TBF, Mags, you have been doing a lot of the heavylifting for the quest, so this will be in good hands.
To be clear to everyone, this is just me burning out on imagination of the quest, since my muse has been hitting me over the head a lot with so many different ideas that I just can't find myself too interested in this.
I'll still hang out here, though, since this still does have a sepcial place in my heart.
I'd like to thank you all for making this a wonderful experience while it lasted.
I'd also like to thank @Magoose, @Fluffy_serpent, and @Martin Noctis for doing so much to help prepare and write this quest. I couldn't have done it without you all.
For anyone wondering about OTL, wiki says that in the 76 summer Olympics the soviets got 49 gold medals and the US got 34. So the Soviets did a little better but DAMN the US did so much better it's not even funny*.
Its less that he reveals schemes and Conspiracies, its mostly just for the fact that people are always roping him in and he wants no part of that bullshit.
Man that was a hell of a good update. Bruce continues to be a Chad and cements himself as a boxing legend and the real life Rocky. Hell of a run that is definitely going to go down in history and be a highlight in his career. Literally faced some of the world's best and won. The Goose has flown far and continues to fly higher.
Magoose you did seem to miss the Quarterfinals and Semifinals but I presume that was skipped over with the presumption that Bruce got two more 1 round KOs until he met Sixto Soria? Crazy that it's twice now that Bruce has gone the distance against one of the best and the rolls were literally just decided by one point. Looking forward to any and all of Bruce's future fights.
My bet is that after the loss, Team USSR got so pissed that they went full ballistic and tried to rig Bruce's drug test to show positive as the only way to save face and prevent America from having a One Punch Man. If this is true and it pops up, there's going to be major reprecussions and it's very likely that Moscow loses its spot hosting the 1980 Olympics as punishment, meaning we see 1980 Atlanta Games or some other alternative.
Considering we're the flagbearer and made that amazing documentary, I'm willing to bet we gave some Shonen boost to the rest of Team USA and while we probably didn't do a clean sweep like Atlanta, it was probably enough to push us as the medal leads over East Germany and the Soviet Union.
Its less that he reveals schemes and Conspiracies, its mostly just for the fact that people are always roping him in and he wants no part of that bullshit.
If the soviets do end up being involved, it might necessitate a few minor retcons. The bribery and dirty money shenanigans that were implied in the update aren't russia's style, they prefer the "sending you pieces of your loved ones until you do what they want" kind of approach. If they do engage in bribery, it's always something they can easily use for blackmail, like inviting someone onto a Jeffry Epstein-style private dacha.
One thing to note is our slug match was against a Cuban so…yeah, that's very politically important that we fought him. And no doubt Cuba will raise a stink about the split decision too.
But overall a hell of a propaganda win. Probably what makes Stallone write Ivan Drago.
If the soviets do end up being involved, it might necessitate a few minor retcons. The bribery and dirty money shenanigans that were implied in the update aren't russia's style, they prefer the "sending you pieces of your loved ones until you do what they want" kind of approach. If they do engage in bribery, it's always something they can easily use for blackmail, like inviting someone onto a Jeffry Epstein-style private dacha.
Eh I think it can still work. I imagine that the Soviets had the intentions of playing fair and square originally because they can't mess up four years before Moscow and it would be more advantageous to cheat on home turf. Then Bruce "The Goose" O'Brian knocked out one of their star fighters in one punch and in a desperate attempt to save face they tried to bribe the drug doctors with whatever money they had on hand. It's less an organized KGB operation and more of a improvised gambit by an embarassed Team USSR, one that if it is true will have Brezhnev see heads roll or sent to the Gulags.
One thing to note is our slug match was against a Cuban so…yeah, that's very politically important that we fought him. And no doubt Cuba will raise a stink about the split decision too.
But overall a hell of a propaganda win. Probably what makes Stallone write Ivan Drago.
That is a funny thought though that the plot of every Rocky film is made just by Stallone watching Bruce's life and then changing the details a bit, at least it guarantees that Rocky V is erased from history. Kind of tempted to have Rocky II be Rocky going to the Olympics and facing off against Drago, but the Rocky v Apollo rematch is way too iconic.
I guess in addition to Emerald Splash, Bruce will be known as the "One Punch Man" even if it's a hard feat to replicate. Shame that One isn't born yet to be inspired but Japan is a big fan of The Goose so there is that.
Common O'Brian W. Shame we couldn't be involved in making the album, but it seems that allowing her some space and privacy helped to make another multi-platinum album. Crazy how Carrie isn't even 20 yet and she's about to have more success than both her parents combined. Guess she really does have the luck of the Irish ever since she met Bruce, lol. Well hopefully we can at least produce some singles with her.
Magoose, which singer OTL would you say Bruce resembles to the closest? It would be really cool if Bruce becomes a classic rock musician.
