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j2memories · 3 months

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Variety article (November 11th 2024)

‘Supernatural’ at 200: The Road So Far, An Oral History

By Laura Prudom

Nov 11, 2014 10:00am PT

After 200 episodes, “Supernatural,” which bowed in 2005, has been to hell and back (several times), with a few sojourns to heaven, purgatory, Oz, the past, the post-apocalyptic future and even our world along the way. The show weathered the conversion from The WB to The CW, survived the 2007-08 writers’ strike, and transitioned through several showrunners — and there’s no end in sight. Here, the stars and creative team chart the unlikely journey of the “little show that could.”

Eric Kripke (Creator): For me, the core notion behind “Supernatural” was to make a series about urban legends. I think they’re this incredibly rich mythology about the United States, and no one had really tapped into that, so when I started as a writer, one of the first ideas I ever pitched was an urban legend show.

A couple years later I tried to pitch, basically, a “Scooby Doo” rip off of a bunch of kids travelling in a van dealing with these urban legends. It was an idea that I never let go of and kept throwing there every couple years. Finally I had a deal with Warner Bros. and that incarnation was a reporter. Frankly, it was a rip off of “Nightstalker,” but I really fleshed it out and it had mythology.

I took it to Susan Rovner and Len Goldstein at the studio and they said, “We love the idea of doing a horror show,” which no one was really doing on TV at that time, “but we’re not into the reporter, that feels really tired. So no thanks and let’s get another angle.”

So in this moment, when they were basically passing on my idea, as you often do in these kinds of rooms, you start tap dancing. And I said, “forget the reporter, we should do this show as ‘Route 66,’ two cool guys in a classic car cruising the country, chasing down these urban legends,” and literally right on the spot I said “and they’re brothers,” because it popped in my head. “And they’re dealing with their family stuff and they’re fighting evil.” You just start making it up as you go. They were like, “Brothers, wow, that’s a relationship we haven’t seen on TV before.” And from there, “Supernatural” was born… out of a piece of improvisation.

Peter Roth (President, Warner Bros. Television): Eric [had] been with us since about 2002. Sometime in 2004, he came to us with this idea… this extraordinary road show about these two brothers, in which they would be living all of the great urban and rural myths that [we’re all] exposed to as kids. It was a very commercial idea, emotionally driven, which was what I was most concerned about: who are the characters? Why do I relate to them? Why are they worth my while to watch? And once we cast Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, along with Eric’s great idea, along with the script, along with David Nutter, our director on the pilot, the combination of those factors is what made me so excited and I frankly knew, from the moment I saw this pilot, that it was a winner. There wasn’t a person who I work with who didn’t feel the same way. It was a real strong story of young adult siblings that resonated perfectly with The WB audience.

Kripke: When we were casting, you see a lot of people. We hadn’t found our Sam and Dean. David Nutter suggested Jensen because we knew him from “Smallville.” We met with him to play Sam, and we fell in love with [him]. And then Jared came in, and he was a really great Sam too. Looking back, we were such idiots to not see it… We had two great Sams and no Dean and you think it would be obvious to put one into the other role, but it was not obvious. So we [went] to Peter Roth and we said, “We’re not sure what to do,” and Peter was like, “why don’t you make Jensen Dean?” We all looked at each other like, “we’re idiots, of course.” It’s so difficult to find one actor who is charismatic enough to be a breakout character and to support a show. So to find two of them, where there’s only two leads… I didn’t realize what a miracle it was at the time. It’s a miracle.

Jared Padalecki (Sam Winchester): They bring us in to the WB lot, and I’m sitting there, and in walks this really pretty dude who I had never seen before. We met and we’re waiting around, and usually in a test situation there are three or four people at least for each character and they’ll do a chemistry read. And so he and I are sitting there waiting for [other] actors to arrive [when] we’re pulled into the room, and it’s 30 big-shots at what was then The WB network and Warner Bros. studio television portion, and it’s daunting. We’re young actors… we’ve got to make our rent payments… We read one of the scenes from the pilot; it takes place at the bottom of a stairwell and Sam says, “when I told Dad there was something in my closet, he gave me a .45.” This great scene between two brothers where we see a lot of love but a lot of pent up anger, and a lot of understanding at its heart. It was a pretty intense scene.

