Back to the Drawing Board: The Live Action "Jetsons" Movies, Part 3

Part 3: "The Jetsons in Viva Rock Vegas" or "Would Astro Have Been an Animatronic or CGI?"

Well, we've made it to the third script for the live action Jetsons movie that never got off the ground. It's been quite a roller coaster, hasn't it? Judy falling in love with Technicolor Jet Screamer lookalikes, references to Jerry Lewis, George becoming a villain with telekinesis bent on world domination, Elroy getting kidnapped, talking rabbits, Jane's bosses having the hots for her... who knows what bizarre situations this draft of the script will put the Jetsons in? Let us get started!

The sun rises over the Jetsons' house, filled to the brim with curvy furniture and angular fixtures that probably wouldn't have looked as neat in live action as it did in a cartoon. An alarm goes off, and the house springs to life. The coffeemaker brews a pot as a table and chairs rise from the floor. George and Jane are asleep in their bedroom. Jane wakes up first, heading into the bathroom so a machine can do her hair and makeup. George is still sleeping, so Jane presses a button that makes the bed lift up and launch him into a shower filled with hot water. Dear lord, Jane, are you trying to cook George like a lobster?

Jane presses another button that makes Judy and Elroy's beds slide into the wall, which is a less-than-pleasant way of waking THEM up. Astro wakes up on his own. Everybody gets ready to start the day - Astro gets a bath, Judy's closet dresses her in a miniskirt and go-go boots (I don't think she ever wore go-go boots in the cartoon, but hey, neither did Daphne...), Elroy eats some food pellets (the future must suck if you only get to eat pellets for every meal) - and everyone is too busy to eat with George. Hmmm, it would seem that in this script, it's everyone else who's too busy to spend time with George, not the other way around. I do wonder if this will lead to George deciding the family is growing too distant and planning a surprise vacation so they can all get closer together.

Jane's index finger is glowing like E.T.'s - she dubs this "Space Finger", something you get from pushing buttons all day. She's working too hard, and the solution to this is NOT having the kids help out with the housework (why don't YOU help out with the housework, George? Lazy bum) but rather to get a robot maid. George initially doesn't want to do it, but all Jane has to do is bat her eyes at him and he just can't say "no". So it's off to the mall, which you have to drive through an asteroid belt to get to.

When they get to the mall, Elroy rushes off to the arcade, where he plays some sort of weird motion-capture version of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, with him and another kid puppeteering the robots with mechanical suits. Judy meets up with some "Eisenhower-era poster children", among them her new boyfriend Waldo Cogswell. George hates Waldo, mainly because he's the son of his boss' arch-enemy. We'll see if Mr. Cogswell plays a big part in this script too.

Oh, and I'm fully convinced that the name of Judy's boyfriend being "Waldo" is a reference to Janet Waldo, her voice actress. I wonder if they would have had her make a cameo somewhere in the film, too... would've been more respectful than replacing her with Tiffany.

Or maybe the scriptwriter is just a big fan of this guy.

At a store called "SEARS AND ROBOT", George and Jane look at the robots for sale, but they're all too gosh-darn expensive. George asks a salesman if they have "some kind of bargain bin... with floor models... bruised demos... stuff in the back that nobody wants". Sure enough, they do - Rosey, who was discontinued ten years ago. She works, and she's cheap, so George says they'll take her. This Rosey has quite the potty mouth, saying the word "hell" three times. This was intended to be a kids' film, right?

Did you know that in the original 1960s run of The Jetsons, Rosey
only appeared twice? She became more prominent in the 1980s revival.

We then cut to Elroy's second grade class, where they're learning some complicated algebra equation... here's a fun fact for you: after you graduate, you never actually use algebra at any point in your life. Unless, I suppose, you work in a bank. If you don't, math class was likely a waste of time.

Meanwhile, George arrives at work. They do the "car folds up into a briefcase" gag, then it's revealed that here all George has to do is press a button to turn on a robotic assembly line. On the one hand, this sounds like the easiest job ever... but on the other hand, wouldn't you very quickly become bored? Mr. Spacely appears on the video monitor to shout at him, then we see him and Mr. Cogswell playing golf. Question: why would you play golf with somebody you mutually despise?

Then again, Mario frequently goes go-karting with Bowser...

Back home, George watches an ad for Spacely's Sprockets, portraying them as the greatest thing ever and comparing Cogswell Cogs to Hitler (no, really). George dubs the ad "too subtle", then reaches for his drink... which lifts into the air and then pours itself all over George, the result of Judy turning on an anti-gravity box. George goes to Judy's room, where she, Waldo and a bunch of other teenagers are dancing to "Eep-Opp-Ork-Ah-Ah" - clearly this was written by folks who watched the original show. George turns off the anti-gravity box and reminds Judy of the "no anti-gravity dancing on school nights" rule. If her friends want to stay, they can play a nice game of charades in the living room.

Next, the script throws in an explanation as to why Astro can talk - again, I don't think we NEEDED an explanation as to why Astro can talk, but whatever. Here, Elroy has built some sort of device that allows Astro to speak. Elroy asks George to read him a bedtime story, to which George agrees, but when he opens the book, an electronic periscope emerges and clamps onto Elroy's head, and then a mechanical voice starts reading the story to him instead. If this is what the future is going to be like, we heavy readers are in trouble.

While he and Jane are getting ready for bed, George laments that he thinks they're all getting too reliant on machines. I often fear the same thing... why do you think we're so worried about companies using AI? Jane insists that "it's just a few appliances that make our lives a little easier". Yeah, that's how it starts. Just as Jane is about to kiss George, Rosey emerges from the bathroom and tells George not to worry so much about gadgets. Maybe he'd feel better if he saw a professional shrink (she has a pretty funny line here about her cousin being an elevator in a medical building)...

George pays a visit to the shrink that Rosey reccommends, Bob Brain: a robot with a big goofy egg-shaped head, spinning tape reels for eyeballs, and a mouth full of colorful blinking lights. "Everywhere I look all I see are buttons," George says. "Sometimes I wish I lived in the past - you know, like back around the 1990's... when people sat around the fireplace, telling stories, exchanging ideas, sharing a hug..." Bob Brain says that the correct response is "relaxation and a mild sedative".

Relaxing might be hard for George, however, because Spacely and Cogswell are in the middle of a getting-people-to-buy-our-crap war. Spacely reduces the price of Sprockets to $200 (still seems like a lot of money to me, but you know how inflation works...), so Cogswell reduces the price of Cogs to $150 each, to which Spacely reduces the price of Sprockets to $125. Eventually, George pays a visit to Spacely's office while he's being threatened by a woman who he owes money to and tells him that he went to K-Martian (get it?) before work and saw that Cogs were the Blue Light Special - they're only one hundred bucks!

"A hundred bucks?! That's IMPOSSIBLE! I can't beat it!" Spacely moans. "I know..." George concurs. "There's no way on Earth to make Sprockets at that price." That gives Spacely an idea - they'll farm it out to a planet with lower wages. Like Pluto, for example. Soon he's got a sweatshop set up where the Plutonians - balls of fur with arms and eyes, probably what happens when an Ewok barfs up a hairball - assemble Sprockets. Very sloppily.

At Spacely Sprockets, a tour group is being led around by a robot. Just as George is trying to explain how Sprockets are made, Spacely tells him that the first shipment of foreign-made Sprockets (only ninety-nine cents) has arrived. When George holds one, he notices that it's "flimsy and tinny". The parts bend and the lighted center is brown. He tells Mr. Spacely that there's something wrong with them, but Spacely claims that it's "just the fluorescent lighting". I do hope this, and the fact that the tour group is snatching them up like Beanie Babies, doesn't come back to bite him in the rear later on...

When George gets home, he is asked by Astro if he smelled any nice synonym for "butts" that begins with the letter "A". Dear lord, why is there so much foul language in this script? I know The Jetsons wasn't made exclusively for kids, but it didn't have characters cursing. Anyway, George then offers Rosey some of the new Sprockets, but she dubs them crap, easily snaps one in half, and demands that George keep them away from her. Astro agrees. George is indignant, declares that he will not take orders from "a dog and a tin can", and starts putting Sprockets in all the devices in the house. How much are you willing to bet that this will lead to WHACKY SHENANIGANS?

That night, strange noises emerge from all the devices. Outside, a guy whose wife earlier put one of the new Sprockets in his jetpack is spinning out of control. And in the morning, George and Jane discover that their alarm clock has let them oversleep. Instead of taking George to the shower, his bed drives him up to the window. He winds up flashing all of Cleveland... the Jetsons live in Ohio now? I thought they lived in Colorado.

Something weird is going on. The machine that puts Elroy's clothes on him dresses him in a frilly pink dress. Judy's makeup machine makes her look like Groucho Marx. A chair goes haywire, dragging Jane through other apartments. George is walking Astro on the treadmill, only for it to subject him to a recreation of the "JANE, STOP THIS CRAZY THING!" gag from the show. Yep - there is indeed something wrong with those new Plutonian Sprockets. Maybe the Plutonians sabotaged them to get revenge on us Earthlings for saying Pluto wasn't a planet anymore.

George rushes to Spacely's Sprockets, yelling "I gotta stop 'em! I GOTTA STOP 'EM!" But as soon as he gets there, he sees dozens of giant delivery trucks head out in all directions. Unaware of the chaos that is about to ensue, Mr. Spacely and his wife celebrate in their office. George runs in and tells Spacely that the new Sprockets are dangerous. Spacely's response to hearing that George's son was wearing a dress and that he was standing naked in a window? "Sounds to me like you need a family therapist." He thinks that the new Sprockets are perfectly safe - heck, he even loaded them into all of HIS robots that morning. Cut to Spacely's mansion, which promptly explodes.

