The Onion: Michael Bay set to ruin 'Thundercats'

I'm a fan of The Onion, even though a lot of the time, the headlines are better than the full stories. This morning, though, I enjoyed two particularly funny stories. One was about the suppressed homoerotic urges of an NRA Annual Meeting. The other one tied in with an ongoing rant of mine that occasionally surfaces on Raised in the 80s.

Michael Bay Signs $50M Deal to F**k Up 'ThunderCats'

"I couldn't be more excited to completely f**k this up," said Bay, who plans to begin production on destroying the live-action adaptation next month. "ThunderCats has a great story, endearing characters, action, adventure, space-travel, and fantasy. It will be an honor to run it into the ground."

Hollywood insiders agreed that Bay—who has reportedly been closely involved in each of the 45 progressively worse rewrites of the script—was a natural choice to take a steaming dump on the popular ThunderCats property.

"Michael Bay has this innate sense of how to ruin a great story," Variety reporter Todd Brick said. "His ability to create astonishing plot holes, pepper dialogue with groan-inducing clichés, and abandon storylines halfway through is unparalleled. He was born to destroy this movie."

I just can't see why people can't leave the 80s alone! In fairness, this is satire, although there are plans to release a CGI feature-length version of ThunderCats next year. But maybe that's it--the best satire is what hits closest to home. Every time I hear that they're going to remake something out of my childhood, this is the kind of visceral reaction of pure dread that I have. It didn't even need to be a good show or movie: what mattered is that it was mine!

Next up: The Jonas Brothers set to star in '3n Wolf' (pronounced Threen Wolf') the third instalment in a decent premise increasingly ruined in the 80s, now slated to be completely wrecked in the 21st-century remake.

Muppets on Beta!

My parents were clearing out their basement, and finally decided to get rid of their old Betamax player. Do you remember Beta? Although it lost the market to VHS, it was actually a technically superior machine, with better recording and playback. If I remember correctly, the biggest trouble was that the faster tape speed meant that you couldn't record nearly as much on a single cassette tape. So even if it was better quality, people weren't as excited about it.
But not only did my parents' antiquated Beta VCR still work (after cleaning and drying out) but there were a few tapes still kicking around, including this one, with some favourite moments from the Muppet Show. Enjoy.

You probably remember all those clips, but here's something serious. Were you one of those folks whose parents got onto the wrong bandwagon when the time came to buy a VCR? Actually, to tell the truth, I'm not really sure which VCR was the wrong choice. Yes, in the course of time, VHS really did crush the Beta opposition, but who's buying VHS now? Way back in the day, Betamaxes actually had better video and audio quality. They just got beat out commercially by a better-marketed product that was all right, but technically inferior. Kind of like the way that HD-DVD was buried by Blu-Ray. Only thing is, with a bit of digging around, you might still find an HD-DVD player, while your Beta tapes are just going to moulder away in the basement. Or are they? This would have been a great way to recover those lost 80s TV shows that you taped, if only HD-DVD had survived...


Sorry to follow up on the Betamax line of thought even further. In a particularly candid moment, US president Barack Obama drew parallels between current economic woes and the 1980s mentality that led to the VHS ascendancy. Obama pointed out that 'sometimes, the answer isn't always "Bigger is better" [referring to the larger VHS tape format]. The only way to be sure is to weigh all the alternatives.'