I know, I know. After being very vocal about my disdain for ’80s cartoons being turned into movies here …

… and here …

… and, in comic form, here …

what gives me the gall to go ahead and do a Fantasy Casting piece for the feline superheroes?

As I’ve said before, it’s how we roll at TheTorchOnline.com.

Unpredictable. Sexy. Dangerous.

One thing to keep in mind — the movie will most likely be using the Avatar-like effect of motion capture fed into CG characters, so even if an actor doesn’t look like a character, that doesn’t really matter.. With that said, away we go …

Lion-O — Craig Horner

This wouldn’t have occurred to me last year, but on this season Legend of the Seeker star Craig Horner returned with a shaggy mop of hair, giving him a very leonine (or as one reader hilariously pointed out, llama-ish) appearance. Horner has proven that he can effortlessly play the hero in a high fantasy project, and is adept at swordplay, something to put to use when wielding Lion-O’s Sword of Omens.

Panthro — Taye Diggs

This role should go to a 30-year-old version of Morgan Freeman, but if such an actor exists, he’s not on my radar. Instead, I would hand it to Taye Diggs, the stunningly handsome and versatile actor who got his start on Broadway in RENT and is currently being wasted on Private Practice. Why wasted? Anyone who saw Equilibrium knows Diggs should be a megastar feature film action hero.

Cheetara — Emma Stone

Cheetara was the only adult female Thundercat (until that ho bag Pumira showed up in the second season) and was as nurturing as she was kick-ass. My suggestion would be Emma Stone, who embodied both of those attributes (though the latter way more than the former) in last summer’s hilarious Zombieland. To top it off, check out those beautiful feline eyes! She was born for this role.

Tygra –Shawn Ashmore

Tigra was a more sensitive guy than Lion-O and Panthra, and his “super-power” was the ability to turn invisible. Despite his strength and agility, Tigra was a more cerebral character, and was the inventor of the group. This kind of dichotomy between tough guy and sensitive man can be perfectly played by a guy like Shawn Ashmore, who proved as Iceman he can be a big time superhero without having bodybuilder muscles.

Wiley-Kat — Michael Cera

How do I put this nicely? Wiley Kit and Wiley Kat were, well, irritating in the cartoon, and don’t exactly lend themselves to the big screen. Therefore, they’re going to need a major overhaul for the movie version, and a sense of humor goes a long way. I nominate Michael Cera as the boy, Wiley Kat. Cera is a true master of the awkward teenage persona that brings the funny, and he would rock this part.

Wiley-Kat –Ellen Page

Okay, this may reek of stunt casting. That’s because it is. But I fell in love with Ellen Page and Michael Cera as an on-screen duo when the two starred in Juno, and they have such amazing chemistry they deserve another go around. But instead of churning out another romantic teen comedy, I say go against type and rock the epic CGI high fantasy.

Jaga - Ian McKellen

Jaga was actually a ghost, the spiritual remains of Lion-O’s one-time mentor. A few years ago I would have thought that Ian McKellen, esteemed actor of stage and screen, one of the most lauded thespians of our time, would be way too high-brow for a project like Thundercats. But then I saw his turn as a voice actor for a polar bear in The Golden Compass, and I realized that the man needs to make a paycheck just like the rest of us.

So there you have it! TheTorchOnline.com’s pick for the cast of the upcoming fantasy/scifi/feline blockbuster, Thundercats. One of these days, Hollywood, we’re going to start charging you.

Have a question about something fantasy-related? Ask the Oracle! (Be sure to include your first name and the city, state, and/or country you are writing from.)

Q: Settle an argument: in The Two Towers movie when Gandalf the White appears to Aragon, Gimli, and Legolas in Fangorn Forest, he is at first mistaken for Saruman — and, in fact, he looks and sounds a lot like Christopher Lee, the actor who portrays the other white wizard. But Ian McKellen has said that that’s entirely his voice and his face. Can that be true? — MAGPIE, Toronto, Canada

A: McKellen definitely maintains that it’s his voice and face — he still says that it’s “All my own work in Fangorn” on his website.

