were enjoyable, so there) and by the 2007 release of Beowulf maybe it won't be so 'uncanny'.
Wasn't Contact based on a Sagan book?
I feel I must respond to Pat Patterson's post in defense of House of Wax. For those who enjoy terrible big-budget horror, as I passionately do, House of Wax was the best film of the year. I saw it twice opening weekend. Yes, Paris Hilton happened to be in it, but no, she was not terrible. The third act contains an action sequence in which the house itself melts while people inside flee from the killer, and it was apparently storyboarded by Zemeckis himself (though he was only the producer). It's truly wonderful, I'm serious!
Although, I enjoyed the second two movies when I was younger, I can't stand them now. But, I still love the first one. I was really annoyed when it came to DVD as only a box set. Even worse, two of the movies were totally misframed in the transfer (which was later fixed with mail-in exchanges) - fortunately, it was the latter two.
As far as Zemeckis, I think I'd still enjoy Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Romancing the Stone.
But, I also cringe when I think of rewatching films like Contact. I believe he was a bit of a Spielberg protege, with Stevie producing some of his works. If Spielberg tiringly overwhelms us, as you mentioned, Zemeckis beats us over the head with the intended emotional effect.
With or without Zemeckis, what's there to do with the BTTF franchise? We already saw the cool Delorean, time traveled and saw the 50's, the near future and the wild west. Go to the 40's and save Pvt. McFly from Obersturmführer Tannen? How about the near future and have Air Marshall McFly sucker punch Biffama bin Tannen to stop him from crashing a plane into the Hill Valley Clock Tower and instead into a manure truck at Twin Pines Mall where there was farm land as far as the eye could see and where old-man Peabody had the crazy idea of growing pine trees.
"What Lies Beneath (can't think of a snarky parenthetical statement to go along with this one, I've failed you all, I'm sorry)"
Damn Michelle Pfeiffer's big toe! Damn her big toe to hell!
I actually hope it doesn't come to being... I really loved the Back to the Future movies... but there's nothing worse than the sequel that is poorly done and ruins the series. They wrapped up the plot so well at the end, and that was it. Doc had his ride off into the sunset moment (or fly in a train moment... whatever)... and you can then imagine the adventures he might have gone on. I think it was a good ending.
Ah, I think I've come up with parenthetical snark for What Lies Beneath (... this pile of crap? Memories of when Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfieffer could get work in good films.)
Then again, how can you hate a bad movie you don't have to see because the feeble plot twist was comprehensively spoiled by the trailer?
IIRC, Zemeckis didn't really want to do What Lies Beneath, but had to in order to get the go ahead for Castaway.
Castaway required a long break in production so Hanks could go from a somewhat overweight professional to a lean, mean, surviving machine. But in order to maintain the same crew to make the production seem consistent, he did What Lies Beneath with that same crew to keep them employed together and not on other projects that might later conflict with the latter production of Castaway.
So, if What Lies seems like the creators' and artists' minds were elsewhere, they probably were.
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