It’s bad enough that Hollywood has to remake all of my childhood memories (yes, I admit my childhood memories are mostly TV shows and movies from the ’70s and ’80s). But when they go and use CGI rather than actors and completely alter the way I remember things (man, that sucked how the Who’s the Boss movie featured a computer generated Mona), I just get so upset I could rant on a blog. So, imagine my relief when I saw this official photo from the set of Universal’s Land of the Lost in today’s USA Today.

Yes, those Sleestak look just as you remember. Only darker, more detailed, and a little (just a little) less like a costume with a human inside. But as much as I’d like to salute director Brad Silberling both for respecting my childhood and for shitting on CGI (which is still just too lazy a tool these days), the choice seems mostly to do with retaining the show’s cheesiness. Anthony Breznican writes for USA Today:

In the ’70s TV show, they were guys in lime-green pajamas — and looked it. The Sleestak are much sleeker now, but the film is largely a comedy, so the guy-in-a-suit look has its charms, Silberling says. “There is a sense of humor that I loved from the original show that can only come from an actor trying to negotiate the suit. If it became CG, they’d be too perfect. For the Sleestak to remain in people’s memories, it tells you that it was about who was in the suit.”

It’s funny that Silberling mentions the memories part, especially considering the Land of the Lost movie deviates in a number of ways from the series. Instead of being about a man and his two children, the story involves three adults (played by Will Ferrell, Danny McBride and Anna Friel) who accidentally wind up in a strange world filled with dinosaurs, Pukani (which are like Ewoks mixed with the Geico cavemen) and of course Sleestak (which, according to a character on the show, “taste a whole lot like lobster. But then again, not like lobster, if you know what I mean.”).

Anyway, I’m at least glad the creatures aren’t rendered digitally, and I again disagree with Silberling that CG would make them look too perfect — unless of course the production got some LOTR kind of budget, and considering this is a kitschy Will Ferrell comedy, I can’t see Universal spending that kind of dough (last month Defamer mentioned the studio cut corners on the film, yet the IMDb listing for the film still mentions a budget of $100 million, which is of course way too high for a comedy post-Evan Almighty).

As far as remakes of my childhood memories go, Land of the Lost is today looking better than Race to Witch Mountain, despite the latest news that original Escape to Witch Mountain child stars Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann will make cameos. I have a feeling that that one will have a lot of terrible computer effects, though I suppose anything is better than those awful harmonica-harnessed-with-string effects from the original.

(via Fark.com)