Why Hasn't There Been an "Inhumanoids" Movie?
Foreword:
This was originally written and posted on DeviantART on Saturday September 3, 2022. Similar to my post on Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, this was another journal that I skimmed past while trying to find other journals to repost on this blog. As you’ll read in the post itself, I wrote this in response to a video that Brandon Tenold made back in 2022. It was a review of a cheaply made bootleg Korean animation movie 🇰🇷 from the early 1990s (the year 1991 to be exact) called Super Thunder Kids that used stock footage from other cheaply made Korean animated movies 🇰🇷, mostly from the 1970s and 1980s.
Korean animated movies 🇰🇷, as in South Korean animated movies 🇰🇷 since that’s what people usually refer to when they talk about Korean animated movies 🇰🇷. People aren’t watching North Korean animated movies 🇰🇵, now are they? Mostly because they don’t have access to them, as most domestic North Korean media 🇰🇵 is restricted for outsiders, as is outside media restricted for North Korean viewers 🇰🇵. Nothing gets in, nothing comes out, it’s a closed system.
Even that North Korean-South Korean co-production 🇰🇵🇰🇷, Empress Chung is now lost media, and has been seen in full by very few people outside of North Korea 🇰🇵. But, even in North Korea 🇰🇵, I bet the movie is still lost. Though, there’s no way to know for sure since North Korea 🇰🇵 is such an isolated and closed off nation. There’s very little way to verify anything factual that goes on in that country, without being inundated with propaganda or being disappeared and thrown into a prison camp by the Ministry of State Security.
The only evidence of its existence is that trailer that you can watch on YouTube and I’ll link right here. I’ll even link a video talking about Empress Chung for your viewing convenience, so you can learn more about it. Trust me, it’s a fascinating story. It’s an animated movie based on a story from Korean mythology or Korean folklore. The video I’m talking about explains it better, but I know for sure that it’s not based in actual history and not about a real Korean historical figure. Sim Chong, the woman ♀︎, isn’t real. She’s make believe, she’s fictional, just as made up as Hua Mulan in Chinese folklore.
But, anyway, this isn’t about Empress Chung, or about North Korea 🇰🇵, or North Korea media 🇰🇵 in general, this is about Inhumanoids, so sorry for diverging from that topic for a moment. Let me get back to it. So, Brandon Tenold reviewed this movie, Space Thunder Kids, which was nothing but stock footage from other movies, and barely constitutes a movie or an original work and is more of a glorified clip show. It’s pretty bad, and not worth watching at all. The movie, not Brandon’s review, his review’s great 👍. But the thing that caught my attention about it was a reference that he made to a thing called Inhumanoids.
When I first heard that, I was like, “Inhumanoids? What’s that?” So, I looked it up on DuckDuckGo 🦆 (my preferred search engine 🔍), and I discovered that Inhumanoids was a Hasbro toyline, a really obscure one, from the 1980s that had dealt with these scientists from this organization called the Earth Corps who wear robot mech suits or exo-suits or whatever and fight against these subterranean monsters called Inhumanoids, which are where the toyline gets its name from.
They come up from underground to try to menace the surface world, it’s up to the Earth Corps to stop them from destroying the world. The surface world that is. Along with these elemental beings called Mutores that are allied with them. In fact, it was the Mutores that came to them, asking for their help defeat the Inhumanoids and prevent them from reaching the surface, since it was their duty to keep the Inhumanoids sealed underground.
A task they obviously failed at since the Inhumanoids broke free and escaped and started attacking the surface world. Specifically, they started attacking San Francisco, after the scientists from the Earth Corps discovered them trapped in amber, and decided to unveil their discovery in the middle of the city. So, it was partially the Earth Corps’s fault that the Inhumanoids escapes and now able to threaten the surface world whenever they please. Maybe that’s why the Earth Corps take it upon themselves to stop the Inhumanoids from freeing their leader, Metlar, and destroying the surface world, along with the Mutores. They’re doing it out of guilt, as well as a strong sense of justice and duty to protect the Earth 🌎 from total destruction.
I looked at the toys, and the designs of the monsters, the Inhumanoids and the Mutores, and I thought, “this is really cool! Why hasn’t anyone made a movie out of this yet?” And so, I wrote this journal on DeviantART, exploring the question of why this toyline hasn’t been adapted into a motion picture, to use an outdated term for movies. Or, I guess the term “motion picture” isn’t that outdated, it’s still technically in use, not to the degree it once was.
It’s mostly older directors from the New Hollywood era (which ironically is no longer new anymore) who still use it, and people who just want to say the word “movie” while sounding a bit more fancy and dignified. Or, they use it a joking manner to express that a certain movie shouldn’t exist or is an insult to the very medium of film, or is a bit silly in concept like the Minecraft movie for instance. When Korey, Martin, and Billy talked about the trailer to A Minecraft Movie (yes, that’s the actual title of the movie) on Double Toasted, Korey jokingly called it, Minecraft: The Motion Picture. He’s done that with a few other films too, but I can’t think of any at the top of my head. Minecraft was only example that came to mind, for that I apologize.
But, for most part, the term “motion picture” isn’t really a popular term to refer to movies, and is no longer used as frequently as it was once was most for the 20th century, for as long as movies have been around, up until the 1990s when the term fell out of use, except in those specific instances that I was talking about before. Nowadays, most people just say either “movie” or “film.” Even if the movie in question wasn’t actually shot on film 🎞️, and was shot digitally, they still refer to it as a “film.” People who make movies are still referred to as “ filmmakers.” And they refer to the act of shooting a movie as “filming a movie,” even if again, it’s shot on digital and not on film 🎞️. I use the terms “movie” and “film” interchangeably as you’ll no doubt notice in my writings.
