#ducktales merlock

[acmeoop]

DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp Poster Art (1990)

“Duck Tales” (1990), poster art by Drew Struzan (via)

[masterhallmark]

I'm doing this poll again, but making it a full week like I originally intended, removing characters who just wear a suit (Sorry Xanatos, Shere Kahn, and Fat Cat) or a basic dress (Sorry Magic De Spell, the reboot gave you better drip), and including someone I missed. I'm also not including characters who only appeared in a tie-in film despite liking Merlock's outfit.

I'm also not including Gummi bears characters like last time because in retrospect they ALL have ugly outfits.

[heavenboy09]

Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 To You, 1 Of The Most Legendary Funniest American Actor Of The 1960s In Cinema 🎥 & Tv 📺 & More Of The Century

Lloyd was born on October 22, 1938, in Stamford, Connecticut, the son of Ruth Lloyd (née Lapham; 1896–1984), a singer and sister of San Francisco mayor Roger Lapham, and her lawyer husband Samuel R. Lloyd Jr. (1897–1959). He is the youngest of three boys and four girls, one of whom, Samuel Lloyd, was an actor in the 1950s and 1960s. Lloyd's maternal grandfather, Lewis Henry Lapham, was one of the founders of the Texaco oil company and Lloyd is also a descendant of Mayflower passengers, including John Howland. Lloyd was raised in Westport, Connecticut, where he attended Staples High School and was involved in founding the high school's theater company, the Staples Players.

He is an American actor. He has appeared in many theater productions, films, and on television since the 1960s. He is known for portraying Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy (1985–1990) and Jim Ignatowski in the comedy series Taxi (1978–1983), for which he won two Emmy Awards.

Lloyd came to public attention in Northeastern theater productions during the 1960s and early 1970s, earning Drama Desk and Obie awards for his work. He made his cinematic debut in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and went on to star as Commander Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Professor Plum in Clue (1985), Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Uncle Fester in The Addams Family (1991) and its sequel Addams Family Values (1993), Switchblade Sam in Dennis the Menace (1993), Mr. Goodman in Piranha 3D (2010), Bill Crowley in I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016) and David Mansell in Nobody (2021).

Lloyd earned a third Emmy for his 1992 guest appearance as Alistair Dimple in Road to Avonlea (1992), and won an Independent Spirit Award for his performance in Twenty Bucks (1993). He has done extensive voice work, including Merlock in DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp (1990), Grigori Rasputin in Anastasia (1997), the Hacker in the PBS Kids series Cyberchase (2002–present), which earned him Daytime Emmy nominations, and the Woodsman in the Cartoon Network miniseries Over the Garden Wall (2014).

Please Wish This Legendary Funny Actor Of The 1960s Of Cinema 🎥 & Tv 📺 & Other Forms Of Entertainment A Very Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊

YOU KNOW HIM

YOU LOVE HIM

& HIS VOICE IS ICONIC THROUGHOUT THE WORLD 🌎

THE 1 & ONLY

MR. CHRISTOPHER ALLEN LLYOD👴 AKA DOCTOR EMMETT BROWN OF THE BACK TO THE FUTURE TRILOGY 👴🚗🕐⏩

#ChristopherLlyod #DocEmmettBrown #Taxi #BackToTheFuture #Anastasia #TheAddamsFamily #WhoFramedRogerRabbit #Cyberchase #SpiritHalloweenTheMovie

[toonqueen]

Duckvember Day 22: Loved Duck

I was gonna try to draw Gene and Faris looking cute on a motorcycle but I have failed. I’ll try later maybe. Instead I picked a song from each of my shipping playlists. SOME CHARS I don’t have a full shipping playlist for them but I have shipping songs on their character playlist if that makes sense lol.  TUMBLR will only let me post 10 links at a time so I will reblog this with more links and info. Next part coming in a second!

Duck Revenger  x Alpha (Nega Donald and Nega Uno)

So I have a headcanon for Negaverse Donald and Alpha would still kinda be heroes. But of course, being the Negaverse, they have more edgy drama. Also Uncle Scrooge is evil and they have to deal with that. 

Duke L’Orange x OC Gallery 

Gallery belongs to @fluxchix

This is actually from a playlist I made for a story that took place wayyy in the future where Gallery is resurrected by magic and Duke’s been alive for a good thousand years (also because of magic.) LOOK it’s a long story. There was space travel and mysteries it was great okay. 

AND THEN here’s a normal shipping song I always think of them with: 

Faustina (OC for Ducktales/Darkwing)

GOD her shipping playlist just has so many good songs in it to pick one is hard. It’s not having her shipped with anyone in particular just how she does relationships lolol. Lot of the songs make her sound worse than she really is I swear. >_>  Two for her

Also this song this has gore:

Non Gore version: 

Fethry x Poe (Ducktales 2017)

So I ship these two for my headcanons for 87/comic blend universe. Poe and Fethry in that universe don’t start being an item until Magica and Gladstone have been together for awhile. I don’t really have a playlist for that ship because there isn’t really any drama to it to have a playlist lololol. For 2017 I have Poe being an active villain so of course more dramaaa. This playlist has a lot of Raven based songs but the main one I picked to show is just a nice angst with a twist ha.

Gene x Djinn

Oh lawd I’ve been trying to fill their shipping play list for more happy songs because MOST of their story is happy. It’s just easy to find songs for when that ONE bad thing happens. (*cough* Merlock *cough.)

Grimstone (Nega Gladstone) x OC Sheldrake Netta

My headcanon for Nega Gladstone is up to stuff with @cataradical OC’s Sheldrake. But they are both bastards so their playlist is full of bastard love songs. 

[princess-ibri]

How would you incorporate Merlock and Solego the Chaos God into the Disneyverse?

Oh the Ducktales stuff is all a separate universe. So it technically exists in the DisneyVerse-mulitverse but isnt part of Our World or the Everrealm

[toonqueen]

Reminds me my temp title for the fic I'm writing where I have Merlock show up for Gene in Ducktales 2017 is, "Soon It Will Be Cold Enough." Which is a very good Album by Emancipator.

*listening to music* hey that was a fic title

[araminakilla]

Ducktales: Plot theory (Part I)

We are getting closer to Season 3 of Ducktales and since we are still on hiatus, I want to share not only a theory about a Dt villain but also what I think season 4 (if, you know...there is one) is going to be about.

So, Magica de Spell. We all know her, almost everyone loves how evil she is and the powers she had, but something that caught my attention was her amulet that now is part of Lena. According to Webby in The Beagle Birthday Massacre:

Webby: Is that a vintage Sumerian talisman?

Lena: Dunno. Found it at a thrift shop.

It seems that Magica's powers come from Sumerian Magic, even if she knows different types of magic, as she said in Shadow War, The Day of the Ducks:

Magica De Spell: [Magic fires blasts of magic at Louie]  I've never heard of it (a curse Louie made up), and I'm inversed with all magics! Gaelic, Demogorgon, Sumerian!

Louie: Sumerian? You were in that dime a long time. Well, good luck with the curse!

But these are not the only mentions of Sumerians, as in Treasure of the Found Lamp when the ducks are talking about the posible thief of Djinn's lamp:

Scrooge: Yes, the lamp was stolen by a powerful figure!

Webby: Ohh, profoundly powerful! Ooh, like a wicked sorcerer? Or a powerful god, like a Sumerian god, or maybe Greek?!

It's interesting that the Sumerian culture was mentioned many times in the show but hasn't been show. Another theme that was present in both seasons was the Santa Claus incident that makes Scrooge unable to hear his name, much less have a statue of him in his mansion. This problem with Santa Claus is going to be touch in one of the new Season's episodes. So, maybe the Sumerian theme is going to be touch in the future.

But returning to the Sumerian mention in the Lamp episode, Webby also said that the powerful figure could be a wicked sorcerer, which is what happened in the Ducktales movie, with a very powerful and siniester villain: Merlock the Wolf Sorcerer.

Now, this part of the post is going to be about another series, but don't worry because this is connected to the theory.

Some of you have seen a series called "American Gods". For those who don't, it's about the battle of the Old Gods vs the New Gods. The old gods were once powerful deities with many followers and believers but now they have been reduced to roam America with only a bit of the power they had in the past. They can pass as normal humans, only showing their power when necesary, like (spoilers) a character named Wednesday.

Why do I bring up this? Well, this concept, along with the Sumerian theme, it's the core of my theory about this Ducktales movie villain, and the theory is:

Merlock is a powerful Sumerian God fallen in disgrace.

What if this sorcerer wants power not because he is very greedy, but because he craves for the power he once had many years ago?

Imagine this: You are a very respected and adored deity in the pantheon. Your followers are a very advanced and great culture who made many inventions that were the base of modern things. Everything is great until your civilization falls, your people are killed or converted. Strangers from other cultures destroy your temples (in this case Ziggurats) and turn your followers against you. Soon you lose your power and you are reduced to a simple person who is holding on the very few believers you have to continue to exist. Then, something happens. You adquire a powerful talisman that allows you to change form. You feel a bit of the power that was taken from you and seach for more powerful artifacts. Then you find a magic lamp with a Genie in it, what to do next?

Before continuing, let's say this one ex powerful Sumerian God is Sin, the god of the Moon. Yes, the satelite (not a planet, LUNARIS) because as other post pointed out, disasters surrounding the Duck family and the World had to be with the moon (Magica's eclipse, the spear of Selene, the Moonvasion) and Sin was like the Zeus equivalent of Sumerian mythology (a very important god) so why not?

Obviously what Merlock/Sin really wanted was being important and have all of his former powers by making people believe in him again. But the Genie said that it was beyond his power. He could make everyone believe that Sin was a sultan or some king. But a god? That wasn't a wish, but a miracle.

Then Sin wished to very inmortal, so he wouldn't have to depend on people believing in him anymore. After that, he decided that if he couldn't obtain followers, then NO ONE should have them.

So he used the Genie to wipe out other civilizations. He was the real culprit for the sinking of Atlantis, he made the volcano in Pompeii explode and other atrocities that made other gods lose people and their sacred places. And of course the Genie was horrified and guilty for this.

Years pass by and the lamp is stolen by a clever thief know as Collie Baba. Again, Sin lose a portion of magic but this time he won't let the mortals get away with it. He begins with the seach for the lamp, also he makes a new reputation as a wicked sorcerer, even if the thought of pass as a mortal mades him sick and humilliated. People in Europe give him a new name. A combination of Merlin and Warlock: Merlock. Even if the wolf was at first annoyed that some Europeans decided his new name, he became fond of it and later embrace it. One day he dissapeared and everyone thought he died, but he decided to stop making trouble so people won't try to hide the lamp again.

