#he does kick them out eventually and the house hunting sequence starts

[tanglecolors]

this has been stewing in my head for a LOONG time so have a sketchy comic loo

[findingjoynweirdstuff]

Dream SMP Underrated Memories/Moments

Everyone’s always talking about the wars, but I wanted to just gather a list of some of my favorite lesser-appreciated moments that aren’t remembered as much! I’ve been thinking about this list for a while and thought this might be a nice time to post it, seeing as it’s really the start of something new :’)

Just some of my fond memories from the past several months

---

- Shortly after the first revolution, Tubbo announces that he has finally seen Hamilton and understands all the references. He, Tommy and Wilbur then spend like 15 minutes arguing which characters they are. Wilbur explains that Tubbo most resembles John Laurens, and everyone’s like “oh cool” until they remember that that would mean that Tubbo has a tragic death in the future. Tommy says, “Let’s not foreshadow the next WAR, GUYS!” in a joking manner. Haha, very funny Tommy.

- Dream and his parrot. The parrot dies, Dream instantly ends stream, then starts it again and builds a memorial, heartbroken. Rest in peace.

- Sapnap borrowing Spirit only to instantly lose the horse to a creeper explosion, THEN accidentally crafting some leather into an item frame that was meant to hold Spirit’s leather. No wonder Dream no longer keeps pets.

- Theropay and premium bonds

- The original L’manberg war being pushed back a day for Dream’s serious stream, and Tommy reacting to it live in the most hilarious way possible. 

“No, George and I are not dating--” - Dream

“--NOOOOOOOOOOO” - Tommy, immediately

- In the days leading up to the L’manberg war, Tommy builds a fight club underneath the embassy but gets distracted with speaking Dutch to Fundy, eventually leading to him wandering around the Prime Path putting signs down that say “The green bastard shall die!” in different languages, as propaganda to Dream’s viewers who may be able to speak those other languages

- Wilbur asking Dream out on a date with Tommy as his wingman (before he joined the SMP? I think? Not sure), leading to the most infamous conspiracy/plot that would go on to stretch all the way to the ELECTION. New fans...you have no idea how lucky you are to have missed the torture.

- Wilbur and especially JSchlatt joining the SMP in general. Tommy being in awe of his SMPLive heroes. The SMPLive Cuck Shed is replicated in the Dream SMP. Wilbur logs off for what was going to be his last time in the community house, giving Tommy ownership of his ball house. Schlatt is kicked and banned.

- Tommy gives a surprisingly good performance of Macbeth and then Hamilton to Dream while held at gunpoint, winning over Dream’s favor with the power of music. Dream mentions Heathers in game chat, but Tommy doesn’t know what that is. Is there a word that means “unintentional foreshadowing?”

- Tommy and Wilbur construct a park composed of alleyways and drug pits to attract drug dealers and women, instead attracting a mysterious Dream. They challenge Dream to a trivia contest and he loses to Wilbur, then jumps off a cliff in despair. We should’ve known trivia was his greatest weakness. Again, is there a word that means “unintentional foreshadowing??” 

- Tommy is ecstatic at Jack Manifold being whitelisted after the L’manberg war, only for Dream to try and get Jack to join the Dream SMP side instead through bribery and secret-code-filled books...and it kinda worked?

- Fundy gathers obsidian for the new Manberg flag, leading to the hilarious sequence of him desperately trying to google common English phrases that Schlatt says, as he doesn’t know what they mean.

“I’ve taken a few pages out of his book” - Schlatt

*Fundy googling “take a page out of his book meaning”* “Yeah”

“do you know what 'idioms’ are?” - Schlatt

*Fundy immediately googling what an idiom is* “uhhhh yeah yeah - yeah, of course”

- Niki joins the SMP after the L’manberg war. They take down the original Camarvan, and Wilbur performs the L’manberg anthem for the first time. 

- Tommy getting Quackity into a VC to try and intimidate Skeppy (he fails) before asking Dream to whitelist him. Dream promptly does.

- That one day that Quackity felt that Tommy was giving more attention to his new pet Henry than to the cartel, so Quackity kidnaps Henry and forces Tommy to play a cruel Saw-like trivia game to bargain for Henry’s life. Tubbo betrays Tommy and cheers on Quackity for the entertainment. It ends in bloodshed, but thankfully Henry is safe... Yeah, we all just kinda forgot about that day, huh?

- Tommy and Tubbo building the nuclear war bunker

- The birth of Big Law at Fundy’s trial over the mysterious disappearance of Beenis. “Be careful, I’m a lawyer!” 

“What do you do for a living, Tubbo?”

(After proclaiming that he’s a lawyer for 30 minutes) “I paint...sofas”

- Karl joining the SMP, creating a new ugly beautiful Minecraft skin...and putting it on backwards

- Purpled starting his stream right before Eret betrays L’manberg in the war, having no clue of what’s going on. He occasionally joins the VC to hear things without context, and stumbles upon where people are gathered, only to be baffled at what’s happening.

- That early on stream where George texts Dream’s mother that he’s Dream’s boyfriend, and she replies. He and the other SMP members spend an hour going back and forth on how to respond.

- The entire Church Prime stream. Honestly the funniest stream I’ve ever seen, no doubt. I was literally crying tears of laughter at times while simultaneously on edge worrying about them getting cancelled.

- The original Deal or No Deal stream where Tubbo won his Happy Meals

- The hunt for Taco Bell

- Drista. Enough said.

- Fundy joining L’manberg, and Tommy accusing him of plagiarizing the L’manberg outfits due to his crayon suit, only for Wilbur to explain that Fundy is his son. Tommy is, as expected, quite confused.

- Dream giving Fundy and Tommy hundreds of dollars in gifts in the most intimidating and nerve-wracking way possible, holding them at gunpoint.

- Purpled’s fall trap at the Socializing Club causing multiple people, including Dream, Fundy and Tommy to all fall down and die, causing their items to get mixed together, leading to arguments and drama.

- Tubbo’s Stress Relievers

- Tommy and Tubbo, during the Pet War, going up Punz’s tower to defend Fundy. They aren’t in VC, and start saying identical things in chat in Perfect Grammar while in full netherite, ominously looking slowly back and forth at each other, looking like evil twins straight out of a horror movie.

--- Feel free to add on with your own :)

[twdmusicboxmystery]

5x09: Analysis

How did everyone like last night's episode of FTWD? I really enjoyed watching. As expected, it was very much a set up for the B half of the season, but I also found some really great symbols and some very promising possibilities. Let's dive right in.

***As always, spoilers abound for this episode below. Don’t read until you’ve watched! You’ve been warned!***

Also, let me say that, yes, I did watch the TWD S10 Preview show and yes, I will do an analysis of it. Look for it tomorrow. I wanted to get my analysis for this episode up today first. ;D

This episode was a slightly different format than we’re used to. They did in the style of a found-footage documentary. This has become a popular style for films in recent years, and I suppose it was a natural thing to do given how Al records everything.

We start out with all the main characters in the group being interviewed on camera. I won’t go over everything they said, as not all of it jumped out at me as super important. But one thing did. Alicia said it felt like, "everything else was training for this." She meant driving around helping people and rounding up survivors to put together a community. But it also feels like a foreshadow of something big coming. Everything prior to this is been training for what lies ahead of them.

Al said they raided a Big Stop and took every camera, battery, and tape they could find. It caught my attention, mostly because Big Stop sounds a whole lot like Big Spot from 4x01. The point was that they now have several cameras traveling around with various groups when they split up to do different things. But of course, Battery Theory.

It's a little unclear what happened with Logan. He showed them where a gas tanker was (though he still hasn’t found the “oil fields”) but they left him behind. All we saw was he running after Sarah’s truck. 

Sarah was quite gleeful about it. And it's a little odd because obviously stuff happened that we haven’t seen yet. Last we saw in 5x08, while they obviously didn't entirely trust Logan, they seemed to be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I got the feeling they would keep a watchful eye on him, but they weren't planning on kicking them out of the group either.

So they’ve obviously skipped over some things and I'm sure they’ll go back and show us what happened and why the decision was made to leave him behind at some point.

We saw them utilizing red and yellow gas cans. Very significant colors. Red = death, yellow = escape. I didn’t notice any green gas cans, so this particular color sequence is, as yet, incomplete.

Dwight said, "I got lucky." (Luck Theory.) He’s also still wheedling and he created a chess set. 

That’s significant and we’ve seen chess sets in the past, both around him and the Gov (X). I also think it's interesting that Dwight doesn't want a haircut. He said in 5x08 that he might take Daniel up on the offer. Now suddenly he's decided against it. I feel like that could be symbolic, and there's a specific reason for it, but I'm not sure what it is. We know that him and Daryl are heavily paralleled and they’re not going to cut Daryl’s hair short anytime soon, so maybe that's it.

We saw a lot of food symbols in this episode. Grace mentioned rice noodles and then they ate them at the end. Anyone who follows @frangipanilove’s theories knows about her noodle theories. It's a symbol we’ve seen a lot, specifically in FTWD, and she has tied it to resurrection and return symbolism. Grace also mentioned being low on powdered eggs. In general, eggs = Easter eggs = resurrection symbol. Tptb also often talk about leaving Easter eggs for us to find. It's kind of interesting to hear that.

They went out of their way to mention that Grace is listening to an audiobook. I'm not entirely sure what to make of this, but it’s such a random detail that they focused on, I'm sure it significant. We didn’t hear the title or author of the audio book, so we can’t read into that. Perhaps it's just a way of showing that book titles we see are significant.

We heard Sarah sing a trucker song about hunting a bear. Obviously, that's a big deal because bear symbolism is part of the Sirisu/Dogstar/return symbolism. Here, it was associated with music. They had a whole discussion about music and Sarah even called it an anthem. Look at lyrics again.

This was one of my favorite symbols in this episode. Let's assume for a minute that bear = Sirius/return symbolism, which means bear = Beth’s return. The song is specifically about hunting a bear. Which suggests looking for a return. The group is actively looking for people to help. So, the way I interpret this is that perhaps the people they’re looking for will eventually lead to Beth’s return.

The main story, aside from having the characters talk about how they feel and where they're at mentally, was about helping a woman named Tess and her son leave their home. She contacted Morgan via walkie-talkie, telling him her husband left to get an inhaler for their son. He never returned.

The husband put landmines all over the front yard and Tess was afraid to leave because she hadn't left in years, since before the apocalypse happened. The group splits up to try and help her. June and Strand find the drugstore but the inhaler isn't there. They figure he must've already gotten it and headed home. Then, when Alicia is by one of the painted trees (which I'll talk about in a minute) a blond male walker comes up behind her and Strand kills it. Turns out, this walker is Tess's husband. He’s dead.

Morgan's group crosses the yard to help Tess and Morgan steps on landline. It's pressurized, which means it won’t go off until he lifts his foot. Al tries to help him disarm it and Tess leaves her house to help as well. Thankfully, everyone gets out alive and Morgan does not lose his foot.

(Although, the way they focused on his foot on the landmine did make me think of Lost Shoe/Foot symbolism. I can't help but wonder if this is a foreshadowing for something down the road and if Morgan might lose his foot at some point. Or perhaps this is jut a way to tie this situation to other symbolism we’ve seen before. Not sure yet.

John says the Tess situation hit home for each of them in a particular way. Morgan was very invested because of what happened to his wife and son. He very much wanted to save Tess and her son because he couldn't save his own family. Because her husband didn’t come back, June and John, who looked for each other, sympathized with her insistence that her husband would return. I thought this was an interesting way to examine where each of the characters are mentally at this point.

At one point, John talked about being partners with Morgan. He said Morgan doesn't talk much. He then talked about being a cop and how you could not say more than two words to your partner all day, but you know them inside and out, and what makes them tick. You have each other's back know how to work and survive together. He basically said that's what Morgan was like. Morgan said the same thing about John, that the neither of them talk very much, but they still work well together.

I sat and thought for a bit about why they included this little snippet. It was a little strange. Morgan and John did work together in this episode, but Al and Luciana with them, as well as others. It wasn’t just the two of them, or anything. It might be a foreshadowing of some arc the two of them will have together in coming episodes, but it also made me think a little bit of other relationships we’ve seen on the show. Naturally, my head went to Beth and Daryl. While Beth definitely talked more than Daryl, there were parts (such as the beginning of Still) where the two of them just stared at one another and didn't say much. It's really about getting to know people not having to fill the silence. Whether it's a romantic relationship or platonic, I really like this theme.

John mentions ugly mustard situations. It’s just a way of saying the situation was very bad. But here’s the thing, guys. In biblical symbolism, the mustard seed is very obviously entwined with the concept of faith. And who talked a lot about faith? That would be Beth. In terms of this situation, “ugly mustard” may specifically apply to a scene where there’s a lack of faith being demonstrated.

Oh, one other really fun reference John made: he was talking about how money is useless now in the apocalypse and the true currency is survival skills. He said something about people who used to sit on piles of money. The kind of people who ate “caviar from ladles.” Yeah, that’s an ocean reference and a Little Dipper reference all rolled into one, y’all. ;D

There were several mentions of something that was needed or something they all needed. It reminded me of the S7 TWD title "Something They Need." I think they said this about Tess needing the inhaler. I know Morgan talked about having planned the campfire dinner at the end and saying it was something, "we all need." This was a definite theme in this episode.

The other theme that I saw was actually very powerful and I feel like it reaches through both shows. They talked about how they didn't blame Tess for not believing her husband was dead. Morgan said that sometimes you can know someone's dead, you can see they’re dead, you still just don't believe it. Basically, it's because you can't bring yourself to say goodbye. 

Tess was that way. She couldn't bring herself to say goodbye. At the end, she did and then she was able to leave her house, go with Morgan's group, and start to live and move forward again. This is something very specific to Morgan because he said that the same thing happened with him and his wife and son. He never said goodbye to them, and he needs to, he just doesn't know how.

