Where's My Mutant Bank Teller?

If you’ve turned on your TV for five minutes in the last two weeks, you’ve probably seen previews for a movie called Splice. The premise looks easy enough to understand – scientists, or at least two people who stole a couple of white coats, toy around in a lab until they create a being that’s half human, half Fox News correspondent. Then the Ann Coulter baby tries to devour its creators and wreak havoc for registered Democrats AND Republicans. No one is safe.

I’m not going to watch this movie and I advise that you don’t either. For one thing, it’s not an original premise. Humans creating things that come to life and turn on them has been seen since at least as far back as Frankenstein. And without knowing how it ends, I imagine most of the movie is pretty predictable. What do the main characters think will happen by tinkering with the DNA of someone from Fox, anyway?

I’d like to see a movie where people take some genomes here, some genomes there, and create a pig/bird/hippo human baby, then raise it and send it off to public school. They could show it playing soccer or t-ball with his peers, learning to ride a bike, participating poorly in spelling bees… or maybe it would do well in spelling bees. Who knows? Surprise us. Don’t have it become class president, though, or take the cutest girl to the senior prom. That’s a little too Teen Wolf or Encino Man. The movie needs to have some foothold in reality, and I imagine a kid with a beak and a curly tail would face just a little criticism from middle schoolers.

It may sound dull, but the movie should be devoid of any extremes. Despite the ridicule he’s sure to receive, I don’t want any scenes where the hippo kid loses control and takes a gun to school, or cries for 3/4s of the movie and then overcomes his adversity to get nominated to the Supreme Court (we’ve seen that already with Justice Scalia). Nothing that teaches valuable lessons or spins a heart-warming tale. Just show his family going to Applebee’s or visiting him at his telemarketing job. Life can’t be all about slithering on the ground and eating everyone you come across. At some point you have to renew your car insurance, no matter how many monkey paws you have.

And it absolutely should not become a super hero or super villain. We’ve definitely seen that before. Every theatrical mutant creature either wants to save the world or destroy it. Something about mixing the genes of people with the genes of animals creates a crazy amount of ambition. Give me a break! If there’s a half-man, half-horse running around, he’s not stopping bank robbers, he’s most likely driving the Greyhound I just passed.

But I get it. That’s not entertaining. Well, here’s betting that Splice isn’t either.