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0aurelion-sol0 · 3 years

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"There's no place like gnome."

Stranger Things 3: The Game.

Gnomes 1-10. 🧙‍♂️

IT'S FINALLY HERE!

It's no secret that the Duffers take a lot of inspirations from Pop Culture. From the most well known movies to the more obscure comics, they are always able to sneak a reference somewhere everytime. And they are also able to make it connected to the story.

I've bragged about how the Stranger Things expanded universe in media is one of the best out there compared to many others. I think that the Duffers, the writers or people in the highest places of the marketing are really paying attention to what comes out of the ST franchise because there is no way to have such content with so many details without someone looking into them.

And ST3: The Game is a very good example of that.

So let's start! The first 10 Gnomes out of 50 that you have to find in the game.

BE AWARE THAT THERE ARE SPOILERS BELOW!

"There's elements that could please those who makes metas/analyzes or theories. Especially things related to possible future plot points, easter eggs, references in previous seasons mainly season 3 like unsolved mysteries or unanswered questions and for future seasons such as season 4 like foreshadowing or teasers, trailers or as of lately the sneak peek."

If you have anything you'd like to add, might think I have missed or think it might be referencing something else don't hesitate to share it by commenting or reblogging.

(Say thanks to @hawkinsschoolcounselor for having helped me with some of them. )

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Gnome #1: Johnny

"He's here... with an axe."

Overall plot:

"The film's central character is Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic who accepts a position as the off-season caretaker of the isolated historic Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies. Wintering over with Jack are his wife, Wendy Torrance, and young son, Danny Torrance. Danny is gifted with "the shining", psychic abilities that enable him to see into the hotel's horrific past. The hotel cook, Dick Hallorann, also has this ability and is able to communicate with Danny telepathically. The hotel had a previous winter caretaker who went insane and killed his family and himself. After a winter storm leaves the Torrances snowbound, Jack's sanity deteriorates due to the influence of the supernatural forces that inhabit the hotel, placing his wife and son in danger."

So I assume a lot of you know The Shining by Stanley Kubrick. A movie which was adapted from the novel of the same name by Stephen King in 1977.

There's a lot of things that could have served as an inspiration for ST.

A boy/child who has psychic abilities = Eleven has psychic abilities such as telekinesis. Will has his True Sight which consist in seeing what the MF was seeing and feeling.

Now there's also the theme of family and parenthood that is also a big theme in Stranger Things. Especially abusive parenthood such as Brenner, Lonnie and even Hopper to a smaller degree.

In Shining, Jack tries to kill his family with an axe due to supernatural forces that are in the hotel but there's a difference between King and Kubrick. While King specifically said that Jack was heavily influenced by the Hotel, Kubrick shows that Jack always had that sinister violence in him even before they arrived at the hotel.

It's interesting to draw a parallel to Billy and Will, both characters called William who tried to kill their families and other people while being possessed. But Billy compared to Will was shown to have been abusive even before that. Dacre Montgomery also said that he was inspired by Jack Nicholson's performance in the Shining for his character Billy.

Joyce and Jonathan were shown to get ready to fight the monsters by taking an axe.

It's also interesting to note that Jack dies in the snow while a blizzard is happening outside the hotel. Much like the storm of the Mindflayer who is in the Upside Down, the same Mindflayer who "likes it cold". While in the book, the Overlook explodes and burn.

(Cold vs Fire much like everything Upside Down related not liking Fire.)

Also "Johnny" = "Jonathan", it's kind of similar and Jonathan did wield an axe before. Maybe this is teasing parts of Jonathan storyline next seasons ?

The gnome was also found in Mike's basement, Mike who wants to be a writer when he's older just like Jack.

Let's just hope that Jonathan and Mike don't get the same fate as Jack.

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Gnome #2: Christine

"Two bright, beaming lights for eyes."

Overall plot:

"Written by Bill Phillips and based on Stephen King's 1983 novel of the same title, the movie follows the changes in the lives of Arnie Cunningham, an awkward and unpopular teenager, his friends, his family, and his teenage enemies in Rockbridge, California after Arnie buys a classic red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury named Christine, licence number CQB 241, a car that seems to have a jealous, possessive personality – and a mind of its own, which has a bad influence on Arnie. After working on a car in a junkyard owned by Will Darnell, Arnie drops his glasses, starts dressing like a 1950's greaser and develops an arrogant and paranoid personality. He than decides to invite and date the most beautiful girl in highschool, Leigh, who will soon become the next victim of Christine."

I was actually quite surprised by how this story parallels Stranger Things a lot.

First off, Christine is very much like The Mindflayer, a dangerous supernatural being set out to destroy anyone who is in her way, the people who tries to take the things that she thinks belongs to her or threatens her. This is very much relevant to The Mindflayer who after being hurt by the Fire created by the Hawkins Lab was upset and attacked everyone he could. Or as Will putted "Not me, everyone else."

This is very much like Christine who tried to kill Leigh because she was taking her place in the life of Arnie. Christine also tried to kill the bullies of Arnie who after a conflit with him, tried to destroy the car which angered Christine heavily.

The Mindflayer has been described someone who views himself as superior to other species and wants to conquer them, even if it's not his real "goal", the description fits anyone who is possessive and paranoid.

Both the MF and Christine are associated with the color red. Red storm = red color of the car.

Arnie ressembles Will and Billy alot. Will is an awkward and unpopular teenager who after being possessed by the Mindflayer became very different and more violent. Billy was shown to be paranoid, jealous, violent and his look even ressembles the one Arnie takes after repairing Christine.

Both of these boys have the same name as Will Darnell, the owner of a junkyard. Just like the boys in Season 1 who takes shelter in a junkyard, or in season 2 where they fight the Demodogs.

Billy dies, killed by the Mindflayer just like Arnie who was completely possessed by Christine who tried to kill Leigh and Dennis, his best friend after they tried to destroy the car when they realised the supernatural nature of it.

Billy's car ressembles a lot Christine with those lights on. Especially with shots like in the Void or at Starcourt during the night.

Chrissy, a new character that will be in season 4, the most popular girl in Hawkins High like Leigh, has a name that is the diminutive of Christine. It is said that under the perfect surface lies a dark secret. Much like the car Christine, while a beauty is actually a dangerous supernatural being. We'll see if the both of them actually connects in the show.

Also it is set in California where Billy and Max come from and has been rumored by many people due to set leaks (The Surfer Boy Pizza Van.) that it is where the Byers went. I won't get into it in this post but this could be a tease or hint of that IF the set leaks ARE true and not fake to mess with people and the fandom.

Arnie also dies in a car crash having been completely possessed by the evil powers of Christine which is something we see in the sneak peek of ST4. It also reminds of Carrie who has a bully named Chris who she kills in a car crash with her boyfriend Billy aka William.

So will someone die from that car crash ? Who is it ? Chrissy, Joyce, Lonnie ? We can only speculate.

The gnome is also found outside the Wheeler's house where Karen lives near the community pool where Billy works and where the car of Billy is located during the first few chapters of the game. Again, a "bad boy" hitting on the beautiful girl in town. (with a lot of creepy subtext all over it.)

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Gnome #3: Doc

"Always mumbling something about being late."

Overall plot:

"Set in 1985, in the town of Hill Valley, California, the story follows Marty McFly, a teenager accidentally sent back to 1955 in a time-traveling DeLorean automobile built by his eccentric scientist friend Doctor Emmett "Doc" Brown. Trapped in the past, Marty inadvertently prevents his future parents' meeting—threatening his very existence—and is forced to reconcile the pair and somehow get back to the future."

So I don't think I need to explain why this is here given how much it has been shown and mentioned in season 3. But few things are interesting here, the fact that California is mentioned is a big deal for me again. I know you are aware of the set leaks just as I am aware, if we can trust them than this could be a hint of that location.

Next, we have the theme of Time. Now ever since ST4 was announced, clocks and times have been a key feature in the promotion. Who know what this might mean but again, we're not going to develop that in the post.

There is also the whole funny scenes of Robin realising that indeed Marty's mother had tried to "bang" her own son. Now given the nature of the shown, certain images in the show during certain events and certain stories, you know to what it connects and to which theories it connects. Won't develop further on it but it can be used as an element that can go into those theories.

The gnome is also found outside of Starcourt Mall where Robin and Steve talk about "Back to the Future". It is also where Billy has his "Back to te Future" moment with his car going extremely fast just like the DeLorean.

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Gnome #4: Indiana

"Master of Adventure."

Overall plot:

"After arriving in India, Indiana Jones is asked by desperate villagers to find a mystical stone and rescue their children from a Thuggee cult practicing child slavery, black magic, and ritualistic human sacrifice in honor of the goddess, Kali."

Fun fact, on Twitter for ST3 promo, a parody poster of this same movie has been posted here of the official ST account.

Jim is obviously Indiana Jones, the look speaks for itself and when he is in the Tunnels in season 2, there's a lot of Indiana Jones imagery.

And of course Kali as 008, a Hindu goddess but as we will see here, it parallels more the Mindflayer.

In 1935, Indiana Jones survives a murder attempt by Lao Che, a crime boss in Shanghai who has hired him to retrieve the remains of Emperor Nurhaci. With his young orphaned Chinese sidekick, Short Round, and the nightclub singer, Willie Scott, in tow, Indy flees Shanghai on a cargo aircraft. While the three of them are asleep, the pilots (employed by Lao Che) dump the fuel and escape via parachute, leaving the plane to crash over the Himalayas. The three narrowly manage to survive by jumping out of the plane on an inflatable raft.

(I wonder if this could be something we see in season 4 with Hopper where he tries to escape on a plane and ends up crashing somewhere or is betrayed by someone who he asked the help of. Now it's a trio and in season 3, Jim, Joyce, Alexei and Murray are the main group that fits this trio. Jim for all the fighting and crazy shit, Joyce and Alexei are kind of like Short Round, they are the sidekicks of Hopper. Murray the role of Willie Scott since she speaks Chinese and him Russian and that Jim just like Indy finds annoying sometimes. Alexei is also kind of like Willie since he kinda goes along with them.

But if we also look at season 2, El is alot like Short Round since she is kind of an orphan too and has a father figure later on. It could also be Will since Hopper is with him a lot of times through season 2. Also Willie did felt out of her element like Alexei because of course he is Russian. Willie in itself doesn't have a lot in common with Joyce but still it's another connection to Will since she has a name close to the one of her sons. Something that does fit a bit more is Jim and Hopper both escaping death, of course Hopper at the end of season 3 but also during season 3 at the farm where he's being shot at by Gregori and than the car doesn't work and explodes and they have to make their way through the forest.

Willie Scott could also be referenced when El disguise herself as this pretty blonde girl in season 1.

Now however, Scoop Troops does fit certain parts of these trio. All the fighting with Steve like Indiana Jones but Robin got his brain because she cracked the code. Dustin and Erica are kinda like short round (especially Dustin who has kind of the same hat as short round.) and are referenced with all the others as children by Robin. Steve doesn't feel in his element like Willie with the three of them who are nerds just like Erica who also doesn't want to accept it. And Robin just like Willie speaks some languages.)

They ride down the mountain slopes and fall into a raging river, eventually arriving at the village of Mayapore in northern India. The villagers plead for their aid in retrieving the sacred stone (shivalinga) stolen from their shrine, along with their missing children, by evil forces in the nearby Pankot Palace. Indy agrees to do so, hypothesizing that the stone is one of the five Sankara stones given by the gods to help humanity fight evil. (It's kinda like Alexei who turns his back on the Russians, for his life of course and agrees to help Hopper close the gate to save Hawkins and their kids before monsters start to appear or may attack one of their kids. Now the stone could be something similar to the promethium or the two keys who opens the gate and is a highly valuable ressource. It also may be the Flayed who are needed to create the monster for the Mindflayer.)

The trio receive a warm welcome at Pankot Palace and are allowed to stay for the night as guests, attending a lavish, but revolting, banquet hosted by the young Maharajah. The officials rebuff Indy's theory that the Thuggee cult is responsible for their troubles. Later that night, Indy is attacked by an assassin. After Indy kills him, he discovers a series of tunnels hidden behind a statue and sets out to explore them, overcoming a number of booby-traps.

(This could be like when Hopper, Joyce and Murray disguised themselves as Russian soldiers but was than discovered by Grigori who attacks them.

The tunnels could be both groups discovering that there is a secret russian base underground and a gate which explains why there are monsters again in Hawkins but it also be the Source, Brimborn Steel Works, where the Mindflayer is lurking underground where he has cult-like followers who makes sacrifices for him to grow bigger and bigger.

It's also like the Tunnels in season 2 who explains why the soil of Hawkins seemed to literally rot. )

The trio reach an underground temple where the Thuggees worship Kali with human sacrifice. They discover that the Thuggees now possess three of the Sankara stones and have enslaved the children to search for the last two, hidden in the palace catacombs. As Indy tries to retrieve the stones, he, Willie, and Shorty are captured. Thuggee high priest Mola Ram forces Indy to drink a potion that puts him into a trance-like state in which he mindlessly serves the cult. (It's very much like Robin and Steve who after discovering the gate are catched by the Russians and than drugged to answer their questions. But also like the Flayed who drinks the chemicals and serves the Mindflayer like a mindless cult.)

Willie is prepared for sacrifice, while Shorty is put to work in the mines with the other children. Shorty escapes and returns to the temple, where he first frees Indy and, later, the Maharajah from the effects of the potion. Indy saves Willie and retrieves the stones. After freeing the children, Indy fights a hulking overseer and leaves him to be killed by a rock crusher. (Basically Dustin saves Steve and Robin. Willie being prepared for sacrifice is kind of like El prepared for sacrifice by Billy in 3x08 but also frees Billy from the effects of the Mindflayer by making him remember his mother, a pretty blonde woman like Willie and sacrifices himself. And Hopper fights Gregori, a "hulking overseer" and kills him.)

The trio escape from the temple, pursued by Thuggees, and barely escape Mola Ram's attempt to flood them out. They are again ambushed by Mola Ram and his henchmen on a rope bridge above a crocodile-infested river. Indy cuts the bridge, causing several of the henchmen to fall to the crocodiles and leaving the survivors to hang on for their lives. As Mola Ram and Indy struggle, Indy invokes the name of Shiva, causing the stones to glow red-hot and burn through Indy's satchel. Two of them fall out; Mola Ram tries to catch the third, but burns his hand and falls from the bridge and into the river, where he, too, is eaten by the crocodiles. (This can be connected to all the kids fighting in Hawkins with the Spider Monster. But the bridge could also fit for the key in the secret base where Hopper and Gregori fights. The gruesome death of Mola Ram is similar to the gruesome death that Gregori has.)