BTW, did you know that Attack of the Clones was one of the first live action movies to be shot digitally instead of on film stock 🎞️? And if it wasn’t, it certainly was one of the first movie to popularize it. Yeah sure, digital cameras back then were still pretty bulky and it was all shot on tapes, but still, shooting a movie digitally on tapes is still a lot different than shooting a movie on actual celluloid 🎞️ that has to be printed and go through a full process that’s a bit time consuming. Even the act of editing a movie shot on film 🎞️ is different since it involves actually physically cutting the film to make your edits ✂️. That’s where the terms “cut,” “cut to,” “cutting to,” and “cut out” come from. George Lucas was a true pioneer in making the transition from film 🎞️ to digital, and a lot of people hated him for it, among other things.
A lot of people at the time hated that he chose to shoot Attack of the Clones digitally instead of on film 🎞️ like all of the previous Star Wars movies had been, including the one that came before, Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. The Phantom Menace was the last Star Wars film to be shot on film 🎞️ for a long while, and there wouldn’t be another Star Wars film shot on film 🎞️ until Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the first film in the Sequel Trilogy. And it was a conscious decision to shoot The Force Awakens on film 🎞️ to get as far away from the Prequels as they could.
That movie was made during a time when people still hated the Prequels (or at least pretended to 😒), and it was expected that you hate the Prequels in order to be considered a “true Star Wars fan,” whatever that means 🙄. Back then, the Original Trilogy was considered the only legitimate part of Star Wars and the only part that truly counted, and the Prequels were considered “fake Star Wars” that didn’t count at all, even though they were all made by the original creator. He wrote and directed all three of them. The only one Lucas didn’t write himself was Attack of the Clones, he had a co-writer on that one, Jonathan Hales. Now, the Sequels and every other Disney Star Wars movie and show is considered “fake Star Wars” by fans, and the Prequels have been redeemed. Funny how that all worked out.
A lot of the people who opposed the decision to shoot Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith on digital were industry professionals and film companies 🎞️, as in companies that produce film stock 🎞️ and film cameras 🎥, like Kodak for instance. No surprise there 🙄, they were worried the digital camera industry and the transition from film 🎞️ to digital would cut into their bottomline.
So, it was more about self-preservation than anything else, they were just trying to save themselves and save their business from being overtaken by digital cameras and digital photography. I should mention most of their ire was directed towards Attack of the Clones and not Revenge of the Sith since Attack of the Clones was the first Star Wars film to be shot digitally. People were already used to digital technology and digital photography by the time Revenge of the Sith came out. In fact, they kind of expected it in some cases.
A lot of the reasons they gave for why opposed the decision to switch from film 🎞️ to digital on the second prequel film had to do with how unwieldy the cameras were at the time. They said the cameras were too bulky, they were too heavy, you couldn’t maneuver them that well compared to a film camera 🎥, couldn’t hand hold a digital camera, and there were too many wires and spools. You had to keep moving the cables out of the way so that the camera could be moved around, and so people wouldn’t trip on the cables.
They also opposed it for film preservation reasons, they said that film 🎞️ was better for preserving movies than digital was, because it’s a physical object that’s physical there, and can be stored properly, and isn’t on a tape, or on disc, or anything can degrades easily. I mean, film 🎞️ does degrade easily too if it’s not kept in the right conditions (it has to be kept in a room with cooler temperatures), but that’s a detail that pro-film 🎞️ seem to ignore or overlook because it hurts their argument, at least partially. The film preservation argument is the only one that kind of makes sense and has an merit to it whatsoever, especially in the age of 4K, when older movies are being digitally restored and remastered in 4K, like The Phantom Menace and the other two Star Wars Prequels. It is easily to transfer a movie shot on film 🎞️ to 4K than it is to transfer a movie shot on digital to 4K unless it was already shot with a 4K camera.
They also opposed Attack of the Clones being shot digitally because they felt that the picture quality was better. They said that movie images shot on film 🎞️ were superior to those shot on digital, that they were crisper, cleaner, and they felt more “real” and “authentic,” and that was due to the film grain. They hated digital because it didn’t have film grain 🙄. This was probably the weakest argument of all them because it’s all subjective.
People have different opinions about what they think looks better, and just because these guys turned their noses up at digital photography and said film photography 🎞️ was better doesn’t mean everyone else agreed with them. George Lucas certainly didn’t agree with them, neither did James Cameron, neither did Peter Jackson, neither did the Wachowskis, and neither did Guillermo del Toro. Though, I value Cameron’s opinions a lot less than those other guys ♂︎ I just mentioned. Though, the Wachowskis are not guys ♂︎, or at least, not anymore since they’re both trans 🏳️⚧️.
There is a bit of elitism and gatekeeping to this hatred of digital and clinging onto film 🎞️. They’re too set in their ways, and too afraid of change to embrace a new piece of technology that many younger filmmakers credit as the thing that open the doors to them becoming filmmakers and making their own movies. Not everyone has access to film cameras 🎞️, especially not anymore since they’re a lot harder to come by and can only be afforded by the richest and most well-off among us. So, most people getting into film, digital is their only option.
Plus, there are filmmakers out there who do prefer the way movies on digital look compared to movies on film 🎞️, even if the majority of moviegoers won’t notice the difference. Like, your average moviegoer probably wouldn’t be able to tell if a movie was shot on film 🎞️ or on digital, which makes the whole film 🎞️ vs. digital debate a bit ridiculous and petty. You’re arguing about something the average viewer won’t be able to perceive. Only people who are tuned into that kind of stuff, and know the ins and outs of filmmaking, and know how movies are shot will actually notice and pick up on that sort of thing. As long as the acting’s good, as long as the writing’s good, and as long as its entertaining, most people won’t care if a movie was shot on film 🎞️ or on digital.