He's just...walking the Earth, trying to find the lamp without being noticed. Hoping for an opportunity to rise and reach godhood again.

Maybe he wants to fight the Greek gods, as they are still prominent in myths. He resents all of them, especially Selene considering she's the godness of the Moon in her culture.

This opportunity will present itself thanks to the current villains of season 3, but that will be explained in another post.

[aimasup]

Some Gene x Djinn doodles because goddamn it there's not nearly enough content for this ship. Also as far as I know (27/10/2020) DT17 Gene doesn't appear to be a child or be mentioned as one, so he's legal, unlike the original. (Click for better resolution)

[zeroraiser]

Shout out to Merlock’s palace from ‘DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp’

This castle fucked, pretty sure it permanently altered my neurons or somethin

animated fantasy films just don’t make fucked up evil castles like they used to

[mighty-ant]

Part & Parcel, Part One

Gene appears on the streets of Cairo with little fanfare, between one blink and the next.  

A single child notices him, walking hand in hand with their mother. They gape at him as he trades his usual, ostentatious outfit for his more roguish Knox Quackington persona, a fedora taking the place of a turban, a trenchcoat in place of silk. 

Gene winks, making a rainbow of sparks fly, and the child looks on in wonder before they and their mother are swallowed by the tide of the crowd. 

He continues in the opposite direction, the press of bodies lessening the further he drifts from the nearby shopping center. The streets are not the ones he knew thirty years ago, but the cacophony of traffic and sea of a hundred different faces are a comforting familiarity. 

Gene relishes in his freedom now as he hasn’t done since the ‘90s, when his previous centuries of confinement in the lamp came to an end. While he likes to ham it up, especially among Normals, he’s usually committed to the character he’s chosen from his mental rolodex of identities. Be it butcher, baker, or candlestick maker (or eccentric photographer), Gene gives 110% to every role he plays in service of the lamp’s wishmakers. 

But his last months of imprisonment at the hands of F.O.W.L. have him breaking character with practically every step he takes. 

At a glance, the withering, indistinguishable plants in a window box become a bushel of red roses. The dents and cracks in every car on his side of the street vanish, and the same happens to the cars on the opposite side for good measure. Eighteen kilometers away, it begins snowing over the Giza Necropolis to the bewilderment of locals and tourists alike as they stare up at the perfectly cloudless, blue blue sky. 

Technically, a few measly months (4 months 2 weeks and 5 days but who’s counting?) shouldn’t amount to much for a genie who’s witnessed and even caused the rise and fall of civilizations. But Gene’s a people person, be they peasant or king, sailor or aviator. Not that any of his acquaintanceships have lasted long; it’s not his fault that people tend to want him around for one thing and one thing only. 

Or three things, to be precise. 

Wandering further from the bustle of the main thoroughfares, Gene lets his instincts guide him onto a quiet side street. An old jackal sweeps the sidewalk outside a small hole-in-the-wall bar, where the name Najima is painted on the wall in fading green letters. He doesn’t look up as Gene walks up to the door and pushes it open to enter. 

The twenty-first century has made its mark on Cairo since Gene last visited, but this bar is curiously untouched by the passage of time. Ceiling fans spin lazily in the early autumn heat, and a radio behind the bar is playing Egyptian Arabic pop songs on a station that’s slightly out of range. Of the half dozen tables, only two are occupied. One by a pair of men whose features are made hazy by cigarette smoke and another by a tall, straight-backed figure clad in black and the darkest purple. 

“Howdy, stranger,” Gene says glibly as he slips into the seat across. “Funny seeing you here.”

Faris smiles as he looks up, transforming his naturally severe expression into one much warmer. 

“My friend,” he replies with an honesty that immediately leaves Gene feeling wrongfooted. He surreptitiously glances under the table to make sure he hasn’t accidentally switched his right leg with his left again. “Funny is one word for it, considering you asked me to meet you here.”

Gene snaps his fingers. “Dangit, you got me.” 

His attempt at saving face falls flat when Faris chuckles, briefly deepening the wrinkles at the corner of his eyes and lightening the shadows beneath them. Making Faris laugh used to be a point of pride, but now agitation, a more familiar and unwelcome companion kindles beneath his ribs like a stoking fire. 

 “How was the trip, by the way?” Gene’s chair creaks as he rocks back and forth on its back legs, warning him that it isn’t what it was made for. He hears himself speak faster. “I made sure to pick something close by, didn’t wanna put you out of your way. Not that anyone can get more lost than the Lost Library of Alexandria, eh?” 

The easy humor melts off Faris’ face. He leans forward, his gaze darting around the bar as though searching for some hidden danger. Knowing Faris, he’s probably already cased the joint. “Gene,” he says, always straight to the point. “Are you alright?”

The bartender, a dark-furred mongoose, steps out from a back room and Gene takes the opportunity to flag him down. “Alright? I’m more than alright, I’m-I’m rad! Just tubular! Isn’t that what the kids are saying?”

“None in this century.”

Gene drops all four chair legs to the ground as the bartender walks up to their table, a towel slung over one shoulder and an unimpressed frown on his face. “Salaam ‘aleikum, my good man! How about a refill for my friend here?” 

The bartender grunts. “Another limoon?”

Faris nods once, a short, shallow movement, and he looks hard at Gene from under the shadow of his brow. Gene quickly looks away before he can crack wise about his choice of drink or crack under the intensity of his gaze.

“I’ll have a TaB.” Gene smiles glibly at the bartender’s narrow-eyed look of confusion, summoning his magic with a flick of his fingers beneath the table. At the bartender’s continued stink eye, Gene also produces a small roll of Egyptian pounds, all high denominations, which he offers to the man. “Check the back of your fridge, I’m sure you just forgot about them.” 

The bartender doesn’t smile but he does pluck the bills out of Gene’s hand. “It’ll just be a minute,” he says and swipes Faris’ mostly empty drinking glass before turning on his heel. 

“That guy’s a teddy bear,” Gene observes, tapping out a frenetic version of the Family Matters theme song on the table. “We’re gonna be best friends by the end of the day, just you wait.”

“Gene.” 

Nobody says his name as much as Faris does, alternatively smiling, grave, or dismayed, like he’s more than what he is, what he can give to people. 

He says it now to get Gene’s attention, and just saying it would be enough, but then Faris’ hand settles on top of his own. It’s not painful or confining, but it nearly makes Gene leap out of his rickety chair and up to the ceiling which would be counterproductive to his goal of remaining incognito. As it is, Faris’ palm is wide and warm, and Gene can feel himself trembling down to his magical molecules.

He doesn’t...hate it. 

Of course that means Faris lets him go right away, an apologetic twist to his mouth that just makes Gene feel guilty(er). But Faris remains close, both a blessing and a curse, propping his folded arms on the table and leaning forward so that Gene has nowhere to look but his dark eyes. 

“You asked me to join you here, and you have bought me my drink. But I sense there is some other reason for our meeting,” he says simply and Gene resists the urge to squirm or to stare straight up at the slowly spinning ceiling fans to avoid Faris’ eyes. 

 The implicit question hangs in the air and as Gene hems and haws over how to answer it, the bartender returns. He places Faris’ limoon in front of him with remarkable civility before turning to Gene with a scowl. With significantly more force, he drops a can of TaB in front of Gene that glistens like it rolled straight out of the factory in 1982 and into the bartender’s waiting arms, which yeah it kinda did. 

“What’d I tell you, buddy! Back of the fridge, right?” Gene waggles his eyebrows as he pulls the tab on the TaB, cracking it open with a satisfying hiss. For all of his solemnity, Faris coughs and quickly takes a sip of his drink before it can turn into a laugh.The bartender glares a bit longer. 

“Right,” he grits out before departing. 

“You shouldn’t antagonize him so,” Faris advises, serious but for the way a corner of his mouth is still twisted in a little half-smile. Gene takes another congratulatory sip, allowing himself a moment of pride at getting this trained warrior to crack.

“Nuh uh, we’re cool. Best friends, remember?”

Faris watches him patiently, clearly still waiting for his earlier question to be answered. 

Unaccustomed to such transparency, Gene unsuccessfully resists the urge to fidget, leaning back in his seat and taking a longer sip of TaB. 

“Yknow, this used to be ol’ Collie Baba’s watering hole, back in the day.” He waves a hand to encompass the entirety of the near-silent, near-empty bar. “According to him this place was really hopping, a sorta 24-hour party type of thing. A real party animal; he barely stopped talking about it long enough to make his wishes.” 

Even as he smiles, Faris’ brow creases slightly. “And did it live up to the….hype, back then?”

Gene snorts. “Heck if I know, pal. This is my first time seeing the old place. After Collie finished wishing to turn his treasure into a scavenger hunt, we went our separate ways.” If you wanted to get technical, Collie Baba went. Gene and the lamp were left behind in the caves where they’d been found. “I haven’t had much to do the last thirty years beside think about this bar and watch reruns, so I decided that the next time I was free, I would invite myself. And then, I decided to invite you.”

Faris ducks his head, an expression flitting across his face that Gene can’t read. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think Faris looked...charmed. But the only magic Gene used was for his soda. 

“In that case, I am doubly honored that you would ask me to share this with you.”

 “No prob, Bob. But you’re right, I didn’t just ask you here for a drink.” Gene keeps his tone light, tamping down the nervousness fizzling high and tight in his chest. It’s time to get serious.

 He pushes his TaB to the side and grins big, letting his magic seep out through the glowing gold of his eyes, making the rest of the world fade away as it permeates the air. Gene watches Faris’ eyes widen, his spine straighten, his chest rise with a sudden, startled inhale—a mortal’s reaction to pure, undiluted magic. 

“I…I’m sorry.” Gene falters, not like an all-powerful genie at all. Faris comes back to himself with a blink, his wonder replaced with confusion. “I’m sorry for getting you locked up in F.O.W.L’s kooky prison,” he plows on, determined to get through the speech he’d rehearsed, even if he’s botching it now. “And for leaving you behind.”

“You did not—”

“C’mon,” Gene interrupts lightly, wishing he could smooth away the crease in Faris’ brow with his thumb and knowing how foolish the impulsive thought is. “I bailed, Faris. The second that I could.”

“I would never blame you for that,” Faris retorts, as passionate now as he is in all things. “You were imprisoned far longer than I, and the fighting was fierce. You are not a warrior. There is no shame in that.”

