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swimmingpool.jpg

Warner Bros. Evokes Fond Memories of the Kiddie Pool

By Miscellaneous | | March 4, 2010 |

By Miscellaneous | | March 4, 2010 |


These daily posts are called Blog Trends, but I don’t normally focus on an actual trend. Rather, I normally just concentrate on a topic that everyone is talking about. But what I especially love about reading the whole blogosphere on a daily basis is how alike we all are. For instance, today I learned that my childhood town was not the only one in which kids played a swimming pool-based game called Marco Polo. Apparently they had that game all over the country! How do I know? Because every single movie blog that wrote about Warner Bros.’ project based on the explorer Marco Polo referenced the aquatic game of the same name.

I can only hope this collective trend in nostalgia means the film will begin with a contemporary setting in which a group of kids are playing the game and some creepy old man with a long beard walks up to the edge of the pool and says, “hey kiddies, how would you like to know about the man upon whom this game be based?” Then they call him out for being a fish out of water, pull him into the deep end, drown him and then we fade to the 13th century.

Here are some examples that prove Carl Jung’s theory about the blogospheric unconscious:

  • Mark at I Watch Stuff:
    No, not the swimming pool game of your childhood (though that, and Red Rover and Red Light/Green Light, will be movies soon enough). Marco Polo, the Venetian merchant and explorer, is going to be a movie, now.
  • Katey Rich at Cinema Blend:
    Even though not many of us know the actual details of Marco Polo’s life— yes, he’s a real person, not just a game you play in the pool— he’s still remembered as the consummate explorer.

  • Josh Wigler at MTV Movies Blog:
    Marco. Polo. No, I’m not trying to start a game with you here — I’m just telling you the topic of the next adventure film from “I Am Legend” director Francis Lawrence and Warner Bros.

  • Oli Lyttelton at ThePlaylist:
    Marco? Polo! Marco? Polo!; Explorer Gets A Reboot From ‘I Am Legend’ Director […] Polo, for those familiar with the name only as a blindfolded swimming pool game, was a merchant who documented his travels through Asia in the book “Il Milione”
  • Brad Brevet at Rope of Silicon:
    Lawrence Yells “Marco,” WB Yells “Polo”: Warner Bros. is enjoying the $468 million brought in by Sherlock Holmes at the worldwide box-office and sees a potential trend and has now set their sights on the 13th century journey of Marco Polo and has brought I Am Legend helmer Francis Lawrence aboard to direct.
  • Ethan Anderton at First Showing:
    Sometimes it seems like the ideas being pumped out of Hollywood are being decided by a random game of chance, or maybe even some studios blindly grabbing for something, like in a game of Marco Polo. But in this case, Variety reports that Warner Bros and director Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend) are developing a film actually focusing on the 13th century journey of trader and explorer Marco Polo.
  • Matt Goldberg at Collider:
    While the film would not be a biopic, Polo had an interesting life of traveling Asia for 24 years with his father and uncle, eventually meeting the ruler of the Mongol empire, Kublai Khan. Polo was also known for his penchant to fuck with blind people who were calling out his name (I have no other explanation as to how the popular swimming pool game began).