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Fashions in movie villains change regularly, from Sinister Chinese to Nazi Spies to Russian Assassins to Mexican Drug Lords to … well, what goes around comes around.
To tap into the undercurrent of paranoia, xenophobia, and closet white-supremacist zeitgeist, BorgCo productions are planning to make
a pitch to potential backers for a crossover all-action adventure thriller. The Evil Mastermind is an ethnic Chinese genius bent on the takeover of the economies of Western nations, which he plans to achieve by destabilizing them using terrorist attacks to undermine the confidence of the voting public in their elected representatives. Since he is exceptionally evil (because he is foreign, of course), he has no qualms about hiding his nefarious activities behind a cloak of religion, and uses young, impressionable adherents of Islam to do his work. Thus his chosen method is suicide bombing; this has the advantage that the unfortunate footsoldiers self-eliminate, thus removing the opportunities for the authorities to obtain human intelligence and limiting them to analysing blood spatter patterns.
Of course, to fulfil the requirements of the idiom, the Evil Genius must be defeated, and unsurprisingly nemesis comes in the person of a middle aged, middle class, middleweight white heterosexual Anglo-Saxon Protestant man, ably assisted by a diverse* team of other white, middle-class middle-aged heterosexual men who are made much more interesting by their range of very minor personality quirks, vague hints of non-Aryan ancestry, being a bit taller or shorter than average, and having acceptably unconventional choices of clothing style and motor vehicle.
There might possibly be a supporting role for a couple of females, but only as love interest for the principles, nurses, secretaries, or victims – in which case their main task will be to panic, do exactly the wrong thing, run in the wrong direction, and fall over and scream photogenically.
In the denoument, the team tracks the Evil Genius to the religious building where he has set up his secret headquarters, and destroy both him and it with the aid of the usual gunplay, fisticuffs, and spectacular special effects.
Working title: “The Mosque of Fu Manchu”.
*For a given (small) value of "diverse"; the permitted Standard Deviation is tailored to the audience.
The Covid Mask Of Fu Manchu
The_20Covid_20Mask_20Of_20Fu_20Manchu
[xenzag]'s inspiring idea [8th of 7, Sep 13 2020]
Arts of Darkness
Arts_20of_20Darkness
"I've rarely scene more efforted expunged upon a single pun." [8th of 7, Sep 13 2020]
Just After Hogwarts
Just_20After_20Hogwarts
"Groans off the Richter scale..." [8th of 7, Sep 13 2020]
Hobbit crossover movie
Hobbit_20crossover_20movie
Shameless elf-promotion [8th of 7, Sep 13 2020]
Terror on Tatooine
Terror_20on_20Tatooine
" ... one of those jobs best left to professionals ..." [8th of 7, Sep 13 2020]
Fast motorbike school
Fast_20motorbike_20school
Not a related idea at all [hippo, Sep 14 2020]
A_20Pocket_20Lights_20Now
[xenzag, Sep 14 2020]
[link]
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Like you could do better. |
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Sir Pterry never eschewed footnotes, so we consider that more than sufficient precedent for their employment. |
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// a long setup for a dreadful play on words at the end, those are the very best. // |
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We draw your attention to some of our other work <links> |
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Excellent. It's the idea I originally had when I
posted The Covid Mask of Fu Manchu, but simply
couldn't be arsed typing it all up. My solution was
to devised a form of words perfectly calculated to
arouse 8th's predictable mind patterns into
generating the very outcome I had first conceived.
