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.

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Who doesn’t love a good man-lizard every now and then? Or a woman-lizard, for that matter.

If the new (and old) series V tells us anything, it’s that mankind has, well, a thing for mutant humanoid reptiles.

Reptile men have a long and celebrated history of interaction with his mammalian brothers, and it’s usually not one of cooperation and mutual benefit. Possibly the very first reptile man to chillax with his primate brethren was Sobek, the Egyptian god of water, specifically, the waters of the Nile which allowed their crops to be bountiful. He was joined by his reptilian cousin Apep, the snake god (occasionally seen as a crocodile, as well), who was a lot nastier than the benevolent Sobek.

And who can forget the story told in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, in which Eve is tempted by none other than the serpent?

Shoot forward to the ’80s, and there was a veritable lizard man explosion!

First, you had the original V, in which Nazi-esque alien lizards descended upon humanity. Simultaneously, on Third Earth, the heroic Thundercats were dealing with some nasty mutant enemies, among them S-s-slithe, the reptilian leader (and yes, his name had hyphens. Hey, mine has an apostrophe, who am I to judge?). There was also the scaly presence of Cobra Commander in the world of G.I. Joe.

Meanwhile, on the big screen, a bizarre and touching friendship occurred between a human and a reptile being in an obscure but fascinating sci-fi film called Enemy Mine, and down here on Earth, James Earl Jones gamely turned into a giant snake in Conan the Barbarian.

In the ’90s, the world of video games brought us both Mortal Kombat’s Reptile and Soul Calibur’s Lizard Man.

And there’s my favorite bat-crap crazy philosopher, David Icke, who really believes that many of our world leaders are actually hybrids of humans and reptile-aliens (in other words, the exact plot of V), spanning the political spectrum from the first George Bush to Hillary Clinton, and belong to the shady institution known as the Illuminati. The man is insane with a capital WTF, so naturally I love him.

But the question has to be asked, what’s up with our fondness for these reptilians? What’s the dilly-yo?

It could be that we have that very human characteristic of being inexorably drawn to the other, the bizarre, that which is unlike us, and as mammals, a reptilian creature fits that mold. When in the shape of a man, it sort of looks like us, but is actually a funhouse mirror image, a bastardization of humanity, a representation of what we might have been had evolution taken a slightly different course. Reptile men are us, when seen through a glass darkly.

Or it could be that scales are just, you know, awesome.

Suffice it to say, with the new series V doing quite well for itself in the ratings, it would seem that lizard men are here to stay, at least until we find a new animal-man hybrid upon which to languish our affection. Personally, I’m leaning in favor of Bird Men. What do you think?

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So here’s the thing. When I was a kid, I would go on and on about how there needed to be a movie version of Thundercats. I felt that the world as we know it would not be complete until Lion-O and the gang came to the screen in a full-blown, effects-laden mega-blockbuster, a la Jurassic Park or Independence Day.

(Yes, those references are dated. I was a kid.)

The point is, life wouldn’t have true meaning until we could see up there, in celluloid, the strength of Panthro, the speed of Cheetara, the disappearing act of Tigra, and the cunning of Wily-Kat and Wily-Kit … oh, and Lion-O’s stuff, too.

In my head it would have looked something like this:

Then one night, when I was in college, the RAs in my hall thought it would be fun to throw an anti-drinking party and show episodes of Thundercats for a fun night of nostalgia, sans underage booze-hounding. I goaded some friends of mine to attend, being desperate to bask once again in the glory of Thundercats. (We may have drank after.)

In the hours leading up to the showing, I reminisced about the deep, dense mythology surrounding the feline heroes: their expulsion from their native planet of Thundera; the death of their leader, Jaga; Lion-O’s tragedy of aging physically while being dormant, thus missing out on the formative years of his life.

It was like Hamlet with cat-people.

Then I watched a few episodes. Um, yeah. Not really that deep.

The reason why many people my age went gaga for the likes of Thundercats, G.I. Joe, He-Man, and, of course, Transformers, is one simple reason: children are easy to impress.

But in truth, the source material has all the depth of a bit of spittle drooled onto one’s shirt. These stories were meant to entertain kids, not adults, which is a strange thing, considering the demographic they’re trying to reach with the Transformers movie is men between 18 and 35.

Do kids younger than me really care about Transformers? By the time they were cognizant enough to watch cartoons, the world had moved on to Doug.

Terrifyingly, I’m now of the same age as the guys in charge of green-lighting what movies are made. (On the younger side of the scale, mind you. Like, REALLY younger side of the scale, okay? But still.)

And what’s happening is that those studio execs are banking on the same nostalgia that drove me to watch episodes of Thundercats and waste some perfectly good beer-time.

I first felt the sting of this grown-uppedness some years ago when I watched a commercial for 1-800-COLLECT. (Remember that?) The two characters featured in this particular ad were bastions of 80s cheese: Hulk Hogan and Alf. I realized that they were targeting my age bracket with a healthy dose of nostalgia.

Transformers has come upon us, and now we are faced with its inevitable sequel, because these days, a movie isn’t a success unless it’s part of a franchise.

It’s all about franchises.

And the first of what’s surely planned to be the G.I. Joe franchise will be hitting theaters before long. For anyone who’s seen the trailer, it looks like your standard lots-of-things-blowing-up and a-few-half-hearted-fistfights actioner.

A He-man film has been in the works for a while, although it seems stuck in development hell.  (IMDB, however, has a listing for a film called Grayskull, and even a year of release — 2011. This will apparently have no connection to the Dolph Lundgren He-man film.) Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was, for a time, rumored to be playing the lead.

He-man is another show best left to the halls of your memory. He-man, is of course, the secret identity of Prince Adam of Eternia. How no one realizes they’re the same person is beyond me, seeing as how they look exactly the same, and no masks are involved. To become He-man, Adam just does some wonky spell with his sword to make all of his clothes disappear, which means he is now He-man.

That’s not a super-hero transformation. That’s just streaking.

And yes, a new Thundercats movie is coming, allegedly due out next year. Unlike the other cartoon-to-movies jump, however, it will be CG. No doubt some Gollum-esque motion capture will be employed. Not sure I like the sound of this, though. I mean, did you see Beowulf? Yikes.

It seems that only more 80s-cartoon properties will chug along to the big screen. What saddens me most is the lack of imagination involved in any of these projects.

On the other hand, I can’t wait for the big screen, epic adapatation of the Smurfs.

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