My Idea For A Superhero Movie (Don't Steal It, Hollywood!)

Why have they never made a movie where there's a superhero and his (or her) (yeah right!) (his) identity is a secret to the whole world but not just all the characters in the story but to the AUDIENCE as well. It's like a murder mystery except that instead of the mystery person being someone who is going around killing English people it will be a person who dons a mask and possibly a cape and goes around un-murdering (saving) people and the whole movie you're trying to figure out which of the main characters is doing all this justice. Is it the high-energy, enthusiastic photographer? The grouchy editor? The lady who smokes all the time? Or is it the powerfully built, uncommonly tall, very attractive reporter who looks identical to the superhero except for he wears spectacles?

Just kidding, it would be way harder to guess than that. For inst, you can imagine if they'd done Dark Knight where actually you didn't know for sure whether it was Bruce of Harvey who was actually Batman. I mean, you could imagine that if you were a person who lived in a cave his whole life!

Anyway, in my movie there's this mystery surrounding the secret identity until the end where it's revealed and everybody stands up and gasps!

This is a little bit what happens in that movie I know you hate called "Unbreakable."

Your hero will need to wear something more than one of those masks like the one Zorro wears. Where does that come from, that this little raccoon thing around your eyes makes you impossible to recognize? I suggest the hero wears a NASA space suit when doing good deeds (could help if he needs to go to outer space to right some wrongs or beat up some grumpy aliens).

Or he could just totally change form like turn into a wolf or something. But then that would be a pretty different movie, wouldn't it?

But yeah, this would be a good way to test the comic convention that people can go undetected for years thanks to a mask that leaves part of their face showing. Don't we have the technology now where even Batman's jaw could be run through some kind of feature-mapping software and they could cross-check it with the database and figure out already that it's Bruce Wayne?

Spider-Man doesn't have this problem. He just has the problem where his voice is muffled, he can barely breathe, and it's a big chore to eat or drink.

Yeah I'm more intrigued by the mast that leaves pretty much all of your face showing, and only covers a small section with a molded piece of plastic that is pretty similar to that part of your face as it really is. I'm looking at you, the Spirit.

Now I'm alarmed about Spiderman, although the facemask never seemed like it could make his abilites better. At least Iron Man has the nice heads-up display going on.

Sure, those are even more silly. And nerds have a name for those things, I just can't remember what it is. You'll notice, too, that Marvel Comics has like zero characters with this kind of mask while DC has loads and loads and loads of them (including the admittedly great character Green Lantern). My big thing with those masks isn't even so much their worthlessness as a disguise as much as it is, How Do They Stay On Your Face? If the answer is a rubber band than I hope somebody's dying of embarrassment because that's the dumbest thing I ever hypothetically heard.

The Spirit movie solved this problem by the mask just being PAINTED ON HIS FACE.

Perhaps your hero could have another person's face painted on his own face, or a different person every time. So it's like spinning newspaper "Larry King saves the day" or "Ronald Reagan Alive and Kicking (Bad Guys' Butts!)" or "Dane Cook Does Something Good?" and then "Big Hoax: It's Just Someone Impersonating These Still-Horrible People."

This would heighten the drama as some intrepid (short skirt) reporter investigates (while wearing glasses) how someone could be impersonating all these famous people, and begins to unravel the mystery of...Faceguy!

Hey, choogles, remember how you were asking me why you're not in charge of a great big movie studio?

Oh yeah, over the weekend I was reading a comic book from DC comics (it was very confusing) and the term for the kind of mask we were talking about (the dumb kind that just covers your eyes and you can't figure out how in heck it stays on your face) came up and the term is "domino mask." I guess because it looks a little bit like a domino with just ones on each side?

It came up because one character (Mr. Terrific) was looking at the dead body of this other guy (Mr. America) who died when he crashed through a ceiling window after getting in a big fight with a super-powered villain and Mr. Terrific says "What did he expect? He's just a guy with a domino mask and a whip!" even though Mr. America was wearing other clothes as well. Like a cape.

Good thing Mr. American died, though, because wotta dumb character!

Although I bet his cousin Captain America was sad.

And probably Miss America, too. Speaking of Miss America, where'd she go?

Oh, THERE SHE IS.

(Get it?)

Because so skinny?

I recently learned that Wonder Woman also has a semi-divine origin story (a la Thor) and am wondering how many superheroes are actually demigods. It's one thing to be from Krypton or get bitten by some sort of life-changing spider or concoct some green and highly effective version of Red Bull or be really wealthy and build awesome gadgets to clobber baddies, but somehow this element of all mythologies being true and also of them being active in the superhero universe is (while exciting a la Indy) hard to get a handle on in terms of superheroes vs. Greek or Norse gods. I mean, those gods acted really strangely, and not often to help those who cannot help themselves, like old ladies or whatever.

The short answer is: it doesn't make any sense. In the Marvel cosmology, for instance, there are about 19 different places you might go if you die. And none of them involve Jesus despite the fact that Christianity seems to do just as well in this fictional universe as it does in our more-boring real one.

The DC universe, I'm pretty sure, is even more confusing. Take, for example, Captain Marvel (Shazam!) and the derivation of his various talents:

In order to transform into Captain Marvel, Billy must speak the wizard's name, an acronym for the six various legendary figures who had agreed to grant aspects of themselves to a willing subject: the wisdom of Solomon; the strength of Hercules; the stamina of Atlas; the power of Zeus; the courage of Achilles; and the speed of Mercury.

I mean what the hulk is Solomon doing in there? Not to mention the fact that the wizard in question is a lot closer to Merlin than anything in Greek/Roman myth. (Speaking of, they also mix up Greek and Roman names for the Gods! Zeus hung out with Hermes, not Mercury!)

The long answer is: similar to the one above but with two or three more sentences.

Well, color me as confused as a Minotaur!

But yeah, comics are fun/groan-inducing. I would love to read a comic book about medieval times and wizards, come to think of it. Perhaps I will have to creat this awesome comic book myself.

choogle wrote:Well, color me as confused as a Minotaur!

But yeah, comics are fun/groan-inducing. I would love to read a comic book about medieval times and wizards, come to think of it. Perhaps I will have to creat this awesome comic book myself.

would it be anything like this?



i think that talking beasts are essential in comic books about medieval times. also, hot ladies in revealing dresses wearing cone hats. (the lady on the cover of Odkin Son of Odkin isn't wearing a hat, so you'd already have one up on that book).

Yes this will work nicely. Wow.

The Wallace Wood Trilogy certainly looks exciting, but "Wallace Wood" -- doesn't that sound like a real estate agent or maybe the attorney you get appointed to you by the county because you can't afford one on your own?

Not only that, he went by "Wally Wood," which is close to Wally World and also a really stupid play on Hollywood. Poor guy though, not a happy man. Still, wizard trilogy looks great. The giant and the flying boat on the first version is pretty enticing:

I thought the name sounded familiar:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Wood

Turns out the non-fictional Wallace Wood was a famous comics artist with a drinking problem!