But he is misremembering. In the DVD commentary, Peter Jackson calls the scene a “visual trick,” pointing out that, “Very briefly, Christopher Lee’s eyes are actually glued onto Ian McKellen’s face…You also hear Christopher Lee’s voice — it’s blended in with Ian’s. We did want people, at least the uninitiated, to think that this possibly was Saruman.”

Co-screenwriter writer Philippa Boyers confirms this version of events: “They both tried to sound like each other” in the looping, she says, but “Christopher Lee could imitate Ian McKellen more than Ian could imitate Chris Lee.”

Q: I’m curious what you and your readers think are the top fantasy book series. Motivation is selfish, too — I want to know what to read. I’m also interested it what people specifically don’t like, and why — e.g., the Narnia series is too religious, and the anthropomorphic animals don’t work for me.  Also not liking Stephen Donaldson. With that, I’ll list mine: The Lord of the Rings, A Wizard of Earthsea, and Harry Potter. — Robert

A: The Oracle would strongly agree with The Lord of the Rings and Earthsea, but would also enthusiastically add A Song of Fire and Ice by George R. R. Marin, the first Kushiel trilogy by Jaqueline Carey, and (yes) The Chronicles of Narnia and The First and Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (but not the third trilogy, which is almost unreadable).

Among kids’ books (of which I’m a fan), I’d also add almost anything by Roald Dahl, but especially Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (although not the terrible sequel, Charlie and Great Glass Elevator). The Oracle also loved Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story and Momo, The Chronicles of Pyrdain by Lloyd Alexander, Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle trilogy, the Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud, and Kenneth Oppel’s Airborn books.

Harry Potter? Truthfully, the Oracle enjoyed them, but found most of the books badly in need of editing, and many of plot-lines forced, especially the conclusion. The Oracle also always thought the following books or series were over-rated, in order from least to most over-praised: A Wrinkle in Time, Inkheart, The Sword of Truth, The Wheel of Time, The Sword of Shannara, and Twilight. (Full disclosure: The Oracle doesn’t read all the books in series he doesn’t like, so perhaps these books improved over time.)

But the Oracle is far more interested in hearing what readers think!

Q: Another question: what is fantasy? For me, it’s not just supernatural. Magic has to be part of that reality. For example, The Dragonriders of Pern series isn’t strictly “fantasy” to me — the planet has spaceflight. Though the dragons can traverse space and even time, my memory is that this ability is never framed as magical, and no other magic seems to exist. — Robert

A: With something as complicated as literature, descriptive genres are, of course, mostly arbitrary, and made that much more so by all the writers who are defiantly (and wonderfully) blurring the boundaries. Labels are just labels, after all.

Here at TheTorchOnline.com, we define “fantasy” broadly. In general, if it involves magic, we cover it, but we’d throw in the dragons of Pern too, even without magic, just because they’re mythical creatures. We also cover some paranormal and “otherworld”-themed projects, as well as some projects involving history-based adventure and/or palace intrigue. Most superheroes also fall under our rubric.

As I said, it’s all pretty arbitrary, and “speculative fiction” is rapidly becoming a catch-all term — although it also includes hard science fiction, outright horror and slasher, and other genres that we almost never focus on here.

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said about hard-core pornography that it was hard to define, but “I know it when I see it.”

I think the same is true of fantasy. But like hard-core pornography, what’s “fantasy” for me may not be that for someone else. Viva la difference!

Q: In 1976, I read a vast number of science fiction anthologies, and read a story about an outpost planet that only ever had one human inhabitant, but they kept going mad with the loneliness. The story was about the latest man, who was promised a solution from earth. Eventually the ship arrived, but it appeared to disappear.  The closing line of the story was the “sound of a seagull”. Any idea who wrote this, and where it could still be obtained? — Errol

A: Sadly, this is beyond even the All-Knowing, Fantasy-Question-Answering Oracle’s near-omniscience. But perhaps a reader can help us both out.

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Have a question about something fantasy-related? Ask the Oracle! (Be sure to include your first name and the city, state, and/or country you are writing from.)

