So, Where In The World IS Carmen Sandiego? Ask J.Lo

Given how much I generally fear it when someone takes a video game concept and characters and decides both would make a great movie, I can't believe that I could actually see ways that this could work.

While franchises like "Halo," "Mass Effect," "Gears Of War," "Assassin's Creed" and others await big-screen adaptations, my generation's beloved "Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?" could be joining the queue.

Deadline reports that Walden Media and Jennifer Lopez have reached an accord to adapt the geography-based educational PC game into a full-length film about the heisting, crimson fedora-topped femme.

Walden representatives claim that so far, Lopez will merely produce the film, but Deadline writer Mike Fleming claims rumors persist that Lopez will also play the titular super-thief.

"The hope is to turn the property into 'National Treasure' meets 'The Thomas Crown Affair'," Fleming wrote. And while I'd rather it be more the latter than the former - especially if Lopez ends up starring, since I think she could evoke something close to the tone Catherine Zeta Jones struck in "Crown" - that sounds like a promising starting point.

While the original game didn't exactly have much plot or backstory in the traditional sense, it's also encouraging that it sounds like the movie will somewhat follow the 1991-1996 PBS game show of the same name, the 1996-1998 spin-off "Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego?" and the 1994, four-season Fox Kids animated series "Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?": Carmen is an ex-ACME agent-turned-thief who is being tracked down by the geography and history-savvy agents of her former employer.

For many people my age, this was among the very first games we ever played - often during school - and when we got our mitts on it, it was a rare treat. What's more, the Fox Kids show was among those rare Saturday-morning cartoons that was really pretty entertaining even beyond having just about the greatest theme music this side of "X-Men: The Animated Series."

Disney also gave this project a try in the 1990s with Sandra Bullock attached, but it didn't pan out. That's too bad, because she'd be similarly apropos.

There are ways that this could work. For one thing, get a director that can handle action, but can also do so with a family-friendly touch, since I presume this will probably go the PG route, PG-13 at the most raw script.

First that comes to mind? Robert Rodriguez. His commercially and critically successful "Spy Kids" work more than proves that he can pack a film with action but keep it clean enough that Mom or Grandma's sensibilities won't be offended sitting through it with a younger set - and actually, Mom might find it pretty entertaining herself, since she probably remembers playing the games/watching the shows and can lose herself within the nostalgia trip.

Plus, Rodriguez uses a unique mix of CGI and practical effects that makes almost nothing anyone could envision impossible to film, but brings the finished product in on-time, probably either within or under the budget, and best of all, doesn't look saturated with glaring, obvious computer wizardry.

Second? Keep the educational element. Kids today spend less and less time acruing fundamental knowledge about the world around them. Subtlely weaving in something to cultivate a genuine fascination with history and geography wouldn't be impossible, nor ignoble. Schools have might be gradually becoming more and more political indoctrination centers and less and less educational institutions, but that doesn't mean independent parties can't occasionally advocate young folk becoming industrious and seeking knowledge themselves.

But consider as far as the movie's overall success, consider this factor most important, because it's the one so few video game adaptations get right: it must be helmed by someone who understands the source material, and will be gentle with original fans' expectations, but will realize that it must also appeal to a bigger audience.

I've seen it go both ways. Take the "Silent Hill" adaptation, for example. It was based largely off the first game but took some liberties with the original's already compelling horror story that left fans gritting their teeth - namely, inserting characters from other games in the series that didn't appear in the first just for the sake of shoehorning in fan-service, changing one character from game antagonist to sympathetic protagonist, and completely changing the main character's gender.

The things critics complained about - the tone, the pacing and the very nature of the story - were the original game's most beloved elements, so critical opinion must be somewhat glossed over since most clearly weren't familiar enough with the source material to really understand that without the things they hated, it wouldn't really be a "Silent Hill" movie.

But then again, look at these comments from an article concerning Ubisoft overseeing production of a developing its own "Assassin's Creed" movie: the consenus is that these fans get bored when a movie follows source material too closely, but want an original story that's true to everything they love about the source's original charactes and concepts.

But again, don't stray too far. Paul W.S. Anderson started out with the right idea (kind of) about making a "Resident Evil" movie: take that game's universe, but tell a new story that strikes a balance between original characters and interaction with the heroes and villains of the games. That lasted all of a single movie. From there, every movie has progressively had as little to do with what gamers know as "Resident Evil" as I had to do with the sinking of the Titanic.

So, let that theme song ring again. But please believe, if Carmen Sandiego is wearing a corset that hikes her rack up to her chin and using wrist-mounted cannons to try and off her ACME pursuers while she does one-handed cartwheels in front of an exploding building, you'll have proven once more that one can't adapt material they don't understand or never loved in the first place.