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.
-- 8th of 7, Sep 13 2020

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]

Like you could do better.
-- 8th of 7, Sep 13 2020


Sir Pterry never eschewed footnotes, so we consider that more than sufficient precedent for their employment.

// a long setup for a dreadful play on words at the end, those are the very best. //

We draw your attention to some of our other work <links>
-- 8th of 7, Sep 13 2020


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. [+]
-- xenzag, Sep 13 2020


// neither of us are Sir Pterry, //

Sadly, that is true, nor shall we ever see his like again.

<Looks wistfully into middle distance/>
-- 8th of 7, Sep 13 2020


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"
-- hippo, Sep 14 2020


Let me tell you a yarn of of how an interplanetary pulmonary excretion resulted in the formulation of a wildly popular confectionery bagatelle.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And the rest is history.
-- zen_tom, Sep 14 2020


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'"
-- hippo, Sep 14 2020


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".
-- zen_tom, Sep 14 2020


So many plodding, second rate imitations ...
-- 8th of 7, Sep 14 2020


What can I do?

We're not completely sure.

We do know that everyone will be watching each minute you're on screen and all will talk about every word you say.

So, if I'm there they'll be critical and demand answers?

Well, that's our best intelligence.

Holy snide aside, Fu Manchu! You are a genius.
-- reensure, Sep 14 2020


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?
-- neutrinos_shadow, Sep 14 2020


Got top dollar for them, too. You want decent puns, you got to pay the going rate; these are free.

Just goes to show that a lot of the time the stuff you get for free isn't worth what you paid for it.
-- 8th of 7, Sep 14 2020


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.
-- zen_tom, Sep 14 2020


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...
-- hippo, Sep 15 2020


//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//

I'll ask, have you managed to?
-- pocmloc, Sep 15 2020


Yes of course. His posting of this idea is proof of the results. Startling isn't it?
-- xenzag, Sep 15 2020


"Mere accumulation of observational evidence does not constitute proof ..."
-- 8th of 7, Sep 15 2020


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.
-- sninctown, Sep 15 2020


// from a certain perspective //

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 ?

You should start a campaign to rehabilitate orcs. Some nutter will fund you ...
-- 8th of 7, Sep 15 2020


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.
-- sninctown, Sep 15 2020


Is this before or after they pay for the Wall ?
-- 8th of 7, Sep 16 2020


The men of Gondor shall have no walls, but they shall rebuild the walls of Isengard which were so wantonly destroyed.
-- sninctown, Sep 16 2020



random, halfbakery