LAND OF THE LOST: A CONTINUATION

The more comments I read online about Will Ferrel's LAND OF THE LOST movie the more I wonder what is really behind Hollywood's continuing master plan of buying established "properties" and turning them into dumbed-down formulaic drivel. Do they honestly believe the average Joe and Jane Doe are morons? Or is there perhaps something far more sinister going on here?

Put your tinfoil hats on boys and girls because a rant be a-coming! Got those tinfoil hats on? Excellent! As I was saying. .

It seems that with every remake and/or "re-envisioning" I read about the quality and content of the movies gets progressively worse. I use the word "progressive" advisedly as someone commented that this movie was progressive. Really? Now I'm no expert on politics (discussions of "the left" and "the right" and their purported differences and agendas confound me) but there was a progressive movement that took root around the early part of the 20^th century that; not unlike the National Socialist party (Nationalsozialismus) which came to power in Germany circa the late 1920s; had a master plan to foment economic, political, social, and moral change. In short this is social engineering. To grossly oversimplify the goal of a social engineer is to manipulate the masses to affect societal and/or geo-political change. How does one begin? Simple, by chipping away at the foundation of the established order.

Over time these cracks will weaken the foundation and the social engineer, who is following a master plan for slowly and deliberately changing the established order, will insert slivers into those cracks to widen them. This is plainly what's been going, not just here in the United States, but on a global scale for the past few decades. And, based on the comments I've been reading, Will Ferrell's movie may be the latest sliver intentionally inserted into those cracks.

Most of the commentary I've read seems to be saying that Hollywood has taken what was a naïve Saturday morning kids series with cheezy and dated VFX and turned it into a repository for juvenile bathroom humor, sexual innuendo, and brazenly targeted (inapporpriately) a movie that's totally lacking moral substance at a impressionable youth audience. The original series wasn't exactly Aesop's fables but it did end on a moralistic note most of the time. Apparently the Hollywood re-envisioning takes a great big dinosaur piss on morality and laughs about it while doing so. I'd say it's a shameful disgrace but Hollywood has no sense of shame. But it is yet another lost opportunity to create something worthwhile.

Thus, since Hollywood seems to not want to put forth the effort to make entertaining movies as they are apparently caught up in the cogs of some social engineer's master plan for destroying the established order of our society I've taken it upon myself to present a germ of what might have been. .

(Psst. You can take those tinfoil hats off now.)

* * *

Opening Scene: Xenoarchaeologist Stewart (male) & Cryptozoologist Temperence (female) visit the ranch of an elderly Marshall to interview him about an incident that happened in the Grand Canyon. They're interested in folklore about Egyptian tombs but discover something far more bizarre.

After much cajoling (and talking with Marshall's current wife) Marshall agrees to talk. .

Stewart: What do you remember?

Marshal: Not much. Will, Holly, and I were rafting. It was a beautiful day, Holly was using the new compassing I gave her. .

Temperence: Compass?

Marshall (laughing): Yes. I know it sounds silly, since we knew where we were, but it was a different time. I wanted Holly to know how to take care of herself and so I was teaching her all that I could, including how to use a compass.

Stewart: So there was nothing unusual then?

Marshall: I didn't say that.

Temperence and Stewart exchange glances.

Marshall: I remember Holly saying something about the compass not working right anymore then. . Then the entire canyon all around us began to shake. It was like being caught in the greatest earthquake ever known.

Temperence: Only there's no record of such a quake.

Marshall (face a mask of grief): Don't I know it.

Marshall's wife: That's enough. It's time for you two to. .

Marshall (holding up had): No, it's alright, I'll be alright. .

Stewart: Maybe we should come back some other. .

Marshall (face suddenly stern): I'm old. Not much time left, best I get this story out while I still can, while there's someone willing to listen. Look, I know there's not record of any quake, if you've done your research like you say you have you know I was found feverish and delirious several weeks and several hundred miles away from where our raftng journey began.

Fade to a montage scene recapping the series as a voice over begins leading into the familiar, yet different, LOTL theme song.

* * *

What Hollywood, in it's heinous desire to urinate on all that was good in the original series, failed to realize is they had a great opportunity here to create a continuation series of movies. The principle actors are, I believe, all still alive. The perfect setup would have been to pick-up the story these many years later. Their is a lot of interest in U.F.O. related folklore and enigmas, like cryptozoology, so all you'd really need is to find a hook. From what I've read they sort of use this as a hook, but in a back-handed manner. But I digress. .

The best hook is in the series itself. The family was rafting in a canyon. What canyon? Well let's call it the grand canyon. Anyone that's read a book like FORBIDDEN ARCHAEOLOGY or a magazine like ANCIENT AMERICAN knows there's plenty of "mysteries" out there for a script writer to exploit. The first hit in Google for the search parameters; "grand canyon" AND Egypt; was this: Grand Canyon - Egypt Connection. Another hit was this article: Ancient Egyptian Treasures In The Grand Canyon? And there's also this: An Archeological Whodunnit! - Egyptian Artifacts in the Grand Canyon.

Therefore our premise is a simple one: researchers researching the Grand Canyon mysteries go to meet with Marshall, as outlined above, and this sets them on a expedition whose journey leads them into the LAND OF THE LOST. Wherein they meet not a series of unfunny site gags but a perilous Lost World of strange fauna and unusual flora. A Lost World wherein we might encounter Will and/or Holly who perhaps rescue our would be xenon-archaeological explorers. Thus a grand adventure unfolds on screen drawing on themes from UFOlogy, myth, and folklore that's merely the first chapter of a new film franchise.

Alas this doesn't seem to be the route Hollywood chose. Based on the scathing critical reviews I've read (and the scenes they bombarded the public with on cable/TV as part of the ad campaign) they wanted fart jokes, sexual innuendo, gay site gags, and to depict the primitive Neanderthal-like Chaka as a pervert unable to control himself. Yeah, that's a nice one folks, they're basically saying primitives and primitive cultures are incapable of self-control. This is the same sort of crude "humor" the Nazi eugenicists used to vilify Jews. Is this really what Hollywood thinks is funny? Recycling the "humor" of racist hatred?

Yet, having not seen the movie, I have to step back, take a deep breath, and ask myself if it's really as bad as some have made the movie sound. I hope not. I really hope not.

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