Turn adult characters from well-known films into children, and vice versa

[Airwings]

A fun game, nothing more.

There's several ways to go.
Either take a film with an adult cast and imagine a scene-by-scene remake with kids. But the characters should otherwise remain the same, and not be written as if they're kids.
You can try this with the Godfather. Maybe it would be a heavy task? Go with original Star Wars trilogy instead.

Or do as above, and write them as kids but let the characters, the story and the scenes be the same (as long as suitable).
Bugsy Malone did someting similar to this. But I want it to be more like a specific film, and not a representation of a whole genre.
Try to think of DePalma's Scarface, but with kid characters written as kids. Firearms can be replaced by slingshots, for example.

The third way is to take a film about children, like a drama, and switch the characters' ages. Child characters become grown-ups and vice versa. But nothing changes from the characters' original behavior and personalities.
The story remains the same.
Maybe it can work with Stand By Me? The result would be weird.

Fourth option is similar to the third, but this time it changes more. It should be a family film or a comedy. Characters who were adults in the original and are turned into children, should also start behaving that way, kid-like.
The same with the ones who were children and have become adults in the remake. These should now also start behaving their age because they're adults now.
Something like Home Alone would either be hillarious or more creepy.

 

[DarkKnight88]

 

[Airwings]

"Take a film with an adult cast and imagine a scene-by-scene remake with kids. But the characters should otherwise remain the same, and not be written as if they're kids."

The first scenario is hard. I can't really write another version where the characters do exactly the same even when they're changed to children. It won't appear to be logic.
The hang-up is just that, everything should play out exactly the same. It sort of prevents the whole thing from being written.

For now, one just have to imagine the very same film remade it with children in the leads.

The title I've chosen is Star Trek: First Contact.
The new version comes out 2015-16 (around there somewhere)

I decided to go with the original characters, not the TNG-crew. That's the only spin I can put on this. (The real reason is that it was easier to find actors for them, and even now I had to dig deep in the mud to find the jewels, haha)
Otherwise, it's basically the same story all over again, so I just give you the cast.
No need to even try writing it down then. We can just watch the film instead.

We have to imagine these young people playing the original Trek characters in a story that was written for the TNG-ensemble. Think of the remake as a bit altered to fit in with the original crew (but not adjusted at all to suit them being aged down).

And if you wonder, the uniforms should be the same as in the 80s films. Not the 1966 ones.

James T Kirk: Levi Miller

Spock: Isaac Hempstead Wright

"Bones"/Dr McCoy: Jaeden Lieberher

Uhura: Storm Reid

Sulu: Neel Sethi
He becomes (half-) Indian here. Still counts as from Asia

Chekov: Dmitry Martynov (From 'Day Watch')
I had to use a time machine back to 2004 to pick up this kid. Because I don't know ANY other russian actors that age.

Scotty: Lewis McDougall
I actually found a Scottish child actor, those are rare.

Zefram: Harvey Scrimshaw

Lily Sloane: Sennia Nanua

Borg Queen: Millie Bobbie Brown

This took a LOT of energy!!!!

 

[Airwings]

"Take a film with an adult cast and imagine a scene-by-scene remake with kids. Write them as kids but let the characters, the story and the scenes be the same (as long as suitable)."

I picked Man of Steele.
It became something that has most of the same story and scenes mixed with stuff I made up myself. It feels different than the original film. I took some liberties.
At times, it can have vibes from Shazam. Because of all the kids' involvement.

It's a long text. Very long.
Boring to read maybe. But picture it happening inside your head and compare it to Snyder's film.

I spent much time writing this new version and didn't focus about ideas for a complete cast.
But if this remake had come out 2014, I think Jor-El could have been played by Dakota Goyo (bcause he played young Noah and Russell Crowe the adult).
Clark/Kal-El has different ages during the course of the story. The child version could have been Jacob Tremblay if the film was out this summer.

On Krypton, all children are being sent away from cities and towns to enormous campus areas, where there’s no contact with the outside world.
It’s a new thing, hasn't been done before.
The kids are told it’s done so that they can study in peace without distress.
Among them are 13-year old twins Lara-El and Jor-El. The brother is a science nerd. He’s not only the brightest boy on the planet, he and his sister are also the only naturally born Kryptonian children in decades. Parents usually prefer to have their offspring created in labs by now.