Jensen Ackles (Dean Winchester): It was just immediate chemistry. There was an ease to it. There was a familiarity to it. Once we got into it with each other, it just fell in place and it came… not easy, but definitely a little easier than my experiences in the past. I think the importance of that bond and that relationship was verbalized by Kripke when he sat us down and said, “this begins and ends with you,” and not only how we relate to each other on screen, but also off screen. There was an importance stamped into [that bond] very early on.

[...]

Padalecki: Ultimately, “Supernatural” is really a show about two brothers and their relationship and their struggles and their loyalties and their sacrifices, and so I knew in my heart of hearts that even though season eight started out with Sam having gone off to try and live another normal life with the character of Amelia (Liane Balaban), I figured it was a way to remind both the audience and the cast and crew what the show was about. I thought season seven might’ve gone a little off the reservation, but in a strange way, by steering even further off the reservation and having the brothers not even be involved with each other [at the start of season eight], it really reaffirmed for everybody what the bread and butter of the show is, which, in my opinion is the relationship between the two brothers, so it was a nice rekindling and repartnership of Sam and Dean.

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astridianmayfly · 3 years

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The Magnus Archives IS a Podcast-- How The Web Literally Wrote This Story

So we’ve all listened to MAG 197 (if you haven’t READ NO FURTHER!) but I am genuinely serious about the topic of this post!

I’ve seen a lot of predictions swirling around regarding the nature of MAG 200, and a lot of us seem to think that the next universe the fears are going to defect to is ours. Frankly, I agree-- but I’d like to put forth what I think is a more specific theory about the way that events will ensue.

All 4 Magnus seasons follow a predictable pattern in terms of their episodes-- the second to last is action-packed and climatic where the last episode (ALWAYS statement form) is the resolution. MAG 200 will be in statement form in some way or another, not straight dialogue. Jonny’s a writer who enjoys parallelism, and finishing the series with a statement is both a reflection of Magnus’s unique medium and the precedents of the previous seasons.

The question here is what will this statement be ABOUT? Everything’s wrapped up. All of the strings will be tied. Unlike the previous seasons, where cliffhangers and anxiety regarding the outcome of the next season were horror fuel, MAG 200 has to have that little bit of loose thread to stir something in the audience. So what’ll MAG 200 be?

A warning.

Not just any warning, though. It’ll be Jon’s statement to us, the residents of the world the fears have defected to, and I’ll go as far as to say that it’ll directly parallel MAG 161 (Gertrude’s warning to the future archivist, with a possible dialogue interlude from the past aka post-change Scottish Safehouse era.) I think it’ll finish off his character arc, explain why he’s using the tape to record this statement (as a throwback to MAG 1!) and stir up some terror (”if you’re hearing this....”)

Don’t forget--the tapes are the web, and therefore malevolent in nature. I find it incredibly unlikely that anything will be recorded after the world changes back-- the tapes will ideally be sucked into the hole on Hilltop Road if all goes well. If the tapes go into the hole, though? That’s how we’ll get to hear Jon’s statement and are hearing this entire story contextualizing it.

But wait! I hear you saying. The tapes are web! How the fuck would we be hearing this if the web’s behind it ALL?? Why would they want us to hear about this story and the people who stood against them?

Well. Hm. MAG 197 gave us a big fat clue. Well, two clues, actually:

ANNABELLE

We found the one we believed most likely to bring about their manifestation. We marked him young, guided his path as best we could. And then, we took his voice.

ARCHIVIST

No…

ANNABELLE

His, and those he walked with. We inscribed them on shining strands of word and meaning, and used them to weave a web which cast itself out through the gate and beyond our universe. So that when the Fears heard that voice, and came in their terrible glory, they might then travel out along it.

Or be dragged.

BASIRA

Is she talking about the tapes?

ARCHIVIST

Yes.

AND

ARCHIVIST

We can pass them our apocalypse.

ANNABELLE

Nothing so extreme. In these new worlds they would exist as they used to in ours, lurking just beyond the threshold.

ARCHIVIST

Until someone is stupid enough to release them there, as well.

ANNABELLE

Perhaps. Even the Mother cannot see the future. Only try to shape it.

All of this is very interesting phrasing.

Let’s break it down. Part I almost seems like... a writer. “Inscribing words of meaning?” It’s a very interesting choice of words to describe the Web’s MO--spiders “weave” rather than “inscribe.”

