By DANNY GALLAGHER

Here's the latest movie news from Hollyweird: action director John Woo wants to turn the video game, "Metroid," into a feature length motion picture.

Apparently, it's the only video game left that mainstream Hollyweird hasn't tried to turn into a movie and that includes "Pac-Man."

"Danny, come on," you're asking your computer in front of your co-workers who now think you're a drug addict because your talking to your computer, you freak you. "'Pac-Man: the Movie?' That's not possible, no competent person running a movie studio would be that uncreative and stupid. And if God truly loved us like my mom always said He did, then this kind of thing couldn't happen without some kind of holy war breaking out!"

Well, break out the firearms and holy water because it's true. The Hollyweird Reporter announced that Crystal Sky, a major international film distributor, purchased the movie rights to the popular video game franchise in 2002. What is the movie going to be about? Sadly, the story doesn't say if a script has been written. That's probably because the screenwriters they hired to write the script were put under intensely stressful working conditions, went completely crazy and got promoted to CEOs of the studio before they could finish it.

Here's three possible stories for "Pac-Man: The Movie."

(1) The manager of a haunted "Dots" candy factory has lost a big shipment of his tasty fruit flavored treats and it's up to him to get them all back before the ghosts do.

(2) A drug dealer who's known for dealing a potent and deadly round yellow pill called "Power Ups" has realized the evil nature of his ways and vows to clean up the streets and fight off his old gang of thugs - Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde.

(3) In one man's diseased mind lies a maze of darkness that has no start, no finish and is haunted by the spirits of the lives he couldn't save. But in order to survive, he must only complete one task - eat the cherries before they disappear.

If you think of those sound bad, the real video game movies, some of which had a smidgen of potential to be tolerable, are some of the worst of all time. You may think you've seen you're share of bad movies. You may have led rebellions in theaters that screened the works of Ashton Kutcher. You may have sat through "Gigli" as part of your court ordered community service. But the world of video game movies blow all those other stinkers right out of the water like U-571 taking on Flipper the dolphin.

"Street Fighter" is the worst one that comes to mind. It stars action movie reject Jean Claude Van Damme as Guile, the American army hero sworn to protect the world from evil doers bent on world domination and the enslavement of humanity who also happens to speak with a French accent. It's his worst performance to date and that counts every other movie he's made since the beginning of time. That's not even the bottom of the barrel, Van Damme had to drill a hole in it to go farther than that. Plus, just like a video game, it doesn't take a lot of brainpower or intelligence to understand or comprehend.

But expecting intelligence from something based on a video game is like expecting McDonald's to serve sandwich that doesn't have more fat content than Roseanne's left thigh. Besides, most of these video game spin-offs are made with children's interests in movies in mind, which is a scary thought since video game films are usually more violent than a remake of "The Wild Bunch" directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Everyone of them involves a plot where the hero has to punch, shoot, kick, gouge, rip, tear, stab, torch, disembowel, dismember and drain all matter of bodily fluids out of their enemies in order to save the day. Parents actually take their kids to watch these fight-festivals because the rating assigned to it says it's alright for them to see and they're too lazy to make a decision for themselves. But if anyone shows just an eighth of an inch of nipple, which is the only thing that would make these movies watchable, then the MPAA bumps it from a PG to a R rating quicker than Speedy Gonzales trying to outrun the U.S. Border Security Patrol.

The only way theaters could make video game movies more enjoyable is if you could unplug them midway through the screening.

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©2004 by Danny Gallagher

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