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alix-roche · 2 years ago

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The Hunt for the Teumessian Fox

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

I couldn’t get a hold of Jansen before breakfast the next morning, so I was going into this mission blind. There weren’t any documents attached to my mission card by the morning.

I dug up everything on the Teumessian Fox from the archives, using my Magidex, but it wasn’t anything I didn’t already know: It was a giant red fox, the last time it ended up on Earth was around two hundred years ago, and its Force-Paradox ability was simple but powerful—it could never be caught.

That didn’t mean that it could never be tamed, though.

I gave up trying to find any more information myself and hoped that there would be enough time to prepare while travelling. We had two long car rides and a flight cooped up with the mission squad, and we would figure something out, I hoped.

These were some of the top Guardians, after all.

If there was one thing I loved about the Union, it was the fact I was able to travel all over whenever I wanted, and I didn’t even have to be sent out on a mission. There were special allowances for what most Guardians called “research holidays” but formally known as “research retreats.”

I could take one and explore an area, and as long as I came back with some new information for the database of the Union, I would be good to go. I was so excited to get the chance for one next month. An actual holiday…

A Guardian had to have the freedom to explore, but the Syndicate didn’t believe that to be the case.

The agents’ Ispoleens usually got restless, which resulted in internal tournaments to pass the time between assignments back in Prague.

But I lacked practical field experience. Like most of the recruits, I was raised along with at the Syndicate. Their method of teaching was… restrictive.

I had adapted to the ways of the Union too quickly, so much so I was scared to tell Raze that.

The Syndicate was my home, and I would do anything to serve the Inner Circle, and Raze in particular. I owed them everything.

But the opportunities I had gotten while here were…

I had to focus and get the most out of the few hours I had before leaving for Basel. My assignment’s outcome would be decided by this very mission.

I walked downstairs to the dining hall where, like every other day, there was a buffet spread of anything I could have thought of for breakfast.

After filling my plate with an omelette, some bread, and a zucchini pancake, I headed for my usual spot in the back of the room, where I could eat in peace… usually…

But before I could take a bite of my food, a tall and slender figure slid into the seat next to me.

“What do you want, Stella?” I asked, biting the inside of my cheek and making it a point not to look her way.

Maybe she would leave me in peace. I had completely overlooked she was also assigned to this mission.

As much as I was thankful to finally work with Devin, working with Stella again was souring my mood.

“You’re coming on a mission with me, and I thought it would be good for me to tell you how things go on high-ranking missions like this,” the young woman started off.

She smoothed back her long red hair, and I was tempted to tell her to keep it out of my food, but alas, I was going to be stuck with her for a while if this mission was to go smoothly.

She was one of the longest-standing members of Jansen’s department.

“If you’re going, it isn’t high ranking enough.” I smiled and shoved a big bite of my omelette into my mouth so I would have to chew instead of entertain the idea of physically putting her in her place like I did last time she insisted on sparring with me.

“You just happened to have the crystal of an Ispoleen that is fit for this mission. If Tina hadn’t backed out last minute—”

“Well, at least you can be happy about one thing.” I interrupted her as I finally turned around and stared her down. I forced my voice an octave lower, driving my threat home. “I am nearly guaranteed to be on debrief duty. Unless you don’t want me to volunteer you for it or drag you into it with me, try not to get on my nerves for the rest of the miserable time, we would have to spend together.”

She angled her head and stared back at me as her nostrils flared.

“I’m also likely getting transferred to Jansen’s department after this. Get used to seeing me around.” I smiled. Riling her up was fun. And deserved, after I had to drag information crystals outside a cave by myself because of her for hours.

We stood like this for a moment before something behind me caught her attention.

I turned around and saw it was the other member of the mission squad, Andreas Lyko, heading our way.

“Good morning, ladies. I see the two of you are already talking. I don’t know if I should be happy about that…” he trailed off as he sat in front of Stella and turned to her. “Jansen is testing you after your stunt last month. You know that, right?”

A huff escaped Stella, and from the corner of my eye, I could swear the ends of her ears had gone as red as her hair.

Well, I guess it was time it bit her in the ass.

Last month, we were on a mission together, just Stella and I. We were sent to retrieve a new batch of information crystals for the Academy from the Jura mountains to make Magidexes for the new Guardians.

Let’s just say she was a little trigger-happy when she saw the Ispoleens guarding that particular dungeon and got herself locked out while trying to show off. To me, of all people…

I had to drag out the crystals myself and load up her Stone Sentinel Ispoleen so we could transport them back to the Academy.

It took us twice as long to get back. Jansen and Neumann were beyond disappointed.

I still couldn’t believe she only got a slap on the wrist from Jansen while I had to hole up in Archiving for a week when I wasn’t even to blame. If going on a mission with me was her punishment…

I couldn’t wait to transfer.

And I couldn’t wait to go head-to-head with her daily in training. She was good, but she overestimated herself. I liked to use that against her.

“Devin is in a meeting up until our leaving time. He is driving as always, so we won’t be leaving without him,” Andreas said, averting his gaze from Stella and locking eyes with me.

“You’ve been on a lot of missions together, I figure?” I smiled up at him, hoping to steer the conversation in a more productive direction. I wanted to make friends, after all.

There was a lot I could learn from both of them. They were both in the top 100 of the Guardians at this Union location.

“Stella and I have been on the same team since our time at the Academy. Jansen picked us up right after we graduated. Devin has come and gone. Stella and Tina were inseparable up until Tina decided to give mentoring another try.”

“I could never take it up now. It feels like a retirement plan,” Stella said… though no one asked for her opinion. I gritted my teeth so the words wouldn’t escape me.

I didn’t know if she was actually annoying or if I was just jealous of her and the opportunities she has gotten. How could one person have it all?

“Tina felt ready to do it again. That’s all that matters. And who knows, maybe Kaira, here, will fit right in. Devin said you’re taking her spot after we get back from the mission.” Andreas turned the conversation to me. “He has been looking for a new partner, you know? Jansen has been on his ass about it ever since his slip-up in Prague last month.”

“I wasn’t aware this was that kind of an arrangement,” I said and felt my stomach drop. No, it wasn’t the food.

“Of course, you weren’t. Andreas doesn’t know how to shut up,” Stella sneered at him.

Alright, maybe it wasn’t just me; she was like that with everyone.

And as happy as I was about the turn of the conversation and the fact Stella had dropped most of her attitude toward me, it took everything in me not to be smug about what I was hearing.

Devin’s slip-up last month in Prague… That was all Raze’s doing. He nearly had him captured without much help from me beyond the mission information I had dug up from the Magidex documentation.

Jansen’s biggest strength and weakness both lay in his immaculate record-keeping.

I had spaced out of the conversation for a few moments, but by the time I came back to it, Stella was heading to fill her plate, Andreas calling after her to hurry up.

Despite that, I now knew two things: I was being tested, by both Jansen and Devin, for a potential at the exact spot in their department I had been after for the past three months.

And I had a very good chance of getting the spot of Devin’s partner as well.

If all went to plan, I would have a reason to call Raze as soon as I returned.

* * *

Devin didn’t show up to breakfast, which was expected, given the meeting time slot I saw last night. Instead, he stormed out of the Academy’s main entrance to the car that Andreas had parked out front, where the three of us waited for him.

He was packed light, just like all of us. Whatever his conversation with Jansen, it must have shaken him because he asked Andreas to drive before swinging his luggage in the trunk.

Stella had called shotgun right before he showed up, banking on him driving like he normally did. This meant he was stuck sitting next to me… or was I the one stuck? I awkwardly sat down on the other side and shuffled in my seat.

“I guess we haven’t been properly introduced before,” he said once he buckled his seat belt, then extended his hand. “Devin Leone, nice to meet you.”

“Kaira Alliguery,” I answered and shook his hand.

He was surprisingly gentle… His handshake was weak, which threw me off—he didn’t seem like that type of person from what I had observed at the Academy. Or what I’d been told about him.

For a second, I was almost starstruck as I looked up at him.

Tan skin, dirty-blonde hair and the face whose picture I had cursed and spat at for months. So much so that I had memorised the arch of his eyebrows, the upturn of his nose and how one of his eyes stayed always half-closed.

Devin became famous, even outside of the Union, because of his quest to find the Scepter of Onyx. No one knew why he was so obsessed with that artefact, even when I asked around the Academy.

It shouldn’t have really mattered to me. It didn’t matter to Raze, after all.

All I needed to know was that Devin was my only ticket to finding and delivering it to the Syndicate.

Andreas and Stella were bickering in the front of the car about the music, which got old fast, so after exchanging a few awkward glances with Devin, he butted in and started talking to Andreas about one of the devices he was working on.

It was going to be a long three hours before we got to the airport.

* * *

At some point, Devin finished his conversation with Andreas about the device. Something to do with the weakening barrier of the Academy, but I couldn’t really understand what it actually did.

A tense silence filled the car, quickly cut through by Devin turning to me. “So, Kaira, how has the Academy been treating you? I heard you transferred pretty recently.”

“I did. I transferred in March. It has been quite the change, not going to lie.” I tensed. I hadn’t known I was going to be interrogated.

“What about before? Where did you transfer from?”

“Kazakhstan, I was in the Astana HQ,” I lied. My paperwork was forged. But the Kazakhs were pretty bad at documentation, so I had a possible out if I got caught.

“Makes sense,” Stella called out from the passenger seat.

“Just because she’s Asian doesn’t mean—” Andreas started.

“It’s fine,” I interrupted. “I am only half-Kazakh. Actually, my mom was from Astana.”

“I’ve never been. Did you live there for a while?” Devin asked.

“Yeah,” I lied. “I left for Russia to live with my father’s family for a few years but eventually came back to Astana.”

Devin locked eyes with me, then angled his head. “Then what brings you here?”

“I wanted to explore Europe,” I said with a smile. “And practice my French, of course.”

“And your Ispoleen affinities? Dark, Push, and Air? Right?”

I smiled and nodded. He had done his research on me; I’d give him that.

Just like I had done mine on him. His affinities were Light, Pull, and Earth.

“Devin, if you are going to interview her, you could have waited, you know?” Stella whined from the front. “There was going to be plenty of downtime to do that later!”

Had they been interviewed in a similar fashion to be in Jansen’s department? I wondered.

“Don’t act like you two weren’t going to be nosy about it later. I thought I could kill two birds with one stone,” Devin replied. “Now, Kaira, would you mind telling us why and how you became a Guardian?”

My heart skipped a beat, and something in my chest shrunk. I used all of my willpower not to physically fold.

“That’s extremely private,” I mumbled.

“Jansen will ask you, too, later. You should be prepared to tell him, at least,” Devin warned me.

I tried to swallow, but my mouth had gone dry. I slammed my hand onto my knee so my leg wouldn’t start shaking before answering.

“I got caught up in a fight between some Guardians from the Union and the Syndicate. Got hurt in the chaos and rescued by my mentor, who took me in for training right away.” I lied through my teeth. It was close enough to the truth, but instead of the Union, the Syndicate took me in. “I know most Guardians show their powers at around sixteen to seventeen. I got mine at ten when I had to defend myself.”

“Not what I meant.” Devin shook his head. “But you’ve got quite the story there. You’ll have to tell me more about it.”

“Of course you would,” Andreas called out for a change. “Didn’t Jansen rescue you from some Syndicate agents when you were thirteen or something? Prodigy complex much?”

I did my best not to laugh, but Devin didn’t, and a snort escaped him.

“You’ve got me there,” he said, closing his eyes for a second before continuing and looking up at me for validation. “It’s a lot different to go to the Academy with no prior knowledge than attending after having years of using your powers intuitively.”

“You’re right.” I nodded even though I didn’t quite understand what he meant.

“Anyway, what I meant to ask is, why are you an active Guardian? What made you want to be out here? What made you want to master your powers?” he reiterated.

Raze made me, I said in my head. There was really no other choice for me.

“I wanted to be powerful enough to be in charge of my own destiny,” I said out loud instead, straightening.

I guess that was a satisfactory enough answer, as all three nodded. Even Stella’s face lacked malice or snark.

The conversation became more casual after that. Andreas and Stella shared stories of their time at the Academy, and I learned they were a lot more than just partners on missions.

Devin didn’t really speak at all after that, opting to stare out of the window. Whenever someone was talking to him, he needed a second to realise they were indeed speaking to him.

Andreas had to repeat himself three times before Devin could tell him which turn to take at the intersection when we were about to arrive in Basel.

“And what about Vixair? How did you acquire him?” Stella asked as we were nearing the airport. She had shared the story of how she got her first Ispoleen crystal just before.

I wrapped the string on which Vixair’s crystal hung on my neck by around my finger. “I’ve had him for ages. He was my first bonded Ispoleen. I discovered him on a mountain hike when I was eleven. It was him that came to me,” I chuckled. It hadn’t happened quite like that.

Raze had taken me to the mountain cave the air Ispoleens were known to inhabit on the Czech-Slovak border. I hiked up there every day for weeks until Vixair finally relented and took pity on me. The two of us needed years before we really started to gel into the team we were today.

“Well, he is an impressive Ispoleen and should be able to track the Teumessian Fox once it feels we are on its trail. It’s why Jansen decided you should be leading the mission with me,” Devin noted.

“I don’t think that’s the case. I was told I am a last-second stand-in,” I said.

“No, you are leading it. At least the hunt portion will be yours to handle. I have the crystal of the Ispoleen of Laelaps, and he can hunt down anything he is told to,” he explained. “And because we will be hunting his opposite force—the Teumessian Fox, the one who can never be caught. Vixair will be the only Ispoleen that will be able to keep up with them, so you’re coming with me.”

That was an interesting development, for sure. I didn’t know Devin had that particular Ispoleen’s crystal. I certainly didn’t see it on his mission record. He must not have acquired it on a mission.

“Then what are Stella and Andreas here for?” I asked.

“Apparently, Jansen won’t let me go anywhere without backup anymore.” Devin sighed.

“And we’re milking it for all we’ve got,” Andreas added. “We want the royal treatment as well!”

“Royal treatment?” I asked.

“Just wait until we get there. You’ll see what we mean,” Stella laughed from the front seat.

I had to give it to them; spending a three-hour car ride with those three taught me a lot about their dynamic.

I could see myself enjoying my time in their company in the future. Even Stella’s. Once she dropped the attitude, she wasn’t half bad.

I was excited to potentially make a female friend at the Union.

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A/N: Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this chapter.

I will be posting the rest of the novella chapters shortly. You should follow me so it will pop up in your feed when I publish it.

In the meantime, you can check out my published work here.

#the magidex academy #litrpg #progression fantasy #na fantasy #fantasy novella #urban fantasy #contemporary fantasy

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irregularcircle · 2 years ago

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Exalted Bios: Anjali

Name: Anjali Skalishaya

Exaltation: Lunar

Caste: No Moon

Totem: Red Fox

Tell: Dark brown ‘gloves/boots’

Weapon(s): Kirandir and Nakanadi, paired Moonsilver short klaives

Language(s): Rivertongue, Low Realm, Old Realm, Forest Tongue

Goal(s): Gathering, discovering, preserving, disseminating, and expanding knowledge, including the lost, known, and yet-unknown.

Fear(s): Losing everything, especially loved ones and precious knowledge

Likes: Books, ruins and other long-forgotten, abandoned places, learning new languages, magic, hunting, tea, Perfect Noodle, campfires, being petted and/or scritched behind the ears

Dislikes: Shoes, being bossed around by Solars, the Wyld Hunt, zombies, not knowing things, combat

Defining feature(s): Purple hair with blonde tips, never wears shoes

Theme song: Bella Luna, by Jazon Mraz

Interesting Extras: Anjali was never tattooed or fostered by the Silver Pact– the manse she Exalted in was carefully hidden outside of Fate, and thus the No Moons of the Silver Pact never got word of her Exaltation. Fortunately, the manse itself had been built by a No Moon who had worked out an automatic tattooing device. Anjali only discovered this upon running afoul of it… and finding herself tattooed mere hours after Exalting.