I am sad that the dice didn't land on the Soviets so we can further embarrass them in the Olympics and kick them out further rising American morale but I digress I for one can't wait for a Count Dankula video on us because us one punching a Soviet boxer in the second round seems kinda fun
Submersion of Japan Directed by: Shiro Moritani
Produced by: Tomoyuki Tanaka, Osamu Tanaka
Distribution (USA): Lucasfilms Unlimited
Starring: Keiju Kobayashi, Tetsuro Tamba, Ayumi Ishida, Hiroshi Fujioka and Yusuke Takita
Audience D100 => 51
Critic 100 => 20 Profits: $2 Million
Lucasfilms Profits: $1 Million
Welp. It was kind of inevitable that Lucasfilms would produce a stinker, nobody was perfect after all. At the very least your first "bomb" was a Toho import, and it technically wasn't even a bomb as it still made money but the negative reception still made it seem as such. You don't know what the hell was lost in translation as Toho kept on hyping it up as the perfect disaster movie, like Godzilla without Godzilla that was sure to have America on the edge of its seats. Instead what you sat through was a very boring disaster movie that everyone seemed to agree was a discount Earthquake even though Submersion came out roughly a year before it.
So the plot was about how some scientists discovered that Japan was in danger of literally sinking into the ocean floor due to some plate tectonics pushing it into a nearby trench. The protagonist is dismissed by the Japanese government as alarmist but is able to work on predicting the event ad making safety precuations thanks to some wealthy backers, all the while starting up a romance. After a disastrous Earthquake in Tokyo, the government switches its tune and tries to help as best they can, but Japan runs into major issues of trying to ship over 100 million refugees and all of their neighbors hating them too much to open their doors. The second half of a film is a very slow slog which switches between melodrama politicking and very bad disaster scenes until Japan anti-climatically sinks and the film ends in a very heavy downer as 60 million Japanese die and life kind of just goes on without any hint of optimism or hope.
To start off with your disappointment, 2/3rd's of the movie weren't even the actual disaster movie! Instead of just focusing on the earthquakes and sinking and showing some great special effects and drama in natural tragedy, the majority of the film is just boring scenes of politics or a very cliche and forced romance plot involving two actors who didn't have any chemistry. The politics also kind of brought down the movie a lot by just acting as filler to pad runtime between disasters. It was a rather bold choice to just have the Japanese government agree to support the scientists and organize an evacuation halfway through instead of just being stubborn idiots, and on the one hand you had to admire that kind of optimism that government could work for the people and do its best even if it didn't end in victory. But the problem was by removing said conflict, there wasn't really any stakes in the politics scenes and it just amounted to the Prime Minister begging for aid, continually told no by other countries, then getting some help at the last second as a disaster happens, all while performed by a mediocre cast who could give meh performances at best.
Maybe this movie could have been saved if it had good disaster scenes, but oh boy were they bad. The special effects were very amateurish and reliant on model sets which showed their fakeness and were captured with bad cinematography. You were sure that ILM could have made a better disaster movie while drunk off their ass and using only the interns, and in fact most of the team packed a theater one night so they could see what NOT to do for future Lucasfilms projects. The editing and storytelling was also really bad, it just cut away from the protagonists with no involvement from them save for the beginning and end disasters, its very slow volcanic eruptions and flooding that a grandma could outrun the disaster, and there weren't really any personal dramas or action to latch onto; the victims were just props who kind of just accepted their fates. Earthquake had both heart and spectacle, stuff this film lacked in spades.
As much as you admired Japanese cinema, you didn't think they were completely perfect, but such a stinker being a major success over there was something that confused the hell out of you, while Toho in return didn't understand why America liked their "masterpiece" of a disaster film. After long conversations with Toho international, you think that the reason for success in Japan is because the film resonated emotionally with a lot of Japanese as a sort of metaphor for the trauma of World War II and the theme of Japan's past sins haunting them by their neighbors refusing refuge and thus condemning half of Japan to death really spoke to a lot of Japanese viewers. Decent stuff, but it went completely over the minds of American audiences and the critics had a field day just blasting it to bits and knowing they were right.
Against Rocky and a host of other summer films, Submersion of Japan had no chance even if it was great. The timing was also pretty awkward in that Universal released a war hit called Midway on the Battle of Midway. It was a damn good war movie and were it not for Star Wars you'd say that it contained the best special effects you ever saw with the dogfights being similar in quality to the early stages of Yavin. Actually it might not have been too much of a coincidence as Mike's Men revealed how Universal's new SFX used George's Dogfight reels as the blueprint for Midway's battles, and unfortunately it was different enough that there was no room for a lawsuit. While you hoped it wasn't the case, a high quality war film of America giving Imperial Japan a bloody nose may have made June and July a bad time to release a Japanese import.
