Short Circuit Reboot Details
A few weeks ago it was confirmed that Short Circuit was joining the ever increasing list of childhood memories getting a potentially ill-advised reboot. The 80′s cult classic tells the story of friendly robot Johnny Five, who escapes from a government facility after a lightning strike brings it to life.
Alvin and The Chipmunk’s director Tim Hill, has been given the thankless task trying to convince us that an inevitably CGI Robot will look anywhere near as convincing as the real life robot featured in the previous films.
The Garfield 2 and Hop director has recently explained that while he is “tempted to go back and grab the original” design for robot Johnny Five, after careful robotic calculations he’s decided they need to update the character to reflect “what modern design actually is.”
Hill says:
“You’ve got to find the balance between something fierce and something endearing. The original was cute. But no one was threatened by it!”. Perfect just what the youth of today needs to be terrorized by adorable faced Terminators.
Apparently reimagining the Wall-E shaped kid’s favourite as a ruthless killing machine makes sense though because as director Tim Hill is quick to point out, Number Five’s origins have always been as a military robot.
Director Hill enthusiastically point out that we really do now “have drones that do our fighting for us” and “what makes this film so interesting is the moment in the story when Johnny realises he’s going to be disassembled and contemplates death and whether it’s right to terminate someone else.”
Hill does freely admit he’s aware “These are heavy themes for a family movie” but he seems convinced that the best way to ensure the film still has an overall family friendly feeling is to make sure the main human characters are teenagers or even pre-teen.
Wow… As much as i loved the 2 Short Circuit movies when i was a kid, in not even remotely as scared as you are that this movie is gonna suck… As a reader i’d actually like to read an open minded article, with maybe a careful opinion or prediction thrown in at the end…
But yeah, the fact that this movie is going to be catered for a completely different audience then you or me, or the fact that people like Tim Hill are actually chosen and being paid to make tough choices like character redesigns, we’ll just throw all of that in the wind.
I hope it’s going to be a fun movie that I will be able to watch with the kids. Of course it will never measure up to the ideas and pictures i have in my head from the previous movies, but i’d love to see what the 21st century would do to movies like these.