Dawn Taylor,
Jul 18, 2008
When you watch a couple of hundred movies every year, sometimes you find your mind wandering. Well, at least my mind wanders. In fact, it's wandering right now, as I type this. I'm actually thinking about pie. Sweet, delicious pie.
What was I saying? Oh, right. Movies. I'll be sitting through the latest abomination from, let's say, Adam Sandler, and I'll be thinking about all the ways that the movie could have been better. Actual writers with talent could have been hired to pen the script, for example. Or maybe someone other than Adam Sandler could have starred. Or perhaps the entire production could have been leveled by a nuclear bomb before it ever made it to the editing room.
Or, just maybe, it could have been set in Las Vegas.
Vegas is an ideal location for virtually any movie. Caper comedy about criminals planning a heist? Vegas! Indie drama about the sad lives of alcoholics? Vegas! Futuristic space opera set on a distant planet? Vegas Moon 14, in orbit around Pluto! Sure, that last one will need a bigger special-effects budget, but you get the idea.
The city's a natural for movie magic, and it's already been the setting for some of cinema's most iconic moments. Who can forget the airplane skidding down the Strip in Con Air? Or Johnny Depp hallucinating in Circus Circus in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? Or Arnold Schwarzenegger running around Mars in Total Recall? Yeah, that was actually shot just outside Vegas. No, really. I looked it up.
Anyway, the point is that Vegas is the perfect setting for almost any film. Even movies that you think wouldn't work at all in Sin City would actually be improved by switching the locale and a few minor plot points. Don't believe me? Read on ...
1.) It's a Wonderful Life
Sure, everyone loves the old-timey, small-town feel of Bedford Falls, but think how much more poignant George Bailey's plight would be if he was having his existential crisis in Vegas. See, George operates a small casino off Fremont and he's barely making ends meet. He sends his mildly retarded Uncle Billy to pay the vig to the loan sharks, but instead Billy spends all the money on lap dances and coke. Now George is going to have his legs broken if he doesn't come up with the cash, and he perches atop the Stratosphere Tower, considering suicide. But an angel appears to him -- it's Tom Jones! Tom takes George on a magical tour to see how much worse Las Vegas would be if he had never lived. It actually turns out that nothing at all would have changed, but George enjoys hanging out with Tom Jones so much that it cheers him up and he decides to not kill himself. Over the end credits, we learn that George's body was found two weeks later, floating facedown in Lake Mead.
2.) The Shining
Moody, unemployed writer Jack Torrance takes a job as a caretaker for a closed hotel off the Strip, bringing his wife and young son along with him for the three-month job. The Overlook Hotel & Casino was once one of the top properties in town, but it's fallen on hard times, and the new owners want someone to live in the empty hotel until the bribes have gone through at City Hall and the renovations can begin. Almost immediately Jack starts seeing horrible things around the hotel -- a haunted roulette wheel that won't stop spinning, a spooky magician who makes sinister balloon animals, and a showgirl with really chunky thighs. His son, Danny, does this weird thing with his finger and keeps muttering "Notwen ... Notwen." Jack discovers too late that Danny has a telepathic connection with Wayne Newton, who takes over Jack's body. The last 20 minutes of the film involve Jack's wife, Wendy, screaming shrilly and trying to escape from Jack, who brandishes a souvenir scimitar from the Sahara gift shop as he sings "Danke Shoen" at the top of his lungs.
3.) Jurassic Park
If Cirque de Soleil can build a 1.5 million gallon water tank for their show, and Caesars Palace can dramatize the Fall of Atlantis with animatronic puppets, it's not a stretch to transplant Dr. Hammond's cloned dinos to the Vegas Strip. In this "reimagining," Donald Trump buys 20 square blocks of prime Vegas real estate to build "Trumpasaurus," a drive-through dinosaur park. But Trump spends so much money on the gambling side of the attraction that he has to skimp on security for the animals, and the dinosaurs escape. Thinking that they may be able to wrangle the rampaging T-Rex, Trump calls Siegfried and Roy for help. Siegfried (or maybe Roy) tries to explain that, the trailer for Ice Age 3 aside, big cats and dinosaurs never lived in the same time period, which means that they really have no idea what to do. But Trump threatens to kill their plastic surgeon if they don't stop the carnage, so Siegfried and Roy concoct a plan to trap the marauding creatures. Almost immediately, a pack of velocoraptors is attracted by the duo's glittering jumpsuits and rips them limb from limb. The city is evacuated, left to the dinosaurs who, we discover at the very end of the film, are not only able to breed, but have learned how to pole-dance to Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me."
4.) Finding Nemo
Almost anything can happen in a cartoon! Imagine if Nemo was still set in the ocean, but all of the fish were gangsters and wise guys, sort of like The Sopranos, only with fish! Wait -- I think they already did that in Shark Tale. And it sucked. So never mind.
5.) Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Having gone from terrific to decent to abominable with each succeeding film, the Pirates franchise would have been better off just skipping that last, awful sequel and going in a completely different direction. Like, say, Vegas. In Pirates of the Caribbean: Double Down, we discover that Jack Sparrow is really Jack Darrow, a costumed actor who plays a pirate in the "Sexy Sirens of Treasure Island" production. Exhausted from doing four shows a day in the desert heat, depressed because of his inability to win the heart of lead siren Lizzy Swan (Emma Watson, replacing Keira Knightley), Jack gets drunk one night and falls overboard into the Treasure Island lagoon, hits his head, and almost drowns. When he comes to, he believes that he's the swashbuckling pirate Capt. Jack Sparrow, and goes on a hilarious romp through Vegas, robbing tourists and hijacking the roller-coaster at New York, New York. Jack only comes to his senses when he has to save Liz from the Blue Man Group, who have kidnapped her and intend to make her go through with a four-way marriage at the Elvis-themed "Viva Las Vegas" wedding chapel. Liz sees that Jack has really had the heart of a true pirate all along, and promises to give up her second job as weekend "towel girl" at the Chicken Ranch.
See? Anything (with the possible exception of Finding Nemo) is better set in Vegas! Play along at home and share your own "Better in Vegas" movie ideas in the comments ... just don't be surprised if Michael Bay steals your idea for his next screenplay.
********
Dawn Taylor knows when to hold 'em, but she's a little sketchy on when she should fold 'em.