Then one morning, there are no adults present at campus anymore. Teachers have programmed robots to replace them and look after the students, and the facilities.
Jor-El understands that something of importance is kept away from them. Which is true.
The planet is actually on the brink of destruction but no kids know about this horror.

He soon starts seeing small signs for what’s about to happen but he can’t really put two and two together, grasping the whole picture.
It gets strange when the robots are starting to break down. Then the electricity comes and goes.
No, something isn’t what it should be.

With no adult supervision, children are changing for the worse. Jor-El’s classmate Zod is a popular jock. Now he’s becoming a school bully, tormenting others.
Jor-El reaches out to the student council at his middle school to tell them about his worries. He asks for permission to go home and visit his father and mother during the upcoming weekend.
Just then, Zod and his gang marches inside the hall. They take the student council as prisoners and tie them up in the underground chambers. Jor-El gets away with a warning to not interfere, or else he will regret it.
The campus is now ruled by Zod. He’s also got access to all there is to know about every student, even the medical status and the genetics. It’s uploaded at the school’s main computer, guarded by several advanced locks. And Zod has gotten his hand on the keys.

During the following night Jor-El manages to break inside the school’s secret vault, due to his brains. There he finds the student information on a special chip called a codex and steals it to protect the other kids. Then he wakes up his sister so they can escape the campus and head home.
A couple of hours later, Zod finds out what’s been stolen and also that the siblings have gone missing. He sets out after them

When the twins reach their home, an earth quake starts shaking the city. A lot of buildings crumbles down.
Inside the remains of his house, they find their father badly wounded. The mother is nowhere to be seen.
Kryptonians have tech that can heal the human body fast. The father is saved at the brink of death. But he’s still in a coma.
Knowing that Zod will come after him to gain control of what he’s stolen, Jor-El infuses every piece of student information into the cells of his father.

Another earth quake happens. The ground is cracking open. Holy s*t, the planet is really doomed.
Now he finally understands. They have to act fast and get away.
Together, Jor-El and Lara-El manage to carry their father out to their hangar. There’s a space pod there that can hold two people. They decide that the father is the most important to send away since he holds such valuable information. They come to grip with the fact that neither one of them is willing to be saved while the other sibling is left behind, that’s not fair. With tears in their eyes, they both agree to stay behind and die together, as brother and sister.
Jor-El fills the rest of the pod with equipment that the father might need to stay alive. Then they initiate countdown. Krypton is crumbling around them.

Zod rushes in. He’s found them!
Jor-El tells what he’s done. They have a short fight but Zod is the strongest one. He gets his arm around Jor-El’s neck, choking the boy before snapping his neck. Then Zod kills Lara-El with a laser gun, but not before she’s launched the pod.

Zod and a select few minions get hold of a bigger starcraft downtown and go after the space pod. He must get the student information, the codex, back. It is so important to him. He needs to know everything about the kids back at campus. He thinks he’s made to rule them, that it is his mission in life.
Krypton explodes behind them!

Centuries later, the space pod crash lands on Earth in the mountains of Colorado, in the year 1850. A pair of homeless orphans, Jonathan and Martha, find the still comatose father inside and decide to nurture him back to life.
He slowly gains conscious over a couple of days before finally waking up.

The father tells the kids that his name is Kal-El and that he has no clue where he is.
The siblings start talking about outer space. They ask if he’s from another planet and he then understand he’s far from home. Very far.
Krypton have colonies around the galaxy but he’s never heard about this world.
As the kids reminds him of his own son and daughter, whom he really misses, he decides to stick around for a little while. They hide the crashed space pod and its equipment in a nearby shack so that nobody find it laying around.

The trio benefit from each other’s company. Kal-El can pose as the kids’ father and take care of them, while they tell him about Earth and humans, and teach him how to hunt (Krypton doesn’t have wildlife in that sense).
Jonathan and Martha start calling him Clark, which he adopts as his earthly name.