Quick Biography: Eldest daughter of Kirandir and Nakanadi Skalishaya, Anjali joined her parents in their long-standing family trade of scavenging: delving into long-forgotten tombs, ruins, and forbidden places in the hopes of finding something valuable… and living long enough to make a profit from it.

Fate moved when Anjali was 19. She accompanied her parents on her first big expedition, searching for a believed-intact Lunar manse deep into the Eastern forests. Their information had been good– the manse was untouched. Unfortunately, this meant that the defenses were intact as well. Three mortal scavengers entered the manse. One Lunar exalt left.

By the time Anjali exited the manse, her tattoos had healed (the manse had an automatic tattooing function), her anima had dimmed again, and she had attuned to the manse as its new master. The porters who had guided her family deep into the East had long since left, and she was alone in the wild. She buried her parents at the doorstep of the manse, built a shrine, spent a month in mourning, and then left, seeking a new path forward.

Her aunt and uncle were caring for her younger sisters in Farhold… but Anjali did not return to them. She dreaded explaining what had happened… that their parents had died violently. That only becoming one of the heroes– or monsters– of legend had saved her. She was afraid they would fear her. That they would never look at her the same again.

She wandered for months, learning new forms and adapting to her new power, before running into a circle of Solar Exalts. She joined them, working with them for several decades, aiding the fight against numerous woes for which only the Exalted are equipped. Until one day, when she woke up to a note (written on her arm…) from someone who knew her name… and had known her in another life as well.

After a few more mysterious encounters, this visitor turned out to be Rachna, an Infernal Exalt… and Anjali’s Celestial mate. Inconveniently, however, Anjali’s circle was actively in conflict with Rachna’s circle, trying to thwart their efforts to release the Yozi upon Creation. Rachna, however, was ALSO against freeing the Yozi, and became a double-agent, working with Anjali’s circle against his own.

After leading Anjali’s circle on an expedition to Malfeas to thwart the Yozi for good, Rachna and Anjali split off from Anjali’s circle and struck out on their own, searching again for new adventures.

Relationship to:

Rachna

Her Celestial mate, an Infernal. Initially skeptical of him, Anjali is now intensely attached to him, would fight to the death to protect him, and fears losing him… partly because she has memories of finding his predecessor dead during the Usurpation in the First Age… moments before her own predecessor’s death. They adopted their First Age predecessors’ ritual of drinking tea together, enjoying the comforting continuity from one relationship to the next.

Kaveri

Anjali’s sister, and the middle child of the three. Being almost ten years older than Kaveri, Anjali was sort of Kaveri’s hero when they were growing up. Anjali may be where Kaveri learned what little she knows of Old Realm. They both liked exploring and playing hide and seek together.

Malati

Malati was barely five when Anjali was ‘lost’ to the deep East, so the relationship between the oldest sister and the youngest was very different. To Malati, Anjali was more like a second mom. Anjali always worried that Malati would never understand why she’d ‘left’, and regretted not being able to see Malati grow up.

Mirth of Drowned Children

A ‘frenemy’ of sorts. A long-time adversary of Anjali’s former circle, Mirth once bit Anjali, and used her blood to perform a bit of black magic that left him with a temporary mental link to her, allowing him to sort of ‘ride around’ in her head, and see and hear and feel what she experienced. At night, when she was asleep, they would converse in her dreams. More than any of her circlemates, Anjali gained an unfortunately deep understanding of Mirth, and developed equally complex feelings toward him. She is troubled and disturbed by his worldview, actively opposes his efforts to end Creation… but can’t help but still sort of like him as a person. For good or for ill, she maintains light contact with him, figuring that keeping an eye on him, and standing as the closest thing he has to a friend in Creation, will ultimately do more good than harm. (She is, much to her embarrassment and shame, somewhat sexually attracted to him– which is somewhat forgivable. Mirth is very attractive.)

Shem

A mortal fur trapper and father of two who Exalted Lunar while seeking Anjali and Rachna’s aid, Shem was the first Lunar Anjali ever gave Moonsilver tattoos to, fulfilling her role as a No Moon. Between raising his kids to adulthood and scraping his village back together, Shem doesn’t spend a lot of time with Anjali’s current circle, but he does keep in touch.

Sereana

A mortal woman who survived Forsaken Bride slaughtering her entire wedding party, only to Exalt Lunar when she talked the Abyssal out of killing her too, Sereana is the second Lunar Anjali tattooed. Unlike Shem, whom Anjali had been interacting with at the time, Sereana had been brought to her by Bride, who knew that Mirth ‘knew a Lunar’.

#Exalted #Exalted character #Lunar exalted #Anjali #Exalted bio #character art #I'm in the market for a better theme song #She's hard to build a playlist for

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silhouetteofacedar · 4 years ago

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Fox Mulder, Closet Romantic Ch. 2: Casual Friday the 13th

Previous Chapter - AO3 Link - MSR, rated E

He gives himself a pep talk on the way to work the next morning. It feels ridiculous.

Just ask her out, he thinks. Be casual. Invite her to grab a drink, act like you’re going whether she joins you or not. It’s just Scully.

That’s some bullshit; she’s not just anything to him. She’s everything.

Also he doesn’t go to bars much, and never alone, so he’s not sure how subtle this will be.

He pushes the thoughts out of his head until they’re leaving the office at the end of the day, gathering their things and donning winter layers.

“Buy you a drink, Agent Scully?” he tosses out casually, taking her coat from the rack.

“Hm, what’s the occasion?” she asks.

“Friday the thirteenth; I’m testing my luck,” he replies, holding her coat open for her.

She slips her arms into the sleeves. “I guess one wouldn’t hurt,” she decides.

Huh. That was surprisingly easy.

He chalks it up to beginner’s luck and ushers her out the door with a hand on her back.

They end up at Casey’s Bar because it’s close to the Hoover Building, and neither of them had wanted to walk too far through the cold February night. Mulder’s a little nervous, but not enough to let it show. At the risk of being overconfident, he thinks it’s actually going pretty well. This outing is markedly different from every first date he’s had in the past. There’s no need for small talk with Scully, no pressure to act more gregarious or charming than he naturally is. Scully herself is a refreshing presence, like a crisp spring breeze. Cool without being austere, gentle and yet invigorating.

Also she doesn’t know it’s a date, so there’s that.

They perch at the far end of the counter and shoot the shit, talk about work. She orders a draught beer, and seeing the large glass in her little hand makes his stomach flutter nonsensically. He orders one too, just to keep pace with her, though he suspects she could drink him under the table if the occasion ever arose. The thought is strangely erotic.

Mulder watches her full pink lips press against the edge of her glass and he clears his throat awkwardly. Down, boy. He scrambles for a diversion.

“Any special plans for tomorrow night?” he asks, taking a foamy swallow of beer.

“What’s- oh.” Scully sets down her glass. “No, not this year,” she says softly.

He suddenly feels like a prick.

“You?” she asks, because she’s a polite human being.

Diffuse the moment, buddy. “I’ve got a pretty hot date, actually.”

Her shoulders stiffen momentarily. Interesting. “Oh?” she says lightly.

“Yeah, the boys invited me over to pick apart some found footage they stumbled upon. Frohike’s making chili.”

Scully’s face breaks into a smile, and he feels a wash of relief. She shakes her head. “You know, for about two seconds I thought you might actually have a life. It was a surreal experience.”

“I have a life, Scully,” he insists. It’s you. Aliens, conspiracy, and you.

“Mhm,” she hums, licking a bit of stray foam off her upper lip, causing a twinge south of his belt buckle. “Mulder, can I ask you a highly personal question?”

He coughs awkwardly. “No guarantees that I’ll answer, but sure. Hit me.”

She suddenly seems nervous. “Well… we’ve known each other for five years now, and we spend a lot of time together. I’ve met your mother, your friends. And in all that time, I’ve not known you to go on a single date.”

Besides this one, he thinks. “And?” he prompts.

She absently wipes her finger through the condensation on her glass. “Well, I can’t figure out why not. Your - preferences - are quite evident, and I’m sure finding a willing partner would be fairly easy for you, at least for… casual encounters.”

I don’t want casual encounters, he thinks. I want to burn pancakes for you on Sunday mornings.

He huffs out a breath of laughter. “I have it on good authority that I’m not the best company, Scully. What makes you think it’d be easy?”

She takes a long pull of her beer. “Because you’re very attractive.”

His heart stops momentarily, then starts back up at twice the speed. He scrambles for some composure. “Oh, so you think I’m attractive,” he teases lightly. He hopes she doesn’t notice the sudden tremble in his fingers.

Scully nods, as though she hadn’t just dropped a bomb on him. “Yes, I do. A lot of people do, Mulder,” she adds quickly. The lighting in the bar is dim, so he assumes he’s imagining the flush on her cheeks. Or it’s the beer. “The women’s restroom at the Bureau is a cesspool of gossip.”

“Well I’m not the only hot piece of ass in the X-Files division,” he says, glancing at her over the rim of his glass.

“Don’t let Skinner hear you say that,” she quips. “He’s shy.”

Mulder grins, amused by her deflection. “People talk about you too, Scully. I’ve had to fend off suitors for you more than once.” Now it’s her turn to squirm, he thinks.

She blinks rapidly. “You’re joking.”

Mulder chuckles. “Swear. Every once in a while a guy will ask me something about you. I tell ‘em to ask you themselves, and I assume they usually chicken out.”

“What kind of things do they want to know?”

Mulder shakes his head. “Let’s just say they’re not asking me your favorite color,” he says simply, lifting his glass to his mouth once more. “You can imagine the rest.”

Scully presses her lips together. “I don’t have to, unfortunately,” she sighs. “Thanks for having my back,” she adds.

He shrugs. “I’m your partner,” he says. “I’ll always have your back.”

He suddenly remembers a conversation he had a little over a year ago, a month or so before Scully’s birthday. It seems like a fitting time to tell her.

“There’s only been one guy that I thought was alright,” he says. “I, uh, never told you this, Scully, because it was confidential, but seeing as the subject in question is now deceased…”

Scully turns to him on her stool. “Mulder, what?”

“Pendrell. He liked you.”

She knits her brows together in that adorable way she has. “I liked him too.”

“I mean, he really liked you,” Mulder emphasizes. “He asked me once if you were seeing anyone.”

“Oh,” she says. "What did you tell him?”

“I told him ‘Agent Scully’s personal life is her business, and any questions regarding it should be posed to her directly’.”

“Very formal,” she muses. “I should print that on my business cards for you to hand out.”

“The thought’s crossed my mind. Are you currently accepting applications for the position of ‘boyfriend’?” Mulder asks. “I’d be happy to field candidates.”

“Oh, I bet you’d love that,” Scully says with an eye roll. “Admit it, you like interrogating suspects. Especially when you think they’re mutants of some kind.”

“I promise that any potential boyfriends will be firmly terrestrial and completely unremarkable.”

The sentence hangs in the air for a long moment. “I don’t know that I want that after all,” Scully finally says quietly. “The husband with a nine-to-five, the picket fence, the priest over for lunch after Sunday mass. I’ve seen too much, done too much, to really fit into that picture anymore.”

Mulder feels a pang in his chest, the old familiar guilt creeping in. “This is a lonely path,” he admits. “Working nonstop to find evidence, only to have it be discounted offhand.”

“No closure, no arrests, no satisfying conclusions to leave you feeling a little bit safer knowing you did your job,” Scully adds.

Mulder rubs his hand over his mouth, nodding. “Just weird substances that nobody can explain and accounts of phenomena that nobody believes. Spooky shit.”

Scully raises her drink with a sudden levity. “To spooky shit,” she toasts.

Their glasses clink, and the contact chimes in Mulder’s ears. A kiss of half-empty pints.

Mulder bites his lip absently, gathering his next words. “So… what do you want?” he asks carefully, leaning in a fraction.

Scully shakes her head, sighing softly. “That’s the big question, isn’t it? I can’t even think about long term at this point. My life is so different from what I’d planned, and I’m still adapting.”

“Alright, forget long term for the moment,” Mulder prompts. “What’s something that you want that you can acquire within, say, the next month or so?”

“You granting wishes now, Mulder?” she asks coyly, taking a sip of beer.

“Depends on what you ask for,” he replies, voice low.

It feels as though they’re circling the truth, caught in each other’s orbit, traveling an ellipse of the unspoken. He wonders if she feels it too. The beer has him weightless, spinning out into the unexplored reaches of space between them. He wants to grab her hand on the worn bar counter, anchor himself to her sun-warmed earth.

“As strange as it sounds,” she says after a moment, “I’m… oddly contented. If I spent more time on it I’m sure I could give you a whole list of things I feel I’m lacking, but at this moment none of them really matter.”

His heart accelerates. “Must be some beer,” he jokes.

She smiles at him, a soft closed-lip turn of her mouth that warms him better than any liquor. “Company’s not half bad either. Despite whatever good authority has told you otherwise.”

He drops a hand onto hers then, gives it a brief squeeze before returning it to his glass and finishing his beer.

They walk back to the FBI parking garage, arms bumping each other as they brace themselves against the winter chill. Mulder escorts Scully to her car because he’s a gentleman and squeezing out every last second he can with her.

Scully ducks her head, seeming almost shy. “Thanks for inviting me. I haven’t been out in a while,” she says simply. “This was nice.”

Mulder shrugs, suddenly unsure how to orient his limbs. He wants to hug her, but he knows this isn’t the right time. “Don’t mention it,” he replies, shoving his hands into his coat pockets.

“Enjoy your ménage à quatre with the Gunmen,” she says with a cheeky grin.

“I’ll save some kisses from Frohike for you,” he replies with a wink.

They face each other, suddenly quiet. It feels as though they waded too far into the ocean and drifted down shore, losing sight of their picnic spot. They float in the silence, buoyed by their exchange, but uncertain as to where they stand.

“Goodnight,” Mulder says finally, because he can’t think of what else to say beyond that and ‘I love you’. Or ‘come home with me’.

“‘Night,” she replies, unlocking her car door and slipping inside.

He wanders aimlessly over to his car and bundles into the driver’s seat, heaving a deep, half-contented sigh. He considers the evening a tentative success, despite a somewhat unsatisfactory conclusion.

He jerks off when he gets home, holding Scully’s sweet face in his mind’s eye as he comes shamefully into his own lonely hand.

#my fic #msr #xfiles #txf fic #fox mulder closet romantic #fmcr #I am CRANKIN this shit out okay bear with me #Molz writes too much

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lokiodinsonofasgard000 · 4 years ago

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Chapter 5

Chapter five: Day One Begins

Prologue:

Mobius finally left the two alone near what seemed to be a cafeteria, for the time begging as he talked with his higher-ups. The two stood side by side, (Name) was much shorter than Loki, they scanned the room and sharing a frown “Feels like a prison to me” (Name) commented “...with slight freedom, I suppose” Loki answered back. (Name) was going to question it but found understanding in his words, although they will have to work for the T.V.A against their own will, however, they would still be able to live someone's life minus the questionable tracking bio-implant. They decided to sit in the back near a large window. (Name) was staring off looking at the endless levels in the common halls of what she could gather. Loki took the moment to study her for a moment. 'how could this Midgardian woman blindly fight for my future self when only she has known is this me that was under that titan giants control...curious' his thoughts continued to reel until (Name) threw a green pea at him to get his attention

"Oi frosty. We need a plan" she sighed from his glare but gestured her to elaborate her reason why "...look I worked for S.H.I.E.L.D believing that I was helping people-" Loki scoffed "and we both know how that turned out. But I stand by my morals, and you Loki… well I know you don't deserve death" "If I was remotely capable I would be touched by your blindness to faults" Loki rolled his eyes and ate the bland food "Oh no no I do think you need discipline. And if my math is correct, you said you were 1048, so if my math is correct your age is the equivalent to human years, you'd be 17? Hmmm, yeah makes sense, you are just a rebellious child" she held a fox-like smile.