"For once, please don't be stupid! JUST LISTEN TO ME!" George begs. Word of advice, George - if you want your boss to listen to you, it's probably not a great idea to call him stupid. Indeed, Mr. Spacely feels insulted and points out that the name of the company is SPACELY'S Sprockets, not JETSON'S Sprockets. "Nothing could possibly go wrong..." he claims. And as we all know, when somebody says that nothing could possibly go wrong, it's a guarantee that something - ANYTHING - will indeed go wrong.

All around the world, people are buying Sprockets and shoving them into whatever devices they have. Cogswell is sobbing that he's ruined. George pays another visit to Bob Brain, who very bluntly tells him that it's his fault this mess is getting started and dubs him a jellyfish. Why is he acting like this? Because HE'S got one of the Plutonian Sprockets inside one of his eyes. In fact, seemingly everything mechanical in the world, with the possible exception of Rosey, has a Plutonian Sprocket in it. And you know what THAT means...

Robots, flying motorcycles, microphones, and even electronic belt buckles are going berserk. The floating disks that Elroy and his friends use in spaceball - a version of basketball in this script as opposed to baseball - have Plutonian Sprockets in them, too, which leads to all the boys... and George, when he tries to save Elroy... getting stuffed into the basket. This is a gag that, at the risk of repeating myself, probably wouldn't have worked as well in live action as it would have in animation. How on Earth could they have stuffed a bunch of child actors, plus whoever would've been cast as George (apparently they wanted Chevy Chase) into a basketball net?

As everyone leaves after the game, a boy from Elroy's class throws one of the Sprockets at George. "SPROCKETS SUCK!" people start shouting. The Jetsons wisely make a run for it. Meanwhile, Spacely gets a call from a very smug-looking Cogswell, who tells him to check out Channels 5, 8, 17, and 23. When Spacely does, he is bombarded by reports about the pandemonium and how it's all being traced back to those Sprockets. It's hard to tell who's more miserable, Spacely or George. Not helping is that Judy, so humilated by her father's working for the company that is destroying the world (insert joke about whatever corporation you hate here), is thinking about changing her name. Suddenly, KA-CHUNK. The car has a "fuel failure" and hurtles downward. George frantically restarts it, and the engine starts working again - but now the steering wheel has locked. The car starts spinning insanely, zigzagging around skyscrapers, ricochets straight into a drive-in burger stand, and smashes through the cart of an Italian guy selling "fresh fruit pellets". Eventually, George yanks an emergency switch that causes a parachute to pop up and let the car gracefully float down towards a landing platform... that a gust of wind blows them away from. Now they're heading towards the Earth's surface, much to everyone's horror. Jane says that it's inhabitable, and rumor has it that it's full of monsters. Hopefully they're FRIENDLY monsters, like the ones on Sesame Street.

The car lands on the Earth's surface, and upon seeing what it's like down there, the Jetsons scream. It's a post-apocalyptic wasteland full of things on fire, mutated beasts, and toxic waste!

Nah, I'm just kidding. It's a beautiful forest with rich green meadows, wildflowers, and bubbling brooks. But since the Jetsons have never actually SEEN any of these things, they're freaked-out. This is an interesting twist, although it does make the future seem a lot less pleasant than Hanna-Barbera intended it to be. Who wants to live in a place without grass?

George bravely opens the car door and says that they need to find a way back up. As soon as they get out of the car, Elroy steps in a mud puddle and panics, thinking that the mud is attacking him. Jane mistakes a waterfall for bad plumbing, when a leaf lands in Judy's hair she acts like it's a spider... then they all hear something moving in the brush and freeze. The "something" turns out to be that most horrifying of creatures, a cute little deer. The Jetsons scream and run for their lives.

Eventually, they find a cluster of poles in a meadow. "Look! CIVILIZATION!" Elroy exclaims. As it turns out, these poles are where the garbage from the Jetsons' high-in-the-sky world winds up. George gets the idea to start climbing one of the poles back up. In the background, monkeys start jumping on the car. Okay, why the heck are there wild monkeys in Ohio? I mean, aside from "because monkeys are funny, nyuck nyuck nyuck"...

The only monkey I'd be okay with having show up in a Jetsons movie is THIS one.

George doesn't know why the car went crazy - he removed the Sprockets, and even replaced them with Cogs. Elroy suggests that maybe the Sprockets are like a virus. Maybe if you take them out, the machines are still infected. Or maybe Cogswell has started having his Cogs made on Pluto too.

In the city, everything is chaos. Moving sidewalks aren't working, and apparently nobody remembers how to walk. The supermarket has run out of pellets. Somebody stumbles out of a public bathroom and says, "You do NOT wanna go in there!" - a rare example of toilet humor actually working. What else can go wrong? Well, inside an appliance store, Bob Brain is enlisting the help of hair dryers and vacuum cleaners. "They built us... but that doesn't mean they're BETTER than us. They're erratic. We're composed. They're stupid. We're smart. Humans lack the logic that makes us superior!" he snaps. "Why take orders from a cretin?" Yes, now all the machines are going to rise up against humanity. Nice going, Mr. Spacely. You've brought upon the apocalypse just because you wanted to make Sprockets cheaper. Though this is kind of Cogswell's fault, too.

The Jetsons have managed to climb up back to their house, where they are greeted by Astro and Rosey. Jane goes to the kitchen to get a glass of water, but according to Rosey, all of the appliances have left - but since they rescued her from the scrap heap, SHE'S not turning her back on them. And here I thought it was just because she didn't have any Sprockets put in her.

At the White House, the president is talking to his cabinet about the situation. All of their landing equipment has failed, so they can't receive supplies, which sucks because Earth hardly has any domestic production anymore... milk comes from the Milky Way, meat comes from meteors, and chicken comes from Zacky Farms (it relocated to Neptune because of a tax subsidy). The president says that it's time to start pointing fingers and basically tells them to bring him the head of Cosmo Spacely. This might be difficult since none of their equipment works, but the president isn't going to let that stop them...

Y'know, Bill Clinton was president when this draft was written in 1996. Do you think they would've had him play the president? Probably not, but it's a pretty amusing mental image. Ironically enough, Bill DID make an appearance in a movie released in 1996 - First Kid! Never heard of it? Neither did I until I looked at Bill Clinton's IMDB page.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, it was pretty bad.

In the city, Mr. and Mrs. Spacely stagger along, disheveled and exhausted. They see government types putting up signs dubbing Mr. Spacely "public enemy number one". He'd probably be even more freaked-out if he knew that every machine, appliance, device, robot, and gadget is gathered in an auditorium to hear Bob Brain tell them why they should take a page from Bender's book and kill all humans. "My friends, we needed an opportunity - and that is NOW!" he declares. "Sprockets have gone bad! It is time we start the REAL INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION!"

This was supposed to be a picture of Bob Brain and his appliance army, but
to be honest, it looks more like Bob Brain having a yard sale...

The Jetsons, meanwhile, have returned to a simpler way of life. The rooms are lit by candles. George gets out a box of his great-great-grandmother's stuff, which is a time capsule of sorts (among the things in there is a t-shirt with "IMPEACH PRESIDENT CLINTON AND HER HUSBAND" written on it). Eventually, George finds a cookbook. Yes, the Jetsons are actually going to cook for themselves. Only problem is, Jane and Judy have no idea what they're doing - when the recipe says to "sauté in drawn butter", Judy takes out a pencil and literally starts drawing butter. The result: a grey, grisly mess. But when they eat it, they find that it actually tastes pretty good.

After that, George destroys the coffee table to make kindling for a fire in the fireplace. Instead of using fancy-schmancy technology, they're sitting by the fire and talking to each other. Maybe you should do that with YOUR family, too, instead of sitting here reading my blog. Then, when it's Elroy's bedtime, George gets to read him an actual bedtime story. Jane wonders if not having technology isn't such a bad thing after all...

In the morning, Bob Brain and his army of machines begin their attack on the city. Y'know that Futurama episode where the robots all go crazy and rise against people because Mom pressed a button that made them? It's basically that. Fortunately, Waldo manages to escape in his space buggy as evil water coolers push people into cages. Bob Brain calls up the president and tells him to surrender. The president begs for them to work out a compromise, but Bob Brain simply has his chandelier attack him.

Can you imagine this thing pushing somebody into a cage?
I don't know if that mental image is disturbing or hilarious...

The Jetsons are safe in their house with enough food for three weeks. Waldo shows up and, as soon as Judy lets him in, plants a smooch on her lips, much to George's outrage. In fact, George initially doesn't want Waldo to hide out with them at all, but Waldo says that the machines have captured his father - they're all in the same boat. George apologizes to everyone and says that he should've stood up to Spacely. "I'm a moron! I spent my life making Sprockets, and I don't even know how they work!" he groans. As it turns out, Elroy does: there's two concentric rings, with the inner one producing a negative charge and the outer one producing a positive charge. Then there's a glowing green diode in the center. There. Now you know how Sprockets work. Don't say you've never learned anything from my blog.

George gets an idea. Maybe if Elroy saw the plans, he could fix the Sprockets! As he and Elroy scramble towards Waldo's car, Jane tells George that he doesn't have to prove anything. George says that he has to take a chance. "It's wrong to live in fear," he says. "If I don't understand technology... then why am I scared of it?" Off he and Elroy fly in the car, eventually arriving at the museum inside the Spacely Sprockets factory. They find the records, but the writing doesn't make any sense. According to George, the writing on them has always been jumbled because Grandpa Spacely was dyslexic. On the bright side, George does find a journal with the original sketch of a sprocket. It's also filled with writing that he can read - so it couldn't have been written by Grandpa Spacely. Very peculiar...