The first time I heard this paragraph, I thought she was referring to the Change of MAG 160, what with the “door opening” and all and Jon’s inability to stop reading the statement. And while I feel as if this statement absolutely confirms that the Web was what forced Jon to keep reading (Jonah being in somewhat of kahoots with the Web but not understanding its entire plan is a theory for another day) I think that there’s a lot more here than that. The Web didn’t just “take his [Jon’s] voice”, it took the voices of “those he walked with.” Literally everyone else Jon has interacted with--most notably the main cast. Jon became the narrator or rather the Archivist. Unbeknownst to him and the others on tape, their stolen voices were “cast through the gate and beyond our universe.” Guys. That’s us. We’re the ones listening to this from beyond the TMA universe.

The Web used the podcast to form a bond with our reality that the fears could use as a PATH when the apocalypse stops in the world of TMA. When we all started listening, we got dragged in. Like a fly caught in a web. LIKE PREY TO THE LURE OF AN ANGLERFISH.

Basira and Jon’s next lines basically confirm this, too. Basira specifically asks if Annabelle’s talking about the tapes. Jon says yes, and doesn’t elaborate further. It’s a perfect indication that Annabelle’s not talking about the one-off accidental kickstarting of the apocalypse--Jon would clarify that if she was. She’s talking about the fact that literally every moment they had of the crew on record formed a tether with our reality.

Part II provides even more insight into the why. WHY would the web want to tell us the story about The Magnus Archives? What’s the ulterior motive here?

It’s simple: The Web (and the fears) do not want to die and probably want to live in our dimension for a very long time. As Annabelle says--they can only try to “shape the future”, and they will do all they can to survive. The Web is the system incarnate, and for the Web, it’s all a show. The Web feeds off of its victims by pushing them in directions and gaslighting them by telling them they’re where they are because of their actions and their actions alone. It doesn’t think like us. The Web thinks that we will take The Tragedy of Jonathan “I refuse to become another mystery” Sims like the Web domain audience received the tragedy of Francis: Through laughter. As something to be mocked or scorned. The Web thinks we’ll see Jon himself as a cautionary tale. Someone who (from the beginning) was too curious for their own good. After all--Jon marked himself with the impulsive decisions he made-- grabbing the tape with the worms, breaking the table, going out for a cigarette confronting the avatars, entering Michael’s corridors, etc etc. Look how many people died! Look how the world suffered! It’s because he was “beholding,” he questioned the world around him, he made people uncomfortable by holding the system accountable. He “made the choice.” He opened the door.

But that’s just it! That’s ALL BULLSHIT, and we know it! And that’s how this fits into the heart of TMA. The recurring thematic elements of choices and consequences and free will and the beloved capitalism metaphor. This is why slightly breaking the fourth wall works so fucking well for this story. We have empathy, unlike the system, and it’s our pathos that will inadvertently help us kill the Web in our own world!

Individuals are not born apocalyptic lynchpins. They’re made, pushed, into becoming monsters and/or helpless witnesses to horrors of uncontrollable magnitudes. The individual is not the evil. It’s the brutal, ugly system that has us tearing at each other, mocking each other, blaming one another for universal maladies. The status quo would listen to The Magnus Archives like it’s teaching you to keep your head down and stay out of trouble. People, real people, listen to The Magnus Archives and hear the words of over a hundred unique statement givers, Tim’s jokes, Jon’s protectiveness over Sasha’s memory, [fabric rustles], and What the Girlfriend’s conversations. The love, not the loss, is more audible than the warning that fearlessness is shortsighted and silly in the insignificant blip of human life. (That’s what the spiders want you to think!)

#the magnus archives #took me two hours to write this bye #tma #tma vague #tma season s5 spoilers #tma theory #the magnus archives season 5 #jonmartin #wtgfs #tma spoilers #tma season 5 #tma season five #jmart #tma meta #tma predictions #mag 197 #the web #tw unreality #unreality

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b-skarsgard · 5 years

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Bill Skarsgård is on his feet, furiously pumping his arms back and forth. Standing 6-foot-4, he could cover a lot of ground if he wanted to, but he’s channeling a specific 5-year-old at play here.

We are talking about picking up other people’s physicalities and incorporating bits and pieces of them into his characters when he shoots up to demonstrate his bag of tricks. Standing in the open space of an Upper West Side home’s library, he brings his shoulders up to his ears, keeping the energy in his top half akin to a runner sprinting to his finish line, while from the waist down he appears more as a slow loris than Sonic the Hedgehog.

“That’s my little brother [Ossian],” Skarsgård says with a laugh, explaining the movement’s inspiration. “He’s 10 now, but when he was 4 or 5, he had a really funny way of running. You ever see kids do this? It’s the funniest thing ever.” Funny, sure, but when done by someone of the actor’s stature, slightly bewildering and creepy. “If you look at Pennywise,” he says, “Pennywise does this.”