I think we could apply this to Daryl. He’s sad because he's never really said goodbye to Beth. In a way, this is actually sort of the opposite of her arc. Here, Tess was told her husband was dead. People saw him as a walker, but she just couldn't make herself believe it. The opposite was true of Beth. We never saw her as a walker, we never saw her get stabbed in the head, but everyone still believes she's dead, when she’s not. So, there’s an anti-parallel going on here. Meanwhile, Daryl has never said goodbye to her.

This is also the key to what's happening whenever any character loses someone and can’t move on from them. They have to find a way to say goodbye, but often they don't know how.

(@wdway often says that FTWD is teaching us HOW to read TWD symbolism. They’re much more obvious in how it should be interpreted, but that just give us a map of how to read TWD symbolism. I think she’s right and this is a good example of it.)

At the end, the group eats rice noodles, carrots, and nuts. I already talked about the rice noodles, but the carrots are big as well. Those were big Beth symbol.

I said I’d return to the painted tree. I'm not going to say too much about it here because I'm going to do a post later in the week that touches on it as well, but this is the other thing that made me super-excited about this episode. Alicia says that she wants to find out who painted the trees. She wants to find them.

Before, I just thought the trees would be used as symbolism in the show. I didn't think they’d be part of the plot beyond that. But Alicia saying this is a foreshadow. Eventually, they will find whoever is painting the trees.

Of course, my first thought was, could it be Beth painting these trees? I'm about 50/50 on that. The wording and the faith inherent in the message (mustard mentioned in the same episode as this tree) definitely sounds like her. But to be fair, we also never saw her doing visual art this way. She was all about the music. The person we did see doing visual art was Jadis, who is also now tied to the helicopter group. I'm not saying Jadis painted the trees. That actually wouldn't make sense given that currently, FTWD is six years behind TWD. Jadis and the Heapsters are still at the junkyard. I’m just saying we can tie it to Rick’s departure and the helicopter group.

You could argue that these are little notes left on the trees for people to find after the person who painted them had already left. It just feels a lot like Beth wanting to leave the thank you note at the funeral home in case the owners ever came back.

I don't know where this will lead, of course, and it may have nothing to do with her in the plot, but it still made me super excited.

At the end, we see a young man watching the group’s video. They’ve set it up at a gas station along with a walkie for people to watch and contact them. The TV and walkie are hooked up to a generator in a locked room. The man doesn’t use the walkie to call them but rather breaks into the generator room and steals some gas. He uses it to fill up his motorcycle. (He and Daryl would be biker buds.)

Then Logan and his group arrive. Logan first assumes he’s with Morgan’s group, but of course he’s not. He looks a little like Heath, but this is a new character. Logan says he likes this guy, but he still steals his stuff and shoots his bike, basically stranding him. He even encourages the guy to call Morgan’s group on the radio and convey a message. No way to know yet if this guy will contact them or not.

Obviously this is a set up for the rest of the season (which will probably consist of Morgan’s group looking for and finding more people, and having run-ins with Logan) but I also saw some interesting symbols in this final sequence.

Inside the gas station (a symbol by itself) was a large sign for hot dogs. It was the “dogs” more than the food that caught my attention, but still. There’s also a money orders sign. I haven’t talked about this, but let’s just say @frangipanilove is working on a money/currency theme in the show. So just tuck this away for now.

The gas station has Grady lighting inside and signs for hot dogs. The gas can he carried out was also blue. 

I also noticed that when Logan got out of the car, he was wearing cowboy boots and the camera focused on them for a second. Not sure what to make of that, but I think it’s significant. Lost Shoe symbolism? Beth’s boots? Even reminded me a little bit of Boots (Tauriel) from 7x08, because it showed the boots before it revealed the face (Logan). So we’ll have to keep an eye on that moving forward.

Actually, there was a lot of shoe symbolism in this episode. There’s what I’ve already mentioned with Morgan and Logan, and then Logan throws a torn up pair of cowboy boots at this guy at the end, saying this is what happens to your shoes and feet when you walk 200 miles. That has to be symbolic--especially as they use cowboy boots--but I’m not sure exactly what it points to yet. 

Also, there an RV (time symbol) in the background as they talk.

So, we definitely have a lot of potential for this coming season and where it will lead. They set up Logan as a villain in the first episode of the season, but we didn't deal with him very much in the A half. I’m sure he'll be in the B half a lot more. Also, meeting new people to help gives us the potential to run into the helicopter group some more and perhaps find the person who is painting the trees. (Yay!) What did everyone else think of this episode?

[aion-rsa]

What If…? Episode 8 Review: A Very Ultron Apocalypse

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains spoilers for Marvel’s What If…? episode 8.

Episode 8 of Marvel’s What If…?, entitled ‘What if… Ultron Won?’, housed some of the best animated sequences of the series so far. We’ve seen some great stuff from the show’s animation team to date, but they really had a chance to flaunt some incredible visuals in this one by keeping the central story fairly simple and the cast of characters small.

Here, we got to find out what would have happened if Ultron had snagged the vibranium body he had made for him in Avengers: Age of Ultron instead of losing it to the creation of Vision, and it turns out that the Avengers saved more than this world when they successfully completed that mission back in the day.

Now, if you’re a regular here and often read our weekly What If…? reviews, you may already know that they have a bit of a unique format – more of a breakdown that we hope will satisfy die-hard Marvel fans but still help bring those less familiar with the MCU up to speed.

With that in mind, it’s time to dig deeper into ‘What if… Ultron Won?’

Required viewing

It definitely helps to have seen Avengers: Age of Ultron since that’s the backstory you need for this episode, but there are callbacks to Black Widow, Avengers: Endgame, Avengers: Infinity War, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, too.

Voice cast

Jeffrey Wright is our Watcher, Jeremy Renner is Clint Barton/Hawkeye, Lake Bell is Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Toby Jones is Arnim Zola, Benedict Cumberbatch is Doctor Strange, Josh Keaton is Steve Rogers, Mick Wingert is Tony Stark/Iron Man, and Alexandra Daniels is Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel.

Ross Marquand, who previously voiced Red Skull in both What If…?, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame, takes over from James Spader as Ultron.

What’s different

In an apocalyptic wasteland that used to be Moscow, Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff search for a way to finally defeat Ultron in a world where he successfully implanted himself in Vision’s vibranium body during the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron, and stuck to his deadly plan to wipe out humanity.

Ultron eventually gets the nuclear codes and launches the world’s nukes during a sequence that once again kills Kenny Tony Stark. Dispatching Thanos with unbelievable ease upon his arrival, Ultron then takes the rest of the Infinity Stones for himself and lays waste to the rest of the universe.

Sakaar, Ego and more are destroyed, and although Captain Marvel takes a pretty good crack at ending Ultron’s diabolical purge, she also fails to get the job done. With his mission complete, Ultron is at a loss until he becomes aware of The Watcher, and realizes that there are still countless universes waiting to be wrecked.

Back on Earth, Clint and Natasha are hunting through the KGB archives. The Watcher almost intervenes when it seems like the duo won’t find what they’re looking for, but Natasha eventually grabs a box containing a file with the location of the last known copy of Arnim Zola’s data-banked brain, as previously seen in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Zola agrees to help them under pressure, and Clint uses an arrow to upload Zola into an Ultron sentry. Unfortunately, Zola’s not able to reach the hive mind and save the day because Ultron’s off world having a spectacularly-animated multiversal punch-up with The Watcher, and so Clint has to sacrifice himself to save Natasha in an almost exact reversal of their goodbye sequence in Avengers: Endgame.

As Ultron faces off against The Watcher in an eye-popping, multiverse-breaking scene, we get a chance to see a Galactus-esque version of Ultron, an Earth populated by Skrulls, and a version of the world where Steve Rogers is being sworn in as President of the United States.

This isn’t just a fun Easter egg for fans: What If…? writer A. C. Bradley repeatedly pitched an episode of the series that would adapt the Marvel Comics story “What If Captain America Had Been Elected President?” by Mike W. Barr and Herb Trimpe, and envisioned the installment paying homage to The West Wing. Sadly, that idea didn’t fly, but we have this fun moment in the episode to console ourselves with.

How does it work out?

In the end, Ultron gets so close to eliminating The Watcher that he’s at a loss and begrudgingly consults with Strange Supreme, who we haven’t seen since he broke his own world and got a Watcher scolding at the end of episode 4. It looks like Stephen might have what it takes to finally resolve the Ultron situation, but we shall have to wait and see.

The Watcher’s reluctance to intervene, given his oath, does seem to be buttering us up for November’s live action MCU entry, Eternals. Ahead of the movie’s release, many Marvel fans have wondered why the hell those ten immortal, superpowered beings didn’t step up to help humanity throughout its many apocalyptic woes, and The Watcher is shaping up to be a prime example of why standing idly by while atrocities play out won’t ever truly cut the mustard with those involved in said atrocities, or indeed us – the Watchers watching The Watcher watch.

Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see the team-up between The Watcher and Strange Supreme in next week’s finale.

Standout moments

I’ve touched on a few standout moments above, but seeing Ultron in near-Galactus form was a sight to behold, and I know I’m not the only one who felt that way because Galactus was soon trending on Twitter after the episode started streaming.

It feels like Marvel are pondering which classic comics villains to introduce next, and that we’re tantalizingly close to seeing Doctor Doom, Galactus, The Beyonder and more join Kang as multiversal threats. But every time we start speculating about the likes of Mephisto in WandaVision or Doom in Loki, Marvel unwittingly kicks the can down the road again. We’re just gonna have to calm the hell down!

Seeing Natasha fight with Red Guardian’s shield was truly a joyful experience, as was seeing Thanos sliced neatly down the middle by Ultron – perfectly balanced, as all things should be! I know Vision was injured in Avengers: Infinity War, but would it have been that easy to kill Thanos if he hadn’t been? Come on.

Sorry, but Tony Stark dying over and over again is just plain funny now. I think there was supposed to be an episode where he lived in this season, but it maybe got moved to Season 2? The result is that he has absolutely become the Kenny of What If…? and honestly if they don’t somehow kill him again in the finale it will be a bit of a let down for me.

There were several moments in this episode where I was genuinely bowled over by the animation work on display. I know I’ve talked about it before, but this animation style doesn’t always work for me, and I do still think there were more visually creative ways to approach this series. However, the style has definitely been a good match for a couple of installments, and this was one of them.

See you next week! Same Watcher time! Same Watcher streaming service! In the meantime, if you want to dig deeper into What If…?, please consider subscribing to Marvel Standom on the Den of Geek YouTube channel, where we dish out weekly episodes on all the new Marvel TV series, trailers and movie releases. Can’t stand our faces? That’s fair! You can listen to Marvel Standom on Spotify and Apple, too.

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from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3CSGbSb

[the-master-cylinder]

Lunch Meat (1987): SUMMARY Cannibals who roam the San Bernardino Mountains in search of victims! PAW & THE BOYS! BENNY, ELWOOD and HARLEY! Psychotic, meat-eating mutilators who get their kicks by ambushing young men and women, hunt them down, and cold-bloodedly. tear their bodies apart!

There’s HARLEY, who get his kicks by chopping off people’s heads with his AXE! There’s ELWOOD, his younger brother, who likes to DRILL HOLES in his victims with his PICKAXE! PAW’S favorite tool is his stainless steel MACHETE! He gets his thrills by tracking his prey down, taking a couple of swipes with the machete to draw BLOOD, and then likes to see them beg for mercy. He’ll move in with a chuckle and CHOP THEM UP into many pieces of BLOOD-DRENCHED MEAT and BONES to be thrown in TRASH BAGS and taken down to the nearest greasy spoon to be sold as lunchmeat!!!! Then there’s BENNY! Deaf and dumb and MANIACAL with an insatiable thirst for human blood and raw flesh!!!! BENNY does his best work with a shovel!!!!

BEHIND THE SCENES/PRODUCTION The film is the culmination of three years work and a virtually lifelong dream of its 39 year-old writer/director Kirk Alex. With a background that includes film school training, Alex had been making his living driving a cab. Eventually the frustrations of that job, and the passion to make movies, overrode the instinct to make a living and he sold his cab to raise the money to start filming LUNCH MEAT.

Alex is understandably reticent about discussing details that might affect the film’s value on the marketplace but it seems likely that it was shot on 16mm with a budget probably below $60,000. The film was made on a 14 day shooting schedule, most of which was haphazardly scattered over an almost three month period. “We’d shoot a couple of days here, a couple of days there,” recalled Alex. “Sometimes we’d stop because we ran out of film and had no money to buy more. Other stoppages were for schedule conflicts for cast or crew. The worst delays were for hassles from the law.”

Cast & Crew

Alex’s cast and crew frequently had to change filming locations due to run-ins with Southern California police or Forest Rangers. “The whole system is set up for big budget productions,” complained Alex. “If you’ve got a movie camera in your hand you’ve got to have a permit to breathe, and everybody is out to make a buck off you. I was supposed to have a police officer and a fire marshal on the set at all times, at $40 an hour. A piece! There’s city, state, and county permits you’ve got to have, insurance and lawyers and paramedics. I could have spent my entire budget without ever exposing a foot of film!”

Instead Alex opted for true outlaw filmmaking. He and his group would shoot in one location until the forces of the law showed up. They would feign ignorance of the rules and regulations and then leave, promising to return with the proper paperwork and cash. In reality they would simply move on to the next suitable location and go through the whole process again.

Surprisingly, few of the film’s problems arose from the cast. “They were all pros,” said Alex. “It was 95° to 100° every day we shot and they spent most of their time running around or falling down in the dirt. Sure, they complained, but they all kept showing up and doing their best.”

