An idea for Stane's armor is that it becomes the basis for a government project, mostly around reverse-engineering the suit [and its biggest hurdle being the energy requirement], where through some espionage bullshittery an enemy faction gains control of the suit and creates either the Crimson Dynamo (Leviathan) or Titanium Man (HYDRA). As an aside, I feel obligated to mention that, while Leviathan as an organization isn't introduced until 2009 we can introduce a similar concept a KGB-remnant/splinter group with ties to the Red Room; additionally, I'd like to save AIM's introduction until after both HYDRA and our Leviathan counterpart are in shambles, that way it would be easy enough for us to introduce them as born from the fragmentary groups as a way to survive against the greater threat and we can carry their technological threat forward.
As for the Hulk question, I feel that it's important for us to begin introducing the psychological elements in this movie as plot hooks for the next, and that after spending the majority of the next film in that psychological element have Jennifer awaken near the end in a horror-esque manner, in a 'I have passed my curse unwitteningly unto you, what have I done?!' kind of way.
I mean where does the government get Stane's armor from? Did Tony just leave it lying around for them to pick up? I'd also rather not have the US government become incompetents. While I'm fine with stuff getting stolen from them every so often, if we have every other movie involving the US government failing to do something or getting secrets stolen from them it just ends up making them look needlessly incompetent. If we have HYDRA steal Stark-tech from the US government it inherently makes HYDRA resurfacing in the modern day in a different movie less impactful because we're repeating previous beats. I think trying to make Stane's armor a big thing is kind of dumb since not everything needs to be interconnected. Just use Stane the character to get that ball rolling and not his armor that should probably be destroyed.
Also where did Jennifer come into the potential plot for the Hulk movie? Does she serve a role in this hypothetical besides waking up at the end as She-Hulk? Why is she not awake before waking up? Like I'm not inherently opposed to the idea of it but this just seems a little disconnected from the conversation about the movie thus far and seems kind of empty of any real substance for consideration on how it would potentially work.
Edit: I just now realized that you're talking about Jennifer waking up in the sequel to the movie we haven't yet finalized a plot to. It's less bad on the disconnect then and my critique is less relevant. That being said even if we introduce psychological elements, they shouldn't be the focus of the film. We ought to lay the seeds for it yes, but the primary purpose of the film ought to be introducing general audiences to the concept of the Hulk and his supporting cast and only get started on the most basic of theming for him going forward. Movie 1 for a character in phase 1 is the literal start to their heroes journey in the greater cinematic universe and it's where we get to set the most basic rules on who they are and how their stuff works that can then be more deeply explored and evolved later.
An idea for like the Leader Hulk matchup is to have the former use like Gamma mutated animals against Hulk like Gamma Eagles, Bears Dogs to like build up his Gammaworld plan while also giving Hulk something to punch. Maybe have some of the Gammanimals have mech parts that Leader made to show off his own know how to the audience
An idea for like the Leader Hulk matchup is to have the former use like Gamma mutated animals against Hulk like Gamma Eagles, Bears Dogs to like build up his Gammaworld plan while also giving Hulk something to punch. Maybe have some of the Gammanimals have mech parts that Leader made to show off his own know how to the audience
It's a neat idea but if we were to do it absolutely no cybernetic parts. Just keep it to gamma powers for superpowers in this movie and make them little more than minions with no characterization. We want them to be simple and not pull away screentime from the actually important characters. I will say that this is also going to run the VFX quality necessity up so I'm not fully on board with it but I don't think it's a bad idea at all conceptually I'm just a little hesitant to fully endorse it.
I'd like to save AIM's introduction until after both HYDRA and our Leviathan counterpart are in shambles, that way it would be easy enough for us to introduce them as born from the fragmentary groups as a way to survive against the greater threat and we can carry their technological threat forward
I agree. I think AIM has the most staying power in the long run in-universe of the films themselves and in-universe of producing movies, because they are evil scientists rather than fascists or communists which are both too evil for other villains and in the rare situation, heroes to work together with.
So it's less questionable to the audience how they are able to work together with other factions / recruit new members and generally survive in the long run as an organization after their leader is defeated (and presumably, someone new takes their place rather than the whole organization collapsing overnight).
I mean where does the government get Stane's armor from? Did Tony just leave it lying around for them to pick up? I'd also rather not have the US government become incompetents. While I'm fine with stuff getting stolen from them every so often, if we have every other movie involving the US government failing to do something or getting secrets stolen from them it just ends up making them look needlessly incompetent. If we have HYDRA steal Stark-tech from the US government it inherently makes HYDRA resurfacing in the modern day in a different movie less impactful because we're repeating previous beats. I think trying to make Stane's armor a big thing is kind of dumb since not everything needs to be interconnected. Just use Stane the character to get that ball rolling and not his armor that should probably be destroyed.