Gene raises his hands beseechingly. “Be that as it may, I still don’t feel great about it.” His heart is trying to crawl its way out of his throat and he very valiantly ignores it. This is the right call. He knows that. 

 “But since I didn’t think you’d accept my apology for getting you caught in the first place, well.” Gene isn’t supposed to meddle with his lamp’s fate but he’s been terrified to let it out of his sight for the last week, tucking it into the hammer space beneath his turban, behind his back, inside an impossibly deep pocket. He retrieves it now, the brass unadorned and gleaming, and sets it on the table between them. Faris leans back sharply. 

 “I’m bending the rules for you a little here, which I hope you appreciate.” The joke falls flat, and his smile threatens to follow. 

Faris stares at the lamp like it’s a snake poised to strike. “Gene,” he grits out, “what is the meaning of this?”

Gene spreads his hands, allowing sparks to fly from his fingertips, a magician unveiling his latest magic trick. 

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m giving you one bona fide genie wish.”  

4 months 2 weeks and 5 days ago 

When ranking previous masters of the lamp, the Phantom Blot lands somewhere in the middle. 

The best are the quick and unselfish; those who wish for safety and peace. The ones who bear his debut with reverence and humbly wish for an army to be diverted, a famine to end, a loved one to heal. Some wish for riches, but Gene doesn’t begrudge them. 

Those were simpler times, when the power of the jinn was still something to be feared, a secret and wondrous gift passed between the common people before it was lost to sands and time, over and over again for ages upon age. But through no fault or doing of his own, the lamp falls into the hands of the greedy and powerful, those whose hunger is without end and to whom cruelty is second nature. 

A jinn is limited in what they can do, bound by laws nearly as old as the earth, though Gene cannot remember who issued them. A jinn cannot kill, revive, or twist the mind into affection for another. Only the Papyrus of Binding, ancient and capricious, is capable of any and every horror untold. 

But Normals are smarter than they appear, and within every law is a loophole they can learn to exploit. A jinn cannot kill, but he can divert a river that drowns the enemy encampment. He can summon a plague that wipes out a city, a fire that consumes crop and beast, a poison for which there is no antidote. 

The very wisest wish for magic of their own, ridding them of the need for a jinn with limitations. 

The very worst come to him with magic already in their grasp, and wish for more. 

Through trickery, Merlock the Magician is made master of the lamp longer than anyone else in history, superseding the laws of the jinn. It’s an enspelled gem that allows him to finagle endless wishes out of the lamp, and wish he does, petty and calculating in turn. 

He wishes for immortality. He wishes for the ability to shapechange. He wishes for power. 

Merlock raises his hand and Gene builds him in a kingdom in the middle of a desert. His castle sprouts out of the sand like a putrid, thorny flower, black as tar and red as blood, a gaping wound against the land’s golden flesh. He wishes for a dam so he might control the water and all those who have need of it, their lives reduced to playthings in his mind. 

For two hundred years he forces Gene to do terrible things. 

Atlantis sinks and Pompeii burns, and he loses track of how many have died at his hand. While Gene could do nothing to stop it, he knows he is responsible. 

Then Merlock is overthrown by a band of rebels he underestimated and the lamp is abruptly and blessedly lost in the ensuing chaos. 

1,000 years later and Gene can still hear Merlock’s growl in his ear, the harsh grating of his laughter. “Genie, for my next wish…” he would say while villagers and kingdoms cowered at his feet. Gene remembers the feeling of his magic compelled to act, his hands twisting against his will as he was stripped of any and all control. 

He manages to avoid anyone too terrible for the next few centuries, dipping in and out of Normal awareness and memory. Television becomes a welcome distraction, a glimpse into a synthetic world of canned laughter, cardboard sets and clashing colors that fascinates him. He finds commercials hilarious, copious and grating, and if Collie Baba gave Gene anything to be grateful for, it was introducing him to Full House. 

The McDucks fight their way into the treasure room, and right away he knows that they’re different, each of them unlike any master the lamp has had before. There are so many of them, their passions and intentions so unique, that they have Gene in suspense waiting to see which of them will discover him first. This family has the power to make or break the world if they so choose, and for once that fascinates rather than frightens him. 

The wish, when it is made, is done by accident but heartfelt in spite of that.

“I wish we had normal family problems.” 

Gene’s never had a family before, so no one can’t blame him for having a little fun with it. 

He doesn’t do this often since it tends to give him a dime-sized headache smackdab in the center of his forehead, but his love of sitcoms gives him the idea to peek behind the veil between realities and flip through dimensions that are similar yet utterly alien to this one.  

Dimension D87 is a goldmine when it comes to outfit ideas, and Dimension D91 isn’t too shabby on that front either. Half of Dimension D96 is inhabited by flesh-faced monsters he wishes he could scrub his brain to forget about, but even they worm their way into his finished product. Gene blends all of these elements together along with a good helping of sitcom cliches, then sits back and lets his masterpiece unfold, and eventually tear itself apart. 

The McDucks continue to surprise him. 

Plenty of masters have tried to defy the lamp’s will in the past, often to disastrous results. Unmaking a wish is no small feat, especially one this large, thrashing in violent death throes as it fights to preserve itself. Genie magic, while simple in concept, is devastatingly complex beneath the surface. 

But another wish, another cry of “Shabooey!” and his carefully constructed world dissipates into nothing but smoke and an earworm of a theme song. But Genie remains ecstatic because these McDucks are a crazy lot, kicking and punching their way to freedom, intriguing him in a way Normals haven’t accomplished in a millennium. He’s eager to embark on another adventure, perhaps the first time since Merlock laid his clammy hands upon the lamp. 

Donald Duck, the father, brother, nephew, has one wish left. He could use it on something mundane, like replacing his garbled voice with the deep and sonorous one he gave himself in Quack Pack™. Or he could use it to rewrite history—stop a rocket ship from taking off on its disastrous maiden voyage, restore a broken family to a time before they were broken.

What Gene doesn’t expect is the mundanity of all mundanities. Donald Duck wishes for a family photo, preserving them just as they are, taken in a reality that no longer exists. 

Gene is...unmoored. 

Genie wishes are hardwon and rare, and in ancient times wars were fought over them so frequently that nearly all of the lamps were lost beneath the blood and dirt and rainfalls of their countless battlefields. They were never a personable lot, but Gene has grieved and accepted the fact that he may be the last of his kind. 

With all of that in mind, it is staggering that anyone would use, would waste, would take advantage of a near-unlimited wish in such a simple, underwhelming way. Gene has always found Normals entertaining at best and terrifying at worst, but for the first time he considers that it might not be as black and white as he imagined. The McDucks’ devotion to adventure had made them interesting, how it persisted in breaking through the characters he’d created for each of them. But their devotion to each other is just as strong, if not stronger. 

If he were less charitable, underwhelming is how Gene would describe the end of this episode. As it is, the word doesn’t do justice to the uncertainty and quiet longing that blooms within him like weeds when Donald looks at his family with love in his eyes and sees it reflected back at him. Gene’s moods come and go like quicksilver ever since Merlock; it’s easier not to feel anything too strongly for too long, lest the full weight of his grief and guilt drag him down like an anchor in a bottomless sea. But this family gets to him in a way he hasn’t allowed anything to in centuries.

Gene grants Donald Duck’s wish, but he knows the value of loopholes too and transports the entire bunch of them back to Duckburg before he does it. He’s rarely eager to jump back into the lamp but he’s painfully aware that he needs some alone time, which he won’t get if another McDuck makes a play for the lamp, this time with purpose. He figures that if they want genie wishes that badly then they can make the journey back to Collie Baba’s cave and hopefully give him enough time to muddle through this strange emptiness that’s opened up inside of him. 

But the McDucks don’t come back and before Gene can decide how he feels about that, he’s being kidnapped. 

Genies are beings of old magic given personhood: a name, a face, and a voice. As such, he’d been under the assumption that there’s nothing that can contain his magic—contain him— other than his lamp. 

The Phantom Blot proves him wrong. 

When he first enters the treasure chamber, Gene is under the impression that he’s just another adventurer. He morphs out of the darkness, a shadow given form, and while he’s clearly mortal flesh and bone, his glowing green eyes hint at something more. 

“Hey there tall, dark and handsome,” Gene says, curious and jaunty. No Normal weapon can harm him no matter how intimidating its wielder, or so he believes. 

The Phantom Blot raises the gauntlet on his right hand. Gene feels a tug. 

Strong, silent type, huh? He thinks but doesn’t get to say as he is sucked up like crumbs in a vacuum cleaner, his body losing substance as his magic is siphoned directly out of him. It’s nothing like returning to the lamp, which is always his choice unless the lamp’s master wishes it so. This is imprisonment, as his magic, body and soul, are sealed into a jar on the back of the Phantom Blot’s gauntlet. A magic-proof jar, he’s quick to learn when he can’t will himself out on a whim or even when he tries really, really hard. 

“Uh, hey, what’s the big idea?” he asks casually even while folded up like a pretzel. “Didn’t your mother tell you it’s rude to kidnap people without introducing yourself first?” 

The Phantom Blot remains silent as he storms out of Collie Baba’s cave, every boobytrap in their path already disabled. The desert beyond the entrance is cast into evening shades of indigo and towering sand dunes rise and fall into the distance like silent waves. There’s a helicopter waiting nearby, and the door slides open before Gene’s captor can reach it. 

A woman in a yellow and red uniform sticks her head out of the cockpit, a smile ready on her bright, open face. It’s such a deviation from the Phantom Blot’s imposing impassivity that Gene automatically beckons to her. 

“Hello there! Would you mind explaining to your large friend here that I’ll happily grant his three wishes, no pickled genie required!”

 The woman barely glances at him, directing her smiles at the Blot. “Great job, partner! See, I told you the glove’s enhancement would take.” 

“You were right, Pepper,” the Phantom Blot admits in a voice like stones being ground together. 

“Hellooooooooo!” Gene’s frightened now, and does nothing to hide it. As little freedom as he had with Merlock, at least he hadn’t been sealed away, ignored, utterly in the dark. “Can you guys hear me? Is this thing on? You wouldn’t happen to have my lamp out there, would you?” 

The Phantom Blot grunts as he climbs into the cockpit. “Be silent, genie. As of now, you are the property of F.O.W.L.” 

That’s all the explanation Gene gets until they arrive at the Lost Library of Alexandria with its rows upon rows of prison cells, and through his dawning horror he begins to understand. Neither the Phantom Blot nor the organization known as F.O.W.L. want the powers of the jinn for what they were intended. They have no interest in making wishes because the end result is unpredictable, potentially dangerous, and uncontrollable. Gene hears enough of the old buzzard’s rants to understand they’re a big club of control freaks and criminals who trust magic as much as they have the ability to wield it. 

