Imagine yourself as a big-time moviemaker. Where do you get inspiration about material for your next film? Are you going to peruse the bookstore and check out the best-seller shelves? Turn on the TV for maybe a news story to rip from the headlines? Maybe your toddler’s diaper?

Well, for a while now, producers have thought it a good idea to use video games for their fertile idea ground. Some fairly deep stories can be found in some works of interactive electronic entertainment. Mortal Kombat: generations of humans and demons defending their realms in a fighting tournament. Halo: a fight with an alien race for the very survival of our spices … er, species. Spices would be Dune, which, to my knowledge, has yet to be made into a video game. I could be wrong. [He is. – Ed.]

But, my hand to God, I never in a thousand years could have predicted what is being made into a film in this day and age (“day and age” being a very specific term referring to 2009).

Do you remember the game Asteroids? Let me refresh your memory. Picture a little ship shooting rocks. The rocks break into smaller pieces when you shoot them, that you can then shoot into smaller pieces, which you can then shoot and break into smaller pieces, which you can then shoot and they disappear.

Groundbreaking, isn’t it? Well, it was back in 1981. But that’s all there was to it: a ship, a few rocks, and … that was it.

And they’re going to make a movie about this. Specifically, a producer named Lorenzo di Bonaventura. If you sit around dark theaters watching the credits roll, you may have noticed his name on such grand works as Constantine (thumbs up – kind of…), Transformers (not terrible), Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen (okay, that sucked), and the recent G.I. Joe (Mommy, make it stop).

The thing is, these films had plenty of story and colorful characters to introduce onto the screen. Yes, the directors were chiefly responsible for the visions we saw at the local cinema, but di Bonaventura has chosen to associate himself with these properties, and for some reason, he sees Asteroids as being at least worthy to put onscreen alongside these monsters of cinema.

In an interview with IGN, Lorenzo (may I call you ‘Lorenzo’?) made the following statement:

“I was attracted to Asteroids, plain and simple, because I think what it tells you is that there’s going to be this big thing in space.”

Wow, that’s brilliant, Ren. (May I call you ‘Ren’?) There’s going to be this big thing in space. How many movies in space have there been where there hasn’t been a ‘big thing in space’?

Hell, the most popular space movie franchise of all time, Star Wars, starts with a big thing in space. The opening scene features a gargantuan ship flying over the camera in what is now a legendary ‘big thing in space’ movie moment. And there aren’t any asteroids at all in that first movie. They don’t appear until The Empire Strikes Back. And those asteroids are done right, let me tell you.

Sure, there have been other movies about asteroids. Deep Impact and Armageddon knocked science fiction’s asteroid subgenre on its ear back in 1998. If you’re going to outdo that two-fer, you are going to have to pull out some serious stops.

I leave to you whether Mr. di Bonaventura (May I call you ‘Mr. di Bonaventura’? I think we should just keep our relationship professional.) is trying to ride the space-coattails of a one-dimensional video game that came out almost three decades ago, or if he has just gotten confused and thought that he bought the rights to muscle enhancers for his hindquarters.

By the way, why aren’t there more movies being made in Louisiana? We are in the Central time zone! We’re halfway between the coasts! Almost every movie is set at least partly in New York or Los Angeles. If you have people on each coast wanting to make some film or other, it only makes sense for them to come together in the middle of the country, don’t it? (Yeah, I said ‘don’t it’! Want to fight?)

Therefore, there should be more movies in the middle cities, the Mississippi River cities! Like St. Louis, Memphis (where Alyssa Milano and I went on our most recent date! [i.e., last place I was able to catch up to her and stalk … er, ‘appreciate her beauty from a distance’]), or – drum roll, please – Baton Rouge!

Come on people, get it done. The vampires have already arrived! We need more! Werewolves, astronauts, ichthyologists, wizards! Write your congressman. Make it happen.

See you in thirty! Wish me happy birthday!