11: The Rest of the Movies
The creation of a shared cinematic universe is very new. The
idea of standard old super-hero sequels go back to the Christopher Reeve
Superman films, but the idea that the sequels should form some sort of coherent
‘arc’ for the character is also pretty new. Movies – outside of the James Bond
franchise – have real problems with iconic characters. Robin Laws defines
Iconic as the heroes who change the lives of the people around them while they
don’t substantially change. Bond is a great example in that in each movie Bond
is, well Bond and there’s little to no change to his character and techniques.
(They broke this rule with the Daniel Craig films to date,
in which they flet the need to do an origin story to get Bond to being Bond
over 3 films; one wonders what they’ll do next, other stand start over again.
But I digress.)
Movies, as we discussed earlier, have their love of origin
stories because of their strong through lines and obvious character growth.
Unfortunately a lot of comic book heroes are iconic, and there isn’t a ton of
room for what screenwriters consider to be character growth before they stop
being who they should be. As Christopher Nolan explored in his Batman films one
of the ways for Bruce Wayne – who spent his life training to be one specific
thing – to meaningfully change is to stop
being Batman. So he does, bot at the start of Dark Knight Rises and at the end, but I don’t want to see Bruce
Wayne not be Batman. But Hollywood
has no interest in the other changes Bruce Wayne might make. While we making
games that should feel like movies that doesn’t mean we have wear those same blinkers
when it comes to our sequels. Those blinkers include
·
The hero loses his powers (or control of same)
in the second act and has to recover/relearn how to use them – i.e. rerun the
origin story.
·
The hero has a new romantic interest (and the
old one has vanished) so we can rerun the romantic subplot.
I had started talking about the need for trilogy plotting
but decided against it as the math just isn’t there. Therefore I caution you
against thinking that way, but will probably example things out like that
anyway.
The cinematic universe conceit means that after we get
through the next cycle of solo movies we have another team up film, but as long
as we have the same connective ideas we established earlier (and perhaps add
new ones) the films don’t have to have very strong links to each other or to
the next team up. It’s much more important that the underlying Power Metaphor,
Universe Origin and tone from the core hero’s first movie stay in place. The
first two help link the shared universe together, but the last keeps the hero’s
own continuity and style intact. Here are your check points for the sequels
·
Any supporting cast that can return should
return
·
If people don’t have PCs; consider taking a
secondary hero from the team up film, or creating a new secondary hero.
·
Continue any emotional arcs from the first film –
love stories should advance, rivalries should deepen, etc…
·
If a secondary hero with powers similar to the
main hero is introduced we might want to have their origin story.
·
Mine the original publication history for one or
maybe two bad guys. If you go with two consider having one planner and one
tough guy, or figure out how the villains might also be at odds.
Again, examples would help
Captain Nostalgia II
Now is the time to bring in 6E as an agent of the Ad Astras,
and Nostalgia has a supporting cast of pretty capable people with similar
powers (he, Buzz & 6E) in terms of the willpower, combat training and (for
Nostlagia and 6E) the physical advantages, so the Frequency rules are important.
Since the Ad Astras are worldwide organization we should take advantage of
that. Hollywood would love to have the inherently optimistic Ad Astras actually
have a rotten core as the villain but that runs absolutely against the Nostalgia
tone. I think that Ralph Crabtree was the villain in the Conflagration and he
had ties to Ad Astras, so we kinda did that already. So any tension should be
about the Ad Astra repurposing of the Uberjaager training to make 6E but that’s
just a character bit and not the core of the plot.
My idea for the plot therefore is the Ad Astras fighting a
world wide conspiracy that is something of their opposite number, trying to
control scientific advancement and restrain human development (something like the
Four from planetary). That lets us start with a murder mystery in the first act
(this is captain Nostalgia, after all) that turns into a round the world thriller.
All we need now is the fourth PC, and Dave asked to bring in Adam Prime, a
Universal Comics character who is an albino gorilla who mastered a universal
sign language and served as a G-Man in the 1930’s. His origin started with a
murder mystery, and his odd science background works with the Ad Astras. This
movie will probably end up feeling like a later era James Bond film.
