Hollywood Punch-Up: The Greatest American Hero

Today marks the release of the re-imagined A-Team, which stars Liam Neeson and a bunch of guys you've never heard of.

(Sorry Bradley Cooper, but if I say that one dude from The Hangover is in it, everyone will go "They got Zach Galifinakis to play Murdock??" Which would have been BRILLIANT.)

Hollywood has done a stellar job of repackaging 80s tv into big blockbuster actions films: The Dukes of Hazzard, Transformers, The A-Team... even Thundercats is in the works for a feature.

So I've taken it upon myself to punch up one series that's been woefully overlooked: The Greatest American Hero.

In my role as Big Time Hollywood Screenwriter, I've also taken it upon myself to swear a lot. Like, really a lot. Because that's what Big Time Hollywood Screenwriters do, people! Drop f-bombs! So if you don't like f-bombs, this may not be the entry for you.

Ok, here we go!

Original logline: A teacher is asked to be a superhero using a special alien suit with powers he can barely understand or control.

Ok, wow, well. Right there -- Welcome to Sucksville, population: one American hero. First of all, our hero's a teacher, which means "sweet, sensitive dude nuzzling off the teat of the American taxpayer." That ain't gonna fly in the red states or with 14 year-old boys. (Chances are if you can cater to one, you cater to the other.) 14 year-old boys don't want to LEAVE school only to turn around and watch a movie about the guy who just gave them a boring-ass lecture about Emily Bronte or the congruence of triangles or some shit.

So we gotta sex this guy up. A teacher is great if you're making a chick flick where he's on summer break in the Hamptons and meets this woman who's a holistic veterinarian and she's not looking for love, but somehow suddenly finds it in his soft brown eyes, gentle wit, and quietly strong demeanor, and despite her outward protests, they begin an intense, soulful love affair punctuated by a few minor but solvable misunderstandings, until there's one really big twist (he's actually a descendant of Scottish royalty and has to return to oversee his manse on the moors!) which causes a heartbreaking rift, which they solve JUST in the nick of time (he chooses love over moors!) only to have him die of cancer or a car accident at the very last moment.

That's what a teacher is good for. But if you want to make 150 million fucking dollars (260 worldwide), you gotta sex it up.

In the original series, Mr. Hinkley is kind of a lovable nerd and I guess if we want to cater to the fans we should keep that kernel of his character, but let's make it sexy. Yeah, I know. Sexy nerd? Oxymoron, right? Watch and learn:

He's a freelance programmer.

YEAHH!!! That giant SQUEE! sound you just heard was all the women in our target demographic going "Ooh! He's smart, rich, AND can get that malware off my laptop?? BONER-LICIOUS!" (Do girls get boners? Whatever. ERECT NIPPLE-ICIOUS!) and all the 14 year-old boys out there are like, "YEAH, he's like a mother-fuckin' HACKER who can program his own Bit Torrent client and pwn mother-fuckin' noobs in Halo 3!! BONER-LICIOUS! (It's a well-known fact that 14 year-old boys have boners ALL THE TIME, but this is a particularly large and motivated one, just not in a gay way.)

Problem one: SOLVED. You're welcome, America.

Ok, so the rest of this shit: "[Our mother-fuckin' SEXY freelance programmer] is asked to be a superhero using a special alien suit with powers he can barely understand or control."

Wow, ok, the FIRST thing I learned in screenwriting school -- wait, let me correct that: the first thing I would have learned in screenwriting school had I gone, but dude you don't fuck with this kind of natural talent, seriously, it just comes out of me what can I say is: don't use the passive voice.

"Is asked"?? -No. "Becomes"! -Still a little weak. "Transforms into"! -Little too Shia LeBeouf, and if you ask me, a LeBeouf is the sound you make when you accidentally fart at a fancy wedding. Let's see... "MORPHS INTO" -Yeah, that's the shit!

"[Our mother-fuckin' SEXY freelance programmer... fuggit, let's call him "Lucas"] MORPHS INTO a superhero using a special alien suit with powers he can barely understand or control."

Alien suit? WTF.

Ok, so first of all, I'd like to apply a little logic here. (Yeah, I know it's Hollywood, but bear with me.) Why in the FUCK would an alien race -- ostensibly with the technology to travel across the vast reaches of space -- build any kind of garment with two arms, two legs, a neck, and a hole to piss out of? (If they can journey across light-years, they gotta be smart enough to put a little vent in there for your dick, right? They don't do all that probing of people, dogs, and cattle just to stop the anatomy lesson at your head and four major appendages.) Did they travel across time and space to be intergalactic haberdashers? Our 14 year-old boys aren't going to go for that. Haberdashery is something the choir geeks do to each other in the back of the bus on the way home from regionals.

Second, let's say we decide to be true to the tv series (MISTAKE NUMBER ONE!) and make it a red suit. That is SO low-fi. Seriously, dude, it's just a pair of long johns with a logo stitched on it. We are re-imagining the series (THANK YOU BATTLE STAR GALACTICA!) it's time to use our REIMAGINATIONS!

"Our mother-fuckin' SEXY freelance programmer LUCAS MORPHS INTO a superhero using special alien NANOTECHNOLOGY with powers he can barely understand or control."

You know how I did that? I stole it from motherfuckin' G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra! $300 million worldwide!!

It's called standing on the shoulders of giants, people.

Ok, let's deal with this last part: "...powers he can barely understand or control."

Alright, the hero has to struggle (Joseph Campbell, people, dude's a motherfuckin' genius. His wikipedia entry is BRILLIANT.) but this log-line makes him sound like a buffoon. And as we all know, that's the Jay Baruchel sidekick part, not the hero. Luckily it's a simple fix:

"Our mother-fuckin' SEXY freelance programmer LUCAS MORPHS INTO a superhero using special alien NANOTECHNOLOGY with powers he SLOWLY GROWS TO understand AND control."

BOOM! Box office gold! We replace William Katt with some hunky no-name (primary traits being a six-pack of abs and a high tolerance for a wire harness), sub out Connie Selleca for Emily Blunt or Mila Kunis, and -- just to prove we have some SERIOUS acting chops on board -- we drop in Liam Neeson for the FBI agent originally played by Robert Culp. (Liam Neeson will do anything for money. c.f., The A-Team, Clash of the Titans, Star Wars: Episode One.) And for some fan service: Connie Selleca cameos as a hot MILF!

The plot writes itself:

Our hero is camping with his sexy hipster girlfriend (i.e. making out with Emily Kunis) when he gets infected with alien nanoware in the desert (insert cool CG effects). They return to San Francisco (sexy hipster central) where he manifests a variety of strange powers (he lifts a mother-fucking car!) and Liam Neeson shows up to investigate the unusual activity and talk British (smart and authoritative!). The aliens arrive to reclaim their lost technology (i.e. vaporize buildings at random) and while at first Lucas tries to run (desperate makeout scene with Emily Kunis in a bunker in Nevada), he soon realizes he cannot escape (coitus interruptus to avoid a hard R) and -- with the help of the US military (USA! USA!) -- faces the aliens in a showdown that levels most of the Bay Area. (Small price to pay for the safety of the world, plus the hourly rate for Ruby On Rails programmers just tripled.) Final shot: A small alien transmitter blinks in the wreckage. Its strident ping echoes through the theater as we pull back from San Fran, to North America, to the Earth, and out into space.

Conservatively: three, four hundred million worldwide.

-Tom, who, if you liked that shit, has a really great treatment of Family Ties you need to read. Sandra Bullock is the new Meredith Baxter Birney!