Wonder Woman 3 :: Pitches Be Crazy

In this episode of Pitches Be Crazy; I spit ball my idea for  Wonder Woman 3.

The brief:

Diana returns to Paradise Island to return the Arrow of Artemis after the evens of Zack Snyder's Justice League.  

Since she was banished after leaving for mans' world she is arrested and put on trial.  This scene builds to the court/jury sentencing her to imprisonment on the island, however, Diana calls them out saying the Queen needs to approve this sentence.  This causes a stir amongst the Amazons.

Hippolyta is sick.  Diana goes to see her and there it is explained that her days are numbered.  Diana asks how this is.  How does the Queen of Themyscira become sick on Paradise Island?

Turns out that Steppenwolf's invasion caused a gateway to Hades to crack open and all the evil of the dead is seeping into their world.  There is talk of ancient creatures being spotted on the island.  Minotaur, Hydra, a Gorgon and other demons of Hades.

Diana pleads with Queen Hippolyta to allow her to fix this mess and, hopefully, save her mother in the process.  This is agreed to with the understanding that suicide mission replaces part of her sentence.

But she cant do it alone...

Diana recruits a number of Amazons with different skills to join her in her endeavour.  All the tropes are represented, the Wise Elder, the Mercenary/Rogue, Lore Master (smart girl), the Athletic archer, the Barbarian (jock), etc. etc.  Each has their own kick-ass look and weapon/item that with definitely be used later in the movie.  While recruiting the Rogue from the dark dungeons of the Amazon cities they encounter Circe. Circe is an ancient, immortal sorceress of incredible power.  She warns Diana that he quest will only end in sorrow.

This is our group of heroes who go on a Clash of the Titans style quest to save Paradise Island.  

First they come to an inland village in the highlands near a lake where talk of a Hydra has made its home.  The team come together in a style to slay the monster.

Next a dangerous mission to kill the Gorgon (basically Medusa but not blatantly stated).  This causes a number of the party to die.  Turned to stone by the eyes of the Gorgon.  But on this trail Diana discovers the origin of the evil...  Hades.  She bags up the Gorgon's head and leaves.

The remaining adventurers head to that area of the Island with the Lore Master warning of the dangers.  Wonder Woman casts aside the warnings as "All the Old Gods are dead".

They arrive at the Gates of Hell, a mythical place with all the usual glowing green and purple smoke and lights.  It is here they find the cracks with evil dripping through, from the Underworld to Paradise Island.

This is where my idea forks in the road...

Path 1;

Diana uses the Gorgon's blood and seals the cracks.  The Queen recovers and Diana returns to the Capital a hero.  However Circe has gained enough power from the leaking evil to break free from her prison setting up a sequel.

Path 2;

Upon looking at the Gates and their damage Diana touches the break and is pulled into Hades.  Cut to black.

End it there?  Nope! Lets get epic.

POV.

Diana's eyes go in and out of focus.  A dark shade moves close.  We focus again.  "Di-ana...  my beautiful niece."

Cut to Diana picking her self up off the black obsidian floor to see... Hades, the Lord of the Underworld.

Hades is either a scary old man or an innocent looking young boy, I'll decide later.

Diana gets up and sees the dead spirits surrounding her.  The two walk towards Hades' Palace and Diana sees the Old Gods.  The Old Gods maybe dead and Hades still has dominion over the underworld.

When they reach the Throne Room of the underworld hades asks why Diana is here and she explains the story.

She tells him that he needs to keep his kingdom in order otherwise she will put in in order.  She is the God-killer after all.  Hades is all ready dead so he tells her to do her worst as he throws countless dead spirits at her. She fights them and Cerberus arrives to the fight.  

Much like Hercules' Twelfth Labour, Wonder Woman bests the creature and tosses the hound at Hade's feet.

The Lord of the Underworld now steps up and the two have a epic fight.  Fight explodes on the ground when Hade's attacks.  Souls cling onto him like a cloak.   Weapons clash, teeth nash and all hell literally breaks loose.

Diana reaches a new stage in her powers.  She as the Old Gods' power in her and she is the last living one.

She uses her gauntlets to create her shockwave only this time it is filled with lightning and fire.

Hades is spent.  He lies on the ground defeated.  Diana walks over to him and tells him to seal the cracks of hell. He argues back saying it was not his fault, it was the invader (Steppenwolf).  Diana puts it clearly that if he wishes to remain Lord of this place he must use his power to seal the breaks.

He agrees and Wonder Woman leaves the underworld.

She returns to her party, (who barely notice she was gone), and they return to the Capital.

It was too late an Hippolyta has died.  Diana will be the new Queen of the Amazons.