Clark starts developing an incredible strength. Jonathan is at first impressed. It’s like his favorite adventure stories. But he then urges Clark to not show what he can do in in front of other people,. They need to stay low to avoid public awareness.
It's not easy holding back. Especially a morning when two bad-tempered townspeople are encouraging Clark to fight or else they will kill him. Jonathan sees this and stops it from happening by running up to Clark, yelling “Father, father, my sis has broken her ankle, please come!” then dragging him away.
When nobody else is around, the boy has a serious talk about the matter again. Martha is there and she agrees with everything her brother says.

Time goes by. The siblings grow up and eventually start to look as old as Clark, who actually never ages. And then they age past him.
Clark decides to do something about it. With an advanced medical device from his own planet, he can stop their cells’ declay. Even reverse it. Would you believe it?
After just one treatment, the siblings look as they did when they first met him. They’re kids again. It seems that humans are easily affected by such tech.
Clark tries it for himself. It takes a lot more effort but he too becomes a boy again.
Now they’re three youngsters who can repeat this every now and then, and be together forever.

One day, when they’re in a mountainside village, Jonathan and some other people are caught in a huge landslide that demolishes the place. Martha stops Clark from saving them. The world is not ready to see his powers yet. But as the kid he is, he gets too emotional and devastated by this.
Clark leaves the girl. She’s already been an adult and could take care of herself. He travels around the world for a couple of decades before ending up in Smallville in the 1950s, deciding to attend middle school there. Maybe he can finally blend in with other humans.
It doesn’t go well. Already the first day, he tries to stop the harassing of a girl in the school cafeteria. The bully starts threatening him instead. Clark knows he can’t fight back because of his powers and runs out, hearing mocking laughter behind him.
Out in the school yard, he feels the furious anger only a kid can feel and decides to take revenge. He does that by bending the bully’s bicycle into the shape of a ball.

After that, he realize he needs to leave his kiddie days behind and grow up to be more mature. It’s a slow process for a kryptonian.
During the aging into an adult, he developpes another power than just strength. He has now become really fast, faster than a bullet.

Now and then he steps in to help people who’s in danger, without them noticing him. His speed makes it possible.
For some years he takes odd jobs as an intern around Kansas and Texas before finally going back to Colorado in 1987. There he meets Martha for the first time in a long time. She’s an old lady now, still hanging around that old shack..
Her eyes get all teary when she sees him. “Clark, is that really you?”.
He builds a beautiful house for her at the grounds, de-ages her into a girl again, and promise to always be around this time, being her father again.

Clark becomes a teacher’s assistant in a nearby town, the same school that he’s now assigned Martha to.
It's not as easy as he thought. The noisy kids are a pain to him, more than the adults feel. He doesn’t really understand why.
One day, he refuses to go inside a classroom. He claims being sick and heads home. The kids start saying he’s a weirdo.
Back home, he and Martha discuss his problem. Martha performs some tests by making different sounds around the house. It seems like Clark has gotten super hearing. He can even hear her whisper silently when she’s upstairs.

Clark continues working at the school for some time until the class is going on a trip. An accident happens and the school bus ends up in a river. The children will drown if he doesn’t help them.
Unfortunately, one on the kids sees Clark use his super strength.
Time for him to disappear once again.

Fast forward to 2013.
James Lane is an archeologist working for the government. During one of the excavations in artic regions of Canada, he’s found a star ship inside the ice. His 13-year-old daughter Lois is now there with him.
Clark has gotten his foot inside this investigation. He’s one of the men hired to work with the discovery.
At night, he walks inside the ship. Joyfully, he recognize its design from Krypton’s early phase of space age. Ancient tech to him, but still very advanced by Earth’s standards.
It was one of the early ships sent out to explore the galaxy.

With the universal computer key his daughter Lara-El put around his neck before sending him away, Clark manages to activate the A.I. of the ship. A hologram of his son Jor-El comes up. Clark gasps at first, before remembering the key is programmed to use something familiar for communication, and now it happened to bring back his most precious memory of Krypton.
He learns to know that this ship discovered Earth but crashed and couldn't return to Krypton to tell about this world.
This was ages before Clark was born and the lost ship must have been forgotten over time.
A door opens and out comes a Kryptonian space uniform bearing the familiar symbol of hope. Clark smiles. All space travelers from Krypton have always used the suit, through the ages.

