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Post by K-Box on Aug 20, 2009 16:58:44 GMT -8
Fourth question:
Sivana's got to be on the list. Yes, he's got a bit of a ... tic, when it comes to the Big Red Cheese, but no more so than Lex does with Big Blue. If Lex is smart, he'll stick Thaddeus in a lab, give him an unlimited budget, and cut off his exposure to outside media, ala Brent Spinder's Area 51 scientist in Independence Day ("We don't get out a lot").
Ra's al-Ghul would almost have to be in on it, because it's his sort of plan anyway, and it's better to recruit a guy like that than to be in competition with him. Plus, it doesn't hurt that he's at least as much of a big-picture visionary as Lex and Sinestro, if not much more so, to the point that they could all help one another stick to the plan, rather than getting derailed by their fixations on their respective foes.
Bane, in his current incarnation, and Black Adam, as he was for the past few years until just recently, would have the self-discipline to walk the relatively straight and narrow, except that they almost might be too honest for a team headed up by Lex Luthor. I suspect that Lex, Ra's and Sinestro would have to do a lot of "This is for the greater good" reassurances with them, but they're persuasive enough to pull it off, and the gain of having these two on their team would be worth it.
Captain Cold, as written by Geoff Johns during the apex of his Flash run, would be an ideal minder for the lower-tier workers. He's blue-collar, no-nonsense, low-ego, even lower-frills, with a proven track record of leadership, and unlike certain Scotsmen on the Flash's Rogues Gallery, he doesn't take bribes from Batman. Yeah, he'd need a steady stream of whores, but even that's a pretty meat-and-potatoes demand, compared to most supervillains. On the other end of the spectrum, I'd be tempted to recruit the Penguin as well, as long as we're talking about the version that's basically "the Bruce Wayne of crass capitalism, as played by Danny DeVito in Other People's Money" (WHY a mutant penguin, Burton? WHY???).
Vandal Savage would NOT be invited to the party. The guy has has done fuck-all with his immortality besides getting his ass kicked and being a drama queen. The Ultra-Humanite would almost be worth recruiting for his ability to maintain a poker face for so long (see also: The Golden Age), but he's ultimately a deeply creepy fucker who's utterly untrustworthy even by the suspect standards of guys like Lex Luthor, so no.
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Post by K-Box on Aug 20, 2009 17:09:35 GMT -8
Third question:
I'm not sure I really have songs that qualify as "nightmare fuel" for me, regardless of content, because I'm too visual a guy. The words need to be printed, or else supported by explicit visuals, in order to get under my skin. Just as lyrics? Not so much.
For this reason, whenever I want to unnerve myself, I listen to the instrumental score soundtracks for certain movies - Memento and The Mothman Prophecies both put my mind in an uncomfortably alien place - or else I raid the trance tracks - DJ Spooky lives up to his handle on more than a few albums.
I will say that "A Warm Place," by Nine Inch Nails, is incredibly haunting to me, but as with the rest of my choices, it probably wouldn't work on anyone else, because so many of the associations are so personal and idiosyncratic.
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Aug 20, 2009 18:20:04 GMT -8
Alright, your turn to ask someone else 5 questions then
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Post by K-Box on Aug 20, 2009 19:55:40 GMT -8
... Dammit, I'm stumped.
I shall relinquish my five to whoever wants them.
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Aug 20, 2009 20:03:55 GMT -8
ah, come on - it's not that hard to come up with some interesting questions for someone who hasn't been asked!
There's Jard, Jens, paul, liliaeth, jbhelfrich, and those are just some of the regulars. Give it a bit of time if you need, but I know you can manage something.
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Post by K-Box on Aug 24, 2009 21:35:25 GMT -8
Paul Pogue: 1. Assemble your ultimate Doctor Who cast - choose your Doctor, companion , supporting characters, villains and TARDIS look from any era.
2. Name the one as-yet-unrevived '80s cartoon franchise that you'd actually want to see turned into a live-action film, and how you'd want to see it done.
3. What's the one franchise-ruining Jumping The Shark moment, in any franchise, that you'd most want to see retroactively erased from real life?