Chuck Ellis, who portrays the gargantuan, cannibalistic mute Benny, was the only member of the cast whom Alex knew before shooting. “I always knew Chuck was a fine actor, and his size creates an undeniable screen presence,” said Alex. “I think he did a great job as Benny. He manages to create some sympathy for this pathetic sub-human even while we’re watching him engage in some pretty barbaric acts on screen.”

One staple of low-budget exploitation films that LUNCH MEAT lacks is sex or nudity. “It wasn’t a conscious decision to leave it out,” said Alex. “I just didn’t see any place for it in the script and I wasn’t going to bring the entire film’s pace to a halt just to have some girl take her top off.” The film’s special effects, the backbone of any gore film, also suffered for the lack of time and money. “A lot of good effects sequences were dropped because they were just too time-consuming, or costly,” recalled Alex. “I think Lori Drucker and her effects crew did a real good job on the throat ripping that kicks off the crazies’ attack, and on the miscellaneous body parts. They could have done even more. It’s the classic story: all we needed was time and money.”

Post production of the film was even more protracted than its filming. Over eight months, in increments of a day here, a day there, were spent before the final project was ready to market. Many of the delays were in order to raise additional money to deal with the next phase of the postproduction chores.

Alex bypassed any thoughts of theatrical exhibition and shopped the film around to various video distributors. He had several offers, some of which appeared more lucrative than those of Tapeworm Video, but he felt he could trust its owners because they were struggling dreamers like himself. To date, LUNCH MEAT has sold over 2500 copies for Tapeworm. That’s a pittance in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of copies a blockbuster title might move, but it’s not bad for an unknown film, with a no-name cast. It is, in fact, Tapeworm’s top seller to date.

And hopes are high that things may get better still. The tape’s incredibly graphic cover, offering a wild-eyed Benny gnawing on a severed human arm, was an undeniable eye catcher but has proven too bold for many video stores. A new, tamer cover was eventually offered.

CAST/CREW Directed/Written Kirk Alex

Produced by Kirk Alex Mark Flynn Al Goodrum Robert Oland Pamela Phillips Oland Ashlyn Gere (credited as Kim McKamy) as Roxy Chuck Ellis as Benny Joe Ricciardella as Frank Elroy Wiese as Paw Robert Oland as Harley Mitch Rogers as Elwood Rick Lorentz as Cary Bob Joseph as Eddie Marie Ruzicka as Debbie Patricia Christie as Sue Ann McBride as Waitress

Slaughterhouse (1987): SUMMARY Lester Bacon is an old nut-case farmer living with his simple-minded, obese son Buddy. Both of them lament the fate of the old skilled hog farmer, now giving way to modern factory-type slaughterhouses. The father and son go on a killing spree against people who trespass on their property. In the opening scene, Buddy kills two teenagers, Kevin and Michelle, who are having some time alone in their car on a remote area of Lovers Lane.

The next day, Harold – Lester’s attorney, along with his law partner Tom and the local police chief, Sheriff Borden, visit Lester at his house to offer him $55,000 to buy his property, along with the closed-down slaughterhouse next door. Lester is told that the demolition of the slaughterhouse would create employment opportunities for many people in town, as well as get the county tax assessor off his back. Lester grumbles about Tom’s equipment and bad meat and says that he could do better with his hands, knives and fewer men. The sheriff tells Lester that the assessor’s office is foreclosing his property and he has 30 days to vacate it.

Meanwhile, Liz – Sheriff Borden’s teenage daughter – is with a group of high school friends planning to shoot a “horror video” and suggests that the area around the Bacon Slaughterhouse would be perfect. Her friends – Skip, Annie, and Buzz – wonder the whereabouts of Kevin and Michelle. Back at Lester Bacon’s property, his son Buddy takes Lester to a room and shows him the dead Michelle and Kevin. Lester is a bit unsettled, thinking that they’re neck-deep in trouble, but he tells Buddy that Tom, Harold, and Sheriff Borden deserve such a fate.

Deputy Dave, after being informed by the worried parents of Michelle and Kevin, checks out the docks and then goes to the slaughterhouse. He walks inside and calls for the two teenagers. As Dave finds a dead hanging cat, Buddy appears and kills him by shoving large metal sliding door on Dave’s gun-toting hand, chopping it off.

Lester then calls Harold to tell him that he has accepted his sales offer. Harold goes to the slaughterhouse where both Lester and Buddy kill him. Buddy then puts on the dead Dave’s blood-stained police uniform and goes for a drive in the squad car. Dave’s girlfriend, Sally, sees him driving past and waves, but Buddy chases her and runs her car off the road. She tries to escape on foot, but Buddy catches up to her and slices her neck with a butcher knife. When Tom arrives at the slaughterhouse, Lester lures him to the processing room, where Buddy drops him into a saw machine.

That evening at the Pig Out, a town dance, the power goes out due to a rainstorm, and many people leave. Buzz says it’s the best time for filming at the slaughterhouse. Skip then makes a $20 bet that the girls cannot last one hour at the slaughterhouse. Liz and Annie are dropped off at the place while the boys are sneaking around with masks used in Liz’s video. Elsewhere, Sheriff Borden finds Sally’s car with the damaged windshield and Dave’s patrol car with the door open. The sheriff then goes back to his car and calls for backup.

Back at the slaughterhouse, Liz and Annie realize that the boys are outside trying to scare them. Liz looks for a way to get behind the two guys and scare them instead. The boys split up and Buzz gets inside the building. Skip is at the window, and Annie laughs until Buddy suddenly appears and whacks Skip. Annie screams and runs, but Lester appears and grabs her.

Liz walks to the front door and sees that everyone is gone. At the same time, Buzz walks into a room, hears a noise and gets hit in the face by Buddy. Liz finds a hanging Annie (still alive), as well as the dead bodies of all the other victims. The father-son duo is there and Buddy grabs Liz. Meanwhile, Sheriff Borden learns that Tom and Harold have mysteriously disappeared.

Buddy and Lester hold Liz down on a table, and Lester says that a meat cutter like himself and Buddy have the skills like a surgeon. Lester slices one of Liz’s fingertips to prove to her that it is one of the most sensitive parts of the human body. When Lester turns and hears Sheriff Borden enter through the front door, Liz kicks Lester and runs away. She finds her father and runs to him. Buddy appears and the sheriff tries to shoot him, but he hits the blade of his meat cleaver. Sheriff Borden and Liz run outside into the rain. As Sheriff Borden pauses at his squad car door, Lester appears and stabs him in the back. Liz picks up her father’s gun and shoots Lester. She then helps the wounded sheriff into his car. She also gets the keys to start up the car, just as Lester rises and knocks at the car windows. She turns around, shifts the car into reverse, and runs over Lester, crushing his head and finally killing him. The sheriff tells Liz to drive away and radio for help. Buddy suddenly sits up from the backseat and swings his knife at Liz. She screams, and the film suddenly ends.

BEHIND THE SCENES/PRODUCTION Even before the new slasher movie Slaughterhouse  played in its first commercial theater, it was in the black. Slowly squealing its way around the country, the film was a testament to the new Hollywood, where independent companies outnumber major studios eight to one, and where home video and foreign sales can more than pay for a film’s cost. Slaughterhouse, for example, was sold to 60% of the foreign markets, including Germany, England, and Japan, before its domestic fate had been determined. Embassy’s Charter Entertainment is distributing the video cassette

It helped that the movie was made on a very tight budget; in fact, only fifteen full-time crew mcmbers were employed. As a result, writer director Rick Roessler was faced with the task of making up credits to increase the film’s prestige. The first two weeks of a four-week shot were done without any days off. and at that point, Roessler joked, they had to pick a few people off the floor and take some time off.

The film marks a major launch for American Artists, in which Roessler is one of three partners. The San Diego-based production company was set up four years ago primarily to produce films. The partners proceeded to work on other people’s movies until they could raise enough capital, mostly from private investors, for their own venture.

They even wanted to distribute the movie themselves, but felt they were not adequately prepared for such a challenge. Instead, they gave that job to Castle Hill in New York, which splits the grosses 50/50 with American Artists. “They don’t normally do horror films,” Roessler explained. “It worried me in the beginning. because I wanted to go with a company that knows horror films. New World wanted to buy it out for the ridiculous figure of $400,000.” Castle Hill’s involvement marks a continuing trend: prestigious “art house” distributors who are resorting more and more to handling low budget horror films as well. In their case, they put the name of a subsidiary on it. JGM Enterprises.

“The name of the game is you have to make a living, suggested Roessler. “I know I dug into our bank account heavily to help bankroll this film. I got into the horror genre not only because I like it but because there’s a base audience out there. Being horror fans, the one thing we didn’t want to do was absolute schlock. We didn’t want to do porn. You won’t see any gratuitous sex.”

One thing Roessler did play up was the comedy element. “We enjoy tongue and cheek stuff,” he said. “There must be a measure of comedy to make the film more horrific; otherwise, it would be too dull. Some films have so much blood, like EVIL DEAD, that they become funny.”

Roessler said he used the FRIDAY THE 13th series as an example of what he was trying to avoid. “It started out well, I think. The first one was low budget, and I think a lot of effort went into it. But look what’s happened to the character in the next five. It’s just gone blithering on they haven’t really identified who this guy is. The last one, six, was this huge slugger walking around with huge boots, whacking people for. I guess, no reason.

For Slaughterhouse Roessler developed his own character, Buddy, who in the ads is described as “360 pounds of Cleavermania” (in real life, Joe Barton, who plays him, is 372).

“With Buddy, what we tried to do was establish a character. He’s human he’s not some abstract. There’s hopefully some sentiment, some pathos in this character. Doesn’t say word one through the whole thing, and he’s the so-called star. He snorts like a pig.”

The film works as a sort of revenge picture, with Buddy killing those who provoke him or try to evict him and his father out of their condemned slaughterhouse. Thus, the title provides an ideal double entendre for the movie. The film has played in Detroit, Nashville. Denver. Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh and Phoenix, with other cities to follow. Roessler is expecting Embassy to be pleased with its release path. “Embassy put money into it because they want it to get out there. The best advertising for home video obviously is theatrical release, and the best theatrical release for home video is the one-week hit ’em and then leave, because not everybody gets to see it. The word gets around, and then they rent the video.”

Poster for Unproduced Sequel

Roessler said raising the money to make the film, over a period of eight months, was the hardest part of getting his project on the screen. “We put on presentations for several investor parties,” he said. “We went door-to-door. We made phone calls.”

CAST/CREW Directed/Written Rick Roessler Produced Ron Matona Joe B. Barton as Buddy Bacon Don Barrett as Lester Bacon William Houck as Sheriff Borden Sherry Leigh (credited as Sherry Bendorf) as Liz Borden Jeff Wright as Deputy Dave Bill Brinsfield as Tom Sanford Lee Robinson as Harold Murdock

CREDITS/REFERENCES/SOURCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY Cinefantastique v19n03 Cinefantastique v18n02-03

DOUBLE FEATURE RETROSPECTIVE – Lunch Meat (1987)/Slaughterhouse (1987) Lunch Meat (1987): SUMMARY Cannibals who roam the San Bernardino Mountains in search of victims! PAW & THE BOYS!

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

What do you think would happen if the Animorphs were caught during their first mission?

“You know that old joke,” Temrash 114 says, pacing up and down in front of them, “about how the babysitter keeps getting calls from some asshole who wants to kill her, and eventually she figures out that, all along, the calls were coming from inside the goddamn house?”  Tom’s face twists, expression cold with anger.  “That’s what my life feels like right about now.”

“It wasn’t a joke, you dumbass,” Rachel mutters, “it was a horror story.”

Temrash 114 shrugs.  “Depends on your point of view, I guess.”

“Won’t you get in trouble, then?” Marco asks, expression still sharp despite the blood painting a line from his scalp to his chin.  “If Jake was here the whole time and you didn’t even know it?  Doesn’t that make you a raging moron?”

“Jury’s still out as to whether we should infest your dad,” Temrash 114 says calmly.  “I could just shoot him in the head, save Visser One a lot of trouble with her host.”

Marco clearly doesn’t know what Visser One has to do with anything, but he snaps his mouth shut all the same, face very white.

Jake tunes out everything they’re saying, because it’s not important.  What’s important—so important that he can’t even think around it—is that this is all his fault.  He can’t believe he was stupid enough, when Marco said that Tom was a controller, to insist on making sure.  To refuse to believe what he was hearing in the middle of that Sharing meeting, to have to get closer…

No one looks twice at a dog, he’d said.  Unless, of course, the someone was Tom, and the dog was Homer.  Unless Jake was stupid enough to wander straight into the loose gathering of controllers on the edge of the beach in the hope that the words he was hearing from his brother’s mouth would somehow prove illusion up close.

Jake was the first one caught, but the roundup after that was brutally fast: they found Marco and Cassie because Tom knew to look for them, whereas Rachel had tried to morph and fight back and Tobias had dived from the sky in an effort to save her.  They’re all tied up for the moment while over a dozen controllers point various weapons at them and two people in the next room (the andalite-controller and a human whose voice sounds familiar for some reason Jake can’t place) shout at each other over what to do next.

Jake’s lying the closest to the door, a short ways away from the others—the yeerk inside Tom kicked him over there in disgust—so he can see as hork-bajir-controllers lead his parents, Rachel’s sisters, even Tobias’s uncle toward the stairs that lead down to the yeerk pool.  He’s vaguely aware that there are tears running down his face, but he tries his hardest to tune out everything except some possible way to get them all out of this.

Rachel is lying a few feet away from Jake, twisting constantly against the duct tape around her wrists.  The only morph she has so far is a horse from Cassie’s barn, but horses can kill people.  She could take a few of them down before they managed to catch her…

She feels a cool hand rest on her ankle, and discovers that Tobias is watching her through wide grey eyes.  He can speak volumes with a tiny shift of expression, wearing his emotions on his sleeve in a way that makes some part of her desperate to draw him close and protect him.  Right now it’s not hard to tell what he’s thinking: that he knows what she’s planning.