Read: not at all. 

Within the Phantom Blot’s gauntlet, Gene is reduced to little more than a battery. A constantly replenishing, neverending, supply of magic to be used against their enemies, to capture and imprison them, all for the sake of some bogus new world order. 

It’s better and worse than existing under Merlock’s thumb. 

Merlock the Magician loved the sound of his own voice as much as he enjoyed the suffering of others. The Phantom Blot rarely speaks, least of all to Gene. Where Merlock was needlessly cruel, Blot is ruthlessly efficient. He wields Gene’s concentrated power as a blunt if effective weapon, against hero and villain alike: stunt pilots, Magica de Spell, Santa Claus. 

Gene quickly learns that there’s no resisting the gauntlet’s control, just as he has no hope of escaping its prison, or that of the stark cube of a cell he’s placed in when he’s not of immediate use. Time passes and Gene loses track of the days, loses track of himself, small, ignored and alone. He’s not granting odious wishes against his will because he no longer has a will, and he’s almost relieved as he begins to fade, his identity and voice dulling like unpolished silver. 

He was never able to explore the emptiness inside him that the McDucks had exposed, the nameless longing, because that emptiness is all he is now, a gaping hole torn open by guilt over hurting so many and being helpless to stop it. With the magic of the jinn on his side, nobody the Phantom Blot faces is ever powerful enough to defeat him. They can’t even begin to suspect the entity he’s contained as easily as a butterfly in a net, though Gene does try to warn them. 

He fails every time, until Djinn. 

It begins as all kidnapping missions do. Over the span of several days (or weeks at this point) he manages a few hours of restless sleep in his cell, made of the same magic-repelling glass as the container, before the Blot siphons him back into his gauntlet. 

For once they don’t travel back to the States in search of their quarry. Their flight’s so brief he’d be surprised if they even left Egypt. As the Blot waits in a dark alley beside a parked motorbike, Gene can make out the blackened remains of an apartment building across the way. Smoke is still rising into the crimson dusk, evidence of the recent fire that had engulfed it. Gene is reminded of the fires he started, the kingdoms he was forced to burn.

But there are no mourners gathered by the ruins because the blaze doesn’t seem to have claimed any lives. Families with ash on their clothing and faces but free of any injury embrace tearfully before they’re herded into neighboring homes and cars to seek shelter elsewhere. Among these groups there is one figure around which they congregate. 

The wolf is tall and slim, clad in black and darkest purples with a sword on his hip, but that doesn’t stop each and every one of them from clasping his hand, embracing him, or nodding deeply in gratitude. He is the one to usher the families to safety, leaning down to speak to an elderly egret, to pass a child into the waiting arms of their parent. Gene gets the impression that this wolf, fur and robes caked with soot, is the reason these families survived the flames that claimed their homes. 

The wolf begins to cough, perhaps on account of the smoke and someone, maybe a family member, maybe a neighbor, presses a bottle of water into his hands. He accepts it with a chagrined smile, still coughing into his sleeve, and downs half of it in one go. When he does leave a few moments later, the wolf heads toward the alley where the Phantom Blot continues to lurk. 

He recedes further into the shadows, intent on ambush as always. The darkness between buildings diverges sharply from the harsh orange light of the setting sun, two worlds starkly divided. But the moment the wolf steps into the threshold of shade, all traces of warmth leave his face and the cold, calculating stare of a warrior takes its place. 

He unsheathes his sword in one smooth motion, gaze locked onto where the Phantom Blot stands immersed in shadow. 

“Who are you?” he commands. “Why do you hide in the shadows?”

The Phantom Blot raises his gauntlet and fires with Gene’s magic before Gene can warn his next victim. His magic, made sickly and acid green, forks out like lightning toward its target. Just one blast, but it leaves Gene feeling weaker already. His magic wasn’t intended for this. 

Impossibly, the wolf deflects it with his sword. 

“What is your purpose here? I will not ask again.” He steps fully into the dark, his eyes briefly glinting green with reflected light. “If I have wronged you in some way, I would have you say so. If it is within my power I will do whatever I can to make amends.”

He speaks like a knight from legend, honorable and refined, and were it not for the rumble of cars nearby Gene could almost believe that they’ve stepped back in time. Gene has to raise his voice to be heard through the thick magic-repelling glass and across the alley, disabusing the knight of any notions of civility regarding this interaction. 

“You’re in the clear, buddy! He’s trying to kidnap you!”

“Silence,” the Phantom Blot hisses, breaking his own mission protocols. But both of them know there’s nothing he can actually do to shut Gene up. It’s just a matter of how quickly the Blot can drain his strength with blasts of magic or Gene tires of trying. The knight makes him want to keep trying.  

The wolf’s eyes widen, but his outrage isn’t even on his own behalf. “You dare threaten me, stranger, while holding an innocent captive? Reveal yourself!” Gene wouldn’t exactly consider himself innocent, but he appreciates the wolf’s concern all the same. 

He reaches into the folds of his robe and pulls out a vial of glittering dust. Gene can sense the magic coming off of it through the walls of his prison, even before the wolf smashes it on the ground. Purple faerie fire bursts into existence, forming a horizontal wall of flame between them before it spreads to line either side of the alley, throwing everything into sharp, flickering clarity. 

The Phantom Blot takes a startled step back, an ingrained Normal instinct, before regaining mastery of himself. Faerie fire is illusionary, harmless, and rare, though this knight wields it confidently. 

Just as confidently as his sword, which he raises once more as he charges through the flames at the Blot. 

The Phantom Blot retreats before firing at the wolf again. The wolf dodges one blast and deflects another, gaze roving across the flame-illuminated alley as if searching for something. “I cannot see you, my friend! Where are you, that I may free you from this creature?” 

If Gene had the energy, he’d laugh. While touched, this knight is in for his third surprise of the evening, and Gene can’t imagine him reacting well to it. Still, desperation lends him a voice. 

“Check the back of Mr. Executioner’s glove!” 

The next burst of green magic is batted away like the rest, but the wolf’s dark gaze follows it to its origin. Their eyes meet for less than two seconds, practically a lifetime, and Gene offers the wolf a weak grin from his cramped position. The horror in the wolf’s face is expected, as is his abrupt withdrawal, though Gene still feels a shred of disappointment. The wolf has defied his expectations until now and he’d begun to hope that maybe they could help each other out. Like Gene’s freedom, it’s not meant to be. 

“A genie,” the wolf murmurs, stunning Gene like a sledgehammer to the head. “How did you manage to capture a genie?”

The Phantom Blot lifts his gauntlet. “Like this.” 

Unlike before, the wolf does not raise his sword to deflect the blast of concentrated magic, and he falls to the ground where he stands. At the same time, Gene’s vision tunnels, his endurance failing, and he follows the wolf into darkness.

[heavenboy09]

Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 To You,  1 Of The Most Legendary Funniest American Actor Of The 1960s In Cinema 🎥  & Tv 📺 & More Of The Century

Lloyd was born on October 22, 1938, in Stamford, Connecticut, the son of Ruth Lloyd (née Lapham; 1896–1984), a singer and sister of San Francisco mayor Roger Lapham, and her lawyer husband Samuel R. Lloyd Jr. (1897–1959). He is the youngest of three boys and four girls, one of whom, Samuel Lloyd, was an actor in the 1950s and 1960s. Lloyd's maternal grandfather, Lewis Henry Lapham, was one of the founders of the Texaco oil company and Lloyd is also a descendant of Mayflower passengers, including John Howland. Lloyd was raised in Westport, Connecticut, where he attended Staples High School and was involved in founding the high school's theater company, the Staples Players.

He is an American actor. He has appeared in many theater productions, films, and on television since the 1960s. He is known for portraying Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy (1985–1990) and Jim Ignatowski in the comedy series Taxi (1978–1983), for which he won two Emmy Awards.

Lloyd came to public attention in Northeastern theater productions during the 1960s and early 1970s, earning Drama Desk and Obie awards for his work. He made his cinematic debut in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and went on to star as Commander Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Professor Plum in Clue (1985), Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Uncle Fester in The Addams Family (1991) and its sequel Addams Family Values (1993), Switchblade Sam in Dennis the Menace (1993), Mr. Goodman in Piranha 3D (2010), Bill Crowley in I Am Not a Serial Killer (2016) and David Mansell in Nobody (2021).

Lloyd earned a third Emmy for his 1992 guest appearance as Alistair Dimple in Road to Avonlea (1992), and won an Independent Spirit Award for his performance in Twenty Bucks (1993). He has done extensive voice work, including Merlock in DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp (1990), Grigori Rasputin in Anastasia (1997), the Hacker in the PBS Kids series Cyberchase (2002–present), which earned him Daytime Emmy nominations, and the Woodsman in the Cartoon Network miniseries Over the Garden Wall (2014).

Please Wish This Legendary Funny Actor Of The 1960s Of Cinema 🎥 & Tv 📺 & Other Forms Of Entertainment A Very Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊

YOU KNOW HIM

YOU LOVE HIM

& HIS VOICE IS ICONIC THROUGHOUT THE WORLD 🌎

THE 1 & ONLY

MR. CHRISTOPHER ALLEN LLYOD👴 AKA DOCTOR EMMETT BROWN OF THE BACK TO THE FUTURE TRILOGY 👴🚗🕐⏩ 

HAPPY 85TH BIRTHDAY 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 TO YOU MR. LLYOD & HERES TO MANY MORE YEARS TO COME #ChristopherLlyod #DocEmmettBrown #Taxi #BackToTheFuture #Anastasia #TheAddamsFamily #WhoFramedRogerRabbit #Cyberchase #SpiritHalloweenTheMovie

[duckapus]

Ducktales: The Key to Crazy

Now that Donald and the girls are back home, the McDucks, Sabrewings, and Team Darkwing are in Spoonerville for the weekend to visit a convention dedicated to the popular book series Kingdom Hearts. They came both to have a fun time and so Scrooge can meet with the author of the series for important business. Said author turns out to be Donald’s good friend Mickey Mouse, an adventurer in his own right who travels not for treasure, but for inspiration for his books. In fact, the first book in the KH series was loosely based on an adventure he, Donald and Goofy(who turns out to be at the convention too) went on when they were younger, racing against Magica De Spell herself for the Heart of the Lost Kingdom of Hollow Bastion. Said Heart turned out to be a big metal key with dormant magical properties no one was able to activate, which is actually on display at the convention and not why Mickey called them.

