Lautner to Play Stretch Armstrong

Been wondering what toys Hasbro's new movie division would exploit alongside its stupendous, and others words starting with "stup," Transformers franchise?

Turns out the next toy out of the box is Stretch Armstrong. And he'll be played by New Moon teen hunk Taylor Lautner, according to Hollywood Reporter.

The casting is actually not at all surprising: Lautner is famous mainly for being shirtless, and for growing his body big enough for people to want him to be shirtless. So the musclebound Armstrong, for whom shirts only get in the way, is a nice fit.

But explain to me how Stretch makes sense as a movie concept. See, I had a Stretch Armstrong. It's appeal wasn't that he was like Mr. Fantastic, who stretched himself around everything in the Fantastic Four comics. With Stretch, what you did was grab onto his hands and pull, as hard as you could, in opposite directions. He'd snap back when you let go. In other words, the stretching was something you did to him.

So what is the movie going to be, 120 minutes of people pulling on Taylor Lautner? We can see that at a Twilight Saga premiere without having to spend $150 million (the amount said to be budgeted for Stretch Armstrong: The Movie).

Thanks to Avatar, the movie is now going to be 3-D, so we won't be seeing the end result for more than two years: the release date is now 2012. I hope they let Lautner out of the gym between now and then.