Loki was angered slightly but the Fox smile of hers somehow sparked something in him, that was yet to be determined "Regardless of your petty calculations of my age, I'll have you know that the T.V.A keeps an eye on each possible future" Loki sighed "Loki I mean come on! You've double-crossed thousands of times before" (Name) slouched in her seat "so what makes this place and the people any difference?"

Loki stared at this woman, he gave a small smirk shaking his head finding amusement. He was able to figure out where she stood in everything, the grey area mostly. She had her morals but she had some selfishness in her "So you suggest that I betray the agency?-" "We will betray the agency. Look, the idea of you dying when you have yet to cause any horrible acts, is barbaric, and they showed your main future so… saying that you were going to "betray" your people when I'm sure you had your slippery plans" (Name) finished off. Loki was staring at her trying to figure her out all over again as soon as he thought he figured her out, it was like she did a 360 turn around and he was back at square one. He heaved out a sigh

"We shall see. We have to at least get their trust first" he paused "so for now we will have to play along with this hero card… but that won't be hard for you Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

The two were taken away and were given a de-brief by Mobius as they made their way to a variety of rooms. Eventually, Mobius explained he wanted to see more of their skills “Now, before your captures, it was a shock to us all how well you two worked with another” Mobius explained “Loki is known to be dangerous and unpredictable and (Name) is known to be skilled and adapts quickly and is equally as unpredictable” “And you want us to do a test run to see how well we do” (Name) spoke arching a brow at him “and make sure it wasn’t a one-off thing?” “Correctimondo” Mobius expressed snapping his fingers “so in here is a portal to a virtual training facility. It simulates real life-based missions” They all stood there looking at this portal with gold energy. (Name) frowned slightly as Loki looked unamused, Mobius, on the other hand, gave a nod smiling “So with that said. Good luck” he shoved the two in.

Loki found himself on a floor face first and groaning in annoyance until (Name) landed on top of his muttering a curse. Loki shoved her off him and got on his knees “Well that was pleasant. What are we even meant to do” (Name) said getting up and dusting herself off “Well, you’re Miss. Adaptable you figure it out” he snapped. She glared at him and slapped the back on his head and told him to watch his tone. She looked around seeing they were in a room with one red door. Around them a clothing rack and a screen dresser, she arched a brow as Loki walked to one rack and looking at the clothing “...Oh lordy me…” she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. Loki looked her way giving a questioning look. (Name) was now at her clothing rack with a variety of dresses and business work clothes, near her was a desk that had a variety of guns, daggers, and some other things that looked a little foreign to her; and on the desk with the weapons was a file with a red stamp saying:

TRAINING EXERCISE: UNDERCOVER, DETAINEE AND OBTAIN

“Please tell me you know how to be normal” she groaned seeing the undercover part.

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Thank you to all that is keeping up with this Loki series fanfic. A lot of content has been released since I started writing this, I will try and wrap up as much as I can in the next chapter to set it up for when the show start on june 9th on disney+ from then on this story will follow the episode roughly so there will be spoiler warnings in the beginning. Anyway I hope you enjoy this chapter. Until next time y'all

Chapter 6: (coming soon)

#loki odinson #loki laufeyson #loki friggason #loki #new loki series #loki show #x reader #agent reader #fem reader #loki x reader #T.V.A #disneyplus

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bottomcasbigbang · 5 years ago

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Here you can read all the stories of our second round and check out the artwork our participants have created! Thank you to everyone who was a part of this, be it as a writer, author, beta, reader, cheerleader or helping hand! Thank you so much everyone and we hope we’ll see you back for the next round! ♥

Without further ado, the BCBB 2019/2020 creations:

Wayward Sons by Substiel (Explicit, 29k)

Illustrated by bees0are0awesome

It's the year 1919 and the Wayward Sons are the most powerful criminal organization in the country. It's ruled by Dean Winchester who bares the Mark of Cain. A curse given to him when Mary Winchester made a deal with the Devil to save her dying son. Dean was always a cold blood killer who did everything for business, and he never let anyone into his heart. He didn't dare let himself get too close to someone. That was until the Roadhouse hired a new bartender.

Castiel always admired Dean from afar for helping the lower class have a voice. For some reason, the bartender knows how to get under Dean's skin. There was something different about him which led to the beginning of their newfound relationship. Two broken souls finding each other in the middle.

Archive Warning: Graphic Depiction of Violence

Art Masterpost / Fic Masterpost

My Bloody Luck by TaymeeLove (Mature, 16k)

Illustrated by Kamicom

Castiel was a struggling actor who never had luck on his side in life or his relationships. He met with an accident and his life was never the same after. Will his luck in relationships turn around this time?

Art Masterpost / Fic Masterpost

Metanoia by adestielable (Explicit, 24k)

Illustrated by Noavice

Castiel’s existence has been nothing but pain, humiliation, and degradation. He’s an omega in a world where omegas are objects for an alpha’s enjoyment.

After a brutal assault on his nineteenth birthday, Castiel began entering into beastie fights—matches where instead of people going head to head, bio and mechanically engineered beasts fight to the death. And in Castiel’s months of fights, he’s not lost once.

It’s after one of these fights where Castiel meets Dean, his supposed true mate. Castiel hates alphas, and has vowed never to let one into his life because all alphas do is inflict pain. Yet…Dean is different. And Castiel finds he can’t help being drawn to him.

Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage

Art Masterpost / Fic Masterpost

Profound Kisses by BENKA79 (Explicit, 20k)

Illustrated by Gio (sketching-fox)

Dean knows he's screwed. He discovers he is in love with Castiel in Purgatory, and now he can't even have the angel in front of him, because he knows it's a one sided love. It’s Valentine's day and Dean tries very hard to hook up as always, but he can't get Cas out of his mind. So he drives back to the motel, drunk, and he finds Castiel trying to help him. Then, when Dean asks Castiel for some experimental kisses and the angel accepts, Dean starts a very dangerous game… finding in Castiel's kisses the most delicious experiences, but also, his own perdition. Will Castiel fall in love with him? Or will he stay emotionless as always?

Art Masterpost / Fic Masterpost

Sparks by DragonSgotenks (Explicit, 20k)

Illustrated by VampyRosa

Omega Cas meets Alpha Dean during one of the worst weeks of his life. Sparks fly when they realize they're truemates. But after a wild and intense night that ends with both of them sporting new mating bites, could a simple misunderstanding tear the new couple apart before they even have a chance to begin?

Art Masterpost / Fic Masterpost

Lesson Number 1: Monsters are Real by blueye22 (Explicit, 20k)

Illustrated by kuwlshadow

When Anael "Jo" Novak goes missing during a hike in the mountains with her boyfriend, worried brother, Castiel, goes in search of her. Castiel is surprised to receive the help of FBI agents, Dean and Sam. But what are they hiding?

Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence

Art Masterpost / Fic Masterpost

You At the End of the Rail by spnsmile (Explicit, 30k)

Illustrated by verobatto-angelxhunter

Dean receives a text message from a new human Cas telling him of his suspicion that angels have found him in Gas n Sip. Still filled with guilt for kicking the ex-angel out of the Bunker, Dean steps up to make it up to his friend. Worried, Dean concludes the ex-angel has to disappear for many days so he asks Cas where he wants to go.

Cas’ answer?

Trains.

Fucking trains.

Archive Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence

Art Masterpost / Fic Masterpost

On Your Knees by raths_kitten (Explicit, 14k)

Illustrated by angeltortured

When Dean gets the assignment to follow the Fallen Angels on tour and write a feature article on them, he isn‘t their biggest fan. But that quickly changes when he hears them play live - and meets their charismatic lead singer Castiel in person.

Art Masterpost / Fic Masterpost

Just Like in the Movies by noxsoulmate (Explicit, 46k)

Illustrated by lotrspnfangirl

In a world where a new mark appears whenever you fall in love, Hollywood sweetheart, Castiel James, is known for his unblemished skin. Oh, he has the faint shadows of old crushes and childish infatuations, but no mark is that of something deep and true. No mark has ever stuck, no mark has ever become more than a hazy outline. Because Cas, well... Cas has never been in love.

The skin of bookshop owner Dean Winchester, however, tells another tale entirely. Dean loves freely, quickly, and deeply. He loves his family, he loves his friends, he still cares for his exes. While the first two don’t show on his skin, the latter do. All brushed over his body in various shapes and forms and colors. Of varying clarity. But even Dean has yet to get that one mark. That mark that sticks. The mark that is so deep, and so sharp, and so clear, it can only be that of a profound bond.

These two men share a common hope; a common desire. That one day, they might have a mark that means they have found a love that is as deep and true as love can be - just like in the movies.

Art Masterpost / Fic Masterpost

Granted by Andromache_42 (Explicit, 20k)

Illustrated by agusvedder

At forty-one, Dr. Castiel Novak is the proud recipient of a generous grant to fund his project on sustainability and urban farming from the Campbell Foundation, a small investing firm based out of Chicago. The night before he meets the award committee, lonely and pushed by his friend Balthazar, Castiel has the best sex of his life during a casual Grindr hook-up with “just-visiting” forty-seven-year-old Dean. Castiel’s life appears to be coming together, until he discovers that Dean is the head of the grant award committee. For the sake of professionalism, Castiel is willing to ignore the intense attraction between the two of them, but Dean turns out to be too tempting to resist.

Art Masterpost / Fic Masterpost

Finding Bigfoot by Desirae (Explicit, 22k)

Illustrated by Tamapochi

“Don’t be such a worrywart. It’s vacation time. Campfires, fishing, beer. What’s better than that?”

“Apparently a sasquatch sighting?” Castiel snarked, with an arched brow.

“Well, yeah. I mean, Sam’s a good substitute, but it’d be nice to see the real thing,” Dean grinned.

Finding Bigfoot wasn't exactly on the itinerary when Dean, Cas, and Sam planned their annual boys-only camping trip, but with his brother in a noticeable funk, Dean was prepared to do what he had to do. Even if it meant keeping quiet about a long-waited love confession from his best friend.

Determined to stay focused on distracting Sam from his troubles, and not make him feel like a third wheel, Dean and Castiel decide to keep their new relationship status to themselves, until after vacation is over.

After years of mutual pining, that shouldn’t be too hard, right?

Art Masterpost / Fic Masterpost

Meet me at Sunset by Suus_Arido (Mature, 55k)

Illustrated by celstese

Ever since the Barrier of Melaina fell and plunged the worlds of men, monsters and magic together, the Republic Elohim has kept its citizens save with help from the hunter organization the Red Circle.

Dean Winchester has never known how the world looked before the fall of the barrier. He and his family have been part of the Red Circle for generations and he knew it was his faith to die in battle. All he is supposed to want is to protect the innocents from darkness. But how can he when his soul is dark and corrupt?

As the monsters start to adapt and become more intelligent, the rise of chaos is not far behind. It’s midst this chaos that Dean meets a human with the name of an angel. Not only does this man believe in the salvation of the world but he also seems to believe that Dean is redeemable as well.

A love story may perhaps develop but Dean knows better, for it is known that the faith of a hunter is tragedy. Will Dean be able to make the right call? Even when blue eyes turn unrecognizable?

Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con

Art Masterpost / Fic Masterpost

Beyond Borders by xHaruka17x (Explicit, 53k)

Illustrated by Diminuel

Sometimes doing what is right, what feels right, doesn't mean you’ll escape the consequences of those actions. Dean Winchester is the Head Alpha of one of the largest packs of the Western Hemisphere. He is days away from being a married and mated Alpha, ready for the next chapter in his life to commence, only for a horrific accident to change everything. Adam, Dean and Sam's little brother, is killed in a car accident across the globe in Russia. Dean finds out his little brother's now widowed Omega is all alone and pregnant, left to the mercy of his horrible home pack. Dean makes a decision and he knows things will explode when he gets back home, but he knows in his heart it’s the right thing to do.

Art Masterpost / Fic Masterpost

The Cleric's Birthright by Scribo_Vivere (Explicit, 34k)

Illustrated by yoyo-deano

Castiel Novak lost his husband and the love of his life, Balthazar, three years ago in a slaying no one has been able to solve. Burying himself in his work at the university as a leading anthropology professor there, he attempts to put the past behind him. When vicious murders begin to plague him in an eerie replication of Balthazar’s death, Castiel decides to find out on his own what sort of evil has descended upon them all. But the answers he’s looking for may not be so easily found, and the revelation forced upon him could destroy everything he knows - about himself, his world, and the faith he once held so dear. Complicating things is his new relationship with Dean Winchester, who may or may not be what he appears. Why is Castiel inexplicably drawn to him like a moth to the flame?

Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death

Art Masterpost / Fic Masterpost

To Soar Without Grace by QuillsAndInk (Explicit)

Castiel is an alpha and a cleric serving the gods of his kingdom and wielding their power in preparation to join a holy war. When he gets taken by the heretical high prince of a rival kingdom, Castiel knows his fate is sealed. That is, until prince Dean tries to persuade him to take on a mad quest to kill his father and end the holy war. With heretical magic Castiel can’t understand forcing him away from the gods he’s always served, Castiel joins Dean. But in the mountain wilderness in the dead of winter with only his sworn enemy for company, can Dean and Castiel get past their differences or will the war swallow them up.

Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Art Masterpost / Fic Masterpost

Cow Bells and Snow Globes by Pimento (Explicit)

It really doesn't matter what the gossip columns say. Dean knows the International Ski Champion Castiel Novak, aka, Casanova of the Slopes is actually just Cas. Loyal, kind, caring Cas. The same Cas he's absolutely not had a crush on since they were teenagers on the competitive circuit.

He's had two plus decade's practice at hiding his feelings, how difficult can it be to suppress them a little longer.

They just so happen to be in the same ski resort, at the same time for an entire season, so Dean is damn well gonna enjoy having his friend back in his life for a while and not screw it up. The fact that he seems to have the magic touch with the grumpy teenage daughter that Cas is trying so desperately to reconnect with is just an opportunity to ease his friends' troubles while he finds his feet again.

Art Masterpost / Fic Masterpost

#supernatural #Destiel #bottom!cas #top!dean #masterpost: 2019/2020 #BCBB

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twentiethcenturymoviesandtv · 4 years ago

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The Princess Bride: Facets of Filmmaking

By the year 1987, director Rob Reiner had already been fairly well established in the film world.

The son of the late Carl Reiner, (who directed films such as The Jerk, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, Summer Rental, and Summer School, as well as acting in many others) Rob Reiner had started in Hollywood as an actor before settling into directing himself. After having earned two primetime Emmy awards as his role of Michael Stivic on All in the Family, Reiner turned his focus to behind the camera, turning out films such as mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap in 1984, and Stephen King coming-of-age adaptation Stand By Me in 1986.

By the time The Princess Bride was released in 1987, Reiner was already enough of a name that had produced decent work that it wasn’t a total shock that this film would be as good as it was, with critics (notably Roger Ebert, Gene Siskel, and Janet Maslin) praising the film for it’s tone and clever writing. It seemed a natural win for Reiner, another classic knocked out of the park (albeit one without commercial success).

And yet, the road to The Princess Bride and it’s eventual ‘cult classic’ status was not an easy one. In fact, there were several bumps in the road before Reiner ever took the reins on the project.

The rights to the novel The Princess Bride (by William Goldman) had been snapped up for $500,000 by Twentieth Century Fox in 1973, the year the book was published. A movie was obviously intended, meant to be directed by Richard Lester, but after the studio head got axed, the idea was dropped.