Skarsgård is, of course, referring to his biggest role to date: Stephen King’s clown creation at the center of the “It” film franchise. As the evil entity known for eating children alive, Skarsgård has taken Pennywise the Dancing Clown—first imagined in King’s 1986 behemoth novel before being brought to the screen by Tim Curry in a campy 1990 miniseries—and morphed him into a truly terrifying being who brings into vivid clarity just how scary circus attire can be.

In case you somehow missed it, “It” premiered in 2017 and quickly became a pop culture phenomenon, grossing $700 million worldwide and breaking the record for the highest-grossing horror film of all time. It inspired Halloween costumes, “Saturday Night Live” spoofs, and a whole new generation of genre fans who will never look at red balloons the same way again.

Skarsgård and his cast—which includes kid co-stars Finn Wolfhard (“Stranger Things”), Jaeden Martell (“Masters of Sex”), Sophia Lillis (“Sharp Objects”), and a standout Jack Dylan Grazer (“Shazam!”), plus their adult counterparts Bill Hader, James McAvoy, Jessica Chastain, and James Ransone, respectively—are hoping to catch lightning in a bottle once more this September with “It Chapter Two.” Picking up 27 years after the first film and Pennywise’s apparent—but temporary—defeat at the hands of the Losers Club, the film is another chance for Skarsgård to showcase the impressive physicality and personality he brought to Round 1.

Just minutes into a conversation with the actor—and after that performance of a 5-year-old running—it’s clear his calculated character work is thanks to a keen sense of observation. Take the Swede’s analysis of Scandinavian cities, for instance: His hometown of Stockholm is not as laid-back as Copenhagen, which by comparison feels more European. Having been raised in Sweden to a family of acting royalty—Stellan Skarsgård (an Emmy nominee this year for “Chernobyl”) is his father and Alexander Skarsgård (Emmy winner for “Big Little Lies”) is his brother—he recalls his people as more serious, the type to follow rules and structure.

His observations let him steal tangible details and tics from strangers, friends, family, and cultures, pulling them into the people (and, in the case of “It,” evil entities) he plays.

“Sometimes I even do it subconsciously, where I do something in a scene and I’m like, Wait a minute, that’s the guy from the subway. I saw this guy and I thought he was weird. Now I just did it in a scene,” he says, getting excited. “I fucking love when it happens so much because it’s literally happening in the moment.”

He’s not Method in his acting, but Skarsgård’s approach certainly feels all-encompassing. He has the capacity to go so deep that he makes it a point to draw clear boundaries for himself; during the audition process, he consciously avoids getting too attached to the role, limiting his prep work to memorizing the sides and making a strong, well-thought-out choice about the character he’s playing.

“You can prepare as much as you want—prepare in terms of the scene or think about the character, but the research I put into a role is emotional, especially if I have a book to read about it,” he says. “The ‘It’ book is a really particular one, but usually, [if] you read about the character, delving much deeper into who [they are], you start getting emotionally attached. You can get emotionally attached to a character without doing much research at all. It’s just shitty when you don’t book it... For me, when I book it is when I let myself go [and] really feel safe to emotionally give so much of myself to it.”

His wariness is understandable when you look at his résumé. Life for any actor naturally ebbs and flows between bookings and rejections, but that’s amplified for an actor like Skarsgård, who has built a career on playing brooding types often living in dire circumstances. His breakout role stateside was as vampire Roman Godfrey on Netflix’s “Hemlock Grove” before going on to play a character in the third installment of the post-apocalyptic “Divergent” series and then a mysterious inmate who’s been theorized to be the actual devil in another Stephen King-inspired screen project, “Castle Rock.” It’s not exactly light fare, and diving into those psyches unnecessarily could become detrimental.

“I like living by [the motto] ‘It is what it is’; you adapt and you’re spontaneous and you change things,” Skarsgård says when asked if he adheres to any specific technique to capture the characters he plays. “My life is not very structured or organized to begin with, and that obviously bleeds into the work that I do.”

It’s the spontaneity of his choices onscreen, too, that makes the 29-year-old so fun to watch, particularly as Pennywise. Two of his contributions to the final incarnation of Pennywise’s appearance include the cartoonishly pointed bottom lip—a thing Skarsgård can really do with his mouth, something he says he’s never seen anyone other than his family members do—and Pennywise’s walleyed stare, in which one of his pupils wanders off to the side while the other stays firmly focused on you.