Aeaea II
Aeaea needs a large new supporting cast, but we can keep
Aldebaron. Someone asks to play Glenda, Fairy Princess and that pretty much
nails down the villain as being evil Faerie. However the GM wanted to do
something with the cold war soviet villains. Solution – Potemkin Villager is now
working for Baba Yaga. Finally we can introduce a new love interest since
Karnak is gone and not coming back.
First act is some stuff with Aldebaron and Aeaea dealing
with routine magical issues that bring them in contact with whoever Aeaea’s new
love interest is as well as Glenda. The first act will pull them all together
fighting some magical event that is being orchestrated by Potemkin Villager,
who is as creepy as we can make him, and who is a cat’s-paw for Baba Yaga, who
is aiming for Russian dominance of the bay area’s high magic zone, in part to
fight an even bigger threat. If the Nostalgia movies are world spanning
mysteries the Aeaea movies are tinged with horror; the inclusion of a magic shoe
girl will not change that.
Phoenix: Red Sky Diary
Phoenix’s key supporting cast member, Freddie, is still
around, and the player asks to tap into the story arc of Amanda hitting it big
in the music scene, becoming the new guitarist and back up vocalist for the
band Red Sky Diary. This moves her out of the struggling NYC scene and into the
worldwide music glitterati, and Freddie’s job expands to helping her keep her
head (yeah, good plan) in the new environment. The other two supporting cast
members can be the other band members, one of whom is a romantic interest and
the other one is a secret villain, said secret villain is a conflagration
victim who happens to show up in the cities that RSD is playing.
I kind of like the idea of the origin story for this movie
being the member of the band slowly undergoing a bodily metamorphosis into
Chimera, and since Chimera is a shape-shifter we can easily have a fake out
villain. Phoenix isn’t really a detective hero so we can string this out long
enough. This one feels a little weak, but that’s somewhat common for the second
movie….
Doc Toltec II: True Nurse Adventures
Since Ralph Crabtree became the villain and Dr. Robinson
died we’re now at the status quo for Doc and Nurse Betty. The other two PCs are
a police officer who had been at best a secondary character in the original
book an Bill Jackson, who is now a tech guy as he is in the TV show. The movie
takes things down from the cosmic level to have Doc Toltec fighting organized crime
in Chicago. There’s a war going on between the old school mobs and ONI, who
have taken on something of a Tong aspect but with their weird high tech magic.
At the end ONI are just a bigger threat and the third act should be Toltec
teaming up with the mob to defeat them, and then arrange a sting to capture the
core mobsters as well, cleaning up the city in one fell swoop.
In this three way war we see the rise of one particular
mobster, Johnny Deuce, who has the hots for Nurse Betty (and come on, who doesn’t?).
We could also set things up where Deuce is the 4th player character.
In any event the movie should end with Deuce in charge of the remaining Chicago
mobs and set things up for the next fim.
Crossover II
And it’s time for the next big crossover movie. The villain
in this one is ONI, who are revealed as being the agents of the Chilean Mandrinate,
villains from the Aeaea book originally who have been populating the Doc Toltec
movies and staying in the background in Aeaea. The Mandrinate’s big plan is to
steal one of the existing time machines (ideally Doc Toltec’s time platform,
but it could be from Ad Astra) to go back to their own founding and uplift
themselves. This means midway through the movie the Mandrinate become vastly,
staggeringly more powerful as they have 600+ years of technological and magical
advancement as well as improving their own bodies with stolen 23rd Nazi
eugenics techniques. Plus they suddenly unveil a colony on Venus and unleash an
army. Ideally at the end of the film Phoenix makes a sacrifice play that makes
it look like she’s dead but in fact she’s thrown to a new arm of the galaxy.
Captain Nostalgia III
Eztra-Diimensional Nazis appear!
Aeaea III
Mandrinate Clean Up, I expect. I really don’t want to have
the HIV demon come back.
Phoenix: Map of Stars
It’s the “other side of the galaxy, getting home” arc
Doc Toltec III
Doc and Johnny Deuce fight Vampires!
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