Then they run into Mr. and Mrs. Spacely. When George asks Mr. Spacely about the journal, Mr. Spacely admits that his grandfather was a fraud. He didn't invent anything, he just stole the idea from his lab assistant, paid her off, and told her to scram. That lady who was demanding money from him earlier? That's the lab assistant, and he's STILL writing her checks. Perhaps SHE can figure out what's wrong with the Sprockets. Little does George know that Bob Brain is watching them. "I should've put him on Prozac when I had the chance," he mutters. Uh oh...

Elroy creates gasoline, which should be enough to get the car to Jupiter. They blast off, but Bob Brain chases after them in a space Mercedes, firing guns. He demands that George pull over. "NO! I don't need your help anymore, Doc!" George snaps before slamming down on the accelerator. Bob Brain is still in hot pursuit. George finds a button on the dashboard that reads "FAST LANE" and presses it... which results in the rear seat of the car folding out into a bed. Then Elroy notices Judy's shoes. Remember, this car belongs to Waldo.

Before George can fume over his daughter getting it on with Waldo, he thinks of a way to get Bob Brain off his tail. He swerves into the Asteroid Beltway, and since he knows the road, he skillfully ducks in and out of the space gravel. Bob Brain, who doesn't know the road, is having more trouble. Eventually, he turns around. But he also takes a card out of the mechanical Rolodex in his chest... the one that has George's address. As Astro might say, "rhuh rhoh"...

A bunch of machines storm into the Jetsons' house and drag Jane, Judy, Astro, and Waldo away. Fortunately, they didn't get Rosey, but George and Elroy better find that lab assistant and fast. They make it to her house, which is described as a "70's Tract House". The lab assistant, Inga, is home, and she says she prefers to live as though it's still... well, our time because she doesn't want to become too reliant on technology like everyone else. She also tells them that it's impossible to live with sprockets, because they only work in a totally clean environment. If they get just one speck of dirt on them, they go haywire. This gives George an idea... if they get a LOT of dirt on the sprockets, it just might do some serious damage. If only they knew where "Pig-Pen" lived...

Back on Earth, all of the humans have been enslaved - except for Jane, Judy, Astro, and Waldo so that Bob Brain can use them as hostages when George shows up. In the meantime, Bob Brain declares himself "Supreme Emperor and Top-of-the-Line Model", that from now on machines will be known as "Mechanical Citizens", and that humans will be known as "Sons of Monkeys". Little does he know that George, Elroy, and Rosie are sneaking around trying to find the other Jetsons. They are briefly spotted by a British robot butler, but Rosie claims that she's just "escorting the prisoners", so he leaves them be. Once they snatch the keys to the other Jetsons' cell and free them. Now they just have to get out of there.

This doesn't have anything to do with what's going on in the script, but I didn't
want to go this long without another picture. So here's a drawing I did that displays
my feelings on how George treated Elroy and Astro in the episode "Elroy's Mob".

Problem is, Bob Brain spots them escaping on a surveillance monitor and sends security robots after them. The good guys manage to outsmart some jetpacks and soar down the corridors. After a few more encounters with machines, they make it to the generator room. Just as George is about to press the button he needs to, guess who shows up?

Ee-yup, Bob Brain, with a bunch of robot guards holding laser guns. He's all "I've got you now!" to which George says, "I don't think so. I figured out your weakness." Bob Brain insists that he doesn't have any weaknesses. He is perfect. But George says that there's one thing he doesn't have: LOVE. This is the Jetsons' cue to hug the robot guards. When Bob Brain refuses to give in to the Power of Love, George hits a big red lever marked "Air Purification System" and clicks it from "EXHAUST" to "REVERSE". The room starts rumbling. On the Earth's surface, the exhaust grates on all the platform bases begin sucking in dirt, twigs, pollen, grass, all the harmless debris of nature (hopefully not any animals). Dirt is blown out of the air vent right above Bob Brain. In fact, ALL the air vents in the building shoot out dirt. The furnaces make a grinding sound. The system is being clogged...

And then, KABOOOOOOOOOOOOM! All over the city, the roofs explode, and clouds of dirt rain down on the machines, killing them. The evil has been defeated. The humans cheer as the Jetsons step out the door of City Hall. Cogswell points out that they shouldn't have let a bunch of gizmos and doodads run their lives. Yeah, you really shouldn't have. I don't know what would've been worse, being enslaved by the machines or turning into the humans from WALL-E. Actually, maybe the first one. At least the humans from WALL-E had those flying chairs.

That night, the Jetsons relax around the fireplace. Jane declares that she never wants to see another machine again. George agrees... although they certainly need a new cleaning machine and dressing machine. The script ends with George reading Elroy a bedtime story...

...oh, wait! That's not the end after all! During the closing credits, they recreate the cartoon's title sequence. Not sure why they didn't do this at the beginning like the Flintstones movie did, although one possible reason might be to reveal that George now works at SPACELY-JETSON SPACE SPROCKETS (now dirt-resistant!), not Spacely's Sprockets - he's the chairman!

Honestly, this wasn't bad.

I'm not kidding. Everyone was in-character, there were some funny gags in there (I liked the Jetsons being all confused by the natural world), and while the "machine uprising" plotline is a bit out of place for a Jetsons movie, it does make for a nice cautionary tale about not being too reliant on technology - a lesson that we need nowadays more than ever. I think this would've made a decent movie... a decent ANIMATED movie, that is. I probably liked this script because I didn't have to stare at a bunch of actors dressed in George, Jane, Elroy etc. Halloween costumes facing off against dated-looking CGI robots (and just imagine what ASTRO would've looked like). Even if they had a great cast, it likely would've just been silly. Of course, there's no way they would've decided to make this animated - after all, they'd just had a theatrical animated Jetsons movie a few years ago and it was a box office bomb, and this was probably only greenlit to cash in on the success of the live action Flintstones. I don't know if a live action Jetsons movie would've been a bigger success. Probably would've depended on the release date it was given, what films it was up against, and how well it was promoted (all reasons that are, for some reason, alien to movie studios when a film flops at the box office).

Well, here's hoping the animated Jetsons movie in development will be good. Or at least better than Scoob!. At this point, maybe we should be hoping it actually gets released instead of being shelved as a tax-write off. It's Warner Bros., after all...

Back to the Drawing Board: The Live Action "Jetsons" Movies, Part 2

Part 2: "Altair and Judy Sittin' in a Tree" or "The Perfect Plutonian Putz"

In the first screenplay for a live action Jetsons movie that never got off the ground we looked at, George was mistakenly implanted with some sort of "human potentializer" that was supposed to turn him into the perfect human being, Judy hooked up with a cute guy who could change colors like a chameleon, Elroy got arrested for shoplifting, and there was a chimpanzee for some reason. Now, onto the 1987 draft of the film's script by Chris Thompson!

This script begins with a beautiful sunrise over the Jetsons' home turf of Galaxy City... in the cartoon, the name of the city is actually Orbit City, but I don't recall them bringing that up much so we'll let it slide. A mechanical rooster standing on a fence crows and then lays a square egg (the script acknowledges that roosters don't lay eggs. They're not mechanical either, of course) that falls into a cylinder that takes it into the Jetsons' kitchen. We basically get the breakfast machine sequence from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and for some reason there's a human face on the wall and the nose on it pops off and inhales the smell of the pancakes. I don't recall any disembodied noses in the cartoon...

George gets out of bed and deals with the weird technology that shaves his face (it winds up shaving his feet), brushes his hair (it brushes his face), and put clothes on him (it puts them on backwards). Jeez, are people in the future really that lazy? They can't even dress themselves? We really ARE on our way to becoming the humans from WALL-E, aren't we?

After that, George heads into the living room and trips over Astro, who turns to the camera and says, "Reet Reorge Retson." Get it? The first line of the theme song? And it keeps going. As we meet Elroy, Judy, and Jane, he says another verse of the song. Elroy's having trouble with his closet, too - it dresses him in girls' clothing because he shares the closet with Judy. Jane uses a beauty shop hair-dryer called Mr. Enrique 1200 to do her makeup. It has an attitude, but you probably would too if your only purpose in life was to put lipstick on women.

Rosey serves everyone breakfast. George realizes that he's late for work, at which point his neuronic talking watch apologizes for not telling him what time it was. "I'm a failure as a watch, aren't I? Do me a favor, just don't tell my union," he pleads. "I'll get demoted and wind up as an egg timer." I imagine this watch likely would've had the voice of Woody Allen. Anyway, George then jumps into his car, which can ALSO talk. The watch is still lamenting what a loser he is, and the car says that he needs professional help. I don't recall the car talking in the original show, but I'm okay with it talking here. The car takes George to Spacely's Sprockets, and once he reaches his office it's revealed that the chair can talk too. Everything in this script talks, apparently. It's like the entire Jetsons world is an episode of Blue's Clues.

I wish Blogger wouldn't make the resolution of my artwork so crummy.
You'll have to click on the picture for a higher-quality version...

Back at Casa De Los Jetsons, Elroy is building an antigravitational-transkinetic-hypermolecular-transponder (if you were able to read all that out loud, major props). It moves stuff, which Elroy demonstrates by having it move Astro's food bowl. Like in the previous script, Elroy really wants to go to Spaceball Camp, but it's apparently really expensive because they can't afford it. They've had to spend money on stuff like a new liver for Judy and speech therapy for Astro. After Jane assures Elroy, Judy, Rosey, and Astro that they're not as poor as they appear to be at the moment, Elroy and Judy head off to school. Jane decides to check out the "Help Wanted" section of the newspaper. Looks like she's looking for a job in this script too.