To further support the pro-digital crowd’s argument, the technology is a lot more convenient and easier to use than film camera technology 🎞️. So, that’s about three major things in digital’s favor over film 🎞️. Or two, if you don’t count the “most people won’t even notice or care” argument as an legitimate argument in favor of digital. It’s really not, it’s more of a “this is a bad and pointless debate that doesn’t mean anything to the average viewer and average consumer” argument.
Lucas, for his part, said that part of the reason he liked shooting Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith on digital was the convenience of it all. He liked being able to go into the editing bay on set, and looking at the dailies, and being able to look at the shots for the day, and review them, and see if they’re good enough and were to his liking, and if they weren’t, then he could immediately do retakes on them.
He could also begin the editing process on the day after shooting a scene. Instead of having to wait for the film prints 🎞️ to processed chemically in a lab for a day until he could finally look at dailies, and do edits on them, or call for retakes. Shooting the movie on digital, also made it easier for the visual effects people to do the visual effects, especially the digital effects since they were working with something that was already digital. As the producer, Rick McCallum said, “We’re already in the digital realm from the moment we start shooting,” or something to that effect.
They made a featurette for the special features of Attack of the Clones on DVD 📀 talking about the transition from film 🎞️ to digital, showing the opposing viewpoint of people who opposed the transition from film 🎞️ to digital. I’ll link it here, so you can watch it for yourself. To the credit of one of the guys they interviewed for that featurette, he did say that digital cameras would improve in the future, and get better than they were at the time they filmed that interview. He wasn’t one of the guys disparaging digital cameras, saying that they’re inherently inferior to film cameras 🎥, and film photography 🎞️ will always look superior to digital photography. He was just saying it wasn’t that good at the moment, but that it would get better in the future.
And to his credit, he was right, digital cameras did improve over time, and can produce photography that rivals anything shot on film 🎞️. The images have higher definition, high fidelity, and you can do colors and lights that could never do before with a regular film camera 🎥. It’s more accepted to shoot a movie on digital than it was back then, in 2001 and 2002, when Attack of the Clones was being shot and worked on.
Nowadays, the only people who still shoot movies on film 🎞️ are the old guard, the guys who have been in the business since the 70s, and are used to shooting on film 🎞️ and don’t want to transition to digital. And people like Christopher Nolan, who want to be all fancy and cool because they’re shooting on film 🎞️ and not digital like the other kids, and because they think film images 🎞️ are superior to digital ones, and they think that filming a movie on film 🎞️ is a dying art and they want to preserve that in the 21st century and the second millennium. They also believe, just like those guys from the film companies 🎞️ in that featurette I just mentioned, film 🎞️ is better for film preservation than digital.
Nolan and others like him are the kind of people who think older technology is better and newer technology sucks. I wouldn’t be surprised if Nolan still used a flip phone and owned a landline 📞 instead of a smartphone 📱. He’s really against CGI, and prefers to do things in camera, practically. JJ Abrams, the director of The Force Awakens, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and other such movies as Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness, Mission: Impossible III, and Super 8, also shoots a lot of his movies on film 🎞️, but he isn’t that much of stickler about them being on film 🎞️ as Nolan. Like, I feel like he shoot a movie digitally if he believed it was the best option.
The only exemption to this was The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker, where he only filmed those movies on film 🎞️ just to spite Lucas and to spite the Prequels. JJ is a staunch Prequel hater. Though he did reference the Prequels, or at least Attack of the Clones, in The Force Awakens when Kylo Ren suggested the idea of using a clone army instead of the kidnapped and indoctrinated human Stormtrooper army that the First Order was currently using because of how poorly they were performing and failing to accomplish the task they set out for them. They were trying to retrieve that piece of the map that the Resistance had found that showed Luke Skywalker’s location within the galaxy.
I featured a few pictures in the post when it was still a journal on DeviantART, showing the toys, both the toys of the Earth Corps and the toys of the Inhumanoids, and I think one of them features the Mutores, and they all look really look cool. They look like toys I would’ve wanted to own and play with if I was a kid growing up in the 80s. But, I was born in 1998, and I grew up in the 2000s, and these toys had already fallen out of fashion if they were even that popular to begin with. It seems like they weren’t given how obscure they are, and how it seems as if barely anyone’s even heard of them except for people like Brandon.
He’s known for deep cut references like that in his videos, referencing things that were obscure even in the decades they came out, usually the 70s or the 80s, which are the two decades where he pulls from to make his reviews. Most of the movies he reviews on his channel are either from the 70s or the 80s, and he’ll occasionally do some from the 90s and the 2000s. He never reviews movies from the 2010s or 2020s unless they’re in vlog form like with Shin Godzilla and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). Still waiting on that vlog for Godzilla vs. Kong, Brandon, if you’re reading this. And Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and Godzilla Minus One. Though Minus One did come out first before Godzilla x Kong. So, if you were to do those in order from when they came out, which you have been doing with all of the other more recent Godzilla movies, then you’ll have to do Minus One first before diving into Godzilla x Kong.
Oh, who am I kidding? You’re not reading this. You’ve got better things to do like review another low budget direct-to-video 📼 horror movie from the 80s or 90s made by a VFX guy or makeup artist. That, or promoting yet another documentary that you had a hand in about a horror film from the 80s that considered a classic by today’s standards. But, for the most part, he just sticks to the 70s and 80s for his reviews. Space Thunder Kids, the thing that started all this, was one of the movies he did that was from the 90s, albeit from the early 90s. Though, like I said before, it barely qualifies as a movie since it’s just a bunch of stock footage from other movies strung together haphazardly that don’t even form a coherent plot.
It’s like that Sompote Sands movie, Space Warriors 2000, which had some original newly shot scenes filmed in the Belgravia district in London with British actors 🇬🇧, but most of it was stock footage thrown together from Sompote Sands’s other movie, Hanuman vs. 11 Ultraman, as well as footage other actual Ultraman movies and TV shows from Japan 🇯🇵. Footage that he didn’t at all have permission to use, and was unauthorized and therefore illegal.
