KRYPTON INC.
Incorporated Kryptonian
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I think as fans we often think about the possibilities inherent in characters from different stories or franchises meeting, whether those characters are similar in the genre they come from or the general tone of their native stories, but also when said characters are diametrically opposed to one another. It's like what Joss Whedon said about the appeal of super groups like the Avengers or the JLA. The dissonance can often be interesting and entertaining in and of itself when it comes to such things.
So, with that in mind, if you could crossover any two or more characters or franchises to exist in the same world, what would they be? How would you fit the characters together and their history into this hypothetical film where differing continuities now meet? I would also include the idea of characters not meeting but, having differing continuities existing in differing times of the same world. So, perhaps the events in one film are actually the past events that set up the events for another film in your reckoning.
The idea for this thread came to me when I happened to have to spend an extra day at my mothers house in the Poconos, and we had to wait because a delivery had to be rescheduled for the next day. So I had time to chill and did a little film festival. I watched THE ROAD WARRIOR (which I had forgotten I even had on DVD) and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK on AMAZON PRIME. After I finished I thought about how the characters of Max and Snake Plisken have similarities and differences that would make the two meeting interesting, and other ideas also started swirling that even if they didn't meet it could be cool in a LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN Alan Moore way if these two films were in a shared film universe. They are the cream of the crop of the late 70's/early 80's post apocalyptic thriller/action films, so why not link them instory as well? It's a cool thought experiment in the least.
To my mind you could go at least two ways with it. You could have it that the events of EFNY happened before the first MAD MAX film. The breakdown of society was in it's first stages because of the actions that Plisken takes at the end of his film perhaps only 20 years or less in the past, where he throws away the fusion formula that the President was going to offer to the Chinese and the Russian governments as part of a peace process. This could gibe with the Feral Boy from RW's recollections of the history he learned about a clash of super powers that sent the world into chaos and a new era of resource scarcity that cause a massive collapse of modern civilization. It's Plisken's actions that help to the continuation of the hostilities that inexorably leads to the world that Max inhabits in the wastelands of Australia.
I also think you could do it where the film's continuities are more or less concurrent. The fact that Australia is so messed up in this world wouldn't be too out of line with what we learn about America in EFNY. The rise of crime causing the use of Manhattan as a prison could still be in line with a world that has had a huge collapse. So while Snake was fighting crazies in NYC and tangling with the Duke, Max was running the gauntlet of Lord Humongous' dogs of war in the wastelands down under. This would allow for the meeting of the two protagonists in a story. My hypothetical tale would be Snake Plisken is brought into a Suicide Squad/Dirty Dozen black ops mission. He along with some other characters from some other dystopian future films have been given the task to halo into deep Australian wastelands. The nuclear fusion process has been recreated but the scientific team that headed up the project in secret has gone missing, shot down while in transport and the future of the world hinges on finding them and bringing them back. Snake's crew is ambushed immediately, leaving Plisken the only survivor, the team's equipment a valued prize to the attacking force of desert Reavers. Snake is brought back to the bandit's camp where he is tied up to a stake next to another prisoner: Max. He was taken as well and has been roughed up so as to tell how to unlock the booby trap on his Interceptor. The two manage to work together to kill their captors, but Plisken double crosses Max and steals his car, intent on completing the mission so as to get an airlift out of this particular crap hole of a situation he is in. Max follows him, intent on getting back what's his, and the two meet again and Max, the survivor with an honorable core of humanity actually becomes more dedicated to finding and rescuing the sympathetic scientists than the nihilist survivor anti-hero Snake, who reveals to Max his part in shaping the world as it is now. Such a story could go many ways but that would be my bare bones concept pitch.
So... What sort of hypothetical continuity mixtures would you like to see and how would you as a fan go about constructing them?
So, with that in mind, if you could crossover any two or more characters or franchises to exist in the same world, what would they be? How would you fit the characters together and their history into this hypothetical film where differing continuities now meet? I would also include the idea of characters not meeting but, having differing continuities existing in differing times of the same world. So, perhaps the events in one film are actually the past events that set up the events for another film in your reckoning.
The idea for this thread came to me when I happened to have to spend an extra day at my mothers house in the Poconos, and we had to wait because a delivery had to be rescheduled for the next day. So I had time to chill and did a little film festival. I watched THE ROAD WARRIOR (which I had forgotten I even had on DVD) and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK on AMAZON PRIME. After I finished I thought about how the characters of Max and Snake Plisken have similarities and differences that would make the two meeting interesting, and other ideas also started swirling that even if they didn't meet it could be cool in a LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN Alan Moore way if these two films were in a shared film universe. They are the cream of the crop of the late 70's/early 80's post apocalyptic thriller/action films, so why not link them instory as well? It's a cool thought experiment in the least.
To my mind you could go at least two ways with it. You could have it that the events of EFNY happened before the first MAD MAX film. The breakdown of society was in it's first stages because of the actions that Plisken takes at the end of his film perhaps only 20 years or less in the past, where he throws away the fusion formula that the President was going to offer to the Chinese and the Russian governments as part of a peace process. This could gibe with the Feral Boy from RW's recollections of the history he learned about a clash of super powers that sent the world into chaos and a new era of resource scarcity that cause a massive collapse of modern civilization. It's Plisken's actions that help to the continuation of the hostilities that inexorably leads to the world that Max inhabits in the wastelands of Australia.
I also think you could do it where the film's continuities are more or less concurrent. The fact that Australia is so messed up in this world wouldn't be too out of line with what we learn about America in EFNY. The rise of crime causing the use of Manhattan as a prison could still be in line with a world that has had a huge collapse. So while Snake was fighting crazies in NYC and tangling with the Duke, Max was running the gauntlet of Lord Humongous' dogs of war in the wastelands down under. This would allow for the meeting of the two protagonists in a story. My hypothetical tale would be Snake Plisken is brought into a Suicide Squad/Dirty Dozen black ops mission. He along with some other characters from some other dystopian future films have been given the task to halo into deep Australian wastelands. The nuclear fusion process has been recreated but the scientific team that headed up the project in secret has gone missing, shot down while in transport and the future of the world hinges on finding them and bringing them back. Snake's crew is ambushed immediately, leaving Plisken the only survivor, the team's equipment a valued prize to the attacking force of desert Reavers. Snake is brought back to the bandit's camp where he is tied up to a stake next to another prisoner: Max. He was taken as well and has been roughed up so as to tell how to unlock the booby trap on his Interceptor. The two manage to work together to kill their captors, but Plisken double crosses Max and steals his car, intent on completing the mission so as to get an airlift out of this particular crap hole of a situation he is in. Max follows him, intent on getting back what's his, and the two meet again and Max, the survivor with an honorable core of humanity actually becomes more dedicated to finding and rescuing the sympathetic scientists than the nihilist survivor anti-hero Snake, who reveals to Max his part in shaping the world as it is now. Such a story could go many ways but that would be my bare bones concept pitch.
So... What sort of hypothetical continuity mixtures would you like to see and how would you as a fan go about constructing them?
