Cinematical

Last fall, Cinematical head honcho Erik Davis referred to screenwriter Justin Marks as "the guy they brought in to f*ck up He-Man." At the time, I wholeheartedly agreed with the boss man. But as of today, I'm changing my mind. If the script review over at Latino Review is to be trusted, Marks has done anything but f*ck up the adaptation of our beloved '80s cartoon series/action figure line. El Mayimbe has read the latest draft of Grayskull: Masters of the Universe, and he's graded the text an A+. And if that's not good enough for you, here's a sweet summation: "GRAYSKULL is LORD OF THE RINGS meets THE MATRIX and a little BATMAN BEGINS thrown in for good measure."

I don't know about you, but that sounds awesome. It certainly sounds better than both the 1987 He-Man adaptation, Masters of the Universe and the 1982 non-adaptation The Beastmaster, which I always thought of as a pre-He-Man He-Man movie (anyone else ever notice that Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time has the same plot as Masters of the Universe?). Of course, neither of those movies would be hard to beat. Warner Bros. and producer Joel Silver could hire a monkey to write a better script.

Unless you're hoping to avoid spoilers, head over to Latino Review to read more praise and plot information for Grayskull (and weep for the omission of Orko). And after getting pumped up about that movie, keep in mind that Marks also wrote or co-wrote the scripts for the upcoming Green Arrow (formerly Supermax: Green Arrow), which IESB.net just reported is looking at a possible summer 2009 release date, Voltron and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (for which we shared another Latino Review script review last year).