Something that Sompote Sands would do repeatedly throughout his career in the Thai film industry 🇹🇭, using footage from other movies and TV shows without permission from the actual legal owners of the property, and making unauthorized films and TV shows based on those properties, as well as claiming legal ownership over a film or TV property he doesn’t actually own. Sompote Sands is a pretty shady guy ♂︎ needless to say 🤨. Only Space Thunder Kids is Korean 🇰🇷 instead of Thai 🇹🇭, and it’s animated instead of live action.
I also featured some fan art depicting two of the main Inhumanoids, one of the main Mutores, and one of the robot mech suits of the Earth Corps, and it looked really cool. The Inhumanoid featured in that picture with all the tentacles that you’ll see down below looked very Lovecraftian in a sort of way. I know I’ve sort of been on this mild Lovecraft kick since I watched the longplay of Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, but I can’t help it. That’s just what I thought of when I looked at that piece of fan art again. BTW, I just realized something: Eternal Darkness is sort of a Y2K game. Hear me out. Even though the game was released in 2002, it actually takes place in 2000 (or at least, the parts set in “the present day” do), and it deals with the end of the world being prevented in the year 2000.
Maybe, that’s their explanation for why the Y2K apocalypse didn’t happen, because it was prevented by Alex Rovias, using knowledge passed down to her from two millennia. And rather than it being a computer virus or glitch that was going to mess up or disable every computer system and electronic device on the planet, or the Devil 😈 bringing Hell to Earth 🌎🔥 or the Antichrist being born like in all of those religious or semi-religious movies and TV shows that were made around that time—like in the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, End of Days, and the TV series, Millennium—it was instead, a bunch of eldritch Lovecraftian gods and their immortal Roman centurion lich minion trying to plunge the Earth 🌎 into eternal darkness because there was a planetary alignment happening that year, in the year 2000 and that’s the only time they can do that: plunge the Earth 🌎 into eternal darkness.
I also discussed the idea of this movie possibly being in the cinematic universe that Hasbro was trying to make back in the mid-to-late 2010s, starting with Transformers: The Last Knight (potentially), which, yeah, it didn’t work out 😬. Or is still trying to make, if the ending of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts if anything to go by. Bumblebee 🐝 and Rise of the Beasts were both reboots to the live action Transformers series, and not prequels to the Michael Bay Transformers movies, no matter what Lorenzo di Bonaventura says. So, they were starting fresh with Rise of the Beasts when it came to trying to set up this cinematic universe of theirs that they really want to do.
Even long after the cinematic universe trend has died down, and no body really cares about more about that kind of stuff anymore because Marvel and DC burnt everyone out on it, and there were so other failed attempts at doing one alongside them, like Universal’s Dark Universe 😂. That cinematic universe only lasted one film ☝️, The Mummy (2017) after they failed to start it up with Dracula Untold, which they retconned out of existed and started fresh with The Mummy (2017), only for that to fail miserably too.
And also there was The Last Knight too—released the same year as The Mummy (2017) BTW—that tried to kick off a cinematic universe, but that ended in failure too, and The Last Knight ended up being the only film that cinematic universe, along with the other four Michael Bay Transformers movies. People have kind of just been turned off to the idea of a cinematic universe. But, Hasbro’s still determined to try to make one of its own, even it’s likely to end in failure.
I wasn’t necessarily in favor of it being apart of the Hasbro Cinematic Universe (HCU), if that’s even a thing that’s still happening or not, but I did say that it was weird that Hasbro never once considered it for their shared universe. They seemed to want to combine all of their sci-fi and action oriented aimed mostly at boys ♂︎ into one MCU-style cinematic universe.
Inhumanoids just seemed like it fit with Transformers, G.I. Joe, and maybe even Battleship, though at this point, I doubt Battleship was or is in any sort of consideration for Hasbro’s cinematic universe if it’s even still happening. Peter Berg killed that brand when he made Battleship (2010), adding aliens 👽 to the mix and trying to copy Michael Bay’s style. If Hasbro were to ever resurrect Battleship and try to make another movie out of it, they’d need to completely overhaul it, start from scratch, take it back to basics.
Remove the aliens 👽 and the sci-fi elements entirely, and either just do a period piece about actual battleships going to town on one another. Either set in World War I or World War II, the two major wars in the 20th century that actually involved battleships doing battle with each other on the high seas in a big way. Or make a movie set in the modern day, about a fictional hypothetical war between the world’s major powers (likely the US 🇺🇸 and China 🇨🇳), featuring fictional hypothetical battleships doing battle with each other.
Okay, well maybe don’t do away with all of the sci-fi elements, just don’t involve aliens 👽, no aliens 👽. I mean, I like aliens 👽, but you don’t need them in a Battleship movie. Or if you don’t want to go that route and risk offending any real-life countries, you could always do the Ace Combat thing, and have fictional countries in a fictional world going to war with each other over fictional political reasons. The Battleship franchise (if you could even call it that) would probably benefit from having its own Strangereal. Yuktobania anyone?
Maybe you could tie into G.I. Joe. Tying G.I. Joe in with Battleship makes more sense than tying it in with Transformers in all honesty. Like, they’re military toylines, and they’re both sort of grounded in reality. Battleship is a little bit more grounded than G.I. Joe, but still. It’s not exactly transforming alien robots, know what I’m saying? The only reason why Hasbro crossed G.I. Joe over with Transformers in the comic books, and is trying to do it again on film, in live action, is that they’re their two most popular brands. Of course they’re going to cross them over…for maximum profit 🤑. Studios and companies only tend to do crossovers unless the things they’re crossing over are already popular.