I feel that regardless of whose hands Stane's armor is nominally in control of, there's going to be enough fragmentary pieces of it from their battle that some were missed in Tony's scavenging; to be absolutely fair, most of those fragments are absolutely useless except as paperweights or for metallurgical study. But fair, the US Government has little to no material of it in their hands, the majority of it being in Tony's hands...originally with no purpose other than just a memory of what was and basically an ugly art installation, before Tony uses the framework for the armor for another project, say Hulkbuster?
In that case, how do Crimson Dynamo or Titanium Man get their headstart on their armorsets? What's the idea for the next one, 'cause I'm kinda digging a take on Demon In A Bottle + Armor Wars, though I do realize it might be a little bit of a retread between it and the OTL versions.
Also where did Jennifer come into the potential plot for the Hulk movie? Does she serve a role in this hypothetical besides waking up at the end as She-Hulk? Why is she not awake before waking up? Like I'm not inherently opposed to the idea of it but this just seems a little disconnected from the conversation about the movie thus far and seems kind of empty of any real substance for consideration on how it would potentially work.
Edit: I just now realized that you're talking about Jennifer waking up in the sequel to the movie we haven't yet finalized a plot to. It's less bad on the disconnect then and my critique is less relevant. That being said even if we introduce psychological elements, they shouldn't be the focus of the film. We ought to lay the seeds for it yes, but the primary purpose of the film ought to be introducing general audiences to the concept of the Hulk and his supporting cast and only get started on the most basic of theming for him going forward. Movie 1 for a character in phase 1 is the literal start to their heroes journey in the greater cinematic universe and it's where we get to set the most basic rules on who they are and how their stuff works that can then be more deeply explored and evolved later.
It's what I was saying? That we introduce but not overcrowd, with adding in the psychological elements for this movie.
I do think we should introduce Jennifer in this one, alongside Rick Jones, though I do think it should be in a different capacity than in the comics...for Jennifer, what about the idea she's Bruce's half-sister instead of his cousin (more for the sake of streamlining for movie audiences than anything else) and she's college roommates with Rick? Like, they're not in a relationship, but they (and a group of friends) are all sharing an apartment out in town- where are we setting this, NYC, San Fran?- and Bruce stumbles through there at one point in the movie, maybe towards the end.
Sidenote: Did you know both Rick Jones and Jessica Jones are adopted? Wouldn't be that hard to justify that they're related in some measure, like they were both adopted by the same family or that Rick is Phil Campbell and he survived the accident. Could be a way to introduce her earlier on, though to protect her copyright maybe have her (Jessica) mentioned as some flavor of Easter Egg.
the majority of it being in Tony's hands...originally with no purpose other than just a memory of what was and basically an ugly art installation, before Tony uses the framework for the armor for another project, say Hulkbuster?
Why would Tony keep it and not just destroy it? Like he can already make better suits without it why use it in any capacity in that sense? The Iron Monger suit isn't better than the Iron Man suit in any meaningful capacity and Tony kind of can just build another Iron Man suit from scratch to be better than both.
In that case, how do Crimson Dynamo or Titanium Man get their headstart on their armorsets? What's the idea for the next one, 'cause I'm kinda digging a take on Demon In A Bottle + Armor Wars, though I do realize it might be a little bit of a retread between it and the OTL versions.
I mean the first solution is to have a villain (Maggia, AIM, Madame Masque etc.) steal directly from Tony Stark. The second solution I can think of is instead of taking a piece of the armor and working with that the inciting incident of the movie is them kidnapping the now imprisoned Obadiah Stane to make use of his know how. A third solution would be to have them simply develop their tech independently due to also being smart people who can figure things out. If we want to be lazy and the sequel is set after Avengers we can have them use alien tech to develop their armor.
A fifth (partial) solution for Crimson Dynamo that I kind of wrote a pitch for is that Crimson Dynamo is a Soviet era cosmonaut who due to relativistic shenanigans on the ship he was on, thinks it's still the cold war when he lands. His suit isn't a weapon per se but rather a space exploration/ship repair suit repurposed into fighting against what he views as the capitalist threat (Tony Stark/Iron Man).
I can think of more but I think every solution listed above is a better solution than "the villains reverse engineered a competent super suit from a fragment of a suit that Tony Stark almost certainly did his level best to destroy and make sure never fell into anyone's hands and who he defeated before he started upgrading the Iron Man suit significantly". Having the Iron Monger suit be really important just doesn't really work in my opinion and there are many better options.
Apologies if that was what you were saying since I misunderstood you. I just want to make sure we don't bite off more than we can chew and people started throwing out that we should start having the Hulk deal with like Devil Hulk and stuff and I want to make it clear that while I'd like those psychological elements in a movie I do not want them in the first movie.
