Memorable Characters We Want to See Again Article by: Greg Roberts Share In 1987, audiences were introduced to Gordon Gekko, the infamous character from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street that nabbed actor Michael Douglas a well deserved Best Supporting Actor statuette. Now, almost 25 years later, Gordon Gekko is getting another chance to rock our financial world in the release of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, now in theaters. Killerreviews sat down and went through our wasteful and alcohol influenced memory banks to come up with other characters from the 1980’s that we would love to see have a new millennium update. In no particular order, here is our list with a helpful hint to any filmmaker brave enough to dare revive our choices, as to where we would like to see our characters in modern times. Lieutenant Marion 'Cobra' Cobretti (Sylvester Stallone) Cobra Sly has played a multitude of cops in his career. He’s played a comedic cop (Stop! Or my Mom Will Shoot!), a fat cop (Cop Land), sci-fi cop (Demolition Man) and a partnered cop (Tango & Cash). But his role as Lt. Marion ‘Cobra’ Cobretti was always my favorite. The movie was atrocious, but at least we got great lines such as “You’re the disease. I’m the cure”. By the end of Cobra, Sly saved the girl, beat all the bad guys and left a trail of dead cult members throughout the state. Update Suggestion: Bring Cobra back as a mentor to a new, younger cop. Cobra can be the Harry Callahan of 2011. Cobra is still driving the same vintage car, wearing the same big glasses and still has a habit of chewing matches. But when he and his new partner are assigned to take down a possible terrorist cell, action and comedy both ensue as the younger cop (Jason Statham sounds good) runs circles around Cobra and Sly is relegated to making wimpy statements about but not being able to keep up due to arthritis, back pain and a gun that jams more than it fires. He may still be the cure, but at an age over 60 and working towards retirement, he has plenty of diseases. Ricky ‘Wild Thing’ Vaughn (Charlie Sheen) Major League Sheen was the best thing in a very funny baseball comedy. His relief pitcher Ricky Vaughn, who needed glasses to his catcher’s target, was a character that you could cheer for. Ricky played for the Cleveland Indians who have an owner that wants to relocate the team but can only do so if they lose, lose, lose. Of course, the Indians rally and win the division. Update Suggestion: Of course, Vaughn would be too old to pitch. Even Rogers Clemens would agree that when you get into your mid-forties, you have to consider hanging them up. So why not have him as a pitching coach hired by the Cleveland Indians. Let’s see Ricky try to remain calm and relevant in 2011 while dealing with the new cool of the next generation. After all, his awkward haircut could seem tame in comparison to what the young kids do today to stand out. Think of all the steroid jokes. Cameron Frye (Alan Ruck) Ferris Beuller’s Day Off Ferris might be the fun one, but straight man Cameron was a treat to watch as Ferris pulled him through Chicago on many an adventure. The film ends at the end of the school day. We know that Cameron has to explain the Ferrari situation to his father and then go back to school the next day to where we can assume he is hardly the centre of attention. Update Suggestion: Cameron never got over living in Ferris’ shadow. And 20+ years later, things haven’t changed much as Ferris has written books, become a Senator and is still the life of the party. Cameron is still depressed and has little ambition outside of living off the Beuller throwaways. So why not pick it up years later where we meet up with Cameron who has married Beuller’s sister (who was played by Jennifer Grey in the original). The whole movie we watch as Cameron tries to bring his life to the attention of those around him only to have Ferris’ successes continually outshine his accomplishments. I would suggest that Ferris isn’t even in the movie. You could write it in such a way that every time Cameron does something of significance, we learn through someone else in the movie how Ferris just did something better. Say Cameron saves someone from being hit from a car and then in the paper the next day he gets the corner section while Ferris gets headlines for saving a group of nuns from a burning school bus. Get my drift? Pee Wee (Dan Monahan) Porky’s Poor Pee Wee. There couldn’t be a worse nickname given to a High School student. He finally got laid at the conclusion of Bob Clark’s classic and then came back for two sequels which were embarrassingly bad and were unable to capture the magic of the original. Update Suggestion: Pee Wee has the worst fate of all his mates. Meat, Tommy, Billy and Tim have all moved on, but Pee Wee is now the guidance counselor at Angel Beach High School and he has married Ms. Ballbrick’s daughter. His life sucks, but his libido is still intact. So he still heads to the place behind the women’s shower, but now he has shame to accompany his masturbational fantasies. His life is now an assembly line of young kids coming into his office telling them their sexual problems or issues with the opposite sex. Having a student enter his office and tell him that they keep a journal measuring the size of their erect penis would be priceless. Oh, and his wife? She works at Porky’s. Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) Trading Places Billy went from bum to broker when he took over the firm in an underhanded bet that displaced Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Ackroyd). But by the end of the movie, Billy and Louis joined forces and we watched them walk into one of the Twin Towers in New York where they then counter-schemed and left Randolph and Mortimer Duke (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche) penniless. Update Suggestion: Any movie that dealt with the financial boom of the 80’s should be updated a la Wall Street to represent the new economic climate. So here’s the idea: Louis is still a trader, but Billy took the money and has been living the retired high-life for the past 15 years. But when Louis’ company has a rival accuse his firm of being a Ponzi scheme, Louis’ firm begins to fall from high stature and he calls up his pal Billy to again help him in a comedic plan to save face. Ray Peterson (Tom Hanks) The ‘burbs At the end of The ‘burbs, Ray was both embarrassed and then vilified of his suspicions of the Klopek’s – the new neighbors that were indeed as evil as the community believed. Ray lived on one of our favorite streets of all time. He had an intrusive and borderline retarded neighbor in Walt, a young punk that looked a lot like Corey Feldman, and a neighbor that was a former army Lt. that takes surveillance way too seriously. The story came to a close at film’s end and we can assume the street went back to normal. Update Suggestion: There is a new development that is going to require the relocating of the street to a new area in town build to house those being displaced. But their new residences are not yet built and their houses are set to be demolished. As a result, the building contractors put Ray, Walt, Lt. Rumsfield and Ricky Butler all in the same house to live for a month until their new homes are ready. Then have something or someone end up dead and have the movie turn into a form of the game Clue with all of the residents of the home being a suspect. David (Matthew Broderick) WarGames David was the computer whiz who ended up hacking into the military computers and almost launched World War III. Luckily, Dabney Coleman gave him a chance to let the super computer play tic-tac-toe which simulated that nuclear war was a no-win situation (it sounded waaaay cooler back in 1983) Update Suggestion: David is now working as a peace activist when the Pentagon calls on him as a new menacing hacker has stolen information from a military hard drive that may reveal the identities of CIA agents. David then has to leave his pacifist life and go undercover himself in a deadly game of espionage where he must again use his honed computer skills to thwart a nuclear attack on American soil. ¬ View Reader Comments...