Remake & Reboot: The Flash Gordon Movie

Just who and what is Flash Gordon in 2011? Created in 1934 as a comic strip, the popularity of that strip has been outweighed by its media adaptations from the 1930s film serials and the campy 1980 film.  It ran as a newspaper comic strip from 1934 to as recent as 2003, but in most people’s minds Flash Gordon is the 80s campy film.

But that can be changed.

The Concept:

The key to making a modern-day Flash Gordon film work is to boil it down to its essentials: a charming and athletic sports player and his girlfriend are taken by a hair-brained scientist into outer space to trace the origins of a dangerous meteor shower coming to earth. They land on a hereto-unknown planet named Mongo, and find that its leader – Ming – caused the meteor shower in an attempt to conquer Earth. The story has its flourishes due to being set on an alien world, but that’s basically it.

A new Flash Gordon film would do well to take that nugget of information and a modernized version of Alex Raymond’s designs to make a modern film flourish. As much as the campiness of the 1980 film thrilled some of us, that campiness needs to be dialed back in favor of a thrilling action story – but still with a bit of humor. That’s where the right director can make or break the project.

The Director:

To bring this vision to the big screen, I’d look no further than cult director Edgar Wright. Through his work on Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World he’s shown an ability to handle story and special effects, two of the biggest hurdles for anyone attempting a Flash Gordon film for today’s audiences. Although Scott Pilgrim failed to win over audiences at large, it showed all the tools necessary to step up to a major studio film. And with him writing the first of Steven Spielberg & Peter Jackson’s Tin Tin movies, he’s in a perfect position to bring those two in as executive producers on this new vision of Flash Gordon.

The Cast:
 

Flash Gordon / Alexander Skarsgard: Best known as the blood-sucking Eric in True Blood, Skarsgard is more than just a pretty face. His work on the TV miniseries Generation Kill showed he can be an All-American, and after being passed over to play Thor, Flash Gordon could be his shot.

Dale Arden / Zooey Deschanel: Although she’s best known so far for her more comedy/drama roles as in 500 Days of Summer, Deschanel has all it takes to be Dale Arden. She can easily give Flash Gordon some humanity and tomboy-ishness to hold her own on Mongo and fending off the advances of Ming.

Dr. Hanz Zarkov / Richard Schiff: Richard Schiff, where have you been? After being one of my favorite parts on The West Wing, Schiff has stuck to relatively small roles in TV and film. Playing the half-mad scientist Zarkov could give Schiff a good part to wail on, especially with the scientist’s arc of coming around to being one of the good guys later on.

Ming the Merciless / Gerard Butler: Take Butler’s character from 300 and push him forward a few years into being a tyrant.. but in space, and you have Ming. Although it’ll be hard for anyone to escape the shadow that Max Von Sydow cast on the role of Ming from the 1980 film, Butler could be sufficiently different – and more menacing in a “I can beat you up myself!” manner to make a new Ming work.