Also, I do think we should introduce Jennifer in this one, alongside Rick Jones, though I do think it should be in a different capacity than in the comics...for Jennifer, what about the idea she's Bruce's half-sister instead of his cousin (more for the sake of streamlining for movie audiences than anything else) and she's college roommates with Rick? Like, they're not in a relationship, but they (and a group of friends) are all sharing an apartment out in town- where are we setting this, NYC, San Fran?- and Bruce stumbles through there at one point in the movie, maybe towards the end.
I mean what role does Jennifer play in this? Like do she and Rick Jones just show up to be cameoed and name dropped? If they appear in the movie I'd like them to do something in the movie significant to the plot to some degree. Avoid making them characters who are just kind of there for no reason.
I'm also not a big fan of the college angle. Bruce is kind of trying to avoid people due to being the Hulk, colleges inherently have a lot of people. I don't think it makes sense for him to willingly head to a place where he thinks the Hulk can go off and hurt a lot of people especially people he's close to.
If you want to include Jennifer in this movie and are dead set on doing it I think the best way to do so would just be to have a mid-credits scene introduce her going through Bruce's stuff or asking Rick Jones if he's seen Bruce or being interviewed by SHIELD about what she knows about Bruce. Leave her as a tiny tease like how Fury was in OTL Iron Man.
As for Jennifer being Bruce's half-sister instead of cousin, I don't really get why the change is necessary. What does the change add to the character and how does it streamline things? Like is it that much harder to explain that Jennifer is his cousin than it would be to explain that she's his half-sister? I'm not opposed to the change inherently but I don't get why the change is being suggested in the first place so as of now it just kind of feels unnecessary.
Sidenote: Did you know both Rick Jones and Jessica Jones are adopted? Wouldn't be that hard to justify that they're related in some measure, like they were both adopted by the same family or that Rick is Phil Campbell and he survived the accident. Could be a way to introduce her earlier on, though to protect her copyright maybe have her mentioned as some flavor of Easter Egg.
If we do have that connection I'd rather bring it in much later and not in this first movie. Easter eggs are great but it's best to keep things fairly simple for now and not try to bite off more than you can chew. I think it's a great opportunity to crossover the TV shows and the movies and have one tangentially impact the other without leaving movie going audiences totally lost, but it's something I'd rather include later as opposed to now if we do include it.
I like the idea but I'd like to wait till both Jessica Jones and Rick Jones are established and then pull on that possible connection to make it feel impactful as opposed to using one as a vehicle to setup the other. I'm happy to push for it but this is like a season 2 Jessica Jones idea and we're still dealing with the Hulk movie and if we're going to even include Rick Jones. I want a solid base for the core of the movie we're working on now and then we can use it to springboard other stuff later once we've gotten our foot in the door and started to solidly have a universe we can play with as opposed to just speculation and "wouldn't it be cool?". Because while a lot of the time something would be cool, we can't discuss it in much relevance till we've at least got a basic gist of what the limitations we're working with and around are.
Film proposal to add to the queue after Hulk and Thor (and to set up for)
Shield - Hawkeye of Shield is long running antagonists with Russian super-agent Black Widow, when she contacts him for help to take out the Red Room, the resurrection of the old Russian super soldier program by Hydra. Together, they discover the secret of the Red Room and the Russian Super-Soldier program (which enhanced black widow) is blood found on the shield of Captain America, secretly found by the USSR after WWII. Post credits is Tony stark using the location it was found and his tech to locate the Captain America crash.
This gets us a setup for Captain America to build anticipation, a change of pace after two big brute movies into more of a action spy thriller (lower cost and less effects, more close action), and the closest thing to a female lead that Ike will let us get away with with a co-progagonist. And we get to be clever as the name Shield is both the group and the literal item.
Film proposal to add to the queue after Hulk and Thor (and to set up for)
Shield - Hawkeye of Shield is long running antagonists with Russian super-agent Black Widow, when she contacts him for help to take out the Red Room, the resurrection of the old Russian super soldier program by Hydra. Together, they discover the secret of the Red Room and the Russian Super-Soldier program (which enhanced black widow) is blood found on the shield of Captain America, secretly found by the USSR after WWII. Post credits is Tony stark using the location it was found and his tech to locate the Captain America crash.
This gets us a setup for Captain America to build anticipation, a change of pace after two big brute movies into more of a action spy thriller (lower cost and less effects, more close action), and the closest thing to a female lead that Ike will let us get away with with a co-progagonist. And we get to be clever as the name Shield is both the group and the literal item.
I have a few issues with this. First and most minorly this is very similar to what we did in the Charcolt quest. This is the least substantial issue.
