The Avengers: a ragtag band of misfits is assembled to use their skills to save the earth! Except they aren't that ragtag or misfit and are all superby competent superheroes.
I propose that for earth saving purposes, some secret intelligence group go to the ends of the earth and assemble a team of creepy mad scientists, each working with uncertain intent on his or her own spooky project. They have in common that they like Earth and own/rent properties here, and so band together.
Benefits
1: Scholarly arguments on death ray construction.
2: Dr Moreau's awesome army! Who needs GMO when you have microsurgical vivisection!
3: General distracted disinterest in ends (eg defeat enemy) with focus chiefly on means and elegant execution.
4: Resolution of old grudges between mad advisor and mad postdoc.
5: Meeting of various Igors, with occasional tips on Igoring exchanged.
6: Heartwarming validation at the end ("They called me mad!") and establishment of a peer group interested in the betterment of mankind, possibly through domination.
Mad scientists are almost always solo characters. I here assert that no prior work has tapped the potential of an assembly of many mad scientists, working sort of together.-- bungston, Jun 26 2012 I assert that http://www.narbonic.com/ [MechE, Jun 26 2012] your assertion is wrong. http://project-apollo.net/mos/Or at least not completely correct. [MechE, Jun 26 2012] The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen https://en.wikipedi...aordinary_GentlemenFeatures nearly everyone mentioned in this thread so far. [DrBob, Jun 27 2012] Soon I Will Be Invincible - The World Will Be Mine http://sooniwillbeinvincible.com/(my application was rejected - next I'll try the Evil League of Evil) [normzone, Jun 27 2012] Specifically the mad scientists convetion in "Narbonic", and pretty much Mars in "A Miracle of Science (second link).-- MechE, Jun 26 2012 No luck with narbonic link.
Consider the Mad Scientist. Generally these work to create or invent something, and the hero thwarts their plan by preventing or destroying the creation. Is it not somewhat perverse that in this scenario, the forces of evil are those of creation, and those of good only destroy?
Such a deep philosophical scene could take place in the movie, with the participants wearing increasingly glowing pyramidal foil hats and clearly getting more and more stoned.-- bungston, Jun 26 2012 //for earth saving purposes, some secret intelligence group go to the ends of the earth and assemble a team of creepy mad scientists, each working with uncertain intent on his or her own spooky project.// Hey! I work there!-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 26 2012 As long as there's forty minutes of incomprehensible flickery graphics and animation near the end of the movie, we'll vote for it.
// the forces of evil are those of creation, and those of good only destroy? //
But, but, but blowing things up is GOOOOD .....
// no prior work has tapped the potential of an assembly of many mad scientists, working sort of together. //
c.f. newsreels, Europe, 1939 - 45 (after which the principals relocated to the USA with a marked increase in ratings).-- 8th of 7, Jun 26 2012 //But, but, but blowing things up is GOOOOD //
Ah yes. They're very lifelike these days, aren't they? I hear some even have real hair.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jun 26 2012 / I hear some even have real hair./
That is just from static cling, and the many, many cats.-- bungston, Jun 26 2012 I'd like for someone to take up the Dr Moriarty character and put together a body of work detailling his adventures inbetween his brushes with Holmes. It'd be a series of 19th Century "heist" stories, in the line of "Hustle" (or "Ocean's {n}" for American readers).-- zen_tom, Jun 27 2012 I worry that so much unopposed Moriarty yin without Holmes yang would make for an unbalanced story. Moriarty is too perfect. One would need to set him in opposition to something besides Holmes. If I recall something of this sort happened in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Maybe he was opposed to Fu Manchu?-- bungston, Jun 27 2012 Not exactly a surprising idea, for a website full of mad scientists.-- DIYMatt, Jun 27 2012 But it has taken 15 years!-- bungston, Jun 27 2012 The key to this sort of interdisciplinary insanity would be mad sociology. A mad sociologist, enraged by those in his field who he raves against as "nonobservers", and other scientists who mock him for "soft" social science, wants to destroy all structures and patterns from society and bring all social life back into accordance with the laws of physics. His mission to bring an end to social life is meant to destroy sociology, organized instutitutions that have declared him insane, and allow him the unprecedented freedom of God over others using the mechanims outlined in his treatise "The Necessary Predictability of the Controllable Social Physik". An infiltrator and and imposter, the mad sociologist has the power to form riotous mobs with ease, have social outcasts do his bidding, and through subtelty of action and suggestion bring about identity breakdown and group decay to even the strongest of social bonds. A cunning inventor of various implements, society to him if of moths fluttering stupidly around lights of their own creation, and uses technology accordingly. In the dank and dreary confines of his dungeon he practices etymology observing the social habits of insects by the light of thousands of moth-firefly hybrids that each flutter in place contented by their own light. etc.-- rcarty, Jun 27 2012 And in order to fulfill this insane goal, he invents Facebook.-- Alterother, Jun 27 2012 /other scientists who mock him for "soft" social science/
That one, the sociologist; one cannot truly call his thing "Mad". More "peeved" or "pissy". "Surly", perhaps. "Mad", that is when you are driven all night every night in the lab to make each of the pi-mesons do your bidding, for making the Arschtretend Death Ray!-- bungston, Jun 27 2012 Nevertheless, this sort of upset sociologist is key to the keeping ties between the Mad Scientist Superhero Team as loose as possible. Originally becoming a member to infiltrate the group and cause the organization to suffer a sort of heat death, his detached modus operandi endeared him to the other scientists, who soon realized they were socializing in error after their attempts to burn him by various means failed.
[Alterother] he loves Facebook, but violently regurgitates acid when he tries to say its name, because to him it is a reprehensible thing, but still fulfills his aims.-- rcarty, Jun 27 2012 That makes two of us, then.-- Alterother, Jun 27 2012 random, halfbakery