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The Mass Media

The Mass Media

The Mass Media

Step aside Hollywood 2: The unnecessary, mandatory, under-performing sequel

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Bianca Oppedisano
A city scape with a giant Beantown sign and a massive neon number 2 above it. Illustration by Bianca Oppedisano / Mass Media Staff.

Nothing screams Hollywood quite like an uninspired sequel to a perfectly adequate stand-alone project that previously generated a sum of money a studio could deem profitable. If Beanwood is going to be anything like its Papa, it’ll have to take a page out of its book. Forget creativity, forget originality, forget quality; believe me, nothing gets a butt in a seat faster than a big, neon number “2” tacked onto the end of a known title. With that in mind, Beanwood Pictures proudly presents, “Step Aside Hollywood 2!” Your a— belongs to me now.  

Curiosity Killed the Kat

High school can be rough, especially when you’re a smart, weird girl who can’t shut up about seeing the ghosts of her dead parents. However, as it turns out, her parents aren’t dead after all, they’ve just been trapped in the nether realm, in limbo between life and death, along with everybody else who has ever died. Accompanied by a fun-loving, sass-giving, bipedal ghost cat that allows her to see dead people, Kat attempts to uncover the truth behind her parents’ fate. Will that cute boy in pre-calc ask her to prom? Will she pass Mrs. Henderson’s social studies class? Will she inadvertently bring about the rapture? Will she be able to resist the temptation of her newfound powers, or will… curiosity kill the Kat?   

Well, I’ll be a Monkey’s Uncle! 

Jim Johnson enjoys a simple life as a personal banking manager consultant, but when he discovers he’s a monkey’s uncle, his world turns upside down. In this eight-part docuseries, a camera crew follows Jim and his monkey nephew as they go from doctor to doctor seeking answers to their odd familial relation. If covert, Cold War-era Russian cloning experiments and family comedy pique your interest, this is the show for you. Hell, we could even have Jim put on a yellow hat at the end to really put butts in seats. People love franchise tie-ins, and this could be the boost needed to jumpstart the CGCU (Curious George Cinematic Universe).    

Toby Maguire Has the Worst Day of His Life 

Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” trilogy was a once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece. With “Tobey Maguire Has the Worst Day of His Life,” we take the best bits of  Raimi’s “Spider-Man” films and consolidate them into one, ninety-minute chunk of pure cinematic bliss. Of course, the best bits refer to Tobey playing a geeky, powerless Peter Parker who went around losing in every conceivable way he could. How’d you like to watch Tobey Maguire deal with the same excruciatingly embarrassing day from Hell over and over again, trapped in a “Groundhog Day” getting farted on by skunks and belittled by his boss? Of course, you’d love to see it! Who wouldn’t love to see it? 

Shrek Education 

Picking up several years after “Shrek Forever After.” The children are in high school, the swamp has been developed into a modern-looking suburban neighborhood, Fiona has gotten into local politics and Shrek has begrudgingly settled into his new life as a stay-at-home father. However, when he discovers that his children’s school lacks a proper sexual education program, he steps in to do what ogres do best: preventing teenage pregnancies and STIs. Donkey is the lunch lady. Dragon is the school bus. 10 million tons of diarrhea. One gay son. The critics will be flocking in from Ogre the hills and far, far away to give this film the all-star score it so rightfully deserves.    

The Domino Effect

With “The Domino Effect,” we take a room full of grown-a— adults and force them to do stupid s— with dominos for cash prizes and discount bin vacations. The details aren’t important, what’s important is the random celebrity cracking the stale, scripted jokes hosting it. We could get Jack Black or Keegan-Michael Key, or honestly, anybody from the cast of “The Mario Movie.” Do they need to have a passion for dominos? No, of course not! Although, if we get Chris Pratt, he’ll probably claim to have spent hours as a kid lining them up and stomping them down.   

Rat-Hat Roonie: The Movie 

The crowning jewel of this year’s independent movie scene, “Rat-Hat Roonie: The Movie” will build upon decades of barrier-breaking in the “Rat-Hat” genre of filmmaking to give audiences a visual spectacular that can’t be beat. An underdog story for the ages, Ron D’Angelo is a chronic underachiever with a hopeless ambition of one day playing baseball for the Boston Red Sox. All of this changes when he meets Roonie, a tiny rat with a big heart who sits under Ron’s hat and gives him unlimited power. But when a great evil arises to threaten reality as we know it, Ron finds out the hard way that once you go rat, there’s no going back. 

Madatgascars

When Allen the tiger and his friends grow sick and tired of the polluted, stinky air surrounding the unnamed zoo in the unspecified city that they live in, they decide to take matters into their own hands. Breaking out of their enclosures, they trade their artificial jungle for a concrete one, quickly adapting to urban life. But in order to accomplish their goal of lessening air pollution, they’ll have to do more than just adapt: they’ll have to masquerade as humans, infiltrate the auto industry and get in the good graces of one particularly greedy business mogul who likes to move it, move it. 

Well, there you have it folks, enough ideas to make an industry executive stare at you blankly and ask, “Do you have anything else?” Are any of these ideas good? No, of course, they aren’t! They’re absolutely atrocious! But if you remember, that’s not important. When it comes to ideas, it doesn’t matter whether or not they’re any good, the only thing that matters is that you had an idea to begin with. It’s not the quality of the content, but the fact that you’re continuously and relentlessly producing it that determines your value. And remember, if you’re ever in a creative bind, don’t be afraid to drop a deuce.   

About the Contributors
Joe DiPersio, Humor Editor
Bianca Oppedisano, Illustrator