Physically, the role is demanding, requiring him to yell, shake, and contort his face in ways that leave him exhausted; that’s not to mention the hours spent sitting in hair and makeup. “You have glue all over your face; there’s paint. Your hair is up in [a skullcap]—it’s itching. There’s, like, a foam head on top of it.” To put it mildly, “It” and its sequel are unlike any of Skarsgård’s other acting experiences. For myriad reasons, it lacked the give and take of more traditional projects. He had to be at “150 percent intensity” whenever the camera was on him. “A lot of the stuff I do sometimes is literally like”—he makes a gurgling sound like a chainsaw underwater. “It’s like one big jump scare, charging the camera screaming and shaking my head violently. There’s never a scene where you’re just chilling.”

The final product is an amalgamation of script work, Skarsgård’s own imagination, and King’s classic novel, which he leaned on more than usual since the script, told from the perspective of the film’s child leads, necessarily left out Pennywise’s perspective. He also used YouTube to watch videos of mimes, hyenas, baboons, and monkeys, using elements from each to piece together the way Pennywise moves through space.

With all the information he’s gathered from his prep process at his fingertips, the on-set experience becomes about playing to the truth of the scene and the “essence of what the character is at that point.”

“You completely intellectualize the character,” he explains about the early stages of figuring out the person he’s playing. “Who is this guy psychologically? Why is he acting this way? What is his relationship with the world and the people closest to him? The way I do it is objectively going out and studying him separately from me. Observing him, judging him, understanding him, and sympathizing with him.”

He admits to developing a fondness for Pennywise, who refused to vacate his mental premises even after the film wrapped. “You go with a character and you think about that character obsessively for a very long time, and then overnight there’s nothing left to think about,” he says. The uncoupling manifested itself in his dreams, where he sometimes was Pennywise and sometimes was talking to Pennywise, upset that he was somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be. “And then I wake up and I’m like, that was kind of sweet.” It’s the kind of affection only an actor who has lovingly pieced together a character over four years can have for something so objectively sinister.

But no matter the role—or its wickedness—we relish the moment Skarsgård stands up to show us what he’s found today.

#link #magazine #backstage magazine #interview #bill skarsgard #bill skarsgård

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bifrostgiant · 6 years

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Doctor Strange 382: Analysis, Loki hurts my heart

I summarized Doctor Strange #382 in my last post, so if you haven’t read it and would like to know what happened go ahead and check it out. Warning Spoilers ahead!

It always amazes me when a writer is able to pack so much story into so little space, a feat Cates has accomplished in this issue. His Skurge reference was well placed, the machine guns are canon in the comic book universe but fans of Ragnarok will recognize and appreciate the nod. As I mentioned in the intro of my summary, I have a number of thoughts and feelings on the events that occurred in this comic

The kiss Loki told Zelma there was something special about her he could not place. In all likelihood, he’s drawn to the power of the “Exile of Singhsoon” within her. Though if we assume there’s more to it than that, can we acknowledge Loki has a type?!

Art by Lee Garbett (Verity Willis, left) and Gabriel Hernandez Walta (Zelma Stanton, right) (Marvel comics)

In Loki: Agent of Asgard, our favorite tricker had an almost love interest by the name of Verity Willis (pictured above next to Zelma). She was last seen jumping through a magic door with Loki and, as far as I know, her current whereabouts are unknown.

When Loki discovers the spell is bound to Zelma’s soul, will he deem her sacrifice an acceptable loss? It will depend on why he’s seeking this power, but I do think (and hope) he will have difficulty with his future moral dilemmas. I suspect he will attempt to extract the spell without harming her, but it would likely be a delicate and risky process.

For now, I will enjoy this cute little fling. I do not know Zelma very well, but what I have seen I have liked thus far. Way to go Loki.

Bats’ death

This event broke my heart. First off, I cannot handle it when the dog dies. Ever since being scarred by Old Yeller as a child, I have actively avoided tragic canine stories. How could you kill the loveable dog companion in the second issue of a comic book arc, Cates?! How could you!

If that wasn’t bad enough, the death was indirectly, and unintentionally, caused by Loki’s magic. Bats’ death was clearly not Loki’s fault but, despite knowing this, a grieving Strange lashed out in the worst possible way:

Loki: I…Stephen, I didn’t mean to…

Strange: You never mean to do anything, do you Loki?!