This was going to become a common theme. Other intended directors included Robert Redford, Norman Jewison, and François Truffaut, but obviously, it never went anywhere. Frustrated, Goldman bought the rights to the film back with his own cash, and right about now is where Rob Reiner comes in.

Rob Reiner had loved the book The Princess Bride since his father had given it to him as a gift. After filming This is Spinal Tap, Reiner had the idea to adapt the book, now that he’d proven himself as a capable filmmaker, and during production of Stand By Me, he approached an executive at Paramount, suggesting an adaptation of The Princess Bride as his next project. After an explanation of the situation regarding the rights to a film adaptation, in short, Reiner was told: ‘we can’t’.

With the financial support of Normal Lear, whom Reiner had known from All in the Family and who had previously helped fund This is Spinal Tap, Reiner managed to get the rights to the book adaptation, and got to work.

Throughout production, Reiner worked very closely with Goldman, so closely that Goldman actually got to write the screenplay to the film adaptation. Thankfully, the author was no stranger to screenwriting, having already written the script for both Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men, winning two Oscars in the process. Reiner’s respect for Goldman’s original story combined with the author’s ability to convey the necessary tone and style in the script ensured that the integrity of the book was kept, even if changes had to be made to the story and characters along the way.

Once Reiner was securely in the director’s chair and Goldman’s screenplay underway, the chief order of business was to find the cast for this fairy-tale. Reiner had wanted Cary Elwes for Westley after seeing his performance in Lady Jane, but during the casting period, Elwes was unavailable, in Germany working on the film Maschenka, forcing Reiner to fly to Berlin to ensure his suitability for the role. Elwes, for his part, had read the book when he was younger, and always identified with Westley. As a result, he was more than happy to jump at the opportunity to play the character in the film adaptation.

On the other hand, the titular Princess Bride herself proved to be a bit more difficult.

Robin Wright wasn’t selected as Buttercup until a week before it was time to start shooting. Reiner and Jane Jenkins, the casting director, had already auditioned multiple actresses for the role, with none of them fitting the bill. Wright’s agent, hearing about the casting call, encouraged her to audition. Wright auditioned, and impressed Jenkins and Reiner so much that they invited Wright to meet Goldman at his house. Wright’s first impression, backlit by the doorway, was so impressive, that Goldman looked at her once and said: ‘Well, that’s what I wrote’.

Other choices were easier: Mandy Patinkin was an early decision for Inigo Montoya, and Wallace Shawn was a shoo-in for Vizzini after Danny DeVito was unavailable. For Fezzik, Goldman had always had André the Giant in mind, even back in the 1970s when the novel was first written. At the time, however, André was at the height of his wrestling career, with a schedule that left him unavailable to film. The runner-up was actually Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, by 1973, was merely a bodybuilder and little-known actor. By the time The Princess Bride project had been greenlit, Schwarzenegger had already starred in films like The Terminator and Commando, and was a major film star, too expensive for the studio to hire. Now without a ‘giant’, Jenkins contacted the World Wrestling Federation to look into hiring André, but was told that he would be busy with a wrestling match in Tokyo that would pay him $5 million. As it turned out, the match was cancelled, and André ended up in the role after all.

With a cast assembled, it was time to start filming. However, it was quickly decided that The Princess Bride was not going to work if shot on backlots and soundstages at a studio, so the production team went location hunting. Most of the sets, as I mentioned in the Facets article, were actually locations in the UK, with the filming taking place over the latter half of the year 1986. During filming, Reiner rented a house, and frequently invited the cast over for dinners and visits, which many of the actors felt strengthened their performances in the final film.

Once filming started, the adventure was by no means over.

Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin were both trained to fence, (both right and left handed) in order to complete the duel without the assistance of stunt doubles (aside from the gymnastics). Brought in to teach the actors was fencing instructor Bob Anderson (who had worked on Star Wars and Highlander, and would go on to work on The Lord of the Rings trilogy) and stunt arranger Peter Diamond, (who had also worked on Star Wars and Highlander) who trained the actors for three weeks before shooting. Patinkin and Elwes continued to practice in their off-camera free time, and were encouraged by Anderson to learn one another’s choreography to avoid any accidents. The pair also watched plenty of fencing scenes from older films in order to get a feel for the movements.

There were a few challenges: after years of damage from wrestling, André the Giant had recently undergone back surgery, and, although being incredibly strong, was unable to support the weight of either Cary Elwes or Robin Wright in those respective scenes, requiring the use of ramps, cables, stunt-doubles and harnesses in order to protect his back while filming the shots used in the film.

Thankfully, though, the production remained untroubled (aside from minor injuries like Cary Elwes’s broken toe and being knocked unconscious on-screen, or Mandy Patinkin’s bruised rib from holding in laughter at Billy Crystal and Carole Kane’s ad-libbing during the Miracle Max sequence) and the film was released in October of 1987 to a modest performance in the box office, and rave reviews from critics, only to become largely forgotten amongst the other box-office smashes of the blockbuster-heavy latter half of the 1980s.

As time went by, The Princess Bride resurfaced, becoming the leader of the cult-classic phenomenon as fans discovered the film, and interest in the movie spiked, with plenty of people realizing the worth of this forgotten gem. To this day, it stands as one of the best known films of the 1980s, ironic, considering it’s initial reception, and has been well-loved, and much-quoted, for over thirty years, and will continue to be for years ahead.

Well, it’s almost time to close on our analysis of The Princess Bride. Join me next time as we take one last look at this classic film: combining the facts with the feelings for a sum-up. Stay tuned, and thanks so much for reading! I hope to see you in the next article.

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our-happygirl500-fan · 5 years ago

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The Batcave is the iconic Base of Batman, the Bats and the Batfamily but multiple members of the Batfamily also have their own bases and HQ’s:

Oracle’s Clock Tower: This one is probably the most iconic after the Batcave, the Gotham Clock Tower is where Barbara based herself as Oracle and the building acted as a headquarters for Barbara’s own team of agents the Birds of Prey.

The Batgirl Cave: Bruce gave and specifically outfitted a miniature version of the Batcave for Cassandra Cain’s own use which first appeared in Batgirl issue 14. The cave acted as both Cass’s home and base of operations in Gotham City, having not only computer and training rooms but also living rooms and bedroom. The cave is linked to Gotham’s underground tunnel system, with at least five tunnels directly linked to the cave’s central room.

The Bat Bunker: An Underground base under Wayne Tower that was the home base for Dick and Damian back when Dick was Batman. It was Dick’s own version of the Batcave and was meant to represent Dick’s style of fighting crime in Gotham such as it being based in the heart of Gotham City.

Firewall: Firewall was originally a second base for Oracle that Barbara created underneath her own apartment building, later on Barbara gifted the base to Stephanie Brown for her own operations as Batgirl and the base was later upgraded by Bruce and Batman Incorporated to be even more technologically advanced as well as fit Steph and her own style of crimefighting such as a Baterang building table. She also got a car which she dubbed ‘the Compact’

Red Robin’s Nest: The Nest is Tim Drake’s own Batcave located under his apartment which is the remodelled movie theatre where Batman was created. In Tim’s apartment there is a panel behind a fish tank that allows Tim to gain access to The Nest along with the words ‘open sesame’. The fish tank Tim uses to gain access to his headquarters is a callback to the movie Batman Returns (1992) where Bruce Wayne activates a similar fish tank switch to access the Batcave. The Nest’s operations centre extends three floors from the ground with an additional sub-basement with underground vehicular access, aerial egress, training level, communications array and crime lab. Tim also has a popcorn machine.

The Belfry: Built by Tim Drake out of one of an Old Wayne Tower, The Belfry acted as Batwoman’s base as well as the team she led The Gotham Knights. The Belfry had multiple living quarters, rec rooms, training rooms, computer rooms and containment chambers. The base was also connected to the Gotham subway system for the teams various vehicles. Most notable about the base was the Mud Room- training area containing advanced artificial intelligence and materials of similar composition to that of Clayface. This can be used to run training simulations or even create constructs of people that are capable of learning and adapting. The Mud Room was used by all members of the Batfamily even those outside the Gotham Knights.

The Hatch: Duke Thomas’s own secret base located underneath the Lucius Fox Community Centre in West Gotham gifted to him by Bruce for Duke’s operations as The Signal. Connected to various secret openings as well as the Gotham underground The Hatch has a multitude of vehicles as well as computer and training rooms. The Hatch is said to have multiple levels however we have only seen two.

Satellite Batcave’s: There are several Satellite Batcave’s located throughout Gotham should the primary Batcave either be compromised or destroyed and these locations have notably acted as safe houses. Notable locations of vaious Satellite Batcave’s include the docks, underneath Robinson Park, under Arkham Asylum itself, under Old Gotham, under Gotham Freight Yards and underneath an old Wayne Enterprises oil refinery.

Jason Todd’s Batcave: Though not much is known about it due to his estrangement from the family at the time Jason Todd was said to have his own version of the Batcave located within the subway tunnels of Gotham.

The BatCove: Only recently appeared and not much is known about it but Batwoman has a secret underwater base which she calls the Batcove which has a well equiped lab and medical station

#DC comics #stephanie brown #cassandra cain #tim drake #duke thomas #barbara gordon #dick grayson #damian wayne #kate kane #bruce wayne #jason todd #dc #batfamily #i'm pretty sure i'm missing some but these are the main bases in gotham

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96thdayofrage · 4 years ago

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Hollywood and Broadway need to realize that you can tell the stories of people of color without whitewashing or blackwashing them. Real life, if not yet reel life, is already kaleidoscopically diverse.

Of course, this assumes these agents of cultural production want to tell these stories. Their answer, however, seems to be that as artists it is not their mission to tell the stories of people of color but to tell universal, human ones. This implies that the stories of people of color are not, or as British author Nikesh Shula has observed, “White people think that people of color only have ethnic experiences and not universal experiences.” Evidently so do some people of color.

The colorism controversy surrounding the lack of Afro Latinx representation in the Hollywood version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights is recent but not new. As Ishmael Reed pointed out in his 2019 critique of Miranda’s Hamilton, in addition to glorifying its titular slaveholding hero and the Founding Fathers as a whole, it fails to present the voices of the “Native Americans, slaves, and white indentured servants” they victimized, voices Reed himself would subsequently include in his play “The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda.”

In response to such criticism, Miranda generously conceded his limitations, while still defending his melanated whitewash of American history: “All the criticisms are valid,” he tweeted, adding, “The sheer tonnage of complexities & failings of these people [the Founding Fathers] I couldn’t get. Or wrestled with but cut. I took 6 years and fit as much as I could in a 2.5 hour musical.” The implication: the oppressive weight of these complex individuals somehow justifies jettisoning acknowledgement of the reality of their failing as slaveholding white supremacists.

In an interview with Reuters, Miranda once again invokes “tonnage” to defend his film: “To be quaint would be a dream come true. No one movie can encompass the sheer tonnage of stories we have to offer.” But “tonnage” vision may not be the only reason for the film’s failure to see Afro Latinx people. (Ironically, the Reuters interview begins with the observation that Miranda is “hoping [his] musical In the Heights changes the conversation in Hollywood about the wider appeal of such movies, just as Crazy Rich Asians did in 2018.”)

Jon M. Chu, the film’s director, provides another, noting that while the casting of Afro Latinx people was “discussed,” “in the end, when we were looking at the cast, we tried to get people who were the best for those roles.”

The sentiment is echoed by Melissa Barrera, one of the film’s white passing Latina: “I think it’s important to note though that in the audition process, which was a long audition process, there were a lot of Afro Latinos there, a lot of darker-skinned people. I think they were looking for just the right people for the roles, for the person that embodied each character in the fullest extent.”

Certainly, Miranda and Chu were aware that the film’s casting did not accurately reflect the racial demographics of Washington Heights, any more than the cast of Hamilton reflects the racial composition of the Founding Fathers. (Read another way, the dark-skinned Afro Latinx Dominican community of the Heights were the wrong people to be represented in a film about their own community.) But Hamilton’s oxymoronic, color-conscious colorblind casting is intentional. A similar intentionality cannot be read into In the Heights, and not just the movie version. (One wonders how the original Broadway musical addressed these issues during its 2008-2011 run: Were dark-skinned Afro Latinx people represented any better? Sadly, it seems colorism plagued these productions as well.

This is unfortunate, since just as Hamilton whitewashed the emotional, financial, and intellectual investment of the founding fathers in slavery and genocide, the film adaptation of In the Heights opts to omit the reality of colorism within communities of color, an issue that was suggested, albeit fleetingly, in the original Broadway production in which the father of Nina, a light-skinned Afro Latina, disapproves of her black, non-Latinx lover Benny. (Not only is this subplot excised from the film, but the romance between the two characters has also been truncated and Benny’s overall role in the film reduced.). In fact, Miranda decided to remove this suggestion of racism from the film, telling the LA Times, The film “isn’t about the parental disapproval of this interracial relationship because we wanted to focus on the specifics of the racial microaggressions Nina faced at Stanford, which Benny very much understands and has her back on. So it didn’t make sense for her to be fighting that war on two fronts.” What Miranda fails to appreciate is that battles against racism and its handmaiden colorism are swaged simultaneously on multiple fronts and that his own film’s conscious attempt to minimize these conflicts may itself be interpreted as a not so micro microaggression.

What makes the current conversation about colorism even more remarkable, is that we’ve had it before. This is not the first time Chu has been criticized for colorism. In 2018, when the Singapore-based Crazy Rich Asians was released, it was criticized there for not accurately portraying that nation’s diversity. The film’s leads are light-skinned East Asians, those in subservient roles are dark-skinned Southeast Asians. As Singapore journalist Kirsten Han, put it, “The focus is specifically on characters and faces of East Asian descent, which plays into issues of racism and colorism that still exist, not only in the U.S. but Asia.”

Responding to his critics, Chu told a press conference, “We decided very early on that this is not the movie to solve all representation issues. This is a very specific world, very specific characters. This is not going to solve everything.” Now, three years later, Chu has directed another film about a specific world and specific characters that excludes specifically dark-skinned people, creating more problems than those it was not intended to solve.

Still, Hollywood has had plenty of opportunities to clean up its act, only to squander them[3] as it deliberately continues to erase people of color from their own lived narratives. The film 21 (2008), based on a true story about a group of MIT students gaming the tables in Vegas, replaces Jeffrey Ma, a Chinese American, with a white character renamed Ben Campbell, while the rest of the real Asian American members of the blackjack team are similarly whitewashed. In an interview with The Tech, Ben Mezrich, author of Bringing Down the House, the book on which the film is based, said that he had been told by a studio executive involved in the casting that “most of the film’s actors would be white, with perhaps an Asian female.” In Stuck (2007), based on another real life incident, this one involving a black woman who accidently hits and kills a homeless man with her car, not only does the main character undergo a name and race change, but, adding insult to injury, the film’s race-switched white female lead sports cornrows.

Fictional characters of color are also subjected to whitening. In 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984), the sequel to2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Bob Balaban is cast as Dr. R. Chandra, the creator of the sentient supercomputer HAL 9000, quite a departure from the Dr. Chandra, a.k.a. Dr. Sivasubramnian Chandrasegaram Pillai, of Arthur C. Clarke’s original novels. In the film Wanted, based on the graphic novel by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones, The Fox, a character physically modeled on Halle Berry, is played by Angelina Jolie. Reuben St. Clair, the black social studies teacher featured in the novel Pay it Forward (2005), in the film becomes white Eugene Simonet (Kevin Spacey). Presumably, in the eyes of the filmmakers all these actors were “the best fit for the role,” even where the race and the names of the characters they portray were changed to accommodate them. If the shoe fits – alter it.

