This weekend Bill Hinzman passed away. Bill played the lumbering undead corpse who attacks Barbara at the beginning of 1968′s classic Night of the Living Dead.
Said differently, Bill was the very first movie zombie.
Ever.
So here at komplexify, we tip our hat to a true movie icon, and express our sincerest hope that Bill pulls himself out of his coffin and eats a mourner or two at his wake.
I just saw a trailer for Transformers 4, which apparently has been renamed “Battleship” for some reason. There’s nothing particularly interesting about the trailer, but it did remind me of the time over summer that I saw Transformers 3 with its director Michael Bay.*
I didn’t write anything about it at the time, owing to the deep psychological trauma it inflicted upon me, but I did manage to find some of my notes of the viewing, which I decided to post here for posterity.
Me: Alright, let’s get this over with. I’ve got somewhere to b… HOLY CRAP THIS IS TWO-AND-A-HALF HOURS LONG?
Bay: Buckle up, baby. It’s time for some Total Bay-os!TM
Onscreen voiceover: In the last days of the great war on Cybertron between the noble Autobots and the evil Decepticons, a single Autobot ship escaped, carrying cargo that would have ended the war and saved…
[ Said spaceship gets blown to smithereens attempting to leave orbit. ]
Onscreen voiceover: Well, shit.
Me: Wait a second… the ship that got blown up at the beginning of the movie, presumably eons ago on a planet hundreds, if not thousands, of light-years away, managed to crash on the Moon? The only moon of the very same planet where, completely unrelated, a tiny piece of the all-important AllSpark landed? And, also completely unrelated, where the Decepticons once set up a sun-destroying machine hidden in the Great Pyramids?
Bay: Awesome, isn’t it?
Me: Do you have any idea what the odds are of anything remotely like that happening?
Bay: Dude, I crashed a spaceship in a vacuum and still had it make a shit-ton of noise. I keep having NASA scientists say “the dark side of the moon” even though there is no such thing. I’m making a movie premised on the idea that the Apollo 11 module landed fifty feet from the wreckage of a spaceship that appears to be the set of Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes, except with dead robots sporting Fu-Manchu mustaches instead of talking monkeys, and that no further evidence of this is ever found in the intervening four decades of space flight and telescope technology. Do I look like I care?
Me: You, sir, are a douche-bag.
Me: Did Bumblebee just shoot a rocket straight into a Iraqi soldier?
Bay: USA! USA! USA!
Me: But… why does he still look like a bright-yellow Camaro? Transformers are robots “in disguise.” The “in disguise” is pretty much the only tagline of Transformers.
Bay: What?
Me: You established in the first movie that Transformers could change their vehicle states at will into anything they scan….
Bay: …
Me: And you said in this one that they’re working with the US army…
Bay: …
Me: …So why doesn’t he transform into something more appropriate to desert warfare like a Jeep or a Humvee or a tank or… well, pretty much anything other than a glow-in-the-dark neon-yellow muscle car?
Bay: …
Me: …
Bay: Did I mention the car is American? USA! USA! USA!
Me: You, sir, are a douche-bag.
Me: So, the Decepticons are hiding out in the middle of the savanah?
Bay: No one would think to look for them in Africa!
Me: …No one except for the entire world, on account of the fact that the Decepticons tore the living shit out of the Great Pyramids in the last movie. And how does that work, anyway? Megatron and Starscream are giant, lumbering 50-foot tall metal monsters. They kind of stand out against the background.
Bay: Ah, but did you notice that Megatron is wearing a hood so nobody will recognize him now?
Me: …
Me: That‘s Shockwave? Why the hell is he riding a robotic sandworm? He’s supposed to transform into a laser gun, man, not the freaking Kwisatz Haderach.
Bay: Croissant-Hadda-whatnow?
Me: Seriously, dude it’s “Robots… in disguise.” What part of “in disguise” confuses you?
Bay: You wanna know who can use “disguise” in a sentence? [ Points thumbs at himself. ] Dis guy…. zuh.
Me: You, sir, are a douche-bag.
Me: So the Autobots went to the moon and found their good buddy Sentinel Prime, who is inexplicably voiced by Leonard Nimoy. That’s after scenes with John Malkovich playing a OCD spaz, Frances McDormand playing a hyper-strung uber-bitch, and Alan Tudyk playing a German manservant so flamingly gay it’s a wonder he hadn’t yet spontaneously burst into flames. What do you have on these people?
Bay: Don’t forget! I also had John Turturro pissed on in the first movie.
Me: [ Remembering. ] Oh God.
Me: So let me get this straight. The Decepticons knew about the crashed spaceship and Sentinel Prime, but they were waiting for the Autobots to find him first, so they could use the Leadership Matrix thingie, which is the only thing that could bring him back to life?
Bay: Brilliant, isn’t it?
Me: But in fact Sentinel Prime is in league with the Decepticons to make a “space bridge” to teleport Cybertron to Earth to rebuild it?
Bay: It’s a plot twist no one could see coming!
Me: But… if Sentinel Prime and Megatron were in cahoots all along, why did the Decepticons blow up the ship at the beginning?
Bay: Er… to throw the Autobots off their trail? After all, they had the Matrix of Leadership, which I established in the last movie revives Primes. Also, it and blows up suns.
Me: Riiiiiiiggghht. But they Autobots only discovered the Matrix after Sentinel’s ship had been blown up. According to the previous movie, the Matrix was assumed to have been destroyed. The Decepticons had no reason to believe the Autobots had it. And if Megatron left Cybertron after Sentinel Prime’s ship blew up and headed off to the Moon, how the hell did Megatron himself end up on Earth stuck in an iceberg hundreds of years earlier?
Bay: Time for an action sequence!
Me: You sir, are a douche-bag.
Onscreen Leonard Nimoy: I’m sorry Optimus, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Me: No… no… no…. [ Shakes fists up at the sky. ] BAY!!! BBBBBBBBBBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!
Me: So we’re going to have another high-speed robot fight on the freeway? Didn’t we cover this in Transformers 1? It seems so… repetitive.
Bay: You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Me: Wait… this is a repeat! You actually just recycled footage from The Island for this chase, but digitally inserted robots in them!
Bay: Yeah? I pulled the same shit off in Transformers 1, too. Suck on that, boyee.
Me: You, sir, are a douche-bag.
Onscreen NASA tech: The Decepticons have promised to destroy the world unless the Autobots promise to leave the Earth. So why do we at NASA need to whipped up an extra-special Space Shuttle really fast, just to send them away?
Onscreen Shia Laboef: Because the Autobots can’t leave the planet.
Me: But… they were just on the Moon a half-hour ago to get Sentinel Prime. That doesn’t make any s… You know what, never mind. At least you got rid of the Racist Twins.
Bay: Yeah, I was told employing such derogatory stereotypes at such length might possibly be construed as racist. That’s why I took Skids and Mudflap out of the movie.
Onscreen Optimus: To help you, NASA scientists, are two of our top engineers, the Wrecker Twins.
Onscreen Twin #1: Achh! It’s good to see you, ma bonnie wee lass!
Onscreen Twin #2: Aye. Now whoo ett me robo-haggis?
Onscreen Twin #1: Achh! I deed, ya daft robowinkle. But now eet’s time to keel Meggeetroon Longshanks.
Onscreen Twin #2: Aye! Yeh keen take away me transmission fluid, but you’ll never take awee me freedom!
Me: You, sir, are a douche-bag.
Me: So the after blowing up the Autobots, the Decepticons take over the world, and teleport a bunch more Decepticons to Earth. Along with Cybertron and gunships, apparently. About that…
Bay: Total Bay-osTM!
Me: Why do robots who can transform into gunships actually need gunships?
Bay: …
Me: Nevermind. So the Decepticons blow Chicago the hell up and slaughter Chicagans left and right on the street… and only then do the Autobots reveal that they’d been hiding, safe and sound, all along?
Bay: It’s all a part of Optimus Prime’s master plan. I like to think of myself as Prime.
Onscreen Optimus Prime: We needed you to understand the Decepticons cannot be trusted.
Onscreen Shia LaBoef: That’s why you let the Decepticons brutally murder hundreds of thousands of humans without even trying to lift a finger to stop them? To teach us a lesson?
Onscreen Optimus Prime: Yes.
Onscreen Shia LaBoef: You, sir, are a docuhe-bag.
Bay: You need to pee? Now’s the time, because the last action scene is going to start.
Me: But… there’s an hour left in this movie.
Bay: I know. It’s going to blow… your… mind.
Me: Well, my head already hurts, so you may have a point. Do you need to use the toilet too?
Bay: Hardly. That’s what I have the American movie-going public for.
I leave for the restroom. In the stall next to me, a person breathlessly exclaims to the person with whom he’s currently on the phone: “Dude, I’m seeing Transformers 4, man. It’s the greatest movie I have ever seen in my life.” **
I weep for humanity, and return to my seat.
Me: I’m back. What did I miss?
Bay: GI Joe parachuted in using wingsuits –
Me: I thought the Decepticons controlled the air and were capable of taking out sophisticated American warplanes armed with missiles and machine guns. How the hell did bunch of guys dressed like Rocky the Flying Squirrel sneak through?
Bay: — and Shockwave used his robot-sandworm to tentacle-rape an office building –
Me: You are one sick puppy.
Bay: — and now… well, I’m not sure what exacty is going on here. Maybe its Bumblebee fighting Starscream. Or Ratchet fighting Soundwave. Or maybe its just some random automotive parts shots I accidentally threw in. I dunno.
Me: You, sir, are a douche-bag.
Onscreen Girlfriend-Who-Is-Not-Megan-Fox: Megatron, you know that when Sentinel beats the Autobots, he won’t need you anymore, and he’ll probably kill you off for, what, the third time in this franchise?
Onscreen Megatron: Your logic is infallible. I must sabotage my own plans in order to salvage my own plans.
Me: Wait, what? Did the supermodel just outwit the evil computer with an appeal to logic and vanity? What is this, Logan’s Run?
Bay: Dude, you’re missing Optimus totally kill the shit out of Megatron for the third time in this franchise.
Me: Did Optimus Prime just shoot Sentinel Prime as he begged for his life? And then ripped out his spinal column like a freaking Mortal Kombat fatality? Isn’t he supposed to be the good guy?
Bay: Total Bay-osTM!!!! Roll credits, bitches.
Me: You, sir, are a douche-bag.
* Obviously this is a parody. I wouldn’t sit through a movie with Michael Bay even if you hog-tied each of my testicles to pair of thoroughbreds and had all four horses head of in separate direction. None of this really happened.
** …Except, sadly, this part.
While driving around town today, I saw a cool bumper sticker. It simply read
C O E X I S T
with each letter doubling as a symbolic representation of a different elaborate, often uplifting, and occasionally dark worldview, apparently with the point of promoting tolerance between adherents of conflicting mindsets.
No, not this one:
I’m not really a believer in the message of religious ecumenicalism that it preaches, even if I do dig the simple cleverness of the graphic design used to preach it. (I find the message COEXIST very clearly spelled out amongst the jumble of images representing Islam, hippies, genders, Judaism, paganism, Eastern mysticism, and Christianity, although it always bothers me that they stick a physical “S” in the middle of the yin-yang. Apparently, they’re more confused we won’t see the letter S in the distinctly S-shaped swirl of the black and white, but are completely fine with us decoding an “X” from the jumble of lines forming the hexagram.)
Anyone can pay lip service to the idea of religious tolerance, but it’s actually extraordinarily difficult to put it into practice. If you really and truly believe the tenants of of your religion — particularly if it makes claims provide for post-death benefits or punishment — then you cannot in good faith tolerate the existence of contradictory religion if for no other reason than to make sure that no one is deprived of that sought-after salvation. For such folks, dealing with those other religions is better summed up by:
Consequently, the only people for whom religious tolerance is a practical, feasible idea are precisely those people who don’t really believe the claims made by those religions (including their own), since they’re often directly contradictory. Instead, such folks see “spirituality” as path to Truth with a capital T, but pretty much disregard the actual content of any particular “religion.” Those folks would be better suited with a different bumper sticker:
However, if we’re willing to postulate that our favorite fantasy worldview is just that — fantasy — then we can probably go a lot farther with the tolerance idea. So while I think there’s no chance that religious tolerance will ever work among the general population, I’m ever hopeful that we can at least attain a level of science-fiction/fantasy tolerance among the geeks and nerds of the Earth.
Thus, the following clever variation on the COEXIST theme:
That being said, I have a few gripes about this particular design:
Fortunately, the geeks of the world went about setting this one right.
You can even find a version that extends the olive branch of fictional tolerance even wider:
Of course, both of these new designs omit that Babylon 5 ship that appears in the original design. But, seriously, Babylon 5 fans? Heretics and infidels.
Let ‘em burn.
The Legend of Korra, the sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender, is officially happening! It premiers at 11 AM EST on Nickelodeon on April 14. The last time I mentioned it I was a little wary of the “steampunk” angle, but nevertheless hoped it would blow me away.
Consider my mind blown:
That was the first official trailer. Here’s the second one:
In case you don’t appreciate how awesome this looks, just watch the subtle multi-layered 3D effect at the 0:53 mark above. This show is going to kick ass.
The best part is that the first episode is premiering tomorrow at the Korra Nation website. Guess I know what I’m doing this weekend.
