Five Movie-Related Things I'd Like To See In My Lifetime (2016 Update)

ORIGINALLY POSTED 2010. New comments will be in bold.

This list will be quick and to-the-point. This is a list of pipe dreams that may or may not come to pass, but they're at the top of my wish list.

2016 Note: Looks like I'm faring a lot better on THIS wish list than the Game-Related Things list...



#5 - Ghostbusters 3, starring the original cast. There's a Ghostbusters 3 coming down the pike...yet rumor has it that it'll star a new cast (rumored to all be women) and have the originals appear only as cameos at best. This isn't something I'm particularly thrilled with. The appeal of Ghostbusters isn't necessarily the subject matter so much as the awesome cast, and I think most people who want to see a Ghostbusters 3 want to see those guys again. Unlike some franchises where keeping the feature player around as they age makes no sense (such as, say, Highlander), these guys are human beings and it'd make perfect sense to have a movie centered around an older team of Ghostbusters who are still protecting New York after all this time. Unfortunately, we'll likely never see this. Instead we'll get Ghostbusters 3: Starring Megan Fox. 2016 Note: Hoo boy. Well, we got a new Ghostbusters, but it isn't Ghostbusters 3. It also didn't have Megan Fox, though. Actually, the cast was okay. The movie certainly had funny moments, but it wasn't very good and the old cast cameos weren't handled very respectfully. I didn't hate the movie, but it wasn't what I wanted. Looks like my idea won't ever come to fruition now that we've lost Harold Ramis. A lot of factors went into this ending up the way it did, and we can pretty much strike it from the list.

#4 - A modern-world follow-up to Wall Street. In today's climate of corporate greed and corruption, the time is perfect for a follow-up to the 1987 smash hit Wall Street. ...wait, this one is actually happening. Cool. My wish for this one is that it not be too dumbed-down, as movies of this nature that have come out in recent years have often tended to be. 2016 Note: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps dropped a few years ago, and it was pretty good. Definitely not dumbed down. Glad we got a good follow-up to this, and the topic is still getting a lot of movie attention with films like The Big Short.

#3 - The rest of the Terminator Salvation saga. This saga was supposed to span three movies and essentially cover the future war. The only real problem with that is, the future war might be too expansive for a mere three movies to cover, so they have to skip a lot of time between each movie. Still, I'd like to see the remaining two movies and see how the war ends. Unfortunately for fans of the story, chances are looking slim that this will happen. While Salvation grossed double its budget worldwide (before DVD/Blu-Ray sales, even) and was largely a success commercially if not critically, things don't look good. The rights to the Terminator saga have been being bounced around between several production companies, all with their own outlandish ideas of how to continue the story. At this point it doesn't look like we'll see any more Terminator movies, and if we do, chances are they will be sabotaged in execution by corporate suits.

2016 Note: I was wrong about this. We got another Terminator movie after all, but it wasn't the follow-up to Salvation. Instead, Terminator Genisys started a NEW trilogy that then went unfinished as well. While Genisys was a good movie and it was great to get it at all, another unfinished trilogy is a bummer. At this point I'd just like to see a Terminator trilogy actually get finished in my lifetime. Since T3, Salvation, and Genisys all failed to garner sequels, maybe James Cameron can finally complete the original trilogy once he regains the rights in 2019 and finishes up with Avatar in the next few years. Back in the 90's when he had the rights, he expressed great interest in a followup to T2 that showed more of the future war victory over Skynet. Essentially a prequel. It would have made boatloads of money at that point, but Cameron ended up getting that in the late 90's anyway. It's looking pretty unlikely, because the series has taken enough of a beating that Cameron might not want to fool with it anymore now.

#2 - Star Wars Episode VII. Now, I know that as of 2010 people largely don't seem to want any more Star Wars movies due to the wave of negative reception the new trilogy got. However, I think there's room for one more movie in this franchise. Just one, mind you. Episode VII could take place several decades after the original trilogy, and feature the returns of Luke, Leia, Han Solo, and anyone else from the original movies who could be brought back. It would be good to see these characters again (and the actors would be about the right age for it) and find out what became of them after Return of the Jedi. Some new Sith menace could present itself, and we could see Jedi master Luke (or Leia, or Han, or their children) swing into action one more time. 2016 Note: Hell yes, this one came to full fruition and was even the way I hoped it'd be. Check this one off the list. One thing I want to note is that while I said I wanted to see "one more" movie, I'm now totally down with a VII to IX trilogy. Not too keen on the series continuing in perpetuity after that though. I say make the "third trilogy" as great as possible and move any further movie ideas to spinoffs like Rogue One.

#1 - The Prydain Chronicles. A series of five books by Lloyd Alexander that are little-known and largely unheard of. They nearly rival the likes of Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter in scope... and they tell quite the extraordinary story about a land in turmoil and the hero who grows up in the midst of it. The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, and The High King would all make amazing movies if given the right treatment, but so far no one has ever tapped into this well. A movie was made of The Black Cauldron, but it was a simplified cartoon version along the lines of the early Lord of the Rings movies. A big-budget production with real actors would bring the saga into the mainstream, and that...is something I'd like to see in my lifetime. 2016 Note: Disney has actually acquired the rights to this series and may be in the pre-pre-pre production stages of bringing us a movie series. Fingers crossed. I'll check in with this post again in 2020 or so...