My work here is done, and 8th is now a mere slave
to my passing whims. Fu Manchu would be so
proud. I see him reaching into his basket of snakes
for a croissant. [+] |
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// neither of us are Sir Pterry, // |
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Sadly, that is true, nor shall we ever see his like again. |
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<Looks wistfully into middle distance/> |
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Ridiculously contrived pun [+]
It reminds me
- in an early draft of the original 'Star Wars'
script the character of Chewbacca was going to be a
rough, tough, hard-drinking male mermaid, who would
swear at other characters and swig some mysterious
liquor from a bottle kept in a pouch. Eventually
they came to the conclusion that mermaids weren't a
believable alien race and changed Chewbacca to the
the big hairy thing seen in the film. They did get
as far as creating props and costumes for the
character though and, in the prop inventory, this
character's bottle was labelled "The Flask of
Merman Chew" |
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Let me tell you a yarn of of how an interplanetary pulmonary excretion resulted in the formulation of a
wildly popular confectionery bagatelle. |
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It was in the early days of the Mars project, only a few hundred terraformers had colonised the surface, and
begun building the biodomes for seeding the surface with viable microzoology for phase 2. |
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Hans Triviality pushed his cart across the packed-earth floor of the dome, his hands pallid in the green
light filtered through the algae-covered plexi-glass. A tickle developed in the back of his throat, a common
enough occurrence since they'd taken delivery of the latest organic payload, 5 tonnes of carefully
genetically tweaked airborne phytoplankton fresh from the growing tanks back on Earth. |
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The tickle became a spasm, and Hans doubled over in a retching coughing fit. "Damn this planet", he thought
between convulsions. If only he'd thought twice before signing his life away on the dotted line. Finally
hawking up a great green glob of slime and victoriously spitting it onto the red dust, he relaxed. From the dome-floor, an angry fizzing
emanated, and looking down, Hans contemplated the vigorously
bubbling green mass. |
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In the reams of documentation presented to the inquiry following the now infamous events that would follow,
it was shown (under carefully isolated experimental conditions) that a freak combinatorial coincidence had
produced a self-replicating terraforming agent so corrosive, it would ultimately reduce the footprint of the
entire enterprise into an ever widening pool of bubbling goo visible from orbit. |
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Over time, as Man's goals and attention shifted and flitted away from the irredemable Martian failure, one
purveyor of children's sweets, initially as a Halloween one-off, would celebrate the story with a green chewy
candy imbued with a mix of strawberry flavoured bicarbonate of soda, these would be sold under the working
title - Mars Cough Foamin Chew. |
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Very interesting, [zen_tom] - did I ever tell you
about the time when I was involved in organising a
computer gaming tournament? All the players'
computers had to be set up with their preferred
desktop settings which were packaged up into a
number of themes. For some reason, probably to make
them memorable, these were given the names of body
parts - "Elbow", "Spleen", etc. Likewise, coffee
preferences were given the names of football clubs,
so "White Americano with 4 sugars" might be
labelled "Liverpool" for example.
This led
to some interesting entries on the list of players
and their computer set-up and beverage preferences.
I remember one player with the note by their name:
"Theme: 'Arse' - Coffee: 'Manch. U'" |
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Nice [hippo] I can see how that would stick in the mind. Similarly prominent in my
consciousness, albeit stretching all notions of tenuousness, are memories from my
time as an anthropomorphic footwear designer for rodents, working closely on the
lower leg-portion of a rather handsome pair of hybrid boot/moccasins that would
look suitably "street" on their rodent models. After the initial brainstorming
session, we settled on a design brief which we summarised as the "Mouse-Calf Human
Shoe". |
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So many plodding, second rate imitations ... |
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We're not completely sure. |
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We do know that everyone will be watching each minute
you're on screen and all will talk about every word you
say. |
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So, if I'm there they'll be critical and demand answers? |
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Well, that's our best intelligence. |
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Holy snide aside, Fu Manchu! You are a genius. |
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Yeah... but at least they're better than that third-rate stuff
on the left... you sold all the first-rate puns to the Ferengi,
didn't you? |
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Got top dollar for them, too. You want decent puns, you got to pay the going rate; these are free. |
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Just goes to show that a lot of the time the stuff you get for free isn't worth what you paid for it. |
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All you did was set the destination, there's multiple ways of
getting there. Or for a cooking analogy, when flavouring a
mixture of flour and fat to make a sauce, there are many
ways of musking a roux mon choux. |
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Exactly. And to extend that cooking analogy, there
are some combinations of ingredients you’d be
crazy to eat, or “fou manger” as the French say... |
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//My solution was to devised a form of words perfectly calculated to arouse 8th's predictable mind patterns into generating the very outcome I had first conceived// |
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I'll ask, have you managed to? |
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Yes of course. His posting of this idea is proof of the results. Startling isn't it? |
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"Mere accumulation of observational evidence does not constitute proof ..." |
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As long as we're on this topic, I'll point out that from
a certain perspective, the Orcs in "Lord of the Rings"
were the good guys, and Gondor was wrong for
having city walls. |
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// from a certain perspective // |
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Would that be from the perspective of an "Eye rimmed with fire, but itself glazed, yellow as a cat's, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing" ? At the top of a huge spiky black tower in the middle of a volcanic wasteland ? |
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You should start a campaign to rehabilitate orcs. Some nutter will fund you ... |
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Soon, all shall pay tributary to the Eye, and men shall
bear no weapons, but shall have leave to govern
their own affairs. But they shall help to build the
Towers of the Eye's servants. |
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Is this before or after they pay for the Wall ? |
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The men of Gondor shall have no walls, but they
shall rebuild the walls of Isengard which were so
wantonly destroyed. |
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