Glancing upward at Chapman—or more specifically at the dracon beam in Chapman’s hand—he shakes his head just a tiny bit.

Rachel jerks her ankle out from under his hand.  Wasn’t he the one who was going on yesterday about how they have to avenge the andalite who died for them?  

“We live,” Tobias hisses, voice drowned out by the shouting in the next room and by Marco, who has started loudly asking questions about one of the voices they can all hear.  “We live and fight another day.  We’ll have another chance, okay?”

Gritting her teeth, Rachel nods.

It’s a decision they all live to regret.  Their bodies rapidly become hosts for high-ranking vissers and sub-vissers, their faces and their voices used in the most horrific possible way.

Essak 1275, who gets Jake’s body, acquires every Earth morph that catches his eye and a few dozen from other planets as well.  He gets reprimanded a couple of times, since it’s getting harder and harder to contain Jake during feedings (still not as difficult as Alloran, but no one tells Visser Three to stop), but the yeerk also gets results.  The complaints stop around the time he uses Jake to kill and eat over forty leerans while in the shape of a lerdethak.  

Marco stops walking—stops of his own accord—the first time they send Visser Twenty-Three into a meeting with Visser One.  Eva’s face does something strange and unquantifiable for several seconds before Edriss wrestles it back into harsh neutrality.  “Get ahold of yourself, won’t you?” she snaps.  Marco’s eyes close, and Akdor 1154 nods.  

Rachel screams death threats and other useless words as Visser Eight uses her face and voice to draw in their tenth victim this month.  Melissa Chapman, Brittany Grant, and T.T. Malcolm are controllers already.  Allison Valencia and Beth Hammond both attend Sharing meetings regularly, and they’re thinking of becoming full members.  Rachel’s the most popular girl in her entire class; it’s like taking candy from a baby.

To everyone’s surprise, it’s Cassie who gets the reputation for being the rebellious host.  Niss 240 aims a dracon beam at a suspicious-looking bird; Cassie jerks it to the side.  Niss starts in on a recruitment pitch; Cassie causes her to collapse on the floor.  There’s talk of simply killing Cassie, as reluctant as everyone is to give up on a morph-capable host (and an estreen at that), but the incidents stop happening after Cassie gets transferred to Aftran 942’s control.  In fact, Aftran herself seemingly falls off the face of the Earth for a while, because no one seems to know where she is or what she’s up to a lot of the time.

Tobias morphs, one time when Odret 177 is feeding and he’s temporarily unsupervised in the cage, and nothing the controllers do can get him to turn back.  He sits there calmly and watches as they fire dracon beams at him, as they throw hot acid on Rachel and Jake, as they threaten to kill his uncle and then carry out their threat.  They zap him with picana, with a low-level shredder blast, finally with a nervous system manipulator, but nothing works.  He screams, he fights back, he throws himself against the bars of their birdcage until he breaks his own wings, but he doesn’t demorph.  Two hours and fifteen minutes into the process, the controllers admit defeat: one of them pulls out a handgun.  Tobias dies free.  

Essak 1275 starts being sent on hunting expeditions.  He’s mostly close-mouthed about what he’s hunting, but all of the highest-ranked vissers know: there’s at least one andalite loose somewhere on Earth.  

Reports are conflicting as to whether it’s just one or if the one has support—some of the rumors that trickle in from Nikto 770’s scans of the human media indicate there might be as many as three—but they all know that unless this andalite’s getting help from the humans, there’s no way he’ll blend in for long.  The andalite or andalites, meanwhile, have already taken out a water supply ship and a ground-based kandrona supply.

One day Jake reaches through the bars separating the hosts’ cages and grabs Tom on the arm.  “Tell the others,” he says.  “There are andalites bandits here, and they’re fighting back.  Don’t give up.  Don’t ever give up.  Not while there’s still hope.”

Tom’s eyes widen.  “You mean…?”

“I mean the yeerks aren’t winning this war as cleanly as the vissers want everyone to think,” Jake says.  “Tell everyone you can: the andalites are out there.”

One day Aftran strides into the yeerk pool, Cassie’s chin held high, an unfamiliar young man walking by her side.  Slowly, almost casually, they make their way over to the specialized reinforced cages used to hold the morph-capable hosts.  Threatening to kill one Animorph if the other makes an escape attempt seems to work fairly well, so Jake and Rachel are currently chained up across from each other and guarded by four hork-bajir-controllers apiece.  Cassie’s hand drops to brush along each cage as she walks by, and as she touches first Jake and then Rachel two tiny red dots fall from her sleeve.  

Jake finds himself staring in amazement at the tiny ladybug that crawls slowly across the surface of his hand.  He doesn’t know about the hours Cassie and Aftran and Gafinilan spent experimenting in order to discover that ladybugs have the eyes and the wings to get around in a hurry, while also having all toxic creatures’ calm insouciance which renders them easy to carry around.  He doesn’t know that the bug on his hand traveled here inside Cassie’s mouth to defeat the Gleet Biofilters, or that this is the final execution of a plan which was months in the making.

He does, however, know what to do.  Concentrating hard on the feel of six tiny feet even now resting on the curve of his index finger, he feels the little beetle sag into relaxation.  Across the way, a minuscule point of red falls from Rachel’s arm as she finishes acquiring her own set of DNA.  

«Please be calm,» an unfamiliar voice says inside their heads.  «My name is Aximili, and I am here to help.  Prince Cassie is about to set off a diversion.  When she does, we need both of you to morph as fast as possible and move toward the northwest exit of the yeerk pool.»

Rachel lifts her head up, shorn hair sliding away from her face, and actually grins at Jake.  “Let’s do it.”

The diversion, when it comes, is brutally simple: Aximili starts the sequence that will drain the yeerk pool for cleaning.

Every controller in the vicinity immediately rushes to try and stop him, including the ones guarding Rachel and Jake.  They both morph fast and morph small, shrinking out of their restraints as they become hard-shelled and six-legged.  Jake takes off for the spot where Cassie is rushing the cages, tiny wings beating hard against the stale kandrona-polluted air, but Rachel goes in a different direction entirely.

Jake and the others might be focused on trying to grab a handful of the hosts and run for it, but Rachel’s here for revenge.  She buzzes over the heads of two human-controller guards who never even look up, slots through a tiny crack in the door of the holding cell on the far side of the yeerk pool, and trundles through a crevasse in the two-foot-thick cinderblock walls of the holding chamber.  This is where Visser Three’s loyal sycophants hold any monster whose DNA he’s planning on acquiring—and right now the chamber is full.

When she demorphs on the floor, she finds herself face-to-face with an octopus-like creature.  If an octopus had a hard exoskeleton and several rows of sharp teeth, that is.  If an octopus was fifteen feet tall and had claws on the ends of its tentacles.  If an octopus had a gaping jaw and more clumsy limbs than it knows what to do with.  

“Hello, gorgeous,” Rachel whispers, and the creature attacks.  

She throws herself out of the way of its stabbing claws, dodges a snaking tentacle, and finally flings herself on top of one of its limbs.  The creature immediately grabs her, but that’s exactly what she wanted; she presses her skin against its lumpy body (and has to grit her teeth—this thing feels like it’s made of acid) and the creature goes limp, dropping her to the ground.

Rachel jams herself into a far corner focuses on her brand-new set of DNA, ignoring the creature (rancor, her inner Star Wars geek decides to call it) as it continues to do its best to eat this strange invader to its territory.  As she swells and hardens, she finds herself gasping in pain—the poor rancor is not adapted to Earth’s atmosphere—but doesn’t let that deter her.  The real rancor makes another attempt to grab her and rip her in half, so she reaches out and, with a single delicate tentacle, enters the code on the keypad next to the door that will let them both into the hallway.

Cassie finds herself frozen in shock for several seconds as two aliens—each one the size of a semi-trailer—burst out of a side hallway and immediately start tearing apart every controller within twenty yards.  «How do you like me now?» one of them shouts in a very familiar voice, and laughingly tears the roof clear off an enclosure holding a dozen hork-bajir hosts.

The hork-bajir explode outward in every direction, most of them running for the nearest exit, but several stop and begin slashing at controllers.  One male hork-bajir who can’t be more than two years old takes a dracon shot to center mass and goes down, weakly crying out in pain; four adults jump on his attacker and begin tearing the man to shreds.  Tom and Melissa Chapman are standing back-to-back, firing at anyone who gets too close as they guard the base of a staircase where hundreds of humans and hork-bajir are streaming toward freedom.

Jake, now in some kind of simian-reptilian morph, has broken into a weapons depot and is throwing dracon beams to newly-freed hosts left and right; every minute, the number of deadly beams lancing through the air increases exponentially.  «Don’t shoot at anyone who doesn’t shoot at you first!» he keeps saying, but not everyone is listening.  Friendly fire is everywhere.

Aximili is out of morph and badly hurt, hooves sliding in the growing pool of his own blood as he uses his tail to fend off two hork-bajir-controllers even as both hands continue to fly across the controls of the yeerk pool maintenance computer.   A hork-bajir female Cassie doesn’t recognize is going from cage to cage and releasing ever-more hosts, while a taxxon-controller has set off some kind of alarm that is bringing hundreds of controllers running from every direction to join in the fray.  Rachel is grabbing double handfuls of human-controllers and flinging them across the room to land in wet heaps; even as Cassie watches she calmly lifts a taxxon and stuffs it into her mouth as it writhes and screams and pain.

Meanwhile, the water level on the yeerk pool is slowly but steadily dropping.

Cassie hears a soft moan of pain and anguish come from the back of her own throat.  She’s not sure if she or Aftran is the one making the noise.

And that’s when Visser Three bursts into the cavern, followed closely by Visser Twenty-Three in Marco’s body.  «We got two more morphers!» Jake shouts.

Visser Three takes in the scene all around him, says several very bad words, and then turns two eyes toward his lieutenant.  «Kill them!» he orders.  «Visser Twenty-Three, kill them all!»

Marco’s head cocks to the side in thoughtful consideration.  His hand goes to the dracon beam at his side, and lifts it just far enough to fire a single shot on full power that takes Visser Three’s head off at the shoulders.  “Oh, did I forget to mention?” he says, grinning.  “Visser Twenty-Three’s been dead for almost a week now.  The Peace Movement says hi, by the way.”

Cassie considers the possibility that in freeing him she created a monster.  Aftran privately agrees.  

«ANYONE WHO’S NOT A CONTROLLER,» Jake bellows in a voice worthy of Visser Three.  «STOP FIGHTING.  LET’S BLOW THIS POPSICLE STAND!»

Rachel rips a drop shaft clear off the wall, creating a huge opening into the incline beyond.  She flings the broken tunnel at a group of taxxon-controllers, laughing when four of them burst open on impact and the others go into a feeding frenzy.  Humans, hork-bajir, and the occasional taxxon or gedd are fleeing in every direction now, leaving the Animorphs’ own force dramatically reduced.   

Even as she watches, the real rancor grabs a man running for the exit and eats him alive.  The beast has gotten in among the hosts now, and—enraged as it is from the constant pain of Earth’s excessive gravity and insufficient nitrogen—it’s killing indiscriminately.  «Sorry,» Rachel says vaguely, and then she wraps one of her own tentacles around the rancor’s neck.  The ensuing battle is nasty but brief, and at the end of it Rachel’s the only monster left in the cavern.  

Three hundred, four hundred, maybe more hosts have already made it outside.  Marco has morphed gorilla, and he’s swinging between cages ripping the locks off the few dozen full ones that remain.  So far Jake, Cassie, and the handful of hosts assisting them are holding the line, but with every second that goes by the proportion of controllers to non-controllers shifts in favor of the yeerks.  

«Let’s go!» Jake calls, collapsing the line steadily backward.  There are still hundreds of freed hosts loose in the cavern, still hundreds in the cages, but there’s nothing else to be done to save them.  He and Cassie and the others are retreating shoulder-to-shoulder, hosts dropping steadily under dracon fire but being replaced all the while by more volunteers from behind them.

Marco lopes over and joins their bubble, bellowing a challenge all around.  The andalite kid who managed to drain almost half of the yeerk pool stumbles over as well, tail flashing out at opponents with blinding speed.  Rachel is still halfway across the cavern, but she seems fine, and it’s not like anyone is daring to get close to her. 

Jake is ten feet from the stairs, then five feet, closing the bubble all the while, when someone breaks from the line of hosts and sets off running in the wrong direction.  «Get back here!» Jake shouts.  «Now!»

Tom actually takes the time to pause and flip Jake off, and then turns and keeps running.  He disappears from sight amid the fracas.

Jake feels like someone ripped several feet of intestine out of his stomach, but he cannot linger on it.  «Cassie, get to the surface and start doing crowd control,» he says.  «Ax—mind if I call you Ax?—give her cover.  Rachel, get over here!  Everyone else, up the stairs now.  Marco and I will cover your retreat.»

Several more people run past the line, heading toward the stairs.  Jake doesn’t know if they’re controllers or not, and he can’t bring himself to care at the moment, too concerned with making sure that the yeerks don’t break through to the hosts behind him.  He moves steadily backward until one of his feet hits the bottom-most stair, and then he starts to demorph.  It’s just him and Marco now against about forty taxxon-controllers, both of them bleeding heavily.  There’s no sign of Rachel, or of Tom.  Marco slips; Jake yanks him to his feet.  Jake doesn’t even register the whamwhamwham of gunfire until he looks down and discovers a red hole just above his left hip.  He drags himself up another stair, clinging tight to the railing.  He’s not even fighting back anymore.  Now he’s just a human shield for the hosts behind.

