Ourchair, Frustrated Hollywood Producer

From an old livejournal post in 2001:

From American McGee, the creative genius that brought you the best-selling American McGee's Alice comes the most visionary and ambitious action adventure since, well, American McGee's Alice.

After personally experiencing the horror of playing in sports other than basketball, Michael Jordan goes catatonic and ventures into the depths of his mind to battle for his sanity by answering a distressed summon to return to Toonsville. However, the Toonsville that Jordan returns to is not the one he remembers from the time he participated in the Space Jam basketball tournament. The land has befouled and degenerated into what could best be described as a nightmarish fusion between Picasso and Ralph Bakshi productions.

The flora and fauna of Acme Forest has twisted and gnarled into a mass of petrified oaks, madly mutated redwood and ill-tempered carnivorous deer while Bambi has become a cyborg menace bent on avenging his mother. The Old Toon West has been over run by a band of ravaging cactus barbarians whilst the very sand beneath its denizens feet has become a mad parasitic collective and exoskeletal apparatus is now a must. The mining community is under an oppressive edict of forced labor, while Yosemite Sam has become a mad obsessive compulsive neat freak avenger bearing massive chainguns and a 20-ton AcmeGear suit.

However, Jordan must remain undaunted by his diseased surroundings, the colossal confusion and his very mortality in order to undo the chaos. Equipped with courage, and a lethal array of deadly transmogrified sporting equipment, he must confront the forces of evil, and put the self-righteous Doctor Toon in his place.

This isn't the Michael Jordan you grew up with.

American McGee's Michael Jordan​

  • Fifteen levels of pure chaotic cartoon madness rendered in beautifully stunning real-time 3D. Lead Jordan on his quest to reclaim Toonsville in stunning third person action based on the utterly vicious code of the Quake IV engine.

  • Battle misfit reincarnations of toons you grew up with: Yosemite Sam now wears a 20-ton battlesuit, Pepe Le Pew packs razor sharp claws and a sulfurous stench, and Popeye has become an testosteroned uberfreak. Everyone's a bit more hostile, violent and unforgiving than they already were in the first place. Except of course, for Foghorn Leghorn. No way in hell that toon can get any nastier.

  • Figure out fiendish puzzles that range from the malevolent mechanisms of the Orange Clockwork Factory to the mind-numbing bric-a-brac madness of the Psychedelic Furniture Shop.

  • Destroy your enemies with wicked sports equipment. Play with exploding golf balls, channel electricity with your 9999-Volt Iron club and bounce some intense pain with your multi-purpose basketball. Never before has pain and punishment been so sporting.

  • Created by renowned level designer American McGee, responsible for the intense gaming architecture that made Quake and Doom so famous.

American McGee's Michael Jordan - An intense artistic action adventure tour de force coming to the PC. Summer 2002 from Electronic Arte Games.
 
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ourchair said:
From an old livejournal post in 2001:

From American McGee, the creative genius that brought you the best-selling American McGee's Alice comes the most visionary and ambitious action adventure since, well, American McGee's Alice.

After personally experiencing the horror of playing in sports other than basketball, Michael Jordan goes catatonic and ventures into the depths of his mind to battle for his sanity by answering a distressed summon to return to Toonsville. However, the Toonsville that Jordan returns to is not the one he remembers from the time he participated in the Space Jam basketball tournament. The land has befouled and degenerated into what could best be described as a nightmarish fusion between Picasso and Ralph Bakshi productions.

The flora and fauna of Acme Forest has twisted and gnarled into a mass of petrified oaks, madly mutated redwood and ill-tempered carnivorous deer while Bambi has become a cyborg menace bent on avenging his mother. The Old Toon West has been over run by a band of ravaging cactus barbarians whilst the very sand beneath its denizens feet has become a mad parasitic collective and exoskeletal apparatus is now a must. The mining community is under an oppressive edict of forced labor, while Yosemite Sam has become a mad obsessive compulsive neat freak avenger bearing massive chainguns and a 20-ton AcmeGear suit.

However, Jordan must remain undaunted by his diseased surroundings, the colossal confusion and his very mortality in order to undo the chaos. Equipped with courage, and a lethal array of deadly transmogrified sporting equipment, he must confront the forces of evil, and put the self-righteous Doctor Toon in his place.

This isn't the Michael Jordan you grew up with.

American McGee's Michael Jordan​

  • Fifteen levels of pure chaotic cartoon madness rendered in beautifully stunning real-time 3D. Lead Jordan on his quest to reclaim Toonsville in stunning third person action based on the utterly vicious code of the Quake IV engine.