At work, George has to deal with a guy named Greg MacGravity, who he claims is a "management trainee". "Jetson, you're a space schmuck. You're just jealous cause you're bogged down in a nowhere job and you have to watch me rocket to the top while you linger at the bottom," MacGravity claims. George's response is, "Actually, what I'd like to watch is a rocket linger up your bottom." That sounds dirty. Apparently the director thought so too, because this line is circled and there's a "No" written next to it in pen. From this scene, we learn that MacGravity is an arrogant tool. And the watch continues to be the funniest character in the script thus far.

For those wondering, no, Greg MacGravity did not appear in the cartoon, he's an invention for this script. There was a character called Dr. McGravity in at least one episode, though. Here's a picture of Dr. McGravity:

We then cut to Judy's high school, where she's complaining to a friend that somebody named Sheldon Spacesludge tried to kiss her. "Gag me with the moon," she complains - remember, this was written in the 1980s. Then just as Judy and her pals are dancing to a Jet Screamer song, a "little matron maid" shows up and tells Judy she is wanted in the Vice Principal's office. Meanwhile, at Elroy's school, he has to put up with a bully named Butch - or rather Arthur "Butch" Spacely. Hmmm, it would seem that in this script, Butch is Mr. Spacely's son. Mr. Spacely had a son in the show, but I don't think he was the school bully.

Here's a picture of Mr. Spacely's son in the show. His name was indeed Arthur, although
I don't recall if anyone ever called him "Butch".

And back at the house, Jane... gets a visit from Dorothy and Toto? No, really. Dorothy and Toto show up. I was not expected a cameo from those two...

In the Spacely Sprockets laboratory, three scientists, only one of whom gets a name, are watching someone play the piano. One scientist tells the only named one, Moone, that the "surgical implantation of the actualizer" has created what may be one of the greatest geniuses of their time. That piano-playing genuis is... a rabbit. His name is Puff. And he has a god complex. And yes, he DOES make a reference to how good rabbits are at multiplying. Meanwhile, George is told that Mr. Spacely wants to see him right away. "Are we in trouble?" he and all the furniture and gadgets in his office ask.

I was originally going to draw Puff, but I think you'd all much rather see
a photo of a cute real life rabbit.

Another similarity to the previous script pops up as we cut back to Judy's high school. The Vice Principal wants her to show around an exchange student. From Korrinian 3. Named Altair. Who looks exactly like Jet Screamer. But this time he's blue as opposed to lime green. Of course, Judy goes gaga over him.

George walks down the hall to Mr. Spacely's office, talking to his watch about how much he hates MacGravity. "Look at him, all young and smug," he says. "Sure, it's easy to be a big success if you just concentrate on work. I'd like to see how he'd do if he had to take care of a wife, two kids, and a great dane with a speech impediment. I hate that son-of-a..." Whoa, George, watch the language. As it turns out, MacGravity is going to see Mr. Spacely too. He says that he'd LIKE to be friends with George, but doing so could put his career at risk. For some reason. Still, he invites George to play with him on the rocketball court that afternoon. As soon as MacArthur is out of earshot, George announces that he's going to "kick [the] asteroids" of that "perfect Plutonian putz".

It turns out that George isn't just meeting with Spacely, but with the board of directors and those three scientists from before as well. Spacely called the meeting because there's rumors being spread around, mainly by Cogswell Cogs, that their company is having financial trouble. Moone shows everyone else how they implanted "the actualizer" into the brain of a rabbit. I guess Chris Thompson thinks that rabbits are funnier than primates, because this rabbit serves as a replacement for the chimpanzee from the previous script. "Alright, Spacely, Moone. Are you saying that you have extended all of the assets of this multi-galactical corporation in order to create a RENNAISANCE BUNNY?!" an executive named Liftoff demands. "Liftoff, you have the brains of a german shepherd and the imagination of a socket wrench," Spacely claims. "Do you think I've spent trillions of solar dollars, just to have a rabbit that can sing Rigoletto?! Let me show you something." He tells MacGravity to stand up, then explains that he holds eight degrees, he's a superb athlete, brilliant, ruthless, and all in all a very fine specimen of a human being. And yet he only uses ten percent of his brain - this is actually a myth, for those wondering. Maybe Spacely just doesn't know that. "Can you imagine what this man could achieve if he was given access to the other ninety percent of his mind?" he asks. "Of course you can't imagine, cause you all have brains that fall somewhere between lungfish and fungus."

MacGravity adds that this is what the actualizer does: once it's implanted in the brain, it allows the recipient to use all one hundred percent of his mind. If it could make a rabbit a genius, it could also make a human being a god of sorts. Which brings Spacely to George, much to his confusion. Spacely dubs George "the most average of the average", and says that once they get the actualizer inside MacGravity's brain, he will become something truly exceptional. Joke's on MacArthur, though - we all know the actualizer is somehow going to wind up in George's brain instead.

We then see Elroy and his friends playing spaceball, and once again Butch creams Elroy. Then we see George and MacGravity at the rocketball court, where MacGravity is acting like the perfect Plutonian putz that he is and making George look like a fool. Not that George needs much help to look like a fool, mind you. As for Jane, she heads to a convenience store called the "7-Squared 11-Cubed", which has a "Help Wanted" sign out front. The store is run by a hairy purple alien in a red smock named Zaxxor, who makes a reference to Michael Jackson because, again, 1980s. Then he makes a reference to Jerry Lewis before giving Jane a job. I reaaaaaaally hope this character doesn't have the hots for Jane like that Mr. Darrow guy from the previous script...

In Mr. Spacely's office, Moone is telling him that they probably won't be ready to implant the actualizer in a human in six months. Why? Because the actualizer has side effects: sudden rages, bouts of melancholy, partial amnesia, an entire rage of emotional quirks, meglomania, and possibly even the creation of suicidal tendencies. Before the conversation can continue, who should show up at Spacely Sprockets but W.C. Cogswell. He offers to buy Spacely's company, to which Spacely refuses. But Cogswell has a note from the bank claiming that if Spacely can't pay them in thirty days, they'll let Cogswell take over the company. Banks can do that, I guess.

"Listen, Fat Boy..." Spacely snarls, "I'm developing a product that'll knock you out of of the solar system." Cogswell reveals that he already knows about the actualizer and that he knows it won't work, to which Spacely says that they're about to implant it into a human being. In fact, he's so sure of its success that, if a month goes by and it DOES fail, he'll sell Cogswell the company. Spacely, you fool. Since there's no turning back now, Spacely tells his secretary to tell Dr. Moone and MacGravity to get ready for the insertation of the actualizer at nine o'clock tomorrow morning.

At dinner that night, Jane tells George about her new job. George advises her to hold off on the job because he thinks they'll get through these financial troubles. He's also miffed that nothing unusual ever goes on in their lives. Well, that settles it... George is definitely going to be implanted with the fancy smarts-boosting device in THIS script, too.

George comes out of his bedroom looking as though he has a new purpose. When he gets to work, he runs into MacGravity again, who boasts that he's going to get the actualizer implanted in his brain. And you'd expect this to be the part where George somehow gets the actualizer implanted in HIS brain by accident, right? Well, not quite. Instead, George knocks out MacGravity and stuffs him into the trunk of his car. Then he barges into the laboratory and tells the two assistants in there that he's MacGravity. I don't know whether George is really brave or really stupid. They put a helmet on his head so when Spacely shows up, he doesn't know that it's George and not MacGravity.

While George is getting the actualizer implanted in his brain, we cut back to the house, where Jane is talking to Marsha (remember her from the previous script?) about how she loves George "just the way he is". Uh oh, you jinxed it, Jane. Elroy, meanwhile, is talking to his friend Vladimir about spaceball camp and dealing with Butch. And Judy is making out with Altair, and as she kisses him she also begins to turn blue because he's giving her his essence. Judy's not exactly on board with that because she's only sixteen, to which Altair tells her that a lot of sixteen year olds on his planet already have offspring (eeeeeeeeeh...). "Altair, I really think you are cool to like the maximum velocity. But I've only known you a couple of days," Judy points out. "I don't know that I'm ready to settle down with you and start having, like little Smurfs." Is that an example of Hanna-Barbera cross-promotion? Say, is Altair the evolved form of a Smurf? That would be a pretty funny twist...

Just as the operation on George is wrapping up, MacGravity bursts into the room, meaning that Spacely now knows it wasn't MacGravity who they implanted the actualizer in but rather George. Way to go, George. You just got yourself a pink slip. On the bright side, George is now an expert rocketball player, so it seems as though the actualizer is working. This makes Spacely very happy. According to Moone, it's going to take thirty days or so for the actualizer to advance George to one hundred percent brain potential. So far he's only at twelve percent.

"I'm finally going to be somebody special. I'm going to give my family everything they've ever wanted," George vows. "You won't regret this, Cosmo. I promise. I know you didn't want to use me, but think about it. You wanted to end mediocrity. Well, what better way to demonstrate that, than to use a mediocre man. Cosmo, I'm gonna put on a show for the board of directors that will blow them from here to the Big Dipper, and then, when I'm ready, we're going to grind Cogswell into teeny atomic particles, and scatter them across the galaxy."