4. Slave girl harem - choose half a dozen of your top favorite female characters to fill yours, EXCLUDING Leia. >
5. Most inspiring superhero story you've ever read?
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Post by paulpogue on Aug 25, 2009 8:33:02 GMT -8
My first answers: 1: Ultimate Doctor Who Cast: Seventh Doctor Aided by Susan Foreman, Sarah Jane Smith, Donna Noble Supporting characters: The Brig (because he's, well, the Brig); the Meddling Monk, because he's a character ripe for reinvention. He'd make a great villain, but I would also like the approach of him as an uneasy ally TARDIS look: Doctor Who, The TV Movie. I may be the only person alive who actually liked that look. The budget let them make the TARDIS feel SPACIOUS as well, which you usually don't get a feel for, even in the modern series. Villain: The Black AND White Guardians, who represent order and balance, and have come to realize that the Doctor, who serves neither order nor chaos, is the ultimate UNBALANCING force in the universe. He serves whatever side is in opposition to who's in charge, the ultimate renegade, and would ultimately counter both their goals. (Which he ultimately did at the end of "The Armageddon Factor," recognizing that even the White Guardian could not be trusted with the Key.) Their agent? A person who loves the idea of authority, so long as it's HIS authority: The Master. 4. Slave Girl harem: Princess Daphne from "Dragon's Lair," who might actually rival Leia in my fictional affections . Emma Frost, assuming that the telepathy-dampening collar was DAMNED effective. Sex on wheels, plus it's always fun to keep the super-turbo-bitch locked up . Shakira (dark-haired variant) Princess Jasmine (red costume variant) Sarah Jane Smith (2009 variant -- every good harem needs a loving mother figure to keep the rest in line. Might even let her keep ME in line . ) More to come. I'm actually at a loss to think of the most inspiring superhero story I've ever read, though I'm sure it'll come to me in time.
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Post by paulpogue on Aug 25, 2009 8:55:05 GMT -8
5. Most inspiring superhero story I've ever read?
While I pause to consider the most inspiring superhero STORY, I'll list my three favorite superhero moments:
Captain American vs. Thanos, The Infinity Gauntlet: Anything that could possibly be said about this moment has already been said. One of Cap's top three moments, ever, really only equalled by "A voice that could command a god -- and does."
Dreadstar #27: Space opera more than superhero, but still relevant. The conclusion to the ultimate Xanatos gambit, as the team's nemesis, who has defeated them time and again, killed their friend Oedi, and delivered them to their ultimate enemy for the ultimate deathtrap: Bound on a dying planet, about to be nuked into oblivion, surrounded by the biggest fleet in the history of time in case the nuke doesn't work. But wait! The nuke's a fake and the fleet gets bombed instead. Nemesis-guy shows up. Everyone's about to kick his ass, and then -- "Hey, guys ..." ... off comes the holo-mask ... "Remember me?" And it's the long-thought-dead catman Oedi, in disguise ever since his "death", and suddenly two years' worth of plot twists make sense in a single panel.
The Invisibles, Volume 2: One of the most badass revelation moments ever.
"Darling ..." Roswell, New Mexico. LORD FANNY. "... Ever get the feeling you've been had?"
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Aug 28, 2009 13:48:51 GMT -8
Still got Questions 2 and 3 to answer, plus you have to ask someone else 5.
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Post by paulpogue on Aug 31, 2009 0:15:29 GMT -8
3. What's the one franchise-ruining Jumping The Shark moment, in any franchise, that you'd most want to see retroactively erased from real life?
Okay, this one drove me nuts, as I went back and forth on it for what felt like ages. My problem is that there's a lot of stuff I like, and a lot of stuff I sort of gave up on, and whereas most of the stuff I like has jump-the-shark moments that hurt it, I still enjoyed them anyway. Season Six of Buffy may have been a disastrous misfire on many counts, but it didn't literally ruin the entire show. I could reasonably say Battlestar Galactica was headed into bad waters the moment Ron Moore started littering the backstory with crucial plot points in which he had no idea where the hell he was going, but at the end of the day, BSG is still classic.
And the things I gave up on were never that strong anyway. "The X-Files" went to hell the moment Chris Carter did the same thing as Moore, but that show was never really meant to be anything else but "Kolchak the Night Stalker" for the 1990s. "Star Trek: Voyager" is practically an entire jump-the-shark series.
I ultimately decided to go with "What creative error was made that was so bad, so destructive that it literally rendered the rest of the series radioactive for full future enjoyment?" And surprisingly enough, those are few and far between, particularly in genre fiction and comic books, my favorite forms of entertainment, because the reset button is so easy to hit. The single worst major creative decision in decades is still in effect in the Spider-Man books, but sooner or later it's going to be undone. We all know it. And then it'll practically be forgotten except for scenes where Spidey wisecracks "Deals with the devil? Oh, don't even MENTION the devil to me," the same way he's been wisecracking "Oh, great, clones, all I need, more clones" for years. And then it'll be like it never happened. Once upon a time it seemed like Spider-Man could not possibly come back from the brink of the Clone Saga. It once looked like Hal Jordan was broken beyond redemption by an entire generation of creators who seemed intent on kicking him into the dirt. Everyone came back in the end. Hell, even the single biggest misfire of modern genre filmdom -- the "Alien vs. Predator" debacle -- could be undone by one good filmmaker assembling a fantastic Alien or Predator or both film. (If Ridley Scott threw together a killer AvP story based on the Predator planet, I think everyone would just politely forget the other two ever happened and the franchises would live happily ever after.)