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One and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

You may think it’s easy being a television critic, getting paid to watch television on all day.

What you’re forgetting is that I have to watch television even when it’s bad.

Even when it’s a six-hour mini-series!

And I don’t get overtime.

AMC’s remake of the classic (and wildly influential) 1960s cult TV series The Prisoner is bad.

But you’re very lucky: I slogged through all six, slowly-paced hours, precisely to tell you that you don’t have to.

The story is similar to the original: a man (The Passion of the Christ’s Jim Caviezel) wakes up in a picturesque, seemingly “perfect” small town that everyone simply calls “the village.” People don’t have names here, but numbers: the man is suddenly called Number Six. The village is overseen by Number Two, a creepy, but well-mannered old guy in a white pressed suit (Gandalf himself, Ian McKellen).

Unlike in the original series, Number Two doesn’t clearly remember his past, but he does have vague memories that he recently resigned from a secret agency. Is this pay-back?

Before long, he learns that he’s a prisoner in this town in the middle of a desert — anyone who tries to leave is consumed by a giant white globe that looks a little like the giant, marauding breast in Woody Allen’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask.

Soon Number Two is searching for answers. To bad it takes him so long — six moody, talky, interminable episodes — to find them.

Do the answers, when we finally learn them, make the mini-series worthwhile? Alas, no.

For some reason, we’ve entered a weird, frustrating period where entertainment companies think they can make money by remaking tried-and-true old properties rather than greenlighting all the fresh, new stories that writers are dying to tell. Apparently, this must make business sense, even if it usually makes for crappy movies and TV.

Of course, many of these original properties have great, indelible endings, but when remaking them, producers must feel like they can’t just reuse these original endings, which are often the most organic to the story, for fear that the audience will feel cheated.

So they invent new endings that technically “explain” the preceding events, but that are so complicated and/or ham-fisted that you end up just rolling your eyes. It happened with Tim Burton’s terrible remake of The Planet of the Apes and last week’s The Box.

It’s also what they do here. The ending is simultaneously way too simple – it’s the first explanation I thought of when I started watching – and way too complicated. It takes almost the whole last episode to explain.

Fun fact: Number Two’s gay son is played by Jamie Campbell Bower, who was recently cast as Wayner Royce in the pilot for HBO’s upcoming Game of Thrones.

The Prisoner airs on AMC from 8 PM to 10 PM, Sunday to Tuesday.

• The Los Angeles Times has an informative update on the “fourth” film in each of these fantasy franchises: Pirates of the Caribbean, the works of Tolkien, Spider-man, and X-Men.

• James Cameron is an insane genius (and, it sounds like, a bit full of himself). A great New Yorker profile of the filmmaker, and an another interesting piece on how the revolutionary CGI effects in his upcoming Avatar were done.

• By contrast, Terry Gilliam thinks 3-D and other expensive effects tend to corrupt movies: “You’re not there to disturb people when you’re given 200 million dollars — you’re there to reassure them.” God, I love that man.

• The Gathering Storm (the first book in the trilogy conclusion to The Wheel of Time) debuts at #1 this week on the New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller fiction hardcover lists, #2 on the Washington Post list, and #4 on the combined USA Today list. It’s a hit, but I still hate the cover.

• A writer visits the set of Voyage of the Dawn Treader and writes and talks about it — but isn’t allowed to take pictures! As the expression goes, a picture is worth a thousand words — maybe more.

• Locus interviews Superpowers author (and Nebula finalist) David Schwartz: “I got the sense from the reviews that Superpowers is a book people either like or really hate. I think a big part of that is the fans coming from the comic book/superhero angle seem to want villains and fights, and they don’t want the interpersonal drama.” As for me, I love the interpersonal drama in comic books.

• Have I mentioned lately how sick I am of the Twilight books? And we’re only on the second movie!