We then cut to the Galaxeria Mall, where Elroy and Vladimir run into Butch... again. Just as he's about to clobber Elroy, George swoops in and lifts him off the ground. He reveals that he's been promoted to Senior Vice President of New Projects, so there's no risk of being fired if he stuffs a corn dog on a jet in Butch's mouth and sends him into a tub of mustard, which is just what he does. Also at the mall are Judy and Altair, who mentions that he'd love to take her back to Korrinian 3 with him... just as George shows up and declares that Judy must be taught a lesson. Then he gives her his Spacy's Department Store card and tells her to buy a new wardrobe. See, he wasn't actually mad at Judy for making out with Altair! It was a bait-and-switch! George, you sly dog!

Coincidentally enough, Jane and Marsha are just leaving the mall, and in the parking lot they see George with a red Corvette Space Car. "Plant your hips inside and we'll take a spin," he tells Jane. Back home, when the family learns about George's new promotion, Jane says she knew they were just waiting for the right position for you. "I always thought the right position for dad was upside down, or on his butt," Judy quips. George then gives Elroy a spaceball with "Congratulations, Elroy Jetson, on your acceptance to Willie Mars Baseball Camp." written on it.

At Cogswell Cogs, Cogswell is getting a massage... and having a meeting with Dr. Moone. Apparently Dr. Moone is actually a mole, planted in Spacely's company by Cogswell because "the boys in Las Venus" are mad at him for welching on his gambling debts. When Moone tells him what's going on, Cogswell tells him to keep him informed of George's progress - if he continues to succeed, they just might have to take matters into their own hands.

At the Spacely Training Laboratory, George is doing some training. He breezes through an obstacle course, wins a dozen games of 3D Chess, lifts weights, and paints a Rembrandt and a Picasso at the same time. Then George moves the family into a deluxe condo that looks like "something out of a magazine". By now, he's using forty-one percent of his brain. However, he does want Spacely and Moone to tell him why he hasn't been informed of whatever side effects the actualizer might have. "I have all the data on your research into the actualizer," he explains. "You took quite a chance putting it into a man. The device is dangerously crude, and rudimentary. Too bad you couldn't build this little baby now. I could show you how to fix it." In fact, if he were to TELL anyone about the "piece of junk" that Spacely put in his head, he'd have a lawsuit that'd have him owning Spacely Sprockets in no time. It should be pretty clear by now that George is getting too big for his britches, but he does have a point. He SHOULD know about whatever side effects the actualizer has, lest he wind up turning into a crystal robot thing again.

George comes home from work with a large human-sized box. When he opens it up, standing inside is a robot in a tuxedo with an English accent. He's their new "Robo-Serve", who he bought to "lighten the load" for Rosey. Instead of falling madly in love with the Robo-Serve like you'd expect her to, Rosey fears that she's being replaced. Then he heads back to work, despite Jane's protest that the kids haven't seen him in days. Oh, great. We're doing THAT cliche now, are we?

This is what I think of when I think of a robot butler.

Judy can't decide whether to go with Altair to his home planet or not. "This is as complicated as shopping for bathing suits," she laments. Elroy and Astro suggest that she ask their father, which gives Judy an idea: she'll ask George when Altair comes to dinner, and when he refuses, Altair will give her credit for trying. It's foolproof!

Cogswell calls up Spacely to "give [him] the chance to sell out now while [his] company [is] still worth something". "I've got a bright new executive that's taking this company to the outer limits of the universe," Spacely tells him. "He'd better do it in ten days, Spacely. Then, if you're lucky, I might give you a job..." Cogswell says - a job in the mail room, that is. Actually, George's behavior has Spacely worried.

Altair shows up at the Jetson household for dinner. Judy says that she's decided to go with Altair to his home planet, but first she has to ask her father. George arrives home and walks past Rosey, who was going to offer him a pipe, Elroy, who holds a paper and smoking jacket, and Astro, with a pair of slippers in his mouth. This, as the script points out, is a way of showing that George has let his success go to his head.

When they sit down to dinner, George says that he got something special for Altair from his home planet - Blue Korrinian Lobster and prime Saturnian steak. Or, as he likes to call it, "Smurf and Turf".

Altair can't bring himself to eat the lobster because he used to have a lobster named Scooter as a pet. George continues to act like a tool, and when Judy asks him about going to Korrinian 3, guess what? He's okay with it, to Jane and Judy's shock.

Scooter.

Later, Jane demands to know why George is letting Judy go off to another planet to get her freak on with a boy she just met. "Jane, do we really want to inhibit her potential for achievement?" George asks. "There's that word again. Achievement. Since when did the word achievement become more important to you than words like family, or responsibility, or human warmth?" Jane wants to know. Why are smart people so often portrayed in movies and TV shows as emotionless robots? That seems unfair to smart people.

We cut to Elroy's big spaceball game, and initially it seems like George is, of course, too busy at work to watch him play. But then he DOES show up in a large Spacely Sprockets rocket, followed by a bunch of guys in suits and lab coats. He gives Elroy a new spaceball that he reconfigured to make it impossible to hit. Elroy protests that they're supposed to play with the equipment they already have so nobody has an unfair advantage, to which George insists that winning is more important than playing fair. Who is he, Dick Dastardly? Then he only stays for about a minute before rushing off to another board meeting. So even though Elroy strikes Butch out, he's not happy. In fact, he's crying. Way to go, George. You've made the cutest Jetson cry. You are officially the most evil Hanna-Barbera character ever.

George's reign of terror is summed up by Moone. He's developed forty-eight new patents in two weeks, fired over a hundred people because he thinks he can do their jobs better, and is scaring the pants off of Moone. And the side effects? There don't seem to be any yet. As for George, he is currently telling the board of directors that he is for all intents and purposes a god and that they should - and I'm quoting this verbatim from the script - "bow to [their] knees and tremble". Cogswell, meanwhile, tells Moone to build him an actualizer that he can implant in one of his employees, but Moone says he can't because George took over the entire project and destroyed all the files and momorized them.

George tells the board of directors that they are now obsolete. When Spacely protests, George declares that he took majority ownership in Spacely Sprockets yesterday so he now dictates what goes on at the company. Sheesh, even Fred didn't become this awful when HE became drunk with power in the Flinstones movie. Spacely says that he never should have put the actualizer in George's head and that he thinks they should take it out before things get worse. George promptly uses his... psychic powers, I guess... to split the conference table in two. Dear lord, he's becoming a supervillain. It's like that episode of Jimmy Neutron where Sheen became super-intelligent and turned evil.

"You should've stopped that crazy thing when I told you to,
Jane."

Back home, Elroy has decided to run away. When George is about to jump into his limo, a bunch of security robots show up to apprehend him, but he uses his psychic powers (again, I don't know when he got psychic powers, they weren't mentioned among the side effects earlier, but just go with it) to melt them. Judy is talking to Altair about how she doesn't think she's ready to go to Korrinian 3. Cogswell decides that if he can't beat George, he'll make him a better offer at his company - coincidentally enough, George's limo is pulling up to Cogswell Cogs right now. And Jane? She has to put up with the unwanted advances of Zaxxor.

It should be pretty obvious that I'm not very good at drawing females.

George tells Cogswell that he's going to buy out his company, but he may continue to work there as his employee. Then he shall take over the entire galaxy. Before he can continue to rant about how everyone in the universe will bow down before the one known as George Jetson, he suddenly grabs his head and screams.

At the Jetson house, Judy, Jane, Astro, and Rosey are watching the video Elroy filmed before he ran away. A crazed George barges in and informs them that now he controls everything and they shall have everything they ever want. Astro tells him to watch the video, which they promptly play for George. In the video, Elroy says that he used to think they were "a pretty happy family who got along kinda good", not knowing that they weren't "acheiving enough" or "making enough money" or "actualizing [their] goals". "Dad, I think something happened where you felt that you weren't everything we thought you should be. Like being normal was some kind of crime or something. But, Dad, I never wanted anything more than just what you gave us," he says. "Love and attention and stuff. I guess you felt like you were disappointing us, but then you got all smart and everything, and then we started to feel like we were disappointing you. Well, I don't like that feeling. So I'm gonna go out and try to achieve something, you know, 'cause that's what you want, okay? And that's why I think it's better that I just go. I'm sorry, Dad... I love you."

Seeing this snaps George out of his, for lack of a better word, evilness and he shouts Elroy's name in anguish, a shout so loud that Elroy can hear it just as he's about to climb aboard a bus.

Then things take a REALLY dark turn. You thought George turning evil was dark? Think again. George runs onto the roof of the building and laments, "I wanted to give you things. They put something in me. In my head. I am powerful. I am brilliant. And yet I am a failure..." Astro tries to stop him from jumping off, but that just causes him to fall off the roof. Fortunately, Elroy saves him.

When George comes to, he's inside the house with the others hovering over him. And now he doesn't recognize any of them. Rosey suggests that they just need to recharge his memory, and fortunately Altair has some sort of ability to give people his memories just by touching their hands. So everyone holds hands and thinks about good times with George, and guess what? It works! George sits up and says, "I know you. You are what matters. You are my family." Hooray!

But then he says, "I would like to stay, but I cannot. I have a destiny, a destiny to rule." To get George back to normal, they need to remove the device in his head. So what does Jane do? Honestly... words can not describe what Jane does next. Here's what the script says:

"Jane grabs her husband's head, and throws a liplock on the back of it. She noisily sucks on his skull. We hear a loud 'POP'. She removes her mouth from his skull and spits. We see the actualizer fly out of her mouth across the room. It lands in Rosey's hand. She looks at it a beat, and crushes it in her metal paw."

...yes, Jane randomly turns into a lamprey and somehow sucks out the actualizer from George's skull. Why she has this ability is never explained.