So, after all that rambling, what's my answer?
The moment somewhere between 1983 and 1996 that George Lucas decided to go it alone.
George Lucas is a very talented filmmaker on a lot of levels. George Lucas is also an enormously flawed one, to the point that the creative success of the original "Star Wars" could almost be considered a fluke.
The prequel trilogy is not a COMPLETE disaster, no. It has its moments. But it is littered with all of Lucas' flaws, the worst ones being that they have next to no decent character bits, horrific dialogue, and the first two are so poorly paced as to be dead boring for entire half-hours at a time. There's a school of thought, in response to this, that says "Sorry, nerds, but Lucas was never all that, the original trilogy isn't as good as you remember." And after watching the original three alongside the prequels, I say: Bullshit. The original trilogy certainly has its flaws -- the dialogue in ANH can be awful, and the Ewoks are still pretty annoying in ROTJ -- but it still holds up remarkably well. ANH is a flawlessly paced, relentless adventure overlaid onto a very well-thought-out map of the Hero's Journey, so much so that it's the template for action films to this day. ROTJ is some serious slam-bang action, some surprisingly good acting from the leads, and an exceptionally well-done twist of focus that really DOES make the whole thing into Darth Vader's story in the end, without short-circuiting the main characters. And Empire? Well, Empire is still as good as everyone thought at the time. And that's before we get into the fact that all the leads shared a natural friendly chemistry that was absolutely nowhere to be found in the prequels. (Every time they TRIED to do that in the prequels, it came off as stiff and leaden.)
So what the hell happened? Where did Lucas go wrong? Why were his prequels so damn boring? Answer: George Lucas alone is simply not that good at this. He had collaborators all through the original trilogy. The only one he wrote and directed himself was the original, and even then his conversations with Joseph Campbell were reportedly so extensive that you could reasonably give him co-story credit. Plus, he was on a strict budget, strict limitations, and everyone thought he was going to fail -- and sometimes, being in exactly that spot can force your creativity. And on the other movies, Lucas very much did not go it alone. In Empire, he had a director, Irvin Kirschner, with whom he had very active disputes, but the final product is unmistakeable. He had producers, Gary Kurtz (also big clashes) and Howard Kazanjian, who were pretty obviously capable of saying "no, that's a terrible idea" to Lucas. And after the first one, he relinquished writing almost entirely to Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett. George Lucas was an excellent collaborator and team player -- even if he didn't always get along with his team (such as Kurtz, who quit after Empire), they managed to pull together some great stuff.
Somewhere along the line that changed. In between "Jedi" and "Phantom Menace," George Lucas elected to remain as the sole creative force behind the movies. It's not clear why. Maybe he just didn't like arguing with Kurtz and Kerschner and felt he would be happier doing it himself. Hell, by all indications he feels the prequels turned out pretty damn good. And that's his prerogative as the sole owner of the franchise. But it's hard to seriously argue that they're the equal of the first ones, and I think it's because Lucas no longer surrounded himself with the creative tension that resulted in such great work the first time.
He had collaborators, to be sure, but they are by no means the equal of their predecessors. Rick McCallum, Lucas #2 man for many years now, does his job very well. Jonathan Hales, the co-writer of "Attack of the Clones," seems quite sincere and dedicated. And I would definitely not go so far as to call them boot-lickers or yes-men. However, they both understood their jobs as "Help George realize his vision as best we can." Kurtz, Kerschner et al approached their tasks as, "Help George Lucas tell his story the best way we can," which is a very different thing. The former involves doing everything possible to tell the prequels exactly the way Lucas wants it; the second involves sitting him down and saying "Sorry, boss, but seriously, the first movie has absolutely nothing happening in it, the second movie centers on a romance that pretty much sucks, and you're making the greatest villain in film history into a whiny brat for two and a half movies." For all we know, McCallum and Hales did exactly that, but they were by no means as successful as their predecessors.
So there's my shark-jump. Lucas didn't exactly break the Star Wars saga completely, but I would argue that the prequels certainly crippled it and made it a lot harder to ever come back to. We'll never know what would have happened if he'd involved different collaborators. Would a Luc Besson-directed Episode I have been any better? Peter Jackson on scripting duties? Sam Raimi? (Don't laugh, we all thought he'd never make Spider-Man work.) Some young gun Robert Rodriguez-style hotshot who had some grand skills but didn't worship the originals to the point that they could only do a cover version? We'll never know. But I imagine it probably would have turned out better than what we got.
