An Animorphs Movie

Ah, Animorphs. The goriest, most Body Horror-filled books for kids ever.

I could see the first movie covering plot elements from Books 1-4 and 6 (with or without the Crayak appearing at the end, depending on whether they want to use him - I agree that if they do he'll at least have to be very altered to be less of a Space Flea From Nowhere).

My only experience with Animorphs has been the Nick live action show and the Pokemon rip-off game.

So, basically I'm interested enough to see how the books will be adapted into film.

Neither of those did the series any justice.

I agree that the characters could be aged up a bit to slow down the obvious aging of the actors. They could also expand the length of time between movies with a throwaway line like:

Marco: "It's been six months since we went to the Yeerk Pool and since then, besides getting Ax, all we've done is get stuck in the Amazon, prove Rachel is allergic to alligators -"

Rachel: "Crocodile."

Marco: "Find Yeerks using Skype, and don't even get me started on that deal with the oatmeal!"

Important stuff that happened in between those incidents, like Visser One's appearance, could be moved to the previous movie or pushed back into the current one. I can see the David Trilogy being incorporated into the Free Hork-Bajir story, with the payoff happening after that plotline was wrapped up. Other stuff like the Andalite traitor book could be taken out entirely.

I want the oatmeal to be involved in one of the movies. It's too ridiculous NOT to use!

Give us our Battle of the Oatmeal, humans acting like literal crocodiles, happy meals with extra happy, and gorillas holding their own guts in it, dangnabbit!

But not the starfish one. Anything but the starfish book. Or the one with the cows and the slaughterhouse.

edited 15th Sep '15 1:48:22 PM by Tuckerscreator

What about the Andalite toilet book?

As much as I love any book where the Animorphs discover that their labors were entirely pointless and they could just as well have stayed home and watched TV, those are probably the easiest books to cut.

They can probably cut the book with the evil undersea race of mutant fish people, too.

edited 15th Sep '15 2:39:47 PM by KnownUnknown

I wonder also if they'll address anything about the changes in technology since the series was written. Surely audiences will be asking about all the ways cell phones and the internet would come in handy now, such as with taking videos of Yeerks and Andalites or contacting allies when stuck across the globe.

Kinda amusing, but pretty pointless and raises the plot hole of why those military guys are never alerted about the truth if they're confirmed un-controlled.

edited 15th Sep '15 2:38:33 PM by Tuckerscreator

A lot of books (even some that would be considered more important) should probably be cut, but in a many of them there are individual moments that could still work really well in a film series.

The books with Taylor, for example, feature a very self contained plotline that - unlike David - doesn't really move things forward for anyone except Tobias, so they'll probably be cut. But I wouldn't mind several of the scenes in those books being modified and put in the films as Tobias-centric moments of development, or even seeing Taylor herself in some form.

Another one that comes tomind is the one where Cassie has to morph a Yeerk, which is also really self-contained but does develop the idea that there's resistance to Yeerk enslavement even within the Yeerks themselves.

edited 15th Sep '15 2:41:53 PM by KnownUnknown

I think the Megamorph books could be done away with. I don't think anyone wants to see Tobias and Ax wipe out a race of aliens anyway.

NNNOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! I wanted to adapt them into an anime! The Animorphs books are too episodic and epic to be done justice in movie format!

@Tobias Drake

I actually assumed that The One was the entity that shoved Crayak out of his home galaxy.

I can't recall for certain, but by that point in the story, they may already have realized something that gets brought up a rather lot later on: the only reason they have any hope of stalling the conflict is because Visser One insists on a secret invasion. An open war would end it all very quickly and not in Earth's favor.

At this point in time, the A-Plan is still "Defeating the Yeerks is a hopeless and impossible cause. Instead, stall the Yeerks long enough for an armada of Andalites to show up, blow them all out of space, and save the day."

edited 17th Sep '15 6:56:37 AM by TobiasDrake

So here's something i can't believe no one's bought up yet.

The books are filled with gore, graphic violence, Croneburgian nightmares, and all center around the theme, 'Hollywood lied. War is purely Hell, not exciting and you will get so,so messed in the head.' A faithful adaptation would get a hard R and thus probably not something the studios will want.

You can tone down the gore without losing the themes.

Nah, PG-13 rating sounds about right. The books are occasionally graphic but rarely outright gory, they deal with dark themes but not in a way that would be considered unacceptable for minors, and can be quite nightmarish - but that's not necessarily grounds for an R rating on its own.

If Hunger Games can get PG-13, Animorphs certainly can.

edited 17th Sep '15 9:52:46 AM by KnownUnknown

The way American ratings work, you can show a ton of violence and not go up a rating as long as you don't include a naughty word or boob. It's worth noting that there wasn't much controversy about continuing to market it to junior highers and teens even after its violence was well-established, and the only library that I came across that had warning labels on these books were for "evolutionary themes".

Blood's also a major factor in ratings. The Dark Knight is very violent, true, but its bloodlessness kept it at PG-13.

Also, messily killing aliens and inhuman beings is often not considered as terrible as having the same happen to people. Not that people don't die messily in Animorphs either, but it still gives them a bit of leeway.

edited 17th Sep '15 1:01:11 PM by KnownUnknown

That too. They might even get away with the blood if it's alien blood that looks like green kool-aid.

Even with them being aliens, they're still going to have a hard time showing half the things the Taxxons do.

I think you could make a pretty good Animorphs movie adapting just the first book, with the destroying-the-Kandrona-generator thing from book 7 added in to give our heroes at least a partial victory.

The sequel could be where you introduce Ax, only in this version, he survived the dome ship crash along with a morphing cube, and that becomes the Macguffin everyone is after that movie. This would also be the time to introduce the idea of Yeerks who want to use morphing technology to permanently become non-sluglike creatures, as well as a kid named David who goes to the Animorphs' school. In the chaotic struggle for the morphing cube, it ends up falling into his hands, leading the Yeerks to target him and infest his parents.

That leads into movie three, where you adapt the David Story Arc, but with the added twist that, before trapping David in a morph, he exposes the Animorphs' real identities to the Yeerk. The sets the stage for a fourth and final movie where it's finally all-out war.

P.S. Aliens getting hacked to pieces is probably okay, but they'll probably have to cut out a lot of the more brutal injuries the Animorphs get while in their animal forms. Showing animals (even CGI ones) getting their limbs hacked off and their stomachs ripped open might actually be worse, from an MPAA perspective, then doing the same thing to human characters.

edited 17th Sep '15 7:56:12 PM by RavenWilder