#201. The Mattel Cinematic Universe Draft!
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This bonus episode is a rapid-fire snake draft of Mattel toy movie pitches, with all three hosts leaning into pure absurdity rather than reviewing anything real. JVL leads off with He-Man and the Masters of the Universe reimagined as a coming-of-age story about muscly guys at a British boarding school figuring out their feelings, follows with an R-rated raunchy comedy about washed-up Olympic figure skaters called Ice Follies (aka Holiday on Ice), and closes with American Girl as a lesbian coming-of-age drama "starring Rachel Nichols," passing on the lamer anthology-of-each-doll pitch Mike floats as a joke. Sonny drafts Hot Wheels as a Drive-meets-Micro-Machines crime caper about a hotel parking attendant who steals cars before finding a conscience, Magic Eight Ball as a cursed-object thriller about a guy who gets rich off the ball's true predictions right up until it foretells his own death, and Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots as an unofficial Matrix prequel in which a robot uprising enslaves humanity for power. Mike takes Uno as an underground high-stakes gambling drama in the vein of Rounders and King of Kong, View Master as a kid-discovers-a-multiverse-portal fantasy he predicts "will actually get made," and closes with a Polly Pocket/Mighty Max mashup pitched as an animated Indiana-Jones-meets-Trolls adventure. There's essentially no opening banter — the entire roughly 19-minute bonus episode, released as a palate cleanser alongside the Barbie review, is the draft itself — and it ends with Mike declaring himself the winner while Sonny grouses that his own grounded, actually-makeable trio (Hot Wheels, Magic Eight Ball, Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots) beats Mike's higher-concept picks.
From the show notes
Meet the new MCU.
Full transcript
Mike00:00:00Welcome to the Sub-Beacon bonus episode. We're doing another draft, aren't we guys? We're doing a draft for Best Mattel Toys, I think, right? That's what we're going for here.
JVL00:00:23Is it Best Mattel Toys or is it Mattel Intellectual Property as you made it to Mattel?
Sonny00:00:29Best Mattel Toys is a movie based on Mattel IP.
Mike00:00:33I see. For the Mattel Cinematic Universe. I see. Okay, well, let's just dive into it then. Should we randomize this order?
JVL00:00:43Randomize it.
Mike00:00:44Okay, let's do a randomized. Here we go. First pick is JVL. Second pick is Sonny. Third pick is me. All right. So we're doing a snake draft here. Well, you get first pick as we do our Mattel movie draft.
JVL00:01:06With the first pick, I select He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. It is a story about a large, muscly, oily guy who lives on a planet with other large, oily muscle guys. And they only wear loincloths and they have swords and laser guns. And there's... There's like one woman there, but nobody's really into her too much. And it's a mashup of the Buck... Not Buck Rogers. What was the... We did actually... Vic's favorite... The mix-up of Flash Gordon and then a coming-of-age sexuality movie about a young, muscly He-Man as he's trying to understand these weird feelings he's having. This is not an adult film.
Sonny00:01:59So this is a PG-13 movie that you're pitching. Me at Sony Studios. You're pitching me with the Mattel brand on it. You're pitching me gay He-Man sex romp.
JVL00:02:15Not sex romp. Much more sort of coming-of-age sci-fi comedy.
Sonny00:02:19I'm not sold on this.
JVL00:02:21Where the characters are mostly gay. Man of arms is like, you know, giving hand jobs. Think about, think of it this way.
Sonny00:02:31I don't think it's a good pitch.
JVL00:02:32The analog here is, think of the Masters of the Universe as a British public school. And, you know, the guys are doing what the guys do at public school, but they're trying to figure out, like, does it really mean anything? Are there feelings there? Or is it just something you do because you're on Quadaradan or whatever the Masters of the Universe planet is?
Sonny00:02:53Planet Greyskull, isn't it? Or is that just the castle?
JVL00:02:56That's the castle. The Castle Greyskull. The planet has a name. All right, that's my pitch for He-Man, Masters of the Universe. I'm sure there will be people in Hollywood who think that's a great movie.
