If you haven’t heard of an upcoming film called Fanboys, that’s understandable. The Weinstein Company, the film’s owners and distributors, have reshuffled the release of the film more times than George Lucas has retconned the Star Wars universe. The film’s logline is this: it’s 1998 and four friends make a pact to infiltrate Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch to watch an early cut of Episode I: The Phantom Menace. What the trailer doesn’t communicate is that the reason why these guys are going to see the movie is because one of them is dying from cancer and so can’t wait until May 1999 to see the movie in theaters.
Here’s the trailer. Watch it and then after you clean up come back for my rant.
OK, so a little back story: eight years back I read the script for this. It was OK, had some good geeky jokes aimed at a Star Wars-savvy audience but the journey that the friends went on felt more akin to a John Hughes movie from the 1980s. You remember those, right? The ones that had their quota of decent jokes as well as a decent story? So why does the trailer for Fanboys look like a nerd version of American Pie And what’s up with Kristen Bell making her only appearance at the end of the trailer? Somehow I suspect that her agent must have made some calls to Weinstein to keep her practically out of this thing because, for the life of me, if the Weinsteins’ are targeting the American Pie crowd then you think there would be a shot of Ms. Veronica Mars in her slave Leia outfit.
I know I sound like an old man bitching at some kids to get off my lawn but I gotta call it like I see it, and what I saw looks like crud. Look, I got the message after the trailer’s third Star Wars reference but apparently that’s all this film is according to this preview. If that is indeed the case and the dramatic elements have been jettisoned like the garbage dumped by an Imperial Star Destroyer before it makes the jump to lightspeed, then the soul of the Fanboys script that I read will have been destroyed. John Hughes, where art thou now?
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One Comment
I think Weinstein yanked the cancer storyline (you can probably find all the to and fro online somewheres). And remember the old trailer, that started at the party and had Kristen in her Slave Leia gold bikini? You should definitely find that trailer. Definitely.
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