An actual photo of Jane Jetson.

But it does the trick, George is back to normal. He then trips over Astro and falls onto the sidewalk, which carries him over to the vacuum tube. And then the script just... ends.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but this wasn't as good as the previous script. It feels less polished, with a lot of things and plot points that don't go anywhere: George taking over Spacely and Cogswell's companies, Elroy's spaceball stuff, even the stuff with Altair just kind of fizzles out. The ending is extremely abrupt. And I don't think anyone wants to see an iconic cartoon character like George Jetson become a diabolical villain who wants to take over the universe.

I will say, though, it's pretty surprising that this script and the first one have so many of the same plot elements. Did Chris Thompson read the first draft for inspiration? I wonder if the third script will be about George getting something implanted in his brain that makes him a supergenius too. I guess we'll just have to wait until the third part to find out...

Back to the Drawing Board: The Live Action "Jetsons" Movies, Part 1

Part 1: "Some Things Should Just Stay Animated" or "Astro's Tail... Sorry, TALE"

You know, I really would like to do more of editions of Back to the Drawing Board. I really would. Problem is, it's really hard to find things to do full posts about on the internet. For example, I wanted to do a post about Joe Jump, the movie that eventually became Reboot Ralph, which in turn became Wreck-It Ralph... but there's little to no information about Joe Jump online. All I could find was some concept art. Okay, well, how about the first draft of an animated movie's script? Maybe there's a script for Shrek? Nope, nothing. It's very frustrating. But what luck! I've found some stuff on the Internet Archive that I can do Back to the Drawing Boards about. Huzzah!

To start this one off, I have a message for the people of Hollywood: DOING LIVE ACTION ADAPTATIONS OF CARTOONS IS A BAD IDEA. The only times I can think of where it actually turned out fine were George of the Jungle (I really need to rewatch that movie at some point) and Yogi Bear (yeah, I honestly didn't think it was that bad). But more often than not we get complete crap. The live action Flintstones was mediocre. It amazes me that the live action Scooby-Doo movies are so well-liked (it's because of these films that Matthew Lillard is doing the voice of Shaggy now, even though he sounds nothing like Casey Kasem). And the less said about those Smurfs movies, the better.

There's a reason why these animated things you insist on doing in live action are animated in the first place. When you attempt to pull them off in live action, it doesn't translate very well. For example, let's take a look at Scooby-Doo:

He's not very realistic-looking, is he? No, but that's part of his charm. It's an appealing character design. Now, let's take a look at the "realistic but still cartoony enough that you can tell it's supposed to be the same character" Scooby from the live action movies:

I'm sorry, but that doesn't look like Scooby-Doo. It doesn't even look like a DOG, much less a Great Dane. And how about the Smurfs? How exactly do you translate tiny blue big-nosed gnomes into live action? The mindset was "given them realistic-looking skin and facial features", and this was the result:

Those are not cute. They are nightmarish. I'm amazed the films made so much money, you'd think those designs would be enough to scare kids away. And this doesn't just apply to the CGI non-human characters. When I watched the live action Flintstones movie, I didn't see Rick Moranis, Elizabeth Perkins, and Rosie O'Donnell as Barney, Wilma, and Betty. They didn't look like them, they didn't sound like them (although Rick at least tried to imitate Mel Blanc)... maybe it's just me, but I just saw people COSPLAYING as the characters, not the characters themselves.

The charm of these cartoony characters goes out the window when you give them a more "realistic but still exaggerated" design. Animation allows you to do goofy stylized character designs, weird locations, wild takes, bizarre shenanigans, and exaggerated movements. You generally can't pull these off in live action, at least not without it looking silly.

So, how exactly could you make The Jetsons in live action? In a cartoon, all the futuristic buildings and technology looks cool, but in real life it'd just look like a garishly-colored pizza parlor. The CGI Astro would look just as bad as the CGI Scooby, or that CGI Hong Kong Phooey they were going to do (remember when that leaked online?). Everyone would look more like people on their way to a Halloween party, not characters in a big budget movie. Even if you had a good script, you'd be better off just making an animated film. But over the years, there have been attempts.

First, Paramount attempted to get a live action Jetsons movie off the ground in 1985. It went nowhere, and Hanna-Barbera decided to do an animated theatrical Jetsons movie instead (which wound up being a flop).

Yes, this is the movie that replaced Janet Waldo as Judy Jetson
with Tiffany.

Then in November 2001, it was announced that Paul Foley and Dan Forman had been hired to write a script for a Jetsons movie, with Rob Minkoff and Denise Di Novi attached to direct and produce it respectively. In 2003, Adam Shankman entered negotiations to direct and co-write the film. In 2004, Denise Di Novi claimed that the most recent draft of the script was written by Sam Harper (who also worked on Open Season and Rio, incidentally). In 2006, the project was relaunched with Adam F. Goldberg chosen to be the new screenwriter and Donald De Line (the producer of The Italian Job) joining as another producer.

2007 saw Robert Rodriguez enter talks with Universal Studios and Warner Brothers to do a Jetsons movie. Denise Di Novi explained in 2011 that "His version was fantastic, but honestly, it wasn't a mainstream studio version. It was kind of his version of what he would shoot at his studio in Texas. He's got a great set-up down there, and I think part of it is that 'it may be fun to play with all those big toys at the studio' but he has a pretty good system going."

So the film was still languishing in Development Limbo, even after Van Robichaux and Evan Susser were hired to rewrite the script in 2012. Even as recently as 2017, it was announced that they were going to do a live action Jetsons TV show, but nothing has come out of that so far. Oh, and in 2015 it was announced that Warner Bros. was planning a new animated theatrical Jetsons movie, but that seems to be in Development Limbo at the moment too.

The good news is, at least three drafts of the film's plot have wound up online. I have found a 1986 draft by Terrence H. Winkless and Alec Lorimore and a 1987 draft by Chris Thompson on the Internet Archive and a 1996 draft by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. Adam F. Goldberg's draft has not surfaced yet, however, I have found a comment from somebody on Reddit who claims to have read it. According to them, "Goldberg's draft is terrible. It fails to capture the spirit of the original show despite borrowing directly from the storylines of several episodes, it's full of lousy puns and out-of-place juvenile humor (including Astro farting in bed and Spacely's son being named Uranus), and the family drama is so poorly handled that it makes George Jetson look completely unlikable."

Now, reviewing all three screenplays in one blog post would make it needlessly long, so we're going to have to do this in three parts. We'll look at them in chronicalogical order. Everybody ready? Let's take a look at the 1986 draft for the live action Jetsons movie that wasn't.

The script starts off with us hurtling through the "outmost reaches of the universe". The script's narrator says, "I suppose the universe existed before I did, but who knows? Until you've personally seen a place, is it really there?" Well, I've never been to Tahiti but I know it is, in fact, a place that exists. So no, I don't think you need to personally see a place for it to acually be there.

We hear "Hound Dog" by Elvis Presley echoing through space as an alien space capsule appears... one that looks suspiciously like a doghouse. Apparently, the narrator is in that capsule. And they're a Great Dane puppy. Say, isn't Astro a Great Dane? I wonder... anyway, the narrator who might or might not be Astro says that he was headed for an uncharted planetary system thousands of light years from his own. And what planet in that planetary system is he specifically headed for? Why, none other than Earth!

Then we cut to a city park in Denver, Colorado. I didn't know The Jetsons took place in Denver (do they ever specify what state the characters live in?). A trail of clothes leads to some bushes where George and Jane are... oh, jeez, are they doing what I think the script is implying? I thought The Jetsons was a kids' show!

The capsule hurtles to Earth and towards the bushes, splitting open upon impact. Out pops the puppy, who is quickly discovered by George and Jane after they put their clothes back on. So, yeah, it's pretty clear by now that this is Astro. Apparently Astro is an alien dog? Really? Is that just supposed to be a way of explaining with he can talk? I'm sorry, but this just seems pointless to me... why do we have to make Astro an alien? Can't he just be a normal dog who has the ability to talk?

Here's my attempt at drawing a puppy Astro (he's mostly based
on Scooby's design in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo).

Jane wants to keep Astro, but George says, "We're trying to start a family, not an inter-galactic zoo, and we're barely making the rent as it is. Sorry, it's just impossible." Of course, he changes his mind a few seconds later. In nine months, Judy is born. Then when she's seven years old, Elroy is born too. Time to play the theme song!

After they recreate the intro, the camera takes us to the Spacely Space Sprockets building. It's nighttime, and all is quiet in the "Psycho-Biological Research Lab", where a bunch of technicians are having a chimpanzee types out Hamlet... I guess this is supposed to be a reference to that whole "if you put a bunch of monkeys at typewriters, they'll eventually type out the entire works of Shakespeare" thing. In this case, it's an ape at a computer, not a monkey at a typewriter, but the principle's the same. But what's this? One of the technicians is a huge "genetic throwback" named Knuckles Nuclear, and he sneaks off to the supply room and steals one of the two clear-plastic cubes from a cryogenic freezer. After he makes his getaway, he drives to the home of Mr. Spacely's arch-enemy, W.C. Cogswell... oh, wait, he's called ARTHUR Cogswell in this script. Maybe Terrence and Alec forgot what his first name was?

Why, yes, he DOES look a lot like Mr. Slate from The Flintstones.

Cogswell is having a cocktail party at his house, and Knuckles meets him over at the hors d'ouevres table and gives him the cube. So I guess Cogswell is going to be the villain of this script. From what I recall, he was already a pretty sleazy guy in the show, so why bother creating a new bad guy like the Flintstones and Yogi Bear movies had to?

