Magic movie – MTG Color Pie

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If you follow me on Twitter (and you should (@MTGColorPie)), you knew that I was down at Grand Prix: Seattle Tacoma this past Saturday. Being more of a casual guy, I don’t hang around at this places all that often. It was my second time at a Grand Prix; the first one was last time a Grand Prix was at Seattle with Old Extended (2005).

Seven years ago, wow.

Anyway, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to attend Day Two of the Grand Prix even though I theoretically had a chance (the format was Sealed). I still wanted to go down and hang out, but I thought about I putting together another video. It seems like I do one every year or so (My Card Kingdom Interview at NPH Release using my iPad2, My Duel Deck: Phyrexian vs the Coalition with the old Gathering Magic’s Reinhart (I miss ya buddy)) and this would be a great time to do another one before the baby comes.

But what was I going to film about? I didn’t want to do another coverage video, so I started brainstorming some ideas. After Kornman and Holt’s fantastic video at Worlds in San Francisco with MaRo, I knew that it was more acceptable to do more sketch comedy at large events. I first came across to make “Sportscenter” type ads where they are a little off center and show a little “slice of life” of Magic. Such ideas included Trick Jarrett telling Mark Rosewater that the feedback from the internet is that they was more cat cards, Rules Manager Matt Tabak playing a game where he changes all of the card texts to help him win the game. The issue with them is that you have to be knowledgeable about the topic (how many of you how don’t follow sports don’t get many of those references in the Sportscenter ads?).

Eventually when I was brainstorming I had the following image in my head: “Coming this summer, the most action packed movie you’ve ever seen” and it cuts to people playing cards quietly. From there I went to write up a fake parody trailer about the GP. It pokes fun at trying to shoot non-visually interesting Magic competitions (believe me, there’s not that much great action unless you force it), while concurrently parodying Hasbro’s love of making everyone of their properties into an action movie. Continue reading “The Video That Wasn’t – M:TG:GP:ST:GR”

movie-poster-explosions2 — One word: Awesome

I was thinking about this on my way home from work yesterday. With G.I. Joe releasing it’s own movie on Friday, other Hasbro property and games are in the works to be made into movie. Monopoly is being made by Ridely Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven), a Michael Bay produced Ouija Board movie, a Candy Land family movie, a Stretch Armstrong Movie by Steve Oedekerk (Kung Pow: Enter the Fist), and a View-Master movie (If you don’t know what it is ask your older siblings or your parents) are all movies being made right now. Does Magic really need a movie?

The way I see it, there are three ways to make a Magic movie: Do it all in the Multi-verse, have someone go from our universe to the multi-verse, or have people play in tournaments. Each of them all have their setbacks as you’re going to have backlash if you choose one of these over the other. Let’s look at the possibilities.

The movie is set in the Multi-verse.

So, you’ve got a property that some people know but to everyone who doesn’t know what Magic is, it looks like another Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter ripoff. You’ve got wizards casting magic spells, you’ve got goblins and elves and zombies all doing battle with each other. The Magic brand does not have several New York Times bestseller books to its name like LotR and Harry Potter does so it doesn’t have the mass appeal like those two did. Even Eragon had some books behind it and it was just a re-hash of A New Hope but in a fantasy setting and no one saw it. Continue reading “Why We Shouldn’t Want a Magic Movie”