And then an enormous grey-brown tentacle sweeps away almost twenty controllers in one go.  Rachel simply flings herself forward onto the enemy line, crushing people with her bulk.  She’s missing three limbs, dragging herself on the other five, but she’s still moving.

Tom bursts through the hole in the line she created, carrying a human shape over his shoulder and dragging what looks like a child by the wrist.  He shouts something at Rachel, who starts to demorph, still crawling toward the stairs.

Jake makes it outside—with his team more or less intact, no less—even if Marco is mostly carrying him for the last several yards.  He morphs amidst a crowd of hosts who are milling around outside of the shopping mall as if looking for direction, demorphs again as the entire herd starts a mass exodus toward the government buildings at the center of town.

They make a very strange picture, this enormous procession of newly-freed slaves marching through the center of town.  Many of them are bruised or bloodied.  Almost all of them are dull-eyed with shock.  They form an unbroken column that stretches nearly two miles in length, this collection of over a thousand humans and hork-bajir and other aliens.  Whatever else happens, this is too big for the yeerks to cover up.  There are too many of them for the yeerks to recapture them all.  The whole block tower is about to come toppling down.

It’s as they’re standing outside while Cassie and Aftran and Ax storm the mayor’s office with news of the invasion that Jake catches Tom again.  “What the hell were you thinking, going back like that?” he demands.  “If you’d been killed—if you’d been taken again—”

In silent response, Tom lowers the woman he’s still carrying to the floor.  Jake registers in shock that it’s their mother, currently unconscious.  “I couldn’t just leave her,” Tom snaps.

“Yeah, and what if she’s still a controller, huh?” Jake says.

“Get off his case,” Rachel tells him.  She’s holding onto the kid that Tom grabbed as well—it’s Sarah.  In this case there’s no question about whether Sarah’s still a controller, given the bruising grip Rachel has on her wrist and the fact that Sarah’s fingernails have already left bloody scratches all over both her sister’s hands.

“Three days from now it’ll be a moot point.”  Tom stands up, crossing his arms.  “Are you seriously going to tell me I should have left her there?  Are you telling me you’re in charge here or something?”

“Of course he’s in charge,” Rachel says, as if this is something everyone agreed upon in a committee.  “That doesn’t mean he’s perfect all the time.”

“Wait, what?”  Jake’s pretty sure he missed something.

Ax takes that opportunity to stick his head out the door and say, «Prince Jake, the human mayor and Prince Cassie are ready for you now.  They’d like you to make a statement.»

“All right, fearless leader, guess you’re needed inside.”  Marco slaps Jake playfully on the arm.

Jake turns to Tom as a last resort.  “Please tell them I’m not in charge of anything,” he says.

Tom frowns, thinking it over.  “You did pretty good back there, midget.  I think I’d be ready to follow you to hell and back with only moderate levels of insubordination.”

Jake slowly turns in a circle, registering just how many people are looking at him.  Realizing that he’s ragged and barefoot and filthy with dried taxxon guts, but that everyone from the mayor to Cassie to the huge battle-scarred andalite standing over her shoulder is looking at him expectantly.

“If I’m leading this revolution,” he says at last, “Rule number one: nobody’s calling me ‘prince.’”

«Absolutely, Prince Jake,» Ax says, utterly solemn.

[themeatlife]

The List - the Meat Life Reviews the Avengers: Infinity Saga

It’s back!  the Meat Life’s The List returns to rank all of the MCU Infinity Saga movies from Iron Man all the way to Spider-Man: Far From Home.

With the home release of Avengers: Endgame, I thought it would be a great time to revisit the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Two summers ago, after I had watched Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 and about a month before I got to watch Spider-Man: Homecoming, I ranked the MCU movies.  You can find that ranking here.  Now that I have watched what Kevin Feige describes as the final installment in Marvel’s Infinity Saga, I go through the movies again and rank all 23 installments including the last two --- Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home. For the ones I ranked in the first one, I have included their old ranking in parentheses. And since Tumblr now limits pictures in entries to ten, I will include pictures of the new reviews.

#23 (15) - The Incredible Hulk (2008)

This is the second film in the first phase of the MCU.  The movie is mostly forgotten in the MCU, including by me.  It wasn’t a bad movie (certainly a marked improvement from 2003′s Hulk), but it felt like something was missing from it.  Of course, there is only so much you can do with a character in its own movie.  We find Bruce Banner (played by Edward Norton in this movie) being chased by General Ross, the man who spearheaded the project to create super soldiers that created the Hulk. Ross will become an important figure 8 years later in Civil War. And of course at the end of the movie we have a Tony Stark-building a team cameo and this was the intro of OG Avenger Bruce Banner/Hulk. Was the worse MCU movie in my initial ranking, and it remains there.

#22 (14) - Iron Man 2 (2010)

The weakest of the Iron Man movies.  They replace Terrence Howard’s Rhodey with Don Cheadle, who in the long run has better chemistry with Robert Downey Jr, but in this movie is just weird to see instead of Howard.  The villains are also probably the weakest of the MCU, with Ivan Vanko looking to exact revenge against the Stark family and Justin Hammer as the head of rival weapons manufacturer looking to take down Tony Stark. Totally didn’t notice the Elon Musk cameo until about the fourth time I watched it, a big inspiration for the Tony Stark movie character. The biggest contribution to the MCU/Infinity Saga is the introduction of OG Avenger Black Widow.

#21 (10) - Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Loki is one of the better villains of the MCU, and in The Dark World he is on full display. Is he good? Is he bad? In this installment, Thor must work with Loki to defeat the Dark Elves who are going after Jane Foster because she has the Ether within her. The cliff-hanger style ending makes it almost unfulfilling. The plot isn’t really as important as the introduction of the Ether, later known as the Reality Stone and the movie’s use in Avengers: Endgame.

#20 (9) - Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Although Age of Ultron was seen as a step back from the first Avengers, it is still a very solid film especially after knowing the full picture of the Infinity Saga. This is very much a set up movie, though.  We see Tony Stark accidentally create Ultron out of feeling the need to further protect the world (and also created Vision to counter). We see Hawkeye with a family and a Romanov-Banner romance.  We see the introduction of the Maximov kids, with Quicksilver’s death toward the end and Scarlet Witch joining the Avengers. And whilst on the run we also see some of the seeds of tension between Stark and Rogers as well as the leveling of the Sokovia that are important later in Captain America: Civil War. I also didn’t notice that much when I first watched but they introduced Wakanda as the source of vibranium and the vibranium poacher Ulysses Klaue.

#19 (13) - Thor (2011)

I did enjoy the movie, although I will say that this is one of the weaker entries in the MCU.  As the heir to the throne of Asgard, the arrogant Thor loses his hammer and must prove his worthiness before getting it back.  He bumps into scientist Jane Foster played by Natalie Portman (yes!).  He humbles himself and eventually earns back his hammer and has to fight the forces of his brother Loki. We see the first appearance of Hawkeye who will become one of the OG Avengers.

#18 (11) - Doctor Strange (2016)

Arrogant doctor Stephen Strange travels to Nepal in search of a treatment for his hands that were devastated from a car accident.  He gets trained by the Ancient One to reveal powers in how to access different dimensions and wield mystical weapons.  He has to harness these powers to fight Kaecilius, who has stolen pages of an ancient handbook to access the Dark Dimension.  Some of the mystical stuff might not be for everyone and I only stuck with it because I like Benedict Cumberbatch and I’m glad I did. I’ve heard Doctor Strange described as Iron Man but with magic, and that’s not wrong.

#17 - Captain Marvel (2019)

We see Carol Danvers, who has lost her memory of her origin and has an unrealized power, think she’s Kree, a sort of police warrior race. She eventually goes against them when she figures out they exiled Krulls and lied to her about her human origin. Along the way she goes to Earth in the 1990’s and does sort of a buddy cop detective case with the SHIELD agent Nick Fury to figure out who she is. It was cool to see how Fury loses his eye and seeing the old Tesseract/Space Stone. While Captain Marvel is not a bad movie, in my opinion this would have been a much stronger movie if they leaned more into her backstory of being held down and knocked down a lot more. Unintentionally, but in my mind this will always be measured against Wonder Woman, about the only thing in the MCU era that DC did better than Marvel.

#16 (6) - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) 

I had this ranked higher in my initial ranking but I must say after a while I liked some of the other titles better than this one. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 picks up where the last left off, mixing the right amount of humor and action and pulling on just enough heartstrings for you to be pulled right in.  The Guardians have to face against someone they never expected: Peter Quill’s dad.  We see the introduction of Mantis and her addition to the Guardians.

#15 (8) - Ant-Man (2015)

Ant-Man grew on me.  Marvel may well have a formula now with the mix of humor and superhero action, but it’s a formula that works.  Here we follow unlikely hero Scott Lang played by Paul Rudd, a former engineer turned petty criminal, training to break into Pym Technologies using Hank Pym’s old shrinking suit to take down the corrupted Pym protege Darren Cross.  Rudd’s humor, chemistry with Evangeline Lilly’s Hope van Dyne, along with humorous sidekicks played by Michael Pena and T.I. are the glue to this movie.

#14 (7) - Iron Man 3 (2013)

I think most don’t give the final installment of the Iron Man trilogy much credit.  We are reminded of why we love the Tony Stark character.  In spite of his arrogance there is a tremendous heart, and we see both on full display here.  Set after the events of the first Avengers, Stark is going through PTSD.  He tries to navigate through that while being attacked by new threats. And it was good after the large scale of the first Avengers movie to get something more down to Earth.

#13 - Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

We pick up after the events of Captain America: Civil War, where Scott Lang is serving the back end of a two-year house arrest for breaking the Sokovia Accords. Hank Pym and Hope van Dyne are underground and developed a quantum accelerator in the hopes of getting Hank’s wife Janet van Dyne out of the quantum realm. Arms dealer Sonny Burch and unstable phasing Ghost are after the accelerator. After the heaviness of Avengers: Infinity War, it was nice to have a little relief on a smaller scale. And Paul Rudd doing Paul Rudd things is always pleasant.

#12 - Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

Picking up after the events of Captain America: Civil War (and apparently “eight years” after the first Avengers movie), we see Peter Parker filling his time being the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man under the distant watchful eye of Happy Hogan and Tony Stark. That is, until he finds The Vulture’s henchmen Shocker one and two selling weapons infused with alien tech from the Invasion of New York. We get a great sequence where Peter learns the night of homecoming that his love interest Liz is actually the Vulture’s daughter and all the tension that follows. With all due respect to Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, Tom Holland fits the Spider-Man/Peter Parker role the very best. And at the end, we get something that rarely happens with Marvel villains...the Vulture lives and goes to jail.

#11 (12) - Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

This movie has aged very well over time. Steve Rogers, a scrawny kid from New York, wanted to serve his country in the middle of World War II.  He was selected for experimental super soldier program and became the face of the US military, spending time raising money for the USO.  Then he starts hunting down Nazi science division Hydra and its leader Red Skull.  It ends with Rogers downing a Hydra bomber and crashing it in ice, preserving him until modern time. It also heartbreakingly separates Rogers from love interest Peggy Carter, SSR Agent who helped him through his WWII missions and promised a dance. This pays off later.

#10 (5) -  Iron Man (2008)

The film that kick started the entire MCU.  Here we follow Tony Stark and the origin of Iron Man, birthed from Stark being captured by a mercenary terror group and called to action after seeing his company’s weapons in the wrong hands.  This was a role ready-made for Robert Downey Jr, a great mix of arrogance, empathy, and quick wit.  And there’s plenty of action. And with that first movie we get the first post-credit scene, a now trademark Marvel touch, introducing Nick Fury the Director of SHIELD recruiting Stark into a “bigger universe.”

#9 (4) - Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

I’ll admit, when Marvel announced Guardians of the Galaxy, I had planned on skipping out.  I knew nothing of the comic and it looked cheesy.  So yes, I had my doubts about a group that included a talking raccoon and a fighting tree.  But I gave it a chance and Guardians ended up being one of the stronger movies of the MCU.  We see the origin of Peter Quill, a.k.a. Star-Lord and how the Guardians came together.  This has that right mix of humor, action, chemistry, and 80s mix tape. And we see the introduction of the Orb containing the Power Stone.

#8 - Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

Eight months following the events of Avengers: Endgame, we get to see some of the aftermath of the world after “The Blip,” including a hilarious school news tribute video of our fallen heroes set to Whitney Houston’s rendition of “I Will Always Love You.” We see Nick Fury commandeer Peter’s summer class trip to Europe to initially help Mysterio battle what looks to be Elementals from another dimension set to destroy Earth. Little do we know that it’s all an illusion that Mysterio and a crew of technicians in an effort to destroy Tony Stark’s legacy and become the biggest savior of the world. That’s about as in depth I’ll go since this movie is still in theaters so I won’t spoil the fun. But I will say that this is probably the best version of a Spider-Man movie with all the awkward teen moments, his heavy weight of responsibility of being in line to be the next Tony Stark, and the sweet interplay between Parker and Zendaya’s MJ as well as bestie Jacob Batalon’s Ned. The MCU is in good hands post-Infinity Saga with Spider-Man on board. And there is a great surprise in the end credit scene.

#7 - Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

This Thor. Marvel finally figured out how to use Thor and Chris Hemsworth’s comedic timing. Right from the opening monologue you get that this is a different movie from the other two Thor’s. After Odin’s death, Thor’s half-sister Hela takes over Asgard as Thor and Loki disappear to the planet Sakaar. Thor is imprisoned as a gladiator-style fighter where he bumps into his “friend from work” Hulk. They all link up with Valkyrie, a former Asgardian warrior to escape Sakaar and save the Asgardian people from destruction. We see great comedy and chemistry between all the main characters, Idris Elba’s Heimdall get a lot of screen time protecting and hiding the Asgardian people from Hela, and hilarious performances from Karl Urban’s Skurge and Jeff Goldblum’s Grandmaster. In the end credit scene we see Thanos’ ship coming in for the events directly preceding Avengers: Infinity War.

