wow. this one's making me dizzy. too... many... possibilities... GAH! (panting, sweating) too many genres... too many character types... (peels off soaking clothes and bears down with labor pains... gets ready to push) So this Tomb Raider type, a priest, and drug lord walk into a bar somewhere in Mexico, right...

[…] Same thing with screenwriting: You have to generate a bunch of crappy …read more […]

This totally reminds me of Alien... in fact, I think that the Alien Vs Predator movie involved a chamber like this in a Central American style ziggurat on Earth... so already I'm really wary of doing a full horror movie based on this. But what I can see is a short film, some boys are playing soccer (futbal) near the pyramid and their ball goes into a crevice, one boy goes in to get it back, finds it in this pit, and takes one of the orbs instead. They kick it around a little, and when they leave, the end of the short has that thing hatch and a baby quetzalcoatl pops out. Quick little Youtube thing. And you could expand upon it into a full length flick, the boy takes the horrible creature home and you do a dark take-off on "a boy and his dog" movie, with that thing actually eating people and causing eclipses and whatever it is they do. You could go into some old-school Guillermo Del Toro territory with this.

What if.... -The orbs are actually from the future, not from the past. The pyramids are actually time travelling hubs. What some people thought were drawings of an astronaut (Pakal in Palenque, Chiapas) is really a time traveler. They accidentally activate it, some end up in the past, some in the future, they must perform several things to get back to the present. -The orbs are found in several Mayan pyramids all around Mexico and Guatemala. They are some kind of magic locks to keep a port to another dimension closed. The scientists, unaware of it take them away and the door is opened. Large monsters that demand human sacrifices are unleashed. -Fact: Teotihuacan was abandoned, nobody knows exactly why. So, maybe they didn't abandoned it, they just "moved" to a miniature magical city contained in orbs. (Think of Superman's city of Kandor but in an orb) -Maybe the orbs are alien Poké balls that captured monsters that were terrorizing Teotihuacan. Or the orbs captured the innocent population of Teotihuacan. -They were secretly planted by a man from the future that traveled way back to the past to put them, his plan to discover them and sell them form millions. But he never thought they would be discovered by someone else. -They're just part of a game, kind of an easter egg hunt for a Teotihuacan's man son. He didn't found a couple of them and they accidentally built the pyramid over it, everybody has theories about magic, monsters, etc. But they are just ancient toys. -They are terraforming machines. Aliens drop them on planets all over the universe, some of them "hatch" and give birth to very simple life that evolves over time. The orbs found just didn't hatched. -They could be feathered serpents eggs. That take exactly 1,800 years to hatch. Hmmm... that would be in 3... 2... 1... ups. -It's just feathered serpent... dung. -They are alien machines that are a kind of "Voyager" Remember NASA launched it with a record with some sounds and pictures? Kind of a message in a bottle? Well, it arrived 1,800 years ago but back then they couldn't activate it. Now we can. They say hi! in five trillion alien languages. -Fact: there's a legend that says Teotihuacan where "the gods (sun and moon) were made" Teotihuacan translation: "the place where men become gods". Fiction: Maybe the orbs are unused "capsules" that can make a sun and a moon. -Fact: lots of people go to Teotihuacan on the spring equinox to "charge their energy". Fiction: the orbs are activated on the next spring equinox they are unearthed and exposed to the sun and moon. -Is the Dragon Ball reference too obvious? Make a wish....

Ha! That gets me thinking of a spoof: Indiana Jones type, Tomb Raider type, Ellen Ripley type, and off you go!

There you go: What if a kid befriends an alien a la E.T., only this little bugger is a killer. Friends with the kids. Sees everyone else as an enemy. A boy and his deadly alien 'dog'.

Lots of interesting ideas here, Alejandro. Two of them: The eggs are from the future. They're not eggs, but container devices a la Poke balls. The movie Goonies comes to mind, so you could age bend the story as blueneumann suggested and turn it into a PG-13 action adventure with some humor thrown in.

Monsters accidentally unleashed, and then you gotta catch em all.... travelling in time.

i REALLY like the short idea @blueneumann! leave the ending dangling. CREEPY! and so very 80s. what a great calling card for a directorial portfolio (is there such a thing? is that a real term?) that would leave a studio wanting more and the "more" just so happens to be the script you've already written. very cool!

...but who'd do who...? oh wait, there's treasure and a potential for aliens. nevermind. things get muddled when there's adventures to be had. ooohhh... but who'd be the dominant female...? am i a 13 yr old boy? and then there's Data and his booty traps. i mean booby traps. and maybe One-eyed Juany was just playing tricks with humanity and it's gum tar and beetle dung. The astronomer/astrophysics geek in me says they're representations of stars and clusters, and they're supposed to be luminescent, but after a stretch they kinda fizzled... and here we are coming up with aliens and the like. ooohhh, maybe it's amber. Jurassic-o Park-o, anyone?

The Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World of archeological horror movies. "Whah you darn kid! You told me this pyramid wasn't haunted! Why you, ooohhh I'm gonna get even wi' yo-wah, oh I'm gonna..." (gets pulled under the dirt).

also, your reference to quetzalcoatl makes me think you're a Ross or that you have a kid who watches too much Dino Dan.

I'll bet by the end of the month Alejandro and I will want to cook something together.

Actually, it was because I was having a discussion on io9 the other day about myths that weren't made as movies yet, someone brought up Quetzalcoatl, and I thought it would be cool to see an animated flick about that legend in the style of The Book Of Kells.

:-D

We'll have to exchange Twitter handles or something (I actually am @blueneumann)

LOL, I already follow you, we met on ScriptChat. I'm @AGSfilmmaker

Brilliant! You know, I assumed that was you, but it's best to make sure. I had three other people with my name in high school, so I know to check.