Apparently Michael Bay is producing a live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. I heard this on Conan the other night, and my immediate thoughts, given my less-than-stellar impression of his work so far, were
Apparently, though, I didn’t realize just how much it’s going to suck. At a recent Nickelodeon shindig, Bay announced
When we are done with this movie, kids are going to believe, one day, that these turtles do exist, when we are done with this movie. These turtles are from an alien race, and they are going to be tough, edgy, funny, and completely lovable.
Bay, listen up. If they’re aliens from another planet, then they are not, by definition, mutated turtles from this one. Once again: they’re not mutant turtles. That means that you’ve fucked up fully half of the defining attributes of principal characters, and you haven’t even started making this movie yet. What the hell is wrong with you, man?
My thoughts on this are best summed up in rage form:
In summary, you, sir, are still a douche-bag.
I’m in Michigan of all places, visiting with some of my wife’s family. At dinner last night, a gaggle of us somehow got onto the topic of Star Wars, including whether or not new and improved 3D versions of them were necessary (and no, they’re not), or the likelihood of George Lucas ever releasing the beloved original versions of the movies to be released on Blu-Ray (also no, that chinless bastard).
So the Queen B showed me this video today, which seemed eerily on-topic. Also hilarious.
Now if we could only get the real George Lucas to hide in a green screen for all time and eternity like he does at the end of this video…
I’ve seen a lot of animated features with the Bugs this summer. Here are some of my thoughts on them, in mathematical format.
Happy Feet 2 supposedly follows the adventures of Mumble Happy Feet after he’s married Gloria and sired some offspring, except that it actually follows a pair of krill having an existential crisis, a puffin having an identity crisis, and a penguin chick having a paternal crisis, all set against the backdrop of every penguin from the first movie suffering from starvation and preparing to die while Mumble watches on helplessly. So, basically:
The immensely popular Belgian adventure comic about a globe-trotting boy reporter, his dog, and his suicidally drunk friend got a CGI makeover by Stevens Spielberg and Moffat (the latter of Doctor Who fame). It should have been a lot of fun, save for two things. First, I just can’t get excited about completely computer-generated action sequences — why should I pay $8 to watch what amounts to somebody else playing a video game? — and this movie is full of ‘em. Second, while the characters are infinitely less terrifying that the soulless corpses of The Polar Express or Beowulf, they’re still far creepier than the charming cartoony style of the original Herge strip. (This is especially perplexing, since the opening title sequence is done this way, and is by far the most entertaining bit of the movie.) So…
A “claymation” flick about a outcast kid, the titular Norman, with the curse (or is it a gift?) of seeing and speaking with the dead, who must save his small town from an invisible witch and an outbreak of lumbering zombies.
Of course, in the end, it turns out that the zombies are actually friendly and merely under the spell of the witch, so perhaps a better description is:
I’m not really sure there’s a difference between the two other than the gender of the protagonist and the taxonomic rank of the creature… but I liked ‘em both a lot anyway.
Geeks Are Sexy recently posted an infographic listing actors and actresses who have appeared in both Doctor Who and Star Wars (which includes the dudes that played Star Wars’ penultimate baddies Darth Vader and Boba Fett!). Click to embiggen the list:
In a similar spirit, here are some more DW/SW crossovers I found after a hasty Googling of the internets.
One common crossover theme I found was revamp the iconic droids C3PO and R2D2 of SW as the iconic cyborg adversaries of DW, the Cybermen and the Daleks, such as in
or
(Of course, you don’t have to re-envision R2 as a Dalek to make a Doctor Who joke. You can also work in a good K-9 gag too:)
Another theme is to have Darth Vader bested by Doctor Who characters, ranging from the Doctor himself
to the Empty Child:
One final theme based on the fact that while both the Doctor and Yoda are 900 years old give or take, time has certainly been kinder to one of them:
May the Force and your sonic screwdriver be with you!
I don’t want to say that The Avengers isn’t a fun popcorn flick, because it is, but by God you need to have sat through ten hours (actually, 10 hours plus 1 minute) of Marvel backstory to figure out just what the hell is happening during its two-and-a-half hour run time, other than the barest elements of various superheros teaming up to stop a scrawny guy with a big horned hat and his army of CGI from (eventually) destroying New York. By way of assistance, let me help out:
One of my Christmas presents was a copy of Ridley Scott’s kinda-sorta prequel to Alien. As Alien and Aliens are among my favorite movies (hell, I even liked David Fincher’s Alien3), I was excited to watch Prometheus and see the hinted at origins of the Xenomorph and Space Jockey. Also, Charlize Theron in skivvies, but I digress.
Prometheus is certainly a marvel to behold. From its Icelandic fly-over opening (which I can only describe as porn for geologists) to its haunting musical score to its Gigeresque backdrops, Promoetheus looks and sounds amazing. It definitely feels like a epic Ridley Scott movie, along with Alien or Blade Runner or Gladiator.
However, when you get down to the actual plot of the movie, Prometheus is a muddled rehashing of the other Alien movies. The basic plot: a ragtag time of scientists led by not-Ellen-Ripley, having watched too much “Ancient Aliens” on History Channel, finagle funds from yet another Mr. Weiland (this time played by Guy Pierce in the worst old-dude make-up possible) and fly off to distant moon LV-not-426 to search out “The Engineers” of humanity.
They arrive at the apparently dead moon but conveniently land next to a giant dome with giant fucking human skull on the top and, being brilliant scientists, decide to investigate it immediately. Without helmets. Right before an oncoming dust storm. Inside, they find an increasing number of dead Engineers, who turn out to be the Space Jockeys from Alien despite their being giant albino bodybuilders, and a room stockpiled with urns filled what turns out to be the black oil from The X-Files. After that, pretty much everbody dies at the hands of non-humans (expect, of course, for not-Ellen-Ripley):
But the Engineer doesn’t make it to Earth (spoilers!) and instead meets the mother of all facehuggers and chest-bursts a really gummy xenomorph, while not-Ripley and the decapitated head of the robot fly off in some leftover Aliens test footage.
On first viewing, almost none of Prometheus makes sense, but not in the clever Primer way: rather, nothing any of the characters do makes a lick of sense. Take, for instance, the scientists. As hinted at in the plot summary, Prometheus is populated by what must be the worst scientists of all time. There’s the aforementioned geologist who cannot identify rocks; there’s the aforementioned biologist who cannot identify dangerous fauna (even when it sits up and hisses at him); there’s the archeologist who, after being outside on an alien environment for all of 5 minutes, decides to remove his helmet because it’s Christmas; there’s the ship captain who, when trying to escape the path of a giant, rotating ship, decides to try and outrun the front of it rather than run perpendicular to it and let it pass. And, of course, there’s the protagonist, scientist not-Ellen-Ripley who, who, when asked to present her evidence for her belief that 200 years of evolutionary biology is completely wrong, remarks “I don’t have any evidence. But it’s what I choose to believe.” Because Up yours!, Scientific Method.
The actions of the aliens don’t make much more sense. There’s the aforementioned space squid that not-Ellen-Ripley gets surgically removed (in the movie’s best — and most quease-inducing — scene), which can apparently increase its body mass by eight-hundred times over the course of an hour. Also, after trying to kill not-Ellen-Ripley after its mechanized C-section (not, she adamantly declares, an abortion), the space squid decides instead to save her and kill the hell out of the Engineer instead. There’s the aforementioned black goop and the fact that it acts naughty or nice only in deference to the current whim of the film’s director. It’s later posited that the goo is some kind of dangerous weapon… which only begs the question of why the Engineers would leave thousands of canisters of the stuff literally just lying around on the ground of a cave. And, of course, brings us to the Engineers, who might be the only creatures stupider than the humans. They leave their deadly bio-weapons in crappy vases on the floors of caves. They pilot their cutting edge space-ships with space-flutes. And, after spending ten thousand years trying to communicate with humanity, they decide at the last minute to nuke ‘em from orbit instead.
The reason for this is never explicitly spelled out in the movie… but after a second and third viewing, we can find enough clues to explain it. Among the clues:
That’s right: the Engineers are pissed with Earthlings because we killed Space Jesus.
That’s right. Jesus Christ was a giant albino space alien. Not only does this explain the movie, it also actually goes a long ways towards explaining why Christ always looks more like this:
than, say, a brown-skinned dude from the Middle East.
So, there you have it. Prometheus is a Aliens prequel in which the dominant themes are:
So, pretty much:
The Doctor frequently laments that he is the last of the Time Lords, but I beg to disagree. Consider:
Further evidence: each new regeneration appears to be getting younger than the previous one.
Further evidence: British companions and a propensity for made-up words.
Further evidence: he opens the movie “Tangled” by saying “This is the story of how I died,” which is EXACTLY how Rose Tyler opens the episode “Army of Ghosts.”
No further evidence, but just look… There were DALEKS! …In Rugrats! …Nickelodeon was AWESOME in the day.
I rest my case.
Now… who have I forgotten?
No, not the good Ah-nold one.
[ The post-apocalyptic bio-weapon ravaged future, where the only two habitable places on Earth are England and Australia, which connected to each other only by a single gravity train called The Fall. ]
Colin Farrell: I’m a blue-collar working-class guy just trying to make a living in this dystopian future whilst lamenting about the nature of consciousness and free will in my spare time. I may also be a good guy or a bad guy in this movie. Why, I totally don’t recall that I played this same character in Minority Report.
Kate Beckinsdale: I’m a sexy British secret agent with a penchant for tight-fitting black clothes, kung fu, and fully automatic handguns. I can also leap from impossibly tall buildings and still stick the landing in by latex boots. Why, I totally don’t recall that I played this same character in the Underworld movies.
Colin: Ack! I just had another completely foreshadowing nightmare involving Jessica Biel! These secret agent nightmares are ruining my life; therefore, I shall go to Rekall and have them stick even more secret agent dreams into my head. What could possibly go wrong?
[ Colin walks from his apartment through what the audience definitely recalls as every exterior set used in Blade Runner. He goes to the Rekall office and meets their chief brain scrambler.]
Colin: John Cho from J.J. Abram’s Star Trek? That would explain all the lens flare in this movie.
In the future…you won’t be able to see a goddammed thing.
So will these new memories feel real?
John Cho: What is real? How do you define real? If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by the brain. Now, take this blue pill and sit into this chair while I plug your brain into a virtual world in which you are the savior. Why, I can’t recall any similarities between this and the Matrix movies.
[ Just then a number of evil agents bursts into the room and shoots the hell out of everybody... except Colin, who defeats them with the power of Bullet TimeTM! ]
Colin: Whoa. I know kung fu.
[ Colin runs home and tells his wife. ]
Kate: Sorry, Colin, but you’re actually a spy with computer-induced amnesia. I suppose I could use any of the many tranquilizers I keep in my medical bag to subdue you and have you brainwashed again, but I’d rather just kill you.
[ Colin and Kate fight for a while, and then chase each other through a city that consists of a seemingly endless sequence of floating ledges that audiences will recall from Super Mario Bros. Colin punches a brick, powers up with a mushroom that tells him he's really a secret agent, and escapes by riding The Fall from Australia to England. ]
Colin: This is a cool 17-minute trip with a nifty weightless “gravity reversal” switcheroo in the middle. But… if the gravity train was in free-fall the whole time, I should experience weightlessness the whole time… so that doesn’t make any sense.
In fact, given the known average density of the Earth’s crust, mantle, and core and assuming a frictionless fall, physics says this trip would actually take about 46 minutes, so not only are we not experiencing free-fall, we’re actually accelerating rather rapidly the whole trip, meaning we should instead be plastered to the ceiling on the way down.
And that’s assuming we weren’t already completely barbecued by the intense twelve-thousand degree temperature at the Earth’s core…
You know what? This is stupid. I should’ve got my ass to Mars instead.
[ The Fall arrives in England. A portly redheaded woman announces her stay will be "Two weeks" after which Colin is discovered wearing the digital mask of an Asian man. This bit of original Total Recall trolling would have been especially clever if it weren't for the fact that the immediately preceding scene showed the Asian man as one of Colin's assumed identities. ]
Colin: Oh, crap. I’d better escape through this crowded building while a bunch of sleek white robots hunts me down in collusion with the police. I totally don’t recall something just like this happening in I, Robot.
[ Just then a sexy chick in latex appears in a souped up car just as our hero is about to be caught. ]
Jessica Biel: Get in! Quick, before I recall that this looks exactly like Quorra saving Sam in Tron Legacy.
[ Colin gets in. They flee, pursued by the cops using futuristic cars hovering over a magnetic track. ]
Colin: Wait, we’re stealing from Minority Report again?
Jessica: Oops, hold on.
[ She swerves to a side road, in which the cars now float in the air, magnetically suspended below a magnetic track. ]
Jessica: How about we steal from The Fifth Element instead?
Three movie rip-offs in one car chase? That’s gotta be some kind of record.
[ They crash the car conveniently close to Colin's pre-amnesia apartment, where he discovers an interactive hologram. ]
Holographic Colin: My responses are limited. You must ask the right questions.
Colin: What, we’re back to ripping off I, Robot?
Holographic Colin: This whole movie’s a rip off. Be thankful there’s a scene with the hot triple-tittied hooker again.
Admit it… this was what you wanted to see in Total Recall.
Listen, you’re really not you, you’re really a bad guy who’s secretly a good guy deep down.