You see, on his most recent adventure he managed to find one of the towers of the legendary Yen Sid, master of magic and sworn enemy of the vile Merlock the Magician, both of which are thought to be long dead. Mickey intends to give Scrooge his map to the tower and the two artifacts he found there, the Hat of Animation and the Wasteland Brush, for safekeeping.

Meanwhile, a few other characters make themselves known. A trio of local teenagers are just arriving at the con; a brown duck with spikey hair in an outfit similar to Mickey’s, a tough looking silver eagle in a yellow shirt and jeans, and a pink robin with red hair in a white tank top and shorts; who are really just here because they’re fans of the book. There’s also Magica, who wants both the Key and the Hat(along with some revenge if she can swing it), washed-up Darkwing Duck actress turned notorious art thief Melody Amber aka Splatter Phoenix, who wants the Brush, and Negaduck, who as usual just really wants to kill Drake, though he won’t say no to a possible team-up with his old co-worker if she’s interested.

Magica and Phoenix do actually manage to get the hat and brush respectively thanks to Negaduck serving as a great distraction and Magica’s resemblance to the villain that’s based on her being a great disguise, and use their newfound power to torn the con’s various attractions into an army of darkness, which ends up scattering the heroes across the venue as they try to protect the fans and get the artifacts back. Notably, Donald and Goofy end up teamed up with the brown duck from earlier, who introduces himself as Sora, and in a pivotal moment in the battle it’s revealed that he’s the one capable of using the key’s magical properties, and now that they are active it’s bonded to him, giving him access to powerful magic and a new, superhero-y version of his outfit, which turns the tide and allows them to defeat the monsters and get back the hat, though Splatter Phoenix unfortunately gets away with the brush. Magica and Negaduck retreat to lick their wounds, having formed a surprisingly lasting alliance during the battle.

After everything’s calmed down, everybody meets back up and Sora introduces everyone to his two friends, Riku and Kairi. Having been inspired by seeing Lena and Darkwing in action, as well as taking part in the battle themselves, the three of them have decided to become a superhero team themselves, protecting Spoonerville with Goofy’s help. Meanwhile, Magica and Negaduck are at the former’s swamp hut “hideout,” where they’re approached by Mark Beaks with a very interesting proposal.

[genquerdeer]

Yeah but both Blade and Donald Duck are owned by Disney. If Batman can crossover with Elmer Fudd, why not Donald and Blade?

So what I'm saying is they SHOULD crossover. There is even a vampire villain in the Duckverse for them to fight!

Not 100% certain but the Ducktales villain Merlock is also listed in "Vampires" category on Disney wiki.

Out of curiosity: of the three crossover scenarios between Marvel/DC characters and non-Marvel/DC characters briefly mentioned in this post, only one is made up – the other two have actually happened in the printed comics.

[toxikku]

also been jumping around with the idea of an oc that was merlock’s apprentice! I don’t have a name for them just yet but they’re kinda immortal & trying to bring back their mentor. and i’m just here like: please don’t. merlock is terrible but they feel like merlock’s the only one who gets them, esp when they’ve been manipulated into thinking magic’s for nothing but evil. it gets intense when they find merlock’s book at mcduck manor. 👀

[popculturebuffet]

Ducktales: The Treasure of the Lost Lamp Movie Reviewcap! (Patreon Stretch Goal)

Hello all you happy people! And we have a special review today for two reasons. The first is that this is my second patreon stretch goal review, having hit the 15 dollar goal back in march thanks to my wonderful friend Emma, the same patreon whose responsible for the Green Eggs and Ham Reviews,  who helped me hit the 15 dollar goal.  As a result you fine people are getting three movie reviews each based on a Disney Afternoon Movie with Treasure of the Lost Lamp today, a goofy movie at the end of the motnh for  a weeklong tribute to my favorite dogmandadguy.  Extremley was going to be part of it but the length of this review convinced me otherwise, but I will be doing it this summer so keep an ear out. If you want to help me hit my next stretch goals do yourselve a favor and zip on over to my patreon YOU CAN FIND MY PATREON HERE. My next stretch goal at “OH Look 20 Dollars” would give everyone patreon and not, a monthly review of Darkwing Duck as decided by my patrons, reviews of BOTH season 2 mini series from Ducktales 87, introducing Fenton to the world and blighting it with Bubba before the 2017 series fixed him, and as a brucey bonus added last month a review of Danny Phantom the Ultimate Enemy. And if that wasn’t enough if you help me get to the goal after that at 25 unlocks another trilogy of disney film reviews, this time for the proud family and recess movie and the best kim possible movie, and dcom period, so the drama as well as Bryan Lee O’ Malley’s two stand alone graphic novels, lost at sea and seconds for you Scottaholics in the audience.

The other reason now the shilling’s done. is that the plan WAS to review this back to back with Treasure of The Found Lamp, to the point the orginal review had a whole thing about that, why it was delayed etc... but now that review’s been scrapped all together as something sudden and wonderful happened. After just kinda giving up someone came through with a translation of Della’s first apperance so presumibly i’ll be doing that as part of the build up to mother’s day, and since I still want ot do maternal instincts too, and already had to let the Floyd Gottfredson birthday special slide away as well... it had to go as I want to leave the only open space on the schedule for the lovely person who found the story for me. But this review is still done, i’m very proud of it so join me under the cut won’t you?

Behind The Scenes: Before I get into it i’d just like to note this article from SyFy Wire. It , along with articles I found via wikipedia citations, was an invaluable resource. 

The film was an experiment: It was an experiment to see if one of their tv properties could bring in theatrical money, to see if a movie made on a cheaper budget and still rake in decent money, to see if a film could be made being outsourced to several diffrent places, and to see what one of those places, their recently aquiried french stuido, could handle this kind of work. 

The film, if succesful would be the first of Disney’s MovieToons line, a series of films based on their shows. As you can tell by the fact only this movie and Goof Troop happened and the Movie Toons label wasn’t applied to that one it very much failed. While the film was warmly recevied by people who liked the show general audiences didn’t turn out for it. As a result the MovieToons label was scrapped, future projects with it were canceled.. but the stellar work put in by the french stuidio lead to it perserviering for several more decades and lead to them working on the Goofy Movie, which we’ll get to later this month but needless to say was a MUCH bigger hit with a much bigger budget. 

As for why the film failed... I have two theories. THe first is that parents were stupid back then and didn’t want to pay to see something on the big screen they could see on tv’s. This is a stupid mentality to me as generally a movie of a tv show puts in a ton of extra effort and usually goes bigger and dosen’t go home. It’s a likely theory given most liscened films of the era didn’t do quite well, with all three hasbro films tanking. And look I get Transformers the Movie is cheesy and killed a lot of people’s childhood toys, but damn if it ain’t aweosme.. and also something I need to cover at some point. Thankfully this died out by later in the 90′s with Rugrats getting a hugely succesful if flawed film, a better sequel and a third one that was also a crossover with the wild thornberries. 

And even now in 2020 we’re getting the Loud House and Rise of the TMNT movies sometimes this summer, we were SUPPOSED to have gotten the bobs burgers movie this summer but arne’t because Disney is being a dick about it.

And we got a phineas and ferb movie last year. With this trend hopefully thsi means we’ll get a Ducktales 2017 movie at some point since season 4 left a huge sequel hook laying right there to grab for a feature film.  One final note: The film was conceptually thought up as a 5 part serial like “Treasure of the Golden Suns”, “Catch as Cash Can”, “SuperDucktales” and “Time is Money, something that DOES show as the movie weirdly has act breaks. In a feature film. Yup. 

The Guest Cast:

I won’t go into the full cast since I’ve sung Alan Young and Russi Taylor’s praises PLENTY on this blog before, and I plan to go into Beakly and Launchpad’s actors when they show up in the pilot movie. But i’d be remiss if i didn’t talk about our three guest actors for our three new parts. 

First up is Merlock voiced by legend and if I had a hall of fame, hall of famer Christopher Lloyd.. I need to get me one of those. Lloyd is of course known for playing Doc Brown in back to the future but has done countless other films, voicework, and other good stuff. Among his MASSIVE filmography includes The Back to the Future Trilogy (Already mentioned it but it bears repeating), Star Trek III, Who Framed Roger Rabbit as the pants destroyingly terrifying Judge Doom, The Addams Family duology as fester, a role rip torn would ironcially play for the animated series made to captalize on said movie, Hey Arnold! The Movie, The Oogieloves in The Big Ballon Adventure (Look everybody needs money sometimes okay?), and Art of the Deal: The Movie, which was not, thankfully an ego filating nightmare made by trump himself but a film made by funny or die parodying his terrible book and having Llloyd return as Doc Brown. TV Wise he’s known for Taxi, Back to the Future the Animated Series, Cyberchase and he most recently popped up on Big City Greens. How I missed that ep I.. do know as I haven’t watched season 2. Gonna fix that later this month. Lloyd is utterly awesome, a great guy and thankfully still alive at the time of this writing, so I was happy to have him here. 

Less familiar to me but still known is Rip Taylor, a comedian known for his flamboyant unique way of speech and his marvelous mustache. He showed up in things occasionally and always seemed like the nicest guy and his passing in late 2019 truly is sad. He does a terrific job here but more on that in a moment. 

Finally we have Richard Libertini, a comedian I never really saw in anything besides this who according to IMDB was most famous for his ablility to do a foreign accent. I REALLY hope all of them aren’t as horribly racist as this one. We’ll.. get to that in a sec as it’s time for the plot!

A Treasure Uncovered:

We open our film gorgeously. The animation is great in the film, having some rough edges I chalk up to the film’s hectic production, the studio being new at working at disney properties, and the film not being meant for HD. That being said a few rough spots here and there aside.. the film looks ungodly gorgeous. Like most theatrical films based on a cartoon it takes an already great style and makes it look great. It feels like a more fluid evolution of the cartoons look and it’s a shame we didn’t get more movies in this style for both this show and others, ESPECIALLY Darkwing Duck. Can you imagine a Darkwing Duck movie with this lush animation? Hopefully we’ll get one eventually. 

So our heroes are going to somewhere in the Middle East. That’s.. that’s all wikipedia gives me and all the film gives me. As usual Scrooge is after treasure in this case the Treasure of Collie Baba, the greatest thief there ever was based obviously off Ali Baba from 1001 nights and that one Beastie Boys song. 