A quick addendum to this one momentarily, then question 3 and my 5 sometime soon.
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Post by paulpogue on Aug 31, 2009 0:37:48 GMT -8
Follow-up:
This one was almost my main choice, but it's not a franchise killer so much as it's merely a sad loss of a very interesting potential direction:
Doctor Who: Daleks In Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks
This one damn near borders on franchise-killer anyway. These two episodes were so perfectly awful, and the ones immediately following so damn boring, that combined with bad memories from how poorly "Torchwood" turned out, there was a very good chance that three years of Who-mania were about to come to a crashing halt. As luck would have it, "Human Nature/Family of Blood/Blink" came right along on top of all that and all was forgiven, and even built up enough goodwill to carry the show through a flawed-though-still-enjoyable season finale three-parter.
But what they did do, without question, was kill stone-dead the highly interesting potential of Dalek Sec.
Kirk has mentioned that he feels the story deconstructed itself one step too far by asking a question that undermines the concept to the point that even asking it breaks the story structure to the point of no return: "If we Daleks are so damned superior and awesome, why are we always getting our asses handed to us by lesser species?" I agree that its execution was pretty awful, but asking the question isn't the problem in my opinion -- it's the highly flawed answer. The Cult of Skaro, and Sec in particular, concluded that the reason Daleks were always getting trashed was because they lacked the human factor, and so being more human would make them awesome. As we learned, BS. Human Dalek Sec was a shark-jumper from the moment he showed up on screen, and every word that came out of his mouth made him suck even more, to the point that the rest of the Daleks thought it'd be best to just treat him like a dog and exterminate the fuck out of him. And so ended a potentially great plot point.
Because Dalek Sec was at that point thus far the sole awesome NEW villain to come out of the series. Latter-day Who has done a very, very good job of covering all the original high points, and they have done a hellaciously good job of creating an endless roster of creepy henchmen, but new master villains? Nada. Their only serious contribution was the Slitheen, about whom the less said the better. The new Cybermen are pretty cool, but they're really just old-school Cybermen with a new paint job and an overly-complicated origin about why they have said paint job. But Dalek Sec? Everything we could want in a reinvention of the Daleks. Leader of a group of Daleks taught to think like individuals and think like the enemy. That sleek black Supreme Dalek design. That screamingly awesome cliffhanger intro. LOCATION: EARTH-TIME-PERIOD: TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY-LIFE-FORMS-DETECTED-EX-TER-MI-NATTTEEEEE! Clever, crafty, talks smack to Cybermen and all but does a little victory dance with every snap. THIS-IS-NOT-WAR-THIS-IS-PEST-CONTROL.
Dalek Sec was the real answer to the question, "Why do Daleks always get defeated in the end?" Because the answer is not, "Humans always beat us so we need to be more like humans." The real answer is "Because humans have the Doctor on their side, and the Daleks do not." The Daleks needed their own Doctor, a brilliant mind to match his, who could think differently and lead the Daleks to victory where many generations of loyal-but-dim troopers could not.
Davros has been mentioned as the possible Dalek anti-Doctor, but that was pretty well shot down within one hour of his first on-screen appearance when he was shot down by his own creations and sparked off thirty years of Davros stories in which he was fighting as hard against the Daleks as he was against the Doctor. Which is pretty much what they did to Sec.
The Daleks have been overused to the point that they're almost broken themselves, and I kind of hope Stephen Moffat stays away from them for a while, since we've had three Super Humongous Dalek Invasion plotlines in four years, and the last one was so big and bombastic that it's next to impossible to top it with "The same thing, only bigger and bombasticer!" They need a serious rethinking of the approach, and it's kind of sad that the modern Doctor Who team was very nearly on track and blew it all in one story that really did break Dalek Sec beyond all possible repair. As with all genre stories, and particularly Who, there's no reason they COULDN'T bring him back in five minutes with a handwave away involving time loops and huon particles and THAT-WAS-NOT-ME-THAT-WAS-A-CLEVER-IMPOSTOR, but it'd be pretty hard to take seriously after spending more onscreen time undercutting him than they did building him up.
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Post by jessebaker on Sept 8, 2009 9:53:10 GMT -8
I should have known you would have picked DiM/EotD Paul for that question
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Sept 23, 2009 19:35:56 GMT -8
Paul - still need a Question 2 answer and your 5Qs for someone else, if you can swing a little time for it.
Michael
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Post by jensaltmann on Jan 7, 2010 1:05:06 GMT -8
Reviving this thread.
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Post by michaelpaciocco on Jan 7, 2010 5:27:48 GMT -8
Alright, then either Paul has to answer his last remaining question (and or ask someone else 5 Questions) or you can ask someone 5 Qs Jens.
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