Clark decides to use kryptonian tech to alter his appearance again. He walks inside a chamber beaming with light and radiation. It turns him slowly to a boy. It’s a stronger treatment than his own little device. Strong enough to kill a human in mere seconds.
This time the reversal will be permanent, irreversible.

What Clark doesn’t know is that Lois did sneak after him when she saw him get up that night. Now she’s heard everything the ship has told Clark. She’s seen the suit and the reversed aging.
She’s amazed and let out a little “yelp”. She couldn’t stop it. Clark heard and stands before the girl in a blink of an eye. They stare at each other for a moment. Then mutual understanding and respect is awakened.
The boy Clark sends her off, dons the suit and walks outside. At that moment, he discovers he can actually levitate. Even fly.

Back home in Metropolis, Lois wants to write about the star ship in the school paper. Her teacher advices her not to. It could cause paranoia.
But she posts the article online instead, from a school computer..
The leader of her middle school’s journalist group, 13-year-old Perry White, is angry at Lois for doing this. Because it can easily be traced back to her. People will know who wrote it and it could put the school in bad light.
Lois still can’t let it rest. She decides to track down Clark by analyzing urban legends about a mysterious man/boy. She wants the truth and runs away from home.
Her journey takes her to Smallville, then to Colorado.
After knocking on Martha’s door, Clark seeks her out to talk about his life. He mentions Jonathan’s sacrifice about a century ago, and Lois promises Clark to keep shut about his secret.

The next day, he and Martha, now again turned into a girl, both attend Lois’ school in Metropolis. He’s pretending to be a real science dork. He’s even got glasses on. But Lois recognizes him immediately.

Zod and his minions has searched the galaxy for Kal-El, after his space pod disappeared in a wormhole by using phantom energy from a negative dimension. He could not be traced at all.
But then they got a signal when Clark used that ancient star ship.
They understand that there’s tech from Krypton on our distant world and suspect it’s Kal-El. Their guess is right!
When they reach the moon, they can also trace a weak signal from Clark because of the kryptonian key around his neck.
After sending a global scaled transmission to every functioning radio receiver around Earth, in every earthly language, that they have come to pick up a criminal and that no-one should dare to interfere, they land outside the school.

Clark quickly sheds his clothes in a phone booth and put on his suit, so fast nobody could possibly see it.
He goes to the student council. They make a quick arrangement that he should give himself up to spare the world.
The chairman of the student council is 14 year old Jimmy, son of army general Swanwick. He decides that the whole council shall oversee the surrender. Perry White is among them.

Zod is at first surprised to see that Kal-El has reversed to a boy again. He reveals he wants the medical and genetic information of every student back at his kryptonian school so that he can control them. And now that the planet has exploded, he must use their DNA stored in the codex to resurrect them.
He also needs to terraform Earth to make it look exactly like Krypton. Everything should be just as it was at their old campus. He’s obsessed with this.
As the information stored on that codex chip is now a part of Clark’s cells, Zod must kill him to extract what he wants

Things go out of hands. A fight starts. Zod and his sadistic girlfriend Faora wreck havok at the school. They threaten the other students, Martha as well.
Clark gets furious. “Don’t hurt my daughter!!!”
They clash and clash. They smash through the walls of classrooms, and the cafeteria. They demolish the whole school premises. Now and they take a second or two for doing another superhero pose. Just as boys would do.
Zod mocks Clark. “You should have remained an adult to beat me. I’m stronger than you now”

The other kryptonians have started altering Earth’s gravity. The students’ bicycles start to levitate, then smash into the ground with full force.
Perry White and a couple of other kids are trying to take everybody to a safe place.

The student council try to fight back with the help of Martha, because she’s become familiar with some kryptonian tech since mid 1800s, and another science geek boy called Emil Hamilton, son of a NASA engineer,

Jimmy and Lois are leading them.
By the use of Clark’s old portable equipment, they manage to open a black hole in the sky which starts sucking in the villains and their starcraft. Then they close it before Earth is taken by it too.