  • Battle misfit reincarnations of toons you grew up with: Yosemite Sam now wears a 20-ton battlesuit, Pepe Le Pew packs razor sharp claws and a sulfurous stench, and Popeye has become an testosteroned uberfreak. Everyone's a bit more hostile, violent and unforgiving than they already were in the first place. Except of course, for Foghorn Leghorn. No way in hell that toon can get any nastier.

  • Figure out fiendish puzzles that range from the malevolent mechanisms of the Orange Clockwork Factory to the mind-numbing bric-a-brac madness of the Psychedelic Furniture Shop.

  • Destroy your enemies with wicked sports equipment. Play with exploding golf balls, channel electricity with your 9999-Volt Iron club and bounce some intense pain with your multi-purpose basketball. Never before has pain and punishment been so sporting.

  • Created by renowned level designer American McGee, responsible for the intense gaming architecture that made Quake and Doom so famous.

American McGee's Michael Jordan - An intense artistic action adventure tour de force coming to the PC. Summer 2002 from Electronic Arte Games.
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That's pretty awesome, actually. Pretty way awesome. I'm kind of curious why you decided to mix non-classically Warner Bros. characters in there, but overall, very slick.

I want to see American McGee's Sesame Street. :D Bert and Ernie vs. the monsters
 
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Zombipanda said:
That's pretty awesome, actually. Pretty way awesome. I'm kind of curious why you decided to mix non-classically Warner Bros. characters in there, but overall, very slick.

I want to see American McGee's Sesame Street. :D Bert and Ernie vs. the monsters
Click to expand...
I basically tried to come up with the most absurd thing that involved an individual who lives in a 'mundane' world who returns to a fantasy land he/she had previously visited so that it neatly copies the Alice formula.

I also used the back of the box of American McGee's Alice as my reference to how to write the piece.

As for Sesame Street I'd rather see an absurd take on MMORPGs done with it called "Street of Sesame: The Spelling Crusade"
 
ourchair said:
I basically tried to come up with the most absurd thing that involved an individual who lives in a 'mundane' world who returns to a fantasy land he/she had previously visited so that it neatly copies the Alice formula.
Click to expand...

I was more curious of, why Bambi? He's Disney.

ourchair said:
I also used the back of the box of American McGee's Alice as my reference to how to write the piece.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Well, it's a joke... ;) But I'd play the **** out of it, if it existed.

ourchair said:
As for Sesame Street I'd rather see an absurd take on MMORPGs done with it called "Street of Sesame: The Spelling Crusade"
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:D :D :D :D :D
 
Zombipanda said:
I was more curious of, why Bambi? He's Disney.
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****, you're right.

Oops.

As a few of you might recall, I was aiming to redevelop Captain Planet and the Planeteers for DreamMovie a handful of rounds back.

I had a very simply defined reinvention, but didn't make it in time to join, so I took that as license to take as much time as I want to continue developing it.

So every once in awhile I revisit the little word document I have with all my notes, and I have to confess that I'm torn. I have pretty much locked the concept in development hell.

I don't know whether I want to go with Authority type heroes who basically demand that the world 'behave,' as they set about to smash down and beat the living crap out of individuals and institutions who devastate the planet. Tearing down the old order and becoming superheroes who don't want to save human civilization, but change it instead.

Or aim for realistic types who lead by example and using their massive resources to show the way. Exemplars who have the courage of "Heart" to effect real change into motion.

The only thing certain is this:

Captain Planet as you know him, will not exist.

So, any suggestions?
 
Why not start them as people who try to change by example, but slowly realize that they have to take a more proactive approach to effect any long lasting change? This approach puts then directly into conflict with a major corporation that controls several media outlets (so the media starts to paint them as eco-terrorists).
 
Iceshadow said:
Why not start them as people who try to change by example, but slowly realize that they have to take a more proactive approach to effect any long lasting change?
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I considered that, but I prefer to polarize the ideas because they make for a more economical story.

If I go for the 'pro-active' approach, I want them to dress in fashionable costumes, and blow stuff up with the power of Wind, Fire, Earth and Water, all under the leadership of Heart. I want it to follow the example set by The Authority and the Ellis/Millar school of heroism which basically concludes that heroes exist to use their great resources to smash the old order.

This is in direct contrast to Grant Morrison's problem with superheroes in which they always put the flag back on top and dust off the monuments and everything proceeds to the way it was, and essentially informed much of the morality behind the first three arcs of Ultimate Fantastic Four and the first six arcs of Ultimate Spider-Man.

