Every so often movie comes along that causes movie-goers to scratch their collective heads and ask “who thought that this was a good idea.” They’re obvious from a mile off: board games, mobile games, toy lines and abstract bits of tech. It’s why movies like Battleship, Ouija and The Angry Birds Movie were such abject critical failures; after the initial marketable idea, there’s just nothing there to base a movie on. At least Transformers and G.I. Joe had long-running TV series to fall back on for characters and storylines.
Sometimes though, loath as I am to admit it, these kinds of movies surprise us, crafting a genuinely moving story from the most ill-advised source material. Going into them, nobody thought that Ouija: Origin of Evil (a prequel to the aforementioned Ouija) and Trolls were going to be anything other than the same, shallow, cinematic cash-grabs that we’ve seen before. But, shockingly, they ended up being some of the better movies of the year. With Origin of Evil sitting at 82% and Trolls at 75% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes respectively, it just goes to show that any idea can make a good movie with the right creative talent behind it.
Although I can’t imagine the upcoming Emoji Movie being anything other than the next in a long line of terrible Hollywood ideas, there’s still an infinitesimal chance that it could be anything more than the creatively bankrupt idea it seems to be on the surface. News just broke, however, that suggests that maybe the movie is heading in a somewhat more positive direction than we initially thought. Sir Patrick Stewart — Charles Xavier, Captain Picard, Deputy Director Bullock — will appear in the movie…
as the Poo Emoji.
That’s right: the Poo Emoji — a giant turd with a face on it. While it might seem a curious use of such an monolithic talent, Stewart has proven a proclivity toward outlandishly crass roles in the past. One of his most iconic roles is as a CIA sub-director on American Dad who, by his own admission, is “a degenerate” who “loves drinking and gambling and [whose] moral compass always points South.” He also lends his voice to the inner monologs of Family Guy‘s Susie Swanson and as the narrator in Ted. More recently, he played the murderous, meth-cooking owner of a Neo-Nazi bar in Green Room.
It may just be that the Emoji Movie‘s script is sharp enough to draw him in as an actor. Or maybe he just liked all the zeroes at the end of his paycheck and swallowed his pride for a ninety-minute comedy that few people will bother to see. At this point, it could go either way.
Still, if Patrick Stewart is the level of talent we can expect to pour into this movie, it might not be as terrible as we’re all fearing. If it turns out to be as good as Trolls was, I will happily eat my words at the premiere.
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