Now Zod is the only evil kryptonian left on Earth. He gets more maniac than ever.
The bully boy tries to kill a group of teachers and younger kids by shooting laser beams from his eyes. A power Clark still hasn’t developed.
There’s only one thing to do. Clark must break Zod’s neck. It’s fair because that’s what the maniac did to his son Jor-El.
Clark starts sobbing. He falls to his knees and cries over the loss of his children, and of his home planet… and of Jonathan Kent, the orphan who taught him so much about Earth. The boy is shaking, he can finally let his feelings out.

Clark takes the alter ago of Superboy.
The city, the whole country, knows that he saved the world.
But unbelievable enough after this event, he still can be anonymous at the school by wearing geeky glasses and pretending to be a fumbling dork. Only two girls, Lois and Martha, know his secret.

The military though, wants to find about the whereabouts of the otherworldly savior. They send out tracking devices to know where the lives.
One day when Jimmy Swanwick and his girlfriend are taking a bicycle trip in the countryside, a drone smash into a nearby field. Jimmy and the girl almost fall off their bike. They see Superboy hovering above them.

Jimmy: Are you effing stupid?

Superboy: It's one of your military’s surveillance drones.

Jimmy: I know! That's a piece of hardware worth millions of dollars!

Superboy: Not anymore, it is. I know the government is trying to find out where I hang my cape. You won't.

Jimmy: We only want to know if you can be trusted. What if you have some other agenda and one day decide to act against us, with your mighty powers? Can we Americans feel safe with you present?

Superboy: Calm down, dear friend. I’m from Colorado, That’s where my first earthly home was, more than 160 years ago, and it still is. I'm about as American as it gets.

[pause]

Superboy: Look. I'm here to help and assist... but it has to be on my own terms. And you have to convince your father of that. He’s a general, isn’t he?

Jimmy: If I tell him that, what makes you think he'd listen to me?

Superboy: I don't know, Jimmy. Guess I'll just have to hope for the best and trust humankind, just as I wish you all to trust me.

[Superboy flies away]

Jimmy (turns to girl): What are you smiling about?

Girlfriend: Eh, nothing. I just think he's kinda… cute

Jimmy (clenching his jaw): Get on the bike!

But it doesn’t end there.
There were many human casualities during the destructive fight at the school. Among them were the parents of a little first-grade boy. He lost them while they were there to pick him up after class, and this mayhem happened. His name is… Bruce Wayne.

 

[Airwings]

"Take a film about children, like a drama, and switch the characters' ages. Child characters become grown-ups and vice versa. But nothing changes from the characters' original behavior and personalities. The story remains the same."

I went with a TV series this time.

Stranger Things
(because it's waaaay easier to re-imagine than GoT)

I think I'm beginning to find my form here.
It's not that long either.

It's September, 2019, in Hawkins (a little town somewhere in America)

Four men have just spent an afternoon together. They are Michael Wheeler, William Byers, Lucas Sinclair and Justin Henderson. At daytime, they’re middle school teachers. But when the working shift is over, they become something else.
Just as every other day, they have now engaged themselves in a role play board game with adventures, magic, heroism and mystery. Whenever they do this, reality is thrown out the window. Everything gets upside-down.
William in particular went completely into his character. “The Sorcerer”, that’s how he imagines his own persona.
Michael’s young daughter Nancy comes inside and asks if the supper is ready. It seems like they have been losing track of the hours, again. It’s time for the others to head home so that Michael can spend some time with his family. It’s only him and Nancy now, as the wife left him because he wasn’t “man enough”. He refuses to grow up, and spends too much time with the nerdy friends he’s known since childhood. Especially with William, and she felt something was not right with that guy. He’s as afraid for spiders as a little girl.

William and Justin decide to race against each other to see who’s got the fastest car. As they always do.
The first prize is a stack of comic books.
This time, William cheats by taking a shortcut along the abandoned Mirkwood road. The sun has already set at the horizon and there’s no streetlights here. Suddenly he sees a shadow crossing the road and he steers sideways, tires screeching, ending up in the ditch.