Sonny00:03:08Beating down the door. All right, so with my first pick, I'm taking Hot Wheels. Now, here's the thing, guys. Here's a story I've heard through the grapevine that Hot Wheels is the most cursed property to pitch in Hollywood. Mattel brings writers in. They let them play with the toys, and then they got to pitch things. But there are rules. There are rules to pitching Hot Wheels. You can't be talking cars because that's like cars, right? They can't, you know, do street races because that's Fast and Furious. So you got to come up with something that doesn't resemble another Cars-based franchise. Here's my pitch for Hot Wheels. You got a parking attendant. Parking attendant. He works at a fancy hotel in Hollywood, and when all of the shakes and mirrors and studio heads, and actors come in and they put their Ferraris and their Ford Mustang Shelby GTs in the garage and go off to do their various Hollywood things, this guy goes up in his, you know, the spiral parking garage where all the cars are kind of, you know, slotted off into the sides and he hops in them, and then he does crimes. He does crimes in them. He's like, it's like drive. It's drive by way of micromachines. or whatever, and while he's doing his crimes, in the midst of committing one of his crimes, he discovers that the crime that he is doing is hurting an innocent person and he gets a conscience and then he decides to stop doing crimes and instead uses his car-stealing abilities for good to run. I don't know, I haven't gotten that far yet, but that's the good that he goes from doing crimes to doing good with the car. The cars that he steals out of the Hot Wheels parking garage.
JVL00:05:02Alternate pitch, you just remake Gone in 60 Seconds, but with Hot Wheels badging over top of it.
Sonny00:05:08I mean, I, I feel like that's, I don't, I feel like you can't just be stealing the cars. I feel like you have to have, there has to be a good, he has to learn a lesson.
JVL00:05:17The wheels are hot.
Sonny00:05:19It's Ghost Rider. I was gonna say, it's Ghost Rider, but with Hot Wheels.
Mike00:05:26There has to, there has to be a moment in the movie where a cop is speaking into, you know, into his thing and saying, uh, it says we got Hot Wheels as it speeds by him.
Sonny00:05:36Mike. Uh, okay.
Mike00:05:38Sonny. All right. All right. So with my first pick, I am in a go with Uno, everybody's favorite, you know, color-coded card game. And my Uno movie, uh, explores the underground world of competitive Uno playing. Um, there's a bit of rounders, uh, mixed with, uh, what was the, what was the name?
JVL00:06:05King of Kong.
Mike00:06:06A bit of King of Kong, but also exactly no, no 21, um, where, where there is some kind of, uh, genius, but, uh, sort of an, uh, undiscovered genius at Uno, you know, he's really good at figuring out, uh, you know, the probabilities when he's, uh, when the right time to lay down that, uh, that draw for wild card. Um, and so he is sort of plucked out of obscurity by somebody who recognizes his talent and is put into this too fast, maybe, uh, too dangerous world of underground Uno playing. Uh, and he comes out on, on top.
JVL00:06:52There's my pitch. He's just playing pickup Uno out on the streets and somebody spots him and realizes that he's out. He's counting the cards. That's right. He's understanding. He's it's like a beautiful mind where we then see on the screen how his head is putting the draw force with the reverses, with the twos and counting the cards. For me, the Uno movie would be a Blumhouse style horror movie because Uno is a game which I have thrown away in our family probably a dozen times because it is instant conflict. Yeah. Would the kids open a box of Uno cards? Yeah. And everybody's screaming at everyone else. Do you guys play? And what I finally did was I just took the cards up and I was like, do you guys play
Sonny00:07:36and do you guys play draw until you get a card you can play or draw only once? Draw only. That's the official rule. Oh, so we play draw until you get a card you can play. Yeah.
Mike00:07:46Yeah. I play draw so you get a card you can play. But see, but see, but see, here's my tagline for my movie, which is something to the effect of you make your own rules.
Sonny00:07:53Well, here's all right. My counter, my counter pitch. Boom. Here's my counter pitch. Boom. In a, in a high stakes game of underground. Uno, uh, Johnny, Johnny blue, uh, comes up against a shark who plays one of the make your own rule cards and it's either draw 25, draw 25 or kill the president and he's got to kill the president. Then he has to kill the president in order to not have to draw 25, the, the game pauses. They put a pause on the game. He goes off and he does, but then he teams up with the secret service to pretend to kill the president. And when he comes back and wins. The Uno game and collects his winning.
JVL00:08:30That's when the secret service swoops in and he takes off the mask and he is the president.
Mike00:08:35Exactly. See, see, clearly you guys were all gunning for Uno and I got it first. So what do you got ideas? All right. So my, so my, my, uh, my next pick is, uh, a little bit out there, a little weird. Um, it's a fantasy sci-fi kind of fantasy, uh, based on the view master.
JVL00:08:54I like this. Oh, I like that.
Mike00:08:56Yeah. And, uh, and, and there's this. Kind of idea that w that in the right hands, this is not a normal view master. It's like the view master is a toy. It is not like something that, that is a special, it is, it is known to be a toy, but one kid discovers that his view master, when he puts in, uh, these particular, uh, round little card things, uh, transport him to the various worlds. And it turns out there is a sort of multiverse, uh, problem that only. He can solve by finding the right view, uh, and, uh, he picks up all of these folks from the multiverse. This sounds like a movie that actually would get made.