This essentially sums up Loki’s struggles as a former villain attempting to rewrite his own tragic story. No matter how hard he tries, he remains prisoner to the cruel fate thrust upon him as the God of lies. How can he escape this cycle when there is no one to trust him, no one to believe in him?

As the title character, this story rightly belongs to Steven Strange, which leaves Loki to assume the role of antagonist. He seeks a dangerously powerful artifact, an appropriate goal for any bad guy worth his weight, but Loki has also displayed a great deal of self-doubt and regret. He has so many feelings and insecurities; characteristics that make this complicated, and sensitive, outcast so endearing. I would not rush to classify him as the true antagonist of this arc just yet, despite the odds stacked against him.

The Sentry

The most shocking reveal of this issue is the reappearance of the Sentry; a human (Robert Reynolds) who gained super powers from consuming a super-soldier serum. This mighty champion has an alter ego parasite called the Void. The Sentry and the Void are in a constant battle for control.

The Sentry/Void’s penultimate comic appearance is extremely relevant to Loki’s story.

This is a page from Siege #4 (courtesy of Marvel). I’m not going to go into the plot of the Siege event, but essentially Loki assisted the bad guys in bringing about a near apocalyptic attack on Asgard. Horrified by what was transpiring, Loki begged Odin to lend him the power of the Norn stones so he could in turn transfer his strength to the heroes who were fighting the Void.

Art by Olivier Coipel (Marvel Comics). Take note of the tears in the bottom right panel as he begs his father. Oh my heart.

Loki’s assistance was enough to give the heroes an edge in the battle, but he was killed by the Void shortly thereafter.

The Void killed Loki. At least a different incarnation of Loki (think of him like Doctor Who).

Now let’s return to the Doctor Strange comic. I doubt Loki will respond particularly well when he finds out who was released upon the world. Not only is Sentry (and possibly the Void) back in the game, Strange is teaming up with him to stop Loki. I could say maybe the Sentry is strong enough to keep his evil half at bay, but I’m pretty sure we’re going to be seeing the Void at some point soon.

It seems a drastic move for Strange to seek out the Sentinel so quickly. I can’t imagine there aren’t other willing heroes who are strong enough to help to him take out Loki. He also only reached out to Zelma once before giving up. Come on dude, shoot her an email or something and say you’re SORRY for being an insensitive douche.

Regardless, I’m looking forward to where Cates will be taking us next. I just hope my heart can survive the torment Loki will inevitably face.

#doctor strange 382 #doctor strange #loki #loki laufeyson #zelma stanton #steven strange #donny cates #gabriel hernandez walta #lee garbett #olivier coipel #loki has all the feelings #marvel #comics #the sentry #the void

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malcortez · 7 years

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OMG! TV Tropes added Malcolm to their page on the Acolytes! Here’s a LINK to it (scroll all the way down for Mal’s section!) but here it is copy-pasted too!: The son of the Marvel Zombies incarnation of Fabian Cortez, Malcolm Cortez is the leader of his world's incarnation of the Acolytes, as well as the Evil Chancellor to his world's version of the Black Panther. In many ways Malcolm is a stock Generation Xerox character, boasting a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses of his father, though in other ways he is quite different from Fabian. Initially chasing the ever-coveted Klingon Promotion, Malcolm is forced into pursuing new goals when the cosmic-empowered Marvel Zombies return from space. He is ultimately successful in ridding his world of the Marvel Zombies, and to all indications has ruled New Wakanda unchallenged ever since. Ambition Is Evil: Just like his father, Malcolm is shown as a character who hungers for power and control. Unlike his father, this trait is very slightly justified, as unlike the privileged Fabian Malcolm grew up in a ravaged post-apocalyptic world. Anti-Villain: To the point where he would probably qualify as a Designated Villain if not for the ambition mentioned directly above. The fact that he is the antagonist to a group of Villain Protagonist characters also helps. Arch-Enemy: To the Black Panther of his world.

The Bad Guy Wins: Marvel Zombies 2 actually ends with a wholesale victory for Malcolm — he is successfully able to banish the Marvel Zombies to another dimension, and the last issue ends with him standing triumphant over Forge, who he may or may not have just beaten to death.

Church Militant: He leads the Acolytes of his world, who worship Magneto as a messiah just as the original Acolytes did. How much Malcolm himself believes in the Acolyte doctrine, however, is unclear.

Crazy Survivalist: Seems to be one of these, as in his Motive Rant to Black Panther he admits flat-out he likes the post-apocalyptic hellscape that is the Marvel Zombies Earth and says he has no interest in knowing what functional civilization is like.