Movies, television and Broadway shows are entertainments not history (though they can be both). To be sure, actors should be given leeway to practice their craft, and escapist histories can provide a means of critically reexamining contemporary constructions of race and being (see for example, Barry Jenkins’ The Underground Railroad). But such imaginative excursions devolve into extravagant indulgence when they substitute for or impede the production of stories that attempt to engage history, particularly history that has been erased by what Reed calls the “Historical Establishment.”

Sure, in the eyes of producers, a film about Anne Boleyn will capture a greater audience share than one about Sojourner Truth. A film about Boleyn starring a black woman could potentially outperform them both, if only because of the controversy it will generate. After all, Boleyn is a known quantity, a brand, a bankable historical commodity. Truth is not, at least to the gatekeepers of popular historical dramaturgy. As history, Gone with the Wind (1939) is irredeemable trash. Yet, for many, both in America and abroad, it offers, like its predecessor The Birth of a Nation (1915), a distorted vision of past American greatness.[3] As for Hamilton, aside from the entertaining irony of turning the melanophobic Founding Fathers into people of color, it tells us nothing meaningful about either but a lot about the marketability of sanitized history, just as In the Heights’s erasure of an entire darkly pigmentated community of color from its own storytells us all too much about our present.

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Mulan And The Chinese Women Warriors of History and Legend

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While American audiences know the story of Mulan through the 1998 animated Disney film and the upcoming live-action reboot, they may not know that the films are based on a Chinese legend. Hua Mulan is a legendary figure whose story was first told in “Ballad of Mulan,” a folksong first transcribed in the 6th century. In the legend, Mulan is a girl who disguises herself as a man and goes to war in place of her father. Mulan fights for many years as part of the army and, after earning much honor and gifts from the emperor, returns home to her family. Only then does she reveal her gender identity.

While Mulan may be the most familiar of woman Chinese warriors (at least to American audiences), she’s only one in a rich history of historical and legendary female heroes in Chinese history. With the live-action adaptation of Mulan releasing on Disney+ this Friday, here are some of the highlights you might encounter when brushing up on your Chinese legends and history—figures who perhaps warrant their own feature film adaptation…

Xun Guan

At thirteen, Xun Guan was already an accomplished martial artist and tactician. Her father, Xun Song, was the governor of Xianyang in the late 200s A.D. One night, when the castle was under siege, Xun Song was ready to lead a force against the opposing soldiers. Convinced that her father leaving the castle would be bad for morale, she proposed that instead she lead a group of elite soldiers out to defeat the enemy. Even though she was only thirteen, Xun Gun had her father’s trust, and he sent her out. Once outside the walls, Xun Guan immediately spotted a weak spot in the enemy’s position, and she and her troops were triumphant against them, successfully allowing the castle to hold out until more reinforcements could arrive.

Pingyang

During much of Pingyang’s lifetime in the early 600s, the emperor, Yangdi, was incompetent, greedy, and vain—he’s become a villain of Chinese history. Pingyang was the daughter of military commander Li Yuan, and became the wife of Chai Shao, the leader of Yangdi’s palace guard. Yangdi decided that Li Yuan was just too good at his job, so he trumped up false charges and had Li Yuan arrested, only to realize that Li Yuan was the only person who could protect Yangdi from people who actually were plotting against him. Yangdi released Li Yuan, but the damage was done: now Li Yuan wanted Yangdi dead, as well. As Li Yuan rebelled, Chai Shao and Pingyang had to decide how both of them could safely support her father; Chai Shao left first to openly join Li Yuan’s rebellion, and Pingyang later escaped on her own, braving the danger because she was confident she could hide in plain sight.

She journeyed back to her family’s lands and threw open the larders, endearing the people to her and recruiting the first members of what would become known as the Army of the Lady, or the Woman’s Army. As the war continued, Pingyang made alliances and built an army 70,000 strong, keeping them all under a strict code of conduct the prohibited looting, raping, and pillaging. Where the army went, they brought food with them to feed the locals, so they were greeted as liberators. Yangdi dismissed Pingyang as a threat (she was just a woman, after all!), until it was far too late; her forces were unhindered by Yangdi’s troops, and they joined up with Li Yuan and Chai Shao for the final attack on the capital—and, in their victory, the establishment of the Tang Dynasty.

Wu Zetian

In the late 600s, China had a woman emperor. Depending on which historical records you read (the sources tend to be very biased against or very biased toward the empress), she lied, cheated, and murdered her way to the throne—and did more of the same to stay there. She started her imperial career as the favorite concubine of Emperor Taizong. When he died, she married his son, the new emperor, Gaozong. Some sources imply that a romance was going on long before the old emperor’s death; others suggest she was so good at courtly intrigue that Gaozong kept her by his side and ruled equally with her, relying on her political savvy. After Gaozong’s death, their children were in line for the throne; Wu poisoned the eldest, exiled the second, and had plans to manipulate the third and continue to rule. When that son showed too much backbone (and made too many other courtiers angry), she had him deposed, replaced him with his younger brother, and then eventually deposed that child, too, taking on the mantle of rule for herself. Though her rule as emperor was short, she made a number of state improvements in religion, literature, and education—and some historians credit those changes with still having an influence on modern Chinese scholarship.

Liang Hongyu

Although she started her career as a musician, Liang Hongyu ended up using her instrumental skills for a more military purpose. She is said to have met her husband, military officer Han Shizhong, when she was performing as a singer and drummer for his troop. They married in 1121, and she later fought by his side as the army pushed back an invasion by the Huns. The drumming comes in because, during that era, commands were sent to different units in the military through flags and drum signaling. Her drummed orders (and the strategy she came up with) are credited with leading a group of only 8,000 soldiers to victory against a force of 100,000 Hun warriors.

Qin Liangyu

Fighting against the Manchus was a family experience for Qin Liangyu, who went to war alongside her brothers in the early 1600s. When the Manchus—from beyond the Great Wall—threatened Beijing, Qin Liangyu led troops from Sichuan to defend the capital. But there were also rebel forces within the Ming Dynasty, and Qin Liangyu fought against them as well, alongside her son, Ma Xianglin. There’s not just one story of Qin Liangyu’s successes; she fought so many successful campaigns that the Chongzhen Emperor appointed her Crown Prince’s Guardian and a title equivalent to marquis. When the Ming Dynasty fell during Qin Liangyu’s later years, she remained in control of an area of Sichuan, where she helped settle 100,000.

Wu Mei

Women in martial arts are common enough in modern schools (and modern film), but they’ve been around much longer! In fact, the founder of the famous kung fu style Wing Chun was one of the legendary five elders of Shaolin Martial Arts, was a woman. Buddhist nun Wu Mei (also known as Ng Mui) survived the destruction of the Shaolin Temple of Dengfeng during the Qing Dynasty. The shaolin practitioners had been accused of anti-Qing activities, and the army went to destroy them for it. In the bloody battle that followed, only the five known as the five elders survived. They’re credited with spreading martial arts across China, and Wu was said to have invented some of the most important styles. Her Wing Chun is possibly the best known of these, named after Wu’s first student—also a woman—Yim Wing Chun.

Ching Shih

In the early 1800s, when the Golden Age of piracy had already faded in the Caribbean, a pirate queen was sailing her fleet, commanding as many as 80,000 outlaws (sources differ), in the South China Sea. History has forgotten her birth name—Ching Shih translates to “widow of Ching”—but not her amazing deeds, which have put her down in the history books as one of the most successful pirates in history. Ching Shih worked as a prostitute until she married the notorious pirate Cheng I (who was reportedly impressed with her shrewd business sense), who had united different factions of pirates into his Red Flag Fleet.

Legends say that she required half the fleet to belong to her as a condition of the marriage, and when Cheng I died six years later, she took control of the entire fleet. She kept order by enforcing a strict pirate code, and though the Qing dynasty officials, Portuguese Navy, and the East India Company all tried to defeat the fleet, she ruled the waves, only ending her piratical activities when she was offered amnesty from the Chinese government. She lived until she was 69, and she’s the inspiration behind Mistress Ching, one of the Pirate Lords in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

Yu Shu Lien and Jen Yu

These two are completely fictional, but as far as pop culture goes, these women warriors cannot be left out. In the film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Jen Yu (played by Zhang Ziyi) is a teenager and an amazing martial artist who has been secretly trained by the villainous Jade Fox, under the nose of Jen’s father, the governor. Yu Shu Lien (played by Michelle Yoeh) owns and runs a private security company; she’s close friends with Li Mu Bai, and she agrees to go with him to take his sword, the Green Destiny, as a gift to a benefactor. When the Green Destiny is stolen, they track it to Governor Yu’s mansion. Eventually, Jen Yu is discovered as the thief, but her youth and talent make both Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien sympathetic to her, even after they realize she’s been taught by Li Mu Bai’s enemy, Jade Fox. Later in the film, Yu Shu Lien tries to teach Jen Yu a lesson, and the two have one of the best choreographed multi-weapon epic martial arts movie fights in the history of martial arts movies.

Aero

Another fictional Chinese hero is Aero, Marvel’s manhua series star. When she’s not being a superhero, Lei Ling is an architect in Beijing. When the monsters start coming, however, she takes to the sky as Aero, the protector of her city. Using powers of manipulating winds and air currents, she struggles with the destruction caused by supervillains, because her passion is for building and creating, not for seeing things torn down. The character was first introduced in the Agents of Atlas comic, but she started starring in her own ongoing comic series in 2019. It’s too much to hope that we’ll get a hint of her in the MCU’s upcoming Shang Chi, but the ongoing series, written by Zhou Liefen with stories by Alyssa Wong and Greg Pak, and art by Keng and Pop Mhan, is definitely worth picking up.

Honorable Mention: Cassandra Cain

I didn’t know this when I watched Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn), but Cassandra Cain—the thief kid who swallows the film’s macguffin—has a long and awesome history in DC comics. She’s a first generation Chinese American; her mother, Lady Shiva, is a dangerous assassin who fled from her village, and her father, David Cain, is one of Ra’s al Ghul’s henchmen. It’s not a love match—he blackmails her into having his child, and then he raises Cassandra to be the perfect assassin and bodyguard. But when she was just eight years old, her empathy made her reject a path of killing, and she ends up in Gotham, where she saves Commissioner Gordon’s life and becomes Batgirl. In fact, Cassandra Cain was the first Batgirl to have her own standalone series run (in 2000). Eventually, after a series of twists and turns, she takes a gig working as one of the global team of Batmen as the Black Bat, where she fights crime in Hong Kong. It’s hard to imagine the Birds of Prey version matching up, but I’d love to see that character in more DC movies!

Mulan premieres on Disney+ on September 4th. Find out how and when you can access it here.

The post Mulan And The Chinese Women Warriors of History and Legend appeared first on Den of Geek.

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grigori77 · 5 years ago

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2019 in Movies - My Top 30 Fave Movies (Part 3)

10. HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD – while I love Disney and Pixar as much as the next movie nut, since the Millennium my loyalty has been slowly but effectively usurped by the consistently impressive (but sometimes frustratingly underappreciated) output of Dreamworks Animation Studios, and in recent years in particular they really have come to rival the House of Mouse in both the astounding quality of their work and their increasing box office reliability. But none of their own franchises (not even Shrek or Kung Fu Panda) have come CLOSE to equalling the sheer, unbridled AWESOMENESS of How to Train Your Dragon, which started off as a fairly loose adaptation of Cressida Cowell’s popular series of children’s stories but quickly developed a very sharp mind of its own – the first two films were undisputable MASTERPIECES, and this third and definitively FINAL chapter in the trilogy matches them to perfection, as well as capping the story off with all the style, flair and raw emotional power we’ve come to expect. The time has come to say goodbye to diminutive Viking Hiccup (Jay Baruchel, as effortlessly endearing as ever) and his adorable Night Fury mount/best friend Toothless, fiancée Astrid (America Ferrera, still tough, sassy and WAY too good for him), mother Valka (Cate Blanchett, classy, wise and still sporting a pretty flawless Scottish accent) and all the other Dragon Riders of the tiny, inhospitable island kingdom of Berk – their home has become overpopulated with scaly, fire-breathing denizens, while a trapper fleet led by the fiendish Grimmel the Grisly (F. Murray Abraham delivering a wonderfully soft-spoken, subtly chilling master villain) is beginning to draw close, prompting Hiccup to take up his late father Stoick (Gerard Butler returning with a gentle turn that EASILY prompts tears and throat-lumps) the Vast’s dream of finding the fabled “Hidden World”, a mysterious safe haven for dragon-kind where they can be safe from those who seek to do them harm. But there’s a wrinkle – Grimmel has a new piece of bait, a female Night Fury (or rather, a “Light Fury”), a major distraction that gets Toothless all hot and bothered … returning writer-director Dean DeBlois has rounded things off beautifully with this closer, giving loyal fans everything they could ever want while also introducing fresh elements such as intriguing new environments, characters and species of dragons to further enrich what is already a powerful, intoxicating world for viewers young and old (I particularly love Craig Ferguson’s ever-reliable comic relief veteran Viking Gobber’s brilliant overreactions to a certain adorably grotesque little new arrival), and like its predecessors this film is just as full of wry, broad and sometimes slightly (or not so slightly) absurd humour and deep down gut-twisting FEELS as it is of stirring, pulse-quickening action sequences and sheer, jaw-dropping WONDER, so it’s as nourishing to our soul as it is to our senses. From the perfectly-pitched, cheekily irreverent opening to the truly devastating, heartbreaking close, this is EXACTLY the final chapter we’ve always dreamed of, even if it does hurt to see this most beloved of screen franchises go. It’s been a wild ride, and one that I think really does CEMENT Dreamworks’ status as one of the true giants of the genre …

9. TERMINATOR: DARK FATE – back in 1984, James Cameron burst onto the scene with a stone-cold PHENOMENON, a pitch-perfect adrenaline-fuelled science fiction survival horror that spawned a million imitators but has never truly been equalled. Less than a decade later, he revisited that universe with a much bigger and far bolder vision, creating an epic action adventure that truly changed blockbuster cinema for the better (or perhaps worse, depending on how you want to look at it), but, with its decidedly final, full-stop climax, also effectively rendered itself sequel-proof. Except that Hollywood had other ideas, the unstoppable money machine smelling potential profit and deciding to milk this particular cash cow for all it was worth – on the small screen, it was the impressive but ultimately intrinsically limited Sarah Connor Chronicles, while on the big screen they cranked out THREE MORE sequels, Sony Pictures starting with straightforward retread Rise of the Machines and following with post-apocalyptic marmite movie Salvation, while Twentieth Century Fox then tried a sort-of soft reboot follow-up to T2 in Genisys. These were all interesting in their own way (personally, I like them all, particularly Salvation), but ultimately suffered from diminishing returns and whiffed strongly of trying too hard without quite getting the point. Cameron himself had long since washed his hands of the whole affair, and it looked like that might well be it … but then Skydance Productions founder David Ellison thought up a new take to breathe much needed new life into the franchise, and enlisted Cameron’s help to usher it in properly, with Deadpool director Tim Miller the intriguing but ultimately inspired choice to helm the project. The end result wisely chooses to paint right over all the pretenders, kicking off right where Judgement Day left off, and as well as Cameron being heavily involved in the story itself, draws another ace with the long-awaited ON-SCREEN return of Linda Hamilton in the role that’s pretty much defined her career, hardboiled survivor Sarah Connor. I’ll leave the details of her return for newcomers to discover, suffice to say she gets caught up in the chase when a new, MUCH more advanced terminator is sent back in time to kill unassuming young Mexican factory worker Dani Ramos (Natalia Reyes). Of course, the future resistance has once again sent a protector back to watch her back, Grace (Blade Runner 2049’s Mackenzie Davis), a cybernetically-enhanced super-soldier specifically outfitted to combat terminators, who reluctantly agrees to team up with the highly experienced Sarah in order to keep Dani alive. Arnold Schwarzenegger once again returns to the role that truly made him a star (of course, how could he not?), and he for one has clearly not lost ANY of his old love or enthusiasm for playing the old T-800, but revealing exactly HOW he comes into the story this time would give away too much; the new terminator, meanwhile, is brilliantly portrayed by Gabriel Luna (probably best known for playing Ghost Rider in Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD), who brings predatory menace and an interesting edge of subtle, entitled arrogance to the role of Rev-9. Ultimately though, this is very much the ladies’ film, the three leads dominating the action and drama both as they kick-ass and verbally spar in equal measure, their chemistry palpably strong throughout – Hamilton is as badass as ever, making Sarah even more of a take-no-shit survivalist burnout than she ever was in T2, and she’s utterly mesmerising in what’s EASILY her best turn in YEARS, while Reyes goes through an incredible transformative character arc as she’s forced to evolve from terrified salary-girl to proto she-warrior through several pleasingly organic steps … my greatest pleasure, however, definitely comes from watching Mackenzie Davis OWN the role of Grace, investing her with an irresistible mixture of icy military precision, downright feral mother lion ferocity and a surprisingly sweet innocence buried underneath all the bravado, thus creating one of my favourite ass-kicking heroines not just for the year but this past decade entirely. Unsurprisingly, in the hands of old hand Tim Miller (working from a screenplay headlined by Blade and Batman Begins scribe David Goyer) this is a pulse-pounding thrill ride that rarely lets its foot up off the pedal, but thankfully the action is ALWAYS in service to the story, each precision-crafted set piece engineered to perfection as we power through high speed chases, explosive shootouts and a succession of bruising heavy metal smackdowns, but thankfully there’s just as much attention paid to the characters and the story – given the familiarity of the tale there’s inevitably a certain predictability to events, but Miller and co. still pull off a few deftly handled surprise twists, while character development always feels organic. Best of all, this genuinely feels like a legitimate part of the original Terminator franchise, Cameron and Hamilton’s returns having finally brought back the old magic that’s been missing for so long. I’d definitely be willing to sign up for more of this – such a shame then that, thanks to the film’s frustrating underperformance at the box office, it looks like this is gonna be it after all. Damn it …