William gets out of the car, feeling hopeless. What should he do now?
He hears a low growling sound nearby and gets scared. He starts to run.
Something mysterious follows slowly after him along the road. He can’t really see what it is.

William turns onto a path into the woods and runs faster. He can’t really see where it leads, due to the absence of light. He tries to calm himself. “I’m not afraid of the dark! I’m not afraid of the dark!” He stumbles and falls, then gets up again.
It’s something bad that’s chasing him, he’s sure of it.
He finds a worn down shack among the trees. An 80s BMX bike is leaning against the wall. He pauses for a second, wondering why it’s there, then gets inside to hide.

It’s even darker in the shack. He picks op his phone to call his friends but he’s forgot to charge the batteries. It goes black before he can even dial a number. Furious, he throws it into the wall.
“Damn phone!”
Ops, he shouldn’t have made that noise. Something big smashes the door.
The clouds let some moonlight through. A giant creature can be seen at the doorstep. It’s a demon from the game. It’s come for him. It looms over him.
“Moom! Help me!”
William never got home to his family that night.

The next morning, Michael, Justin and Lucas get to hear about their old’s friend’s disappearance.
His two little kids Joyce and Jonathan are already taken care off by the police.
The girl seems to have gone mad. She claims her father is "inside the wall". Sounds like nonsense. It's more like it's her that's "off the wall".
As if the sheriff didn’t have enough problems already. After his wife died of cancer, his teenage son Jim Hooper has taken to drugs to ease the pain of the loss. He’s also started making investigations of his own, like he’s a detective or something. Doesn't help that he's told he's a minor, only 14 for heaven's sake. He never stops trying to solve crimes.

After some days, William’s car is found in the pond of water at the quarry. It’s totally wrecked and the body of a man is found inside.

Michael, Lucas and Justin take some days off from work to be searching for William on their own. The dead man can’t have been William. They refuse to accept this.
During one of their searches, they find a woman with shaved head and a hospital tunic in the bushes. She’s silent at first, before breaking out in tears.
The men try to comfort her. Michael even gives her a warm hug.
The woman reveals she’s been trapped by large number of devil worshipping children, some even Russian, in the ghost village far up in the mountains. Ten other people were already being held prisoner there. She was the last one to get caught and that everything is all her fault. Then she started to blab about mind-reading, portals, mirror dimensions, ley lines, dark energy and other strange things.

Before they can process anything of what they’ve just been told, members from the local mobster family show up. It’s a whole bunch of them. They’re some really bad men who’s out looking for trouble.
The leader and godfather himself, Steve Harrington, threatens Lucas and Justin with a knife, claiming they have to pay their debt to him or else he will cut of one of his fingers.
Michael tries to intervene and gets pushed of the cliff by the other mobs. But he doesn’t die when he hits the bottom. He doesn’t fall at all but instead he levitates in the air before being put back at safe ground again.
The woman has saved him. She can actually move objects with her mind. No stranger thing has ever happened in their town

The woman turns to the mobsters with an angry look on her face. She uses her powers against them. The gang get knocked aside by an invisible force. Then she looks at Steve with a sinister smile. He feels taken by surprise what she can do”
“Are you going to kill me now or what?”
“No, I think you can be useful for the coming days, if you decide to leave your old ways and join us”
“F*ck off, you filthy trash. I would rather…. work in a mall.”
Michael and his friends laugh. Steve gets mad.
“Hey, don’t mess with me, or I will stab all of you right in the…!” was what he could say. He’s cut off before he could finish his line. The woman makes his knife go flying up in the air, then she breaks his arm with her powers. Steve falls down in pain.
“Please, I promise to be a good person, to help you, to be a hero. I’ll even be an ice cream parlor if you want”
“Good, that’s what I wanted to hear! Now go to a doctor with that arm, and come back later!”
The woman turns to Michael and the others, and they all join in a group hug.
“What should we do now?” Lucas asks. “Can we go to the arcade, please?”
“Maybe we should head to the ghost village to get some answers?” Justin suggests. “To find out if the number 11 is of any importance”
But what he really wanted, was a pet animal.