Secondly this movie tries to establish way too much all at once. Because it's before a Captain America movie it needs to set up SHIELD, HYDRA, Black Widow, Black Widow being a super soldier that is enhanced, Hawkeye, the Red Room and who Captain America is as well as any of the supporting cast and antagonists. It's too much and it's a bloated film considering you're revealing three new organizations for the first time. The film is also very reliant on people knowing and caring about Captain America which wasn't really a thing before the Marvel Movies occured. We're operating in a fictional 2008 right now where "Captain America" wasn't a household name and it's very dependent on people caring about a character who hasn't been seen on the big screen almost at all (save when he stole cars in a terrible movie in the seventies I believe).
Thirdly the post-credits scene makes no sense. What motivation does Tony Stark have to find Captain America? We've never shown him caring about this so it comes out of nowhere and feels really jarring.
Fourthly we do not need to have an entire movie about another character hype up a different character. This feels less like a story about Black Widow and Hawkeye and more like a vehicle to promote the Captain America movie. Like Captain America has been given bigger pitching than a named antagonist in this film.
Fifthly and this one is just personal preference, I would like to see a Black Widow who's actually scary and morally ambiguous. Show the red in her ledger instead of telling us about it constantly and then playing her as nothing but a straight hero.
Sixthly we could have a close to female lead movie like this if we were willing to do Ant-Man and the Wasp and it would give us a significant divergence from both OTL and Charcolt's Quest that we still have not had.
This pitch requires either a significant rewrite and retooling because it's just not good as is (even ignoring the three more personal problems I have there are still three significant conceptual issues with the movie that hamstring it from the get-go). I will oppose this potential movie if it is meant to be produced as is. There might be a solid idea here but it's simultaneously too safe in terms of what it's covering and too ambitious in trying to set up too much stuff all at once and so anything interesting or good about it is buried under the much more immediately bad things about it.
Edit: Basic suggestion on how to improve this, pick a villain with a name and give them a plot/plan that makes sense that introduces as few new elements from what's needed to set-up the heroes as you can. It won't guarantee you a good movie but it'll guarantee you a movie about the central protagonists and antagonists that doesn't feel like a set-up vehicle.
Why would Tony keep it and not just destroy it? Like he can already make better suits without it why use it in any capacity in that sense? The Iron Monger suit isn't better than the Iron Man suit in any meaningful capacity and Tony kind of can just build another Iron Man suit from scratch to be better than both.
Depends on what he wants to accomplish. Maybe he still has it because, despite his intellect and pragmatism, he's feeling sentimental; maybe he kept it because he was looking into the inner mechanisms, and while he could definitely make better suits, he's taking inspiration from some of the systems in the suit that he wouldn't have thought of such as perhaps a better User Interface or a honeycomb framework (dunno how to justify this further than people finding inspiration in weird places).
I mean the first solution is to have a villain (Maggia, AIM, Madame Masque etc.) steal directly from Tony Stark. The second solution I can think of is instead of taking a piece of the armor and working with that the inciting incident of the movie is them kidnapping the now imprisoned Obadiah Stane to make use of his know how. A third solution would be to have them simply develop their tech independently due to also being smart people who can figure things out. If we want to be lazy and the sequel is set after Avengers we can have them use alien tech to develop their armor.
Again, we should save AIM for after HYDRA (or whatever organization we end up using) is in shambles so that we can carry the technological threat they present forward, and at this point the Mafia (Maggia was only used because Stan Lee and the rest of Marvel wanted to write about the Mafia without getting ganked in their sleep- yes, they were that big of a threat in New York during that time) or other criminal organizations should not have the power or ability to gain access to Stark's newer technologies, we should save that for further down the road like maybe Phase 3.
That second option does work out better, I mean we did leave him alive for a reason, but as for that third option, I'm willing to bet the biggest challenge to making their own versions is still going to be the sheer energy requirement...maybe we can use this as a way to introduce Wonder Man and maybe the Tesseract/Space Stone a little earlier on.
A fifth (partial) solution for Crimson Dynamo that I kind of wrote a pitch for is that Crimson Dynamo is a Soviet era cosmonaut who due to relativistic shenanigans on the ship he was on, thinks it's still the cold war when he lands. His suit isn't a weapon per se but rather a space exploration/ship repair suit repurposed into fighting against what he views as the capitalist threat (Tony Stark/Iron Man).
Eh, how'd the Soviet's get relativistic technology is now the problem and better yet is how Crimson Dynamo survived going at those speeds. When did he leave Earth's orbit, why didn't the Soviet's use the technology in the interim, did the CIA manage to get their hands on the technology? Did they get the technology from the same source as the Mandarin, did they develop it on their own, did they use shortcuts, why didn't the USSR announce it to the world that they acquired the technology and if they did, what were some of the repercussions of that event? If they did have the technology for surviving at relativistic speeds, what was the energy shielding like and would it be strong enough to prevent Chernobyl? If they had the means and resources to create the technology, are the Soviets still around and if they are, are they using this technology to gather an insane amount of resources from the asteroid belt and beyond? Did he have Cosmo with him and was this enough to give the dog powers?
