There's a new movie coming about aliens sending a bunch of old 8-bit, pixellated video game characters to Earth to kick our asses. Like almost every alien-kicking-our-asses movie, it looks pretty fun. This movie also gives the modern Mini Cooper its first real acting roles, where Minis will play the role of Pac-Man ghosts.
Yep,that's right. Our old nemeses and quarter-stealers Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde, the Pac-Man quartet of ghosts, will be played by some color-matched Minis with some manner of equipment mounted on them.
Here, watch the trailer, so we can all speculate together:
I'm guessing that the four Mini/Ghost drivers (Adam Sandler, Tyrion Lannister, that guy from that episode of Bored to Death, and an actor portraying Toru Iwatani, the creator of Pac-Man) are old, washed-up 80s video game champions, brought back to help save the world? That's my guess.
And the equipment on the Minis, which appears to be some sort of ray-type device mounted in an amiable orb and connected via wires into something in the hatch, that must be some manner of pixel-destroying ray. Maybe it's an anti-aliasing beam of some sort.
The movie looks like it may be pretty fun, and this is a sort of different take on automotive product placement, in that I think it's the first time a car has been cast to take the role of a specific non-automotive character or element. I think. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm having trouble thinking of another example of this.
Hey, here's a weird bit of Pac-Man trivia I just learned. In the original Puck-Man (the original name was changed when it came to the US because you can guess why) the ghosts nicknames, when translated from Japanese, were Chaser, Ambusher, Fickle, and Feigning Ignorance. Feigning Ignorance is one hell of a ghost name.
I'm still reeling from the idea that Pac-Man is a bad guy. After all the meals I helped that bastard eat? Maybe he's trying to settle the score for how many times I got him killed, though. I suspect many of us have a lot of yellow blood on our hands.