8. DOCTOR SLEEP – first up, before I say anything else about this latest Stephen King screen adaptation, I HAVE NOT yet got round to reading the original novel yet, so I can’t speak to how it compares. That said, I HAVE read The Shining, to which the book is a direct sequel, so I DO know about at least one of the major, KEY changes, and besides, this is actually a sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s MOVIE of The Shining, which differed significantly from its own source material anyway, so there’s that … yeah, this is a complicated kettle of fish even BEFORE we get down to the details. Suffice to say, you don’t have to have read the book to get this movie, but a working knowledge of Kubrick’s horror classic may at least help you get some context before watching this … anyways, enough with the confusion, on to the meat of the matter – this is a CRACKING horror movie by any stretch, and, for me, one of the strongest King horrors to make it to the big screen in quite some time. Of course it helps no end to have a filmmaker of MAJOR calibre at the helm, and there are few working in horror at the moment with whom I am quite so impressed as Mike Flanagan, writer-director of two of this past decade’s definitive horrors (at least for me), Oculus and Hush, as well as a BLINDING TV series adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House for Netflix – the man is an absolute master of the craft, incredibly skilled with all the tricks of this particular genre’s trade, and, as it turns out, a perfect fit with King’s material. Following on from The Shining, then, we learn what happened to the kid, Danny Torrance, after he and his mother left the Overlook Hotel in the wake of his father’s psychotic break driven by monstrous apparitions “living” in the cursed halls, following him from childhood as he initially shuns the psychic gifts (or “shine”) he was taught to use by the hotel’s late caretaker, Dick Halloran. It’s only in later years, as he fights to overcome his alcoholism and self-destructive lifestyle, that he reconnects with that power, just in time to discover psychic “pen-pal” Abra Stone, an immensely powerful young psychic. Which leads us to the present day, when Abra, now a teenager, becomes the target of the True Knot, a group of psychic vampires who travel America hunting and killing young people with psychic abilities in order to consume their “smoke” (basically the stuff of their “shines”), thus expanding their already unnatural lifespans – they’re tracking Abra, and they’re getting close, and only her “Uncle Dan” can save her from them. Ewan McGregor is PERFECT as the grown-up Dan, delivering one of his career-best turns as he captures the world-weary seriousness of someone who’s seen, felt and had to do things no-one should, especially when he was so very young, the kinds of things that colour a soul for their entire life, and he’s clearly DESPERATE not to become his father; newcomer Kyleigh Curran, meanwhile, is an absolute revelation as Abra, bringing depth and weight far beyond her years to the role, but never losing sight of the fact that, under all the power, she’s ultimately still just a child; there are also excellent supporting turns from the likes of Cliff Curtis as Dan’s best friend and AA sponsor Billy Freeman, Zahn McClarnon (Longmire, Fargo season 2) and Emily Lind (Revenge, Code Black) as True Knot members Crow Daddy and Snakebite Annie, and Carl Lumbly (Cagney & Lacey, TV’s Supergirl), who beautifully replaces deceased original actor Scatman Crothers in the role of Dick. The film’s tour-de-force performance, however, comes from Rebecca Ferguson as Rose the Hat, leader of the True Knot – they’re an intriguing bunch of villains, very well written and fleshed out, and it’s clear they have genuine love for one another, like a real family, which makes it hard not to sympathise with them a little bit, and this is none more true than in Rose, whom Ferguson invests with so much light and warmth and intriguing, complex character, as well as a fantastic streak of playful mischief that makes her all the more riveting in those times when they then turn around and do some truly heinous, unforgivable things … as horror movies go this is the cream of the crop, but Flanagan has purposefully kept away from jump scares and the more flashy stuff, preferring, like Kubrick in The Shining, to let the insidious darkness bubble up underneath good and slow, drawing out the creepiness and those most unsettling, twisted little touches the author himself is always so very good at. Intent can be such a scary thing, and Flanagan gets it, so that’s just what he uses here. As a result this is a fantastic slow-burn creep-fest that constantly works its way deeper under your skin, building to a phenomenal climax that, (perversely) thanks in no small part to the differences between both novels and films, pays as much loving tribute to Kubrick’s visionary landmark as the original novel of The Shining. For me, this is Flanagan’s best film to date, and as far as Stephen King adaptations go I consider this to be right up there with the likes of The Mist and The Green Mile. Best of all, I think he’d be proud of it too …

7. SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME – summer 20019 was something of a decompression period for fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with many of us recovering from the sheer emotional DEVASTATION of the grand finale of Phase 3, Avengers: Endgame, so the main Blockbuster Season’s entry really needed to be light and breezy, a blessed relief after all that angst and loss, much like Ant-Man & the Wasp was last year as it followed Infinity War. And it is, by and large – this is as light-hearted and irreverent as its predecessor, following much the same goofy teen comedy template as Homecoming, but there’s no denying that there’s a definite emotional through-line from Endgame that looms large here, a sense of loss the film fearlessly addresses right from the start, sometimes with a bittersweet sense of humour, sometimes straight. But whichever path the narrative chooses, the film stays true to this underlying truth – there have been great and painful changes in this world, and we can’t go back to how it was before, no matter how hard we try, but then perhaps we shouldn’t. This is certainly central to our young hero’s central arc – Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is in mourning, and not even the prospect of a trip around Europe with his newly returned classmates, together with the chance to finally get close to M.J. (Zendaya), maybe even start a relationship, can entirely distract him from the gaping hole in his life. Still, he’s gonna give it his best shot, but it looks like fate has other plans for our erstwhile Spider-Man as superspy extraordinaire Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) comes calling, basically hijacking his vacation with an Avengers-level threat to deal with, aided by enigmatic inter-dimensional superhero Quentin Beck, aka Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal), who has a personal stake in the mission, but as he’s drawn deeper into the fray Peter discovers that things may not be quite as they seem. Of course, giving anything more away would of course dumps HEINOUS spoilers on the precious few who haven’t yet seen the film – suffice to say that the narrative drops a MAJOR sea-change twist at the midpoint that’s EVERY BIT as fiendish as the one Shane Black gave us in Iron Man 3 (although the more knowledgeable fans of the comics will likely see it coming), and also provides Peter with JUST the push he needs to get his priorities straight and just GET OVER IT once and for all. Tom Holland again proves his character is the most endearing teenage geek in cinematic history, his spectacular super-powered abilities and winning underdog perseverance in the face of impossible odds still paradoxically tempered by the fact he’s as loveably hopeless as ever outside his suit; Mysterio himself, meanwhile, frequently steals the film out from under him, the strong bromance they develop certainly mirroring what Peter had with Tony Stark, and it’s a major credit to Gyllenhaal that he so perfectly captures the essential dualities of the character, investing Beck with a roguish but subtly self-deprecating charm that makes him EXTREMELY easy to like, but ultimately belying something much more complex hidden beneath it; it’s also nice to see so many beloved familiar faces returning, particularly the fantastically snarky and self-assured Zendaya, Jacob Batalon (once again pure comedy gold as Peter’s adorably nerdy best friend Ned), Tony Revolori (as his self-important class rival Flash Thompson) and, of course, Marisa Tomei as the ever-pivotal Aunt May, as well as Jackson and Cobie Smoulders as dynamite SHIELD duo Fury and his faithful lieutenant Maria Hill, and best of all Jon Favreau gets a MUCH bigger role this time round as Happy Hogan. Altogether this is very much business as usual for the MCU, the well-oiled machine unsurprisingly turning out another near-perfect gem of a superhero flick that ticks all the required boxes, but a big part of the film’s success should be attributed to returning director Jon Watts, effectively building on the granite-strong foundations of Homecoming with the help of fellow alumni Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers on screenplay duty, for a picture that feels both comfortingly familiar and rewardingly fresh, delivering on all the required counts with thrilling action and eye candy spectacle, endearingly quirky character-based charm and a typically winning sense of humour, and plenty of understandably powerful emotional heft. And, like always, there are plenty of fan-pleasing winks and nods and revelations, and the pre-requisite mid- and post-credit teasers too, both proving to be some proper game-changing corkers. Another winner from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then, but was there really ever any doubt?

6. US – back in 2017, Jordan Peele made the transition from racially-charged TV and stand-up comedy to astounding cinemagoers with stunning ease through his writer-director feature debut Get Out, a sharply observed jet black comedy horror with SERIOUS themes that was INSANELY well-received by audiences and horror fans alike. Peele instantly became ONE TO WATCH in the genre, so his follow-up feature had A LOT riding on it, but this equally biting, deeply satirical existential mind-bender is EASILY the equal of its predecessor, possibly even its better … giving away too much plot detail would do great disservice to the many intriguing, shocking twists on offer as middle class parents Adelaide and Gabe Wilson (Black Panther alumni Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke) take their children, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex), to Santa Cruz on vacation, only to step into a nightmare as a night-time visitation by a family of murderous doppelgangers signals the start of a terrifying supernatural revolution with potential nationwide consequences. The idea at the heart of this film is ASTOUNDINGLY original, quite an achievement in a genre where just about everything has been tried at least once, but it’s also DEEPLY subversive, as challenging and thought-provoking as the themes visited in Get Out, but also potentially even more wide-reaching. It’s also THOROUGHLY fascinating and absolutely TERRIFYING, a peerless exercise in slow-burn tension and acid-drip discomfort, liberally soaked in an oppressive atmosphere so thick you could choke on it if you’re not careful, such a perfect horror master-class it’s amazing that this is only Peele’s second FEATURE, never mind his sophomore offering IN THE GENRE. The incredibly game cast really help, too – the four leads are all EXCEPTIONAL, each delivering fascinatingly nuanced performances in startlingly oppositional dual roles as both the besieged family AND their monstrous doubles, a feat brilliantly mimicked by Mad Men and The Handmaid’s Tale-star Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker and teen twins Cali and Noelle Sheldon as the Wilsons’ friends, the Tylers, and their similarly psychotic mimics. The film is DOMINATED, however, by Oscar-troubler Nyong’o, effortlessly holding our attention throughout the film with yet another raw, intense, masterful turn that keeps up glued to the screen from start to finish, even as the twists get weirder and more full-on brain-mashy. Of course, while this really is scary as hell, it’s also often HILARIOUSLY funny, Peele again poking HUGE fun at both his intended audience AND his allegorical targets, proving that scares often work best when twinned with humour. BY FAR the best thing in horror in 2019, Us shows just what a master of the genre Jordan Peele is, and it looks like he’s here to stay …

5. KNIVES OUT – with The Last Jedi, writer-director Rian Johnson divided audiences so completely that he seemed to have come perilously close to ruining his career. Thankfully, he’s a thick-skinned auteur with an almost ridiculous amount of talent, and he’s come bouncing back as strong as ever, doing what he does best. His big break feature debut was with Brick, a cult classic murder mystery that was, surprisingly, set in and around a high school, and his latest has some of that same DNA as Johnson crafts a fantastic sleuthy whodunit cast in the classic mould of Agatha Christie, albeit shot through with his own wonderfully eclectic verve, wit and slyly subversive streak. Daniel Craig holds court magnificently as quirky and flamboyant Deep South private detective Benoit Blanc, summoned to the home of newly-deceased star crime author Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) to investigate his possible murder and faced with a veritable web of lies, deceit and twisting knives as he meets the maybe-victim’s extensive and INCREDIBLY dysfunctional family, all of whom are potential suspects. Craig is thoroughly mesmerising throughout, clearly having the time of his life in one of his career-best roles, while the narrative focus is actually, interestingly, given largely to Ana de Armas (Blade Runner 2049 and soon to be seen with Craig again in the latest Bond-flick No Time To Die), who proves equally adept at driving the film as Harlan’s sweet but steely and impressively resourceful nurse Marta Cabrera, whose own involvement in the case it would do the film a massive disservice to reveal. The rest of the Thrombey clan are an equally intriguing bunch, all played to the hilt by an amazing selection of heavyweight talent that includes Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette and It’s Jaeden Martell, but the film is, undeniably, DOMINATED by Chris Evans as Harlan’s black sheep grandson Ransom, the now former Captain America clearly enjoying his first major post-MCU role as he roundly steals every scene he’s in, effortlessly bringing back the kind of snarky, sarcastic underhanded arrogance we haven’t seen him play since his early career and entertaining us thoroughly. Johnson has very nearly outdone himself this time, weaving a gleefully twisty web of intrigue that viewers will take great pleasure in watching Blanc untangle, even if we’re actually already privy to (most of) the truth of the deed, and he pulls off some diabolical twists and turns as we rattle towards an inspired final reveal which genuinely surprises. He’s also generously smothered the film with oodles of his characteristically dry, acerbic wit, wonderfully tweaking many of the classic tropes of this familiar little sub-genre so this is at once a loving homage to the classics but also a sly, skilful deconstruction. Intriguing, compelling, enrapturing and often thoroughly hilarious, this is VERY NEARLY the best film he’s ever made. Only the mighty Looper remains unbeaten …