There's too many ripple effects from this idea, and people will be asking why weren't they introduced in IM1.
I can think of more but I think every solution listed above is a better solution than "the villains reverse engineered a competent super suit from a fragment of a suit that Tony Stark almost certainly did his level best to destroy and make sure never fell into anyone's hands and who he defeated before he started upgrading the Iron Man suit significantly". Having the Iron Monger suit be really important just doesn't really work in my opinion and there are many better options.
There honestly aren't a lot of options that don't introduce a shitton of questions into the story, mostly revolving around where did the changes to our timeline originate, how big of an impact did it have, and what enemy agents exist as a result of it? If it's Captain America, did HYDRA have a greater technological advantage or did they use other means as a stopgap measure? Why didn't other foreign entities utilize HYDRA's captured knowledge, surely the Soviets would have the greatest amount of stolen knowledge due to the sheer size of their warfront and if they did, how was it that the notoriously volatile Stalin allowed for any organization or person under his control have that amount of power? Did they grow in strength after his death, having squirrelled away the greatest amount of their resources in the interim period and did they have a hand in his death or was it really an accident? How much of Leviathan or Red Room did he have a hand in, did it grow in strength and size after his demise? Going back to HYDRA, was it a bigger or smaller department under Nazi control? Where was their base and oversight? Who in that party had the biggest hand in it, and why did or didn't Hitler have them more or less firmly under his control. Are they a remnant state, terrorist organization, what?
If it was Iron Man, they still have a period of trying to catch up to him technologically...which would be greatly helped by the Leader's existence and/or capturing Stane. I like this option more now.
I mean what role does Jennifer play in this? Like do she and Rick Jones just show up to be cameoed and name dropped? If they appear in the movie I'd like them to do something in the movie significant to the plot to some degree. Avoid making them characters who are just kind of there for no reason.
I'm also not a big fan of the college angle. Bruce is kind of trying to avoid people due to being the Hulk, colleges inherently have a lot of people. I don't think it makes sense for him to willingly head to a place where he thinks the Hulk can go off and hurt a lot of people especially people he's close to.
Maybe not a major city then, maybe a smaller college town? And if not college, are they postgraduates, working full time?
For Rick, as due to his time in the comics as leader of the HAM radio operator group the 'Teen Brigade', I imagine something related to computer-engineering and software, so hacker or social media extraordinaire? Like, it's almost a coincidence that he's there, but Bruce remembers having this conversation with Jennifer about it or having met him earlier in the movie, so he's using him as the middle man to get information about where he needs to go or hide.
If you want to include Jennifer in this movie and are dead set on doing it I think the best way to do so would just be to have a mid-credits scene introduce her going through Bruce's stuff or asking Rick Jones if he's seen Bruce or being interviewed by SHIELD about what she knows about Bruce. Leave her as a tiny tease like how Fury was in OTL Iron Man.
As for Jennifer being Bruce's half-sister instead of cousin, I don't really get why the change is necessary. What does the change add to the character and how does it streamline things? Like is it that much harder to explain that Jennifer is his cousin than it would be to explain that she's his half-sister? I'm not opposed to the change inherently but I don't get why the change is being suggested in the first place so as of now it just kind of feels unnecessary.
The idea came about after reading about their shared backstory, with how she was always there to help Bruce after his father, Brian, got a little too abusive with him, and I find it a likelier story that she's more directly tied to him as a reason for why she wasn't able to get her own parents to report Brian to CPS and prevent Rebecca's (Bruce's mom) death that route. It removes points of failure for the audience to point out [no matter how realistic it is in some families], that it shouldn't have happened, ergo Jessica ends up being adapted as his (full/half) sister.
If we do have that connection I'd rather bring it in much later and not in this first movie. Easter eggs are great but it's best to keep things fairly simple for now and not try to bite off more than you can chew. I think it's a great opportunity to crossover the TV shows and the movies and have one tangentially impact the other without leaving movie going audiences totally lost, but it's something I'd rather include later as opposed to now if we do include it.
Film proposal to add to the queue after Hulk and Thor (and to set up for)
Shield - Hawkeye of Shield is long running antagonists with Russian super-agent Black Widow, when she contacts him for help to take out the Red Room, the resurrection of the old Russian super soldier program by Hydra. Together, they discover the secret of the Red Room and the Russian Super-Soldier program (which enhanced black widow) is blood found on the shield of Captain America, secretly found by the USSR after WWII. Post credits is Tony stark using the location it was found and his tech to locate the Captain America crash.
I don't think we need to introduce SHIELD at this juncture, or at least in the way it was in OTL, as a primarily American/NATO operation and instead have it be a more natural outgrowth of what happens in this timeline, say something akin to Interpol in that it's actually a multinational venture, perhaps answerable to the UN or Interpol itself.