Sonny00:09:40Exactly. Yeah.
JVL00:09:42I want movie sliders, but view master. This will happen.
Mike00:09:45Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, I'll be taking those residuals, uh, when, when they make, uh, and, uh, and that's it.
Sonny00:09:53It's just called view master. Uh, I like that idea. That's the closest thing to a real movie that I've heard so far. All right. Uh, all right. So my second pick, I'm going to go low budget poor. I take the magic eight ball and very simple plot here. Guy gets cursed magic eight ball, but he doesn't realize it's cursed at first. It tells the actual future. So he says, is Amazon stock going to go up this day and he shakes and it says, it looks bad. And then he shorts it and he makes a million dollars. He's like, oh my God, I can use this to make so much money. And then he starts asking it other things though. He's like, uh, magic eight ball. Am I going to live to be a hundred? And it says, no. Magic bay April. Am I going to live to be 80 and it says no magic eight ball. Am I going to live to see tomorrow? And it says no. And he has got to figure out how to stop his own death spoiler. He does it by smashing the eight ball.
Mike00:10:43Just right there.
Sonny00:10:44Right. Right then and there. That's it.
JVL00:10:47That's the, that's the whole pitch.
Mike00:10:48That's not a bad.
JVL00:10:49That's not a bad pitch. I like it. Sunny. All right. JVL. So, uh, with my pick, I'm going to choose holiday on ice slash ice follies. This is a property that, uh, Mattel picked up in the nineties, I believe this is people may remember this, the traveling ice capades shows where, you know, or during the winter, a bunch of, uh, people go and they put on ice rink shows. This is people, you know, parents buy tickets and they take their children to see it in the ice follies is an R rated comedy. About what a bunch of washed up Olympic wannabes figure skater types do when the only work they can find. Mind is basically the figure skating equivalent of the circus and they're weird bunch of misfits making their way through life together and there's, you know, like everybody's sleeping with everybody else and there's like, you know, jokes about how the kids think they're so funny. But like the, really the funny ice folly guy is really sad and dark and uh, and there's
Sonny00:11:49probably a, maybe even a love story packed in there somewhere, but it's a, an R rated
JVL00:11:56comedy that's raunchy, but with a lot of fun.
Sonny00:11:58Of heart ice fall ice follies.
Mike00:12:01Did you know JVL? There is a Jimmy Stewart, uh, movie, Jimmy Stewart, and I think Joan Crawford movie called ice follies.
Sonny00:12:08There was a, does it track what I was just saying? I forget what that was. Blades of glades of glory.
Mike00:12:14Well, there's blades of glory, uh, no, but it's called the ice follies of 1939 and it's, it's not quite the same, but um, I think you wrap that in somehow there's some reference for the, for the cinephiles.
JVL00:12:28Uh, all right. With my final pick, I am torn between American girl and Fisher price, little people, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna go with American girl. Yeah. And this is, this is, this is an R rated sexual coming of age story. Yeah. So lesbian, he, man, in which a bunch of girls who do things together, uh, and are just, you know, they, they. Uh, they have their own world with their own power. They don't need guys. And they, as they're growing up, they realize some things about the starring Rachel Nichols.
?00:13:08There.
Mike00:13:09See the, but see here, the actual pitch, the actual pitch is a, there is a franchise in America, which is just tell the stories of the each American girl in the, in movie and like, yeah, totally boring.
JVL00:13:24But all right. All right. Well, we already have those direct to video. I own like 15 of them. Okay. All right. None of them starring Rachel Nichols. Go ahead.
Sonny00:13:32All right. Sunny with your final pick. Rock 'em, sock 'em robots in which, uh, it's the, it's the distant future. Robots have, uh, become helpers of the sort, you know, that we see, uh, all the time, but
JVL00:13:43an illicit underground human Jack, an illicit didn't Hugh Jackman make that move.
Sonny00:13:47No, that was called something else. Real steel. Okay. That was called real steel, but, but, uh, but in, in this future, um, uh, the robots are kidnapped. They're made to fight underground, uh, to the death until there's a robot uprising. And then the humans become enslaved and sources of power for the robots, along with, uh, a new form of fusion that is, uh, powering and the humans are plugged into a computer simulation. So their bodies don't shut down, um, uh, and continue to do the heat for this energy source. Uh, but that rock 'em, sock 'em robots. It's not a matrix prequel.