Of course, Transformers is way more popular than G.I. Joe, and a lot of people interpret Hasbro’s recent efforts to put them together as them trying to prop up G.I. Joe, a dying or already dead franchise (depending on your perspective), by tying to a much more popular and still very alive and kicking franchise. So, why tie a dying or dead franchise to one that is already dead? The Real American Heroes™ 🇺🇸 are better with the transforming robots, at least from a financial point-of-view.
But, thematically, tonally, and subject matter wise, G.I. Joe fits way better with Battleship than Transformers. G.I. Joe is based mainly in the US Army 🇺🇸, it’s even named a nickname given to US Army soldiers 🇺🇸 in World War II. While, Battleship is clearly based in the US Navy 🇺🇸. So, if you put the two franchises together, or had them exist in the same universe, you’d have two distinct branches of the US military 🇺🇸 represented. It’s perfect, it works out perfectly.
Of course, Inhumanoids is more obscure than any of those properties I mentioned. I imagine the reason why Hasbro never considered adding Inhumanoids to their cinematic universe was that even they forgot about it. Yes, even more than Micronauts, which was actually going to be apart of the HCU, no joke. Hasbro’s trying to make a movie out of that too. So, if you were to add in Inhumanoids, it would be as if it were leeching off of the popularity and success of Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Battleship. Wouldn’t that just be the criticism of Hasbro trying to crossover G.I. Joe with Transformers, but amplified a thousand hold?
Well, think of it like this. G.I. Joe is more popular than Battleship and Transformers is more popular than G.I. Joe. So, if you were to create a cinematic universe where all of these properties, all of these characters, locations, and storylines all existed in the same universe, like Hasbro has been trying to do for about 9 years now (since 2015), the ideal situation would be that each franchise would kind of feed off of each other, and benefit from one another in a kind of symbiotic relationship.
Inhumanoids would be another link in that chain 🔗, benefiting the most from that arrangement of these properties existing in the same universe together. The same goes for Micronauts, which I reckon is even less popular and well known than Inhumanoids despite Hasbro choosing it for the movie treatment instead of Inhumanoids. I would prefer an Inhumanoids movie over a Micronauts movie, but I having a feeling that we may get a Micronauts movie first, so we’ll have to make do with what we have.
The same thing happened with Guardians of the Galaxy. It benefited and became more popular than it once was, just by virtue of it being apart of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the MCU. Had the Guardians of the Galaxy films not been tied to the MCU, they likely wouldn’t have been as successful as they ended up being, in fact, they likely would have bombed 💣. It was because it was tied to a pre-existing brand, a brand that people trusted (at least back then), that it achieved the level of success that it did.
It was because of the MCU that Guardians of the Galaxy became the juggernaut that it became, that it became the box office draw that it did, and it was levitated to the level of The Avengers in terms of popularity and pop culture relevancy. The MCU, more than anything else, made Guardians of the Galaxy. They did try to do the same thing with other obscure Marvel characters and teams, like the Eternals (in the movie, Eternals), but didn’t work out as well for them as did with the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Even if the films don’t really call back to the rest of the MCU, or play a huge role in the story. The only time they did tie into the wider story of the MCU was with the Infinity Saga, with Thanos and the Infinity Stones because the Guardians found the Power Stone (the purple one) and then you had members of the team who had ties to Thanos, namely Gamora and Nebula. But, besides that, the films kind of stand on their own, doing their own thing, which is what a lot of people like about them, including myself.
We like that they aren’t obligated to play a significant role in the greater story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (or Multiverse, since it’s now a multiverse apparently), and that they don’t feel the need to reference the other films in the MCU, or feature other characters from those other films. After the Infinity Saga concluded, the Guardians didn’t play any role in the story that Marvel Studios was trying to put together for the next few phases of the MCU. The third film, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 came out last year, in 2023, 4 years after Avengers: Endgame, which was the final film of the Infinity Saga, it wrapped that story up. So, it was post-Infinity Saga. And it didn’t even reference Kang, or the multiverse, or any of the other plot threads or seeds that Marvel was trying to plant around that time.
And it’s probably good that they didn’t since Jonathan Majors is out, and all that Kang and multiverse stuff has been tossed aside to make way for a different big bad, Doctor Doom, played for some reason by Robert Downey Jr., who previously played Tony Stark AKA Iron Man in the MCU. The only film recently that was gone back to well, and referenced the multiverse, and done stuff in the multiverse was Deadpool & Wolverine, but even then, it was treated more as a joke and only used as a way to facilitate the plot.
It was only used as a way to get Deadpool and Wolverine together in the same movie by having Deadpool be recruited by the TVA (Time Variance Authority) to save the multiverse or whatever, and then having him pull Wolverine out from a different universe (different from the one where he died in Logan) to help him in his mission. Or at least, I think that’s what happened. I’ve seen the movie, and I have no intention of ever watching it. It also used as a way to tell jokes and references, and of course, break the fourth wall as Deadpool is obligated to do.
They did all this multiverse stuff in Deadpool & Wolverine just so we see other variants of Deadpool and so they could make jokes about that, like the female variant of Deadpool ♀︎, Lady Deadpool ♀︎ that everyone was going crazy about in the lead up the movie’s release for some reason. Probably because some people thought Lady Deadpool ♀︎ was going to be played by Taylor Swift, when she was actually played by Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds’s real-life wife. No surprise there 🙄. People also thought Taylor Swift was going to cameo in the movie as a different Marvel character, Dazzler, but that’s beside the point.
