Entertainment

Get Ready to Weep, 'Sailor Moon' Fans

by Anneliese Cooper

When the trailer for the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie dropped (and was predictably awful), I warned Michael Bay to stay away from my childhood icons or else — but, curses, I forgot to give the same admonition to his leading lady, Megan Fox. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly to promote TMNT, Fox gushed over her re-imagined version of April O'Neil, calling her "more representative of a modern woman," then rounded out her soundbytes by telling the reporter all of the other cartoon franchises she'd love to revamp for the silver screen. After listing Gundam Wing , Thundercats , and Jurassic Park (which wasn't a cartoon, but fine), Fox uttered perhaps the worst two words imaginable (aside from Power Rangers): Sailor Moon. "That could feasibly be made into a live action movie," she said. "I don’t know how many Americans were into that. I was into that, but I don’t know how huge it was here. That’s not actually a bad idea." And, to make matters worse, the verb the reporter uses to describe that quote is "mulls" — not "says," "mulls" — as in, "is actually giving the idea some serious consideration," as in, "cue the drop-to-knees pan-out scream Nooooooo."

Of course, nothing is set in stone, or even in motion — not yet, anyhow — but this is how buzz gets generated, and buzz is how things get done. So, with that in mind, I'd like to throw some serious anti-buzz into the mix by reminding everyone why this would be a terrible idea:

To start, let me just say that I am a major Sailor Moon fan. I watched Promise of the Rose so many times I'm pretty sure I broke the VHS. The conversation "Which Sailor are you?" is a deathly serious undertaking as far as I'm concerned — almost as important as "Which Ninja Turtle are you?" (and just look how that one panned out). For all I know, Megan Fox is also a true blue fangirl, and for all the right reasons; she probably fancies herself a Sailor Jupiter. Still, I can just picture some cigar-chomping film exec reading that she's interested and bellowing "Fox in one of those schoolgirl skirts? Hot! Let's fast-track this thing!" which would mean yet another instance of whitewashed casting (hi, new Shredder) — and, most likely, a pretty terrible movie. The original series is both campy and empowering, credited with almost singlehandedly revamping the "magical girl" Manga genre, but I can so easily see a Fox-led film adaptation devolving into Japonisme-drenched Sucker Punch rehash.

So, Hollywood, do not do this. It will be bad. It will be worse than bad. It will be tantamount to ripping out the hearts of an entire generation and stomping on them with your big dumb Hollywood feet, and mine just can't take another trouncing. But if you do, for whatever reason, decide you simply must go live-action with the Sailor Scouts someday, please at least avoid casting Megan Fox — unless, in a surprise twist, she's playing Tuxedo Mask, in order to make up for the lesbian subplots that were dubbed out of the English version? Actually, no, just scrap the whole thing.

Now, let's ride out by singing along to the Sailor Moon themesong and forget this ever happened, shall we? I bet Promise of the Rose is on the Internet somewhere...

Image: Tumblr/MellifluousSursurration