Michael thinks to himself “This woman doesn’t have somewhere to sleep. I will offer her to stay at my place. But I have to hide her from my daughter so that she doesn’t think this is her new mom.”
He pauses for a second in his thoughts.
“Hmm, maybe I could actually get in a relationship with this woman someday?”

In the meantime, another family is moving to town. It’s Max Mayfield and her young son Billy, a real troublemaker and bad boy for his age

And at Hawkins middle school, the science class have managed to grow a new kind of biological cells, from a sample they were taking from some mold they found inside an abandoned chemical factory. It develops faster than they suspected when they use electricity and anti-matter.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

 

[Airwings]

What?

 

[Airwings]

"Take a film about children, a family film or a comedy. Child characters become grown-ups and vice versa. Every changed character should also start behaving according to their new age."

This time, I went with Hugo Cabret (originally directed by Scorsese)
I’ve changed things to suit this re-imagined version



Victor Cabret is a failed inventor in late 1950’s Paris. He used to work at a museum but was fired because he was always late. And he lacked control of his hands.

He had to find another job. The only thing he could get was to maintain the delicately crafted Swiss clocks at Gare Montparnasse, the city’s main train station, and to have them show the correct time. Irony can be rude sometimes.
The salary is not great. He could hardly make it for himself and his sons Hugo and Claude.

They were quite poor, to put it mildly. He was thinking of taking up the bottle. There’s already alcoholism in the family. His father had that problem. His uncle and grandfather too.
When Claude started drinking, life got even harder.

One of the only few bright things towards the end was when Hugo, the youngest, found a metallic device in a trash can downtown. It had the shape of a human, it was a robot.
Someone had built this and thrown it away. It seemed broken.
A pen was in its hand, as if it was about to write something.
The robot gave Hugo a new light in life. He wanted to fix it, make it work again. He thought he could program it to write or draw. The boy started to spend a lot of time trying to repair the invention. Hour after hour.
You should have seen his eyes when doing this. They had a glow of happiness. A few times, he turned to look at his father with a smile.
Hugo had more talents for mechanics and such than his father. Actual real talent. He could have become something in life.

Claude started to disappear for hours, then coming home drunk way past sunset. One late evening Victor had enough of his behavior and the two had a load quarrel. He demanded that the son should get himself together and straighten up because it’s not easy for any of them. Hugo woke up from their verbal fight and came into the kitchen.
“I forbid you to ever take a drop of that poison again! It’s a family destroyer! Do you hear me, kiddo?!” He lifted the older son by the collars and gave him a sharp stare.
Claude went mad, broke free, and smashed a bottle of liquer. He threw it right at the robot which went broken again.
“I hate you!” Claude yelled, before running out.

Hugo’s eyes teared up. “Why would he do that? I was almost finished. I wanted you to see…” followed by sobs.
The father embraced his son to comfort him and make him feel good again. He promised that the two of them can help each other fix the damaged robot. Maybe he could learn a thing or two himself about building things. The boy dried the eyes with his hand and smiled weakly. “Yes” he whispered.

A terrible fire broke out later that night. Victor could barely escape with his life. He couldn’t get Hugo out. He couldn’t reach his room for the flames. It was burning too much. He couldn’t save his son.
Outside, he coughed almost his lungs out. He looked for Claude but the boy was nowhere to be seen.
The father fell into a lump on the pavement while the roof fell down and their shack burned to ashes.
Victor cursed his oldest kid for not being at home, to help him. He cursed himself for not being a good father enough.
Poor little Hugo! The father prayed that the boy had died by the smoke while sleeping, before the fire got him so that he was spared from the fright and pain. And then he broke down to cry, and cry. He was so sad.
When there was nothing left of his home, only the robot remained. It was lying there, blackened and dirty. A painful reminder.

This was a poor part of Paris, in the outskirts of the city. No fire truck did show up at all. Nobody cared.
Now he had lost his family. He was homeless.

Victor had to stay at the train station until he could get another place to live. He created a little sleeping quarter for himself in a hidden corner of the attic. Nobody really went there that often. He could get away with doing so.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Victor wakes up. It’s 04:30. Time to maintain the clocks.
Every morning is the same. It’s been a month now.