[ The robo-cops and Kate show up at the apartment, where they have a fight inside a smallish cubical elevator that zips along the x-, y-, and z-axes amongst a maze of other similarly moving cubes. Occasionally folks get dismembered when they try to leave the box from the wrong direction. ]
Colin: I totally don’t recall this from Cube!
[ They escape. ]
Jessica: We need to escape the city and see Mathias, the Kuato-character in this movie, played by Bill Nighy.
Colin: Cool. The creepy little gut-mutant from the original Total Recall is being played by an actor known for playing the hideously decomposed boss vampire in Underworld and the anthropomorphic squid pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean 2. I can’t wait to see the make-up on him in this movie.
Completely ordinary Bill Nighy: ‘Ello.
Colin: Poop.
[ The robo-cops and Kate show up again, this time with Brian Cranston, who is the evil mastermind Cohaagen. They kill Bill Nighy, capture Jessica, and attempt to reprogram Colin again by plugging him into another Matrix-style chair. But because he is The One, he escapes. Or something. All these sci-fi movies are starting to look the same to me. ]
Colin: I need to get back on The Fall to stop the bad guys from sending their robo-cops to kill everyone in Australia for some reason or other. I’ll fight off all these various bad guys in this multi-story building-like elevator with no means of escape, armed only with this hand-gun. I totally don’t recall anything like this happening in Die Hard.
[ The building begins to move. ]
Colin: …Or Die Hard 2.
[ The fight includes a number of baddies who bounce around the walls like they're free-runners. ]
Colin: …Or Die Hard 4.
[ Eventually The Fall lands in Australia, whereupon Colin -- who we've already established is sharp-shooting, kung-fuing, super spy -- gets his ass repeatedly beat down by a middle-aged politician. ]
Bryan Cranston: Apparently Breaking Bad is paying off for me!
[ Fortunately, Jessica shows up in a grounded plane and machine-guns the hell out of Bryan and his robot reinforcements. ]
Jessica: I totally don’t recall this from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
[ Kate Beckinsdale shows up one last time for what promises to be a full-on martial-arts throw-down, but Colin simply shoots her instead. ]
Colin: What was that about Raiders?
[ They blow up The Fall. ]
Colin: Wait… in the original Total Recall, my character powers up alien technology that terraforms Mars into a lush, living planet, giving humanity a new place to live and hope for their otherwise dangerously expanding population. In this movie, my character blows up an elevator, thereby isolating the last two groups of humanity from each other, effectively speeding up their eventual demise.
Jessica: They should have called this Total Ripoff instead.
THE END.
Star Trek 2.2: The Wrath of John Harrison… No, you got me. It’s Khan.
[ Chris Pine and Karl Urban are running through the red-plant forest from War of the Worlds while being chased by the natives from Raiders of the Lost Ark. ]
Chris Pine: This opening scene shows us that this is not your parent’s Star Trek movie!
Karl Urban: No… it’s apparently your parent’s Steven Spielberg movie instead.
[ They escape by cliff-diving, where the starship Enterprise is resting on the bottom of the freaking ocean. They enter the bridge, which still looks like an Apple store's Genius Bar, and contact Simon Pegg in engineering, which still looks like a Budwesier brewery. ]
Simon Pegg: Cap’n, it’s time to go. The salt water’s corrodin’ the nacelles and floodin’ me kilt.
Karl Urban: That‘s the problem? This starship is at the bottom of the ocean… Even assuming a ridiculously shallow depth of 500 feet, there should be at least 15 atmospheres of pressure pushing in on this ship from all directions. How many atmospheres can the Enterprise withstand?
Pegg: Well, it’s a space ship, so I’d say anywhere between 0 and 1.
Urban: What, was it built by Planet Express?
Good news, everyone!
Chris Pine: Never mind the questionable physics, we need to beam Zachary Quinto out of that active volcano before his freeze bomb detonates.
Pegg: Sorry, cap’n, I canna beam ‘im through that volcanic activity.
Pine: Aren’t you the same guy who, in the last movie, jerry-rigged a broken-down transporter to beam the pair of us onto a starship located billions of lightyears away while it was itself moving faster than the speed of light? And now we can’t beam up a guy less than 5 miles away... because it’s too smoky?
Pegg: Aye.
[ The Enterprise rises from the ocean floor, the sight of which completely destroys the indigenous religion and becomes their new God, the profound implications of which are never to be considered again during the movie. Oh, and they beam up Quinto, too. ]
[ Meanwhile, back on Earth in London, Noel Clarke's daughter is dying in a hospital. ]
Benedict Cumberbatch: As a fellow BBC thespian, I will save your daughter by giving her some of my mysterious super-blood, in exchange for which you will suicide-bomb the hell out of a Starfleet bunker. By the way, I’m totally not Khan.
Noel Clarke: Man, I should’ve stayed on the TARDIS. [ Blows up. ]
[ Meanwhile, back on Earth in San Francisco. ]
Bruce Greenwood: Chris Pine, you’ve violated the Prime Directive, falsified official documents, and violated at least 17 bestiality laws with those two naked cat-chicks in your hotel room last night. You’ve got no right to be in Starfleet, much less commanding its flagship Enterprise. You’re off the ship, and back to the Academy.
Pine: Man, this sucks.
Greenwood: On second thought, why don’t you be my first officer on the Enterprise again?
Pine: Awesome.
Greenwood: Let’s hope nothing terribly incapacitating happens to me in the next, say, five minutes so that you’ll get another battle-field promotion to Captain like in the last movie.
[ Cumberbatch flies up in Airwolf, kills him, and beams away. ]
Greenwood: Ah, shit. [Dies. ]
Peter Weller: Dammit! It turns out that Benedict Cumberbatch, who is totally not Khan by the way, has declared war on Starfleet, but is hiding on the Klingon’s home-world of Kronos. Chris, I need you to take our most recognizable vessel, violate all of our treaties with the Klingons by entering the Neutral Zone, and utterly murder Benedict without trial by nuking him with these 72 utterly mysterious photon torpedoes, which you will fire without provocation on Kronos, in all likelihood starting an all-out war with the Klingon Empire in the process. Do you have any problems with this?
Pine: Just one. If their home world is called Kronos, why the hell are they called Klingons instead of Kronons or Kronians or something like that?
[ Chris Pine gets the gang back together in the Mystery Machin-- I mean, the Enterprise. ]
Pine: All right, gang, here’s the mission. We’re going to take Starfleet’s most recognizable vessel, violate our treaties with the Klingons by entering the Neutral Zone, and utterly murder Benedict Cumberbatch, who is not Khan, by nuking him with these 72 utterly mysterious photon torpedoes, which we will fire without provocation on the Klingon home-world, in all likelihood starting an all-out war with the Klingon Empire in the process. Do you have any problems with this?
Zachary Quinto: I have a problem with this. It’s immoral and illogical.
Pine: Shut up. I’m replacing you as Chief Science Officer with Alice Eve in lingerie.
Did you notice Alice Eve has two different colored eyes? Of course not. Your eyes never got up that high, did they?
Simon Pegg: I too have a problem with this. It’s immoral and dangerous.
Pine: Shut up. I’m replacing you as Chief Engineer with Anton Yelchin. Get off my ship.
Anton Yelchin: It’s a good thing our characters are completely interchangeable and don’t have definite roles that have been established for, say, almost fifty years!
Pine: Seeing as how nobody else has a problem, let’s go to Kronos.
[ Pause. ]
Pine: Wait. I’ve just realized what we’re doing is immoral, illogical, and dangerous. Let’s do the right thing, and bring in Cumberbatch to stand trial!
Pegg [ at home ]: Son of a…
[ The Enterprise, sans Simon Pegg, goes to Kronos, but gets a flat tire, which is pronounced as "warp core malfunction" in the future. ]
Pine: My ship is broke. How should we get Benedict Cumberbatch now? Who I shall emphasize again is not Khan?
Quinto: The only logical answer should be obvious, Captain. This is a summer blockbuster action movie. If we follow the plot from similar such movies such as The Dark Knight or The Avengers or Skyfall, we should chase the villain, have him handily beat our asses for a while before suddenly surrendering, whereupon we shall imprison him in a large glass cell until he reveals his backstory and escapes.
Pine: Sounds like a plan! Zoe Saldana, come along for comic relief.
Zoe Saldana: Oh no you di’int!
[ They chase the villain to Kronos, where they meet Klingons. They all get the shit kicked out of them by Benedict Cumberbatch, who suddenly surrenders and is brought back to the Enterprise and placed in a large glass cell. ]
Because the whole “get yourself caught and thrown in a glass cell” plan worked so well for the Joker, Loki, and Silva…
Pine: So why did those Klingons look so weird? Is this one of the consequences of the whole “Alternate Timeline” thingy established in the last movie?
Quinto: No, Captain. Klingon faces just get retconned about as often as Time Lords.
Cumberbatch: Two Doctor Who jokes already and not a single mention of Sherlock? Enough, inferior fools. Time for my completely unexpected backstory.
[ Pause. ]
Cumberbatch: I’m Khan.
Quinto: You’re Khan? Khan… Noonien… Singh? Apparently racebending exists in the twenty-third century.
Cumberbatch: I am a genetically engineered superman from 300 years in your past. Peter Weller awoke me to design weapons to be used in a new war with the Klingons. My comrades are asleep in those mysterious torpedoes Peter Weller gave you. Also, he slashed your tires and is on his way to kill you right now.
[ Suddenly an evil Starfleet ship comes out of warp. We know it's evil because its big and black and covered with spikes and skulls and stuff. ]
Wait… the little white ship is the good guy and the big scary black one is the bad guy. That’s racist, dude.
Peter Weller: You’re coming with me, Khan!
Cumberbatch: Is that a Robocop 2 reference?
[ The USS Enterprise warps back to Earth, but the USS MurderDeathKill warps faster and shoots the hell out of it, causing it to suddenly fall out of warp. ]
Quinto: That is most illogical. I do not understand how the almost instantaneous deceleration from faster-than-light speed to a full stop did not cause the crew to be spattered and crushed against the interior walls of the ship, Captain.
Pine: Never mind that… why the hell does warp travel look exactly like the East Australian Current from Finding Nemo?
Live long and prosper, duuuuuuuuuuude.
Simon Pegg: It’s alright, Cap’n. I’ve stowed meself a’board the evil vessel and have temporarily disabled its weapons and thrusters, ’cause there’s nothing more exciting than watching two ships just floating through space aimlessly for a half hour.
Pine: We need to get over to that ship and stop Peter Weller. But how?
Quinto: Perhaps we should recycle another plot point from a summer blockbuster. I suggest we redo the “space jump” scene from our last movie, except this time do it horizontally through space instead of vertically through air. But let’s keep the sound of wind rushing past for no apparent reason.
Benedict: By the way, I suppose it’s about time for for me to escape and betray you, don’t you think? What do you say to letting me come with you?
Pine: What could possibly go wrong?
[ They space jump. Horizontally, this time. It's thrilling, especially when Chris Pine's heads-up display gets damaged by space debris. ]
Chris Pine: Oh crap… I’ve switched off my targeting computer. How will I ever get through this tiny corridor in space to reach the tiny exhaust port on the big evil Death Ship in one piece?
J.J. Abrams: You know I’m directing Star Wars next, right? Use the Force, Kirk!
[ He does. He and Cumberbatch arrive on the evil starship. ]
Peter Weller: How’d you get on my ship? I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling kids.
Pine: Sorry, old man! It’s time to arrest you and take you back to Starfleet for your own trial.
[ Cumberbatch instead crushes Weller's skull like a grape with is bare hands. ]
Pine: Or that, you know. Whatever.
Cumberbatch: Alright, Enterprise. Beam me my crew in their torpedo-slash-sleeping bags or I’ll suffocate you to death. I’ll give you some time to discuss this amongst yourselves and find a way to outsmart me while I google for some spoilers on Sherlock Series 4.
Zachary Quinto: Get me Leonard Nimoy!
Leonard Nimoy: Why am I in this movie again? The whole point of the last Star Trek was to establish that you guys were now in an alternate timeline, allowing the franchise to go in new and exciting directions. Now you’re recycling Khan and Old Spock because you can’t think of anything better to do? What’s next? You gonna hit me up to sell cars with you?
Quinto: Err…
Seriously, this should have been the short they play before the movie.
How about we just take the sleeping dudes out of the torpedoes and just beam over the outer casings with the warheads activated.
[ He does. The USS MurderDeathKill blows up. ]
John Cho: Oh no! The Earth’s gravity has suddenly decided to affect us now that we’ve conveniently dispatched the enemy ship. We’re all going to die!
Chris Pine: Not if I go into the heavily irradiated warp core and fix the delicate but misaligned nuclear power source by kicking it repeatedly!
[ He does. The Enterprise is saved, but Chris Pine remains locked in the radioactive room while Zachary Quinto talks to him through the door. ]
Pine: Er… dying act… clever twist on original… Star Trek 2 ending… let’s not do anything more to make it… cheesy… okay?
Quinto: KHHHHAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN!
Pine: Damn, man. [ Dies. ]
[ Just then Benedict Cumberbatch pilots the surprisingly intact USS MurderDeathKill into downtown San Francisco, destroying several office skyscrapers, killing thousands of people and injuring millions more. ]
John Cho: Sir, Benedict Cumberbatch has crashed his ship into a heavily populated metropolitan area. There are probably millions of dead or injured people who could use our assistance. What should we do?
Quinto: Could we completely ignore them and instead beam me down to chase Benedict around for a bit on flying squad cars for awhile?
