MTV.com is premiering Ben Stiller’s Fake Trailer Project , which determines whether phony trailers can be made into hit movies. After all, the original trailers for Hobo With a Shotgun and Machete were bogus, but they both ended up being made into actual big-screen releases. With this in mind, we decided to pick a few of our own favorite fakes. Some are online classics while others are relatively new, but we think they all seriously deserve to be made into feature-length films.
ET-X: the sequel to ET
If Hollywood is so hellbent on ruining childhood nostalgia for so many of us, why not go for the crown jewel?
Seinfeld: The Real Peterman
John O’Hurley has been arguably overexposed over the course of the last decade, but if this movie were ever to be made, all would be forgiven. Once a goofy secondary character, this taut trailer shows him as a menacing enigma.
Legend of Zelda
Though this is an April Fools’ Day prank from a few years ago, it still makes us wish it were real. It would make up for so many terrible movie adaptations of video games.
Titanic: The Sequel
Once again, if Rose had just moved her ass over a smidgen, Jack could have been saved. Instead, we fruitlessly look forward to this fictitious onscreen gem.
Batman Meets Superman
With the Batman series set to take a bow next summer, and a Superman reboot currently underway, we like to think that a crossover would be a refreshing angle. Instead of explaining tiresome origins, let’s just pick up in the middle of things and bring together the best of both worlds. If this casting were possible, it would be a hit.
Star Wars: Empire
George Lucas just released his Blu-ray edition of the Star Wars movies, loading them with extras while tinkering with original story elements. We think his next project should be more like this inspired trailer — that is, tell the story from the side of the Empire. It would be vastly more compelling than any new changes made to the existing series, and an interesting take on an old story.
Shining Happy People
At one point or another, we’ve all watched a film that we thought was going to be comedy, but instead, turned out to be a drama (or vice versa). Disappointing as that experience may be, imagine if The Shining had been marketed as some sort of sentimental, comedy-tinged, coming-of-age story — or better yet, actually was one. The futures of Stanley Kubrick, Jack Nicholson, and Stephen King would have been very different.
At the Mountains of Madness
HP Lovecraft has always gotten short shrift for his work as an author, and with Guillermo Del Toro’s big-screen adaptation for At the Mountains of Madness effectively canned, it seems Lovecraft is being unsympathetically dismissed again. This trailer gives us hope that the film might someday become a reality.
The Oregon Trail
Some of us remember playing this game in grade school, when oversized Tandy terminals littered computer classrooms back in the ’80s and ’90s. If this trailer meant an actual big-screen film, our sadness could now turn to joy over being told, “You have died of dysentery.”
Scary Poppins
People seems to have a love/hate relationship with Mary Poppins, but if the film version of this trailer existed, it would bring the debate to an entirely new level. After all, one man’s tale of whimsy is another man’s tale of terror.