The movie ends with a coronation/funeral.

Mid-credits scene;

Circe's eyes glow with purple power from the underworld and she breaks out of her cell setting up a sequel.

Boom!

My Dinner With André

Did ya ever watch a movie where two men talk over dinner for nearly two hours? 

My Dinner With André is this movie.

This is probably the least cinematic movie I have ever seen, yet I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.  There is a mesmerising quality to this film.  It stars Wallace Shawn as a fictionalised version of himself, Wally and André Gregory as André, as a fictionalised version of himself too.  In it, Wally is coerced into having a meal with an old friend, a friend whom he doesn't really want to see.  A friend he can't be bothered with and throughout the movie André talks, and tells his stories, and Wally becomes more and more engaged with the conversation.  

See André is a theatre director who has put his job behind him and went on a “find-yourself” type adventure.  He went in search of more from life.  André witnessed theatre in its basic form amongst native customs and people and proceeds to tell this story to Wally, and explain how it has fundamentally changed him.

Wally is a playwright and is locked in on his own habits and routine.  He is a character who has settled with who he has become.  Throughout André’s many stories, the movie is about 1 hour 50 and André Gregory does most of the talking (it is a dinner with him after all), we see Wally react and wrestle with some of André’s observations on life and society.

This movie places us in the shoes of Wally, listening to André and challenges us.  Have we become like him? Are we set in our ways?  Are we comfortable?  Too comfortable?  Are you mindlessly going through life?  Moments when they talk about an electric blanket and how it keeps us warm so all we think about is how warm and comfortable we are.  André says that we all have one of these, whatever it may be, that numbs us.  Numbs our mind and not reflect on how we are.  Are we passive in this world?  Are we without purpose? Am I?

My favourite topic in this conversation is when André describes how we have regimented our lives into an order that has no room for disorder or chaos.  It continues from the electric blanket and comfort discussion.  André at one point says that comfort can lull you into dangerous tranquillity.  Throughout the conversation he drops ideas, like how we are no longer affected by the seasons. I love that idea.  Humans have changed their surroundings to them and are not experiencing the world they are in.  The dinner conversation discusses how we have built our comfort and that that has led us to being bored and trapped and have nothing of worth in this world.  Somehow this movie about two people having dinner has journeyed to a point where real existential questions are being asked and discussed in a truly thought provoking way.

The movie is full of ideas and thoughts and stories meant to make us, the audience think.  Movies don’t always require a brain but modern cinema rarely thinks you have one.  So seeing a movie where you are challenged or left questioning your life is a real treat.

See I find myself agreeing with André and his perspective on things but I end up being just like Wally.  I have become everything the movie was saying.  No matter what was presented to Wally he went home, in a taxi, staring out the window at the shops.  Has anything changed after this dinner? Was Wally challenged during their meal but what was said, what happened at the dinner table made any lasting impact on him?  Did it on me?

All I know is I watched two men talk for nearly two hours and was mesmerised.

Incendies

 Denis Villeneuve is the best director working today.  He has to be.  The man has steadily been producing gold through his career, with a few exceptions.  But I feel that in spite of this his movies are some of the most thought provoking and well constructed movies I have seen.  I mean Did Ya Ever Seen Incendies?

Incendies is Villeneuve’s most recent foreign language movie, after this started to work in the US and English language pictures and, to be honest, I can see why.  Incendies is such a powerful movie that it would open doors.  Incendies is so well made and designed you can see why Villeneuve got the Blade Runner 2049 job, or why they showed it to Ted Chaing when his story was optioned as Arrival.  This movie is significant.  It is incredible.

So the movie follows a woman tracing the steps of her mother through the Middle East to uncover her past.  It cuts between present day daughter and past mother.  See, the mother has died and has left her twin daughter and son to deliver a letter each.  One to their father and one to the brother they did not know they had.  The daughter accepts this challenge while her brother does not.  It is this journey we travel with, flashing back to the mother, Nawal, and then we move along with the daughter, Jeanne.  As we flashback we witness a terrible war in the unnamed Middle Eastern country.  This gives us one of the most incredible scenes.