Indy catches the stone safely and climbs up just as a company of British Indian Army riflemen, sent by the Maharajah, arrive and open fire against the Thuggees to drive them away; the surviving Thuggees are soon cornered and arrested by more soldiers. Indy, Willie, and Shorty return safely to Mayapore with the stone and the missing children. (While it may end well in the movie, we know Billy and multiple people die, the Thuggees unlike the Russians have been captured while the Russians where all able to flee before the US Army arrives and Hopper is presumed dead. Only the children in both stories are alive but are probably traumatized for life.)

All in all we can see that this movie might have had a big influence on the plot of season 3 through many characters and more. It may have some hints about possible events for Hopper in season 4 or even beyond but that's about it for. It's a nice package of comparaisons and references though.

The gnome is found in the Hawkins Community Pool where Billy is. The same Billy who obeys mindlessly the Mindflayer and sacrifices people to it. Just like the Thuggees with Kali.

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Gnome #5: Chunk

"Posed in some odd dance maneuver."

Overall plot:

"In the film, a band of kids who live in the "Goon Docks" neighborhood of Astoria, Oregon, attempt to save their homes from foreclosure and, in doing so, they discover an old treasure map that takes them on an adventure to unearth the long-lost fortune of One-Eyed Willy, a legendary 17th-century pirate. During the adventure, they are chased by a family of criminals who want the treasure for themselves."

So first, let's get this out of the way, Sean Astin who play Bob Newby, our beloved who plays a character named Mikey.

The Goonies is a 1985 American adventure comedy film co-produced and directed by Richard Donner from a screenplay by Chris Columbus, based on a story by executive producer Steven Spielberg. In the film, kids who live in the "Goon Docks" neighborhood of Astoria, Oregon, attempt to save their homes from foreclosure and, in doing so, they discover an old treasure map that takes them on an adventure to unearth the long-lost fortune of One-Eyed Willy, a legendary 17th-century pirate. During the adventure, they are chased by a family of criminals who want the treasure for themselves.

I wonder if this might hint at some Season 4 plot right here. The Hawkins gang faces the threat of Hawkins becoming a literal ghost down and might need to find something to save it. Also Willy like William, again Will is still there.

The Goonies include optimist lead Goonie Mikey Walsh, his older brother Brandon, the inventive Data, the talkative Mouth, and the overweight klutz Chunk.

Rummaging through the Walshes' attic, they come across a 1632 doubloon and an old treasure map purporting to lead to the treasure of legendary pirate "One-Eyed Willy", believed to be located somewhere nearby. Mikey considers One-Eyed Willy to be the original Goonie. (It kinda reminds me of Mike who got mad at Max in season 2 and told her they didn't need another party member. And he mentionned Will first right after him.)

The kids overpower and bind Brandon and make their way to an abandoned restaurant on the coast that coincides with the map; Brandon soon follows alongside Andy, a cheerleader with a crush on him ( there has been cheerleaders that have been reported in season 4 such as Chrissy.); and Stef, Andy's friend. The group quickly discovers the derelict restaurant is a hideout of the Fratelli crime family: Francis, Jake, and their mother. (Maybe it is both a reference to the Russians in season 3 who have a hideout under the mall who have many restaurants. Or the Lab who OBVIOUSLY does a lot of illegal activities. )

The Goonies find a tunnel in the basement and follow it (like the tunnels made by the Mindflayer in season 2), but when Chunk flags down a motorist to go to the sheriff’s station, he gets abducted by the assailants and imprisoned with their hulking, deformed, younger brother Sloth. (This is obviously like Dustin who befriends Dart in season 2, a literal Demogorgon in the making.)

The Fratellis interrogate Chunk until he reveals where the Goonies have gone, and begin pursuit. Chunk is left behind with Sloth, but befriends him. After Sloth frees both of them, Chunk calls the sheriff, and both follow the trail of the Fratellis. (This is very reminiscent of Hopper in season 1 who gets interrogated by Lab agents or Steve and Robin by the Russians.)

The Goonies evade several deadly booby traps along the tunnels, while staying ahead of the Fratellis. Finally, they reach the grotto where Willy's pirate ship, the Inferno, is anchored. (Will also has a ship, the rainbow ship he drew for Joyce, also Inferno literally means Hell just like what Hawkins has been called.)

The group discovers the ship is filled with treasure, and they start filling their pockets, but Mikey warns them not to take any on a set of scales in front of Willy, considering that to be their tribute to him. As they leave the ship, the assailants appear and strip them of their loot. They start to bind the Goonies and make them walk the plank, until Chunk arrives with Sloth and distracts the assailants long enough for the Goonies to jump overboard and swim to safety. (It's the opposite of the season 2 finale, where Dustin has to distract Dart so that the other could pass through the tunnels.)

The Fratellis proceed to grab all the treasure they can, including those on Willy's scales; this triggers another booby trap that causes the grotto to cave in. With Sloth's help, the Goonies and Fratellis barely escape.

The two groups emerge on Astoria's beach, where they reunite with the Goonies' families and the police. The Fratellis are arrested, but Chunk prevents Sloth from also being taken; he invites Sloth to live with him, which Sloth accepts. ("Unfortunately", Dart compared to Sloth probably died.)

As the kids describe their adventure to their parents, the Walshes' housekeeper, Rosalita, discovers that Mikey's marble bag is filled with gems he took from the ship and had not been seized by the Fratellis. Mikey's father triumphantly rips up the foreclosure papers, declaring they have enough money to negate the foreclosure. As the Goonies celebrate, they see the Inferno, having broken free of the grotto, sailing off on its own in the distance. (Could it be hinting at a possible happy ending for Stranger Things ?)

So Fratellis, is similar to fratello which means "brother, fellow, neighbor" which perhaps could be a reference to the Mindflayer who is kind of our neighbor since he is basically in the same places but in the Upside Down. The Mindflayer also has been paralleled to Billy and other abusive father figures. Billy who is the brother of Max. He has also been paralleled to Kali through his anger and him attacking people who hurted him or might hurt him. Could in itself The Mindflayer should be taken or seen as some sort of family figure ? Maybe him being always associated with Will The Wise especially in 2x04 or someone who has the name Will like Billy is a connection. The same Billy who also parallels Russians who just like the Fratellis have secret hideouts.

Though the Fratellis are more motivated by greed which fits Brenner, Lonnie (who tried to use his son's death to gain money.) or Russians most.

Now Willy, Willy is a captain. Maybe it could be hinting at the fact that Will has more importance to the story than we think. There's also Inferno, "Hell" which is Hawkins but also the name of the ship. And Will has a rainbow ship... Could Hawkins be the ship of Will where his adventures are taking place ?

As for the dance... well as you've seen upper in the post: it's the "Truffle Shuffle Dance". It's something that Chunk has to do before entering Mikey's house. It's similar to what Dustin do at the beginning of season 1 to the bullies when he makes his bones crack due to his medical condition, cleidocranial dysplasia.

As for where this gnome is located, it's in Weathertop where Cerebro is located which is fitting since Dustin has a lot of Goonies as inspiration for his character.

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Gnome #6: Elvis

"He's not dead!"

"Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), also known simply as Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century. His energized interpretations of songs and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a singularly potent mix of influences across color lines during a transformative era in race relations, led him to both great success and initial controversy." - Wikipedia.

It is a lot known that people in the 80's thought that Elvis Presley was still alive due to his status and the aura he had as a celebrity. However, no matter how appealing this myth may be, he died of an excessive usage of prescription drugs which reminds me of Nancy who said she thought Tom was on drugs when he fired her and Jonathan while he an the Flayed were drinking chemicals. He also died in 1977, the same year "Heroes" by David Bowie came out which is a song that was used two times when we thought a character died when he was actually alive which are Will and Hopper. Will and Hopper both have a lot of rock in their Spotify playlist.

Also, I personally think that Steve has kind of an Elvis Presley aura to him especially in season 1. After all, Steve has a nickname "King Steve" and Elvis Presley is often nicknamed "The King" and both were popular with girls.

Fun fact: Dacre Montgomery who plays Billy who literally becomes the new "King" of Hawkins will play in the biographical music drama "Elvis" about Elvis Presley where he will play a character called "Steve Binder".

Also actor David Harbour also got married with singer Lily Allen by Elvis in Las Vegas.

It's also found hidden behind bushes near the Public Library. Maybe indicating that Elvis is still out there in the world and hiding.

Which also may be a reference to Brenner who has a similar haircut but also about the novel "Suspicious Minds", a prequel of ST taking place in the Lab when Brenner was doing his sinister experiments which is the same title as one of the songs of Elvis. Like Elvis, Brenner is still out there, hiding in Hawkins.

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Gnome #7: Jack

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull gnome."

Again another reference to Shining. So what you are seeing here is a proverb, it means: "It means that without time off from work, a person becomes both bored and boring."

In Shining, it represents Jack's slow descent into madness. But it could be a reference to Joyce, Jonathan and Nancy who all work their asses off and don't take a lot of time for themselves and so don't have the time to explore anything else than work which also cause for them not to be there when Will got kidnapped. It may also represent Jonathan's words to Nancy in season 1 where he "called out" the boring life she will have and that she will live like her parents so in this case the proverb becomes about societal norms.

Mike just like Jack is an aspiring writer, Mike just like other members of his family falls into these societal norms that are expected like work and overworking in this instance which makes them boring in the eyes of people like Jonathan. "No play" may also reference D&D which Mike started to ignore in season 3 and worried more pointless and superficial things.

Again, hope it doesn't foreshadow anything for these two characters.

This gnome is found in the Library which is fitting considering Jack wants to be a writer.

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Gnome #8: Flynn (Flynn Rider from "Tangled" (2010))

"Looks like he rides well."

Overall plot of Tangled (2010):

"The film tells the story of Rapunzel, a lost, young princess with magical long blonde hair who yearns to leave her secluded tower. Against her abusive foster mother's wishes who kidnappee her when she was young, she accepts the aid of an intruder to take her out into the world which she has never seen."

This story is literally what the boys was arguing about at the end of season 1.

1)The lost knight...

Flynn Rider is actually the son of a king and queen that were from a kingdom that got destroyed by a powerful opal. He was evacuated and placed in an orphanage. He made his reputation as thief.

So Mike and El both parallels this guy, well Mike is a palladin in D&D and he is the son of a wealthy family so he is basically a night. El however also lost her parents like him and has more attributes of a knight in season 1 than Mike.

Flynn is arrogant, which Mike can be a bit sometimes but the both of them can be extremely courageous and care a lot about the people they care about though they are not very strong, nor athletic. Maybe Flynn a bit more.

Also fun coincidence Flynn = Finn, the name of the actor who plays Mike. (almost the same name).

Both him and El run into each other in the woods. Just like Flynn who discover Rapunzel while trying to enter Rapunzel's tower but is knocked out by her who is none other than the...

2)The proud princess...

Well first Rapunzel = Eleven. Both of these girls have magical powers and are used by an abusive and evil parental figure who needs them for their own interest, Mother Gothel used the powers of Rapunzel to stay young forever (like an addiction, a drug) and Martin Brenner aka "Papa". They are both locked away somewhere. El in the lab and Rapunzel in the tower which they both seeked to escape out of. Both believed that these parental figures loved them while it was not true. El also has long blond hair in season 1 like Rapunzel. And both quickly form a relationship with a boy they just met. Both don't know who their real parents are and wants to find them. While Rapunzel has long blonde hair, El had a shaved head.

Also in season 2, El is locked in a cabin in the woods because of Hopper because he believe it is not safe out there which is exactly what Mother Gothel tells Rapunzel. Just like her El disobeys and seeks to discover who her true parents are.

Rapunzel seeks to know what are those floating lights that always appear on her birthday, it is actually her parents who are the king and queen of a kingdom not so far away that do that every year hoping one day she will come back to her. She is a "lost princess". It is very similar to Terry Ives who was communicating through the lights to El.

Rapunzel's power comes out of something that is also connected to something famous in ST.

3) Weird flowers in the cave...

Rapunzel's power come from a flower called "Sundrop flower". = Sunflower which is said by Terry Ives.

This flower can pretty much heal anything including mortal wounds. The Queen got pregnant with Rapunzel but was also terribly sick so she took this flower to heal herself and while doing so, Rapunzel got this ability.

This is very reminiscent of Terry Ives who was pregnant with El and took part in the MKUltra experiences that gave her these powers including certain drugs. She is also "ill" in a way as she is now stuck in a loop. At least from what we saw.

But Rapunzel also parallels another character.

Will Byers. Will could communicate through lights to his mother, just like the parents of Rapunzel and Terry Ives.

The weird flowers could be referencing the sort of vines that entered inside of him in the Upside Down which gave him his "now-memories".

Both had abusive parental figure that would lock them somewhere for whatever reason. (Lonnie with Will in his trunk.)

(Also Hopper may have tried to separate Mike and El but he wasn't like what a Lonnie or Brenner would have been. This is why yes, the situation in season 2 parallels but Hopper truly wished good for El while Brenner and Mother Gothel didn't care for any of these two.)

Same is for Lonnie, he doesn't care about Will.

Since Will is a cleric, both him and Rapunzel have the same time of power. Powers that El doesn't have:

To heal the sick and injured

To revive the dead

To work as a shield

Given this story, it may hint at the fact that Brenner and Lonnie may try to take El and Will for their own greed and purposes.

Since Rapunzel parallels both Will and El, you know what that means for Flynn who parallels Mike.

Flynn in the movie is stabbed by Mother Gothel and dies before cutting the hair of Rapunzel killing Mother Gothel in the process. Rapunzel mourns him and one of his tears heal him.

If Flynn parallels Mike, than something bad could happen to him. If Will does have powers and has feelings for Mike, a supposed death may reveal his powers.

And if he has the same powers as his cleric role, than he could heal those who get hurt or even bring the dead back to life.

If Lonnie sees Mike around Will, given he is homophobic. He may try to hurt him so that he doesn't go near Will again which could lead to him being in grave danger.

Of course all of that is just speculation.

This gnome was found on the parking lot of Starcourt where El decided to break up with Mike and we saw Will smiling in the background.