We then cut to the Jetsons household. Judy is now sixteen, and Elroy is now nine. Rosey the robot is making breakfast. George is watching Jane model outfits in their bedroom before Rosey barges in and forces George to get ready for work. Judy, who is a goth now apparently (but still obsessed with Jet Screamer), is subjected to pranks from Elroy. She's also taking Driver's Ed, but she still isn't very good at driving, which doesn't stop George and Jane from letting her drive Elroy to school. When they arrive at the school, Judy attempts to murder Elroy by unfastening his strap-on anti-gravity belt. I know Elroy pulled a prank on you earlier, but that does not justify murder, Judy. I should not have to tell you that.

Next George, Jane and Judy head to the People Mover Station, which is described as "a multi-level network of moving sidewalks ala LAX which take people to and from the urban center". They're there because Jane is starting a new job. Then it's off to Judy's high school, after which George goes to Spacely's Sprockets and recreates the scene where his car folds up into a briefcase. Also there is a guy with a Ferrari (Luigi and Guido from Cars would approve) that folds up into a Gucci wallet. "This is the '80s!" he claims... he doesn't mean the 1980s, does he?

We then cut to the city where Jane's new job - botanical design - is set up. Her boss, Mr. Darrow, has the hots for her (even though the script describes him as being younger than Jane). Disturbing.

Back at Spacely's Sprockets, Mr. Spacely and Mr. Cogswell are playing a rousing game of indoor golf. You ever notice that bosses in movies and TV show play indoor golf a lot? Do all CEOs have indoor golf courses set up in their offices? Anyhow, Spacely asks Cogswell how his "Expotech" project is going, to which Cogswell says that they likely won't have an entry this year because there's "simply no way to compete with you". After Cogswell drives off with Knuckles in a golf cart, Spacely inspects the damage done to the research lab. Head researcher Dr. Boone suggests that they have the chimpanzee be their "Expotech" entry, but Spacely says that he's convinced Cogswell stole "the F-202" (presumably the cube Knuckles swiped earlier) and that, since Cogswell has no morals or conscience, he's going to put it in a human being and exhibit them at "Expotech". So they decide to put the "F-202" into the guy with the Ferrari - "Mr. Ferrari", the script calls him - and have HIM be their entry to "Expotech". And you thought they were going to put it in George, didn't you? After all, he IS the main character. Speaking of George, he's waiting to talk to Spacely in his office's waiting area, but he doesn't get the chance because Spacely is too busy.

Don't you love it when you find a screencap from the actual show you can use
as a visual aid here, saving you from having to draw one yourself?

Meanwhile, Elroy is playing with his little league Spaceball ("like baseball but played in off-the-ground anti-gravity conditions on a transparent forcefield") team. On the opposing team is school bully Butch, who is apparently the Alex Rodriguez of Spaceball and clobbers Elroy. At the high school, Judy is given a special assignment by her vice principal to snap her out of her goth phase: show around an exchange student from the planet Korrinian 3. His name is Altair. Judy is not happy because she expects him to look like a Star Trek villain, but fortunately for her, it turns out that he's one of those aliens that looks almost exactly like a human being - in this case, he looks like Jet Screamer except he's lime green. Zhe odds, vhat are zhey?

That night, Elroy asks to be excused from dinner so he can practice his Spaceball with the help of holographic technology. When George pops in, Elroy tells him about how Butch won the game that day and how the coach says he could still be a starter if he went to Spaceball Camp. George knows what he has to do...

We cut to him marching right into Spacely's office, only for Spacely to assume that he's the guy they chose to put the F-202 in and whisk him off to the spaceport - like an airport, but futuristic - so they can go to Las Venus. Odd that in this script, Spacely doesn't know who George is. If this is supposed to be canon to the cartoon, you'd think he'd remember the guy he fires once an episode. One flight in a shuttle later, they're in Las Venus, a metropolis with various research and hospital facilities, casinos, hotels, and even a Six Flags. This probably would've all looked very impressive on the screen. I'd put a drawing of what it might have looked like here, but my drawing skills are limited, so instead, here's a photo of the actual Las Vegas:

George is then thrust into an operating anteroom, where he's injected with a drug that makes him act like he's on laughing gas. When he comes to, he's on a chaise lounge, and Mr. Spacely explains that he volunteered to have "the human potentializer - Spacely Sprockets Research Project F202", a computer-imprinted organic crystal, implanted into his head. George is furious, as is Spacely when he's informed that George just wanted to get a promotion, and they start strangling each other. Eventually, George shoves Spacely away, sending him flying into a pool, much to his shock. The F202 works! But Spacely can't swim. George is about to dive in and save Spacely, but then he decides to make Spacely promise him a promotion first. And a raise. And half a year's salary in advance.

For thirty days, the company is going to put George through a training program until he's the first perfect human being in the galaxy, and Spacely says he's not allowed to tell anyone about it - giving new meaning to the phrase "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." Or rather, what happens in Venus stays in Venus, I suppose. First they play some blackjack, which George wins because he is now the smartest person ever. He also now has a blonde stewardess madly in love with him. But what's this? Jane's friend Marsha, who helped get her to her new job earlier in the script, just so happens to be in Las Venus because... I don't know, and she spots George with the stewardess. Something tells me that George is going to be in trouble with Jane at some point...

The next morning (apparently the Las Venus trip occurred all in one night, and George was able to get back without anyone noticing he was missing?), Jane suggests that they go on a family vacation to Las Venus. George initially says they can't, but then when Elroy enters and becomes excited over the prospect of going to the aforementioned Six Flags in Las Venus, he does a 180 and says yes. After all, he's been promoted, which means he and his family will have everything they've ever dreamed of. Also, Judy is back to her usual self - apparently meeting the Jet Screamer lookalike has snapped her out of her goth phase.

We get a montage of the Jetsons' lives improving. George gets a new car, then gives the old one to Judy. He arranges for Elroy to go to Spaceball Camp. Jane gets a new outfit. The living room is redecorated. Jane gives George a kaleidoscope that Elroy identifies as being Cassiopeian - he learned all about them in galactic history class. According to legend, the Cassiopeian race was dying and they thought the kaleidoscope has magic powers and that it had failed them. One day, when things looked their darkest, the purest of the race's leaders looked into the kaleidoscope and discovered the answer to all their problems. "He found... hope. They say that even now, a person can find it again with this if he loves enough," George explains. "But that a person who doesn't love, finds nothing but blackness." I wonder if this kaleidoscope and its message of hope will be important later on...

While George is relaxing in his new office later, Knuckles (remember him?) sneaks around outside disguised as a robot window washer. Apparently, he's been sent to do something to Mr. Ferrari that involves aiming a remote control unit at him and pushing it. Mr. Ferrari doesn't respond, but in George's office, HE'S receiving the signals. So now it looks like he's hitting himself in the face, his leg is vibrating, his back arches, this probably would've been the big "LOL he's acting like a cartoon character but he's a real person" scene that most movies based on cartoons are required to have.

Next, Spacely takes George to a domed coliseum where he'll be doing some physical training. His training partner is... the chimpanzee from before. Presumably only because primates are funny, amirite? George is sentenced to an obstacle course, a game of 3D Chess, and a calculus class alongside Albert, who makes him look like a loser. George continues training at home by running on the treadmill with Astro. No, they don't recreate the iconic "JANE, STOP THIS CRAZY THING!" gag. Instead, Astro loses his footing and is flattened in the speeding mechanism. Odd how this isn't quite as funny when it happens to Astro (maybe because we're more sensitive with dogs getting hurt than human beings?).

George discovers that he is, in fact, a monkey's uncle. Well, an APE'S
uncle, anyway...

In case you're wondering about Judy, things are going well between her and Altair. He uses some sort of mind-merge power to take Judy to his home planet. This scene is pretty much pointless, so let's cut back to George and Jane. The anniversary of the day George proposed is tomorrow. This doesn't stop Marsha from setting Jane up on what is for all intents and purposes a date with her boss. So much infidelity in this screenplay, isn't there? I'm reminded of the Flintstones movie having that subplot about Halle Berry seducing Fred. What is it with film adaptations based on Hanna-Barbera films and infidelity?

More training! George is now doing much better, we get more "LOL primates are funny" stuff with Albert, Knuckles unknowingly makes George's body freak out with the remote, and then George "re-enacts the St. Vitus routine" (whatever that means) in the research lab. Dr. Boone tells George that the auto-cranial command system was originally designed by Cogswell Cogs for use in remote-controlled computer satellite - he knows this because he worked on it before he joined Spacely's Sprockets. "When the F202 started going over budget, well, we cut a few corners," he explains. "We copied the satellite circuitry, miniaturized it, and put it in your head." George asks if this means Cogswell is remote controlling him, then says that they have to tell Spacely about it. "It's not that easy, George," Dr. Boone says. "Look - next to beating Cogswell at golf, the potentializer is Spacely's one great dream. He's got everything tied up in it - he's second-mortgaged his house, hocked his life insurance, his kid's college tuition, even his wife's jewelry! The thing is - that in spite of all his bluster, Spacely's actually a decent human being. And if he knew you were in real danger he'd call it off. Naturally, the experiment fails, everybody's out of a job and they all hate you. On the other hand, if you could stick with it, get to the bottom of this, let the experiment succeed, well - need I say more?"

The technicians strap George under a device "which resembles a beauty shop hair-dryer on acid". Spacely dubs this device a teaching machine from Hieronymus 12, and once it's activated it makes George for all intents and purposes a walking encyclopedia. When George gets home, he discovers that Judy invited Altair over for dinner, and thanks to his now being a walking encyclopedia he winds up... rambling definitions of random things and embarrassing Altair by bringing up the reason why his species can change color like a chameleon.

