Monday, November 12, 2018

BREAKING NEWS: Disney to Remake Outlaw King!



Just kidding. You can resume breathing. Yes, we did watch Outlaw King this weekend: my wife, because she finds Chris Pine to be pleasing eye-candy, and me—actually, she kind of dragged me into watching it. I’m already quite familiar with the story. Robert the Bruce is a distant ancestor, after all. It was not by accident that my Dad named my older brother Robert, and me... Well, you know.

But once I started watching, I did get thoroughly hooked by the story, and I really enjoyed this movie. Most of all, I appreciated the fact that the filmmakers actually made a significant effort to get the history right, and did not make the traditional Hollywood botch of the thing.

Which got me thinking: what if...

Hence today’s gedankenexperiment*: what if, say, Disney had gotten hold of this property? How would it have been different? Obviously, the first place to start would have been by casting Idris Elba as the Black Douglas, and then giving Queen Elizabeth a big boss-fight duel with the Prince of Wales atop the battlements of Berwick Castle. But what other horrible things would they have done to it, in order to make it a proper Hollywood movie?

The lines are open. Let the conversation begin.




* gedankenexperiment: German for, “no funding available”

4 comments:

Karen said...

It's the Chris's, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pine, Chris Pratt, Chris Evans, Chris Noth......

Mark Keigley said...

I suspect Disney would have had to have some sort of "cutsey" tie-in movie market toys...perhaps trebuchets and siege engines for storming castles...

Judith said...

Lots of songs.

~brb said...

Yes, of course. Ditch all that depressing Celtic folk music and replace it with some snappy show tunes. Maybe get Elton John to come out of retirement one more time to write the score? I mean, Outlaw King, Lion King, what's the diff?