An Animorphs Movie

It was a genocide. The Nesk deliberately redirect the comet that was going to pass by Earth to wipe out the Mercora. The Mercora ask the Animorphs for the warhead to prevent the comet from hitting Earth and Tobias and Ax deliberately sabotage it so that all the Mercora would die.

And yet Jake only felt guilty about the act of massacre in the last book but not this prior one.

Speaking of "Assassinate Baby Hitler Y/N?", remember that time when Tobias literally murdered Hitler? But then it didn't count because they used time travel to temporally abort the guy who'd discovered the Time Matrix from ever being born, thus erasing all of that book's time travel consequences (except, bizarrely, that one) from the timeline?

When are we getting that movie, Scholastic?

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jun 19th 2020 at 12:53:57 PM

Also in that timeline Hitler was just some guy.

And yet Rachel gets labeled the overly violent one.

So if I remember right, Jake's the leader, Marco's the clown, Cassie's the caring one, Rachel's the violent one, Tobias is the moody one, and Ax is the weird one, right?

Yeah pretty much.

I love how Jake is never allowed a personality in these lists.

I mean, "leader" has quite a few implied personalities attached to it. Hell, maybe even more than the others. It's a quick and dirty list, not a comprehensive character study.

Jake is suffering under The Chains of Commanding but also Not So Above It All, Marco is a Sad Clown and The Strategist, Cassie is the Tomboy with a Girly Streak and a huge example of Beware the Nice Ones, Rachel is the Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak who Jumped at the Call, Tobias has a Dark and Troubled Past worse than anyone else and is Smarter Than You Look, and Ax is a Book Dumb slacker by the standards of a Proud Warrior Race.

Edited by Discar on Jun 19th 2020 at 2:18:20 AM

On another topic, I think an Animorphs adaptation should be a 90s period piece. The main reason is that nowadays cell phone cameras and the Internet are ubiquitous, and would be a major constant snag in the Yeerks's attempts to infiltrate in secret worldwide. In the 90s you could get away with the only online evidence of Yeerks being a crude AOL drawing, but now pictures of the Yeerk Pool would spread within the first week of invasion.

One could argue Animorphs already takes place in an alternate history, considering that Cassie's zoo is very clearly modeled after the California Busch Gardens, albeit still open 20 years later and with much more animals than just birds.

The Pop Arena has a pretty good video about why Animorphs only really works in the 90s between the end of the Cold War and the start of the War on Terror. I think this is the video, but it's been a while and I haven't double-checked.

I disagree. It would be fun to see how they work the story into the 2010s/2020s (assuming we ignore COVID, of course).

I generally think of Jake as "the one with PTSD."

So how would animorphs work as a film. They'd need to go the Harry potter route and make a few films if they didn't want to rush the saga.

I wonder if a film series would adapt the Ellimist at all, or just do the plot as if it happened on his own and he wasn't involved.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Oct 4th 2020 at 3:54:45 AM

I feel like the Ellimist can easily be cut since he's just a walking prophecy machine from what I recall.

Off the top of my head, the stories/concept (not limited to one particular book) I think should definitely get adapted or establish, in no particular order, are:

• The first six books composited into one.
• Erik
• The Hork Bajir Liberation movement.
• Elfangor is Tobias' father.
• David (the first arc, not his later appearance).
• The Yeerk Peace Movement.
• Visser Two is Marco's mom.
• The finale, as the Yeerks discover who the Animorphs really are, Tom ascends, yadda yadda all the way until the end.

These shouldn't all be their own movie - merge them together into a smaller number of plots if need be - but imo those are the essentials for the worldbuilding and the story. And if you just wanted to get the story to the end without some of the substance, you could possibly cut out some of those too.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Oct 4th 2020 at 3:56:30 AM

Like I said it's some thing that requires multiple movies if you really want to do it right. It's why I think it would work better as a tv series personally.

The Ellimist Chronicles is my favorite book of the series, I'd be really disappointed if they cut the character entirely.

Huh, they're still making this?

Counter to Pop Arena's point, if you were writing the series to take place in the present day, what would YOU change?

I think it works best as a 90s period piece.

I'm just wondering, if you were to create a modern-day adaptation, how would you go about it? What aspects would have to be sacrificed, and what could be kept? What might actually work well in today's world?

The whole premise revolves around people not carrying cameras everywhere they go, if you put it in the modern era, you'd have to cut out most of the series.

The Yeerks would have to be a lot more competent, yeah.

It's interesting to look at stories made before cell phones, especially smartphones, were everywhere. A lot of the threat factor of classic stories, especially thrillers and such, fall apart if everyone has a phone on them.

The whole idea of this secret cult showing up and taking people with no surveillance whatsoever gets pretty difficult to believe if anyone - let alone our protags - could take pictures of everything they see and post them online.