• Why is there suddenly all this news from Ian McKellen talking about The Hobbit? Because he’s out promoting his AMC mini-series The Prisoner (which airs on Sunday, and we’ll review this Friday), but everyone wants to ask him about Gandalf (except Whoopi Goldberg, who asked him about Dumbledore!). The thing is, McKellen hasn’t signed a contract yet and doesn’t really know much about the movie.

• Jake Gyllenhaal discusses his role in the upcoming Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, calling it “40 days and 40 nights of misery.” But in other ways, the role is just play-acting: “This is how you play when you’re a kid, and you go outside and I remember specifically many times I would go outside and be like, ‘I play him and you play him and let’s fight!’ And we’re just like doing that every day.”

• Eastwick has been canceled. Stop the presses!

• A ridiculously misleading headline alert for ComingSoon.net: “Is Aragorn Ready to Return to The Hobbit?” The article’s answer: well, the actor would, but there’s no role for him in the movies. How in the world do sites like this stay in business?

• It’s hard to say if this is a misleading headline or not: “Do we meet Dumbledore’s gay lover in the last Harry Potter films?” The article tells us the producers have hired an actor to play the role of Grindelwald, the man J.K. Rowling says Dumbledore loved, and the character appears in a vision in the film. But the article doesn’t say if his relationship to Dumbledore is any clearer in the movies than it is in the books (which would obviously be a big deal!).

• Realms of Fantasy (the fantasy fiction magazine) is back in business, and is now accepting art and fiction submissions.

Ian McKellen appeared on The View last week to promote AMC’s upcoming mini-series The Prisoner. After a tense exchange about British health care with a typically-uninformed Elizabeth Hasselbeck, Whoopi asked if the actor would be back in Harry Potter.

“Maybe if I were Michael Gambon,” Sir Ian said.

But a chagrined Whoopi later made up for the embarrassing gaffe by asking a cheeky, but long-overdue Lord of the Rings-related question: will we ever see a black hobbit?

McKellen also mentioned that he has not yet signed a contract for The Hobbit.

So far, the casting news from the upcoming movie version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit has been surprisingly confusing.

First, director Guillermo Del Toro announced in a radio interview in June that Hugo Weaving, Ian McKellen, and Andy Serkis were all going to reprise their Lord of the Rings‘ roles — a claim that was immediately disputed by a confused Weaving, who said he hadn’t signed on for such a gig (but would be willing).

Then four weeks ago at ComicCon, producer and Hobbit co-screenwriter Peter Jackson said that he was about a month away from delivering a screenplay, and that no casting decisions for the film would be made until at least a month after that.

But last night, Ian McKellen told an audience at a screening in London that, in fact, he has already been cast in the project (which will be split into two movies), and that he expects filming to begin in March 2010.

McKellen also claimed, seemingly contrary to Jackson’s comments at ComicCon, that the part of Bilbo has already been cast as well, though he declined to name the actor, saying only that fans would be very pleased. James McAvoy, who played Tumnus in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, has been frequently mentioned as a possibility, though he has since signed for other roles that may put him in conflict with such an acting gig.

While appearing on BBC radio this week, Guillermo Del Toro, the director of the upcoming movie The Hobbit, confirmed that several actors from The Lord of the Rings will be returning to reprise their roles — specifically, Ian McKellen as Gandalf, Hugo Weaving as Elrond, and Andy Serkis as Gollum.

Other media have reported that Bilbo, the main character in The Hobbit, but a supporting character in The Lord of the Rings, will not be played by Ian Holm, as in the Rings trilogy. The Hobbit takes place many years before The Lord of the Rings, and a hobbit, unlike an elf or a wizard, would appear to be considerably younger than the Rings character. Holm is 77.

No actor has yet been announced for the role of Bilbo, though the producers are said to be very close to a decision. Contenders are thought to include James McAvoy (Tumnis in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), Jack Black, and even Daniel Radcliffe.

Regarding the all-important dragon Smaug, Guillermo told the BBC that, after eight months, they have just “cracked the basic engineering” and will need six or seven months more before the creature is ready for film.

The Hobbit, which will be split into two movies and supplimented with plot material from other Tolkien books, will be filmed in New Zealand in 2010 for a planned 2011 release.