It’s here we find the WORST thing about the film, the thing that makes this a hard one to watch depsite otherwise being pretty good, and that makes my skin crawl knowing i’m a white man and a BUNCH of white guys, Ducktales series creator who did the voice casting for this character, the writers who wrote him, the direector disney them fucking selves who thought this was okay. 

The film has some horrible steroytping. It starts with a bunch of backgorund guys surronding Scrooge, with crooked teeth and steotypical voices. This on it’s own is odious. 

It somehow gets worse. Then we meet one of our antagonists. We meet Dijon. 

This Fucking Guy 

Djon is horribly offensive reminding me of other such luminaries in being ungodly offensive yet somehow getting put to film as Jar Jar Binks (With all respeect to his poor actor Ahmed Best, this is not his fault), Rob Schinder as a Sterotypically asian preist, Skids and Mudflap, Rob Schinder as a sterotypically mexican bandit, The Whitewashed cast of The Last Airbender, and Rob Schinder as a stereotypically asian preist. What i’m saying is Djon is an AWFUL, horribly offensive character.. and that Rob Schinder should be shot up into space, not to watch cheesy movies, he’s not funny enough for that, but instead to be sent to a satlitie that’s liveable, but also filled to the brim with spring loaded boxing gloves. Just tons of boxing gloves that feel like getting punched by a heavewight boxer all hidden... they could hit his legs, his face, his nuts, his face and his nuts, the point is he’s in constnat pain unless he moves carefully. 

And lest you think i’m exaggerating for starters this is his design. 

It just screams “vaugely but sterotpyically middle eastern” along with cowardly. The fact he’s also a literal rat is just the icing on the cake made of broken glass, shrapnel and broken DVD’s of Transformers; Revenge of the Fallen. They say if you eat a reveng eof the fallen dvd John Tutoro appears at the foot of your bed and watches you while you sleep.. and by they I mean me. It was a bad bet. I got rid of him with some insese and a bribe of five dollars. 

Oh but that’s just design.. when he talks it’s MUCH worse. His voice is like if they took Apu from the simpsons and said “This but MORE offensive”, and his perosnality is WORSE. He’s a thief.. and not in the endearing loveable rogue way but he’s a pick pocket and a running “Gag’ is that he’ll often grab eveyrthing within reahc. As the deisgn shows he’s a coward running at every opportunity. Oh and to top it all off he’s the willing servant of the white coded, given all ducks in this series are white coded and voiced bby white actors, big bad. And the actor is naturally VERY white to make this cocktail of offensivness so complete that if Disney ever got rid of this film I GUARANTEE the republcian party would be running in with accusations of cancel culture gone amok and never shutting up about this like they did the muppets. Which for the record THEY DIDN’T CANCEL THEM, YOUR POINT IS ILLEGITMATE, THEY JUST WANTED TO BE SENSTIVE YOU GHOULS. 

I do have a reason for bringing up Disney’s content warnings... most damming of all given just how DEEPLY uncomfortbale this character is.. there isn’t one for this movie. I double checked: There isn’t even wanring notes on the website. It’s just.. on there. And given just how ghastly a sterotype Djon is.. that’s not right. Seriously they DID put them on certain episodes of the show, theyk now this sort of thing is wrong and they done wrong.. but for NO reason they haven’t done so for a film released 31 years ago. Around the same time as the series and just offensive as that show at it’s worst if not more so. This is flatly inexcusable.. par for the course for Disney’s incompetence but still horribly furstrating, disgusting and shameful.. which has been the theme of the last three days really. I expect better because when it comes to putting that warning label on this stuff, they usually are better. First the scheduling mixup and now this. You already do a handful of things wrong Disney why add this to the list?!

It’s just draining not only to run into another Disney Fuckup after a weekend of dealing with one of their worst in recent memory, but just to watch Djon. To see this horrible caractrure saunter onto the screen and go on with his harmful schtick, to see that THIS is what Ducktales 87 reduced non white people to more often than not.  It’s remarkable just how throughly and awesomely Frank and Matt completely and totally reversed this. Instead of horrible sterotypes in the reboot, we got TONS of loveable people of color, an endearing latino hero, a smart african american buisness woman who takes no shit but is still a consumate professional, and an egyptian HERO with an intresting story and a strong moral code instead of this horrible reminder that racisim in media was such an afterthought not ONE person brought this up during the scyfy wire stuff or in any inteview i’ve seen. No one cared. Djon was POPULAR enough that he got three episode sin the series. THREE FUCKING EPISODES. This film could be GOOD.. but it’s just so bogged down EVERY FUCKING TIME this artists interpreitation of what Tucker Carlson sees when he looks at a middle eastern person I had to pause to compose myself and had to take a break writing this review to avoid tyiping this in all caps and using the phrase YOU RACIST MOTHERFUCKERS every other sentence. And again i’m white, I get this is second hand offensiveness.. I do... but it dosen’t mean I can’t be offended other white people were so callous about other cultures behaviors this happened.

And what makes me feel worse.. is that I just sorta... never thought about white people voicing non white characters. Things like this I noticed sure, I realize now part of the reason I didn’t like this movie the first time I saw it was this alex jones version of a looney tune, but I do feel shame for not noticing or caring long before this. Sure I loved it when a character of color got played by a person of color.. but I didn’t realize just how deep that problem was and how LONG it went on for before the outcry post george floyd and the call to action lead to most shows still going course correcting. It’s why stuff like this extra botehrs me: because THIS was just as okay at the time. No one blinked twice about this and odds are the creators involved still haven’t. And that.. that’s just terrible and it hurts to think about and  I still have most of the movie to go.  

The Pyramid of Peril:

So we do get a gorgeous unvewling scene of a box Scrooge found out about from Collie Baba’s horde that should lead them to the treasure. This scene reminds me of Indina Jones.. and I bring this up because the poster was specifically made to mimick an indinia jones poster, to the point of getting drew struzan to do it. THe creator of Ducktales objected..l but I do not get WHY. While I”m not sure if he had yet, Speilberg flat out admits the Carl Barks comics were an inspiration for Indina Jones, with the iconic bolder chase coming from a similar scene in one of Barks Stories. Gotta cover that too. So yeah I don’t get not wanting an indina jones style poster when both were inspiried by the same work and it’s just simple logic and it looks so neat. Thank you. 

Scrooge finds seemingly just clothes.. and a map. Jeff Dunham’s Most Racist Puppet reports to his master, Merlock. Merlock is a.. meh villian. Christopher Lloyd does try.. but Lock is your standard evil overlord wants to take over the world type. He dosen’t have much depth, or personality and only his style saves him from dragging the film down along with Dana Carvey’s most racist disguise in master of disguise. He does have a deent shape shifting gimick and being played by Christopher Lloyd means he’s acted TREMENDOUSLY. Alan Young was apparently in awe watching him work and that’s wonderful to hear. The guy did his best. Weirdly Merlock would show up in tons of other works, mostly video games.. but even weirder he NEVER showed up in ducktales 2017. Both Djon and Gene would, Djon thankfully renamed we’ll get to all of that tommorow thank god. I need it after this. But Frank has outright said they didn’t use Merlock because there simply wasn’t anything they could do with him they couldn’t dow ith magica. My likely guess is the might of found a way to revamp him EVENTUALLY, it’s not like radical revamps weren’t there thing come on, they just had way more stories with Magica and didnd’t get around to it before the show was canceled. Just make him some sort of evil god or something. it’s what I might do. There’s a lot of angles with him. Though I would’ve still gotten christopher lloyd back. I mean most of the recasting is good but he’s still alive and deserved a better shot at things. 

So Merlock sends Djonn to go with scrooge as his guide to find the treasure, as there’s something of imense power within it. And I gotta ask WHY does Merlock need a minon. No really. This isn’t a situation like reboot magica where he’s trapped in another realm. He can shapeshift into any animal. We only see him use falcon, rat, cockroach and bear but theoritically he can become anything and bear alone is still a LOT. Why does he need this sterotype even other sterytopes ar eashamed of? The film dosen’t NEED Djonn. Just let Christopher Lloyd monologue and leave this post 911 propogranda cartoon at home. 

So our heroes nad rejected jar jar prototype head into the desert, and seemingly find nothing before finding a small pyramid all while Merlock follows desecretley as a mighty hawk. 

Scrooge makes the boys and Djon dig... because they clearly forgot the “work hard” part of his ethos. 

Our heroes unveil the pyramid... and while Merlock SAYS he searched the desert and I get it’s hard to see thourgh all of that.. the dude is immortal, had decades to search and had Mickey Rooney there on standby to force him to go comb the desert. I have an artist rendering of that hang on

So our heroes enter the pyramid and it goes.. really how you’d expect: there’s a bunch of traps our brave explorers have to pass, the boys minintpret a juinor woodchuck saying about loosing your marbles to mean using the ones they actually have which geninely comes in handy as they trip the traps and Rob SChinder as a carrot stumbles into one. Also launchpad is wearing a hawaiin shirt and shades. This has no baring on the plot, but it does bring the movie up a notch in my book and I question why the reboot never used this outfit. Then again they also never properly used Donald’s Quack Pack Outfit (Which bad show or not, is objectively awesome), or his Quack Shot Indiana Jones Riff Outfit, so  it’s not like there isn’t a presdecnt for not giving a character a cool costume change from a previous medium. I really should do a top 12 missed opportunities list for the 2017 cartoon.. the ideas for stuff are really piling up. 

OUr heroes eventually find the treasure which has insidiously clever security the more I think about it: at first I thought it had none, just a pit with some... scorpions? I mean their supposed to be but they look like they crawled out of the same stygian hole in the sky Doofus crawled out of. And if your asking me “wait which Doofus” the answer is both. Both these abominations crawled out of a stygian hole in the sky.

But the treasure is on a platform surrounded by scoprions with the only way out being the trap filled way they came in. Unless someone comes in with a full team and a bunch of lootin sacks, they aren’t getting out with EVERYTHING. They can steal SOME of the treasure but there’s no way to get any signifigant portion... and the team thing itself is an issue, something Collie defintely predicted being a thief himself: while some thieves can work well as a team, hence why we have four oceans movies 3/4 damn good, and for the record 12 is the bad one, 8 is how you do a soft reboot and a female led reboot right, a good chunk of professional crooks will turn on each other or try and swinldle... and tha’ts dangerous in a trap filled temple but hey some criminals ain’t so smart.  If they all were Rudy Gulliani wouldn’t have two razzies for preparing to pull his pants down, and have waved his phone around on tv like a dare for future adminstrations to arrest the shit out of him would he? 