Cho: Sure.
[ He does. They fight. Eventually Zoe Saldana beams down too and they subdue Benedict through a combination of phaser blasts, offensive Vulcan mind melds, and blunt force trauma to the head. Karl Urban then synthesizes Cumberbatch's blood into a cure for death for Chris Pine, although not, apparently, for anybody else who died in the city. ]
Chris Pine: Well, it’s been one year since those horrible events take place, and since every high-ranking Starfleet officer was either killed or implicated in Peter Weller’s scheme… looks like I get to captain of the Enterprise again! Kick. Ass.
THE END
The face of monsters is changing, and it’s not pretty.
Or rather, it is pretty, and that’s the problem.
Once upon a time, vampires were undead bloodsuckers who lacked reflections, were scared of lower-case t‘s, and could be dispatched by a stake, sunlight, or garlic. Werewolves were infected lycanthropes who transformed under full moons and could be killed by silver or cured by hierarchical murder. Zombies were infected animated corpses that sought to eat your brains but could be taken out with a double-tap to theirs.
In other words, monsters were, well, monsters: scary and evil.
But lately, things have begun to change. Vampires avoid the sun not because they’ll burst into flames, but because they’ll burst into FABULOUS! Werewolves transform not into hideous man-wolves, but into overgrown Labradors. Zombies may not have brains in their heads, but they sure as hell have product in their hair. It’s almost as if someone said, “Hey, monsters are great for the nerds and geeks and goths out there, but what about the popular and attractive people? What about their needs?”
Apparently, one person was brave enough to answer that call. Legend has it, she studied the movie Underworld, which involves an ill-fated love story set against an age-old battle between vampires and werewolves, and identified 5 areas for improvement by which the whole thing could be made palatable by the clientele of Abercrombie and Fitch, namely
And Stephanie Meyers wrote Twilight.
Now, to be honest, I haven’t read Twilight or the rest of the so-called saga, although to be fair I did try, only to give up at the reveal that vampires were descended from sparkly sparkly disco balls instead of bats. (I have, however, seen the resulting movies, which can be summarized as:
One is a faceless, emotionless, un-human shell. The other is a Dalek.
Nevertheless, the same 5-step process above can be — and has been — applied to any manner of monster story, converting the traditionally flawed geek/goth-centric movie version into the new and improved ones we see today, fit for popular girls… a process we here at komplexify call Twilightification:
History will condemn us for not stopping this sooner.
That is, if we twilightify the vampires and werewolves of Underworld, we get the Twilight saga.
What about zombies, another staple of movie-monster fare? Start with a well-established zombie flick, but replace their undead cravings from “brains” to “Beiber,” add a few Shakespeare references, and boom:
“Warm Bodies” really should have been called “Romero and Juliet.”
Can one twilightify invading aliens? Start with a classic alien invader — say, the body snatcher type — add two hunky love interests and the words “Stephanie Meyer” to the title slate, and voila:
You know, for a movie originally involving soulless, expressionless automatons, it’s surprising they didn’t recast Kristin Stewart.
What about twilightifying a generic monster? Start off with the most iconically generic monster — “The Beast” — and change his beastly affliction from monstrous teeth and hair to unsightly tattoos and facial piercings, switch things up by adding two feuding girlfriends, and you have it:
To be fair, being cursed by one of the Olsen twins IS pretty terrifying.
In fact, fairy tales are apparently ideal for twilightification. For example, change the big bad wolf into Twilight-style werewolves but retain the heroine’s unique fashion sense, add two hunky suitors, and boom:
Bonus points for recycling the dad from the Twilight movies…
What about witches and dwarves? Add a second love interest, Thor say, and boom:
…but penalty points for recycling the chick from the Twilight movies.
Even non-monster movies can twilightified! For example, take a popular Japanese movie in which high schoolers are dumped on a deserted island and made to kill each other for sport. Make the heroine pretty, give her two suitors, and avoid the gore and bam!
Interestingly, you get the same result if your twilightify “The Breakfast Club.”
Behold the new face of monster movies: fangless, clawless, and devoid of all horror.
At least it has dreamy eyes. And rock-hard abs.
Actually, I count 6 Iron Men, but hey, whatever.
[ Flashback to the 90s. Robert Downy Jr. is a young, rich prick hopped up on booze and drugs at a party. Incidentally, he's also portraying "Tony Stark." ]
Robert Downy Jr: Yo, brick of cocaine, right here!
Guy Pierce [ dressed as every protagonist from Revenge of the Nerds simultaneously whilst talking like Sid the Sloth ]: Essccckushe me, Mr. Junior sir, but would you be interested in joining my new think tank, Plot Foreshadowing Incorporated?
Downy Jr: Nice nerd make-up, Guy. You managed to look worse than when you were in that shitty old-guy make-up in Prometheus. Get lost, dork. [ Gives Guy an atomic wedgie. ]
Pierce: That does it. This minor insult from a visibly inebriated and universally acknowledged self-centered prick is all the motivation I need to dedicate my life to… eeeeevil. I shall become… [ flips through his collection of Iron Man comics to see what villain hasn't shown up onscreen yet. ]… the Mandarin!
Downy Jr: Whatever, geek. How about you, sexy lady… wanna do a math problem with me? I’ll subtract the clothes and divide the legs and…
Rebecca Hall: I beg your pardon, sir. I am a proper English lady who is also an extremely talented molecular biologist. I have just invented a regenerative treatment called Extremelyforbodis, but it is plagued with an instability I thought that together we might be able to…
Downy Jr: Waitasec! You were Christian Bale’s wife in The Prestige, which essentially means you banged Batman. You wanna sample a little of the Marvel universe now, baby?
Hall: [ Swoon. ]
[ Robert and Rebecca proceed to... ahem... "talk" while the flacid little plant Rebecca brought in suddenly grows turgid and throbbing and erect before exploding in a wet goo. ]
Federico Fellini: God, I sure hope that’s a foreshadowing plot point, because otherwise that’s just… gross.
[ Flash forward twenty years. Guy Pierce has become buff and successful and decides to visit Gweneth Paltrow. ]
Guy Pierce: I’m back to give Robert Downy Jr a second chance to join my think tank. Here, let me show you a giant holographic projection of the effects of this little blue pill on my throbbing organ. If we stimulate it, we can make it erupt in frothy white activity.
Gweneth Paltrow: Oh myyy…
[ Guy puts up a holographic projection of his brain. ]
Paltrow: Oh.
For all things, there is an appropriate Futurama Quote.
Pierce: I’m calling it my raging brainer.
Fellini: I’m calling it quits.
[ Meanwhile at Robert Downy Jr's home, which is apparently back in California and not the giant Stark Tower that played a crucial role in the previous movie... ]
Robert Downy Jr: I’m racked with post-traumatic-stress syndrome brought on by the events of the Avengers movie. I can’t even leave the house.
[ Suddenly Don Cheadle bursts in! ]
Don Cheadle: Dammit Robert! As your dearest, closest, bestest, and interchangeably black friend, I am concerned for you. Ben Kingsley is calling himself the Mandarin now. He’s apparently a TV terrorist who has been blowing up stuff across the United States. Isn’t stopping terrorists kinda your thing in Iron Man movies?
Downy Jr: Meh.
Cheadle: Why are you freaked out by The Avengers? That movie’s like the third highest-grossing movie of all time.
Downy Jr: Have you seen it? The whole last hour is indistinguishable from Transformers 3. By extension, I’m almost indistinguishable from Michael Bay. [ Shudders uncontrollably and vomits. ]
Cheadle: I can see your point. You need a hobby.
Downy Jr: Oh, I’ve got one. I’ve been building a whole fleet of specialized Iron Man suits. This one shoots electricity, that one shoots airs, that one throws boulders, that one is equipped with giant scissors…
I would play the hell out of this game. Get on it, NES.
Cheadle: Wait… Is this Iron Man or Mega Man?
Downy Jr: Sorry Don. Someone already beat you to that joke.
[ Suddenly Gweneth Paltrow bursts in! ]
Gweneth Paltrow: Dammit, Robert! As your token love interest, I love you, but we’re already already a third the way into this movie and you haven’t even left the house! Plus, Guy Pierce may be evil.
Downy Jr: Meh.
[ Suddenly Jon Favreau bursts in! ]
Jon Favreau: Dammit, Robert! As your former bodyguard, I should tell you that Guy Pierce’s henchmen have strange mysterious regenerating powers and, when overstimulated, become turgid and explody. I know this because I was in an explosion and suffered massive bodily trauma. [ Slumps over in bloody agony. ]
Downy Jr: Meh.
Favreau: Looks like I picked a bad day to stop directing Iron Man movies. [ Dies. ]
[ Suddenly Rebecca Hall bursts in! ]
Rebecca Hall: Dammit, Robert! I’m not sure if you’re connecting the conveniently laid out dots in the plot so far, but I think that Ben Kingsley and Guy Pierce are working together using my unstable regenerative breakthrough.
Downy Jr: Meh.
Hall: Also, if you stay around the house, you’ll have to deal with your ex-one-night-stand and your current girlfriend nagging at you simultaneously.
Downy Jr: Iron Man is back in action! Come and get me, Guy Pierce.
Guy Pierce: Okay.
[ Guy sends a fleet of gunships to blast the living shit out of Robert's house. Robert narrowly escapes in an Iron man suit that conveniently flies him to Tennessee because the plot requires it. ]
Downy Jr: I’m alone and presumed dead in a hillbilly backwood. Let’s see… I’ve had a love interest… a male sidekick… a female sidekick… and a whole league of sidekicks… now what?
Ty Simpkins: How about a precocious kid sidekick?
Downy Jr: Do you have both a conveniently located ramshackle shed in which I can rebuild my suit and a set of legal guardians who won’t show up for at least the next 72 hours to check up on you in any way?
Simpkins: [Precociously] Sure do!
Downy Jr: I shall call you “Iron Manchild.”
Simpkins: Well, at least it’s better than “Iron Patriot.”
Still, you must admit he LOOKS FAB-U-LOUS!
Stephanie Szostak: Not so fast! I’m one of Guy Pierce’s regenerative super-soldiers, and I’m here to kill you!
Downy Jr: You’re playing “Ellen Brandt,” right? She’s only a supporting character in the Marvel Universe, right?
Szostak: Er… that’s right. Why does that matter?
Downy Jr: Oh, nothing. [ Kills her with his bare hands and some conveniently located kitchen tools. ]
Simpkins: [Precociously] You just killed one of the super-soldiers with your bare hands. Won’t that make you facing a super-soldier armed with, like, a hundred different Iron Man suits during the movie’s finale completely without tension?
Downy Jr: Shut up, kid.
[ Robert finds the Mandarin's lair. ]
Ben Kingsley: Actually, I’m not the Mandarin. I just play one on TV. Now, if we’re done here, I’m needed on the set of Ender’s Game, where I’m apparently playing Queequeg.
Downy Jr: Quelle surprise!
That’s pretty much the only “Moby Dick” quote I can come up with.
Guy Pierce: Seems like you’ve found me. Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy.
Downy Jr.: This is the Marvel universe, dumbass.
Pierce: For that insult, I will kill Rebecca Hall, infect Gweneth Paltrow with my super-solider serum, and steal Don Cheadle’s Iron Man suit, and leave you two in my dungeon while I go off and kill the president with it.
Downy Jr: Let me get this straight. You’re going to kill off a character whose only been in, what, 2 scenes and to whom no one in the audience has any connection? Then you’re going to give my girlfriend precisely the super powers she needs in order to kill you? Then you’re lock me, a certified genius weapons builder and Iron Man pilot, unsup
Hi Ho Silver, away…. from this movie.
[ A train consisting of several cars filled with religiously devout passengers and one car filled with homicidal cannibalistic psychopath William Fichtner races through 1800's Texas, because what could possibly go wrong? The prison car also has Johnny Depp under watch by the authorities, trying to sneak by them and fulfill his destiny by killing his nemesis (the aforementioned psychopath) using a combination of cunning and slapstick comic relief. ]
William Fichtner: So, you’re pretty much just reprising your role from Pirates of the Carribean, except reset in the Old West.
Johnny Depp: You savvy, mate… I mean… How, kemosabe.
[ Passanger Armie Hammer breaks into the prison car just as Johnny Depp is about to kill William Fichtner. ]
Armie Hammer: Stop, I say! For I am a newly deputized district attorney, and hence I command you to desist in your criminal activities. For I am noble and without guile, but also naive and comically unprepared to face off against mean people. Essentially, I’m reprising my role from Mirror Mirror.
Depp: [ Facepalm. ]
[ Just then bad guys board the train, tie up Johnny and Armie, free William, and sabotage the train so that it will crash several miles down the track after they've left, because that makes much more sense than killing them on the spot. ]
Depp: We’ve conveniently escaped our shackles, kemosabe. Now let us affect our escape during an extended action sequence aboard a moving vessel, only to have me caught and arrested by your Goody-Two-Shoes ass.
Hammer: Isn’t that pretty much how Pirates of the Carribean began?
Depp: Cram it, kemosabe. Gore Verbinski only knows how to direct one action movie, and that one was it.
Hammer: Does this mean that I shall find my beloved betrothed to my nemesis?
Depp: If by “betrothed” you mean “already married” and by “nemesis” you mean “brother,” then yes, kemosabe.