If I go for the lead by example route, I have to endeavor for a more complex socio-political albeit realistic portrait in which changing the world is a 'brand' that can save humanity, a la Joe Casey's WildCATs 3.0, and that means developing a distribution of virtues among five elements, which was hinted at in my teaser.

And that in turn, means developing five complementary vices and representatives for those vices (i.e. Hoggish Greedly, Dr. Blight, Verminous Skumm, etc.). All of this, I'm trying to do while establishing a clear Big Bad, and finding a way to incorporate Gaia and maybe Zarm into the fabric of the story.

The reason why I put so much thought into this is because I actually pay a lot of attention to the green movement and the politics, sociology and morality of that movement and the obstacles it faces, and I don't intend to make the pitch boringly elaborate but I do want it to be informed by all these ideas on a fundamentally enjoyable 'pop' level.

Iceshadow said:
This approach puts then directly into conflict with a major corporation that controls several media outlets (so the media starts to paint them as eco-terrorists).
Click to expand...
I think regardless of which route I take, the media will probably be brushed aside, simply because the media is a much smaller obstacle to change than it used to be and is simply a 'soft power' for those who would obstruct change, at least insofar as this universe is concerned.

That's not meant to be reflective to my actual beliefs, just that if you consider books like Global Frequency, The Authority and Planetary, the media operates on a level that is just irrelevant to the events that occur and the agents that spur them into motion.
 
ourchair said:
I considered that, but I prefer to polarize the ideas because they make for a more economical story.

If I go for the 'pro-active' approach, I want them to dress in fashionable costumes, and blow stuff up with the power of Wind, Fire, Earth and Water, all under the leadership of Heart. I want it to follow the example set by The Authority and the Ellis/Millar school of heroism which basically concludes that heroes exist to use their great resources to smash the old order.

This is in direct contrast to Grant Morrison's problem with superheroes in which they always put the flag back on top and dust off the monuments and everything proceeds to the way it was, and essentially informed much of the morality behind the first three arcs of Ultimate Fantastic Four and the first six arcs of Ultimate Spider-Man.

If I go for the lead by example route, I have to endeavor for a more complex socio-political albeit realistic portrait in which changing the world is a 'brand' that can save humanity, a la Joe Casey's WildCATs 3.0, and that means developing a distribution of virtues among five elements, which was hinted at in my teaser.

And that in turn, means developing five complementary vices and representatives for those vices (i.e. Hoggish Greedly, Dr. Blight, Verminous Skumm, etc.). All of this, I'm trying to do while establishing a clear Big Bad, and finding a way to incorporate Gaia and maybe Zarm into the fabric of the story.

The reason why I put so much thought into this is because I actually pay a lot of attention to the green movement and the politics, sociology and morality of that movement and the obstacles it faces, and I don't intend to make the pitch boringly elaborate but I do want it to be informed by all these ideas on a fundamentally enjoyable 'pop' level.

I think regardless of which route I take, the media will probably be brushed aside, simply because the media is a much smaller obstacle to change than it used to be and is simply a 'soft power' for those who would obstruct change, at least insofar as this universe is concerned.

That's not meant to be reflective to my actual beliefs, just that if you consider books like Global Frequency, The Authority and Planetary, the media operates on a level that is just irrelevant to the events that occur and the agents that spur them into motion.
Click to expand...

What if they ARE eco-terrorists, regardless of how the media portrays them?

Either way, Heart should be *******ed scary. Maybe play on the proto-mythic idea that eating the heart of an animal or person will give you their powers.
 
Zombipanda said:
What if they ARE eco-terrorists, regardless of how the media portrays them?
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They are, in a sense.

Which is why media would be irrelevant.

Regardless, I tend to granulate green movements between light green environmentalism and eco-terrorism with bright green falling in between, so eco-terrorism is basically when humans become secondary to the concerns of the planet.

Which is NOT what I want the Planeteers to be. I want them to believe in a green future where humans exist, rather than being people who believe that humans are an eschatological force on the planet. And I won't waver from THAT part of the design because I already worked out how to incorporate eschatology into the pitch.

Zombipanda said:
Either way, Heart should be *******ed scary. Maybe play on the proto-mythic idea that eating the heart of an animal or person will give you their powers.
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Actually, as namby-pamby as this sounds, I want Heart to be the 'community' virtue of the team, and if I DO make him into a superpowered character then I already know what his practical ability is.
 
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