People just really wanted Taylor Swift to be in Deadpool & Wolverine. Her biggest cinematic achievement was being in Cats 🐈 (2019). A lot of people forget that she was even in that movie, or they have and they’ve chosen to sweep under the rug now that she’s the biggest pop star in the world, or one of the biggest. And they also do the multiverse stuff so that they could feature versions of characters from film that were not apart of the MCU (pre-MCU Marvel films), and make jokes about that. And also comment on and poke fun at how Disney bought Twentieth Century Fox (technically Twenty-First Century Fox, but whatever, you know what I mean, that detail and distinction’s not that important). As if those haven’t already been played out and aren’t dated by 5 years 🙄.
The worst case scenario would be if one of, or all of the movies in this Hasbro cinematic universe, this HCU, were bad (as in, poor quality) and failed at box office, then it would be as if the franchises are parasitizing off of each other rather than mutually benefiting like in a true symbiotic relationship. Does that make sense? I hope it does. It probably doesn’t, but at least I tried. I’m writing this part late at night, and I am getting a bit tired 🥱, and I don’t exactly make the most sense when I’m tired 🥱. I don’t know anyone who makes any sense when they’re tired 🥱. It took me three days to write this, so keep that in mind. It likely won’t be posted the same time of day (or night rather) that I’m writing this portion.
One thing that I didn’t know about Inhumanoids was that there was an animated series of it. I suppose that’s where the logo I used as the cover image on DeviantART came from, but I figured that it probably came from one of the commercials for the toys. I mean, the cartoon was a commercial for the toys in and of itself (as were most popular cartoons in the 80s), but you get what I mean. I thought it was an ad that played in-between the programming you were actually watching at any given time. During all your Saturday-morning cartoons and what not.
Given how obscure the toys themselves are, and how obscure the property is overall, I’m guessing that the show wasn’t that popular or successful, certainly not as popular as the original G1 Transformers animated series or the original G.I. Joe animated series were in their hay day. But, like those shows, I’m sure that’s where the majority of the storyline and the lore surrounding the Inhumanoids, the Mutores, and the Earth Corps came from. It didn’t come from the toys themselves.
I haven’t watched the show for myself, I mean I didn’t know that even existed until recently, but I am willing to watch it just to get an idea of what the show was like, and that the story and characters are like before it’s ever adapted into a movie. In case I’m ever the one who ends up adapting it into a movie, if I end up writing the screenplay for the movie or I end up directing it. I learned about the show’s existence from a comment on the journal asking what would they even base the story of the movie around. The exact comment was:
“But what would they do? the same story of the first five episodes?”
— XUnlimited, Why Hasn’t There Been an Inhumanoids Movie?, DeviantART, May 5, 2024
And then I asked, “There was a series?” and the commenter said, “Yeah, 13 episodes, you can find them on YouTube,” and then I said, “Oh wow. Well, I guess that’s where that logo I used came from.” Given that the show has 13 episodes, I guess it really wasn’t that all successful then if it was that short-lived. The original Transformers series had 98 episodes across 4 seasons, and the original G.I. Joe series had 95 episodes across 2 seasons. So, 13 episodes across 1 season isn’t very good for a toy-based-cartoon of that era.
But, to answer this question, which I didn’t do the first time since I asked my own question, if there ever was a live action film adaptation of Inhumanoids, I don’t think they would adapt anything from the animated series directly. I think they would do much like what the live action Transformers and live action G.I. Joe movies have done, mostly tell their own story, while taking characters and elements from the cartoon and the lore overall that they like and putting it into their own script, their own movie. That’s what I would do I was tasked with writing the script for a live action Inhumanoids movie.
One last thing before I wrap this foreword up, I decided not to repost any of my Meru the Succubus posts. I was planning reposting them throughout this month, but around Friday (October 11, 2024) last week, I decided against reposting them. Before I explain my reasons why, I should probably explain what Meru the Succubus is. Basically, it’s a hentai OVA, porn 🔞 basically. It was created by a NSFW artist 🔞, Skuddbutt, he does 3D animated porn 🔞 of various cartoon characters, usually from kid’s cartoons like Ben 10. He does age up the characters to 18 years or older, like he’s not a sicko or anything like that, he’s not doing anything illegal. He does follow the rules (to degree that there was rules regarding this stuff), and produce regular porn animation 🔞 with age appropriate characters. He did the same thing with Meru.
The OVA had five episodes, each about 6 to 12 minutes in length, with the third one being the shortest one. It was basically about this succubus named Meru, who possesses the body of a high school girl ♀︎ (who is 18, to keep it in legal bounds) and starts going around having sex with all the boys ♂︎ in the neighborhood and at the school because she has to consume semen in order to increase her power.
Semen is the main source of source of sustenance for succubi like her, and they need it to survive and stay powerful, and unless they’re getting a steady stream of it, they’ll be weak and powerless. They might even die. And of course, the only way they can get semen is if they have sex with men ♂︎. They can either consume and absorb the semen by having the guy ♂︎ ejaculate inside their vagina during regular vaginal sex or anal sex, or swallowing it directly through oral sex.
Meru’s main mission is that she wants to have sex with and consume the semen of a pure virgin boy ♂︎, a boy ♂︎ who has never had sex in his life before, and doesn’t have a horny or perverted thoughts in his head. If she does that, she will be able to maintain a permanent possession of the body she’s currently in, and with that, she’ll be able to get revenge on this priest who exorcised her from her previous body. But luckily, there is a girl ♀︎ there at the school who can stop Meru from achieving her goals.
Her name is Erica, and she’s a bit of a loner and recluse. I wouldn’t say that she’s an outcast or anything, but she mostly keeps to herself and doesn’t really hang out with anyone at the school. From what the OVA showed us, it doesn’t seem like she had any friends at all. But, he does have a crush on Tyler, the pure virgin boy ♂︎ that Meru has targeted to try to make her possession permanent, and her opposition towards Meru mostly has to do with jealousy. Like, she’s only trying to stop Meru and her evil plans because she likes the boy ♂︎ that she’s after, and doesn’t want any other girl ♀︎ messing with her man ♂︎, especially one that’s a demon sent straight from Hell 🔥.