#6 (3) - The Avengers (2012)

Director Joss Whedon pulled off what people once thought impossible...a superhero team-up movie. We see Nick Fury pull together Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow and later Hawkeye for the first time to figure out and stop Loki’s plan to use the Chitauri warriors to take over Earth. The Avengers definitely is an action movie with some dramatic elements but the thing that sticks out about this is even with New York City in peril, the ride is great!  The chemistry of the entire ensemble is on full display.  Before Thanos, Loki makes for probably the strongest villain in the series.  When this came out, it was hard to see Marvel top this. And we see a glimpse of Thanos for the first time in a post-credits scene.

#5 - Black Panther (2018)

Marvel never stops amazing world building, a vibrant look at the fictional nation of Wakanda included. Black Panther picks up after the events of Captain America: Civil War, but to open we get a flashback of Oakland, California in 1992 that will impact the entire plot that follows. We then see Prince T’Challa get crowned king upon his return to Wakanda, following the death of his father T’Chaka in Civil War. Mysterious American Killmonger works with vibranium poacher Ulysses Klaue at first seemingly to steal more vibranium. As the movie progresses it is revealed that Killmonger is actually Wakandan whose father was killed in the opening scene in Oakland and is after the throne. Upon several viewings, there are multiple layers as there are in Ryan Coogler directed movies. This movie is part James Bond (with T’Challa’s sister Shuri playing the Q role), part family drama, part political thriller, and of course part Marvel movie. Black Panther tries to tackle political issues like inclusion, globalization, and immigration while also addressing how a family’s mistakes from the past can haunt and impact a family’s future. Michael B Jordan’s Killmonger is a top three MCU villain and there are wonderful performances from Lupita Nyong’o’s Nakia, Danai Gurira’s Okoye, Martin Freeman’s Everett Ross, and Andy Serkis’ Klaue. The end credit scene shows a relaxed Bucky talking to Shuri about his recovery.

#4 (2) - Captain America: Civil War (2016)

In this installment, the Avengers find themselves under hot water after an accident on a mission.  The UN votes to approve the Sokovia Accords that limits the Avengers decision making, splitting the team between those who support it who stand with Iron Man and those who oppose it who stand with Captain America. During the signing, we see an attack that initially looked like it was done by the Winter Soldier but is really carried out by a former Sokovian special forces soldier who is seeking to destroy the Avengers for indirectly killing his family. Civil War has probably the coolest fight scene of the series at a German airport.  The newbies Black Panther and Spider-Man are a sight to see.  And there is a twist ending that’s really heart wrenching that splits our two main Avengers in Iron Man and Captain America. 

#3 - Avengers: Endgame (2019)

I reviewed this a few months ago, so I’ll provide the link to my review here. What I will discuss here is how great this movie is. I almost put this at number 1. The storytelling and the conclusion to many of the main characters is so satisfying as a fan. It just felt so good to watch. I may rank this higher if I ever revisit the Infinity Saga, but for now I think top three at the very least is very very good. And it is the most satisfying ending to a movie series since The Dark Knight Rises. But I placed the other two above it for the reasons I will outline.

#2 (1) - Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

Wow. For so long this has been my favorite MCU movie and probably still is. We see Cap and Black Widow running from SHIELD, out to hunt down the Winter Soldier for the assassination of Nick Fury. Out of all the MCU, this movie had a modern real world feel with its questions about how to determine whether or not someone is a threat. It kind of revisits a concept dealt with in Minority Report, whether someone’s free will determines their criminality or their preconceived conditions. It had great action sequences. And it defined the direction of the MCU with its revelation that Hydra was secretly controlling SHIELD for all those years. In this installment in the MCU, we see the possibility of how these movies can be dealt. There can be genre movies within the comic book genre. This was the political spy thriller of the MCU, in the same vein as some of those political thrillers of the 1970s. And as it pertains to the bigger Infinity Saga story, we find out Steve Roger’s old buddy Bucky is the infamous assassin The Winter Soldier. And we get the introduction of Sam Wilson, the Falcon.

#1 - Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

I never got to review this when it initially came out. This is basically a Thanos movie disguised and named as an Avengers movie. The best MCU villains have the most fleshed out backstories, and in Infinity War we get Thanos’ background, how his world collapsed and how he came about his reasoning behind wanting to eliminate half of the universe’s inhabitants. You see his rational, and even though he goes about things the wrong way (I mean, he is a villain), you get to see his reasoning and motivation behind his quest. For this alone, I felt compelled to rank it number one just because of how different the approach was and how effective the execution turned out.

Then, inter-spliced with Thanos’ story is the present day struggle. The beginning of the movie we see the destroyed Asgardian ship with Thanos and his disciples taking out most of the leadership, but not before Heimdall uses the Bifrost to get Hulk back to Earth. We see Heimdall and Loki die and Thor left for dead before Thanos moves on with the Space Stone and already in possession of the Power Stone.

The story builds toward two separate teams. The space team with Iron Man, Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Nebula, and the Guardians minus Rocket and Groot defend the Time Stone with the ultimate face off with Thanos on the collapsed planet Titan. Before that, Thanos had a skirmish with the Guardians on Knowhere before ultimately obtaining the Reality Stone from the Collector, kidnapping Gamora in the process. Thanos killed Gamora on the planet Vormir to obtain the Soul Stone. Before the fight on Titan, Dr. Strange looks into the future and sees 14 million possible outcomes and only one where they win. The Earth team with Captain America, Falcon, Black Widow, War Machine, Bruce Banner, Scarlett Witch, Vision, Black Panther, and the Wakandan military protect Vision while Shuri tries to unlink the Mind Stone to destroy without harming Vision while battling the Chitauri and some of Thanos’ disciples in Wakanda with Thor, Rocket, and Groot dropping in toward the end.

The space team almost grabs the gauntlet from Thanos but ultimately fail (partly due to Peter Quill’s temper after finding out Gamora was killed by Thanos). Thanos then descends to Earth into Wakanda and some of the Earth team, in particular Captain America holds him off long enough for Scarlett Witch to destroy the Mind Stone, killing her love Vision. But Thanos uses the Time Stone to turn Vision back long enough to restore the Mind Stone and obtain the last stone he was searching for. Right before he is able to snap his gauntlet fingers, Thor drops down with his new ax Stormbreaker, thrusting the ax into Thanos’ chest. But Thanos is still able to snap his fingers, dusting half the population of the universe including some of our heroes: in particular Black Panther, most of the Guardians, Dr. Strange, and, in probably the most emotional scene outside of Endgame, Spider-Man.

If you were a moviegoer in a previous era and didn’t know they were already shooting Spider-Man: Far From Home, the impact of The Snap would have resonated so much more. Even in this era, though, the ending of the film was sharp, jarring, and effective.

—————

That’s my list! I may revisit years down the line, and some of these movies may age better than others. But I feel pretty comfortable about where these movies ended up. Let me know what you think! And enjoy the home release of Avengers: Endgame!

[tomb-of-ash]

Kurtis Trent Spin-Off Game Design Ideas

We’ve received a number of documents on the abandoned Kurtis Trent spin-off game, a prequel to Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. These were sent to us anonymously. This particular anonymous contributor has sent a number of screenshots and documents to us in the past and they were eventually verified by members of the Core Design team. As such, we have no doubts about the authenticity of these documents.

Kurtis Game – Design ideas – 06/07/01

Game name   -  Bloodline

The name comes from Kurtis Trent’s realization of his ancestral legacy and the re-discovery of his inherited paranormal powers.

The story overview

The story is a prequel to TR Next Gen.

Set in New York City, USA. Between the years1998 to 2000.

Kurtis drives a wrecked 1970’s Ford.

He sleeps in the back seat.

Survives on the proceeds of crime.

He is running from his ancestral past - and present day demons.

Game genre

Third person arcade adventure.

Focal points of the game

The core of the game is based around search and destroy missions.

Focus on (in order of importance)

Combat – destroy all     enemies using available weapons.

Exploration –search     rooms for pick ups and enemies to destroy.

World interaction – open     doors, shoot out windows and walls.

Story – to create     atmosphere, depth of character and link episodes.

Focus on - Combat

Kurtis Trent has the following abilities.

Hand to hand combat.

Use of firearms.

Use of explosives.

Use of psychic occult powers – to power-boost firearms and explosives.

Use of psychic occult powers – for reconnaissance and object control.

World interaction – use of computers and machinery to produce a simple goal.

Enemies will have the following abilities.

Hand to hand combat.

Use of firearms.

Use of psychic occult powers – to power-boost firearms and explosives.

Focus on - Exploration

Search for pick ups to replenish energy and weapons.

Search for enemies to destroy.

Kurtis must destroy all enemies in a room before the door unlocks and lets him continue.

Focus on - World interaction

Kurtis can climb stairs

Kurtis can open swing doors with a push

Kurtis can shoot out windows and jump through the hole

Kurtis can shoot out walls and vents at pre-defined points and jump through the hole.

Kurtis can smash objects – crates, barrels, machines

Kurtis can be harmed by pre-defined zones placed in the room.

These zones are : Fire (burning), Water (drowning), Electrical (electrocution).

Focus on – Story

The story is presented using the in game polygon graphics.

The story is revealed in the twelve episodes that make up the game.

At the end of each episode is a short video that plays music, news bulletins and off the wall imagery. This is designed to reinforce the world of Kurtis Trent.

There is no introduction sequence.

The game starts and as the player plays the names of the characters are superimposed over the action.

Story is delivered in the following ways:

Exerts from diaries.     (With voice over narration).

In game cut scenes with     game characters.

Media transmissions from     TV.

Media transmissions from     radio.

Characters

Friends

Kurtis Trent – Demon hunter.

Father Francis – Excommunicated priest and occult expert.

Ana Bell – TV news reporter and Kurtis’ doomed girlfriend.

Marty Cruise  - Forensic police scientist.

Marie Cornel – Kurtis’ mother.

Foes

Eckhart – Fourteenth century crazed alchemist.

Phil Yates – Possessed billionaire software mogul.

Jean Rochelle - Old ‘friend’ from the Foreign Legion.

Obnoxtrux - Monster demon

Spawn - Furry gremlin critters.

Vampires – The living dead.

NYPD police force – Gun happy flat foots who get in the way.

MIB’s –  Government agents looking to capture Kurtis and study his paranormal powers. (By removing his brain and cutting it into small pieces!)

                       MIB’s come in two varieties:

                       Type 1 - MIB agent. Man in a dark suit. (Investigators).

                       Type 2 - SWAT team commando operatives. (Capture teams).

Demonic possessed – People who have been enslaved by the dark forces. Only scanning their aura will alert Kurtis to their true nature.

Enemy Reactions

Enemy characters are assigned trigger values for reaction times, aggression, health and ammunition.

These triggers control the resulting animations.

A line of sight cone emits from the characters head. If Kurtis is within this cone the enemy character will react according to its trigger values.

Enemy patrol paths

Patrol paths are set by positioning control nodes around the room.

The direction and any incidental animations of the character is set on the node.

World navigation

A scanner that shows the level map and paranormal hot spots.

Appears as a semi-transparent HUD map over the game world.

To use the map scanner:

Select map scanner from the inventory. HUD map appears.

Press the CROSS – (action) button to make it disappear.

Time gates

These are inter-dimensional gateways that offer a window into past and future events.

Kurtis can witness actions from other times and receive messages from the past - and future.

While Kurtis can not step through, he can use his mind control powers to capture small non-organic objects and bring them into his dimension.

Time gates are scattered everywhere but are disguised as everyday objects.

To find and use a Time gate:

Select Psychic Aura Scanner from the Psychic inventory.

Scan the area for psychic aura.

When it is revealed the player stands in front of the Time gate and presses the CROSS – (action) button.

The Time gate opens and the Kurtis sees a third person camera view of the action.

To capture an object:

R2 – Hold = Mind control over objects

Steer crosshair over object with:

AL – Left/right/forward/back + 1 click = Capture object

When the object is captured Kurtis is returned to the normal game mode.

Objects can also be thrown into the Time gates.

Players inventory

D PAD – LEFT ARROW - Hold down = Inventory

Scrolling horizontal selection bar. Rolls left or right.

Center slot is high lighted and the item inside it is the current weapon.

Release the D PAD button to use the selected item.

Items list:

Diary.

Amulet.

Antidote.

Paranormal scanner.

Hand weapon inventory

D PAD – UP ARROW - Hold down = Hand weapons

Scrolling horizontal selection bar. Rolls left or right.

Center slot is high lighted and the item inside it is the current weapon.

Release the D PAD button to use the selected item.

Items list:

Multi-round hand gun.

Fires a variety of 9mm ordnance.

Sodium SALT tipped slug.

Standard 9mm slug.

Stun slug. 

Uzi sized submachine gun. Fires standard 9mm slug.

Throwing weapons inventory

D PAD – DOWN ARROW - Hold down  = Throwing weapons

Scrolling horizontal selection bar. Rolls left or right.

Center slot is high lighted and the item inside it is the current weapon.

Release the D PAD button to use the selected item.

Items list:

Gas grenade.

Explosive grenade.

SALT grenade.

PSYWARE

PSYWARE is the military term given to the paranormal abilities of the human mind.

This breaks down into two areas:

Area 1.            Psychic powers are concentrated on tactical and information gathering activities.

List of powers:

Out of body eye for reconnaissance.

Aura scanner. For detecting the paranormal.

Mind control of objects. Pick up, move and drop.

Levitation. Limited in height and duration. Quickly depletes energy reserves.

Best used to enhance fighting moves. Kicks, flips etc.

Mind control over life forms. Take control of other creatures’ bodies.

Psychic tap. Kurtis can drain the energy from humans to power up his occult energy reserves.

