With the Transformers franchise roaring ahead, the time
could finally be right for a Robotech movie. The only
question is, will Tobey Maguire and Akiva Goldsman stick to the
original storyline, about a crashed alien spaceship unifying the
whole planet into a military quasi-dictatorship? We could soon find
out, since producer Chuck Roven wants shooting to begin next
year.
Roven talked to IESB about Robotech, and mentioned that
there's no script yet. Maguire is producing, but may or may not
star. (Most likely, he'll be too busy with the next two
Spider-Man films.) Goldsman (I Am Legend, I, Robot,
Batman And Robin) is also producing, but it's not clear if
he's writing the script.
In the Robotech saga, an alien spaceship crashlands on Earth in
1999, after ten years of devastating global warfare. The crashed
ship awakens the Earthlings to the possibility of alien invasion,
and everybody rallies around, forming a new world government that
marshals all resources to beat a possible alien invasion. Ten years
later, the Earth ship is finally ready to launch — just as the
first wave of Zentraedi attackers show up. It's up to two young
pilots to save the day. Eventually, there are three waves of alien
invasion.
Talking about the storyline, Roven said that an alien invasion
is the "triggering event" for the movie's plot. So either he's
confused about the crashed spaceship thing, or the movie will be
different. But he also stressed that there's no script yet, and
everything is up in the air. He wouldn't even say for sure whether
the movie takes place on Earth. Production design hasn't even
started yet, but Roven says it'll be reasonably faithful to the
look of the original animated series.
I really hope Goldsman doesn't write the script for this film —
his scripts are always a little too glib and preachy for me. I sort
of hope they do keep the whole thing about the Earth uniting after
the alien spaceship shows up, since it's like a look at the world
after the end of Watchmen. But I hope they show the
problematic parts of that scenario as well as the rosy ones. Also,
I hope they keep the thing where the human culture starts to
influence the warlike Zentraedi and "contaminate" the Zentraedi
culture, since that could be fun to