Hammer: Well, poop, that kind of rules out coitus with her at the end then. Will there be supernatural shenanigans involving a fleet of zombies who only show their true form under moonlight?
Depp: If by “fleet of zombies” you mean “magic horse” and by “true form under moonlight” you mean “materializes anytime or anywhere the plot requires it,” then yes, kemosabe.
Hammer: This movie is going to suck.
Depp: And how, kemosabe.
[ Armie and Johnny head to Colby, Texas, where they find Armie's ex-girlfriend Ruth Wilson married to Armie's brother James Badge Dale, a Texas Ranger, and employed by train magnate Tom Wilkinson. ]
James Badge Dale: Well little brother, you sure managed to completely screw up my prisoner transport with your book-learnin’, no-gun-shootin’, city-livin’, yellow-bellied dumbassitude. So why don’t you come along on our unnecessarily hasty and extremely dangerous shootin’ posse to round him up.
Tom Wilkinson: Splendid. How could this possibly go wrong? Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to reprise my role from The Ghost and The Darkness and have some lions kill Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas.
[ They look for William Fichtner. We see the posse ford a stream. We see the posse cross the prairie. We see the posse gallop over the desert. We see the posse pose in front of a butte. We see the posse... ]
Hammer: Holy hell, cowboy movies are boring.
[ Finally the posse comes to a mysterious and foreboding canyon. ]
Dale: Hmmm. This seems like the ideal spot for an ambush. You ready for your motivation to kill William Fichtner yet?
Hammer: Er, what?
[ The posse is ambushed by William Fichtner's men, who shoot everyone to death. William proceeds to eat Dale's heart, to gain his courage. His rich, tasty courage. ]
I TOLD YOU, there is no situation for which there is not an approriate Futurama quote.
[ He leaves. Johnny Depp shows up with a white horse and nurses Armie back to health. ]
Hammer: Oh, man, I feel like I’ve been dead for three days.
Depp: Messiah complex much? Also, you have been dead for three days, but now you’re alive and the wind-talker or wind-breaker or something, I dunno. This white horse brought you back to life, kemosabe.
Hammer: Er, what?
Depp: I already told you: magical horse. Deal with it.
Hammer: So the Lone Ranger, rebooted for the 21st century, is going to involve a magical horse with the power to resurrect the dead?
Depp: Yes, kemosabe. Later, he’ll be able to fly.
Hammer: Riiiiiiiiight. Let me just put on this mask so no one associates me with this movie…
Depp: Whatever, let’s go kill William Fichtner. First, we visit hookers.
Hammer: Er, what?
[ They visit a seedy brothel, run by one-legged madam Helena Bodham Carter. ]
Depp: Did I just walk into a Tim Burton movie again?
Helena Bodham Carter: No, this is just a Disney movie. I’m a whore with a heart of gold. Also with a leg of pearl, which replaced the one that was eaten off by William Fichtner, who was into petty BDSM and extreme cannibalism. I guess that’s what happens when you forget the safe word. Later on I’ll use my fake leg to seduce a calvaryman with amputation fetish, distracting him long enough to get this movie into its final action sequence. In the meantime, you should go, because a posse of crossdressing cowpokes are threatening to rape Ruth Wilson and her son.
Hammer: Disney… seriously… what the frack?
[ They leave and fight off the ruffians, who nevertheless manage to escape with Ruth and son while trapping Armie and Johnny in a burning barn. Thankfully, they are saved when the horse flies to the roof of the barn to save them. They land and dispatch the two remaining baddies by a Rube Goldberg-esque sequence of accidents. ]
Or is it Deus Equus Machina? My Latin sucks.
Hammer: Worst. Action movie. Ever.
Depp: And how, kemosabe.
[ They are captured by Comanches, and Armie is taken to Chief Saginaw Grant, who tells Armie that Johnny has dedicated his life to killing William Fichtner (who was responsible for killing his entire village over a silver mine when he was a kid) and, oh!, also that he's gonna kill Armie. ]
Hammer: But why? Is it because by screwing up Johnny’s revenge the beginning of the movie, I’ve tampered with his destiny and made him more insane than before?
Saginaw Grant: No.
Hammer: Is it because by inadvertently letting Fichtner escape, he is now framing Comanches for attacks he perpetrated, leading the US Calvary to suppose you’re in open revolt and sending military troops to come and slaughter you completely?
Grant: No.
Hammer: Is it because my brother promised to protect us from the White Man, but by inadvertently freeing Fichtner, I also got him killed, leaving you defenseless?
Grant: No.
Hammer: Then what gives?
Grant: Dude, you’ve turned the Lone Ranger and Tonto from a series about to kickass crimefighters in the Old West into two bumbling buffoons who have a magic Jesus horse.
Hammer: Quite right. I deserve to die.
[ They bury Armie and Johnny up to their heads in sand and pour scorpions on them, before leaving. Just then Silver the magic horse shows up with a can of Raid, sprays off all the scorpions, and pulls Armie and Johnny out of the sand with his teeth. ]
Hammer: Wait? How did Silver operate a spray can? He doesn’t even have thumbs.
Depp: MAGIC… HORSE… kemosabe.
You know, Owen Wilson had to dig himself out with a pair of chopsticks. Wusses.
[ They go to the super-secret silver mine and use slapstick TNT gags (together with a surprising lack of concern for the lives of innocent indentured Chinese workers already in the mine) to blow up Fichtner's posse. ]
Hammer: [ Points gun right at Fichtner's face. ] Alright, William Fichnter. You killed Johnny’s family. You ate Helena’s leg. You ate my brother’s heart out of his chest. You kidnapped and quite possibly raped and killed by sister-in-law and nephew. You shot me and left me to die in the desert.
[ Pause. ]
Hammer: Guess I oughtter tie ya up and take you to the authorities, then.
Depp: [ Facepalm. ]
[ Armie takes William to Tom Wilkinson and Cavalryman Barry Pepper. ]
Tom Wilkinson: Thank you for capturing… my brother! Yes, I’m evil too!
Hammer: What? How could this be?
Wilkinson: You didn’t catch my villainous reference to The Ghost and The Darkness?
Hammer: Dude, that movie came out almost twenty years ago.
Wilkinson: Hmph. If you can’t be bothered to take an interest in cinema history, that’s your own look-out. Off to the firing squad for you. Apathetic bloody little ingrate, I’ve no sympathy at all.*
* Yes, this is a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference in the middle of a Ghost and the Darkness reference in the middle of a Lone Ranger script. Nerd trifecta.
[ They take Armie to be killed by firing squad, but just then the Comanches attack. They are completely slaughtered by the Calavary in a slow-motion somber fight sequence that would be far more effective at evoking our national guilt at the eradication of entire Native American populations if it wasn't interspersed with Johnny and Armie's slap-stick push-cart plus Indiana-Jones-rolling-fireball comic escape. ]
Depp: I overhead Tom and William are going to Promontory Point tomorrow to kill the railroad investors and monopolize the entire railroad industry.
Hammer: How the hell will be get from South Texas to North Utah by morning with only nineteenth century technology?
Depp: How many times do I have to say it, man? MAGIC HORSE.
[ The next day, at the joining of the Transcontinental Railroad, Tom Wilkinson reveals his plan to take over the railroad industry by killing one of the railroad magnates. Before he can finish the job, Johnny Depp steals the train will all the silver, foiling Tom's plan to buy up the shares of the other railroad companies. ]
Tom Wilkonson: Damn. Perhaps I should have actually bought the other companies before announcing my plan to buy them out and kill all their executives. Oh well, live and learn. Evil Twin powers, ACTIVATE!
Well, it’s better than “a bucket of water.”
[ He and William Fichtner board the other train and pursue Johnny. Meanwhile, Armie boards Silver and pursues Tom and William. Meanwhile, Cavalryman Barry boards a Gatlin Gun, but is too distracted by Helena's pearl leg to shoot him, the freaky perv. ]
[ The William Tell Overture begins. ]
Hammer: It’s about frickin’ time.
[ The William Tell Overture continues for the next... twenty... minutes. ]
Hammer: Oh God, kill me now.
[ Armie catches up with the second train, and challenges the baddies to a fight. They respond by throwing his sister-in-law and nephew over the side, where they land on Silver, who has managed to keep pace with the speeding train despite the insanely rugged and mountainous terrain. ]
William Fichtner: How is that even possible?
Johnny Depp [ in the distance ]: Magic! Fucking! Horse!
[ Suddenly the single track splits into two tracks which criss-cross back-and-forth and over-and-under each other more times than a DNA molecule, because ACTION MOVIE ENGINEERING. Also, the protagonists and antagonists go back and forth between the trains over and over and over again because ACTION MOVIE FINALE. Eventually they end up with Armie and William on the pursuing train and Johnny and Tom on the silver train. Armie sabotages the train and jumps off in time to watch William Fichtner die in a fiery wreck. ]
Hammer: Um… Johnny. Sorry I kind of killed off your arch nemesis, thereby completely destroying any chance you had of fulfilling your life’s destiny. My bad.
Depp: That’s okay, kemo-S-O-B. I’ll just kill this white guy instead.
[ He jumps off the CGI train as it falls off an CGI bridge and CGI explodes. It is in no way as cool as the same live-action train sequence in the finale of Back to the Future III. Also, Silver sprouts wings and carries Armie and Johnny to the coast where they defeat the Kraken. ]
…or Kristin Stewart.
Townspeople: Who was that masked man?
Hammer: [hides mask in his pocket with embarrassment] Hell if I know.
THE END.
[ Four magicians scattered across the United States are summoned to a crappy New York apartment by Tarot cards. Because when a random Tarot card tells you to do something, you do it, dammit. ]
Dave Franco: I’m an up-and-coming magician, a profession I subsidize by being a pick-pocket and petty criminal. I shall exhibit these skills by breaking into this apartment.
Woody Harrelson: I’m a talented mentalist, a profession I subsidize by blackmailing strangers I meet at airports and bus depots. I shall exhibit these skills by tightening this slightly loose light bulb.
Jesse Eisenberg: I’m a neurotic, fast-talking, anal-retentive control freak who has overcome my inherent meekness to seduce hot chicks. Of course, since that’s my usually my entire character schtick and I already did that in the first 5 minutes of the movie, I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to do for the next 110 minutes. Let me randomly flick this light switch.
Isla Fisher: I’m a talented escape artist who is apparently surrounded by a bunch of dicks. Now let me water this conspicuously placed plant with this equally conspicuously placed watering can.
[ She does so, thereby activating a fog machine and also the Death Star holographic projector from Star Wars. ]
MYSTERY MAGICIAN: Good morning, Four Horsemen. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to perform the greatest magic trick in history: pulling off the greatest heists in history while the world watches!
Eisenberg: Awesome! With my incredible planning skills, we should be able to…
MYSTERY MAGICIAN: No, I’ve already got the plans here. Just follow them to the letter for the next year or so.
Eisenberg: [ Disappointed. ] Oh.
Franco: But we’ll learn the secret of true magic?
MYSTERY MAGICIAN: Nope. There’s no magic here.
Franco: [ Disappointed. ] Oh.
MYSTERY MAGICIAN: Just a lot of unlikely plot contrivances, sleight of hand, and Woody Harrelson using his skillset to save Eisenberg and you two other kids.
Harrelson: [ Disappointed. ] Dammit, it’s Zombieland all over again.
MYSTERY MAGICIAN: Pretty much. This movie is essentially Ocean’s Eleven meets The Prestige, but without the witty banter or clever plot twists. Should any of your team be killed or caught, we’ll resolve that with a “twist” at the end of the movie. This tape will self destruct in 5 seconds.
[ One year later, the Four Horsemen are performing in Las Vegas. ]
Eisenberg: For our grand finale, we shall rob a bank. Can we have a random audience member, preferably one who banks in, say, France?
Jose Garcia: Mais, oui! C’est moi!
[ Jose puts on Professor X's Cerebro helmet and steps into a open box, that appears to crush him, but magically sends him into a French bank vault, where he vacuums up the money an escapes through an air duct before being magically transported back to Vegas. ]
Eisenberg: Ta-da!
Audience members: From our point of view, all we saw you do was perform a cheesy disappear/reappear trick with a planted co-conspirator, together with some “mockumentary” video footage and clearly pre-packaged French money falling from the rafters. This trick blows.
Eisenberg: But tomorrow when you watch the news you’ll think this is a cool trick. Good night! No refunds!
[ Tomorrow, everyone finds out the bank was -- gasp! -- robbed. Cops close in on the Horse Horsemen. ]
Fisher: I suppose now I should use my skills as an escape artist.
Harrelson: No, I got this. [ Surrenders. ]
Fisher: [ Disappointed. ] Oh.
Mark Ruffalo: I’m a grizzled cop who hates magic and wishes superstition and fairy tales and even Lucky Charms. I know those guys robbed that bank without magic.
Melanie Laurent: I’m your new Interpol partner from France who believes in magic and wishes and fairies. What are the ends we would be teamed up?
Morgan Freeman: I’m an ex-magician turned professional magic debunker. This trick was easy to do. Obviously, the Four Horsemen went to France a while ago, acquired an armored truck from that bank, stole the money, replaced it with counterfeit money rigged to vaporize at exactly this date, found a patsy, used hypnosis to make him come to Las Vegas on just this night, staged choosing him at random, dropped him to this perfect reproduction of the bank vault built under the stage, and then yanked him bank, all whilst he was still hypnotized. It’s obvious when you think about it.