The bus sequence.  If you have seen Sicario and the border crossing sequence then you know Denis Villenueve can masterfully construct a tense set piece.  For me, Incendies tops that.  It is so well done that most posters for the movie include the final image on it.  So we have Nawal, a Christian disguised as a Muslim refugee so she can travel in a Muslim bus.  The scene starts off steady enough but then the bus is stopped by Christian Nationalists.  The entire sequence has us placed in the bus with Nawal and this makes this scene so much more intense because of this.  The Christian Nationalists proceed to shower bullets into the bus and now we are on the floor with Nawal and a couple of surviving passengers, most notably a woman and her son.  Blood is running down the aisle and sweat is dripping from their faces.  We hear footsteps on the roof and some sort of fuel dripping down onto our survivors.  The mother and son are terrified and we are still on the bus with them.  Nawal takes out her cross necklace and takes the young boy from his mother, she is going to try and escape the bus.  Problem is the bus being set on fire.  We finally have a shot from the Nationalists POV.  Nawal, the screaming boy and flames slowly surrounding them.  Que, what seems like, an eternally long wait for the leading the Nationalist to decide their fate.

It's hard to give this scene justice here, especially the end.  I don’t want to over spoil this movie or the scene.  I hate to tease but this is a movie you need to experience.  The bus sequence is just one powerful scene out of the many.  

I understand that subtitles put a lot of people off but Bong Joon-Ho (director or Parasite) was right when he won his Academy Award.  ‘Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films’.  This would be an excellent place to start.

Ghostbusters International :: Pitches Be Crazy

After rewatching Ghostbusters Afterlife I had an idea for Pitches Be Crazy.

Ghostbusters Afterlife has a number of end credits scenes.  It feels like there was some studio meddling, the little Stay Puft marshmallows are a solid example (I talk about it my Ghostbusters Afterlife pod and blog).  But, anyway…  The last end credits scene seems to set up future movies.  The movie, and the 2016 movie, has a title card for Ghost Corps.  Ghost Corps, hmmm…

How about having a Ghostbusters movie set in European capitals?  Sounds good, eh?  Or even better a TV show with a couple of episodes creating a 3 or 4 episode arc in key places.  Does Sony have a streaming platform?  

So the first arc…

Episode 1-2

Winston Zeddemore arrives in London to set up a branch of the Ghost Corps in the UK.  In an increasingly secular Britain there is an abundance of old religious venues left to ruin.  He buys up an old Church as the new base of operations.  I just think it would be cool to have Ghostbusters in an old English church with a spire.  Regardless, it's somewhere other than an old fire station.

This run is largely Winston building the team and the UK corps.  Winston goes to Cambridge to try and get an Egon Sepngler type genius character.  He gets a fanatic who has his own website on the local paranormal and supernatural, basically a Podcast from Afterlife only more filled out, and an adult. He gets another member, a hands on everyman, probably comedic.  Look If i was running a studio I’d be looking a Simon Pegg and  Nick Frost type thing (although Nick Frost did that Amazon show, maybe I should watch that before finishing this).  Basically cast good up and coming British actors, casting from each of the four UK countries could be fun.  Or bring in a special guest Scot for an episode in Scotland, a Welsh actor for a Welsh story, an Ulsterman for Northern Ireland etc or not.

Ghost Corps UK.

Imagine an episode where the UK Ghostbusters chase after the spirit of Jack the Ripper. 

Imagine an episode where the UK Ghostbusters are on, basically, the Wicker Man island hunting Pagan deities. 

Imagine an episode where the UK Ghostbusters are exorcising the demons from the British Museum. 

Imagine an episode where the UK Ghostbusters go to Whitby and have a Dracula type story.  Imagine an episode where the UK Ghostbusters go after any British legend or folk story. The British Isles has legends going back through time, there are wars, disasters and atrocities deep in the history of the UK.

I'd watch a season of that.

Do a season in different areas, Paris, Rome, Sarajevo, Romania (literally any Eastern European region could have a plethora of stories) anywhere different, unique or interesting. Imagine all the cool Ecto vehicles; classic British motorbikes like Triumph or Royal Enfield, Kamaz or Tatra Trucks in Eastern Europe, stylish Italian sports cars (a Lamborghini with Proton packs) a Ural motorcycle with a portable containment unit in the side car.

Look the cartoons did it, so why not do a TV show.

If movies all Sony wants the how about this idea...

Ghostbusters meets Men In Black.  Think about it.  Two organisations working outside or above the government.  Now the problem comes in bringing these two units together.  I would need to be in the US, largely because the extra-terrestrial has a larger base there.  So there would need to be another branch of the Ghost Corps, like a West Coast Corps.  The 2016 movie seems to be outside the Afterlife and the 1980s movies, so they will probably be no use.  Shame because some of that movie could be redeemed here.  I know the comics did a crossover with the 1984 team, the 2016 team and the Real Ghostbusters cartoon team.  Easy for a comic book, less easy for live action mediums. 

The easy choice is the ghost of the Roswell Alien whose body is in Area 51.  Men in Black and Ghostbusters crossing over for a legitimate reason, easy, right? Imagine a haunted Area 51!