4. CAPTAIN MARVEL – before the first real main event of not only the year’s blockbusters but also, more importantly, 2019’s big screen MCU roster, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and co dropped a powerful opening salvo with what, it turns out, was the TRUE inception point of the Avengers Initiative and all its accompanying baggage (not Captain America: the First Avenger, as we were originally led to believe). For me, this is simply the MCU film I have MOST been looking forward to essentially since the beginning – the onscreen introduction of my favourite Avenger, former US Air Force Captain Carol Danvers, the TRUE Captain Marvel (no matter what the DC purists might say), who was hinted at in the post credits sting of Avengers: Infinity War but never actually seen. Not only is she the most powerful Avenger (sorry Thor, but it’s true), but for me she’s also the most badass – she’s an unstoppable force of (cosmically enhanced) nature, with near GODLIKE powers (she can even fly through space without needing a suit!), but the thing that REALLY makes her so full-on EPIC is her sheer, unbreakable WILL, the fact that no matter what’s thrown at her, no matter how often or how hard she gets knocked down, she KEEPS GETTING BACK UP. She is, without a doubt, the MOST AWESOME woman in the entire Marvel Universe, both on the comic page AND up on the big screen. Needless to say, such a special character needs an equally special actor to portray her, and we’re thoroughly blessed in the inspired casting choice of Brie Larson, who might as well have been purpose-engineered exclusively for this very role – she’s Carol Danvers stepped right out of the primary-coloured panels, as steely cool, unswervingly determined and strikingly statuesque as she’s always been drawn and scripted, with just the right amount of twinkle-eyed, knowing smirk and sassy humour to complete the package. Needless to say she’s the heart and soul of the film, a pure joy to watch throughout, but there’s so much more to enjoy here that this is VERY NEARLY the most enjoyable cinematic experience I had all year … writer-director double-act Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck may only be known for smart, humble indies like Half Nelson and Mississippi Grind, but they’ve taken to the big budget, all-action blockbuster game like ducks to water, co-scripting with Geneva Robertson-Dworet (writer of the Tomb Raider reboot movie and the long-gestating third Sherlock Holmes movie) to craft yet another pitch-perfect MCU origin story, playing a sneakily multilayered, misleading game of perception-versus-truth as we’re told how Carol got her powers and became the unstoppable badass supposedly destined to turn the tide in a certain Endgame … slyly rolling the clock back to the mid-90s, we’re presented with a skilfully realised mid-90s period culture clash adventure as Carol, a super-powered warrior fighting for the Kree Empire against the encroaching threat of the shape-shifting Skrulls, crash-lands in California and winds up uncovering the hidden truth behind her origins, with the help of a particular SHIELD agent, before he wound up with an eye-patch and a more cynical point-of-view – yup, it’s a younger, fresher Nick Fury (the incomparable Samuel L. Jackson, digitally de-aged with such skill it’s really just a pure, flesh-and-blood performance). There’s action, thrills, spectacle and (as always with the MCU) pure, skilfully observed, wry humour by the bucket-load, but one of the biggest strengths of the film is the perfectly natural chemistry between the two leads, Larson and Jackson playing off each other BEAUTIFULLY, no hint of romantic tension, just a playfully prickly, banter-rich odd couple vibe that belies a deep, honest respect building between both the characters and, clearly, the actors themselves. There’s also sterling support from Jude Law as Kree warrior Yon-Rogg, Carol’s commander and mentor, Ben Mendelsohn, slick, sly and surprisingly seductive (despite a whole lot of make-up) as Skrull leader Talos, returning MCU-faces Clark Gregg and Lee Pace as rookie SHIELD agent Phil Coulson (another wildly successful de-aging job) and Kree Accuser Ronan, Annette Bening as a mysterious face from Carol’s past and, in particular, Lashana Lynch (Still Star-Crossed, soon to be seen in No Time To Die) as Carol’s one-time best friend and fellow Air Force pilot Maria Rambeau, along with the impossibly adorable Akira Akbar as her precocious daughter Monica … that said, the film is frequently stolen by a quartet of ginger tabbies who perfectly capture fan-favourite Goose the “cat” (better known to comics fans as Chewie). This is about as great as the MCU standalone films get – for me it’s up there with the Russo’s Captain America films and Black Panther, perfectly pitched and SO MUCH FUN, but with a multilayered, monofilament-sharp intelligence that makes it a more cerebrally satisfying ride than most blockbusters, throwing us a slew of skilfully choreographed twists and narrative curveballs we almost never see coming, and finishing it off with a bucket-load of swaggering style and pure, raw emotional power (the film kicks right off with an incredibly touching, heartfelt tear-jerking tribute to Marvel master Stan Lee). Forget Steve Rogers – THIS is the Captain MCU fans need AND deserve, and I am SO CHUFFED they got my favourite Avenger so totally, perfectly RIGHT. I can die happy now, I guess …

3. JOHN WICK CHAPTER 3 – needless to say, those who know me should be in no doubt why THIS was at the top of my list for summer 2019 – this has EVERYTHING I love in movies and more. Keanu Reeves is back in the very best role he’s ever played, unstoppable, unbeatable, un-killable hitman John Wick, who, when we rejoin him mere moments after the end of 2017’s phenomenal Chapter 2, is in some SERIOUSLY deep shit, having been declared Incommunicado by the High Table (the all-powerful ruling elite who run this dark and deadly shadowy underworld) after circumstances forced him to gun down an enemy on the grounds of the New York Continental Hotel (the inviolable sanctuary safe-house for all denizens of the underworld), as his last remaining moments of peace tick away and he desperately tries to find somewhere safe to weather the initial storm. Needless to say the opening act of the film is ONE LONG ACTION SEQUENCE as John careers through the rain-slick streets of New York, fighting off attackers left and right with his signature brutal efficiency and unerring skill, perfectly setting up what’s to come – namely a head-spinning, exhausting parade of spectacular set pieces that each put EVERY OTHER offering in every other film this past year to shame. Returning director Chad Stahelski again proves that he’s one of the very best helmsmen around for this kind of stuff, delivering FAR beyond the call on every count as he creates a third entry to a series that continues to go from strength to strength, while Keanu once again demonstrates what a phenomenal screen action GOD he is, gliding through each scenario with poise, precision and just the right balance of brooding charm and so-very-done-with-this-shit intensity and a thoroughly enviable athletic physicality that really does put him on the same genre footing as Tom Cruise. As with the first two chapters, what plot there is is largely an afterthought, a facility to fuel the endless wave of stylish, wince-inducing, thoroughly exhilarating violent bloodshed, as John cuts another bloody swathe through the underworld searching for a way to remove the lethal bounty from his head while an Adjudicator from the High Table (Orange Is the New Black’s Asia Kate Dillon) arrives in New York to settle affairs with Winston (Ian McShane), the manager of the New York Continental, and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) for helping John create this mess in the first place. McShane and Fishburne are both HUGE entertainment in their fantastically nuanced large-than-life roles, effortlessly stealing each of their scenes, while the ever-brilliant Lance Reddick also makes a welcome return as Winston’s faithful right-hand Charon, the concierge of the Continental, who finally gets to show off his own hardcore action chops when trouble arrives at their doorstep, and there are plenty of franchise newcomers who make strong impressions here – Dillon is the epitome of icy imperiousness, perfectly capturing the haughty superiority you’d expect from a direct representative of the High Table, Halle Berry gets a frustratingly rare opportunity to show just how seriously badass she can be as former assassin Sofia, the manager of the Casablanca branch of the Continental and one of John’s only remaining allies, Game of Thrones’ Jerome Flynn is smarmy and entitled as her boss Berrada, and Anjelica Houston is typically classy as the Director, the ruthless head of New York’s Ruska Roma (John’s former “alma mater”, basically). The one that REALLY sticks in the memory, though, is Mark Dacascos, finally returning to the big time after frustrating years languishing in lurid straight-to-video action dreck and lowbrow TV hosting duties thanks to a BLISTERING turn as Zero, a truly brilliant semi-comic creation who routinely runs away with the film – he’s the Japanese master ninja the Adjudicator tasks with dispensing her will, a thoroughly lethal killer who may well be as skilled as our hero, but his deadliness is amusingly tempered by the fact that he’s also a total nerd who HERO WORSHIPS John Wick, adorably geeking out whenever their paths cross. Their long-gestating showdown provides a suitably magnificent climax to the action, but there’s plenty to enjoy in the meantime, as former stuntman Stahelski and co keep things interestingly fluid as they constantly change up the dynamics and add new elements, from John using kicking horses in a stable and knives torn out of display cases in a weaponry museum to dispatch foes on the fly, through Sofia’s use of attack dogs to make the Moroccan portion particularly nasty and a SPECTACULAR high octane sequence in which John fights katana-wielding assailants on speeding motorcycles, to the film’s UNDISPUTABLE highlight, an astounding fight in which John takes on Zero’s disciples (including two of the most impressive guys from The Raid movies, Cecep Arif Rahman and Yayan Ruhian) in (and through) an expansive chamber made up entirely of glass walls and floors. Altogether then, this is business as usual for a franchise that’s consistently set the bar for the genre as a whole, an intensely bruising, blissfully blood-drenched epic that cranks its action up to eleven, shot with delicious neon-drenched flair and glossy graphic novel visual excess, a consistently inspired exercise in fascinating world-building that genuinely makes you want to live among its deadly denizens (even though you probably wouldn’t live very long). The denouement sets things up for an inevitable sequel, and I’m not at all surprised – right from the first film I knew the concept had legs, and it’s just too good to quit yet. Which is just how I like it …

2. AVENGERS: ENDGAME – the stars have aligned and everything is right with the world – the second half of the ridiculously vast, epic, nerve-shredding and gut-punching MCU saga that began with 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War has FINALLY arrived and it’s JUST AS GOOD as its predecessor … maybe even a little bit better, simply by virtue of the fact that (just about) all the soul-crushing loss and upheaval of the first film is resolved here. Opening shortly after the universally cataclysmic repercussions of “the Snap”, the world at large and the surviving Avengers in particular are VERY MUCH on the back foot as they desperately search for a means to reverse the damage wrought by brutally single-minded cosmic megalomaniac Thanos and his Infinity Stone-powered gauntlet – revealing much more dumps so many spoilers it’s criminal to continue, so I’ll simply say that their immediate plan really DOESN��T work out, leaving them worse off than ever. Fast-forward five years and the universe is a very different place, mourning what it’s lost and torn apart by grief-fuelled outbursts, while our heroes in particular are in various, sometimes better, but often much worse places – Bruce Banner/the Hulk (Mark Ruffallo) has found a kind of peace that’s always eluded him before, but Thor (Chris Hemsworth) really is a MESS, while Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) has gone to a VERY dark place indeed. Then Ant-Man Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) finds a way back from his forced sojourn in the Quantum Realm, and brings with him a potential solution of a very temporal nature … star directors the Russo Brothers, along with returning screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, have once again crafted a stunning cinematic masterpiece, taking what could have been a bloated, overloaded and simply RIDICULOUS narrative mess and weaving it into a compelling, rich and thoroughly rewarding ride that, despite its THREE HOURS PLUS RUNNING TIME, stays fresh and interesting from start to finish, building on the solid foundations of Infinity War while also forging new ground (narratively speaking, at least) incorporating a wonderfully fresh take on time-travel that pokes gleeful fun at the decidedly clichéd tropes inherent in this particular little sub-genre. In fact this is frequently a simply HILARIOUS film in its own right, largely pulling away from the darker tone of its predecessor by injecting a very strong vein of chaotic humour into proceedings, perfectly tempering the more dramatic turns and epic feels that inevitably crop up, particularly as the stakes continue to rise. Needless to say the entire cast get to shine throughout, particularly those veterans whose own tours of duty in the franchise are coming to a close, and as with Infinity War even the minor characters get at least a few choice moments in the spotlight, especially in the vast, operatic climax where pretty much the ENTIRE MCU cast return for the inevitable final showdown. It’s a masterful affair, handled with skill and deep, earnest respect but also enough irreverence to keep it fun, although in the end it really comes down to those big, fat, heart-crushing emotional FEELS, as we say goodbye to some favourites and see others reach crossroads in their own arcs that send them off in new, interesting directions. Seriously guys, keep a lot of tissues handy, you really will need them. If this were the very last MCU film ever, I’d say it’s a PERFECT piece to go out on – thankfully it’s not, and while it is the end of an era the franchise looks set to go on as strong as ever, safe in the knowledge that there’s plenty more cracking movies on the way so long as Kevin Feige and co continue to employ top-notch talent like this to make their films. Eleven years and twenty-two films down, then – here’s to eleven and twenty-two more, I say …

1. THE IRISHMAN (aka I HEARD YOU PAINT HOUSES) – beating smash-hit superhero movies and unstoppable assassin action-fests to the top spot is no mean feat, but so completely blowing me away that I had NO OTHER CHOICE than to put this at NUMBER ONE is something else entirely. Not only is this the best thing I saw at the cinema this past year, but I’d be happy to say it’s guaranteed to go down as one of my all-time greats of the entire decade. I’ve been an ardent fan of the filmmaking of Martin Scorsese ever since I first properly got into cinema in my early adolescence, when I was first shown Taxi Driver and was completely and irrevocably changed forever as a movie junkie. He’s a director who impresses me like a select few others, one of the true, undisputable masters of the craft, and I find it incredibly pleasing that I’m not alone in this assertion. Goodfellas and The Departed are both numbered among my all-time favourite crime movies, while I regard the latter as one of the greatest films of the current cinematic century. I’ve learned more about the art and craft of filmmaking and big-screen storytelling from watching Scorsese’s work than from any other director out there (with the notable exception of my OTHER filmmaking hero, Ridley Scott), and I continue to discover more about his films every time I watch them, so I never stop. Anyways … enough with the gushing, time to get on with talking about his latest offering, a Netflix Original true-life gangster thriller of truly epic proportions chronicling the career and times of Frank Sheeran, a Philadelphia truck driver who became the most trusted assassin of the Northeastern Pennsylvania crime family and, in particular, its boss (and Sheeran’s best friend) Russell Bufalino, particularly focusing on his rise to power within the Philly Mob and his significant association with controversial and ultimately ill-fated Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa. It’s a sprawling epic in the tradition of Scorsese’s previously most expansive film, Casino, but in terms of scope this easily eclipses the 1995 classic, taking in SIX DECADES of genuinely world-changing events largely seen through Sheeran’s eyes, but as always the director is in total control throughout, never losing sight of the true focus – one man’s fall from grace as he loses his soul to the terrible events he takes part in. Then again, the screenplay is by Steve Zaillian (Schindler’s List, Moneyball, Fincher’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), one of the true masters of the art form, with whom Scorsese previously worked with on Gangs of New York, so it’s pure gold – tight as a drum, razor sharp and impossibly rich and rewarding, the perfect vehicle for the director to just prep his cast and run with it. And WHAT A CAST we have here – this is a three-way lead master-class of titanic proportions, as Scorsese-regular Robert De Niro and his Goodfellas co-star Joe Pesci are finally reteamed as, respectively, Sheeran and Bufalino, while Al Pacino gets to work with the master for the first time as Hoffa; all three are INCREDIBLE, EXTRAORDINARY, on absolute tip-top form as they bring everything they have to their roles, De Niro and Pesci underplaying magnificently while Pacino just lets rip with his full, thunderous fury in a seemingly larger-than-life turn which simply does one of history’s biggest crooks perfect justice; the supporting cast, meanwhile, is one of the strongest seen in cinema all year, with Ray Romano, Bobby Canavale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Harvey Keitel, Stephanie Kurtzuba (The Wolf of Wall Street), Jack Huston (Boardwalk Empire) and Jesse Plemmons among MANY others all making MAJOR impressions throughout, all holding their own even when up against the combined star power of the headlining trio. This is filmmaking as high art, Scorsese bringing every trick at his considerable, monumentally experienced disposal to bear to craft a crime thriller that strongly compares not only to the director’s own best but many of the genre’s own other masterpieces such as The Godfather and Chinatown. It may clock in at a potentially insane THREE HOURS AND TWENTY-NINE MINUTES but it NEVER feels overlong, every moment crafted for maximum impact with a story that unfolds so busily and with such mesmerising power it’s impossible to get bored with it. The film may have received a limited theatrical release, obviously reaching MOST of its audience when unleashed on Netflix nearly a month later, but I was one of the lucky few who got to see it on the big screen, and BELIEVE ME, it was totally worth it. Best thing I saw in 2019, ONE OF the best things I saw this past decade, and DEFINITELY one of Scorsese’s best films EVER. See it, any way you can. You won’t be disappointed.