Also I don't know but... "Looks like he rides well", I mean there's certain undertones to that which are... I don't know how to process that but from what you've just read, Mike apparently rides well. I mean I have nothing against gay sex jokes but still...

Even if it's unintentional, it's how it'll sound on the internet.

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Gnome #9: David

"At 399, he's the oldest gnome around."

So this gnome was already in the first ST official mobile game. And this reminds me a lot of The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit but also and of course; Dungeons & Dragons.

The World of David the Gnome, originally titled David, el Gnomo (also known as David, the Gnome), is a Spanish animated television series based on the children's book The Secret Book of Gnomes, by the Dutch author Wil Huygen and illustrator Rien Poortvliet. The series was originally created in Spain by BRB Internacional (who were also responsible for the Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds franchise (Like Dart in season 2 and Mike, Lucas and Dustin where very much like the Three Musketeers in season 1.) and other cartoons such as Bobobobs and Around the World with Willy Fog)

The series presents the gnomes as a kind species, of 15 centimetres (6 inches) of height, and between 250 and 300 grams (8 and 10 ounces) of weight depending on gnome body mass. According to their habitat, different types of gnomes are distinguished: the ones of the forest, the ones of the garden, the ones of the farm, the ones of the house, the ones of the dunes, those of Siberia (David = David Harbour = Hopper = Hopper is in Russia), and nomadic "gypsy" gnomes (commonly looked down upon by other gnomes). A gnome's lifespan is usually 400 years, though there is one example of a couple in the Balkans living 550 years.

Gnomes such as the main characters live in pairs in comfortable caves or holes under trees [kinda like Hobbits] (in their case in the company of a pair of mice and a cricket). Their diet is mostly vegetarian. They are helped by the animals of the forest (kinda like Radagast who is the password to Castle Byers who is located in the woods) when travelling long distances or when they need to arrive quickly at a specific location. Gnomes work in various ways to repair the damage inevitably caused by humans. They also have the power of telepathy and mind control. (kinda like El or the Mindflayer, or even Galadriel in The Lord Of The Rings.)

Their main enemies are the trolls, malevolent and clumsy creatures who always make trouble for the other inhabitants of the forest, as well as gnome poachers. They have supernatural powers that are really strong but they have a weakness, if the sunlight gets on them, they turn to stone.(could be referencing all the Upside Down creatures who don't like sunlight and everything hot.) [Also very much like the Hobbit.] Also one of the trolls was voiced by someone who had the name Henderson, like Dustin Henderson. I also think it references a comic where some bullies attack Will and Mike calls them trolls.

Here are the most important characters:

David is a gnome of the forest. David is 399 years old, making him the oldest gnome around (since gnomes live no more than 400 years exactly, except Franklin, the gnome from the west, who lived 550 years), although he possesses exceptional constitution. David is a doctor, and he uses his knowledge of many fields, such as hypnosis and acupuncture, to heal his patients, usually animals, such as his faithful friend Swift the fox, or other gnomes. David also befriends a bird that, when he whistles, immediately arrives to quickly transport him to wherever necessary. For longer trips, he sometimes travels in a basket attached to the neck of the bird. (It may be a reference to clerics who are known to heal their allies and travelling with birds reminds me of Gandald who sometimes has the help of Eagles in some stories.)

Paul is David's twin brother. Not only does Paul have a normal moustache in contrast to David's handlebar moustache but his jumper is a darker shade of blue, he has a bigger nose, his gnome hat is dark blue whereas David's is red, and his trousers and boots are an inverse of David's: David's trousers are brown and his boots are beige, while Paul wears beige trousers and dark boots. (Of course this is a reference to Will and El who have been compared a lot of times throughout the show and who a lot of people in the fandom consider them siblings and twins, Will has a lot of Red in his wardrobe while El has a lot of blue.)

This gnome was found in a secret Russian base underground in Weathertop where Dustin discovers the Russian transmission coming from their main base located under the mall like a cave (like where gnome lives.). There are also gnomes in Siberia and having the name David, the name of Hopper's actor creates a connection since right now Hopper is in Russia. It may also be a nod to the group of kids who are all little gnomes running around the forest with their magical powers.

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Gnome #10: Baskin

"Robin's favorite gnome."

Now this is a funny one.

This is a reference to the famous Baskin-Robbins which is a chain of ice cream restaurants that did special ice creams for Season 3 because of Scoops Ahoy. It is Robin's favorite gnome because they literally share the same name.

Baskin could also be a reference to the film of the same name where Five police officers, Remzi, Arda, Yavuz, Apo, and Seyfi, are dining at a restaurant, during which they have a discussion. Their meal is interrupted when they receive a distress call from Inceagac, a town known for being the focus of strange rumors. During the trip Seyfi has a terrifying vision of a bloody figure and accidentally drives their van into the water. Stranded, the officers eventually make their way to Inceagac, where they find themselves in an abandoned building (back in the Ottoman days, this used to be a police station), captured by cult members and are subjected to a number of increasingly bizarre and surreal scenarios. In the end, they realize they have all inadvertently wandered into Hell.

It has alot of similiraties with stories like Silent Hills or Hellraiser, two stories that inspired Stranger Things especially Hellraiser for Stranger Things 4. And it fully embraces the satanic imagery and themes which is something we are going to see with the satanic panic and also has the theme of time, dreams and visions.

We'll see how much season 4 decides to use those sort of elements in the show.

Well this gnome is easy to find. It's in the Scoops Ahoy parlor next to Robin. USS Butterscotch seems to be very popular there

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Gnomes 11 - 20 coming soon.

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batmannotes · 4 years

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DC SHOWCASE

BATMAN: DEATH IN THE FAMILY

WARNER BROS. HOME ENTERTAINMENT AND DC PRESENT COMPILATION OF 2019-2020 ANIMATED SHORTS

COMING OCTOBER 13, 2020 TO BLU-RAY™ & DIGITAL

NEW COLLECTION INCLUDES ACCLAIMED TITLES SGT. ROCK, ADAM STRANGE, DEATH AND THE PHANTOM STRANGER

BURBANK, CA (July 30, 2020) – Five fascinating tales from the iconic DC canon, including the first interactive film presentation in Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (WBHE) history, come to animated life in DC Showcase – Batman: Death in the Family. Produced by Warner Bros. Animation and DC, the anthology of 2019-2020 animated shorts arrives from WBHE on Blu-ray and Digital starting October 13, 2020.

Anchoring the compilation of shorts is Batman: Death in the Family, WBHE’s first-ever venture into interactive storytelling that allows fans to choose where the story goes through an innovative navigation guided by the viewer’s remote control. Central to the extended-length short is an adaptation of “Batman: A Death in the Family,” the 1988 landmark DC event where fans voted by telephone to determine the story’s ending.

Inspired by characters and stories from DC’s robust portfolio, the 2019-2020 series of shorts – which have been individually included on DC Universe Movies releases since Summer 2019 – include; Sgt. Rock, Adam Strange, Death and The Phantom Stranger.

DC Showcase – Batman: Death in the Family will be available on Blu-ray (USA $24.98 SRP) and Digital (19.99 SRP). The Blu-ray features a Blu-ray disc with all of the shorts in hi-definition, including the fully-interactive, extended-length Batman: Death in the Family, plus a digital version of the four other 2019-2020 DC Showcase shorts. The Digital distribution features the Batman: Death in the Family extended-length short in a non-interactive format (pre-assembled version of the story, entitled Under the Red Hood: Reloaded), along with the other four 2019-2020 DC Showcase shorts, and three other non-interactive versions of the Batman: Death in the Family (entitled Jason Todd’s Rebellion, Robin’s Revenge and Red Hood’s Reckoning) as bonus features (Note: not all Digital retailers offer bonus features with purchase). The Blu-ray also offers approximately five minutes of additional content within the Batman: Death in the Family story that is not included in the Digital version.

Produced, directed and written by Brandon Vietti, Batman: Death in the Family offers an inventive take on the long-demanded story. In the new animated presentation, the infamous murder of Batman protégé Jason Todd will be undone, and the destinies of Batman, Robin and The Joker will play out in shocking new ways as viewers make multiple choices to control the story. And while Batman: Under the Red Hood provides a baseline, the story also branches in new directions and features several characters previously unseen in the original film. Bruce Greenwood (The Resident, Star Trek, iRobot), Vincent Martella (Phineas and Ferb) and John DiMaggio (Futurama, Adventure Time) reprise their Batman: Under The Red Hood roles of Batman, young Jason Todd and The Joker, respectively. Other featured voices are Zehra Fazal (Young Justice) as Talia al Ghul and Gary Cole (Veep) as Two-Face and James Gordon.

“Batman: Death in the Family is essentially a comic book come to life,” says Vietti, whose DC Universe Movies directing credits include Batman: Under the Red Hood and Superman: Doomsday, and he is co-creator and co-executive producer of the popular Young Justice animated television series. “We’ve paid homage to the 1988 interactive experience of DC’s ‘A Death in the Family’ comics release by giving fans a unique opportunity to craft their own story through a branching tool that can lead in multiple directions. The viewer gets to choose these characters’ paths, and each choice paves an alternate future for all of the characters and, ultimately, the story.”

The interactive Blu-ray presentation offers many different ways for viewers to tell the Batman: Death in the Family story, with numerous twists and turns in the middle, and several possible endings. The choices along the way put greater weight on the viewers’ decisions and result in even stronger stories. Viewers can also choose to allow the story to tell itself, as there is an option to let the Blu-ray decide its own path.

Packed with Easter Eggs, the centerpiece short’s story – with its foundation grounded in the original “Batman: A Death in the Family” comic run, and the acclaimed Batman: Under the Red Hood animated film – balances a number of integral themes within its entertainment, including fatherhood, mental health, death, rebirth, revenge and redemption. Along the route, viewers encounter new, surprising looks at some classic DC characters.

“From the very first navigation card, we wanted to give the audience an impression of what they’re getting into, but then also give them something unexpected – maybe even something they’ll regret, so they have to think twice about every future choice they make,” Vietti explains. “Branched storytelling has to be stronger than just the gimmick of the choices – it has to be rewarding and offer new and worthwhile insights into the characters. It needs to involve you, and keep you searching for the next twist. So we sought to subvert expectations and do something very different.”

Beyond Batman: Death in the Family, the additional four shorts on Blu-ray & Digital are:

Originally attached to Batman: Hush, Sgt. Rock is executive produced and directed by Bruce Timm (Batman: The Animated Series) from a script by award-winning comics writers Louise Simonson & Walter Simonson and Tim Sheridan (Superman: Man of Tomorrow, Reign of the Supermen). The original tale finds battle-weary Sgt. Rock thinking he has seen everything that World War II can dish out. But he is in for the surprise of his life when he is assigned to lead a company consisting of legendary monsters into battle against an unstoppable platoon of Nazi zombies. Karl Urban (Star Trek & Lord of the Rings film franchises) provides the voice of Sgt. Rock. Also voicing characters in Sgt. Rock are Keith Ferguson, William Salyers and Audrey Wasilewski.

Inspired by Neil Gaiman’s “The Sandman,” Death is produced & directed by Sam Liu (Superman: Red Son, The Death of Superman) and written by J.M. DeMatteis (Batman: Bad Blood). In the story, Vincent, an artist with unresolved inner demons, meets a mysterious girl who helps him come to terms with his creative legacy … and eventual death. Leonard Nam (Westworld) provides the voice of Vincent, and Jamie Chung (The Gifted, Big Hero 6) is the voice of Death. The cast includes Darin De Paul, Keith Szarabajka and Kari Wahlgren. Death was originally included with Wonder Woman: Bloodlines.

Attached as a bonus feature on the release of Superman: Red Son, The Phantom Stranger has Bruce Timm (Batman: The Killing Joke) at the helm as executive producer & director, and the short is written by Ernie Altbacker (Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, Batman: Hush). Set in the 1970s, the short find the enigmatic DC mystery man simultaneously playing both omniscient narrator and active character in a story of supernatural comeuppance for evil doers. Peter Serafinowicz (The Tick) gives voice to The Phantom Stranger, and Michael Rosenbaum (Smallville, Impastor) provides the voice of Seth. The Phantom Stranger also features the voices of Natalie Lander, Grey Griffin and Roger Craig Smith.

Adam Strange is produced and directed by Butch Lukic (Superman: Man of Tomorrow), who also conceived the original story – which is written by J.M. DeMatteis (Deathstroke: Knights & Dragons, Constantine: City of Demons). The short was initially attached to Justice League Dark: Apokolips War. On a rugged asteroid mining colony, few of the toiling workers are aware that their town drunk was ever anything but an interplanetary derelict. But when the miners open a fissure into the home of a horde of deadly alien insects, his true identity is exposed. He is space adventurer Adam Strange, whose heroic backstory is played out in flashbacks as he struggles to save the very people who have scorned him for so long. Charlie Weber (How To Get Away with Murder) provides the voice of Adam Strange, alongside with Roger R. Cross, Kimberly Brooks, Ray Chase and Fred Tatasciore.

All five new DC Showcase shorts credits include Jim Krieg (Batman: Gotham by Gaslight) as co-producer and Amy McKenna (Wonder Woman: Bloodlines) as producer. Sam Register is executive producer.

Initially launched in 2010, DC Showcase was originally comprised of four animated shorts produced by Bruce Timm and directed by Joaquim Dos Santos: The Spectre (released on 2/23/2010), Jonah Hex (7/27/2010), Green Arrow (9/28/2010) and Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam (11/9/2010). An additional short, Catwoman (10/18/2011), was attached the following year to the release of Batman: Year One, and was directed by Lauren Montgomery (Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths) and executive produced by Bruce Timm. Screenwriters on the initial quintet were Steve Niles (The Spectre), Joe Lansdale (Jonah Hex), Greg Weisman (Green Arrow), Michael Jelenic (Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam) and Paul Dini (Catwoman).

“Interactive storytelling offers an entirely new dimension of entertainment for DC animated movie fans, and an exciting look into potential titles for the future,” said Mary Ellen Thomas, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Senior Vice President, Originals, Animation and Family Marketing. “Brandon Vietti has crafted a uniquely involving, multi-tiered approach to captivating the audience with both popular story devices and some very unexpected plot twists.”

DC Showcase – Batman: Death in the Family Special Features – Blu-ray

Audio Commentaries – Commentary tracks on Sgt. Rock, Adam Strange, Death and The Phantom Stranger, plus one of the linear “Death in the Family” shorts (Under the Red Hood: Reloaded), by DC Daily hosts Amy Dallen and Hector Navarro.