Ruffalo: Er, what?
Laurent: Or it was real magic.
Ruffalo: Riiiiiiiiight. I guess we’re just gonna let this one slide. I hate magic.
[ The Four Horsemen next perform in New Orleans. ]
Eisenberg: For our grand finale, we shall rob an insurance magnate. Can we have a random insurance magnate, preferably one who has appeared in, say, other magic-themed movie?
Michael Caine: Oi! Right here, blokes!
[ Woody Harrelson chooses several people completely not at random from the audience, and shows a number of oversized checks featuring their bank accounts. Then the balances on their checks increase while Michael's balance drops by the EXACT SAME AMOUNT. ]
Eisenberg: Ta-da!
Audience members: You know, from our point of view, all we saw you do was perform an arithmetic problem with cheesy disappearing ink and several planted co-conspirators, but this time without the video or the free money. This trick really blows.
Eisenberg: No refunds!
[ Just then the police burst in to arrest the Four Horsemen. ]
Fisher: I suppose now I should use my skills as an escape artist.
Eisenberg: No, I got this. [ Uses suddenly acquired freerunning skills to climb up walls and slip out through New Orleans like the Amazing Cajun Spiderman. ]
Fisher: [ Disappointed. ] Oh.
Mark Ruffalo: I’m still hate magic, but now I’m angered by it. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.
Morgan Freeman: This trick was easy to do. Obviously, the Four Horsemen cozied themselves up to Michael Caine, got him to fund their magic act, got him to secretly divulge his computer passwords by hypnosis, infected his computer mainframe trojan horse virus programmed to access his bank accounts to transfer money to people his insurance company boned at precisely that time, and probably used lemon juice and a hot pack for the invisible ink trick. It’s obvious when you think about it.
Laurent: Or it was real magic.
Ruffalo: Riiiiiiiiight. I really hate magicians. Fortunately by partner has found out where they’re hiding in New York, so shut the hell up, both of you.
[ The police burst in to arrest the Four Horsemen in their New York apartment. ]
Fisher: I suppose now I should use my skills as an escape artist.
Franco: No, I got this. [ Uses suddenly acquired martial arts skills to kick the cops' asses six ways to Sunday like the bastard offspring of Jason Bourne and Ethan Hunt. ]
Fisher: [ Disappointed. ] Oh.
[ Three of the Horsemen escape, but Dave Franco dies in a fiery car crash after police chase him from the apartment. ]
Mark Ruffalo: I really hate magic, but at least there’s one less magician out there to hate.
Morgan Freeman: Not quite. This trick was easy to do. Obviously, the Four Horsemen new you were coming, set up an elaborate fight sequence with you in order to make sure you got the location to their last trick, and then faked Dave’s death by attaching a decoy car to the front of a bus that happened to be directly in front of you at all times and making the switch by distracting you with Jesse Eisenberg in the world’s worst mustache disguise. It’s obvious when you think about it.
Laurent: Or it was real magic.
Ruffalo: [Stares at both of them.] MAGIC MAKE MARK ANGRY! MARK SMASH MAGIC!
[ The Four Three Horsemen next perform in New York. ]
Eisenberg: For our only trick tonight, we shall turn into giant piles of money that we swear we magically stole from an armored truck this very night!
[ They jump off the top of a building and turn into piles pf fake money that rain on the audience. ]
Eisenberg: [ In the ether ] Ta-da!
Audience members: You know we didn’t see any of the cool armored car switcheroo set pieces that occurred immediately before this scene, right? You guys really suck at magic.
Eisenberg: [ In the ether] No refunds!
[ Just then the police burst in to arrest the Three Horsemen... who have already vanished. ]
Fisher: [ In the ether ] Why the hell did we even establish I was an escape artist in this movie?
Eisenberg: So the guys in the audience could goggle your tits and ass during the opening scenes.
Fisher: [ Disappointed. ] Oh.
Mark Ruffalo: I positively hate magic. The complete lack of reasonabe explanations for the previous crimes has meant that I cannot arrest the Four Horsemen!
[ Suddenly Morgan Freemen's SUV bursts open, revealing that every available cubic centimeter of its interior is filled with the stolen money. ]
Ruffalo: However, the complete lack of any reasonably explanation for how this money got into your car right now clearly means that I should arrest you!
Morgan Freeman: I was framed. This trick was easy to do. Obviously, the Four Horsemen snuck into the secret warehouse with the secret safe and erected a giant mirror at a precise 45 degree angle to give the impression of the room being empty to anyone who happened to, say, only look at the room but not actually walk into it, which of course they didn’t, being hypnotized by Woody Harrelson who cleverly embedded subliminal messages throughout his entire Cheers career. Then, when you were out chasing the fake truck, they smashed the mirror, broke into the safe, a filled by car with that money. It’s obvious when you think about it.
Ruffalo: Piss off, Morgan.
Laurent: Or it was real magic.
Ruffalo: You too, Melanie.
[ They arrest Morgan Freeman. ]
Freeman: I was framed.
Ruffalo: I know. This trick was easy to do. Obviously, I am the son of one of the magicians you debunked, who went on to die disgracefully in a failed escape attempt. So I dedicated my entire life to seeking revenge on you and anyone tangentially related to this crime, but devising an elaborate plan to be executed by four master magicians, while I would simultaneously infiltrate the police force to make sure that I got this one exact case to secretly make sure it succeeded. Because that was a hell of lot easier than just, say, shooting you. It’s obvious when you think about it.
Freeman: That… doesn’t make a lick of fucking sense.
[ Meanwhile, the Four Horsemen -- that's right, Dave's not really dead! -- use their original Tarot cards to activate a treeborg which takes them to the magic carousel from Something Wicked This Way Comes. Or something. Meanwhile, Mark goes to France to explain everything to Melanie Laurent. ]
Ruffalo: … and that’s exactly what happened.
Laurent: Or it was magic.
Ruffalo: [ Facepalm. ]
THE END
The face of monsters is changing, and it’s not pretty.
Or rather, it is pretty, and that’s the problem.
Once upon a time, vampires were undead bloodsuckers who lacked reflections, were scared of lower-case t‘s, and could be dispatched by a stake, sunlight, or garlic. Werewolves were infected lycanthropes who transformed under full moons and could be killed by silver or cured by hierarchical murder. Zombies were infected animated corpses that sought to eat your brains but could be taken out with a double-tap to theirs.
In other words, monsters were, well, monsters: scary and evil.
But lately, things have begun to change. Vampires avoid the sun not because they’ll burst into flames, but because they’ll burst into FABULOUS! Werewolves transform not into hideous man-wolves, but into overgrown Labradors. Zombies may not have brains in their heads, but they sure as hell have product in their hair. It’s almost as if someone said, “Hey, monsters are great for the nerds and geeks and goths out there, but what about the popular and attractive people? What about their needs?”
Apparently, one person was brave enough to answer that call. Legend has it, she studied the movie Underworld, which involves an ill-fated love story set against an age-old battle between vampires and werewolves, and identified 5 areas for improvement by which the whole thing could be made palatable by the clientele of Abercrombie and Fitch, namely
And Stephanie Meyers wrote Twilight.
Now, to be honest, I haven’t read Twilight or the rest of the so-called saga, although to be fair I did try, only to give up at the reveal that vampires were descended from sparkly sparkly disco balls instead of bats. (I have, however, seen the resulting movies, which can be summarized as:
One is a faceless, emotionless, un-human shell. The other is a Dalek.
Nevertheless, the same 5-step process above can be — and has been — applied to any manner of monster story, converting the traditionally flawed geek/goth-centric movie version into the new and improved ones we see today, fit for popular girls… a process we here at komplexify call Twilightification:
History will condemn us for not stopping this sooner.
That is, if we twilightify the vampires and werewolves of Underworld, we get the Twilight saga.
What about zombies, another staple of movie-monster fare? Start with a well-established zombie flick, but replace their undead cravings from “brains” to “Beiber,” add a few Shakespeare references, and boom:
“Warm Bodies” really should have been called “Romero and Juliet.”
Can one twilightify invading aliens? Start with a classic alien invader — say, the body snatcher type — add two hunky love interests and the words “Stephanie Meyer” to the title slate, and voila:
You know, for a movie originally involving soulless, expressionless automatons, it’s surprising they didn’t recast Kristin Stewart.
What about twilightifying a generic monster? Start off with the most iconically generic monster — “The Beast” — and change his beastly affliction from monstrous teeth and hair to unsightly tattoos and facial piercings, switch things up by adding two feuding girlfriends, and you have it:
To be fair, being cursed by one of the Olsen twins IS pretty terrifying.
In fact, fairy tales are apparently ideal for twilightification. For example, change the big bad wolf into Twilight-style werewolves but retain the heroine’s unique fashion sense, add two hunky suitors, and boom:
Bonus points for recycling the dad from the Twilight movies…
What about witches and dwarves? Add a second love interest, Thor say, and boom:
…but penalty points for recycling the chick from the Twilight movies.
Even non-monster movies can twilightified! For example, take a popular Japanese movie in which high schoolers are dumped on a deserted island and made to kill each other for sport. Make the heroine pretty, give her two suitors, and avoid the gore and bam!
Interestingly, you get the same result if your twilightify “The Breakfast Club.”
Behold the new face of monster movies: defanged, declawed, and devoid of all horror.
At least it has dreamy eyes. And rock-hard abs.
Actually, I count 6 Iron Men, but hey, whatever.
[ Flashback to the 90s. Robert Downy Jr. is a young, rich prick hopped up on booze and drugs at a party. Incidentally, he's also portraying "Tony Stark." ]
Robert Downy Jr: Yo, brick of cocaine, right here!
Guy Pierce [ dressed as every protagonist from Revenge of the Nerds simultaneously whilst talking like Sid the Sloth ]: Essccckushe me, Mr. Junior sir, but would you be interested in joining my new think tank, Plot Foreshadowing Incorporated?
Downy Jr: Nice nerd make-up, Guy. You managed to look worse than when you were in that shitty old-guy make-up in Prometheus. Get lost, dork. [ Gives Guy an atomic wedgie. ]
Pierce: That does it. This minor insult from a visibly inebriated and universally acknowledged self-centered prick is all the motivation I need to dedicate my life to… eeeeevil. I shall become… [ flips through his collection of Iron Man comics to see what villain hasn't shown up onscreen yet. ]… the Mandarin!
Downy Jr: Whatever, geek. How about you, sexy lady… wanna do a math problem with me? I’ll subtract the clothes and divide the legs and…
Rebecca Hall: I beg your pardon, sir. I am a proper English lady who is also an extremely talented molecular biologist. I have just invented a regenerative treatment called Extremelyforbodis, but it is plagued with an instability I thought that together we might be able to…
Downy Jr: Waitasec! You were Christian Bale’s wife in The Prestige, which essentially means you banged Batman. You wanna sample a little of the Marvel universe now, baby?
Hall: [ Swoon. ]
[ Robert and Rebecca proceed to... ahem... "talk" while the flacid little plant Rebecca brought in suddenly grows turgid and throbbing and erect before exploding in a wet goo. ]
Federico Fellini: God, I sure hope that’s a foreshadowing plot point, because otherwise that’s just… gross.
[ Flash forward twenty years. Guy Pierce has become buff and successful and decides to visit Gweneth Paltrow. ]
Guy Pierce: I’m back to give Robert Downy Jr a second chance to join my think tank. Here, let me show you a giant holographic projection of the effects of this little blue pill on my throbbing organ. If we stimulate it, we can make it erupt in frothy white activity.
Gweneth Paltrow: Oh myyy…
[ Guy puts up a holographic projection of his brain. ]
Paltrow: Oh.
For all things, there is an appropriate Futurama Quote.
Pierce: I’m calling it my raging brainer.
Fellini: I’m calling it quits.
[ Meanwhile at Robert Downy Jr's home, which is apparently back in California and not the giant Stark Tower that played a crucial role in the previous movie... ]
Robert Downy Jr: I’m racked with post-traumatic-stress syndrome brought on by the events of the Avengers movie. I can’t even leave the house.
[ Suddenly Don Cheadle bursts in! ]
Don Cheadle: Dammit Robert! As your dearest, closest, bestest, and interchangeably black friend, I am concerned for you. Ben Kingsley is calling himself the Mandarin now. He’s apparently a TV terrorist who has been blowing up stuff across the United States. Isn’t stopping terrorists kinda your thing in Iron Man movies?
Downy Jr: Meh.
Cheadle: Why are you freaked out by The Avengers? That movie’s like the third highest-grossing movie of all time.
Downy Jr: Have you seen it? The whole last hour is indistinguishable from Transformers 3. By extension, I’m almost indistinguishable from Michael Bay. [
Shudders uncontrollably and vomits. ]
Cheadle: I can see your point. You need a hobby.
Downy Jr: Oh, I’ve got one. I’ve been building a whole fleet of specialized Iron Man suits. This one shoots electricity, that one shoots airs, that one throws boulders, that one is equipped with giant scissors…
I would play the hell out of this game. Get on it, NES.
Cheadle: Wait… Is this Iron Man or Mega Man?
Downy Jr: Sorry Don. Someone already beat you to that joke.
[ Suddenly Gweneth Paltrow bursts in! ]
Gweneth Paltrow: Dammit, Robert! As your token love interest, I love you, but we’re already already a third the way into this movie and you haven’t even left the house! Plus, Guy Pierce may be evil.