Area 2.           Occult powers are used for offensive and defensive attacks and draw their energy from the energy signatures of all living things.

List of powers:

Directional energy wave.

360 blast energy wave.

PSYWARE booster.

All of the weapons in the Hand weapon and throwing weapon inventory can be power-boosted by combining Hand weapons and Throwing weapons with the Psychic power button.

Select a Hand weapon or throwing weapon.

Hold down the L1 – Psychic power

Enemy demons

When a demon breaks through the dimensional barrier, the first thing it wants to do is enslave minions. It does this with a zap of power, turning the victim into a slave. These slaves can be used as assassins or cannon fodder, and spies.

Demons will camouflage their true shape for as long as possible, preferring to take the form of another creature.

Only when the host form has been rendered useless will they appear in their true demonic form.

Demon hunting tends to follow this pattern:

Tracking – the investigation and locating of the demonic infestation.

Mortal combat – combat with the enslaved minions protecting their master.

Paranormal combat – containment and exorcism of the demon itself.

Game structure

The game will take the format of a TV series.

Twelve episodes form a complete series.

Each episode has its own complete story and mission to be completed, although some missions and stories will span two episodes.

Key characters will appear in each episode, while some will only come back later on in the series.

Overview of episodes. Only showing key story points.

Note: In-between each episode is a commercial break. Adverts, music videos and news bulletins are broadcast. Some may seem completely off at a tangent but all will create a feel for the kind of world that Kurtis inhabits.

Episode 1      

Kurtis on the streets. Living on the proceeds of crime.

Meets Father Francis for the first time.

Rejects the priest’s offer of help.

Kurtis is involved in a robbery that goes wrong. Ends up in prison.

Father Francis gets him out and takes him to his safe house.

Episode 2      

Father Francis shows Kurtis how to master his occult powers.

They go on a demon hunt together. Kurtis is back on track.

Episode 3

More demon fighting. Kurtis is becoming more adept at using his skills as a demon hunter.

Eckhart makes his first appearance and escapes after a savage fight.

Father Francis explains the invisible war between good and evil that is raging in the city.

Episode 4      

A super demon breaks in and is loose in the city.

Kurtis rescues a girl. Ana Bell, TV news reporter. Falls in love. She dies. (Sigh.)

Kurtis blames himself.

 Episode 5      

First part of a two part story.

Eckhart is trying to mastermind a massive occult invasion in the  city.

To be continued …

 Episode 6      

Continues …

The investigation leads to a billionaires mansion. Beneath the gothic pile are miles of catacombs filled with a demon army.

Eckhart escapes to fight again.

 Episode 7     

Introduce Martella Chancy - a forensic police scientist. Side kick for Kurtis and Father Francis.

Kurtis meets his mother. She gives him his father’s diary.

The diary will provide insights into Kurtis past and future.

Episode 8      

More demon fighting.

An old friend from Kurtis’ legion days turns up.

Kurtis’ is persuaded to join in a bank robbery.

This is a trap and the MIB capture him.

Kurtis must escape from captivity.

Episode 9      

Comedy episode

Cute furry critters are being sold all over the  city.

They hatch into something nasty.

Episode 10

Halloween in the city.

Vampires are abroad tonight.

Father Francis “Vampires! I hate those guys!”

Episode 11    

Eckhart kidnaps Kurtis’ mother (Marie Cornel) and Kurtis must rescue her.

Father Francis dies in this episode.

Kurtis must go on alone.

 Episode 12    

Eckhart has taken Marie Cornel to the place where Kurtis was born – a hermetically sealed base in the Utah desert.

Kurtis must rescue his mother.

Eckhart escapes to Europe.

Kurtis Trent character animations

Basic moves

Standing/Waiting

Personality move – smoking a fag/eating peanuts.

Walk

Run

Strafe – left + right

Sneak

Crouch

Belly Crawl

Jump – upwards/forwards/backwards - (hop)

Rolling – left/right/forward

Stepping – left/right/forward/backwards

Death move

Weakened slouch

Hit reactions – punch, shot, electrocution etc..

World interaction

Push door

Kick locked door open

Climbing – ladders

Press button – chest height

Operate keyboard – table height

Pick up object

Throw object

Weapons

Holster + Draw firearm

Fire firearm

Reload firearm

Grab + Throw Grenade

Cast/throw salt

Hold occult amulet

Psychic moves

Trance state – out of body movement

Mind control – arm extended to move objects/humans etc..

Psychic wave – tense up crouch move and release

Levitation stance – angelic pose

Psychic Energy Drain – same as mind control move

Psychic Shield – cross arms and brings head down

Psychic overload – hands holding head, stumbling around

Psychic blast – arms extended, hands together/open

Hand to hand fighting

Punch – psychic same move

Kick 

Shove

Block

PSX 2 controller

AL – Half forward = Walk

AL – Full forward = Run

AL – Full back = Jump back

AL – Left/right = Turn around

L3 + 1 click = Crouch. To exit crouch : L3 + 1 click = Stand

L3 + 2 clicks = Crawl. To exit crawl : L3 + 1 click = Stand

AR – Left/right = Strafe sideways

AL – Forward + AR – Forward = Sneak

AL – Full forward + SQUARE – Tap = Jump forward

AL – Full back + SQUARE – Tap = Jump backwards

L1 –   Hold down to combine psychic power with weapons and fighting moves.

           Hold down to build up a stronger release of psychic power.

           On screen charge bar will indicate level of power.

L1 – Hold = Psychic power + TRIANGLE – Block = Psychic shield

D PAD – UP ARROW -  Hold down  = Hand weapons

D PAD – DOWN ARROW -  Hold down  = Throwing weapons

D PAD – LEFT ARROW -  Hold down  = Inventory

D PAD – RIGHT ARROW -  Hold down  = NOT USED AT THE MOMENT

To select an item from the D PAD menus do the following:

+ AL – Left/right scroll to pick item. When high lighted release the D PAD arrow button

L1 – Psychic power + SQUARE – Jump = Levitation

To steer the character in levitation mode use a combination of AL and AR:

AL – Left/right = Turn around

AR – Left/right = Hover left/hover right

AR – Forward/back = Hover up/hover down

R1 – Hold = Out of body.

The Kurtis character freezes and a ball of light leaves his body.

To steer the ball to a host body in the out of body mode use a combination of AL and AR:

AL – Left/right = Turn around

AR – Left/right = Hover left/hover right

AR – Forward/back = Hover up/hover down

Fly into the host body you want to capture and control. They will move using the same controls as the Kurtis character.

L2 – Hold = Psychic power drain

To direct the beam onto a host body use:

AL – Left/right = Turn around

AR – Forward/Back = Up/down

L1 – Hold - Psychic power + CROSS – Tap = Psychic power blast

Mind control over objects:

R2 – Hold = Mind control over objects

Steer crosshair over object with:

AL – Left/right/forward/back + 1 click = Capture object

Move with:

AL – Left/right = Turn around

AR – Left/right = Hover left/hover right

AR – Forward/back = Hover up/hover down

Release with:

AL + 1 click = Release

CROSS –      Tap = Action/punch Note: Hold down longer for greater distance throws with objects.

SQUARE – Tap = Jump up

CIRCLE – Tap = Kick

TRIANGLE – Tap = Defensive block

Threat indicator

How to show which direction the enemies are coming from in a combat situation.

Occult database

Referred to by Father Francis but only discovered at the end of the game.

Pick ups and reward system

Ammo

Energy

Keys

Kurtis’ fathers’ diary

Handed to Kurtis by his mother. This is not a happy family reunion.

Kurtis is bitter at his fathers absence and his mothers enforced exile from him.

The diary is not something he immediately values.

Game will use diary to provide background to enemy characters weaknesses.

The Lux Veritatis charms

Body charm 1 – True sight

Amulet that when Kurtis picks it up it burns a symbol onto the palm of his hand.

The tattoo will glow when occult danger is in the vicinity.

Body charm 2 – Pillar of strength

A rune covered stone pillar that when Kurtis encircles it with his arms burns a tattoo onto both forearms.

Increases Kurtis’ resistance to occult attack.

Body charm 3 – Pure of heart

A horizontal beam of energy that cuts through Kurtis leaving a tattoo on his chest.

Increases Kurtis’ resistance to occult mind control.

Body charm 4 – Wisdom of ages

A headband with a carved rune on the front.

Burns into Kurtis’ forehead and gives him instant access to the Lux Veritatis archives of occult knowledge.

Psychic power meter

This onscreen power meter indicates the amount of psychic charge being used when the player presses the L1 – Psychic power button.

The diagram below shows the power scale.

The longer the L1 – Physic power button is held the greater the eventual discharge of energy.

If the player exceeds the safe zone limit and enters the danger zone then the eventual discharge of energy can have unpredictable effects on Kurtis and his surroundings.

These can be one of the following:

Kurtis dies (if mortal     energy is low).

Shape change

Kill mortals in the     immediate vicinity

Fire storm

Game map building

Dimensions are in meters.

Steps, stairs, walkways, doorways, windows, machines and furniture will all be built in metric scale.

See Kurtis Trent character animations for the characters walk/jump distances.

Let us know what you think about these documents in the comments below.

See more exclusive Tomb Raider - the Angel of Darkness content

[incomplete-nano-stash]

Time Wolf - Chapter 4

               Laricia was surprised by the re-entry of her husband to the house. “I wasn’t expecting you home until …” Once she saw that Stephen was right behind Ian, wearing the TX-31 suit, she understood perfectly. “I see. Come on back, we’ll attend to you both.”

               “Thanks, honey.” Ian bent over to deliver a friendly kiss to Laricia. Stephen would have scratched his head were he not wearing a helmet. Ian motioned toward the basement door, leading Stephen down.

               Stephen tried to pull the suit off of himself carefully. To his surprise, there was yet another docking station that Ian plugged the suit into, hiding under his house. This wasn’t the biggest surprise, however. “You’re … married?” Stephen stuttered.

               “Just, actually, not six years ago,” Ian replied. “Her family disowned her, she was lost and cold and alone when she came here. I took her in, nursed her to health, and eventually we wound up … well …”

               The older man seemed immensely embarrassed by his relationship to the far-younger Laricia. Stephen decided it was a subject not to be broached until later. “So one question, how do I get this thing off? I wasn’t conscious the last time.”

               Ian seemed in a fog, only absently aware Stephen had asked the question. “Oh, yeah, it’s a voice command. Use this code.” He hastily wrote down a combination before handing it to Stephen.

               Stephen looked over the sheet, taking a deep breath. “Shutdown sequence, code T7KK29, sleep and recharge mode.”

               Chime. “Shutting down.”

               The entire suit split open and virtually spit Stephen out through its crotch. As he landed in a heap on the floor, the docking station held the suit motionless, silently charging it up. Ian picked Stephen up, hoisting him by the shoulders.

               Laricia chose that moment to come into the basement, holding two mugs. “Here you go, boys, some coffee. Sorry about this, the ration’s about out so it’s mostly water.”

               Ian took his mug, sipped, and smiled warmly at his wife. “Laricia, you don’t ever have to worry about that because you are a magician with limited resources.”

               Laricia beamed. “I’ll start dinner.” She walked back up the stairs and closed the door behind her. Stephen took his own sip of the coffee and found he had to agree with Ian; although it was watery, the coffee was surprisingly bracing.

               “So you see one of the issues we have now.” Ian set the mug down on his work bench, the only light coming from four candles stationed at the table’s corners.

               “Looks like food isn’t the only thing being rationed,” Stephen observed.

               “If only it were that. Water, technology, electricity, health care, natural gas, hell even goddamn solar panels are highly regulated.”

               “The government?” Stephen asked hopefully, though he thought he might know the answer already.

               “I wish.” Ian sighed, slumping on his stool. “You see, when I told you Wolf Technologies runs the world, I wasn’t being facetious. They literally run the world. And the world was happy to let ‘em do it, because the governments had been so corrupted by that point they felt it was the lesser of two evils.”

               Stephen shivered, though the basement was not cold. Shoving a hand in his pocket, he found the duplicate ring, which he pulled out and showed to Ian. “This was my first indication that something was weird about this situation.”

               Ian took the ring in his hand, looking it over carefully. “Interesting … nice structure, though a little worse for wear … hm, what does this inscription mean?”

               Stephen cleared his throat. “It was a little pet name my wife and I came up with for our marriage, a mashup of both of our names. It stands for ‘Stephen Tiffany Rockford Fulton.’”

               Ian raised an eyebrow. “Your wife’s name is Tiffany?”

               “Last I knew, why?”

               The old man chuckled. “No reason … anyway, why was this your first sign?”

               Stephen took off the ring currently on his finger. “Because I was still wearing it when I found it.” He handed the original ring to Ian, who inspected it.

               “Fascinating … an actual time travel artifact! This is …” He trailed off, then looked back at Stephen while handing back the two rings. “Hang on to these as tight as you can, Wolf Technologies is always hunting down time travel artifacts so they can be destroyed.”

               Stephen clutched the rings tightly. “Why?”

               “They’re proof that things can be changed, that time travel isn’t just limited to the higher-ups. An average citizen holding a time travel artifact, if he got it himself, would be utter chaos.”

               “I see.” Stephen returned his original ring … or at least he hoped it was his original ring … to his finger. “So what was the upgrade that I used to get away?”

               “Oh, that? Just a little something I hacked based on an old Army package for the TX-31.” Ian grinned, a little too proud of his handiwork. “You don’t need to worry yourself any about how it works, just know that it works.”

               The younger man sighed, guessing that he probably would rather not know the particulars. “Fair enough.” He pulled up a stool and sat at the bench next to Ian, who turned and began tinkering with another circuit board. The two men sat in silence for a while, in the flickering light, the only sounds coming from Ian’s circuit board machinations.

               “So, Stephen … I know we didn’t know each other very well,” Ian finally broke the silence. “Tell me a bit about yourself.”