As for Red Room, can I argue that it made more than just Black Widows, like it was also involved in the creation of the Winter Soldiers (and whoever we can steal from Fox, like Omega Red)? If we can't use Leviathan (since it officially comes out as an organization next year in the comics), having this be the umbrella organization and Soviet remnant will make more sense (narratively).
For some reason I had the thought of the Tesseract/Space Stone/Whichever Stone collecting dust in a random storage unit of Williams Innovations, and it getting repossessed (by a Stan Lee cameo) as part of the company's bankruptcy.
Of course, Simon might not know of it's importance, it's probably repossessed in bulk with a bunch of other innovations that seem more impressive, so when the Maggia come knocking with an offer of all the cash he needs to reclaim the repossessed innovations, that could be how the space stone comes into play in the modern day.
It's simultaneously really funny (especially upon re-watch for viewers that didn't understand the power of an infinity stone until later films) while also a realistically feasible chain of events.
Depends on what he wants to accomplish. Maybe he still has it because, despite his intellect and pragmatism, he's feeling sentimental; maybe he kept it because he was looking into the inner mechanisms, and while he could definitely make better suits, he's taking inspiration from some of the systems in the suit that he wouldn't have thought of such as perhaps a better User Interface or a honeycomb framework (dunno how to justify this further than people finding inspiration in weird places).
This feels like a reach. Like you're working backwards from a conclusion to desperately make things fit. I don't think this is a good enough reason. Even if do concede to Tony keeping it out of sentimental reasons, him going and using the thing he preserved as the base of a new armor, when he could just build a new armor using that inspiration that's entirely separate from the object he's sentimental, feels really painfully forced and contrived.
Again, we should save AIM for after HYDRA (or whatever organization we end up using) is in shambles so that we can carry the threat forward, and at this point the Mafia (Maggia was only used because Stan Lee and the rest of Marvel wanted to write about the Mafia without getting ganked in their sleep- yes, they were that big of a threat in New York during that time) or other criminal organizations should not have the power or ability to gain access to Stark's newer technologies, we should save that for further down the road like maybe Phase 3.
That second option does work out better, I mean we did leave him alive for a reason, but as for that third option, I'm willing to bet the biggest challenge to making their own versions is still going to be the sheer energy requirement...maybe we can use this as a way to introduce Wonder Man and maybe the Tesseract/Space Stone a little earlier on.
I mean if we already have people taking tiny scraps of Obadiah's armor and making functional suits that can compete with Stark tech, what impact does stealing from Stark directly have after that? Seriously it's just doing the same thing but again. I'm not saying the solutions I came up with were perfect but rather they're better than using the actual physical probably mostly if not entirely destroyed Iron Monger suit as the basis of new armor.
I also don't get what the advantage of introducing the tesseract earlier is so why would we even bother doing that?
Eh, how'd the Soviet's get relativistic technology is now the problem and better yet is how Crimson Dynamo survived going at those speeds. When did he leave Earth's orbit, why didn't the Soviet's use the technology in the interim, did the CIA manage to get their hands on the technology? Did they get the technology from the same source as the Mandarin, did they develop it on their own, did they use shortcuts, why didn't the USSR announce it to the world that they acquired the technology and if they did, what were some of the repercussions of that event? If they did have the technology for surviving at relativistic speeds, what was the energy shielding like and would it be strong enough to prevent Chernobyl? If they had the means and resources to create the technology, are the Soviets still around and if they are, are they using this technology to gather an insane amount of resources from the asteroid belt and beyond? Did he have Cosmo with him and was this enough to give the dog powers?
There's too many ripple effects from this idea, and people will be asking why weren't they introduced in IM1
Experimental shuttle with an engine that was charged with some macguffin was my answer to how they got the technology. Crimson Dynamo survived going at relativistic speeds by being inside the ship (it's a sci-fi way to Rip Van Winkle him).
The Soviet's didn't use the technology because they believed it to be a failure due to losing contact with him. That's why the CIA doesn't have it because the tech was deemed a failure. They developed it on their own and after human testing decided it was a failure. Literally almost every question following this can be answered with "they thought it was a failure after its first test so they didn't look into it more". Like it's not tight sci-fi but I think we can get some suspension of disbelief on super-tech and I felt this falls under it.
Also asking if he had Cosmo with him is a complete non-sequitur as that's you introducing a problem the premise on it's own doesn't inherently invite. Cosmo can simply not be with him and therefore that's not a question that's asked.
As for ripple effects again one test that was deemed a failure and indefinitely scrapped because of it. There for next to no ripple effects (because you don't hear about an idea that is never considered successful).
Edit: I don't think my idea is perfect by any means but I think that it's better for the overall narrative then recycle something that we ought to just let die by this point. Is the physical Iron Monger suit so important we need to use it again in another movie?