Empowered Badass Normal: He is a mutant like his father, but his powers are unknown and in all his fights he uses only Good Old Fisticuffs, qualifying him for this.

Even Evil Has Standards: He refuses to indulge in Would Hurt a Child (at least not until the child is old enough for him to be okay with it; see below) and was not actually intending to beat/kill Forge, as Forge stumbled in by chance and declared he would bring the zombies back, sending Malcolm into a murderous rage.

Evil Chancellor: He serves Black Panther, who is still King of Wakanda (or rather, New Wakanda) while plotting against him, making him one of these even if he had no known formal title.

Evil Redhead: Like his father, though his evil quotient is a little more fluid than that of his Obvious Judas father.

Gadgeteer Genius: He manages the very impressive feat of disabling an interdimensional teleporter in such a way that Forge (whose mutant power is being a Gadgeteer Genius) is neither able to fix it, nor able to detect the sabotage, for years even, making Malcolm most certainly qualify as this.

Generation Xerox: Just like his father, he's a Manipulative Bastard Evil Redhead who suffers from Chronic Backstabbing Disorder.

Klingon Promotion: His initial goal is the assassination of Black Panther, but when Black Panther becomes a zombie instead and the other Marvel Zombies return, he has to adjust his plans a little.

Legacy Character: He's the son of Fabian Cortez and dresses in a uniform identical to the one worn by his father (it might even be the uniform worn by his father, as Malcolm and Fabian have identical heights and builds).

Loser Son of Loser Dad: Played with, as in-story no one speaks ill of Malcolm for any reasons related to his father, and indeed the Fabian of the Marvel Zombies universe was a recipient of Adaptational Heroism compared to his normal incarnation. But as he is a Generation Xerox character who also suffers from Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, Malcolm falls into this trope in a narrative sense rather than a literal one.

Manipulative Bastard: He is able to convince Black Panther he is a faithful servant while secretly undermining him, and at the end manages to trick all the zombies into standing on an interdimensional teleporter so he can banish them into another dimension.

Multiversal Conqueror: Inverted. Malcolm has the technology to become this but uses it to exile the beings who could help him achieve it.

No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Marvel Zombies 2 ends with him giving one of these to Forge. He may in fact have beat Forge to death.

Troubled Sympathetic Bigot: Painted as one of these, but the "bigot" status is extremely debatable as he is depicted as a sort of Straw Racist against zombies (who not only are neither a race nor an ethnicity unto themselves, but are also the beings responsible for reducing his world to a post-apocalyptic hellscape).

Villainous Valour: Despite his many parallels to his father, one trait Malcolm does not share with Fabian is cowardice. Indeed, he is shown in one panel as being ready to throw down with a horde of Elite Zombie versions of the Marvel Zombies (who qualify as Elite Zombie even by default; the zombies Malcolm was challenging were empowered by having devoured Galactus). Like him or hate him, a move like that takes balls.

Would Hurt a Child: Played with, as he tells Black Panther flat-out he plans to kill his son, but notes that he'll wait until the boy is "old enough". How generous of him.

Xanatos Speed Chess: Much like his father Malcolm plays this game, and if the ending of his canon is any indication, he's actually rather a bit better at it than his old man.

You Are Too Late: When he gives his Motive Rant to Black Panther, Panther flat-out asks Malcolm why he is admitting to this when he knows he will be killed for it. Malcolm's response is simply "Because I can." Then he banishes Black Panther and all the other zombies into another dimension.

#xmen #x men #marvel zombies #marvel zombies 2 #malcolm cortez #TV Tropes #I'm so proud!

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fengshuiatl · 7 years

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Inspirations - Into The Badlands

I mentioned back in The Elevator Pitch that Feng Shui takes place across multiple time periods, known as junctures, and in my games (including the Feng Shui ATL campaign) I’ve always planned to take advantage of all of them. My first game had jaunts into the mainland China’s distant past. The prequel game took detours into Hong Kong, and Japan in the late 1800s, Mexico in the early 1900s, NYC in the 1980s, and even a post-apocalyptic future. Of them all, I’ve always been very sparring with my use of the future setting.

