Usually my instinctive reaction to any remake news is to scoff and ask, "Why?" Not so with the recent announcement that James Cameron will be producing another go at the 1966 non-classic Fantastic Voyage. That's because I revisited this childhood favorite five years ago and found it sorely lacking. Another more recent, post-Avatar viewing just confirmed that the King Of The World is the perfect person to take the terrific concept -- an Abyss/Titanic style submarine miniaturized and injected into the Aliens/Avatar-like alien-landscape of the human body -- and make it, you know, actually fantastic. Here's how he'll do it.
1. 3-D-IMAX-CG-Mo-Cap-Dolby-Digital
The original Fantastic Voyage came in lovely CinemaScope and four-track stereo. For 1966, this was awesome. In 2012, the journey will, of course, be rendered with state-of-the-art images and sound. After Avatar, we're convinced -- at least for certain stories, this being one of them -- that the immersive three-dimensional film "ride" is the way to go. As first depicted by director Richard Fleischer's art department and special effects crew, the inside of the human body is a series of rivers and chambers that are often neon colored and inhabited by floating jelly fish type things. This could be straight out of Avatar. Cameron, presently attached director Shane Salerno and Weta Digital can unleash all sorts of magic here while doing away with the fuzzy mattes of the original. Also happily history: the Star Trek-like scenes where the cast are called on to fall this way and that as the submarine is buffeted.
2. A More Ace Base
The original Fantastic Voyage takes us into the underground headquarters of the amusingly named "Combined Miniature Deterrent Forces," which yields the unwieldy acronym CMDF -- which then becomes a huge badge on everyone's uniform. In this secret HQ, workers get around on golf carts and there are even MP's to direct this meager "traffic." In the control room, workers monitor black-and-white TV screens while lights on ancient computer-trons blink on and off and the equivalent of an over-sized alarm clock display flicks down the 60 minutes our heroes have before the begin to grow again. Cameron does great industrial-military bases and he'll ensure this place has a better name (maybe "Munchkinland" for a thru-line from the Oz reference in Avatar?), bustles with hard-headed grunts and that the nerve center positively bursts with those awesome 3-D displays that were one of the best effects in Avatar.
3. Give Them A Better Motivation
Our heroes are shrunk down to microscopic size so they can laser away an embolism from the brain of a man who has barely survived an assassination attempt by "Them," presumably the Russians. The reason for his importance? He holds the key to making the miniaturization process last longer than 60 minutes. For starters, why is it such an advantage to be able to shrink armies down so small they can fit in a bottle cap? Yes, it'd make transportation easier, but any saving here would be negated by the need to shuffle hundreds of thousands of troops and their equipment into the over-sized microwave oven that does the shrinking. And once they were tiny, you'd risk having your forces accidentally flushed down the toilet. The movie also makes it clear in the "inner ear" sequence that tiny people can be completely destroyed by loud noises, meaning the entire miniaturized 101st Airborne could be wiped out by an errant blast of Metallica. So Cameron needs to give us a better patient (a popular President will do) who has a better need to survive at all costs (a controversial environmental agreement could work) and a better reason why miniaturization was developed (for speed-of-light space travel with spaceships fired as particles in a beam).
4. Give Us Some Characterization
Stephen Boyd's Grant is our putative hero. He's called in to provide some kind of security for the mission. Once on board, he's occasionally asked to flip a switch or monitor a gauge. Who exactly is he? Not a clue. The man has not a skerrick of back story. His compadres -- Donald Pleasence, Raquel Welch and Arthur Kennedy -- have barely any more history, other than we're told they do "science." A little personality, please.
5. Come To Think Of It, Give Us A Villain...
Right from the outset of the original, the crew are told that there's likely a saboteur working against the mission. Talk about security measures! They have this trillion-dollar secret program to shrink important shit, and yet of the four people on the mission one of them's a Russkie spy with a license to kill! Just try to guess who it is! Here's where James Cameron can update it by making the bad guy a secret fundamentalist nutjob opposed to the president's efforts to save the environment and explore God's universe. Cameron should obviously keep the 1966 version's supporting baddies -- the human system's voracious antibodies -- but should add in some gnarly killer nanobots, which are perhaps injected by the medical team but which go rogue.
6. ...And A Woman Warrior
No offense, and Raquel Welch fills out her white jumpsuit nicely, but hers is a subservient research gal role -- and Cameron doesn't do those. Expect the updated Fantastic Voyage to be led by a ballsy, sexy and scientifically advanced uber-babe. Zoe Saldana's done the hard yards in the mo-cap studio for Cameron so she deserves first right of refusal, surely. And on the jumpsuits: Please do away with them, James. My retinas are still scarred by the male cameltoes caused by the original costumes' "lift-and-separate" effect.
7. Make Them Louder
The original shrunken foursome must be the quietest bunch ever. Boyd, who shouted his way through awesome-awful_ The Oscar_ that same year, was probably happy to give his vocal chords a rest, especially with lines like, "That reminds me, I better spawn a radio message." Pleasence was career-long quiet-talker and Welch was saving herself for her big "Tumak? Loana!" speech in that year's One Million Years B.C. Kennedy, meanwhile, is right to keep his endless speechifying on the down-low, especially with chewy mouthfuls like: "The medieval philosophers were right. Man is the center of the universe. We stand in the middle of infinity between outer and inner space, and there's no limit to either." Cameron will no doubt bring some much-needed shouted/growled dialogue along the lines of, "The human digestive system will chew you up and shit you out with zero warning!"
8. Make It Snappy
One of Avatar's strengths was how quickly it thrust us into the world of Pandora. We were in space on Fade In and shooting through the alien world's atmosphere minutes later. Fantastic Voyage needs such a shot of adrenaline. It's an achingly slow 37 minutes before the miniaturized sub and scientists hit that bloodstream. And much of this snooze-time is taken up with deadly dull dialogue like, "Mr Grant, open induction valves on and two," and "Phase four, elevate zero module."
9. Don't Open In A Snowstorm
No doubt Avatar will bounce back beautifully next week, recording the lowest-ever box-office drop off. But Cameron will take no chances with his next one. Right now his R&D people are no doubt plowing Avatar's project profits back into weather control. Not that we'll hear about it. Just don't be surprised when, in the lead up to Fantastic Voyage's Christmas 2012 release, we have a week of 80-degree days.
Michael Adams' pop-culture memoir Showgirls, Teen Wolves, and Astro Zombies, which follows his year-long quest to watch the world's worst movie, is in stores January 19. To read a sample chapter free, go to www.badmoviebook.com