There honestly aren't a lot of options that don't introduce a shitton of questions into the story, mostly revolving around where did the changes to our timeline originate, how big of an impact did it have, and what enemy agents exist as a result of it? If it's Captain America, did HYDRA have a greater technological advantage or did they use other means as a stopgap measure? Why didn't other foreign entities utilize HYDRA's captured knowledge, surely the Soviets would have the greatest amount of stolen knowledge due to the sheer size of their warfront and if they did, how was it that the notoriously volatile Stalin allowed for any organization or person under his control have that amount of power? Did they grow in strength after his death, having squirrelled away the greatest amount of their resources in the interim period and did they have a hand in his death or was it really an accident? How much of Leviathan or Red Room did he have a hand in, did it grow in strength and size after his demise? Going back to HYDRA, was it a bigger or smaller department under Nazi control? Where was their base and oversight? Who in that party had the biggest hand in it, and why did or didn't Hitler have them more or less firmly under his control. Are they a remnant state, terrorist organization, what?
If it was Iron Man, they still have a period of trying to catch up to him technologically...which would be greatly helped by the Leader's existence and/or capturing Stane. I like this option more now.
You're missing the point of the objection. My issue is not that it's unfeasible to make new suits or that we need to stick to hard sci-fi rules or anything like that. My issue is that having Obadiah Stane's Iron Monger suit be a weapon that falls into the wrong hands and is used as the basis for people developing new Iron Man suits is nonsensical from a character perspective (it doesn't make sense for Tony to let this happen) and it completely and totally undermines the theming and triumph of the first Iron Man film if we make Tony's efforts to keep weapons out of the wrong people's hands literally not matter or succeed in any meaningful way.
It's not an issue of it not conforming to reality perfectly and being 100% realistic (trying to do that with a Superhero movie is an exercise in stupidity you have to allow for some contrivances and suspension of disbelief) but rather it being a completely and utterly pointless assassination of the themes and narrative arcs of the story in order to cross promote stuff for the sake of cross promoting stuff. I don't see a reason why using the Iron Monger suit specifically is any better than having someone just make the tech on their own (which isn't great but in my opinion is significantly better because it doesn't shit all over the achievements the characters had in Iron Man 1 for the sake of something as arbitrary as connectivity).
I would much rather have Stane and Leader just be smart enough to build another suit without needing a fragment of the Iron Monger suit then have them use the physical Iron Monger suit as the basis for another villains suit.
Edit: IRL I don't remember people asking questions about "how was Vanko smart enough to make suits for Hammer?", or "How was Killian smart enough to make Extremis?". Like people can be smart and invent stuff independently of somehow having access to Tony Stark's stuff.
Maybe not a major city then, maybe a smaller college town? And if not college, are they postgraduates, working full time?
For Rick, as due to his time in the comics as leader of the HAM radio operator group the 'Teen Brigade', I imagine something related to computer-engineering and software, so hacker or social media extraordinaire? Like, it's almost a coincidence that he's there, but Bruce remembers having this conversation with Jennifer about it or having met him earlier in the movie, so he's using him as the middle man to get information about where he needs to go or hide.
I'm not a fan. It feels contrived to have everything come together like this. If you want to have Rick Jones give Bruce information the brilliant scientist can't get himself then I don't feel like he ought to be connected with Jennifer. It feels like it's trying too hard to throw everything in at once. Let thing develop organically and slowly instead of randomly having Bruce run into the person he needs who has ties to his cousin/half-sister who he also conveniently doesn't remember is in the area and they just happen to help him in exactly the manner he needs before dipping out of the movie.
The idea came about after reading about their shared backstory, with how she was always there to help Bruce after his father, Brian, got a little too abusive with him, and I find it a likelier story that she's more directly tied to him as a reason for why she wasn't able to get her own parents to report Brian to CPS and prevent Rebecca's (Bruce's mom) death that route. It removes points of failure for the audience to point out [no matter how realistic it is in some families], that it shouldn't have happened, ergo Jessica ends up being adapted as his (full/half) sister.
This feels like an unnecessary change. Like I don't see it being a massive point of failure that she couldn't get her parents to report Brian to CPS and prevent the death of Bruce's mom. It's an issue adapted by literally having one line of dialogue where Jennifer says she tried and failed to convince her parents to do so if she's explaining the background to someone else. Or in a conversation with Bruce apologize for not doing enough to help him despite trying to get her parents to do this.
Like I don't see the need to heavily overhaul the relationship between the two when we can fix the same problem with a single line. It feels to me like you're taking a cleaver to fix an issue that needs a scalpel.