After Altair leaves, Judy and Jane chew out George for... what exactly is George doing wrong here? I'm not sure. Well, anyway, Jane forgives him for a second but then Spacely calls him up and tells them that they're going golfing on Saturday with Cogswell and Senator Zachary. This makes Jane MAD! Again!

George's new smarts might be ticking off his wife, but it makes him a great golf player. Alas, Knuckles is there, and he starts to figure out that something fishy is going on with George. After the game, we cut to Elroy, who's depressed... presumably also because George is acting weirdly... and that leads to him getting involved with Butch and his pals' attempt to get their hands on Playboy "girlie-o-grams". It's just as disturbing as it sounds. Long story short, Elroy and Butch wind up getting arrested. Yeesh, this script took a dark turn all of a sudden...

That night, the Jetsons attend Judy's high school play. Marsha and Darrow are there, too, for some reason, and Marsha tells Jane about what she saw in Las Venus... uh oh. And Knuckles has snuck in as well. Double uh oh. Unsurprisingly, he starts controlling George with the remote, resulting in George jolting to his feet, back-handspringing into the orchestra pit, knocking away ushers, climbing onto the stage, and dancing like Gorbachov (the script's words, not mine). Then George is subjected to some sort of Rube Goldberg shenanigan that leads to a laser beam hitting his forehead in the exact spot where the potentializer was implanted. Judy and Jane are humiliated. Fortunately, Elroy saw Knuckles and the remote device in his pocket, puts two and two together, and is promptly threatened by Knuckles, only for Astro to show up and scare Knuckles off.

George is taken away by the paramedics. Nobody listens to Elroy when he claims that it's the fault of that "neanderthal in the lobby". Judy disowns George and leaves with Altair. Marsha and Darrow lead Jane and Elroy away from George, Elroy desperately telling George that it's not his fault. Back at Cogswell's office, Knuckles tells him what happened and Cogswell decides that they must make certain he goes through with Expotech. "Perhaps there are other ways to long distance remote a fellow..." he says.

Cogswell gets a wonderful, awful idea.

Inside Darrow's car, he and Marsha are telling Jane that she should divorce George. Jane divorce George? Why, that'd be like Minnie leaving Mickey! As soon as they hit a red light, Elroy jumps out of the car and flies off with his anti-gravity belt. This leads to Jane snapping and guessing that Darrow and Marsha are just jealous of her marriage and demands that they get her to a phone so she can save it. Meanwhile, George is in a bar, telling an offscreen voice his tales of woe. The offscreen voice is revealed to be Astro, who - now that he knows about the potentializer - helps fill him in as to what, exactly, Cogswell wants out of Senator Zachary. "Don't you read the paper I bring to you every morning?" he asks. "What he wants are those galactic exploration contracts - there's an article practically every day. Zachary is the head of the Senate committee that decides who gets them. That's why he's buddying up to him, playing golf and all that." And if Cogswell can remote control Zachary like he did to George, then Zachary gives Cogswell the contracts and Cogswell gets richer. George was just a guinea pig to them to fine tune the device on. He urges George to patch things up with Jane (and not to be afraid to beg. "Believe me, you get used to it.").

Do you think they would've stuck with Don Messick as Astro or tossed the role over to a celebrity who was popular in the 1980s? I'm curious...

Elroy returns home to find Rosey with her feet where her head should be and vice-versa - and Knuckles, who promptly kidnaps him. No, don't hurt Elroy! He's the cutest Jetson! After giving Jane his demands, she calls up George to tell him about it. "He said you have to go on with your program at Expotech or else," she says. Will Elroy be saved? Before we can find out, we cut to the Research Lab, where we discover that the chimpanzee got jealous of George's progress and tried the teaching machine on his own, but he turned it up too high and the laser conductor coil exploded. Now Spacely, Dr. Boone, and the physical trainer have a chimp's corpse on their hands. They put the corpse under a scanning machine that tells them it is now ninety-seven percent crystal... the more he used the powers, the more the crystal replicated itself throughout his system, with the laser acting as a catalyst. Say, wasn't George zapped with a laser earlier? It would seem that Mr. Ferrari dodged a massive bullet...

George makes like a kangaroo to Cogswell Cogs... say, this is ANOTHER thing the script has in common with the Flintstones movie, doesn't it? The kid gets kidnapped by the villain and held hostage? Did the writers of that movie read this script and take inspiration? Well, anyway, Elroy is imprisoned in a force field, with Knuckles guarding him. George bursts in... only for Knuckles to put him in the force field as well. "We know Cogswell's going to implant the stolen potentializer in Senator Zachary, then remote him into awarding him the galactic exploration contracts," George declares. "You're supposed to keep us under wraps till the operation's on the ice - but there's a problem... we'll always be a threat to blow the whistle. You've got no choice - you've gotta kill us." But then he gets Knuckles to explain HOW they're going to implant the potentializer in Zachary, and once Knuckles tells him that they're going to get Zachary drunk and then shipped off to the zero gravity hospital while he's too drunk to realize what's going on, George bursts through the force field and pulls Knuckles into it, allowing him and Elroy to make a run for it.

At the spaceport, Judy and Altair are in the check-in line for a flight to Korrinian 3. But then Judy realizes that Altair doesn't have a sense of humor - apparently, once his species eliminated pain and suffering, they saw that laughter served no purpose. She decides that she doesn't want to live without emotions because then her life will be boring and leaves. She arrives home just as George, Jane, Elroy, and Astro are putting Rosey back together.

The next day is Expotech, described as having "a state fair atmosphere". A sign at the Spacely Sprockets booth reads "Meet George Jetson: Today - 3:00 - In Performance Hall". Everyone is showing off non-futuristic things like a classic nylon string guitar, seeds, and pulling taffy by hand. When it's 3:00, Senator Zachary makes a keynote speech since he's the honorary chairman of Expotech. Backstage, Jane tells Spacely about what's going on. Spacely suggests that they get George to a hospital so they can reverse the process and get the gizmo out before he turns into a healing crystal, but Jane insists: "Don't you get it? You started with a dream of making the world a better place. That dream can still come true - but only by letting the world see just how wrong this all was to begin with. If George doesn't go on, if we don't go ahead with this plan... then you truly will lose everything." Then she goes onstage to tell Zachary the plan.

Jane, this could be your future. Are you okay with that?

Spacely and George begin their presentation. "You've all read the press releases. You know that until a few weeks ago I was an ordinary guy," George, hidden in the shadows, tells the crowd. "And then, I was implanted with a device to make me a perfect human being." While George is talking, Cogswell slips something into Zachary's drink. But Judy, disguised as a robot waitress, spills champagne on Cogswell, distracting him so that Zachary can swap the drugged drink with a fresh one from her tray. "We all have faults. We have imperfections. We are irrational," George continues. "But it's our ability to rise above these flaws, to accept ourselves, and care about one another that makes us human beings. And perfectly imperfect. Unlike me."

The lights turn up and we see that George has basically turned into a robot: he has crystal shapes in place of pupils, brittle fiberglass for hair, skin the texture of shale, and his features chiseled and mechanical-looking. The crowd gasps. Are you sure getting the potentializer taken out wasn't the better idea, Jane? Suddenly, Zachary keels over. Secret Service and ushers rush over and put Zachary on a gurney. A doctor shows up. Cogswell says that Zachary has "angio endothelioma"... at which point Zachary gets up and the doctor is revealed to be Dr. Boone, who asks Cogswell how he knew that unless that's what he wanted it to look like. Realizing that he's been PUNKED, Cogswell makes a run for it. Spacely says that they have to get George to a hospital, but George wants to stop Cogswell and gives chase. Elroy rides Astro after his father.

They all wind up on the roof. Cogswell jumps into his craft and tries to fly off, but George grabs a landing gear strut. Elroy identifies Cogswell's craft as a Lear, which he built a model of earlier, and figures out that "it's a GB451 with an anti-gravity thrust of 100 G's per second, an alternate conductive hyper-drive - and - yes! - an exterior twin can overhead automatic reverse!" Using what he learned from spaceball practice, he throws an apple at the craft's reverse button. Down onto the roof it falls.

While Cogswell is being arrested, George is put onto a gurney and Dr. Boone says that there isn't any more of his humanity left. Jane insists that George is in there somewhere and puts the kaleidoscope to George's eye. It works - George sees the pretty colors and changes back to normal.

Huzzah!

George is rewarded with a Congressional Medal from Senator Zachary. Spacely gets the contract that Cogswell wanted. Elroy gets a lot better at spaceball. And Astro tells us that he now knows the universe DID exist before he got there. "It's not a question of seeing something yourself, but of believing in something that you can't see," he says. "Well, do you believe? What the heck, sure you do."

So, what did I think of this hypothetical Jetsons movie? Well, as a whole, it's not a bad effort but it tries to do a bit too much. There's a lot of stuff that could easily have been cut - Elroy getting involved with shoplifting, Jane having to put up with her boss' romantic advancements, whatever conflicts George and Jane have in the middle... even Astro being the narrator has potential, but he isn't given much to do aside from the scene in the bar. And I think we're all very lucky to be spared the image of George turned into some sort of crystal robot. Imagine how nightmarish THAT would've been.

Still, as far as live action adaptations of a cartoon go, this script wasn't too bad. I give it two and a half Spacely's Sprockets out of five. In Part 2, we look at Chris Thompson's 1987 script.