Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out – Dan Cohen
Nintendo’s Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out! is one of the greatest video games ever made. Finally beating Mike Tyson in a split decision was probably the greatest video game moment of my life. Oh, who am I kidding! It was one of the greatest moments of my life period. But that’s a story for another day. One of the biggest reasons why video game movies fail is they don’t trust the game. They conjure up these convoluted cliché storylines around what the game is, i.e. Street Fighter. You didn’t need to make Guile a military leader who goes after M. Bison, a dictator who yearns to take over the world. Street Fighter should have been Bloodsport! Put all these eccentric characters in a fighting tournament, and go nuts! I say this to say that Punch-Out can absolutely work as a melodramatic comedy. The characters are like exaggerated Rocky villains. Soda Popinski is a drunken Ivan Drago. If you took the approach Dodgeball did, this could be hilarious. One of the reasons I felt a Punch-Out movie was ripe for the picking is this fake trailer that was made by Team Awesome years ago:
Oh, yeah! That’s what I’m talking about! I saw this, and wanted it to be real so bad. The over the top intensity. The revenge sub-plots. Little Mac getting back into shape. If you give something like this a budget and real actors, the sky’s the limit. Another element that pisses me off about video game movies is the complete abandonment of video game scores. I’m not saying it has to sound 8-bit, but if a Punch-Out movie was made, YOU MUST USE THE PUNCH-OUT SCORE. I’d get chills. And the movie should open with a boxing glove coming through the screen.
A long time ago on my old website, I actually cast the Punch-Out movie, and had Shia LaBeouf as Little Mac. If Shia can buckle down and get serious, I can still see that working. Casting the villains like Bald Bull and Don Flamenco would be tough, but I did have Owen Wilson as Glass Joe, a choice I’m particularly proud of. The interesting question would be whether or not to include Mike Tyson in the film, and if they do, should he actually play himself? Now that’s something to ponder. The bigger question would be the director, and there’s no doubt in my mind Christopher Miller and Phil Lord would be able to make this one of the funniest movies of the last ten years.
I know making Super Mario Brothers back in the early nineties scarred Nintendo for life on making more films, but I’d love for someone to at least write a script that could convince them that Punch-Out could be special. If I can leave you with one final thought on a Punch-Out movie, it would be this: “Join the Nintendo Fun Club Today.”
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