But Scrooge has his family so they get loading. But not before Webby finds the lamp. Not knowing about it Scrooge has no intrest in it, but Webby does. We also get a really simple but hilarious gag where SCrooge dickers over the idea for a second.. before Webby picks up a Jeweled tiara to possibly take instead. The best gags to me are often the ones that just let the character’s perosnalities take the lead and bounce off each other. It’s why when I reviewed the four lilo and stitch crossovers recently I harped on character interaction as their biggest weakness: it’s what MAKES a good work for me. It’s why my faviorite comics and shows often follow a loveable group of disfunctional misfits. I like a group of big personalities who despite in theory should NOT be able to work making it work anyway. And it’s honeslty what’s made Scrooge last so long: Scrooge on his OWN is awesome.. but iwth the boys, donald, and in the case of this series and the reivival Webby and Launchpad, with people to bounce off of who he contrasts heavily with, from Launchapd’s buffonery to Webby’s inehrent sweetness in both versions, to the boys genuine honesty and sense of adventure.... it makes him truly stand out. He’s a great character on his own, don’t get me wrong.. but it’s the people around him that give him chances to show WHY. A good character on it’s own is fine and dandy.. a good character with other good characters around them is where it gets truly special. 

Merlock naturally bursts in and in a VERY Black Heron move needlesly outs what micheal bay sees when he closes his eyes as a bad guy... no really he grabs the guy with his talons as he captures the treasure and reveals he’s a bad guy. I don’t even get why keep Djonn alive. He’s done all Merlock possibly could’ve needed and Merlock is ruthless... this makes no sense and only happens because they need Djonn for later in the plot.

Our heroes barely escape, rafting out on the platform itself in a thrilling sequence.. but it’s the one right after that catches my attention. Scrooge utterly defeated, having searched for this treasure for forty years and unresponsive to everyone else. The anmation, coupled with the incomprable Alan young’s acting makes this the highlight of the film for me. Beneath the armor of wealth and skill.. is only a poor old man who just lost something he’s been chasing after most of his life. Scrooge tries his hardest not to be vunerable and both shows and the original comics all use that so when he truly is devistated like this, and i’ts belivible since this treasure is a personal goal of his and as someone who has had things that they seek out specifically, loosing them always hurts. It hurts to ALMOST reach a goal only to have it crumble out under you

But while this alone is good.. what’s next makes it great. Webby sweetly offers up the lamp. Scrooge turns it down, and her genuine gesture reinvgorates him and reminds us of who he is “I’ll find it if it takes another 40 years”> Scrooge may be bitter, mean and selfish a lot of the time.. but deep down, he’s a good man and one who will not give up, and a momentary setback can only stop him so long as long as he has his family to remind him of who he truly is.. and what’s truly important. It’s genuinely sweet and to me is also a reminder of why 87 Webby is a good character: Shes’ not perfect, her main personality trait is often Girl Sterotype”.. but she’s a genuinely sweet small child with a huge heart. It’s telling that while 17′ Webby is almost completely diffren,t and far better, that heart remains her biggest strength. Sure her reboot self could kill a man nad no one would ever find the body, but it’s her heart and empathy that makes that possible and makes her Webby.  That inherent loving nature is what makes Webby webby wether she’s a toddler having a tea party or a tween getting ready to intergoate a guy with a meat tenderizer while saying ‘Cute girl stuff”. 

Gene Genie Let’s Himself Go:

It’s a few days later and this is the point where it REALLY becomes obvious this was written as a bunch of episodes. Though to the film’s credit while it does ake this feel like a compliation movie as a result... it dosen’t hamper the film’s quality, condiment from Rush Limbaghs’ hot dog stand does that just fine, but once you notice it it’s impossible to unotice it. Weirdly though it seems chunked up into four episodes rather than the usual five, likely cutting down an episode, though I can’t see where they cut out material frankly if they did and i’ts just as likely they woudl’ve had to make one to fill in the space.

So Scrooge is in a mood, being grumpy with his secretary Mrs. Featherly, quackfaster in all but name, and having to be sent home. So while Duckworth goes to fetch him Webby polishes her treasure at long last readying for a tea party, something the boys roundly reject because their sexist little twits and swo were the writers or executies who assumed all little boys act the same. It’s easily my biggest pet peeve with the series as a whole: anytime this crops up with the boys it turns them into the worst dicks imaginable. It’s telling this, being mean about her wantin ga tea party with her surrogate brothersi s TAME. Normally they’ll say she can’t do things because she’s a girl or mock her hobies outright instead of just be mildly dickish. And while she dosen’t look much younger Webby is VERY CLEARLY, in this series anyway, supposed to be say 5 or 6 to the boys 8-10. 7 at most. SHe’s a small child and while it is realistic for older kids to bully younger ones, it’s not fun to watch. It’s why I get annoyed at all the big sibling bully characters.. some work, but most aren’t fun to watch because there’s nothing funny or intresting about it. It’s the same deal here. 

Thankfully that quickly goes away as the lamp moves when Webby rubs it and does so again to prove it did move. Huey finishes it and we’re introduced to Gene, the best part of the film.  Gene is a Genie and he takes a second to dart around before messing with the appliances in the kitchen, as he was last around during the time 1001 Nights Came About. Cleverly though, and so we thankfully don’t have 80 dozen fishout of water jokes that have already been done before. As you can probably guess i’m not a huge fan of time travel fish out of water stuff. Now from another dimensoin or planet, i’m on board with with Star Vs, Steven Universe and Sym-Bionic Titan being great examples of this, as is the comic resident alien. (Despite having the wonderous Alan Tuduk the show sounds way more mean spirited and misses the entire point of the comic as given by the author in the credits, i.e. that the alien is supposed to NOT be a threat and just be gently waiting for a ride) The inverse is also good with Amphbia and owl house, taking a human and plopping them into our world. But time travel stuff just usually runs the same beats of “look at the shiny thing” and what not. The only time i’ve sene something SIMILAR work is with thor where their society is SIMILAR to vikings time but still it’s own thing.. it also gave us a classic gag in..

So yeah i’m glad they dropped this and instead had a clever way around it: Gene reads the encylopedia at the mansion. Granted it’s Scrooge so I don’t know how current it is and given this came out in 1990 thus HOW racist it is. It’s not a questoin of IF it was, but how much.

But having caught up the kids confront him with the fact he has to grant wishes. This lamp runs on what I now realize are Aladdin rules: Whoever currently holds the Lamp is the Genie’s master, they only get three wishes, and that dosen’t reset if it changes hands. The only big diffrence from the usual is Gene dosen’t have to TELL them about the wishes like Genie did, and Gene very begrudginly agrees to it. He also seem’s phsyically pained when doing so. 

So since all 12 know about him, each of the kids gets a wish though it seems unfair with HDL. Their one person, they shoudln’t get 9 wishes just because their brain is spread out over three bodies. 

This film continues the weird simliarties to Aladdin by attaching rules though they instead come up as a result of our heroes talking rather than the Genie just flat out tleling them: both share the “you can’t wish for more wishes” thing, a common rule in these stories and usually only broken nowadays as a clever twist as the rule is SO common place, not having it is a twist. But it is there for a reason: to limit the sheer power of a reality warping wish. The wishes can also only go so far. In a nice line, when Huey, Dewey or Louie suggests wishing for peace one earth, Gene says “No pipe dreams’ He can’t bend people or reality on THAT scale. He can bend reality as we find out, but it’s smaller scales like turning someone’s possesions over ot someone else, warping the bin into a castle, or bringing inanitamte objects to limited life. Still HUGE feats worth of a genie, so Gene’s power isn’t so nerfed it’s unusuable, but it does explain why his evil pervious ownder Merlock, more ont hat in a bit too, didn’t just wish to have eternal dominon over the earth or something. Gene can do just about anything but he can’t change the world on a fundemental level. 

And I do LIKE having rules in wished based stories like this, I chalk it up to growing up with Fairly Odd Parents... though they eventually went too far in the oppsoitie direction, pulling rules out of their ass to suit the episode, instead of simply having some very standard, very understandable rules that still pose challenges but don’t outright cheat so the episode can happen. 

So Webby does her first wish.. and wishes for a Baby Elephant, something Gene is against as he prefers they keep the wishes small: otherwise he gets found out, and the fight over him begins. So one of the boys wishes him away. Or Webby does. Point is it’s gone though not before Beakly sees it and Scrooge smells something is up. Our heroes try to hide gene, but gene thankfully simply dresses up like a modern kid and thus is able to pass as a friend of there staying for the night. 

So with the rules established and what not the kids find a clever solution: they simply go a ways away from the mansion into the woods, far enough from town to avoid any suspcion, and same iwth the mansion and just wish for all kinds of stuff: a giant bunch of ice cream toys, standard kid wish fufillment but it’s nice... in part because the kids treat Gene like one of them. Wihle they STARTED asking him about the wishes, this starts the bonding process. Soon he will be part of the hive mind.. SOON. 

Until then though after using another wish to make scrooge not mad at them for coming home late and missing dinner, that night we find out Gene’s backstory.... and it’s an utter tearjerker. As it turns out Merlock wants him back because he’s Gene’s former master and as you’d guess.. it was NOT a happy existnace, used contstnatly to do horrible things with no power to stop himself. Pompeii and Atlantis were both directly Merlock’s fault and it was only Collie Baba stealing the lamp that put an end to his hell. He also answers the two obvious questions botht he audeiince and the boys have: How the hell is Merlock still alive and shoudln’t he be out of wishes then? The first is simple. Unlike pretty much every DBZ Villian whose WANTED to do so, Merlock wished for immortality first chance he got, taking the Zamasu route instead and thus leaving him free. 

As for the wishes thing it turns out his amulet, in adition to shapeshifting, also gives him extra wishes becuase fuck it. 

But the boys sweetly offer to protect him. 

The next day, Apu’s Cousin let’s Merlock know the maps in the mansion and Merlock has him help sneak in with Merlock taking rat form. This backfires as Mrs. Beakley notices the form and chases after him with a broom

Meanwhile Webby has her tea party with Gene after he and the boys played cops and robbers earlier, and he’s bored.. though nicely not because it’s a girly thing, but because the stuffed animals aren’t alive and she naively has him fix that. This leads to 

Which sadly is jsut scrooge vs a duck toy but admit it, you want that movie for Disney Plus yesterday. Call Charles Band Disney. CALL CHARLES BAND! 

