Anything Superman can do, Bananaman can do too – only with more potassium. And a crow. The smoothie-flavoured superhero could be – ye gads – the latest kids’ animation to soar into production as a movie. Those sharp-eyed types at Den Of Geek have spotted a new website, Bananamanmovie.com, newly launched and promising three things: a 2015 release date, an Elstree Studio base and some terrible puns. And as you know, we like a terrible pun around here. “Peel the Power!”
Created by John Geering 35 years ago, the man-of-peel has had a home in both The Beano and The Dandy. He is, of course, ordinary schoolboy Eric Wimp who, in a fond pastiche of Marvel heroes, is transformed into a yellow-clad flying, super-strength ubermensch by the merest nibble of one of his five a day.
If this website does signal a movie in the works – and it's still an 'if' – the filmmakers could go down the Spider-Man 3/Sinister Six route and laden the movie with villainy. We might, for instance, end up with such childhood nasties as Kiwi Fruit Girl, Doctor Gloom, alien big bads the Nerks, Mouseman and old Empire nemesis, Fat Cat. We’re wholly unsure of how Mouseman and Fat Cat would work together but it would probably involve quite a lot of hissing and tree-climbing.
If they decide that too much villainy would dilute the purity of the storytelling and go with a Man Of Steel-style origin story, expect to see baby Eric arriving on Earth from the moon and learning the immense power afforded him by the humble banana. You can almost hear the Hans Zimmer score cueing up now.