All the other settings in Feng Shui all owe a great deal to classic HK/South-East Asian action cinema. If you're looking for movies to tie to each juncture, you've got the below examples as just a small sample of your choices:

Distant Past or Fantasy - Hero, Tai Chi Master, Five Deadly Venoms

1800s - Once Upon a Time in China, Iron Monkey, Drunken Master II (aka The Legend of Drunken Master)

Contemporary - Royal Warriors, SPL (aka Killzone), Hard Boiled

The trouble with Feng Shui's future juncture, either in its original incarnation as a dystopian nightmare ruled by an evil corporation fueling cybernetics with chi energy, or its Feng Shui 2 version as a post-apocalyptic hellscape, blighted by the chi powered super bomb: Neither one of them fit in neatly with the other junctures or the game's major inspiration. The former owes more to Terry Gilliam's Brazil (on down to the coloquial term for one another being ‘consumer’), and the latter's clearly inspired by Mad Max. Both are settings are fine divorced from the wider world of martials arts mayhem, heroic bloodshed, and chi-as-magic. Once you have them flush up against the rest of Feng Shui, though, things like cyborg apes, grotesque bio-technology, and comically bureacractic corporations that literally rule the world, in my opinion they don't already don't sync up tonally. For a Feng Shui game like mine in particular, it's a complete splash of cold water on the proceedings.

Enter Into The Badlands. The AMC series premiered in 2015, and while I missed it when when it was first broadcast, I spent the past week binging its 6-episode first season on Netflix and was struck by the unique world that seems almost tailormade to be a natural leap into the future for your Feng Shui campaign. The show is set in a world that, after a period of natural disasters, wars, and other such chaos, has returned to a feudal state. Think Japan's Sengoku period and you're on the right track. Industry, technology, complex infrastructure has all broken down and the rulers of the day are men and women called Barons. Each of them has a resource that they control (the two major players we see most of control opium and oil, respectively), and their own personal armies. If Barons are like Daimyos, then their Samurai are known as Clippers. Loyal to their masters and highly proficient fighters, they're all trained from childhood to kill and die at the honor of their Baron.

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All that world building above is served by some pretty cool aesthetic choices. The clothing and remaining technology has a steampunk, thrown together quality to it. Each Baron and their associated followers have a color scheme and insignias (you can see them and a lot more details of the setting at AMC's website, but beware of spoilers). The casting is diverse enough (an Asian lead, with a woman of color as his love interest, and tonight's season two premiere introduced a martial arts master portrayed by half-Zimbabwean, half Chinese actress Chipo Chung) that your players could easily see a variety of characters in the world with no trouble. But the narrative choice that makes the biggest visual splash, and what brought me to the dance, is that guns have managed to be outlawed throughout the land. So martial arts and melee weapons rule the day. The fight choreography, helmed by veteran Hong Kong stunt director Huan-Chiu “Dee Dee” Ku (seriously, check the resume), is simliar to a lot of latter-day Hong Kong martial arts films. Brutal, fast paced action, mixed with a bit of wirework to emphasize the impressive (and in one case, possibly mystical) nature of the combatants' abilities. It's some of the best television fight work I've ever seen, and if some of the reactions to Iron Fist are anything to go by...

Watching Danny Rand do half speed fight choreography while Colleen Wing is getting her Michelle Yeoh on is highkey frustrating...

— Dart_Adams (@Dart_Adams) March 18, 2017

It probably won't be beat anytime soon. From the variety of weapons and fighting setpieces on display, you've got plenty of grist for the fight sequence mill. As for how you could apply the world of Into The Badlands to Feng Shui, I could very easily see the situation the depicted in the show coming about if you involve The Four Monarchs. If you're unfamiliar with them, in the larger Feng Shui canon, the Four Monarchs are the four offspring of a powerful sorcerer who managed to take over the world. They subsequently lost their grip on the world due to infighting and are currently exiled to the Netherworld, a physical place outside of time. Perhaps by temporarily setting aside their differences, the Monarchs are able to retake the future juncture for themselves. Of course, their alliance being temporary coul learn to carved up territories and warring with one another, just like the Barons in the show. Or you could decide that the Secret War eventually escalated to the point where all the known player wiped themselves off the board in some way, and the few remaining feng shui sites mean relatively immense power for whoever can control them. Options abound.

The new season of Into The Badlands started tonight, and I'll definitely be tuned in for the rest of the episodes to mine for ideas. Even if you're aren't looking for an alternate future juncture for Feng Shui though, I'd highly recommend tuning in. If you're the kind of person who'd spend your free time reading a Tumblr devoted to Feng Shui, you're probably going to love it.

#kung fu #future juncture #into the badlands #feng shui 2

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