How would you cast “Twilight Saga: Eclipse” or “The Karate Kid” if the actors were actually wireless companies?

This being the middle of summer and the time usually reserved for beach reads and icy cold lemonades, let’s kick back and take a look at some of the story lines going on in the wireless industry.

If we were casting “Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” we’d have to call on Google, Verizon Wireless and Apple for the lead roles. Verizon gets to play Bella Swan, the mortal who’s really in love with the vamp Edward Cullen (Google) but she’s also got the eye of Jacob (Apple), who’s a werewolf. (Please, don’t read anything into that!)

The reason I cast these three is related to the “when is Verizon Wireless going to get the iPhone?” saga. It’s a saga about as tiresome as these Twilight films. (Sorry, Twihards.) For that matter, it’s about as tiresome as the whole “vampires rule” theme that has taken over mass media. First of all, Bella should be able to keep her morals regardless of whether she’s picked Google or Apple, or Edward or Jacob. Well, she’s kind of already picked Google for a strategic partnership and they’re pretty hot and steamy, but everyone wants to see her hook up with the iPhone. So, Verizon will have to make a decision (not!) for one or the other. These two dashing suitors are at each other’s throats. Let’s put an end to this saga and just say ... they’re all three going to make major bank at the box office.

Moving on to the more lighthearted comedy genre, who plays the lead roles in “Toy Story: 3”? Hummm. Seems like everyone gets a role in that. Motorola can be the kid who goes off to college while his toys go to daycare. The toys – in this case, the companies from other industries that play around with handsets while the MOT is at school – get to have a lot of fun at the older kid’s expense. Since I haven’t seen this movie, I have to rewrite the plot/ending a little bit. In the end, Motorola comes back from college, sees all the progress his “friends” have made while he was gone, and he decides to kick some butt. Embraces Android and rolls out some hot new toys of his own. Ahh, what a star.

As for “The Karate Kid,” the lead kid role has to go to Apple. He just keeps coming back swinging! Year after year after blasted year. Then again, the kid could be Google. It’s got chops, too. Or look at it this way. Like any feel-good movie, the main character learns a lesson along the way. Apple admitted it used a bad formula to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display on the iPhone. It even went so far as to say it was adopting AT&T’s recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. Taking advice from a carrier? Wow, that’s a new one. So, Apple’s the kid and AT&T’s the all-knowing kung fu teacher.

Alternatively, you could put Google in there and show how it learned that running an online phone store isn’t that easy, nor its bailiwick. But forget about it. We’re casting agents, right? If you want to please the movie-going public, you’re better off casting someone else altogether because if either Apple or Google were to win or lose in the end, you’d have all those fanboys and girls to answer to. Not worth the trouble.

“Knight and Day” poses some problems. Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz strike me as an unlikely and bad pairing, so they might be represented by Palm (Cruise) and HP (Diaz). Cruise gets to be Palm because I usually like him as an actor and Palm’s a very smart company. Diaz, I’m not so sure about, but if this were really, truly typecast to represent the strong (HP) pairing with the weaker (Palm), then I’d have to switch them around, so HP gets to be Cruise and Palm gets to be Diaz. (Hey, this isn’t open heart surgery.)

While thus far this column has focused on summer movies, I must turn to a TV program, “Breaking Bad.” (Roll with me, here.) In this show, there’s a character, Walt, who consistently makes bad decisions. Like life or death bad decisions. This role must go to Microsoft for making a string of so many bad decisions that its Windows Phone 7 isn’t even on the market yet. Now, I like the main character in this show, but he’s such a screw-up. (Whoever would have thought Microsoft would be the underdog in the smartphone wars?) Like Walt, Microsoft has to cook up a really great concoction to get the phone addicts to try its line of goods. Good luck with that.

I’m not going to recast some other movies, like “Sex and the City 2,” which is just not worth it, or “The Last Airbender,” another M. Night Shyamalan wreck that sounds worse than any product the wireless industry could ever put out. (Well, I forgot about the Storm.) But if you have any suggestions of your own, check out www.wirelessweek.com and leave a comment or start a forum. Surely there’s more than one way to cast a blockbuster – or a train wreck.