#how to train your dragon the hidden world #terminator dark fate #doctor sleep #spider-man far from home #us #us movie #knives out #Captain Marvel #john wick chapter 3 #avengers endgame #the irishman #2019 in movies

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chiseler · 5 years ago

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A Week of Kindness in the Rue Morgue

From Bela Lugosi’s Mackie Messer in the beginning to the final moments of an ape bounding over the rooftops of a pasteboard Paris, Robert Florey’s 1932 Murders in the Rue Morgue is an unselfconscious adaptation of Max Ernst’s great work, Une semaine de bonté. Ernst’s book was published two years later, so it would be even more curious to know if he saw this film – especially given the Surrealists’ bent for valorizing junk.

A wild contraption mixing sci-fi super science, eugenics, and Guignol jungle horror with European postwar exoticism, Murders rattles on for little over an hour, employing several amusing devices along the way. Viz: a send-up of Françafrique colonialism with Karl May-like Indians bedeviling a crowd of bourgeois pigs; a series of funny gags on language, nationalism, and food that break up the foggy Krafft-Ebbing carnality; Lugosi’s unboarded mad doctor, part carnival barker and part Francis Galton (Lugosi’s Brechtian pedagogy is interrupted by a gleeful sadism and misogyny, which is the real point of his supposedly ‘hammy’ line readings); phantasmagoric ‘exteriors’, beautifully exposed by the great Carl Freund, giving a moving panorama background to the essentially vaudeville goings-on. Florey’s film is a stew of pulp and pulp critique, with the requisite dynamo speed and a true populist delight in dirty innuendo.

The picture was not a great success upon release (Universal’s Carl Laemmle Jr. was hoping for a second Frankenstein – which Lugosi turned down in ‘31, both as monster and doctor). But the real casualty of the picture was Arlene Francis, pictured above on the cross being adored by a monastic Béla (this blasphemous altarpiece was partially mangled by edits for the general release, but remains in press stills). For promotional material, the crucifixion scene was reproduced in life-size card mock-ups and displayed in theater lobbies around the country – which enflamed the Presbyterians and also Miss Francis’ father, who successfully petitioned Universal to remove the offending cut-outs (the family’s actual last name was Kazanjian, which is Armenian; the grandparents were victims of the Genocide, with the remnant moving to the US soon after). The ancillary activities in this Rue Morgue are almost as fascinating as those of Ulmer’s Black Cat, which makes a strong case for a profound revision of the entire Lugosi constellation.

Aside from the ape, the only real Poe characters to appear in the film are a far more dashing version of Auguste Dupin, the great father of all neurotic detectives, and a bumbling police prefect (who is clearly the Inspector ‘G’ of the three canonical Dupin mysteries). Dupin lives in the kind of artist’s garret Arlene Francis’ father knew during his years as a painter in the real Paris, c. 1896 – or at least he would have registered it as a soapy parody of that time. Dark and unforgettable, Miss Francis had lucked into her small silent role in the film, and it damped her subsequent career. She did later become well-known as a regular on What’s My Line, but anyone who saw her ragdoll body and necrophiliac sexuality in Murders couldn’t possibly have forgotten her. And there is racism too: her agent recommended a nose-job after this film, doubtless because she looked too ‘Asiatic’ (Jewish). She complied – needing work, like we do.

Closest scene to Ernst: the ape’s arm lolls out a carriage window in the mist, as Dr Mirakle (Lugosi’s preposterously-named heavy) summons him to carry off the comely Sidney Fox (a second subject for devolution after Arlene Francis dies). The ape appears also as a great shadowy hand, an actual ape in facial close-up, and as a shaggy clump loping in long shot. Though it is simian blood Lugosi injects into women in his quest to breed supercreatures, the audience easily reads ‘bestiality’. Perhaps here too, we can see the paranoia of French who suspected a devilish plot between Oriental doctors with near-Yiddish names and noirs? Dreyfuss and his Apelings?

WWI Europe thrilled American servicemen, even as it destroyed their minds. Stateside horror films of the period are strange reflections of battlefields and louche flâneur, Puritanism, VD, and slipping borders. The unreal cities of occupation and prostitutes are essays of wandering Yanks, flashed in stark documentary and astral bodies; dirty reels of malaprop, anachronism, and funhouse fantasy contra the phantasmagoria of czar and kaiser lands fast falling into particle dust. The Universal or PRC cheapie is an unholy conspiracy between the homeless Euro sophisticate and the American canine – a junk and junkier art where plot is subservient to scene, as the new medium technically demanded.

Along with the static, hallucinatory Dracula’s Daughter and Karl Freund’s gamy film of The Mummy (1932), Florey’s flick is one of the most sensual of early Universal horrors and probably the sleaziest. The Hays Code was not strictly enforced until 1934, but it was gaining traction all the while. It succeeded in removing some of Francis’ bound body to make up for letting Zita Jahnn dance for Pharaoh and Karloff a year earlier. But in 1936, Dracula’s daughter’s lesbian fling with a model missed them completely, even though they monitored horror like hawks. Despite the bloody lips and ripped blouses of the later Hammer or hippie cult shows, horror was a truly Modernist organ in these 1930s workingman’s shows. Requiescat in pace

Post-Watergate, even the most interesting genre pictures could muster only an amusing retro-viral pastiche or guilt about the human body as real estate. As in economics, neoliberalism and its discontents emerged triumphant after a time of monsters. But perhaps the story isn’t over yet, and the ape will ignore liberty and again go straight for the throat.

(watch here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x21gvsx )

by Martin Billheimer

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geek-gem · 5 years ago

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I’ve been working on this for some days. Because of Aawesomepenguin’s latest post. I know how the Sonic movie goes. While we have known some stuff of it already before. But not in that much detail.

This is basically my what if idea for a Sonic movie. I’ve made two of these before. The first being with Metal Sonic and Silver Sonic, the 2nd I’d like to called the, “Chaos Draft” because it was a loose adaption of Sonic Adventure and borrowing heavily from the fake Reddit info leak I’ve talked about before.

Really I’ll give my honest thoughts on the Sonic movie when I see it personally. Because I don’t wanna just slam a whole bunch of negativity on it. But I’m mainly disappointed by the fact of the direction it went. I might end up loving the film. Yet I would of liked something like a more serious take on the franchise. Let me talk deep here mate.

I’ve wanted to talk about this despite this has been said in my head. I would love if it Sonic was made cool again. Which is a intriguing topic because hasn’t Sonic always been cool? It depends on how you see it. Which is why I seem more serious on a Sonic movie adaptation than other video game adaptions. Because the franchise means a lot to me. Which is why I want the movie to be good and hopefully the reception gets better because of it.

Despite I’ve learned I shouldn’t do a condensed loose version of Sonic Adventure and whatever else. My biggest inspirations for this new version of my Sonic movie was taken from several things. Such as my love for the 2018 movie adaption of Rampage by Brad Peyton. Which helped inspired this vision in a weird way.

Along with Paul W.S. Anderson’s RE films mainly the first because of well those films aren’t big. Mainly low budget. So I decided to not take a risk with Chris Pratt as the lead character. Especially there were other characters in actors and characters. But also the mis-mash of ideas which is risky. Considering the first RE movie took elements from RE 1 and 2 and I wanted to try something like that.

The other inspiration was Sonic Adventure 2. Such as using elements from that story but not all of it where it be a direct adaption. This is the reason why I’ve been playing the game more(Mainly if I recall on the Dreamcast). To get inspiration for this story. While Adventure 2 suffers problems such as with writing and other things, it’s a game I personally love. Including this is a reason why Rouge is here(Along with the reason I want Lisa voicing that character), and other elements as well. Also considering when the Sonic movie we were getting was getting written. The Adventure games such as Sonic Adventure 2 Battle was an inspiration. Basically this classic image here.

Including other info I’ve learned from here about Van. https://www.bumbleking.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7576&start=210&sid=2d070269a047bd57674d2db32b49a8f8 Gonna be honest I did not expect that image to be put here I was expecting a link.

Basically I wanted to make a outline while it’s not a draft. But a story I was happy with and I thought would make a good start off for Sonic movie. A story I felt would of been good as a stand alone in a way but it might get sequels anyway. Which is why it’s not just a simple origin story you have Sonic, Eggman, Tails, Amy Rose, Rouge, Metal Sonic, Silver Sonic, the GUN Commander, and the president(with his secretary of course). Especially that fake Reddit leaked story was in mind with the areas. But still it’s a story I feel personally happy with. Despite I have not written a script but it’s the outline I like.

In a similar way to the 2018 Rampage movie. Which while there are other nice and good video game movie adaptions as well such as Detective Pikachu. My direction for a film like this(it would be directed by someone else or whatever) is gonna be a lot more bad ass, a bit more serious, but most importantly a lot more emotional.

Especially to aim for a PG-13 rating that older audiences can enjoy. Along with the other goal to understand who Sonic is as a character when he’s involved in a more serious situation where the world is kind of against him, he’s been framed, Robotnik and the, “Metal Brothers” are out to kill him. With Ian being this surrogate of like the fans that love Sonic(which may seem weird as hell), but also being a person that develops this close bond with this creature because they are very alike. Including Ian will risk his life to make sure this creature who has become his best friend, almost like a brother won’t die. But also with these other characters too such as Tails and Amy.

Including the other point is to make a surrogate better than well Chris Thorndyke because he’s a character that I felt should of been better. Yet Sonic is still the main protagonist with Ian being a deuteragonist. It’s to show in a setting like this humans can be pretty good characters if handled right. That’s why he’s there too in a way.

While I have thought of the idea people would look at the, “Make Sonic cool again” as a way of it being brought back to levels of Shadow The Hedgehog and Sonic 06. But more so again like the Dreamcast era and some modern games and some classic games thrown in there a bit too.

Besides I think I’ve made too many of these. I’m officially gonna stop because I’m kind of happy with what I did. With this idea because it’s I guess almost everything I want. It’s a reasonable starting point for a Sonic movie. Because it has things I like and would like to see in a movie. So I’m pleased with it. I’m being an annoyance to folks anyway making this shit. Because it seems disrespectful I make these while a movie is coming out anyway that’s already completed in a way. Despite we are getting a redesign.

But again here’s my what if idea for a Sonic movie. Whether it could be at Paramount, or even at Warner Bros with Legendary Pictures. I’ve rambled on too long I talk too much.

“Sometimes you gotta go fast! In a action packed adventure based upon the popular and iconic video game series, Sonic The Hedgehog.

The world is in serious danger when an insane scientist by the name of Dr. Ivo Robotnik(Jeffrey Dean Morgan) plans to take it over. His goal is to use the power of the mysterious Chaos Emeralds to power his machines. To ensure his victory, Robotnik has made certain robots that will make sure he is able to obtain his goal for world domination.

Now because of being mistaken for a villainous robot who looks like him. Sonic(Tom Holland), the world’s fastest hedgehog is on the run from the military. Along the way he meets a young GUN soldier Ian Andrews(Brenton Thwaites), a man who wants to help everyone the best he can.

With them teaming up, on the run from the military known as GUN, and to get the Chaos Emeralds and stop Robotnik from achieving his goal. But during this time as they fight through a ever changing battlefield. Ian must make sure not only help stop a global catastrophe. Yet to also save Sonic who he’s developed an unshakable bond with. Especially from the horrifying threat of Metal Sonic”.

Characters.

Sonic The Hedgehog. Voiced by Tom Holland. A 21 year old hedgehog who’s cocky but kind and chill. 4 feet tall. The world’s fastest hedgehog who while being framed by Metal Sonic, wants to save the planet from Robotnik. Even if it means risking his own life helping these humans who don’t understand who he is as a person. Because he knows it’s the right thing to do/

Ian Andrews. Played by Brenton Thwaites. The 21 year old GUN Private who helps assist Sonic to save the planet. A young man who joined GUN because he wanted to simply helped people in his area. While only a Private assigned in his home area to defend it. He is courageous despite being afraid of certain enemies. Especially because he wants to simply help everyone the best he can. Including the blue hedgehog who he develops an unshakable bond with, almost like a brother. He knows Sonic is innocent and risks his life to reveal the truth.

Dr. Ivo Robotnik. Played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. The 55 year old scientist with an IQ of 300. Who wants to take over the planet, along with making Robotnikland a reality. While he may be hilarious, he is a rather cruel, narcissistic, and a very intelligent man who will do anything to get what he wants.

Miles Tails Prower. Voiced by: Noah Schnapp. A 14 year old two tailed fox. 3 feet tall. He’s an intelligent engineer and inventor who flies a plane, and Sonic’s best friend, who is like Sonic’s younger brother.

Amy Rose. Voiced by Maisie Williams. A 18 year old hedgehog. 4 feet tall. While she admittedly has a crush on Sonic. She’s like to make it as public. But she is a kind hearted young woman who wants to help her friends and will fight for them if needed. Especially to never give up on them.

Rouge The Bat. Voiced by Lisa Hannigan. A 24 year old bat who is helping Robotnik but is secretly a GUN agent. 4 feet tall. While a treasure hunter and even a thief. She’s actually much more kind than people think about her. Despite her narcissism, being strong minded, and flirtatious.

Metal Sonic. A robotic copy of Sonic himself and Robotnik’s personal enforcer. 4 feet tall. Inspired by Sonic’s skills and speed. Metal is Robotnik’s greatest creation. With a goal set in mind by Robotnik, to kill Sonic once and for all while being Robotnik’s personal enforcer and leader of his robotic army. But as time goes on, Metal becomes more obsessed with Sonic to where he thinks there can only be one Sonic.

Silver Sonic. Another robotic copy of Sonic and Robotnik’s powerhouse of a brute. 16 feet tall. While not as self aware as Metal. Silver Sonic’s doesn’t care and just would rather listen to his master Robotnik. Built to simply destroy anyone or anything that gets in the doctors way.

Abraham Westbrook the GUN Commander. Played by Idris Elba. The 53 year old commander who leads the GUN military. While trying to figure out what’s going on with Robotnik and Sonic. He’s trying to stop any possible threats to thw world.

Gabriel Ivan the President of the United States. Played by Oded Fehr. The 51 year old president of the USA. Who while trying to do what’s best for nation’s people and be against Robotnik. He understands Ian’s situation considering he was once a solider in the GUN military and just wanted to do the right thing. He’s also the one who sent Rouge to go undercover with Robotnik and to find Sonic as well.

To be honest I have thought about other characters. Such as being played by actors being like callbacks to stuff. Such as Deedee Magno Hall(Steven Universe), Jennifer Paz(Steven Universe), Shelby Rabara(Steven Universe), and Emilia Clarke. But I have realized there are too many characters if you don’t handle them right. Besides I think I just wanna post this after seeing that spoilers filled post.

Including I’ll leave the little details under this with areas and the inspirations. Which I have talked already about. Other details are that I’d would love Andrew Lockington to do the score.

I’ll also admit Ian who is not Gary anymore or he could be a younger brother of Gary. Ian is basically inspired by Leon Kennedy especially the RE2 remake version. Including I decided to make Ian’s Sonic’s new age because it might help them connect more or so.

I’m not gonna do a RT score because I don’t want to. Besides we haven’t even got the Sonic movie out yet with no score. I’m talking about Rotten Tomatoes. Hopefully you enjoy this or so. It’s just me rambling and yeah I’m done with these. Because I feel happy when I think about this story. Yet also it’s probably secretly annoying people now. Since I’ve just put down the tags, hope no one minds this in the Sonic movie positivity tag. Because I don’t really shit on the movie. Yet I want this to get some attraction. Despite I know my long rambling will turn people off.

Areas:

Central City.

Green Hill.

Chemical Plant.

South Island.

Metropolis zone.

Inspirations:

Sonic Adventure 2.

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic movie #sonic movie positivity

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