               Stephen sighed. “What’s there to know? I work at Wolf Technologies, I’ve got a little family. I really need to get back to them.”

               “Tell me about your family,” Ian urged, slightly distracted.

               “They’re my rock,” Stephen sighed. “Tiffany was my high school girlfriend, and I always thought she was the only one who understood me truly. She stayed with me, stayed loyal even when I was in college. She went to a different college, got a different degree, we got together after graduation.”

               “Sounds like true love,” Ian chuckled.

               “It is, believe me. We got married right after graduation. My position at Wolf Technologies was going to give us a great head start to our life together, and with both of us working we’d have a great advantage.”

               A silence hung over the work bench for what felt like an uncomfortably long time. Eventually, Stephen broke it himself. “The morning I came forward, she’d just called me an hour before and told me she was pregnant, our first.”

               Ian nodded. “Congratulations.”

               Stephen blushed. “What good will it do if I can’t get back to her? What good will it do if I know what my daughter has to look forward to is, well …” He motioned around the basement. “I don’t want my baby to grow up like this.”

               Ian snuffled, set down the circuit board, and turned to face the younger man. “Listen, Stephen. We’ve been trying for a while, but I think this would be a good opportunity to get a leg up on Wolf Technologies using our TX-31 here.” He led Stephen over to the suit. “Wolf Technologies has outlawed all civilian use of the TX-31 in order to protect themselves. They claimed that they had destroyed all of the production models, so knowing that a time-displaced prototype is around is going to likely quadruple their efforts to try to get it back and make sure you can’t make the return trip.”

               Dread filled Stephen’s heart. “I gotta go back, don’t I? I have to fight my way back.”

               “Afraid so,” Ian confirmed. “However, you’ll need to go back to a point in time when you can influence things. One thing is for certain, you have to prevent the TX-31 from going into production.”

               “Well that’ll be easy, I just have to give it a failing rating, right?”

               “If it were that simple, I would’ve told you to do that, but it’s not.” The door opened, causing Ian to cut himself short. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

               “Dinner’s ready, boys,” Laricia called down. “Come on up while it’s hot.”

               The two men steadily walked up the staircase, up to where Laricia waited, next to a well-laid-out table of food. She was smiling at both of them.

               Her smile faded as the glass behind her shattered, as the canisters started pumping chemical smoke into the air. All three of them ducked down under the table, huddling close with their shirts over their mouths. The door splintered as it was kicked down, and Stephen suddenly felt the sensation of a small hand yanking on his ankle.

               “Get out here, timer. You’re under arrest!” The small hands scrabbled at Stephen’s ankle, trying to pull him out from where Ian and Laricia kept holding him. At last, three of the riot-squad men were able to extract him, kicking and fighting the whole way.

               The eyes of one of the soldiers widened when he saw Stephen’s face. “Holy crap, how’s this possible?” He waved for one of his teammates. “Guys, look!”

               All of the soldiers shared concerned muttering and whispering, trying to decide what to do. Stephen looked back under the table, at Ian and Laricia crouching with fear. He finally turned back toward the lead soldier, clearing his throat despite the burning sensation of the gas.

               “I’ll come with you guys, just leave those two alone. They have nothing to do with this.”

               The soldier raised his weapon. “Where is your TX-31?”

               These were Wolf Technologies men, all right. “It’s at City Hall.”

               The soldier nodded. “Get him up on his feet. We’re taking him to base.” The small soldiers pushed on Stephen’s shoulders to force him to his feet, keeping their guns trained on him the whole time. “Send a company to locate the TX-31 and destroy it.”

               Vinyl restraints were slipped on Stephen’s wrists, and he was forcibly pushed out of the door.

[comic-movieheroesranked]

Cinematic Comic Characters Ranked! (Year 2006) Part One

Another list makes it’s debut! 2006 six was a slow year for comics with only the debut of V for Vendetta and Superman Returns, as well as the sequel X-Men: The Last Stand. Because of this I decided to add two movies from previous years the slipped passed my radar. From 2003 we had The Hulk and from 2004 we had The Punisher! Lets get our list started with numbers 60 through 41!

*SPOILERS AHEAD FOR ALL MOVIES HIGHLIGHTED ABOVE*

Cameo Appreciation: Stan Lee and Lou Ferrigno (The Hulk) Stan Lee shared his cameo spotlight in this film with Lou Ferrigno, the original Hulk! The two play a pair of security guards that greet Bruce as he walks by.

Cameo Appreciation: Stan Lee (X-Men: The Last Stand) Stan Lee returns to the X-Men franchise in the opening sequence of the movie. When Jean demonstrates her powers, Stan Lee appears as the neighbor amazed at the water levitating from his hose.

Cameo Appreciation: Jubilee, Siryn, Phat, Spike, and Dr. Moria MacTaggert (X-Men: The Last Stand) X-Men: The Last Stand had the most mutants featured in it's movie to date. Jubilee and Siryn return as Xavier's students, while new mutants Phat and Spike appear as part of the Brotherhood, the latter having a fight scene with Wolverine. Dr. Mactaggert, a long term ally of the X-Men, also shows up taking care of Xavier's brain-dead twin. When The Phoenix destroys Xavier's body, Dr. Mactaggert discovers that Xavier's mind has now taking over his brother's body.

60. Dr. Kavita Rao (X-Men: The Last Stand)

"No! Don't hurt him!!!"

Dr. Rao is the brain who was capable of developing a 'cure' to the mutant gene. It's never clear on if she took on the project because she doesn't like mutants or because this scientific breakthrough would basically cement her career. We never find out by the time the Brotherhood attacks and Kid Omega kills her.

59. Edith Banner (The Hulk)

"No!!! Bruce!!!!!"

Now I usually have a soft spot for mothers, ESPECIALLY when they risk their own lives to protect their children, which I thought was going to be the case with Edith. Here I was, so grateful that FINALLY this movie would have a tender moment when Edith gets stabbed trying to protect Bruce from her psycho husband, but then what happens? She ditches the kid. She literally gets up, opens the sliding door, and runs away while her toddler is still in the house with the man that tried to kill him. She dies, of course, from her wounds but DAMN, it could've been more heroic.

58. Jaime Madrox/Multiple Man (X-Men: The Last Stand)

"I'm in."

Multiple Man is one of the first of many mutants that were wasted in this film. Here we have someone who can multiply himself several times, and Magneto decides his best use is to be a decoy while they go hunt down the cure? And even more shocking is Jaime agreed? He literally just got out of prison and just agrees to get captured again? Disgraceful.

57. Bobby Saint (The Punisher)

"This is not my deal!"

Ah, the death that started the war. Bobby Saint wasn't meant for the criminal life like the rest of his family, which made him that much more determined to be successful at it. He ditches his father's guards and takes part in a weapon's deal Castle is about to bust. He panics when the cops show and after things get out of hand, dies. So many lives would've been spared if he just would've stayed home like the rich boy he was.

56. The President and Trask (X-Men: The Last Stand)

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."

The President and Trask are the two forces behind the humans in this crazy living dynamic between the humans and the mutants. The President clearly wants to live in peace with the mutants, but he can't help but be afraid of them, especially once Magneto and the Brotherhood go on the attack. Trask does what he has to do to protect the country, which means weaponizing the cure to use against the Brotherhood.

55. Martha Kent (Superman Returns)

"Your father used to say you were put here for a reason."

Mama Kent doesn't have much of a big role in this movie. She's the first one to find out her son has come back to Krypton and help him ease back into his life on Earth. After Clark leaves for Metropolis, we don't see much of her.

54. Warren Worthington II (X-Men: The Last Stand)

"I was only trying to help you people."

This is a man who is ignorant when it comes to mutants. Like so many other humans, he believes it's a sickness and goes on a mission to find a cure when he discovers his son is one. Well, thanks to his wealth, a cure is eventually created but all it does is cause hell to break loose as humans and mutants end up fighting each other once more. I wish I could say he has a breakthrough but he doesn't, hopefully he learns to accept his son after he literally saves him from falling from his death.

53. Dascomb and Etheridge (V for Vendetta)

"It's not the media's job to tell the truth.

In Sutler's new government, Dascomb represents the Mouth: the media, telling the public what the government says is the truth. Etheridge represents the Eyes and Ears: hearing and seeing everything the public does. When V starts bringing down the government, Dascomb has a hard time feeding news to the public when they know it's all lies, which is backed up by Etheridge. We don't see what happens to them once Parliament is brought down, but considering they were working with the enemy, nothing good.

52. Perry White (Superman Returns)

"Three things sell this newspaper: Tragedy, sex, and Superman. These people have had enough tragedy, and we all know you can't write worth a damn about sex."

Similar to J.J. Jameson, Perry White is the Editor of the Daily Planet, where Clark, Lois, and Jimmy work. He doesn't hate this superhero, though. In fact, he absolutely loves him because he knows that Superman will always be the big story. As soon as the Man of Steel returns he gets everyone working for him to cover him, whether that's finding out who he's dating, how much weight he's, or even if he helps old woman down the street, he makes sure the Daily Planet is the first newspaper publishing it.

51. Dominic (V for Vendetta)

"What do you think will happen?"

Dominic was Finch's sidekick and nothing more. He's only on the list because he was with Finch in almost every important scene that involved him. It does show that he's a good cop, doing what's right instead of what Sutler says is right. He'll most likely help Finch fix their now destroyed government.

50. Talbot (The Hulk)

"Bad science, maybe, but personally gratifying."

This guy was just a douche for the sake of being a douche. Hardly ever had a reason but since Bruce can only turn into the Hulk when he's angry, SOMEBODY had to get him angry. Unluckily for him, every time Bruce turned into the Hulk Talbot either got his ass kicked or blew up after trying to shoot him with a missile.

49. Jimmy/Leech (X-Men: The Last Stand)

"Your powers won't work around me."

Leech has a unique ability. If mutants get near him, they lose their powers. Warren Worthington II decides to use his ability as the foundation for a 'mutant cure' which brings out a war as one side fights to protect Leech while the other fights to kill him. Most of the time he remains in his room, helpless but once the war ends, he gets to attend Xavier's school like everyone else.

48. Kitty Kowalkski (Superman Returns)

"Sounds great, Lex, but you're not a god."

This girl was annoying. She seemed to be Lex Luthor's main squeeze, even though he was irritated with her throughout the entire movie. I mean, he even put her life in danger at one point. She didn't believe any of Lex's plans were going to work and she definitely didn't approve of Lex killing billions of people, but she wasn't one to really stick up for what she believed in. And can we talk about her Pomeranian dogs? Like one totally ate the other one but it was never addressed in the movie. It literally devoured it to the bone and no one even batted an eye.

47. Elizabeth Braddock/Psylocke, Philippa Sontag/Arclight, and Kid Omega (X-Men: The Last Stand)

"Do we look like we need your help?"

First of all, this movie completely ruined my favorite mutant, Psylocke. Two lines? Really? And then we only see her use her shadow manipulation to just pop out and block people's walking path? And then we kill her?!? Disrespectful! Arclight and Kid Omega didn't get any better treatment. They both get slapped around by Storm and Kid Omega only kills a helpless scientist. Arclight does have a cool moment where she uses her shock waves to destroy the human's plastic weapons, allowing Magneto's forces to attack. In the end they also die with Psylocke when the Phoenix disintegrates them.

46. Harry Heck and The Russian (The Punisher)

"I'm gonna sing it at your funeral."

When Castle comes back to take down Howard Saint, Saint hires two hitmen to take him down. First is the musician, Harry Heck. He sings a song he wrote about Frank before attacking the latter on a bridge. He underestimates Castle and ends up getting a knife shot into his throat. Next is the Russian, who has a hilarious fight montage with a drunk Castle while his neighbors dance around to an opera record. The Russian is able to take a knife, a crowbar, and smashes Frank's gun until Frank throws boiling hot water at his face and tackles him down the stairs, breaking the Russian's neck.

45. Lewis Prothero and Lilliman (V for Vendetta)

"I wish I had been there!"

Two people I was happy to see die. Lewis Prothero had his own show where he would spew his ignorant and bigoted opinions for the world to eat up and Lilliman was a disgusting priest with a taste for minor girls. They had one thing in common, which was the torture of V. He got his revenge on them, killing the both when the time came.

44. Ross (The Hulk)

"We'll fight him outside."

I lowkey get where Ross is coming from. David was a psycho scientist so he assumed his son was also a psycho scientist, especially when said son started turning into the Hulk, a result from David's psycho science testing. The Hulk is a major threat to society, and Ross's daughter, when he loses control so he does what he thinks best and nukes both scientist while they duke it out.

43. Little Glasses Girl (V for Vendetta)

"Bollocks."

Someone I didn't expect to be important, but kept popping up throughout the movie. Little Glasses Girl didn't even have a name, but she believed in the justice V was fighting for and she refused to sit back and not get in the action. With Sutler getting more paranoid, the government took down anyone wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, including Little Glasses Girl. This backfired though, as it was the last straw the citizens of London had with their government.

42. Maria and Will Castle (The Punisher)

"We are blessed."

Ok so I know these two were doomed to die but I couldn't help but scream at them when they were running for their lives from Saint's men. Why weren't they zig-zagging? Or why didn't they jump out of the way at the last second before getting hit by the truck? I know that if the truck missed them they probably would've been shot anyway, but Frank was so close so I could only hope he would've reached them in time. But that's not how the Punisher is born so as fucked up as it is, his wife and son had to die.

41. Pyotr Rasputin/Colossus (X-Men: The Last Stand)

"Yeah. She took off."

Colossus has bumped up from cameo status! Too bad his bump isn't much of a big one. He's officially apart of the X-Men team and joins the final fight against the Brotherhood. He mainly stays in the background though, not talking, and only having a major moment when it comes time to through Wolverine at the enemy.