Downy Jr: Meh.
[ Suddenly Jon Favreau bursts in! ]
Jon Favreau: Dammit, Robert! As your former bodyguard, I should tell you that Guy Pierce’s henchmen have strange mysterious regenerating powers and, when overstimulated, become turgid and explody. I know this because I was in an explosion and suffered massive bodily trauma. [ Slumps over in bloody agony. ]
Downy Jr: Meh.
Favreau: Looks like I picked a bad day to stop directing Iron Man movies. [ Dies. ]
[ Suddenly Rebecca Hall bursts in! ]
Rebecca Hall: Dammit, Robert! I’m not sure if you’re connecting the conveniently laid out dots in the plot so far, but I think that Ben Kingsley and Guy Pierce are working together using my unstable regenerative breakthrough.
Downy Jr: Meh.
Hall: Also, if you stay around the house, you’ll have to deal with your ex-one-night-stand and your current girlfriend nagging at you simultaneously.
Downy Jr: Iron Man is back in action! Come and get me, Guy Pierce.
Guy Pierce: Okay.
[ Guy sends a fleet of gunships to blast the living shit out of Robert's house. Robert narrowly escapes in an Iron man suit that conveniently flies him to Tennessee because the plot requires it. ]
Downy Jr: I’m alone and presumed dead in a hillbilly backwood. Let’s see… I’ve had a love interest… a male sidekick… a female sidekick… and a whole league of sidekicks… now what?
Ty Simpkins: How about a precocious kid sidekick?
Downy Jr: Do you have both a conveniently located ramshackle shed in which I can rebuild my suit and a set of legal guardians who won’t show up for at least the next 72 hours to check up on you in any way?
Simpkins: [Precociously] Sure do!
Downy Jr: I shall call you “Iron Manchild.”
Simpkins: Well, at least it’s better than “Iron Patriot.”
Still, you must admit he LOOKS FAB-U-LOUS!
Stephanie Szostak: Not so fast! I’m one of Guy Pierce’s regenerative super-soldiers, and I’m here to kill you!
Downy Jr: You’re playing “Ellen Brandt,” right? She’s only a supporting character in the Marvel Universe, right?
Szostak: Er… that’s right. Why does that matter?
Downy Jr: Oh, nothing. [ Kills her with his bare hands and some conveniently located kitchen tools. ]
Simpkins: [Precociously] You just killed one of the super-soldiers with your bare hands. Won’t that make you facing a super-soldier whilst armed with, like, a hundred different Iron Man suits during the movie’s finale completely without tension?
Downy Jr: Shut up, kid.
[ Robert finds the Mandarin's lair. ]
Ben Kingsley: Actually, I’m not the Mandarin. I just play one on TV. Now, if we’re done here, I’m needed on the set of Ender’s Game, where I’m apparently playing Queequeg.
Downy Jr: Quelle surprise!
That’s pretty much the only “Moby Dick” quote I can come up with.
Guy Pierce: Seems like you’ve found me. Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy.
Downy Jr.: This is the Marvel universe, dumbass.
Pierce: For that insult, I will kill Rebecca Hall, infect Gweneth Paltrow with my super-solider serum, and steal Don Cheadle’s Iron Man suit, and leave you two in my dungeon while I go off and kill the president with it.
Downy Jr: Let me get this straight. You’re going to kill off a character whose only been in, what, 2 scenes and to whom no one in the audience has any connection? Then you’re going to give my girlfriend precisely the super powers she needs in order to kill you? Then you’re lock me, a certified genius weapons builder and Iron Man pilot, unsupervised with my very best friend, a trained military warrior and Iron Man pilot?
Pierce: Yes. What could go wrong?
Downy Jr: What was the point of that “big brain” sequence again?
[ Guy leaves, and uses a remote-controlled CGI Iron Man suit to steal the President off Air Force One. He is thwarted when Robert uses a different remote controlled CGI Iron Man suit to save the remaining passengers. Because nothing says "action sequence" like having the participants being two levels removed from the actual action.]
Not “Iron Man 2″ on FX again…
Pierce: Now it’s time to kill the President because EVIL. Also, I must do it on abandoned oil platform because ACTION MOVIE.
Downy Jr: Not so fast. Me and my entire army of now completely autonomous Iron Man suits will defeat you. In fact, since they’re now completely autonomous, I can actually just sit down here on this couch and relax for the next thirty minutes or so. Want some popcorn, Don?
Don Cheadle: Sure.
I dig the Village People’s new, modern look.
[ They munch popcorn as Guy Pierce's army is destroyed one-by-one by Iron Man suits, after which Guy Pierce destroys the Iron Man suits one-by-one. Also, he throws Gweneth Paltrow into a pit of fire. ]
Downy Jr: Great. You’ve thrown my now invincible and super-powered girlfriend into certain death. Don’t you know what happens when you do that in Marvel movies? [ Shows Guy Pierce the end of X-Men 2 and all of X-Men 3. ]
Pierce: Oh God, no.
[ Suddenly Gweneth Paltrow emerges from the flames as either the Phoenix or, even worse, Brett Ratner. In either case, she kills the shit out of Guy Pierce. ]
Downy Jr: Thank God you’re alive! To properly express my gratitude, let me remove explode all my Iron Man suits, representing all the time I spent bent up in PTSD unable to express my love for you!
Gweneth Paltrow: Oh myyy…
Downy Jr: Also, I’ll remove your super powers and my arc reactor chest thingie, so that we can be just two ordinary, puny, unexceptional people again.
Paltrow: Oh.
Cheadle: Wait… did you just blow up my suit too? [ Realizes he's now suddenly unemployed. ] Well, shit.
THE END.
Mark Ruffalo: Wait, I get a cameo at the end, but no actual action in the movie? Hulk SMASH!
Hi Ho Silver, away…. from this movie.
[ A train consisting of several cars filled with religiously devout passengers and one car filled with homicidal cannibalistic psychopath William Fichtner races through 1800's Texas, because what could possibly go wrong? The prison car also has Johnny Depp under watch by the authorities, trying to sneak by them and fulfill his destiny by killing his nemesis (the aforementioned psychopath) using a combination of cunning and slapstick comic relief. ]
William Fichtner: So, you’re pretty much just reprising your role from Pirates of the Carribean, except reset in the Old West.
Johnny Depp: You savvy, mate… I mean… How, kemosabe.
[ Passanger Armie Hammer breaks into the prison car just as Johnny Depp is about to kill William Fichtner. ]
Armie Hammer: Stop, I say! For I am a newly deputized district attorney, and hence I command you to desist in your criminal activities. For I am noble and without guile, but also naive and comically unprepared to face off against mean people. Essentially, I’m reprising my role from Mirror Mirror.
Depp: [ Facepalm. ]
[ Just then bad guys board the train, tie up Johnny and Armie, free William, and sabotage the train so that it will crash several miles down the track after they've left, because that makes much more sense than killing them on the spot. ]
Depp: We’ve conveniently escaped our shackles, kemosabe. Now let us affect our escape during an extended action sequence aboard a moving vessel, only to have me caught and arrested by your Goody-Two-Shoes ass.
Hammer: Isn’t that pretty much how Pirates of the Carribean began?
Depp: Cram it, kemosabe. Gore Verbinski only knows how to direct one action movie, and that one was it.
Hammer: Does this mean that I shall find my beloved betrothed to my nemesis?
Depp: If by “betrothed” you mean “already married” and by “nemesis” you mean “brother,” then yes, kemosabe.
Hammer: Well, poop, that kind of rules out coitus with her at the end then. Will there be supernatural shenanigans involving a fleet of zombies who only show their true form under moonlight?
Depp: If by “fleet of zombies” you mean “a horse” and by “true form under moonlight” you mean “materializes anytime or anywhere the plot requires it,” then yes, kemosabe.
Hammer: This movie is going to suck.
Depp: And how, kemosabe.
[ Armie and Johnny head to Colby, Texas, where they find Armie's ex-girlfriend Ruth Wilson married to Armie's brother James Badge Dale, a Texas Ranger, and employed by train magnate Tom Wilkinson. ]
James Badge Dale: Well little brother, you sure managed to completely screw up my prisoner transport with your book-learnin’, no-gun-shootin’, city-livin’, yellow-bellied dumbassitude. So why don’t you come along on our unnecessarily hasty and extremely dangerous shootin’ posse to round him up.
Tom Wilkinson: Splendid. How could this possibly go wrong? Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to reprise my role from The Ghost and The Darkness and have some lions kill Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas.
[ They look for William Fichtner. We see the posse ford a stream. We see the posse cross the prairie. We see the posse gallop over the desert. We see the posse pose in front of a butte. We see the posse... ]
Hammer: Holy hell, cowboy movies are boring.
[ Finally the posse comes to a mysterious and foreboding canyon. ]
Dale: Hmmm. This seems like the ideal spot for an ambush. You ready for your motivation to kill William Fichtner yet?
Hammer: Er, what?
[ The posse is ambushed by William Fichtner's men, who shoot everyone to death. William proceeds to eat Dale's heart, to gain his courage. His rich, tasty courage. ]
I TOLD YOU, there is no situation for which there is not an appropriate Futurama quote.
[ He leaves. Johnny Depp shows up with a white horse and nurses Armie back to health. ]
Hammer: Oh, man, I feel like I’ve been dead for three days.
Depp: Messiah complex much? Also, you have been dead for three days, but now you’re alive and the wind-talker or wind-breaker or something, I dunno. This white horse brought you back to life, kemosabe.
Hammer: Er, what?
Depp: I already told you: magical horse. Deal with it.
Hammer: So the Lone Ranger, rebooted for the 21st century, is going to involve a magical horse with the power to resurrect the dead?
Depp: Yes, kemosabe. Later, he’ll be able to fly.
Hammer: Riiiiiiiiight. Let me just put on this mask so no one associates me with this movie…
Depp: Whatever, let’s go kill William Fichtner. First, we visit hookers.
Hammer: Er, what?
[ They visit a seedy brothel, run by one-legged madam Helena Bodham Carter. ]
Depp: Did I just walk into a Tim Burton movie again?
Helena Bodham Carter: No, this is just a Disney movie. I’m a whore with a heart of gold. Also with a leg of pearl, which replaced the one that was eaten off by William Fichtner, who was into petty BDSM and extreme cannibalism. I guess that’s what happens when you forget the safe word. Later on I’ll use my fake leg to seduce a calvaryman with amputation fetish, distracting him long enough to get this movie into its final action sequence. In the meantime, you should go, because a posse of crossdressing cowpokes are threatening to rape Ruth Wilson and her son.
Hammer: Disney… seriously… what the frack?
[ They leave and fight off the ruffians, who nevertheless manage to escape with Ruth and son while trapping Armie and Johnny in a burning barn. Thankfully, they are saved when the horse flies to the roof of the barn to save them. They land and dispatch the two remaining baddies by a Rube Goldberg-esque sequence of accidents. ]
Or is it Deus Equus Machina? My Latin sucks.
Hammer: Worst. Action movie. Ever.
Depp: And how, kemosabe.
[ They are captured by Comanches, and Armie is taken to Chief Saginaw Grant, who tells Armie that Johnny has dedicated his life to killing William Fichtner (who was responsible for killing his entire village over a silver mine when he was a kid) and, oh!, also that he's gonna kill Armie. ]
Hammer: But why? Is it because by screwing up Johnny’s revenge the beginning of the movie, I’ve tampered with his destiny and made him more insane than before?
Saginaw Grant: No.
Hammer: Is it because by inadvertently letting Fichtner escape, he is now framing Comanches for attacks he perpetrated, leading the US Calvary to suppose you’re in open revolt and sending military troops to come and slaughter you completely?
Grant: No.
Hammer: Is it because my brother promised to protect us from the White Man, but by inadvertently freeing Fichtner, I also got him killed, leaving you defenseless?
Grant: No.
Hammer: Then what gives?
Grant: Dude, you’ve turned the Lone Ranger and Tonto from a series about to kickass crimefighters in the Old West into two bumbling buffoons who have a magic Jesus horse.
Hammer: Quite right. I deserve to die.
[ They bury Armie and Johnny up to their heads in sand and pour scorpions on them, before leaving. Just then Silver the magic horse shows up with a can of Raid, sprays off all the scorpions, and pulls Armie and Johnny out of the sand with his teeth. ]
Hammer: Wait? How did Silver operate a spray can? He doesn’t even have thumbs.
Depp: MAGIC… HORSE… kemosabe.
You know, Owen Wilson had to dig himself out with a pair of chopsticks. Wusses.
[ They go to the super-secret silver mine and use slapstick TNT gags (together with a surprising lack of concern for the lives of innocent indentured Chinese workers already in the mine) to blow up Fichtner's posse. ]
Hammer: [ Points gun right at Fichtner's face. ] Alright, William Fichnter. You killed Johnny’s family. You ate Helena’s leg. You ate my brother’s heart out of his chest. You kidnapped and quite possibly raped and killed by sister-in-law and nephew. You shot me and left me to die in the desert.
[ Pause. ]
Hammer: Guess I oughtter tie ya up and take you to the authorities, then.
Depp: [ Facepalm. ]
[ Armie takes William to Tom Wilkinson and Cavalryman Barry Pepper. ]
Tom Wilkinson: Thank you for capturing… my brother! Yes, I’m evil too!
Hammer: What? How could this be?