DC Showcase – Batman: Death in the Family Special Features – Digital

Three non-interactive versions of the Batman: Death in the Family – entitled Jason Todd’s Rebellion, Robin’s Revenge and Red Hood’s Reckoning. (Note: not all Digital retailers offer bonus features with purchase).

youtube

Running Time: 96 minutes (151 minutes for interactive storylines)

Preorder now at Amazon.

#batman #news #notes

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bm2ab · 3 years

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Arrivals & Departures 21 August 1920 – 20 April 1996 Christopher Robin Milne

Christopher Robin Milne was an English author and bookseller and the only child of author A. A. Milne. As a child, he was the basis of the character Christopher Robin in his father's Winnie-the-Pooh stories and in two books of poems.

Christopher Robin Milne was born at 11 Mallord Street, Chelsea, London, on 21 August 1920, to author Alan Alexander Milne and Daphne (née de Sélincourt) Milne. Milne speculated that he was an only child because "he had been a long time coming." From an early age, Milne was cared for by his nanny Olive Brockwell, until May 1930, when he entered boarding school. Milne called her Nou, and stated "Apart from her fortnight's holiday every September, we had not been out of each other's sight for more than a few hours at a time", and "we lived together in a large nursery on the top floor."

Milne's father explained that Rosemary was the intended name for their first born, if a girl. Realizing it was going to be a boy, he decided on Billy, but without the intention of actually christening him William. Instead, each parent chose a name, hence his legal name Christopher Robin. He was referred to within the family as Billy Moon, a combination of his nickname and his childhood mispronunciation of Milne. From 1929 onwards, he would be referred to simply as Christopher, and he later stated it was "The only name I feel to be really mine.

At his first birthday on 21 August 1921, Milne received an Alpha Farnell teddy bear, which he later named Edward. Eeyore was a Christmas present in 1921 and Piglet arrived undated. Edward, along with a real Canadian black bear named Winnipeg that Milne saw at London Zoo, eventually became the inspiration for the Winnie-the-Pooh character.

Milne spoke self-deprecatingly of his own intellect, "I may have been on the dim side", or "not very bright". He also described himself as being "good with his hands", and possessing a Meccano set. His self-descriptions included "girlish", since he had long hair and wore "girlish clothes", and being "very shy and 'un-self-possessed'".

An early childhood friend was Anne Darlington, also an only child, who as Milne described it, was for his parents "the Rosemary that I wasn't." Anne Darlington had a toy monkey, Jumbo, as dear to her as Pooh was to Christopher. Several poems by Milne, and several illustrations by E. H. Shepard, feature Anne and Christopher, notably "Buttercup Days", in which their relative hair colours (brown and golden blond) and their mutual affection is noted (the illustration to this latter poem, from Now We Are Six, also features the cottage at Cotchford Farm). To Alan and Daphne Milne, Anne was and remained to her death the Rosemary that Christopher wasn't, and Daphne long held fond hopes that Anne and Christopher would marry.

In 1925, Milne's father bought Cotchford Farm, near the Ashdown Forest in East Sussex. Though still living in London, the family would spend weekends, Easter, and summer holidays there. As Milne described it, "So there we were in 1925 with a cottage, a little bit of garden, a lot of jungle, two fields, a river, and then all the green, hilly countryside beyond, meadows and woods, waiting to be explored." The place became the inspiration for fiction, with Milne stating, "Gill's Lap that inspired Galleon's Lap, the group of pine trees on the other side of the main road that became the Six Pine Trees, the bridge over the river at Posingford that became Pooh-sticks Bridge," and a nearby "ancient walnut tree" became Pooh's House. His toys, Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet, plus two invented characters, Owl and Rabbit, came to life through Milne and his mother, to the point where his father could write stories about them. Kanga, Roo, and Tigger were later presents from his parents.

Of this time, Milne states, "I loved my Nanny, I loved Cotchford. I also quite liked being Christopher Robin and being famous."

When his nanny departed when he was age 9, Milne's relationship with his father grew. As he put it, "For nearly ten years I had clung to Nanny. For nearly ten more years I was to cling to him, adoring him as I had adored Nanny, so that he too became almost a part of me ..."

When Milne eventually wrote his memoirs, he dedicated them to Olive Brockwell, "Alice to millions, but Nou to me"

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professorprophetess · 5 years

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Analysis

Why “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” worked where other video game themed movies fell short”

Jumanii: Welcome to the Jungle was not met with any sort of optimism whenever the sequel to the beloved Robin Williams movie was announced following the actor’s death. Yet despite all misgivings this movie turned out to be better than one might expect it to be, even standing its own and paying many moments of homage to the prior film. It managed to be a video game movie that actually worked, and that mostly comes from how it embraced its concept whereas other game movies tend to try too hard to take those half-real incoherences out of the equation and it more often than not weakens what is being attempted. In contrast I’ll be referencing these other movies: Spy Kids 3: Game Over and Ready Player One as well to compare and contrast how well each films handles their game elements.

First a few definition of terms might help those who are not as versed in the terminology as I am or as other game scholars might be. Whenever I say Incoherence, I am of course referencing Jesper Juul’s Half-Real. In it, these things are basically those parts of video games that are non-diagetic but are part of gameplay. The UI, the menus, the rules, the loading screens, the world maps, etc. It’s one of those reasons straight video game adaptations have such a hard time because a large part of what is going on with the game is those non-diagetic elements (Juul 121-162). I may also refer to certain games as MMO, MMORPG or just RPGs and while I know many know what those abbreviations stand for, I’ll spell them out right now. An MMORPG is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game whereas MMO is just to refer to any large game that is online. RPG is simply a Role Playing Game. Any game that has classes to choose from and the party system are generally RPGs. There are other types of abbreviations for games but for the games being discusses, these are the three most pertinent. The final abbreviation is VR or Virtual Reality.

I will start with the oldest film of the three: Spy Kids 3: Game Over. Its central conceit is child spy Junie Cortez had retired from spy work because he was feeling inadequate and just wanted to do something else with his life. Then the maker of a new VR MMO game turned out to secretly be an evil mastermind. They had sent another spy kid into the game but her mind had been trapped by him somewhere in it. Since the other spy kid is his older sister Carmen, Junie has no choice but to enter the game world and go after his sister and save the world while he was at it. In the end, the villain is stopped by Junie and then the virtual monsters somehow end up in the real world with the climax being that the mecha monsters are stopped by Junie and his family (Spy Kids 3). As far as video game adaptation movies go, this and the other films don’t technically count since the games in their plots aren’t real. However, Spy Kids 3 doesn’t also seem all that concerned as to how its central game’s rules work. Sometimes they’ll throw in the gaming concept of mini-games to advance —the robot fights, the racing game, the duel, I can only think of a few times where they faced monsters. Only three times did their life points count—the robot fight, the duel, and when the guy got blown up—. Emails are mentioned but it’s never shown how they exchange them aside from an awkward mimed handoff. Then there is the power up the bad guy gives Junie’s Grandpa AKA his old friend. These items, and the few elements of game play rules are there but they’re not really anything other than a plot point here or a beat there. They’re not central to how the plot is resolved nor how the story is playing out beyond a few bumps in their path to the climax. In fact the film version of incoherence AKA breaking the fourth wall plays more of a role with the climax as the 3-D glasses are used to see the monsters once they get into the real world. They’re not called those in the film but it is very clear with how they look that they are 3D glasses. Still, while it doesn’t resist the incoherences, it merely accepts them as a fact of a game movie and moves on (Juul 121-162, Spy Kids 3).

The next film I’ll look at is Ready Player One. Unlike Spy Kids 3, Ready Player One’s VR world isn’t actually an MMO. The OASIS is actually an internet interface that has many gameified elements to it (Ready Player One). In this film, the inventor of the OASIS died without any heirs about ten years before the start of the main plot and then added an extra gameified element to the OASIS. He left behind an Easter Egg Hunt for the whole of the OASIS’s user base to find. Winner takes the whole OASIS for themselves. This set off a bunch of people pouring over the things he loved in his life to see what kind of Easter eggs he hid to find the clues to get to that final prize. The hero, Wade, is a major Halliday—the OASIS creator—fanboy and finally manages to crack the code to get through the first challenge. From there, the race is on against his fellow gamers and Sorento the menacing head of a company that—should they get control—would make the VR world of the OASIS a pop-up filled nightmare. For the most part the rules of the game are not as important as the rules of the real world, as Sorento being the generic corporate villain that he is uses in game data to find the offline ID’s of the leaderboard to threaten them or, in one case, kills Wade’s not-all-that-lamented Aunt and Uncle as well as a bunch of innocent people who also lived in his trailer house stack (Ready Player One). Item inventories and passwords play a large role in the movie’s outcome as well as an extra life and the rules of the various mini games and challenges the players go through, but beyond that, I wouldn’t say the incoherences are ever used to anyone’s advantage beyond a plot device moment with that extra life Wade got from the Archivist (who turned out not to be just an NPC but an actual user avatar after all: the ex-best friend of Halliday) (Juul 121-162, Ready Player One). Ready Player One was far more concerned with pop-culture references than it was anything else. This doesn’t detract from things but it is what it is.The gameified OASIS of the movie with its customizable avatars is interesting but doesn’t seem particularly efficient for anyone just trying to use the internet for data sharing or business. In fact it seems like it has a lot of wasted features to look cool instead of be functional. If it were a straight up VR MMO, that would make sense but here it creates more issues. Ultimately, the incoherences are there but not super important more than item collection—the keys and Wade’s 1-Up—,the moment where they steal Sorento’s password, and the chase scene at the end where the real-world jerking about it making it hard for Wade to get to his goal. Never once do they seem to be anything anyone—except the bad guys—can take advantage of and even then it was more by accident than design (Juul 121-162, Ready Player One).

I saved Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle for last. In the original film, Jumanji was just a board game. A possessed board game but a board game none-the-less. Yet, its rules affected the whole plot of that first film. That first film ends with two of its Protagonists, Allan Parrish and Sarah Williams, throwing it into a river for it to get washed away in the year 1969 (after having been adults in 1995 for most of the film’s plot). There is a post credit scene where two girls speaking French come across it on a beach (Jumanji). Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle opens with a man jogging along a beach and finding the game in the year 1996, one year after a majority of the plot of Jumanji took place. He picks it up, takes it home, and tosses it on his sleeping teenage son, Alex, who remarks “who even plays board games anymore?” While he plays his vaguely Atari 2600-esque console, the game magically changes into a cartridge version of Jumanji. Alex picks it up and puts it in. The next that is seen is a flash of green light. The movie jumps ahead and now it’s 2017. The movie introduces our four new teenage protagonists as four types of teenagers: the wimpy nerd, the lazy too-cool-for-school jock, the introverted awkward girl, and the self-absorbed, selfie-obsessed, popular, pretty girl. Also, the father of the Alex is re-introduced and the consequences of his disappearance have made him a wary, angry man. The four kids all get in trouble and land in detention; pretty girl Beth for being on the phone in class, Awkward girl Martha for mouthing off, and the boys Nerdy Spencer and Jock Anthony “Fridge” are in trouble because Spencer helped Fridge cheat on his homework. They find the old-quasi Atari console with its very Nintendo looking controllers and decide to turn it on to play Jumanji. It is shown to look like it’s an old school RPG for four players that can each choose from different characters to play. After pressing start, they all get sucked into the game and become their characters. Spencer becoming the handsome Dr. Bravestone, Fridge becoming the comically small “Mouse” Finnbar, Martha becoming the sexy Ruby Roundhouse, and Beth becoming the male Dr. Shelly Oberon (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle). The first instance of game incoherence being part of the actual plot is when they get into the game and Beth dies but comes back because the extra life system. They meet a helpful—to a point—NPC named Nigel who fills them in (enabling a flashback cutscene) which is even explained by Spencer to the others. He gives them the item they need to finish the game as well as warnings about the bad guy they’re running from/racing to the center of Jumanji and drives off repeating his voice lines. A nice touch, as after they’re done with any sort of major speaking, NPCs do repeatedly say the same thing due to programming (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Juul 121-162). The next incoherence is ability UIs that can be displayed by pressing their names on their outfits, and that Bethany being the character who is the cartographer is the only one who can use the map-item. Along the way, Fridge’s back-pack is an inventory for weapons that shouldn’t reasonably fit in it and the group has special attacks they can activate once conditions are met, like Martha using Ruby’s fighting skills or Spencer using Bravestone’s weapons(Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Juul 121-162). Other touches where the game incoherences are woven into the plot are when NPC’s only talk to Spencer’s Bravestone, shortcuts across the whole world from the bazaar to the jungle house of Allan Parrish, and the NPC guardsmen whom Martha has to distract with a radio that conveniently is there for here to use her character’s dance fighting with. Then there is the scene where Alex, who has been in the game since 1996, is almost game-overed permanently but Beth transfers an extra life to him. Finally, there is the climax of the film where Martha as Ruby uses one of her extra lives to get to the top of the giant Jaguar mountain where the stone needs to go to win Jumanji, because characters respawn in this world by dropping from the sky. She purposefully uses her character’s weakness to snakes to get to the sky and she slaps the stone into Spencer’s hand so he can end the game(Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Juul 121-162). This leads to them winning once he yells Jumanji and the kids are free to go. They leave school and see that Alex was sent back to 1996 and his family’s house is no longer the dilapidated mess but is now warm and full of life. The kids move on and the movie ends with them at school the next day smashing the console with a bowling ball and the credits roll. At no point were the rules of the game they were in ever ignored and as mentioned the characters of the movie were even able to use those rules to their advantage whether it be getting through the world faster via a shortcut or using how the characters respawn to get around the bad guy. It wove these in well and that is why, of the three films here, it implemented its game aspects the best. There were still moments where the movie deviated—since we would see what the villain was up-to from time to time—but otherwise it stuck to keeping the rules consistent (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Juul 121-162).

Jumanji: Weclome to the Jungle was a film I had very low expectations for and not only did it exceed those expectations, it very cleverly used parts of gaming that other films ignore —unless they have to deal with them—to their full advantage for the plot line. Spy Kids 3 and Ready Player One didn’t ignore these aspects per-say but they did not fully embrace them as Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle did. By doing things the way they did, the writers of Jumanji were able to side-step a lot of the problems movies with video games in them could run into while attempting to make an engaging video game based narrative. The other two films attempted this same tactic but with varying levels of success. Video games are hard to adapt, and that is just a consequence of their inherent interactive status. The player’s interactivity affects how the game is to them. Adaptations take this out and lose part of the game. What Jumanji ultimately did that the others didn’t was make it feel like this was a game someone could play and showed how it would be played. The others did not. That was why they fell short.