This means that while Meru is technically the villain and Erica is technically the hero, Meru is the protagonist since most of the OVA is from her perspective. This makes Erica the antagonist for most of it. most of the OVA after the first episode is Meru trying to get Tyler’s attention, so that she can seduce him and have sex with him, and Erica trying and failing to thwart her advances at every turn. The third episode is the only one that doesn’t feature Meru at all, and only has Erica. There wasn’t much to it, it really just amounted to Erica being in her bedroom, lying on top of her bedroom, and then one of Meru’s fairy or pixie things comes in, and puts a spell on her that makes her have a wet dream 💦💭 (yes, girls ♀︎ can have wet dreams 💦💭) and masturbate in her sleep 😴.
Meru did this, she sent that fairy or pixie thing to do that to Erica, as way of trying to corrupt her because Erica I guess is pure of heart too, like she has powers of a priest even though she herself isn’t a priest and we don’t know if her father’s a priest. In fact, we never see her parents or anyone’s parents in this OVA. The only adult over 18 that we see is the teacher, Mr. Bun. So, Meru wanted to try to undermine that by corrupting her with sexual thoughts. That’s basically it. It’s my least favorite episode of the OVA for that reason.
There are moments where you could tell Skuddbutt made this on a very limited budget, and this episode, and other moments in other episodes make that the most apparent. But, the animation is pretty fluid for most of it. It’s crazy how good the animation looks considered how small of a budget Skuddbutt was working with.
All of the characters are 18 years old or older, so even if the high school characters are teenagers technically, they are legal adults, and it’s okay to show them engaging in sexual acts. The only character in the OVA is older than 18 like I said is the teacher, Mr. Bun, who turns out to be a priest himself (in disguise) who was hunting Meru down to try to vanquish her once and for all. Which he doesn’t completely succeed in doing since Meru isn’t completely gone by the end after being defeated and failing to take Tyler, and it’s revealed that she was working for a higher master the whole time. She wasn’t working alone. This OVA does end on a bit of a cliffhanger, a cliffhanger that may or may not be resolved anytime soon, or ever, for that matter.
Skuddbutt didn’t create the character of Meru. The person who actually created the character was another NSFW artist 🔞, a female one ♀︎ if you could believe it, who goes by the name, Merunyaa. She created the character, Meru, and she essentially uses it as her mascot in all of her artwork. She’s drawn pieces completely dedicated to Meru, showing her in different situations (most of them of a sexual nature), wearing different outfits, and even kind of having different personalities.
Meru’s personality has never really consistent and she never really had a backstory, and this OVA by Skuddbutt was his attempt at trying to give her a consistent personality and backstory. I did like that he did give an explanation for why succubi like Meru have sex with men ♂︎. It’s not just that they’re horny, it’s that they need to have sex for sustenance. Semen is basically like a food source to them, and they need it to stay alive and stay energized. Without it, they’re weak, lethargic, and they will most likely die. They can’t maintain a possession for very long without it, and they certainly can’t achieve a permanent possession without it, especially if it’s from a pure virgin boy ♂︎ like Tyler.
This was a project they were supposed to work on together, but Merunyaa ended up getting busy with a lot of stuff, I think Skuddbutt said that it was school work since Merunyaa was still a college student at the time, so Skuddbutt ended up working on the project by himself. Most of the lore surrounding Meru, he came up with himself, and all of the other characters that are not Meru are his original creations. This includes Erica, even though Merunyaa did draw some artwork showing her and Meru together, looking happy and friendly towards each other 😊, but not having sex, that’s the one thing.
I wrote extensively about this OVA. I wrote about four or five Status Posts talking about my opinions on the OVA, and then I wrote a journal talking about my favorite episodes of the OVA after it wrapped up. I even wrote a fan fiction episode and alternate ending for the OVA because I wanted an episode that focused on Meru in detention since she gets sent to detention at the end of the fourth episode, and I was unsatisfied with the ending, so I wrote my own ending. But, I wasn’t planning on reposting that on my blog, I was mainly just planning on reposting the Status Posts and the journal I wrote talking about my favorite episodes.
The reason why I’ve ultimately decided against reposting these is that I don’t want my blog to get age restricted. I tried to see if it was possible if you could age restrict certain posts on your blog, and if you could, then I would’ve just age restricted those, but I couldn’t find anything on that. It seems like you can only age restrict your entire blog, rather than individual posts. I don’t want to do that because the majority of my blog is NOT adult content 🔞. Yeah, sure, my blog isn’t exactly aimed at kids, but it’s certainly not aimed purely at adults and is not of a pornographic nature 🔞 at all. If I really want to write that kind of stuff, I would create a separate blog for that. But, I don’t feel like doing that either at this time. I just want to focus on one blog for the time being.
I didn’t want to chance it by reposting any of those posts, and risk them getting flagged and age restricted, and have get several strikes on my blog until my blog either get taken down or gets age restricted entirely. I don’t fully understand how Blogger’s content system works, but I think after awhile, if you keep posting things on your blog that violates their rules regarding adult content 🔞, you’re whole blog will get age restricted and have that content warning telling you that the blog you’re about to visit has adult content 🔞. And I don’t want that to happen to my blog, because it would limit the visibility of my blog in the search results, and I want people to find my blog and visit it without some content warning page popping up when they click on it.
Plus, I am a little bit embarrassed about what I wrote in those posts. Looking back and reading them again, even though they were all from three years ago, I still cringe at them and I don’t feel as if it fully reflects on who I am now. Because I was still 22 years old when I wrote those, and I’m 25 now. You are a little different at 25 than you were at 22. I was a little bit less mature back then than I am now, and that wasn’t even that long ago. You know, I did say some gross things, I did get really graphic in my descriptions, and I did go into real detail about what happened in those episodes, and the things that I liked in them.
