Asteroids: The Movie will be a stinker, no doubt.
BUT, it doesn't have to be.
THE LAST STARFIGHTER is proof that you can be damn creative and make a kick-ass film from an admittedly silly premise.
I don't know, maybe I'm so old now that I wouldn't mind Asteroids: The Last Retro Starfighter
And I just came up with a premise:
It is the near future. Weapons and space programs are more advanced than those of today.
In this world of super-complex death machines, human operators are even more dependent on very sophisticated / specialized electronic hardware and computers (hell, even my coffee maker is super-complex, I don't know what half the buttons are for, but at least I can program it to grind and brew fresh coffee in the morning).
Anyway, the fact that human operators are over-reliant on advanced computer interfaces has become a weakness, an Achilles heel, if you will... and doing things "manually"--or using only the most basic electronic weapon systems-- is a lost art.... lost.... lost...
Blah, blah, blah, our nation/continent/world is put in peril, and, to make things worse, our detection/weapons systems are failing us. You see, the designers of these systems didn't account for __________________ , and now we are facing a threat rooted in ______________ .
So, Atari, Electronic Arts and Nintendo (who have long-since partnered with Raytheon, Honeywell and other defense contractors) hold the Retro World Championship to recruit a new cohort of pilots/soldiers who can save us all!
Skillz in Atari 2600 games translates into --> saving us all!
Of course, it turns out the skillz needed for Asteroids is the most valuable of all (because it translates directly to manually operating the ultra-modern weapon systems, duh!)
I can't believe I just wasted my time writing this shite up. I hope you appreciate all of the hackneyed crap in there.