Sources:

Jumanji. Directed by Joe Jonhston, performances by Robin Williams, Kirsten Dunst, Bonnie Hunt, and Bradley Pierce, TriStar Pictures, 1995.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. Directed by Jake Kasdan, performances by Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart , and Jack Black, Sony Pictures, 2017.

Juul, Jesper. Half-Real. MIT Press, 2005. pg 121-162.

Ready Player One. Directed by Stephen Spielberg, performances by Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, and Ben Mendelsohn, Warner Bros, 2018.

Spy Kids 3: Game Over. Directed by Robert Rodriguez, performances by Daryl Sabara, Alexa PenaVega, and Antonio Banderas, Dimension Studios, 2003.

#academic paper #jumanji 2017 #jumanji #spy kids 3 #ready player one

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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WandaVision: What Wanda’s Kids Mean for the Future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

https://ift.tt/3sLardk

This article contains WANDAVISION Episode 3 spoilers, and potential spoilers for future episodes, the wider MCU, and Marvel Comics.

I don’t think I’m overstepping when I say that WandaVision is a weird show. It’s intentionally cryptic and there’s a lot going on. It focuses on two characters who have been in several Marvel movies but never truly got the spotlight. Even their romantic relationship in those movies has come off as forced to viewers at times. For comic fans, it’s an easier pill to swallow because it’s something familiar from the comics.

In the comics, the story of Vision and Scarlet Witch was that of two heroes with complicated backstories who found each other, fell in love, and lived happily ever after…until realizing that the point of serialized comics is to keep going and going. Soon their happily ever after became a horror story that destroyed their spirits and that damage lingers to this day.

Scarlet Witch’s history of triumph turning to torment is alive and well in WandaVision episode 3 as she goes through a full-on pregnancy in merely a day. The concept of Wanda having kids with Vision comes from the comics, and it’s one of the big red flags (scarlet flags?) in their immediate future. While things might end up all right down the line with little Billy and Tommy, we’re about see some dark stuff go down with their parents.

Even getting past the fact that Vision should absolutely be dead and the pregnancy only took about 24 hours, Wanda’s pregnancy should be raising questions due to Vision’s general biology. Vision may be capable of all kinds of feats, but he’s not really a human being and shouldn’t be able to put a bun in the oven. He’s just a pile of synthetic flesh grafted onto vibranium with an Infinity Stone on his forehead and the copied personality of a dead butler.

In the comics, Vision’s origins were just as convoluted. Also a “synthezoid,” the comics version of Vision was a special kind of high tech that was so advanced that he was nearly human in design. Mentally and emotionally, he was human enough, although his brain was copied from the personality of Wonder Man (a character whose only MCU appearance is movie posters in a Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 deleted scene). He truly loved Wanda and was capable of performing under the covers, but impregnating her? That was an awful lot to ask us to buy.

Scarlet Witch’s mutant powers allow her to alter probability, so maybe she could take a longshot like Vision knocking her up and make it work. While they were working on that, they had a little adventure where they were kidnapped by the magical villain group the Salem Seven. During the climax of the battle, Scarlet Witch absorbed a bunch of magic and the ghost of Agatha Harkness (Wanda’s mentor in magic) told her to harness it and use it however she saw fit. Wouldn’t you know it, in the next issue, she was pregnant!

Sorry if that last paragraph was a lot.

Billy and Tommy

Wanda would give birth to twins, Thomas and William. She and Vision would join the West Coast Avengers and things would go to shit. In one storyline, Vision would not only have his entire personality erased, but he’d be dismantled and autopsied to show that he was more mechanical than originally thought. It was writer Jim Starlin’s way of saying, “This is dumb. He absolutely cannot father children. Stop it.”

There was weird stuff going on with the twins too. When Wanda wasn’t around, her kids would just cease to exist. It wasn’t them fiddling with magic. It was the idea that they weren’t truly real and they were part of Wanda’s consciousness. Soon she discovered the truth about Billy and Tommy.

That truth is…um…really, really complicated. There’s stuff involving Mephisto and Franklin Richards and Master Pandemonium, who has the power of baby hands. And not the kind of baby hands that Donald Trump and Teen Titans Go Robin have. I mean that literal babies Billy and Tommy became his hands. It’s wacky.

Wanda did not take this news well and briefly turned villain because of it. It was a whole mess that involved her sexually assaulting Wonder Man. They ended up mindwiping Wanda of the whole incident, including her having kids to begin with. Ah, mindwiping. The superhero trope that never, ever ends well over time. Just ask Dr. Light and Batman.

Vision and Wanda returned to their usual soap opera filler stuff until Brian Michael Bendis decided that he wanted to freshen up the Avengers as a concept. In the big storyline Avengers: Disassembled, Scarlet Witch regained her memories, went a little nutty, and decided to have a whole bunch of stuff go wrong at once by abusing her powers against her so-called teammates. I’m talking alien invasions, She-Hulk losing control of her rage, Ultron attacks, exploding zombies, Tony Stark having a drunken rant at the UN, etc. She was stopped in a very anticlimactic fashion and the Avengers just decided that they were done being a thing.

Wiccan and Speed

A new Avengers team (now with mainstream appeal!) would show up months later and in the meantime, a group of teenagers tried to pick up the slack themselves. A younger version of the time-traveling villain Kang the Conqueror came to the present under the name Iron Lad and put together a team of heroes called the Young Avengers. One of these heroes was Wiccan, a boy named Billy with magical powers and reality warping, which were awakened after a mysterious meeting with Scarlet Witch.

At one point, he came across a troubled teen with speedster powers named Tommy who, despite having different parents, looked exactly like Billy but with white hair (white hair and super speed being part of Wanda’s brother Pietro’s whole deal). Iron Lad explained that not only were the two twins, but they were Wanda’s twins.

Movies

WandaVision Explained: Who is Geraldine?

By Jim Dandy

Marvel’s WandaVision Episode 3: MCU Easter Eggs and Reference Guide

By Mike Cecchini and 2 others

Yes, it seems that although the babies existed under questionable circumstances, they did actually have souls and those souls found other ways to live on. We don’t actually know the full story of how the connection works. Did the souls overtake existing children? Did the souls go back in time a few years to be reborn?

While unexplained, Billy and Tommy live on as the heroes Wiccan and Speed. After House of M, Marvel started to back away from Scarlet Witch being a villain and eased her back into heroism, including having her connect with her sort-of-children.

Now, we already know that the parenthood in WandaVision is going to end very, very badly for the mother and father. Ignoring Wanda’s desperate control over reality, there’s seemingly some kind of mysterious, cult-like reason for the twins to be born. Yes, there will indeed be tragedy.

On the other hand, Billy and Tommy may see the light at the end of the tunnel. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is not only lining up some torch passing, but we’re seeing various setups for the Young Avengers to take form.

We already have a teen version of Cassie Lang. The Hawkeye series is going to be about Kate Bishop taking up the mantle. The third Ant-Man and the Wasp movie will introduce Kang the Conqueror, which could in turn lead to his younger self appearing. Eventual team member Miss America is supposed to be in Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. There are even rumors and theories that Patriot will be appearing in some form in Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Billy and Tommy were born fast and so they might be crime-fighting teenagers sooner than we realize.

The post WandaVision: What Wanda’s Kids Mean for the Future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 7 years

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Sun Myung Moon – Emperor of the Universe video and transcript

youtube

The link above is to a 47 minute version of the original 60 minute documentary.

“REPUTATIONS Sun Myung Moon: Emperor of the Universe”

A BBC / A&E Network co-production 2000.

It may also have been known as “Reverend Sun Myung Moon: Emperor of the Universe”. It was broadcast as a 60 minute documentary by the BBC.In the US and Asia a shortened version was broadcast.

_____________________________________

Sun Myung Moon died in 2012. These words were written on his coffin:

天一國眞聖德皇帝億兆蒼生 (천일국 진성덕황제 억조창생)

 萬勝君皇太平聖代萬事亨通 (만승군황 태평성대 만사형통)

“True Emperor of Cheon Il Guk with Holiness and Virtue

 Emperor of Absolute Victory over the whole”

_____________________________________

Contributors

Allen Tate Wood (ex senior member) Antonio Betancourt (Unification Church) Bo Hi Pak (special assistant to Moon) Chung Hwan Kwak (senior leader, Unification Church) Cathryn Mazer (ex follower) Cesar Zaduski (Unification Church, Brazil) Donna Collins (ex member, second gen.) Sir Edward Heath (former British Prime Minister) George Bush (former President of the US) Herb Rosedale (anti-cult lawyer and founding member of ICSA) Jorge Guldenzoph (Unification Church, Uruguay) Juan Ramos (Bank Worker’s Association of Uruguay) General John Singlaub (former Chairman of World Anti-Communist League) Michael Hershman (US Congressional Investigator) Nansook Hong (Moon’s ex daughter-in-law) Neil Salonen (former President of the Unification Church in the US) Robin Marsh (Unification Church, UK) Ron Paquette (former executive in Moon organization) Ronald Reagan (former President of the US) William Cheshire (former Editor, Washington Times)

________________________________

Transcript updated October 23, 2021.

A transcript of the full 60 minute production follows. Note that about a dozen images have been added to the transcript. These are indicated by ❖. Some are just better or alternative versions of images that are in the documentary. A few comments have been added.

November 28, 1999 Reno, Nevada

Narrator: “Yesterday the body of a 21-year-old Korean male was found on a casino skywalk after apparently falling 17 floors. A hotel guest spotted the body shortly after dawn. He had checked in the previous day around 8am. It sure looks like suicide.”

Narrator: “In the press the young man’s death stirred barely a ripple of interest – until it emerged who he was. He lived on a palatial estate. His father was famous – a modern day messiah.”

Seoul, South Korea

Bo Hi Pak (special assistant to Moon): “He is a great teacher. He is a great prophet, and the messiah.”

Antonio Betancourt (Unification Church): “We see him as the lord of the universe, the first person coming as God’s representative.”

Narrator: “A convicted felon, he controls wealth beyond imagination.”

Allen Tate Wood (ex senior member): “At the heart of Moon’s psyche is the drive, the need for power.”

1:00 Narrator: “He thinks he can literally buy countries?”

Herb Rosedale (lawyer, ICSA): “Absolutely”

Narrator: “He leads a church or a cult?”

Allen Tate Wood: “He [Moon] is quoted as saying this, ‘We want absolute control of the mind,’ and to me that means brainwashing”

Narrator: “He marries off total strangers.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Rev Moon is, sort of, [the] world’s finest matchmaker.”

Rev Moon: “Mansei!”

Allen Tate Wood: “They are given a kendo stick, and the woman has to bend over and the man hits her three times as hard as he can with the kendo stick.”

Narrator: “He crusaded against communism.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Who did liberate communism? To me, [it is] very clear. It’s the Rev. Moon.”

Narrator: “His stated aim is world domination.”

Donna Collins (ex follower): “You have to be prepared to die for him, and he says that.”

Cheering crowd: “Mansei!”

2:00 Narrator: “He is Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Moonies”

Cheering crowd: “Mansei!”

Allen Tate Wood: “He’d clap his hands and he’d say: ‘Where I am going is to the Kingdom of Heaven, and I want you to come with me, all of those of you who want to come with me, come ahead. The rest of you, out of my way.’”

Allen Tate Wood: “One of the things they say in their prayers is ‘Crush Satan, Out Satan, Crush Satan, Out Satan.’ Oh, it was tremendously exciting. These were the end times. These were the ‘Last Days’ and we had the great blessing to be on the side of the son of God. I loved him, I adored him.”

Antonio Betancourt: “It is an awesome feeling when you are near him. You feel in the presence of an enormous power.”

Allen Tate Wood: “This is a man who is going towards his destiny regardless of what anybody else thinks, says or does.”

3:02 Narrator: “Moon says that from soon after his birth in 1920, in a village in North Korea, he was clairvoyant and could see the future. His legend is strange and fascinating. At age 15, his followers believe, he walked up into the mountains one Easter morning to pray. There were clouds tipped with gold. Jesus stepped out of the clouds.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Put his hands on his head, and the voice was very clear: ‘Now you are to take over my undone mission. I will be walking every step of the day with you.”

Narrator: “Moon protested he was unworthy, but Jesus insisted.” LINK

4:00 Bo Hi Pak: “To me, Rev Moon coming to this world is the second coming of Christ.”

Antonio Betancourt: “Well his power is greater than Jesus’ because Jesus is working with him, so two is better than one. And many people have seen this spiritually, when Rev Moon is speaking they see Jesus next to him.”

Narrator: “Then, his followers believe, other prophets appeared.”

Bo Hi Pak: “He met with Buddha, met with Mohammed, met with Confucius. He had many, many incredible spiritual encounters.”

Narrator: “So Jesus and the Rev Moon are working together?”

Antonio Betancourt: “Absolutely, absolutely. But not only. Jesus is working with Rev Moon in America. In the Islam, it is Mohammed. In Asia it is Buddha.”

4:55 Narrator: “He came down from the mountain transformed. In his village Moon was supposed to have wisdom beyond his years. He was seen to wrestle trees on the hillside in a state of trance. Before World War II, Korea was under Japanese occupation. Koreans were ordered to follow the Japanese Shinto faith. Now nearly 20, Moon says his struggle was ‘not with the Japanese, it was with the devil.’”

5:40 Bo Hi Pak: “I have never seen any man so dedicated to God.”

Narrator: “Legend has it that at his home in Seoul, overwhelmed by the suffering of God, he would cry for days on end. Once his tears leaked into the room below. As Japan made ready for World War II, Moon went to Tokyo to study engineering.” [In that way he could avoid being drafted into the Japanese military.]

6:05 Chung-hwan Kwak (senior leader, Unification Church): “I asked him, why you don’t go to missionary school, seminary school, why you go to engineering course. He’s laughing, smiling and he explained, he’s not necessary [to go] to theological seminary…”

Narrator: “Because God had told him that he was the messiah?”

Chung-hwan Kwak: “Absolutely, of course.”