Whelp Scrooge Still Sucks:

Scrooge takes for a turn for the obnoxious in the next part, but i’ts fine by me as it’s part of the plot. Naturally this reinactment of Cult of Chucky has lead to Scrooge finding out about the Genie. To his credit, Scrooge is tactical about his wishes. As said by the Duck himself “I could wish for a diamond, no the world’s biggest dimaond, no ten world’s biggest diamond, no a diamond mind, no the MINING INDUSTRY!”

The sheer power this gives him is TERRIFYING, both because of his status.. and because unlike the kids who all wished for simple kid stuff and used up their wishes quickly, he both gets how much he can do with this and could conquer the world economy if he truly wanted to. 

The obnoxious part comes in as he treats Gene as not a person, figuring he’s just there and forces him into the lamp despite the kids protests after Gene grants his first wish: Collie Baba’s treasure. It also dosen’t feel like the wishing nor him using the lamp to get the tresure back goes against his hard work ethos: for the former while he is getting all this magically, he’s still having ot use his wits to get the most out of it, and he did earn the lamp itself square. For the latter, he already earned the treasure square too and had it stolen. He’s onlyg etting back what’s by all rights HIS. Granted he plans on giving most of it up for a tax break but still it’s his by right. 

However the reason his assholery works is twofold: first it’s Scrooge. While he’s not a TERRIBLE person, in the comcis and this cartoon he isn’t a GOOD person either. He DOES have a good heart and will usually do the right thing, but his first instnct is always to get more money and to be a cantakerous old bastard to eveyrone and everything. While he’s subtly grew out of “I hate eveyrone and everyone hates me” as his guiding principal, it’s still his defualt reaction to most situations. But he first relents by letting Gene attend the party, part of why the Collie Baba thing stung so bad was that he’s told the historical society he’d get the treasure for years only to come back empty handed, if shrunken. But he still manages to have a good time while Asok and Merlock infiltrate.. well I’mRunningOutofINsultingNIcknamesCanYouTell steals the silverware. Yes... that.. that really happens. 

Look we’re almost done, i’m almost free of this racist mummies curse. Let’s continue. Gene sees melock and freaks and drags SCrooge with him and while at First Scrooge is cranky...

No but now I want a Donkey Kong Country crossover too dammmit. And to talk about those games. Another thing for the list. But Scrooge is righ tot be a bit surly...

Okay now your just pushing it. As Gene whisked him away without telling him anything other than vauge worries... but then he gets a full idea of why Gene’s so terrified when Merlock shapeshifts into a bear and starts breaking the door down. Eh, could be worse. 

Gene shrinks them to escape and Merlock leaves thinking they fled but leaves Skids Minus Mudflap to go look for them. Scrooge sneaks out but bumps into a cart running from the photo you see when you look up stereotype on google. I mean I assume.. let’s try it. 

Huh you know I HOPED but I never expected... 

So Google Proving My Point plans to give his lamp to the master because of his weird Torgo-Esque obession with helping a man who clearly wants to murder him but takes his sweet time doing so because plot, and Gene figuring this COULDN’T POSSIBLY go as bad as Melock getting him urges the dummy to keep him and make his own wishes.

This goes about as well as you’d expect....

Wiped Out With A Wish:

Scrooge returns home to find Watto has wished to take his poessions, fortune, everything and Scrooge gets thrown in jail for breaking into his own house. We get two great moments back to back. The first is Scrooge lamenting loosing his fortune in jail, and realizing the sheer power and risk of the lamp, especially since he worked hard to earn it, every bit of it.. and Sam Wilson’s 70′s Backstory came in and took it all in an instant. 

The second is Scrooge’s family coming for him, including Launchpad , Beakly and Webby obviously and bailing him out. Though Beakly is UNGOLDLY annoying in this scene, sobbing hysterically and adding nothing and it’s not nearly as funny as the  film thinks. Turns out Goliath getting buried wrapped in chains threw them out. 

Scrooge takes a bit to rebound from all this.. but eventually realizes something: he knows the security of the bin inside and out. He had it put in after all. So it’d be easy enough to break in. So they gotta break in to break out the lamp, undo this nightmare, and END THIS MOVIE. Seriously this review has taken two days  as is I do NOT want to miss my invincible review. 

So they break into the bin, and it’s a tightly paced Scene, scrooge going in one way while the kids go the other and we even get a nice callback as the marbels come in handy to get past one of the traps. It’s just a good scene. it’s only real flaw is that Launchapd just sorta disappears as does Duckworth despite the fact their in a plane, and the bin later gets turned into a floating castle. Kinda a plot hole to not have Launchpad crash in to save htem just saying. 

Scrooge eventually does get to Djonn, whose been ignoring the imminent threat of Merlock while Gene sweats it out... and this backfires horribly as Merlock hitched a ride as a roach (Though there was a hilarious scene of him getting fried constnatly by lasers when Louie went through a laser hallway, as while Louie had the directions, it dind’t take into account passengers on your head. 

So Merlock remanifests in full gets the Lamp and unleashes his wrath on Tin Tin in the Congo and turns him into a wild pig. 

Not you sweetie. He then forces Gene to turn the castle into a fortress and float it back to his home in parts unknown. It’s a DAMN cool scene with impressive and horrifiing animation as the bin melts and crumbles into thte castle and the kids barely make it up the stares as they shift and disolve. Really top notch stuff.

Scrooge stands up to Merlock... and this naturally goes poorlyw ith Gene begging Merlock not to respond.. and Merlock having him blow scrooge off the top of the forgtess storm eagle style, though scrooge understands. And this is the true reason why scrooge being a dick didn’t bother me so much. Because it helps create a great contrast between him and Merlock. Both thought of Gene as a tool rather than a person.. but Scrooge grew to realize he was wrong and what he was dealing with wasn’t some magical goodies creator.. but a child forced to constantly grant wishes, in sheer agony to do so no less, likely so sick of it because again and again and again people used him as a slave to get what they wanted and to hell with what Gene wanted. He realized he was terrible for making this poor boy into his slave simply because that’s his job. In contrast Merlock could give no shits and is a malevolent monster who glefully uses Gene despite the pain the wishes put him through and his protests. It’s why Gene is the best part.. he’s  athroughly likeable, throughly inncoent character with tons of personality and a truly tragic and horrifying backstory and Rip Taylor acts the hell out of every scene with the guy. 

Thankfully the marbles come in handy one last time and Huey, Dewey or Louie snipes the lamp away and a struggle for it insues between Scrooge and Merloc mid air. it’s fucking awesome.. and it get sbetter in how scroogewins. He simply gets rid of Merlock’s amulet, taking it then throwing it. Grante dhe COULD’EVE used it for unimited wishes.. but it was too risky to do that and as we’ll see in the ending , Scrooge realized the Lamp was too powerful to keep around for much longer and too much of a tempting target for his rogues.. not that we see them this movie as the crew wanted it to bea ccesaible and thus kept hte cast to the main cast from season 1 and just made new vilians and a new supporting character, but still. 

He does use his second wish though to undue the damage Merlock had done and the bin and clan mcduck are returned to duckburg in good condition.

Time for our ending, which is genuinely and wholly touching. With the lamp too dangerous to use Scrooge considers just sending it to the earth’s core, which horrifies the kids as it’d mean Gene would be trapped there forever... if the molten lava iddn’t just outright destory the lamp and probably kill him. But Scrooge.. isn’t the bastard he likes to potray himself as. Instead he makes Gene into a real boy. He gives the poor kid HIS wish, which designrates the lamp and undoes all the spells... so Merlock is PROBABLY dead but he does return for some games so maybe not? 

And so we end on two things: Gene happily playing cops and robbers with the boys finally free.. and Birth of A Nation grabbing all the loot he can in his patns and running off. Ha ha ha thank god i’m done with this prick. And no I will not be looking at his ducktales episodes unless I have to. 

Final Thoughts:

This movie is OKAY. It has a solid plot, gene is a wonderful chacter, the animatoin is pretty prettay pretty good, and the voice acting as usual is excellent, with Rip Taylor being the standout. 

But as my paragraphs of rage shoud’ve made Clear Djonn is just BAD. Easily the worst character i’ve encountered in my year of reviewing and some of the worst writing i’ve ran into. And that writing includes a goblin man voyerstically forcing two teenagers to make out, making jokes about santa renaming himself Clem the sceneafter he tearfully confessed to letting the elves and ms. claus die, accidental transphobia via the u-men, and Bryan Lee O malley thinking we needed more than one volume of Julie Powers being around.  This was disgusting, even by 1990 standards and especially by 2021 standards and it drags the film down considerably. Without it the film is okay.. with it the film is just VERY hard to watch any time he pops up.  He made getting through the movie a nightmare and while I pause a lot becaue it’s a bad habbit I did so more simply because as I said earlier in the review I could not stand him. 

It makes it a hard film to recommend. If you can stomach the racisim, then it might be worth it, but be aware of what your putting up with going in. But if you can’t.. there’s no shame in that, it’s carbombya levels of bad. Which yes was a real fictoinal country. It was so bad Casey Casem quit transformers over it. True story. So yeah, it’s an okay film, on par with the series at it’s best for the most part.. but Djonn just spoils it for me. 

If you liked this review, like it, share it around that sort of thing and if you want MORE disney movie reviews, in addiiton to the goofy movie one later this month, if you help me hit my 25 dollar stretch goal on patroen.com/popculturebuffet, i’ll do reviews of the Recess, Proud Family and Kim Possible MOvies (Well so the drama anyway), so help me out would you and i’ll see you at the next rainbow.

[crak-ducktales-theories]

Gene17 killed Merlock

And he probably did it with a typical trick wish

In the movie Merlock is an idiot who doesn’t think his wishes trough, but so is Gene, probably because he is child coded even when both were hundreds of years old and he looks like an old man, but whatever.

Reboot Gene, however, is an adult and very smart, even if he is playfull.

He worked constantly trough the episode to mantain Donald’s wish, but also his own, he is a fan of the nineties so he did what he could to do both, he acts like he is not in control when the wish starts going haywire but he is constantly ignored by the humans and keeps using his magic to summon things to entertain himself.

And that was considering that Gene liked the family, they left in good terms.

Tell me he wouldn’t start twisting wishes if his master was a jerk.

Why I think he killed Merlock?

We know Merlock is cannon since he wrote a black magic book Webby has

But what did he had that is directly related to the genie?

The talisman, that keeps the genie conected to him and under his control. Also, is only taken from him when he falls to his death.

Guess what Gene has, take a wild fucking guess.

Attached to a grey/blue feather no less. What was Merlocks favorite form again?