Wilkinson: You didn’t catch my villainous reference to The Ghost and The Darkness?
Hammer: Dude, that movie came out almost twenty years ago.
Wilkinson: Hmph. If you can’t be bothered to take an interest in cinema history, that’s your own look-out. Off to the firing squad for you. Apathetic bloody little ingrate, I’ve no sympathy at all.*
* Yes, this is a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference in the middle of a Ghost and the Darkness reference in the middle of a Lone Ranger script. Nerd trifecta.
[ They take Armie to be killed by firing squad, but just then the Comanches attack. They are completely slaughtered by the Calavary in a slow-motion somber fight sequence that would be far more effective at evoking our national guilt at the eradication of entire Native American populations if it wasn't interspersed with Johnny and Armie's slap-stick push-cart plus Indiana-Jones-rolling-fireball comic escape. ]
Depp: I overhead Tom and William are going to Promontory Point tomorrow to kill the railroad investors and monopolize the entire railroad industry.
Hammer: How the hell will be get from South Texas to North Utah by morning with only nineteenth century technology?
Depp: How many times do I have to say it, man?
MAGIC HORSE.
[ The next day, at the joining of the Transcontinental Railroad, Tom Wilkinson reveals his plan to take over the railroad industry by killing one of the railroad magnates. Before he can finish the job, Johnny Depp steals the train will all the silver, foiling Tom's plan to buy up the shares of the other railroad companies. ]
Tom Wilkonson: Damn. Perhaps I should have actually bought the other companies before announcing my plan to buy them out and kill all their executives. Oh well, live and learn. Evil Twin powers, ACTIVATE!
Well, it’s better than “a bucket of water.”
[ He and William Fichtner board the other train and pursue Johnny. Meanwhile, Armie boards Silver and pursues Tom and William. Meanwhile, Cavalryman Barry boards a Gatlin Gun, but is too distracted by Helena's pearl leg to shoot him, the freaky perv. ]
[ The William Tell Overture begins. ]
Hammer: It’s about frickin’ time.
[ The William Tell Overture continues for the next... twenty... minutes. ]
Hammer: Oh God, kill me now.
[ Armie catches up with the second train, and challenges the baddies to a fight. They respond by throwing his sister-in-law and nephew over the side, where they land on Silver, who has managed to keep pace with the speeding train despite the insanely rugged and mountainous terrain. ]
William Fichtner: How is that even possible?
Johnny Depp [ in the distance ]: Magic! Fucking! Horse!
[ Suddenly the single track splits into two tracks which criss-cross back-and-forth and over-and-under each other more times than a DNA molecule, because ACTION MOVIE ENGINEERING. Also, the protagonists and antagonists go back and forth between the trains over and over and over again because ACTION MOVIE FINALE. Eventually they end up with Armie and William on the pursuing train and Johnny and Tom on the silver train. Armie sabotages the train and jumps off in time to watch William Fichtner die in a fiery wreck. ]
Hammer: Um… Johnny. Sorry I kind of killed off your arch nemesis, thereby completely destroying any chance you had of fulfilling your life’s destiny. My bad.
Depp: That’s okay, kemo-S-O-B. I’ll just kill this white guy instead.
[ He jumps off the CGI train as it falls off an CGI bridge and CGI explodes. It is in no way as cool as the same live-action train sequence in the finale of Back to the Future III. Also, Silver sprouts wings and carries Armie and Johnny to the coast where they defeat the Kraken. ]
…or Kristin Stewart.
Townspeople: Who was that masked man?
Hammer: [hides mask in his pocket with embarrassment] Hell if I know.
THE END.
[ Four magicians scattered across the United States are summoned to a crappy New York apartment by Tarot cards. Because when a random Tarot card tells you to do something, you do it, dammit. ]
Dave Franco: I’m an up-and-coming magician, a profession I subsidize by being a pick-pocket and petty criminal. I shall exhibit these skills by breaking into this apartment.
Woody Harrelson: I’m a talented mentalist, a profession I subsidize by blackmailing strangers I meet at airports and bus depots. I shall exhibit these skills by tightening this slightly loose light bulb.
Jesse Eisenberg: I’m a neurotic, fast-talking, anal-retentive control freak who has overcome my inherent meekness to seduce hot chicks. Of course, since that’s my usually my entire character schtick and I already did that in the first 5 minutes of the movie, I’m not exactly sure what I’m supposed to do for the next 110 minutes. Let me randomly flick this light switch.
Isla Fisher: I’m a talented escape artist who is apparently surrounded by a bunch of dicks. Now let me water this conspicuously placed plant with this equally conspicuously placed watering can.
[ She does so, thereby activating a fog machine and also the Death Star holographic projector from Star Wars. ]
MYSTERY MAGICIAN: Good morning, Four Horsemen. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to perform the greatest magic trick in history: pulling off the greatest heists in history while the world watches!
Eisenberg: Awesome! With my incredible planning skills, we should be able to…
MYSTERY MAGICIAN: No, I’ve already got the plans here. Just follow them to the letter for the next year or so.
Eisenberg: [ Disappointed. ] Oh.
Franco: But we’ll learn the secret of true magic?
MYSTERY MAGICIAN: Nope. There’s no magic here.
Franco: [ Disappointed. ] Oh.
MYSTERY MAGICIAN: Just a lot of unlikely plot contrivances, sleight of hand, and Woody Harrelson using his skillset to save Eisenberg and you two other kids.
Harrelson: [ Disappointed. ] Dammit, it’s Zombieland all over again.
MYSTERY MAGICIAN: Pretty much. This movie is essentially Ocean’s Eleven meets The Prestige, but without the witty banter or clever plot twists. Should any of your team be killed or caught, we’ll resolve that with a “twist” at the end of the movie. This tape will self destruct in 5 seconds.
[ One year later, the Four Horsemen are performing in Las Vegas. ]
Eisenberg: For our grand finale, we shall rob a bank. Can we have a random audience member, preferably one who banks in, say, France?
Jose Garcia: Mais, oui! C’est moi!
[ Jose puts on Professor X's Cerebro helmet and steps into a open box, that appears to crush him, but magically sends him into a French bank vault, where he vacuums up the money an escapes through an air duct before being magically transported back to Vegas. ]
Eisenberg: Ta-da!
Audience members: From our point of view, all we saw you do was perform a cheesy disappear/reappear trick with a planted co-conspirator, together with some “mockumentary” video footage and clearly pre-packaged French money falling from the rafters. This trick blows.
Eisenberg: But tomorrow when you watch the news you’ll think this is a cool trick. Good night! No refunds!
[ Tomorrow, everyone finds out the bank was -- gasp! -- robbed. Cops close in on the Horse Horsemen. ]
Fisher: I suppose now I should use my skills as an escape artist.
Harrelson: No, I got this. [ Surrenders. ]
Fisher: [ Disappointed. ] Oh.
Mark Ruffalo: I’m a grizzled cop who hates magic and wishes superstition and fairy tales and even Lucky Charms. I know those guys robbed that bank without magic.
Melanie Laurent: I’m your new Interpol partner from France who believes in magic and wishes and fairies. What are the ends we would be teamed up?
Morgan Freeman: I’m an ex-magician turned professional magic debunker. This trick was easy to do. Obviously, the Four Horsemen went to France a while ago, acquired an armored truck from that bank, stole the money, replaced it with counterfeit money rigged to vaporize at exactly this date, found a patsy, used hypnosis to make him come to Las Vegas on just this night, staged choosing him at random, dropped him to this perfect reproduction of the bank vault built under the stage, and then yanked him bank, all whilst he was still hypnotized. It’s obvious when you think about it.
Ruffalo: Er, what?
Laurent: Or it was real magic.
Ruffalo: Riiiiiiiiight. I guess we’re just gonna
let this one slide. I hate magic.
[ The Four Horsemen next perform in New Orleans. ]
Eisenberg: For our grand finale, we shall rob an insurance magnate. Can we have a random insurance magnate, preferably one who has appeared in, say, other magic-themed movie?
Michael Caine: Oi! Right here, blokes!
[ Woody Harrelson chooses several people completely not at random from the audience, and shows a number of oversized checks featuring their bank accounts. Then the balances on their checks increase while Michael's balance drops by the EXACT SAME AMOUNT. ]
Eisenberg: Ta-da!
Audience members: You know, from our point of view, all we saw you do was perform an arithmetic problem with cheesy disappearing ink and several planted co-conspirators, but this time without the video or the free money. This trick really blows.
Eisenberg: No refunds!
[ Just then the police burst in to arrest the Four Horsemen. ]
Fisher: I suppose now I should use my skills as an escape artist.
Eisenberg: No, I got this. [ Uses suddenly acquired freerunning skills to climb up walls and slip out through New Orleans like the Amazing Cajun Spiderman. ]
Fisher: [ Disappointed. ] Oh.
Mark Ruffalo: I’m still hate magic, but now I’m angered by it. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.
Morgan Freeman: This trick was easy to do. Obviously, the Four Horsemen cozied themselves up to Michael Caine, got him to fund their magic act, got him to secretly divulge his computer passwords by hypnosis, infected his computer mainframe trojan horse virus programmed to access his bank accounts to transfer money to people his insurance company boned at precisely that time, and probably used lemon juice and a hot pack for the invisible ink trick. It’s obvious when you think about it.
Laurent: Or it was real magic.
Ruffalo: Riiiiiiiiight. I really hate magicians. Fortunately by partner has found out where they’re hiding in New York, so shut the hell up, both of you.
[ The police burst in to arrest the Four Horsemen in their New York apartment. ]
Fisher: I suppose now I should use my skills as an escape artist.
Franco: No, I got this. [ Uses suddenly acquired martial arts skills to kick the cops' asses six ways to Sunday like the bastard offspring of Jason Bourne and Ethan Hunt. ]
Fisher: [ Disappointed. ] Oh.
[ Three of the Horsemen escape, but Dave Franco dies in a fiery car crash after police chase him from the apartment. ]
Mark Ruffalo: I really hate magic, but at least there’s one less magician out there to hate.
Morgan Freeman: Not quite. This trick was easy to do. Obviously, the Four Horsemen new you were coming, set up an elaborate fight sequence with you in order to make sure you got the location to their last trick, and then faked Dave’s death by attaching a decoy car to the front of a bus that happened to be directly in front of you at all times and making the switch by distracting you with Jesse Eisenberg in the world’s worst mustache disguise. It’s obvious when you think about it.
Laurent: Or it was real magic.
Ruffalo: [Stares at both of them.] MAGIC MAKE MARK ANGRY! MARK SMASH MAGIC!
[ The Four Three Horsemen next perform in New York. ]
Eisenberg: For our only trick tonight, we shall turn into giant piles of money that we swear we magically stole from an armored truck this very night!
[ They jump off the top of a building and turn into piles pf fake money that rain on the audience. ]
Eisenberg: [ In the ether ] Ta-da!
Audience members: You know we didn’t see any of the cool armored car switcheroo set pieces that occurred immediately before this scene, right? You guys really suck at magic.
Eisenberg: [ In the ether] No refunds!
[ Just then the police burst in to arrest the Three Horsemen... who have already vanished. ]
Fisher: [ In the ether ] Why the hell did we even establish I was an escape artist in this movie?
Eisenberg: So the guys in the audience could goggle your tits and ass during the opening scenes.
Fisher: [ Disappointed. ] Oh.
Mark Ruffalo: I positively hate magic. The complete lack of reasonabe explanations for the previous crimes has meant that I cannot arrest the Four Horsemen!
[ Suddenly Morgan Freemen's SUV bursts open, revealing that every available cubic centimeter of its interior is filled with the stolen money. ]
Ruffalo: However, the complete lack of any reasonably explanation for how this money got into your car right now clearly means that I should arrest you!
Morgan Freeman: I was framed. This trick was easy to do. Obviously, the Four Horsemen snuck into the secret warehouse with the secret safe and erected a giant mirror at a precise 45 degree angle to give the impression of the room being empty to anyone who happened to, say, only look at the room but not actually walk into it, which of course they didn’t, being hypnotized by Woody Harrelson who cleverly embedded subliminal messages throughout his entire Cheers career. Then, when you were out chasing the fake truck, they smashed the mirror, broke into the safe, a filled by car with that money. It’s obvious when you think about it.
Ruffalo: Piss off, Morgan.
Laurent: Or it was real magic.
Ruffalo: You too, Melanie.
[ They arrest Morgan Freeman. ]
Freeman: I was framed.
Ruffalo: I know. This trick was easy to do. Obviously, I am the son of one of the magicians you debunked, who went on to die disgracefully in a failed escape attempt. So I dedicated my entire life to seeking revenge on you and anyone tangentially related to this crime, but devising an elaborate plan to be executed by four master magicians, while I would simultaneously infiltrate the police force to make sure that I got this one exact case to secretly make sure it succeeded. Because that was a hell of lot easier than just, say, shooting you. It’s obvious when you think about it.
Freeman: That… doesn’t make a lick of fucking sense.
[ Meanwhile, the Four Horsemen -- that's right, Dave's not really dead! -- use their original Tarot cards to activate a treeborg which takes them to the magic carousel from Something Wicked This Way Comes. Or something. Meanwhile, Mark goes to France to explain everything to Melanie Laurent. ]
Ruffalo: … and that’s exactly what happened.
Laurent: Or it was magic.
Ruffalo:[ Facepalm. ]
THE END