Narrator: “As Moon saw it, evil began in the Garden of Eden. Eve tasted the forbidden fruit. She had sex with Lucifer, the archangel. Then she had sex with Adam.”

Cesar Zaduski (Unification Church): “But for Rev Moon, it is quite clear there was a sex relationship. Why so? That is very simple, because what is the part of Adam and Eve they hide after that? If they had eaten some apple they would hide the mouth, but they hide the sexual parts.”

7:15 Narrator: “Her original sin was transmitted to future generations. Hence the ‘Fall of Man.’ There was famine and pestilence. As Moon told his followers, he was the third Adam, here to restore the perfect world that God had designed.”

▲ Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han’s 1960 wedding

7:55 Bo Hi Pak: “You have no way to know if Rev Moon is the messiah just [by] looking at him. He was praying more than 17 hours every day. He is a man of prayer. Through him I feel elevated and closer to God.”

Narrator: “Ironically, Moon’s church was born out of suffering. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered and pulled their troops out of Korea.”

Douglas MacArthur: “I now invite the representatives of the Emperor of Japan to sign the instrument of surrender.”

Narrator: “Now there was religious freedom in Korea. Back in Seoul, Moon got married. According to legend he told his wife he was going out to buy rice for their new baby. He never came back. God told him to go to North Korea – to preach.”

9:20 Bo Hi Pak: “His way of teaching, it was just simply fascinating. All the conventional questions [were] resolved automatically, like the snow melting.”

Narrator: “His belief that Korea had spawned a new messiah outraged many Christians.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Rev. Moon was accused as heretic.”

Narrator: “Worse still, Soviet troops were swarming into North Korea, stifling freedom of worship almost as soon as it began. Today Moon’s followers are told that he was framed by the new communist regime of Kim Il-sung – punished for speaking the word of God.”

Bo Hi Pak: “He was absolutely incredibly tortured by the communist police. Incredible. He was just virtually beaten to death.”

Narrator: “He was sent to North Korea’s Heungnam Death Camp.”

Narrator: “According to a later FBI report, the charge was bigamy.”

Bo Hi Pak: “None of the prisoners survived in that prison more that 18 months.”

10:15 Narrator: “In his book, Divine Principle, which lays out his theology, Moon says he endured suffering unimagined by anyone in history. He suffered so much he atoned for the sins of mankind and became perfect.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Rev Moon was sentenced to that death camp for five years imprisonment.”

Narrator: “In 1950 North Korea invaded the South. The cold war had begun, a long confrontation between the Soviets and the West. Perversely, the Korean War saved Moon’s life. UN bombers pounded the city where he was held. In the chaos Moon was freed.”

11:14 Bo Hi Pak: “The day before they were systematically killing all the prisoners, knowing that UN forces [were] coming up. Before [it was] Rev Moon’s turn, luckily the UN forces rushed the gate.” [Only the political prisoners were being executed. Moon was in jail for bigamy and was not due to be executed. The guards fled the camp, and that is how Moon became free.]

11:40 Narrator: “He joined thousands of refugees fleeing south to escape the communists. His followers speak with awe of how he carried an injured man across Korea.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Roughly 200 miles walking and walking in the mountains he carry him on [his] back. [An] 80kg man on [his] back, all the way to the south. To me, that alone shows him [to be] the messiah to me.” [Pak Chung-hwa, the man concerned, explained that he was only carried twice by Moon. Each time was for about 200-300 yards, and it was never through water – once it was up a mountain pass. Pak was pushed on a bicycle for the first part of the journey, and was able to walk the last third. ref Michael Breen’s book, Sun Myung Moon, the early years, for details.]

❖

Narrator: “For years the Moon organization used this photo [above] as evidence, before quietly conceding it was of someone else. In a tiny shack made of US army ration boxes Moon founded his Unification Church. He and his followers often went hungry.”

Chung-hwan Kwak (Church elder): “Our tiny group, very poor, under that circumstances, he trained us [to] overcome temptations of food.”

Singing: “Hallelujah, Hallelujah.”

▲ Sun Myung Moon was given a private jet by the Japanese Unification Church members on his 80th birthday.

Narrator: “In the decades that followed Moon would become rich and powerful. His anthem, inevitably, Handel’s ‘Messiah.’ He would be accused of breaking laws and seeking influence. He’d make friends in high places.”

Allen Tate Wood: “To me that is the heart of Moon’s psyche, it is the drive, the need for power. He is not interested in people developing and finding themselves. He is interested in people finding him and kneeling to him, and bowing to him and then giving him all their strength, all their energy, all their power.”

Narrator: “His church would be accused of brainwashing teenagers and taking their assets.”

Allen Tate Wood: “All of your money, somebody else’s money, their land, their property, any kind of real or material goods they have. Your job is to get a hold of that and bring it into the organization, because outside of the organization it has no meaning. It has no value. It is property owned by satan.”

Narrator: “Moon would talk openly of controlling the earth. [Moon’s words:] “The whole world is in my hands and I will conquer and subjugate the world.”

14:05 Herb Rosedale: “Just as he claims to be a man of love, and yet if you look at any of his speeches, his speeches will exude hatred towards those who disagree with him.”

Narrator: “From the beginning Moon believed that rival churches, the media, even the Korean government, were out to get him.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Just like Jesus Christ came 2000 years ago, he encountered incredible opposition [in] those days [from] the existing religions.”

Narrator: “In Seoul in the 1950s there were stories that Moon was having sex with female converts, to purify them.”

Antonio Betancourt (Unification Church): “There were women coming to lectures, who – they’d rather be at lecture than being with their husbands or with their families – so the husbands could not understand what was going on. So for them they must be having some kind of sexual relationship. There must be something wrong. There must be something wrong that is going on in that place.”

❖

▲ These Ewha Womans University students were all expelled because of their involvement with Sun Myung Moon. One of them had a son with Moon.

15:00 Narrator: “However, a later FBI report claimed ‘that women students had been expelled from university in Seoul because of sexual initiation rites with Moon and some others.’”

Nansook Hong (Moon’s ex daughter-in-law): “Moon claimed, since he was the perfect man, a perfect Adam, by sleeping with women he would purify women. And he did tell me that he did those things – it was God’s work.”

15:55 Narrator: “Divorcing his first wife, he married a woman 20 years younger than himself, Hak Ja Han. He and his new wife would be the ‘True Parents of all mankind.’ He told his followers: ‘Love True Parents more than your own self, spouse or children.’”

❖

▲ Sun Myung Moon married the teenage Hak Ja Han in 1960.

Donna Collins (ex follower): “He said, you know, ‘You must know that I am your only parent, and your father is bad for you. You must forget about him. We are the True Parents. I am the True Parent.’”

Narrator: “In the early days, Moon lived above his church. His speeches would go on for half the night.”

Chung-hwan Kwak (Unification Church): “He never slept. Never. He continued usually until 1:00am, 2:00am. Never slept. His sleep time is always less than three hours. Only two or three hours.”

Narrator: “The Korean War had ended in a bizarre face-off between North and South – surreal, yet deadly. It was a microcosm of what was happening all over the world. Moon was made by the new Cold War.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Rev Moon frequently said ‘The communist goal is to kick off God from the planet.’ The communistic ideology, if it takes over the entire world, then there is no room for God. We cannot allow God going out of this planet. We need God. Rev Moon from day one is truly an anti-communist.”

Narrator: “To Moon, communist North Korea was satanic, and its Stalinist leader, Kim Il-sung, the devil.”

Bo Hi Pak: “If communists win in the Cold War, and if the entire world is communized, then [there is] no room for free men to stand.”

18:00 Narrator: “In Seoul, nobody laughed at Moon anymore. The word now was that he had powerful new friends, including Kim Jong-pil founder of Korea’s ferocious new intelligence agency, the KCIA. It crushed dissent. In Washington, the Americans heard that Kim Jong-pil was using Moon’s church as a political tool. America was where Moon would make his future.”

Bo Hi Pak: “He looked at America as the chosen nation, so in the most crucial role [that] must get played by America.”

Narrator: “Rather fortunately for Moon, he arrived in America at a time of great anguish. The Vietnam war had divided the generations. American cities were full of teenagers looking for answers. Few knew why Americans were dying in Vietnam, or raining death on a country they had barely heard of. Moon built his church on their self doubt.”

Allen Tate Wood: “Here was a guy that just seemed to be just totally sure. There was just this tremendous energy, tremendous force which he communicated. It was as though his whole body was going to one place, to one point.

Rev Moon speaks in Korean

Bo Hi Pak: “We are not just ordinary Christians.”

Narrator: “Teenagers would be intercepted on the street by Moonies. Often they would be invited to some innocuous seminar.”

Cathryn Mazer (ex follower): “These individuals were just unusually open and honest and friendly and caring and playful and sweet.”

Narrator: “Cathryn Mazer was taken to a house on Long Island.”

Cathryn Mazer: “The name ‘Rev Moon’ never came up. I actually asked when I was first going with them to the site, if they were the Unification Church, and I was told ‘no.’”

20:25 Narrator: “An FBI analyst wrote: ‘Moon’s success depends on very subtle … deceptive tactics.’ Finally Cathryn Mazer was told about Moon. He was her ‘True Parent.’ It would be dangerous to contact her real parents…”

Cathryn Mazer: “… because they could be used by Satan to take away the amazing gift of having met the messiah. That Satan uses the ones you love to influence you away from the remarkable and unsurpassable gift you have been given.”

Narrator: “She says the Moonies encouraged her to lie to her mother on the phone, not telling her where she really was.

Cathryn Mazer: “But it was just important, whatever I told her, that I did not tell her that I was involved with the Unification Church.

Narrator: “And they were perfectly happy for you to lie?”

Cathryn Mazer: “Oh, I was encouraged to lie. I was asked to lie.”

Narrator: “Cathryn’s worried family traced her to the house on Long Island.”

Cathryn Mazer’s mother: “I want to see my daughter. I need to see somebody.”

Moonie: “I am sorry, she is not here.”

Lawyer: “But you are not prepared to let Cathryn’s mother go in and see for herself.”

Narrator: “They were too late.”

Mazer family: “Well if you can’t prove to us that she is not here, then why should we leave under the assumption that she is not here?”

Narrator: “She had been moved, but the Moonies wouldn’t say where.”

Cathryn’s mother: “Oh my…”

Lawyer: “Just calm down.”

Cathryn’s mother: “Right, you talk with them.”

Narrator: “So you actually thought that your mother projected Satan.”

Cathryn Mazer: “Yeah, I thought she was being, you know, for all intents and purposes, possessed.”

Narrator: “In trying to find you.”

Cathryn Mazer nods in agreement.

Narrator: “From the early seventies, Moon would be accused of brainwashing, mind control. Neil Salonen, once president of the church in America, says the messiah never brainwashed his followers, or cut them off from their parents.”

Neil Salonen (Unification Church): “Because we are family based, in many cases members, for the first time, begin experiencing a deeper and closer relationship with their parents.”

Group at mansion guardhouse: “They’re worried about their daughter.” “OK, sir...”

Narrator: “But when Cathryn Mazer’s parents arrived at Moon’s mansion outside New York, guards called the police.”

Group at mansion guardhouse: “We thought we…”

Allen Tate Wood: “He is quoted as saying this, that we want absolute control of the mind, and to me that means brainwashing.”

Narrator: “And this brainwashing comes directly from Moon?”

Allen Tate Wood: “Absolutely, Yeah.”

Group at mansion guardhouse: “So we should show up there…”

Narrator: “Ex-Moonie Ron Paquette says he spoke to Moon’s son about brainwashing.”

23:00 Ron Paquette (former executive Moon organization): “And I said in many ways it reminds me sometimes of the communist camps, and at that point he said: ‘Yeah I know,’ he said, ‘Father learned that when he was in prison camp,’ and I kept trying to make the point that no, no, the way we bring in people, and the way we control people is kind of like the way this goes on in North Korean prison camps, and he kept saying ‘I know’.”

Narrator: “Belvedere was the first of Moon’s magnificent estates in America. Once it was owned by America’s wealthiest families. In some cases recruits would make over everything they owned to Moon, then they would go out selling trinkets at inflated prices.”

Cathryn Mazer: “I was sent out on the streets, sometimes for 14 or 16 hours at a time. Sometimes in very dangerous neighborhoods.”

Narrator: “Wandering big cities, Cathryn Mazer lives on hamburgers and donuts.”

Cathryn Mazer: “There were many, many times we were just on the side of basically a highway alone with hundreds of dollars of cash on our persons.”

24:10 Narrator: “In the end she decided to leave the Moonies.”

Cathryn Mazer: “I was told stories about other people who had betrayed the messiah, or who had walked away. Something really, really bad could happen to me, whether it be illness or a random act of violence. I mean I was scared. I was terrified.”

Narrator: “Cathryn went back to her mother. Others stayed, giving Moon their all.”

Ron Paquette: “They like to talk in the church about the blood, sweat and tears of Moon. Well I think, you know, by and large he’s living off the blood, sweat and tears of a lot of members.”

Antonio Betancourt: “He receives the treatment of a messiah, and therefore we have the rituals of the court. And in this court it is as pompous, it is as beautiful as being in the presence of an earthly king, or queen, for example the Queen Elizabeth. It is not Hollywood. It is real. That is the court of the messiah, but after this is finished, he becomes a very, very ordinary man. He goes and digs his hands in the dirt. He examines pebbles. He goes into the mud. He goes and eats in McDonalds.”

Moon praying: “With this Blessing Ceremony, I thank you that we build the superhighway to you.”

25:40 Narrator: “The greatest honor for a Moonie, is to be married by Moon.”

Allen Tate Wood: “It is like a pyramid marketing scheme, and it is embedded in the theology. You, in fact, cannot be married by Moon, which is the ultimate blessing according to their theology, until you have brought three people into the church who are ready to die in your place. Once you have brought three people in, then you have the right to be married, you have the right to be blessed by Moon.”

Narrator: “He would even find you a partner, a total stranger.”

Rev Moon praying: “Today I am blessing this … and declare the true … of God…”

Bo Hi Pak: “Rev Moon see the family background and the future. So Rev Moon is, sort of, [the] world’s finest matchmaker.”

Rev Moon: “Amen”

Narrator: “Sometimes Moon would choose marriage partners from their photos.”

❖

▲ Rev Moon matching couples by photograph.