It’s not the kind of stuff I would write now, especially not on this blog. In fact, I would probably only write that kind of stuff if I were writing an erotica 🔞, but even though, I would still try to be a little bit more eloquent with it. Erotica 🔞 is supposed to be a bit fancier and more dignified than regular porn 🔞, since it is mostly for women ♀︎, erotica 🔞 is overwhelmingly targeted at women ♀︎ and women ♀︎ just like that kind of stuff.
They like it because it is a bit more tantalizing, it is a bit more drawn out, and it’s not completely straight to the point and purely visual like regular porn 🔞 is. There is more foreplay involved in erotica 🔞 than there is in regular porn 🔞, in regular porn 🔞 it’s pretty much just the sex. There’s a little bit of setup, a little bit of talking at the beginning, but then maybe like 5 or 10 minutes in, maybe even 2 minutes, all of the talking stops and it’s just sex from then on out.
This kind of embarrassment that I feel towards my Meru posts is sort of similar to the embarrassment I felt reading my first Yashahime review, when I got kinda nasty, and started talking about sexual things. That’s why I edited those parts out of it when I reposted it here on this blog. It wasn’t just that I linked an actual porn website 🔞, but also that I felt embarrassment and shame about what I wrote.
I feel from now on, I should probably keep those kind of feelings to myself, or if I do I write them down, I’ll just keep it private, and if I do post it on the Internet 🛜, it’ll have to be somewhere specifically tailored made for that kind of thing. Not on a blog that’s about other topics like movies, TV shows, video games, books 📖 sometimes, politics, and history. That shit would just get in the way of that stuff. So, it has to be somewhere else, like a different blog entirely.
I hope that this post doesn’t get flagged or age restricted just because I’m talking about all this, but if it does, then I’ll just have to edit this part out just like I did with my Armageddon ☄️ review. I tried to be as clinical and as vague in my descriptions, not going to any graphic details. But, we’ll just see what happens. I think I might be okay and I won’t have to edit this part out because I think the reason why the Armageddon ☄️ review got flagged was that I did mention and link a real porn site 🔞, and one of my Meru posts does mention and link to a real porn site 🔞. And there’s no way to edit that part out without ruining the flow of the text or getting of the point I was trying to make.
So, as long as I don’t do that, I should be okay. I talked about a female character ♀︎ being naked in my Deep Blue Sea review, kind of going into a bit of graphic detail talking about her genitalia and everything, and that didn’t get flagged or age restricted. It’s crazy to think DeviantART is more lenient about that kind of stuff than Blogger is. I guess that’s why DeviantART has the reputation on the Internet 🛜 that it does.
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I watched Brandon Tenold's review of the notorious clip show animated movie, Space Thunder Kids, and he mentioned a very obscure Hasbro toyline in that review that I want to write about. It was called Inhumanoids, and it basically deals with these subterranean monsters called Inhumanoids that this superhero-scientist group called the Earth Corps have to fight and defend the surface world from, with the help of these elemental beings called the Mutores.
Brandon showed pictures of the toys when he made the reference, and when I rewatched his video, I decided to do some more research and look at more pictures. Not only did I learn that Inhumanoids had an animated series similar to Transformers and G.I. Joe, but I saw more of the toys and saw some fan art, and definitely looks awesome. That made me wonder why there hasn't been an Inhumanoids live action movie yet.
After the first Transformers movie by Michael Bay from 2007 was successful, and Hasbro wanted to adapt more of their properties into big budget live action movies to cash in on its success 🤑, you would think that Inhumanoids would be one of the ones they would do, or at least consider doing. Or when Hasbro tried its hand at creating a Marvel-style cinematic universe with all of their action figure properties (you know, boy toys ︎︎︎♂︎), you would think that Inhumanoids would've been one of the ones that they've considered adding to their would-be cinematic universe that didn't actually end up happening.
I mean, it totally fits, and it's different enough from the two big action figure toylines that Hasbro has like Transformers and G.I. Joe. Transformers is about giant alien robots that can transform into vehicles and other machinery, and are on Earth 🌎 fighting a factional civil war with each other. G.I. Joe and Battleship are more military type of things, grounded a little bit more in reality, with G.I. Joe being about a US military branch 🇺🇸 or special unit or whatever that fights a terrorist organization bent on world domination, and Battleship being well…about battleships; that they decided to throw aliens 👽 into for the live action movie for some reason. And Inhumanoids is about these subterranean monsters that are terrorizing the surface world, and these human scientists have to stop them, with help of these elemental beings that actually defeat these subterranean monsters.
So, with Transformers, you'd have your giant alien robot movie, with G.I. Joe, you'd have your more military action movie, and with Inhumanoids, you'd have your monster movie. You can lean more into action or horror on that one, or even try to mix them both together, but it would a monster movie, it would be its own unique thing from Transformers and G.I. Joe, which are the top dogs at Hasbro, the heavy hitters that are the most well-known, most popular, and make the most money 💵, which is what Hasbro cares about at the end of the day 🤑.
Sure, Inhumanoids is very obscure and not very well-known outside of its core fanbase, and outside of 80s nostalgia circles, but if people are or were infested in these Hasbro live action movies or in this Hasbro cinematic universe that didn't happen but almost did (before Transformers: The Last Knight underperformed at the box office), I'm sure they would've given Inhumanoids a chance.
They can still make an Inhumanoids movie even if it's a purely stand alone movie that doesn't connect to other movies or to a larger universe, as long as someone at Hasbro or any major Hollywood producer or anyone at any of the major studios in Hollywood think that it's worth making into a movie. I would certainly check out an Inhumanoids movie if one was ever made even if I didn't grow up with the toys or the cartoon and didn't know the brand even existed until Brandon referenced it in his video.
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