Guys, sure the idea of a movie about Viewmaster, which isn’t even a toy so much as it’s a tool, seems totally ridiculous and stupid and like a cheap cash-in and part of the further dumbing down of Hollywood narrative. But don’t be so cynical! After all, the guys who wrote the Transformers movies are doing the scripting job on this one, and they’d like you to give them a break.

At an LA press event for the DVD releases of Star Trek (a good movie hampered by a truly dumb script, by Orci and Kurtzman) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (one of the worst movies of the year), Orci and Kurtzman defended their upcoming Viewmaster movie. Courtesy of Collider:

Alex: We’ve read a lot of the wildly cynical response to [the Viewmaster movie]. What I’ll say is that some toys should be movies and some toys should not be movies, and I’d like to believe we know the difference between those things. The movies that work, work when there’s a story there that you could take the toy out of, but then, when you put the toy in, it becomes an even more amazing experience, for whatever reason. Brad Kane, who was a writer for us on Fringe, came to us with an amazing idea, that had absolutely nothing to do with View-Master. We loved it and thought it was fantastic.

Bob: But, we said, “It’s missing one thing. I don’t know what that thing could be.”

Alex: And, along came View-Master, and it sounded like the perfect marriage of ideas. But, it’s because we started with a story that felt like it could be told, all on its own, before that came along. So, it’s like, “Bring it on!” If you want to be cynical about View-Master, great ’cause we’re so [confident] in where it’s going to end up going that we feel like there’s nowhere to go, but up.

They also say that ET began life as a movie without an alien, which is really untrue, as it began life as a movie where evil aliens attack a small farm (as I wrote about in Movies That Never Were #3), but you know, they’re trying to make a point.