Victor walks though the station to get hold of something to eat. He’s hungry.
Passengers hurry off to the morning trains. The smell of newly baked bread fills the air.
Usually, he succeed in stealing from the bakery or one of the cafeterias. He’s become quite good getting hold of a loaf or some left-overs at the tables, when the staff is looking at something else
If he doesn’t make it, he has to look in the trash bins. He feels lousy, like he can’t possible sink any longer. Life is miserable. La vie est misérable
He has to restrain himself, gain some self-control, and not head for the bottle. It won’t help him.
The week before, his oldest son Claude had been found dead in the river. Drowned. With an empty bottle in the pocket of his jacket. This had made Victor even more devastated because he still had that tiny hope to see him again. It felt terrible that they last saw each other in anger. Poor Claude! He didn't deserve to die.
Now he has nothing left. He’s not a father anymore. What can he possible have to live for?

During the following hours, musicians start playing chansons to entertain people. Families pass through the main hall. Whenever Victor sees them, he’s reminded of his own children.
There’s a girl who walks her little dog every day… there’s another that carry flowers… and there’s the boy with his pockets full of screws and nuts. Some of it falls out while he hurries by.
Victor picks them up as he always does. He needs it to repair the robot. That’s the least he can do to honor the memory of his youngest son. Poor little Hugo!

Danger arises at the other end of the hall. It’s Gustave, grandson of the senior police captain. Victor must avoid being seen by him.
He’s a mean one. He started to show up a couple of weeks ago after he his application for military service was turned down. He had really wanted to be at the battlefield. But he’s too young, only 15.
The kid decided to cleanse the station of what he refers to as “scum”.
Beggars, drunk people and the homeless disappear every day. One after another.
Nobody knows what happen to these poor people. Gustave probably gives them a beating. He has that sadistic aura to him.
One can say the kid now wages war here instead.

Victor hurries away.
Actually, he thinks he could have overpowered the kid if it wasn’t for the baton he’s carrying. Too risky to try fighting him. There’s too many people around, too. It would only lead to the police being involved. It’s important to keep a low profile.
On a platform outside, he stumbles right into somebody and drops his notebook. Victor looks up. It's a woman. A beautiful one, wearing a traditional french beret.

“Sorry. I’m sorry” He gasps.

The woman picks it up for him. “Late for a train, I presume?”

“No, not at all. I’m just late” Victor spits out.

"Oh, are you on an adventure? I love such things, never outgrew them!" She laugs a melodic laughter. “I’m Isabelle. Isabelle Méliès. And you are…?”

“Victor Hugo, sorry no, I mean Victor Cabret”

"Ah, so not the writer then?"

---------------------------------------------------------------

This was the first time Victor and Isabelle met. They will do that again. and again.
They will talk more and more, leading to Isabelle saying she’s a single mom with a teenage son.
Victor is eventually going to mention his sons and the robot to her.
Isabelle will reveal that it was her son Georges who built it because he’s fascinated by tech and American sci fi films, but he’s stubborn and thinks the robot is a failure so he threw it away. But she’s managed to save one thing because it was beautifully crafted, it’s a heart-shaped key. She is wearing it around her neck, and will show it to him.

After that, Isabelle will invite Victor home to look at the son’s drawing boards for the robot, to prove she didn’t lie. Then they will watch some of the short films he’s done.
Georges will enter the room, grumpy at first. Almost throwing a tantrum for his mother having gone through his things with a stranger.
But then he will start bragging about his work, even though it’s not needed. Victor will already be impressed about the boy’s skills.
And he will recognize him at once. It’s the boy with all the screws and nuts in his pockets.
George is going to help Victor to repair the robot. He will admit to regret getting rid of it.
They will be using the heart-key to recharge the inside mechanics
When doing so, the robot will start writing a note.

We love you, dad!
Claude and Hugo​

A surprise from his sons, now both dead. This will make Victor break down and cry his heart out. But Isabelle is there to comfort him.

Even later, years in fact, Victor will have gotten his life spirit back. He’s not fumbling anymore. He’s living out his childhood dream of being a card magician. As such, he will perform at the premiere of George’s first motion picture. It’s his stepson, and he’s so proud of him.