Short Circuit Remake Will Have Pre-Teen Lead (and darker theme)
Hop director Tim Hill has come forth and announced what he planned remake of Short Circuit remake will be like. His intent is to make it “more family friendly” (pay strict attention to those buzzwords, I’ll get back to it in a minute) by bringing down the age of the character played by Ally Sheedy to around the age of puberty.
/Film has this to say:
As for aging down the female lead, that’s to give the film a more family feel and also play with the “wish fulfillment” that kids might have of an all-powerful, robotic best friend. Of course, that’ll then delve into human’s current dependency on technology.
Finally, speaking on the new look of Johnny-5, Hill said it would definitely be similar to the original but needs to have a modern touch
Hill adds, in referencing J5:
“The original was cute. But no one was threatened by it.”
The story is going to feature what modern day robot drones are expected to do in war. Johnny realizes he is going to be obsolete, get disassembled and face death.
At first when I heard this bit about altering the age of the female lead…I don’t agree that makes it more family friendly. The original was light enough, and Johnny 5 was a fish out of water fun character. Yes, the robot was first created in a line of robots designed for cold war/spy use. But what’s up with the “anti-war” stand where naturally, you don’t want to risk human causalities but now you’re making a statement that you don’t even want to risk NON-HUMAN robots? Okay… The real alarm bell for me was when Hill said J5 wasn’t threatening and it his intention to make the character a little bit more so.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but Johnny5 was supposed to be loveable, curious, humorous and…let me guess….non-threatening? I can sort of get the idea of a slight redesign, as he slightly bears a passing resemblance to WALL-E. Still, when you first saw the original Short Circuit, how old were you? About the same age as the age range Hill is proposing, perhaps?
But the problem is…the younger you go, can you really have harder issues playing out in the back story? Why would you want to make a loveable character darker – and pair him up alongside a kid?
I’m starting to get some bad input here.
How about you?
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Perhaps they want the new designs to resemble the Iron Giant? Where the Giant had and innocent image to him but was also intimidating and when angered turn into a DeathBOT! Another robot that I can think of that has traits similar to the Iron Giant is Callebreto from the Battle Chasers comics done by Joe Mad.
I’d loooooove to see a Iron Giant live action film..Brad Bird? can we make this happen???
Honestly, I think it makes a lot of sense. He is suppose to be a bot used for war and intelligence gathering. A child or teenager would most likely be the only one not threatened by him and would simply love him and think he is amazing. However, an adult would take one look at him and think he is dangerous. As a result of that, the younger character would do everything she could to defend and protect him. Nothing they have said about this reboot worries me at all. I’ll wait for the trailers, but as of right now, it sounds like it could be pretty awesome. With this new angle they are going for, the door is wide open for either success or major failure. I don’t think the latter will be the outcome. Johnny 5 is ALIVE!