Rev Moon: “Amen”

26:30 Nansook Hong: “Sometimes there is a picture matching, and sometimes the people [are in] rows of men and women [sitting] together, and he just picks you, you – you, you – and you are supposed to be husband and wife. And a lot of times it doesn’t work.”

Rev Moon: “Mansei!”

Bo Hi Pak: “That marriage is far more durable, and lasting longer. Of course there are some breakages, but not like the 50 percent in the western world.”

M.C.: “Welcome to Blessing ’97. World Peace through ideal families.”

Narrator: “The church claims that millions of couples have been blessed by Moon in ceremonies from Seoul to Washington, even at the 2000 room New Yorker Hotel, bought by Moon for a few million dollars.”

Robin Marsh (Unification Church): “He looked down into my eyes, and I felt that he knew everything about me. And then he guided me to where my wife was already standing. And he looked at us, and he just beckoned to us to go. We went to another room and discussed whether we would like to continue with this match. And I really felt that this was God’s choice. And I felt a lot of God’s happiness and joy at that time.”

Narrator: “Sometimes the matchings took a bizarre turn.”

Allen Tate Wood: “If they accept it and they come back in the room, the first thing that they do in their relationship is they are given a kendo stick. And the woman has to bend over and the man hits her three times as hard as he can with the kendo stick. And the audience then judges that. If they didn’t hit hard enough, the man has to hit her again, until the audience accepts the strength of the beating. Then the woman turns around and she beats the man. It is the same thing. So this is how these marriages made in heaven begin.”

Narrator: “Moon seems convinced of his own divinity.”

Donna Collins: “But he was kind of innocent in some way. I mean he was very like a child amid all these big important people.”

Narrator: “Donna Collins’ parents led the church in Britain.”

Donna Collins: “You know he seemed sweet at times.”

Voice: “Dream technology, yes”

Narrator: “Moon seemed anything but sweet to church leader Allen Tate Wood, summoned to his home is South Korea. A man lay prostrate on the floor in front of the messiah.”

29:00 Allen Tate Wood: “And from that position he made some kind of greeting to Mr. Moon. And Mr. Moon then barked something back, and they had a conversation. This man never raised his head off the ground. He was looking into the rug. And when this was going on, I began to understand that this is how I am to relate to Mr. Moon, and through me they are teaching all Americans how we are to relate to Mr. Moon.”

Narrator: “By the 1970s Moon was beginning to enjoy fame and fabulous wealth. In Asia he was building an industrial empire, processing titanium and ginseng, making machinery and guns. Over the years church income would grow phenomenally.”

Neil Salonen: “I do think that we are talking hundreds of millions of dollars. I don’t know how specific beyond that I could be.”

Narrator: “In the United States the Moons would spend a fortune buying hotels newspapers, fishing fleets and property. In a bleak Massachusetts town they even made machine guns.”

Narrator: “Meanwhile Moon had found friends in high places. He sprang to the aid of Richard Nixon, accused of ordering the Watergate coverup.”

Richard Nixon: “Tonight let me explain to you what I did about Watergate after the break-in occurred, so that you can better understand the fact that I also had no knowledge of…” [August 15, 1973]

Bo Hi Pak: “Rev Moon made a crusade for the rescue of President Nixon.

Narrator: “As Washington bayed for his resignation, Moonies demonstrated for the President. [January 31, 1974]

Allen Tate Wood: “Meanwhile you have ABC, NBC and CBS covering this as though this were some sort of spontaneous demonstration of Americans supporting Nixon, when in fact every single person in the park was a Moonie who had been ordered to be there.”

Narrator: “by Moon?” Allen Tate Wood: “by Moon.”

31:00 Narrator: “Meeting Nixon at the White House, Moon advised him to burn the Watergate tapes.”

Bo Hi Pak: “And there Rev Moon saying, Mr. President what you have to do [is to] ask for the forgiveness of the people.”

❖

▲ Sun Myung Moon’s Little Angels with President Nixon.

Narrator: “At congressional hearings, Moon was accused of conspiring with Korean intelligence to buy influence in Washington.”

Donald Fraser: “I’ll tell you what, Colonel, let’s split the difference. How’s ten minutes?”

Michael Hershman (Congressional Investigator): “Never before or since had we seen such a blatant attempt to influence our political, social, cultural institutions.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Could you kindly give me five more minutes. I said 15 minutes.”

Narrator: “So there was no doubt to you that the KCIA and Moon were hand in hand?”

Michael Hershman (Congressional Investigator): “There was no doubt.”

Narrator: “The South Koreans were terrified the Americans would abandon them, just as they had abandoned South Vietnam.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Korea would be a second Vietnam. If Korea becomes a second Vietnam, Korea collapses, then there is no way, no way the free world can survive.”

Narrator: “The South Koreans believed that Moon had the power to influence events in Washington. And according to a CIA source, were willing to pay for his help. The source claimed the money had been channeled through a company in South Korea. Congressional investigators found that the head of Korean intelligence once held a meeting with Moon’s American leaders at a hotel in San Francisco.”

Bo Hi Pak: “The public and the media misunderstood him, and they thought Rev Moon is act upon Korean government front or Korean CIA front. He must be funded.”

Narrator: “By the mid seventies, Moon was at the pinnacle of his power, holding enormous rallies in American cities. The church claimed 300,000 people attended this rally in Washington.”

Rev Moon speaking in Korean on September 18, 1976

Bo Hi Pak translated: “Today America is plagued with problems: racism, juvenile delinquency and immorality. Christianity is declining. Communism is rising. The menace of communism is everywhere. Of all these problems….”

Narrator: “Privately, investigators believed, Moon was part of a KCIA plan to win over the Washington establishment. He told Allen Tate Wood to find friends in the military and intelligence community.”

Allen Tate Wood: “His key strategy was, we will find some powerful man or some powerful organization, and we will find out what their agenda is, and we will attend them and serve them, and eventually they will come to recognize in us their greatest ally, and at that point we then begin to be able to dictate to them.”

Rev Moon speaking in Korean.

Bo Hi Pak translated: “We shall never let him down. Never, never, never. Thank you.”

34:00

Subcommittee on International Organizations. April 20, 1978

Bo Hi Pak: “The Lord is my shepherd, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for thou art with me. Thank you Mr. Chairman.”

Narrator: “Bo Hi Pak denied allegations that his master was controlled by the KCIA.”

Bo Hi Pak: “They were trying to crush our movement through the Congressional Hearing.”

Narrator: “Incredibly, Pak accused the committee chairman of being a Soviet spy. The committee in turn accused Moon of violating US tax, immigration and banking law.”

Michael Hershman (Congressional Investigator): “If you were against him, if you were threatening his objectives, you were the devil.”

Narrator: “As the committee saw it, no-one realised how dangerous Moon was, because they didn’t bother to listen to his speeches.”

The words of Rev Moon: “There will come a time when my words almost become law. If I want a certain thing it will be done.”

Narrator: “On the Korean border Moon seemed to expect a bloody apocalypse, out of which he would emerge leader of a united Korea, and then of the world.”

Allen Tate Wood: “And he said in this final battle, the only way for the forces of good to win maybe to force the world to wake up. He said the way we will do that is we will send thousands and thousands of Unification Church members and place them on the border, on the Demilitarized Zone inbetween North and South Korea. And he said if the North Koreans attack then the Unification Church members will be the first people to be killed. If we can have a lot of young people killed who are from England, France, Germany, the United States that will force those nations to come in on the side of South Korea. He would talk to us for hours and hours and hours about how God is searching for a nation. He wants to get Korea, but if he can’t get Korea, then he will try to get the United States. If he can get the United States then he will get Japan. If he can get the United States and Japan and then England, if he can get those three nations that he will quickly grab seven. And once he has got seven, then he will swallow the whole world.”

Rev Moon speaking in Korean.

36:15 Donna Collins: “Loyalty at the end of the day is to him. You have to be prepared to die for him, and he says that.”

Narrator: “In 1982 a young Korean girl arrived at Moon’s estate outside New York.”

Nansook Hong: “It was absolutey beautiful – big mansions, big rooms. The room that I stayed [in] it was like a princess’s room.”

Narrator: “Moon had chosen her to marry one of his sons. She was barely 15.”

Nansook Hong: “Every time we saw him we had to [do] full bows. He was God. He was really God for everybody.”

Narrator: “Inside the estate a fortress mentality prevailed.”

Nansook Hong: “There is [the] inside world and [the] outside world. There were outside people and there was us. We were the chosen people and [the] outside people are satanic people.”

Narrator: “She saw church leaders arriving from Asia with bags of cash for the Moons.”

Nansook Hong: “I saw sometimes a million dollars, sometimes two million dollars, sometimes $200,000 but for them it is really not a lot of money. It is for their own personal use.”

Narrator: “Publicly Moon railed against gambling, but Nansook says he took her and the rest of his entourage to Las Vegas. An assistant would place bets for him. Did you say to him, ‘Father, I thought we were supposed not to gamble.’”

Nansook Hong: “No, of course not. Haha. If I wanted to die, maybe. No. No, we never raised any questions or doubts. We just had to be there accepting.”

Narrator: “If Moon thought he was safe from earthly law, he was to be disillusioned. He was accused of tax evasion.”

Ron Paquette (former executive Moon organization): “Not paying your taxes, withholding payroll taxes, paying people under the table cash so that we didn’t have to pay the government money, that saved Father money, so therefore it was OK. It was doing God’s will beause anything that supported Moon, or supported the agenda, was doing God’s will.”

Narrator: “He asked God for deliverance.”

Nansook Hong: “We prayed on the holy rock every morning and so did a lot of us. We were there all night praying for Moon, but it seems like nothing worked.”

Narrator: “In 1984 Moon was sent to jail.”

38:44 Lawyer: “The trial judge himself said quite openly that of course were his religion less controversial the government would have had less interest in pursuing the matter.”

Singing: “Justice will be done. Justice will be done.”

Narrator: “To the Moonies, their master was a victim of his beliefs. Martyred by a bigoted and racist Justice Department.”

Nansook Hong: “But we all knew that yes, it was tax evasion.”

[And the serious crime of document forgery] LINK

Narrator: “Released 13 months later, Moon celebrated in his own particular way.”

39:20 Nansook Hong: “Moon crowned himself as the Emperor of the Universe. It was quite odd. Pictures were forbidden. Nobody could take pictures, because it had to be an absolute secret. At that point he became God, in his eyes.”

Narrator: “The chastened Moon realised that he needed more than hotels and fishing fleets to achieve power in America. He needed his own voice in Washington. He founded the Washington Times.”

39:40 Nansook Hong: “And now he has one way to control this country, that was through the newspaper. That’s how he saw it.”

Narrator: “It would counter the liberal Washington Post. The Times would become the voice of the Republican right.”

Ronald Reagan: “The American people know the truth, and you, my friends at The Washington Times, have told it to them.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Rev Moon never side with the political party, only side with God.”

William Cheshire (former Editor, Washington Times): “It was like the messiah had ridden into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and Moon would say ‘Rah, rah, rah,’ and Pak would say, ‘Reverend Moon say, all men are brothers.’”

Narrator: “...except for Bill Clinton. The Times worried that he might have had KGB connections, then that he was an asset of the CIA. It raised $100,000 for the Contras fighting the left in Nicaragua.”

Michael Hershman (Congressional Investigator): “I believe they lose tens of millions of dollars a year, perhaps as high as 40 million dollars a year.”

CAUSA presentation: “One man has seen the true…”

41:00 Narrator: “Moon spent millions more funding right wing foundations and pressure groups.”

CAUSA presentation: “He has tasted the bitter evils of communism in North Korea…”

William Cheshire: “I mean the amount of money Moon has invested in The Washington Times alone, it just staggers the imagination.”

Narrator: “What you're saying is that nobody else has ever spent as much money lobbying in Washington as Moon.”

William Cheshire: “No one I am aware of.”

Narrator: “The paper declined to let us film its operations.”

Narrator: “Has The Washington Times always been independent?”

Neil Salonen (Unification Church): “I do think so. In fact every editor, that I have known, and I have known them all, has made the point at different times, that they receive much less pressure from the owner, than the owners of any other newspaper might.”

Narrator: “But in 1987, editor Bill Cheshire resigned, accusing the paper of augmenting news agency copy, in Moon’s favor.”

William Cheshire: “I said this has never been an acceptable or ethical performance anywhere I have ever worked. It is totally irregular, totally improper and totally dishonest, and reprehensible. Well didn’t do any good…”

President George Bush: “And the editors of The Washington Times have told me that never once has the man with the vision interfered in the editorial policies of The Washington Times. Rev Moon never tried to tell them what to say, who to endorse.”

Narrator: “Moon invited George Bush to celebrate the birth of another new paper in Latin America.” [The Tiempos del Mundo was launched in Buenos Aires.]

❖

President George Bush speaking at the launch in November 1996: “You know, a lot of my friends in South America don’t know about The Washington Times, but it is an independent voice.”

William Cheshire: “I doubt very seriously if George Bush has any real understanding of the Rev Moon and the Unification Church, and what they represent in terms of crazy theology and all the other things that are part of the Moon story.”

42:50 Narrator: “Some of Moon’s contacts were far to the right of The Washington Times. In Japan, after the war, he had met Ryoichi Sasakawa, a rich and powerful fascist. He had been imprisoned by the Americans as a war criminal.”

❖

▲ Left to right: Won-pok Choi (a ‘second wife’ of Moon), Hak Ja Han, Sun Myung Moon, Ryoichi Sasakawa, unknown, Hyo-won Eu (who wrote the 1957 Divine Principle and was the main lecturer and organizer of the UC in Korea in the late 1950s and 1960s) and Osami Kuboki (leader of the UC of Japan) at Gimpo airport, Seoul.

Allen Tate Wood: “I heard him say to us, referring to himself, he said ‘I am Mr. Moon’s dog.’ This is the most powerful man in Japan who is essentially saying he is under Mr. Moon. He is serving Mr. Moon’s purposes.”

Rev Moon speaking in Korean

Narrator: “Another of Moon’s Japanese contacts was Yoshio Kodama, an extreme right-winger with ties to the Japanese underworld.”

▲ Yoshio Kodama

Allen Tate Wood: “Kodama is reported as saying that, ‘the people say Mr. Moon is the messiah, well that’s fine but Mr. Moon can’t be the messiah without me, because I am the man who supplies him with money.’”

Narrator: “Moon and the Japanese poured cash into the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), which included neo-Nazis, fascists and even death squad members form South America.”

