The Big Bang Theory Movie?

All the great TV shows have done it: South Park. Sex and the City. Phineas and Ferb. Taking the genius of a half hour or hour-long show and turning that into a full-length feature film is apparently a lot easier than you’d think. Have you seen the Sex and the City movies? Don’t tell me anyone spent more than fifteen minutes writing those duds.

The first step to converting a television show into a feature film is having an engaging story to tell, and The Big Bang Theory has that in spades. There are a multitude of story lines this show could tell over the course of 90 minutes. I submit that with the unusual intellect of characters like Raj, Sheldon, and Leonard, anything is possible.

Here’s one angle The Big Bang Theory movie could take.

The Premise

Raj, Sheldon, Wolowitz, and Leonard are approached by a suspicious duo of guys who claim to work for a super-secret government office, so secret that it doesn’t even have a name. They’re told they have an hour to decide if they want it–if they accept and complete the mission, they’ll earn millions of dollars and have access to the sorts of government secrets normally reserved for spies and people with special seals on their office rugs. But they have to decide whether or not to take the job before learning any details.

I imagine it doesn’t take long for Sheldon and Leonard to spill the beans to Penny. Of course, they won’t say the name of the office because there isn’t a name, but Penny thinks they’re just not saying the name because they’re trying to hold out on them. Hilarity ensues.

We’ve got to get Penny in on the plot because, let’s face it, she’s hot and every movie needs a hot lady to capture that all-important male 12-25 demographic. The gang convince the G-Men that Penny is a genius codebreaker and they won’t work without, so the five of them are taken by government van, blackened windows and all, to a secret location.

The Plot

Essentially, every conspiracy theory in history is correct. Aliens live at Area 51, the moon landings never took place, the Abominable Snowman is responsible for 9/11, and on and on. Obviously, the US government has been keeping a pretty tight lid on all this, mostly because they’re worried about the stability of the government’s power if all these secrets got out. The problem is how to contain it all.

Sheldon, Leonard, Howard, Rajesh, and Penny are led into an underground bunker to see the aliens, Sasquatch, the second gunman, Dick Cheney’s android double, you know, whatever the government is hiding.

Gags

I imagine a lot of hilarity arising from Penny’s inability to play the part of a genius codebreaker. Sheldon’s anxiety plays a big part. Raj’s inability to talk to women and fear of bugs. Howard just . . .being Howard.

Don’t forget that a ton of the government’s secrets turn out to be living beings, tired of being cooped up in their various cages and secret bunkers. Those aliens living at Area 51? They’ve been breeding for decades, and the entirety of the ground underneath the desert Southwest is basically a giant alien commune. What’s worse, they’ve learned about American history. They want their own Bill of Rights. They want cable TV. They want Internet porn.

How It All Turns Out

The crux of the movie will be these great intellects coming to terms with the fact that things exist outside the realm of the believable. Sheldon’s lack of religious faith is challenged by the discovery of a telephone that appears to go directly to God. Raj must come face to face with The Giant Bug-Women of Saturn or some such nonsense. Insert your own laugh lines here.

There’s also the question of whether or not, as men of science, the gang is compelled to reveal the truth to the world. This is something of an ethical nightmare for all involved. What if people rebel against the government? What if the alien’s demands for civil rights are upheld and we’re forced to share our Big Macs with a whole new race of superbeings? How hard will it be to get a table at The Cheesecake Factory once Sasquatch and his cousins find out about it?

Eventually, they decide that they must reveal the truth. Naturally, no one believes them. Their evidence, in the form of photographs, videos, and (in the case of Raj) an actual alien (now his girlfriend) is written off as special effects. They return to their lives, nonplussed.

When the same government agents return a few days later with grant money for all involved, except for Penny, whose pathetic attempt at codebreaking very nearly reignited the Cold War, Sheldon is confused because they broke the rules of the deal and told the world about the government’s secrets. What he doesn’t realize is that this was the government’s plant he whole time. All these geeks did by spilling the beans was to further convince people that conspiracy theories are total nonsense. The gang goes back to their regular lives, grant money shoring up their research for years to come. Raj and his alien girlfriend get married in a civil ceremony in Hawaii.

Of course, to maintain the integrity of the TV series, we’d have to end it with one of those tacky “It was all a dream” moments that viewers hate. But maybe, if we did it Big Bang Theory style and throw in a cameo by Stephen Hawking to explain how the film exists in a bubble universe or something, fans of the show would be more than happy to play along.

Will Roby is a writer and TV junkie from Texas. For more on his obsession with The Big Bang Theory, check out BigBangTheoryDVDs.com. Hate this movie idea and have a better one? Leave him a comment. He loves that sort of thing.

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