JVL00:14:28Then at some point, uh, they start, uh, a massive online video game about the rock 'em,
Sonny00:14:35sock 'em robots that the, no, I'm sorry.
JVL00:14:38I'm trying to bring it back into that last horrible matrix movie that we did.
Sonny00:14:42Uh, yeah. Yeah.
JVL00:14:44Terrible. Which I never, which I don't know.
Sonny00:14:46I feel like this was a lot of Mike. We got one more. I'm surprised. Polly.
Mike00:14:50We got one more. We got one more. Mike. Oh yeah. You got me. Uh, and in fact, you, uh, you anticipated a JVL. Uh, I'm thinking of a poly.
JVL00:14:57Hard.
Mike00:14:58Polly. Polly. Polly pocket. And, uh, uh, I've just, uh, uh, what is his name? Um, there's a boy version of Polly pocket called mighty max. Yeah. So a Polly pocket, mighty max mashup, uh, movie where, um, there's a, it actually kind of draws from a lot of the stuff from the Barbie movie, the idea of this sort of like parallel worlds. Um, but there's no real world, but like they, they, they like sort of. It's sort of, everybody lives in every Polly pocket and every, uh, miracle max lives in their own little, uh, clamshell little toy thing, uh, house. Um, and they go on adventures together. It's a, it's a sort of, it's sort of like the trolls movies. I'm imagining this as an animated movie, um, and which, uh, and, and which the, the sort of these two diametrically opposed, uh, figures, mighty Mac, uh, mighty max, who is a, um, adventurer kind of in the. In the vein of Harris of, uh, of Indiana Jones and, and Polly pocket, who is, um, you know, she's domestic. She, she likes to be at home and have tea parties and they, they get kind of, uh, whisked off together into this exciting adventure, bit Indiana Jones, a bit romancing the stone. Um, and, uh, and, and a bit of trolls. So Polly pocket meets mighty max. I don't know what you call it, but there it is pocket max pocket. Exactly. Definitely. Uh, all right. Pocket universe.
Sonny00:16:28Um, there you go, mighty, mighty, but there was a mighty max cartoon. I definitely watched that as a kid, like the early nineties.
Mike00:16:36That was a British, by the way, that was a British toy company that was purchased by Mattel. As was Thomas, the tank engine. That's right. Same, same company.
Sonny00:16:44Same company. I'm surprised nobody took Thomas the tank engine.
?00:16:46Frankly.
Mike00:16:47They're two. They're four. They're six. They're eight. Um, I've just seen so many of them. Um, and they make so many movies.
JVL00:16:54I've come to disdain Thomas and his train. Friends. You don't care for their, like their Jaybury. I don't, I don't care for their Jaybury.
Mike00:17:03No. All right. I like the fat controller. All right. So let's always just trying to have order here. So let's, let's go through this again. Yeah. So, um, uh, JVL he man in the masters of the universe, uh, gay coming of age, Rob, uh, number two, pick holiday on ice slash ice follies. Um, and number three, the American girl, there's a lot of sexual awakening stuff in here. I'm not, I'm not too. Yeah.
Sonny00:17:27They're all, all of them are all sexually.
Mike00:17:28Right. Yeah. Uh, Sonny, the hot wheels, uh, got in 60 seconds, hot wheels movie, um, magic eight ball with the number two. Well, I know, but, but whatever, uh, that's how I think of it. Number three, rock 'em sock 'em robots. And for me, number one, pick UNO number two, view master, number three, Polly pocket slash mighty max. There you are. We'll throw up the, uh, the pole. One of these days, uh, I think you win Mike. You think I win?
JVL00:17:57Yeah. I think you won. I kind of think I win too. I mean, I think, I think that's a good, that's a very solid line.
Sonny00:18:02I gotta say, I gotta stick up here for hot wheels, magic eight ball and rock 'em sock and robots. Those are things that you can actually make movies out of pretty good. Those are, those are, those are like actual things that you can make movies out of. It's not high concept view master sliders movie, you know, I don't know.
Mike00:18:17Here's the, here's the thing, Sonny, it, it, you might wanna like, uh, take out a piece of paper and a pen to like learn about how movies are made. It's not about the object itself. It's, it's about the idea, you know, and can you take, can you take something and turn it into a great idea? And I think that's what I've done.
Sonny00:18:34Okay. Yes. No, no, no. I, I think that's, I think that's probably, uh, I think you got it. You nailed it. You nailed it.
Mike00:18:40All right. Uh, that's all the time we're giving to this bonus episode, sub beacon.com. I'm sure it's fine.
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