44:00 General John Singlaub (former Chairman of World Anti-Communist League): “His organization, from my point of view, was more of a political effort, that is to save the world from the ‘evil empire’ than it was to save individuals from the devil.”

Rev Moon speaking in Korean

Narrator: “Moon preached love, but aligned himself with murderous Latin regimes that tortured or killed their left wing opponents. Latin America, he believed, would be the graveyard of communism. He was deeply disillusioned with the United States. ‘Satan created this hell on earth,’ he said.”

Inauguration: “I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear that I will…”

Narrator: “Moon had spent many millions supporting Republican causes.”

President Ronald Reagan: “that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, so help me God.”

Narrator: “But the Reagan administration declined to pardon him for his tax offense.

Michael Hershman (Congressional Investigator): “He was extremely bitter, and decided that he could better grow his organization, better grow his influence, outside our shores.”

Narrator: “In poor Uruguay the army had won a wasting war with Tupamaros guerrillas. The capital, Montevideo, was an off-shore banking center were rich foreigners could hide their cash. For Moon it held other attractions too.”

45:30 Michael Hershman: “A friendly legal environment. That is laws and regulations that were not as well developed as here in the United States. A fairly uneducated and poor population, who was ready to accept a message of anyone who made promises for a better life.”

Narrator: “Moon called Uruguay his oasis. Today he owns newspapers and sponsors radio programmes that preach family values. As Moon sees it, if only the world would listen, all its problems from AIDS to racial hatred would simply vanish.”

Chung-hwan Kwak (senior leader, Unification Church): “If all peoples follow our vision, why not be solved?”

Narrator: “War?”

Chung-hwan Kwak: “War also. This is messiah’s law.”

❖

▲ 4,000 Japanese Moonies arrived in Montevideo bringing cash for Moon.

Narrator: “Moon built Uruguay’s first luxury hotel. He also bought a bank. On one occasion bank employees claimed that 4,000 Japanese Moonies had suddenly showed up, depositing millions of dollars in cash.”

Juan Ramos (Bank Worker’s Association): “The money still had the U.S. Federal Reserve band around it. More than $80 million was deposited over the course of a week.”

Narrator: “More than once the authorities accused the bank of breaching banking rules. A local journalist asked embarrassing questions. Some time later, as he told the judge, he was grabbed by two men in a car who stuck a gun in his mouth. They said they had no connection with Moon, but warned him off. Even in his new haven, Moon was under fire.”

Jorge Guldenzoph: “I remember Rev. Moon’s wife saying ‘How long are they going to think we’re bad?’ I felt humbled because there was no trace of resentment or bitterness in him. No part of him was asking why he had to suffer. It was like Jesus on the cross.”

Narrator: “One of Moon’s key men in Uruguay is Jorge Guldenzoph, a veteran of the dirty war with the left. A former communist, he joined the secret police.”

Jorge Guldenzoph: “The Rev Moon is my savior. My life was literally saved by him. It’s as simple as that, Rev. Moon is my savior.”

▲ Moon’s home in Montevideo.

48:08 Narrator: “By the late 1980s Moon owned so much property in Montevideo that locals wryly renamed it ‘Moontevideo.’ Moonies say that this palatial building was going to be his home, his Latin American sanctuary.

❖

▲ Moon speaking at his Punta del Este resort by the ocean in Uruguay.

Instead he chose a lush resort on the ocean, and a ranch by a river where he could fish. Here he hoped to find peace.”

Antonio Betancourt (Unification Church): “He fishes for the physical fish, but this is symbolic of many things. He fishes, one fish could be a great leader who listens to him.”

Narrator: “He said he would like his own fleet of submarines to free him from national boundaries. In 1989 one of Moon’s greatest dreams came true, the fall of the Berlin Wall. To him it seemed as though he had won his lifelong struggle against communism.”

Bo Hi Pak (Unification Church): “Who did liberate communism? To me, [it is] very clear. it's Rev. Moon, as the messiah.”

Narrator: “In Latin America Moon would spend millions. He said he ‘gave the bait to Uruguay, then the bigger fish of Argentina and Brazil kept their mouths open’.”

Narrator: “He thinks he can literally buy countries?”

Herb Rosedale (anti-cult lawyer): “Absolutely”

Narrator: “Several countries did take the bait, including Brazil. In 1994 Moon bought a swath of its Pantanal region, a vast area known for its extraordinary beauty. Here would be the new Garden of Eden, where Moon would have absolute dominion.”

Cesar Zaduski (Unification Church farm manager in Brazil): “Rev Moon named it because he wants this place to be as pristine and as natural as it was in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were created by Heavenly Father. And Rev Moon said that this area could be in the same shape like in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were created.”

Narrator: “According to the church it would have an airport big enough for wide body jets and millions of acres of fertile land.”

Bo Hi Pak: “This is why he is engaged in millions and millions of acres in Brazil to cultivate those wasted lands into beautiful fertile farmland, producing millions of tons of tons of food.”

Narrator: “It would teach the Brazilians new farming methods, educate the area’s mainly Catholic population and unite religions. People on the farm hope that Moon, now in his 80s, will spend his last years in Brazil. From here he can communicate with his other 200 projects around the world.”

▲ Communications mast in Brazil

Antonio Betancourt: “I have been with him there, in the Pantanal, which he considers one of the gates, one of the earthly gates of the Kingdom of Heaven. Going at three o’clock in the morning, with no reason except a compelling spiritual reason to go into places that nobody will go because they are not tame yet. He could get lost and nobody would find him in ten years.”

Narrator: “To be near their messiah, Korean and Japanese Moonies are bused in after a gruelling flight from Asia.”

Cesar Zaduski: “And these families, living with the nature, they can learn the original aspects of God, that was lost after the Fall of Man.”

Narrator: “His followers fish like Father Moon, work on the land, pray and procreate in small air-conditioned rooms.”

Cesar Zaduski: “And for Rev Moon especially, this place is the place where the families should do what they were supposed to do in the Garden of Eden, and was done wrong – so we should do it right.”

Narrator: “Moon has other great dreams, like a road from London to Tokyo, but it is just a dream. At New Hope there is no airport for wide body jets. Its manager says it rains erratically so it is hard to grow crops. Despite Moon’s talk of uniting religions, local Catholics dismiss his creed as junk theology.”

Cesar Zaduski: “But it is quite clear that in the history of mankind, always someone who came with a big idea, or a new understanding was stoned, and after his death they made a big statue and proclaimed him as a saint. That always happens.”

Narrator: “Sealed inside his many fine houses, gazing out over tropical gardens or great oceans, Moon has had many sorrows. In 1989 a teenage son, Heung-jin, was killed in a car crash.”

❖

▲ Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han with the body of Heung Jin Moon

Nansook Hong: “This Moon’s child went to heaven and became the ruler of heaven. Even Jesus came and bowed down to this child.”

Narrator: “Moon’s followers said they had seen visions of his son taking the place of Jesus.”

Nansook Hong: “Because he was Moon’s child, he can have this kind of position in the spiritual world, in the heaven.”

Narrator: “A higher position than Jesus?”

❖

▲ Sun Myung Moon wrote this calligraphy for his son: “Absolute Victory of Moon Heung Jin 文興進 as Commander-in-Chief of Heaven.”

53:40 Nansook Hong: “A higher position than Jesus, and he was going to hold that position until his Dad comes.”

Narrator: “As Moon saw it, to achieve his proper place in Heaven his dead son needed a wife.”

William Cheshire (former Editor, Washington Times): “And so they took his body, I suppose in a coffin and went ahead with the marriage ceremony. The corpse was married to Bo Hi Pak’s daughter.”

❖

▲ The 1994 marriage of Julia Pak to a photograph of the deceased Heung Jin Moon. Nansook Hong is standing at the back on the right.

Narrator: “Julia Moon, the daughter of Moon’s right hand man, leads his international ballet company.”

Nansook Hong: “And so she married with his picture in her arms. And it was strange, but we simply accepted the fact that was the case.”

Narrator: “A baby was found and given to Julia Moon to bring up with her dead husband.”

Nansook Hong: “We had the wedding ceremony. We had entertainment.”

Narrator: “So it was an ordinary wedding except the bridegroom wasn’t there.”

Nansook Hong: “Yes, exactly”

Narrator: “Much of Moon’s wealth flowed to his children. Nansook says her husband, Hyo-jin, spent it on cocaine in Harlem. High on drugs, he would threaten her.’”

55:00 Nansook Hong: “There were a lot of times he kept saying he was going to kill me, he was going to kill me. There was a point that I knew he was going to kill me. I knew when he was drunk enough, he was high enough, he was capable of doing anything.”

Narrator: “Physically abused, she fled the Moon compound with her children.”

Singing: “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you.”

Narrator: “At the beginning of the year 2000, Moon celebrated his 80th birthday, and some saw him as a prophet out of step with time.”

Donna Collins (ex follower): “In one speech he said that it would be better for men to cut off, their privates, penises, and he said penis, than to engage in a homosexual act. Over time he became more embittered, more angry with the western world for not accepting him, for not realizing and bowing down to his messianic role.”

Dan Quayle: “May God bless you.”

Narrator: “The world’s statesmen who speak at his conferences are a dwindling band. They include Dan Quayle, Kenneth Kaunda and Sir Edward Heath. They applaud his work for peace, but Sir Edward can’t say what he’s actually achieved.”

Sir Edward Heath: “I can’t name anything, no. But what I have done is to address their conference. I think this is the third occasion. No, I have no connection with Dr. Moon.”

Narrator: “But Moon can lay claim to one crowning achievement, a reconciliation with his old enemy, Kim Il-sung, the leader of North Korea. Moon agreed to invest millions in a country he once thought satanic.”

Bo Hi Pak (special assistant to Moon): “Rev Moon, in his own lifetime, has done more than any individual I have ever known in history.”

57:00 Narrator: “Why Moon’s son, Young-jin, fell to his death from the seventeenth floor of a hotel in Reno remains unexplained. So finally is the drive and true nature of his father. Some say their assets and lives were stolen by a megalomaniac.”

Ron Paquette: “You know sometimes when I think about the loss of time and the violation is so great that…sigh.”

Narrator: “Others say Moon has enthused their lives with meaning, and for that, by some, he is revered.”

Bo Hi Pak: “Rev Moon will be known, far more, far greater in next hundred years, next thousand years. And he will be known as the man who truly brought the truth and changed the world. Not by the bullet and fire, but by the spirit of God and the truth of God. He brought more change here on earth than anybody else.”

Subtitle: Moon says that after his death, he will lead his Church from the spirit world.

END

_________________________________________

Nansook Hong In The Shadow Of The Moons: My Life In The Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Family Little, Brown & Co. Boston, New York, Toronto & London, 1998

pages 148-150

“Reverend Moon was freed [from jail] on August 20, 1985. …

At East Garden it was as though Father had returned from a world speaking tour and not from a prison term. The old rhythms returned. The meetings around his breakfast table resumed. But something was different. There was a perceptible shift in the Reverend Moon’s Sunday-morning sermons at Belvedere after his release from the penitentiary. He talked less and less about God and more and more about himself. He seemed obsessed with his vision of himself as some kind of historical figure, not merely as an emissary of God. Where once I had listened intently to his sermons in search of spiritual insight, I now found myself more uneasy and less engaged.

The Reverend Moon’s hubris culminated later that year in a secret ceremony in which he actually crowned himself and Hak Ja Han Moon as Emperor and Empress of the Universe. Preparations for the lavish, clandestine event at Belvedere took months and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Church women were assigned to research the regal robes of the five-hundred-year Yi dynasty that ended in the nineteenth century. Others were ordered to design solid-gold-and-jade crowns modeled on the ones worn by tribal kings. My mother was in charge of buying yards and yards of silk and satin and brocade material and finding seamstresses in Korea to turn these expensive raw materials into the costumes of a royal court. All twelve of Sun Myung Moon’s children, all of his in-laws, all of his grandchildren, were to be outfitted as princes and princesses.

In the end Sun Myung Moon’s crowning ceremony looked less like a historical reconstruction than like a popular Korean television soap opera set during the Yi dynasty. I felt silly, as though I were dressed for a period comedy rather than a sacred religious service. The Reverend Moon was aware enough of how an act of such monumental egotism would be received by the world that he banned photographs from being taken at the actual ceremony. Invited guests, all high-level church officials, who arrived with cameras had them confiscated by security guards, who blocked the entrances to gate-crashers.

In his gold crown and elaborate robes, Sun Myung Moon looked to me for all the world like a modern-day Charlemagne. The difference was that this emperor bowed to no pope. Since there was no authority higher than the Reverend Moon, the Messiah had to crown himself Emperor of the Universe.

The coronation was a turning point for me and my parents. For the first time we voiced our doubts to one another about Sun Myung Moon. It was not an easy thing to do. Much has been written about the coercion and brainwashing that takes place in the Uniﬁcation Church. What I experienced was conditioning. You are isolated among like-minded people. You are bombarded with messages elevating obedience above critical thinking. Your belief system is reinforced at every turn. You become invested in those beliefs the longer you are associated with the church. After ten years, after twenty years, who would want to admit, even to herself, that her beliefs were built on sand?

I didn’t, surely. I was part of the inner circle. I had seen enough kindness in the Reverend Moon to excuse his blatant lapses — his toleration of his son’s behavior, his hitting his children, his verbal abuse of me. Not to excuse him was to open my whole life up to question. Not just my life. My parents had spent thirty years pushing aside their own doubts. My father tolerated the arbitrary way in which Sun Myung Moon ran his businesses, inserting unqualified friends and relatives into positions of authority, promoting those who curried favor and firing those who displayed any independence. My father survived at the top of Il Hwa pharmaceuticals by accepting the Reverend Moon’s frequent public humiliations. For his part, the Reverend Moon left my father in place because Il Hwa continued to make money for him.

If the deification of Heung Jin and the crowning ceremony tested my faith, the emergence of the Black Heung Jin nearly destroyed it. …”

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Part of Emperor of the Universe is available with Spanish subtitles:

La secta Moon

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Nansook Hong, transcripts of three interviews, including ‘60 Minutes’

Nansook Hong In The Shadow Of The Moons, part 1

New Republic – The Fall of the House of Moon

Mother Jones – Sun Myung Moon’s secret love child

Moon’s theology for his pikareum sex rituals with all the 36 wives

Sun Myung Moon and the United Nations

FBI and other reports on Sun Myung Moon