So here's a very simple hypothetical skeleton for the movie we've got for Hulk. I'd like to hear people's thoughts on it or if people have problems with it. While it is a movie skeleton written to be one I like, I tried to incorporate other's ideas where I thought it would be possible. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Basics of the plot
The movie opens with General Ross coming to a bomb test site. We meet General Ross, Bruce Banner, Betty Ross and Samuel Sterns. Banner is established as the scientist behind the bomb, Betty is a soldier who is in a relationship with Bruce that General Ross disapproves of and Samuel Sterns is a nobody janitor. Ross demands the bomb be tested ahead of schedule Bruce tries to refuse but eventually gives in despite knowing better.
With the bomb testing going earlier than it should, something is about to go wrong and Samuel Sterns is in the blast zone. Bruce Banner runs out of the safe area to shield Sterns and they both get caught up in the ensuing blast. We hear Hulk roar and gunfire and screaming is heard as the camera pans on the destruction of the gamma bomb but we don't see the Hulk.
There's a time jump and now it's Bruce hiding out in a small town trying to avoid people. He runs into Rick Jones who is nice to him despite Bruce trying to push him away. Bruce eventually goes off to somewhere else when he's confronted by an asshole of some stripe who despite Bruce's best efforts, gets him mad enough to transform into the Hulk. The Hulk rampages through the town but stops when he sees Rick Jones. He detransforms into Banner and then flees into the woods. The Hulk turning into Bruce Banner is caught on video.
We cut to Thaddeus hearing about this. He talks to a now visibly transformed Sterns who says that he can figure out a way to undo the Hulk transformation if General Ross gives him some tools and a lab to work in. General Ross agrees despite Betty's protests.
Rick Jones heads off into the woods to meet with Bruce and give him some food. Bruce attempts to get Rick to leave, but Rick's optimism and friendliness wears through Bruce's shell and he eventually agrees to stick around if Rick can get him a new shirt or something before he leaves. Rick returns to the town to find it's swarmed by the military. Rick is arrested by the military.
People try to interrogate Rick about where Banner/the Hulk is but he doesn't reveal where Banner is due to knowing that Banner is hiding from the military and he doesn't want to sell out his friend. Betty eventually enters Rick's cell to talk to him. She figures out that he knows where Bruce is and that he learned a way to get the Hulk to calm down and detransform. She lets him out if he agrees to take her to Bruce. Rick agrees and they do so. Bruce and Betty have a reunion but Bruce eventually pushes her away because he's afraid he'll hurt her.
General Ross and his forces burst onto the scene and Bruce transforms against his will into the Hulk and effortlessly smashes the military. Ross realizes he underestimated what the Hulk is capable of and orders his men to retreat and regroup. He's the last man to leave. The Hulk runs off deeper into the forest to be alone and Rick decides to chase after him.
General Ross returns to the base and we see Samuel Sterns creating a gamma enhanced rat. Thaddeus Ross is ranting about how he needs something a little more impressive than a big green rat to beat the Hulk. Samuel Sterns promises him that he can give him a way to beat the Hulk if he's just given enough time. Ross agrees to this and sends him off to some secret military base/production facility with a suitably ominous name. Betty then comes in and she has a fight with her father where her father argues that her feelings about Banner blind her to how dangerous he is and Betty responds by mentioning that Ross' feelings about Banner blind him to the fact he's not a threat.
Bruce is back and hiding alone in a cave. Rick comes across him and tries to cheer him up but Bruce yells about how he's a monster who destroys everything he touches. Bruce persists and then Rick points out that the Hulk never hurt him once despite having multiple chances to do so. Bruce remains stubbornly convinced that he is a monster but agrees to wait as he does need a new shirt that Rick can get him but he refuses to stay any longer than that so he doesn't wreck Rick's life despite Rick insisting that this has been a great adventure for him.
Back with Ross and Sterns, Sterns claims to Ross that he can cure Bruce if he is captured. Ross says that none of that helps him catch the Hulk and he insults Sterns angering him but Sterns says he needs more time. Ross angrily leaves and says he'll give Sterns 24 hours to give him something workable or he's going in a cell next to the Hulk. Ross leaves and Sterns mutters to himself that Ross has 12 hours before the earth's new leader takes charge. He then unleashes a swarm of Gamma-enhanced animals (mostly the lab rats he was given) and uses them to murder the people at the facility and take control himself.
Ross finds Bruce with his forces and attempts to take him down. This time Ross has learned and while he's unable to defeat the Hulk he is able to work around him a lot better. Eventually Rick learns from Betty (who tagged along with her father) that there is a cure for being the Hulk. Rick manages to get the Hulk to stop rampaging and destransform and Bruce willingly lets himself be captured and restrained.
Ross insults and blusters at the Hulk but Banner keeps his cool. They arrive at the base where Stern's greets them over the intercom. Ross then takes Bruce a chamber where Sterns remotely performs a procedure that supposedly would prevent Bruce from being the Hulk. The procedure is done. Sterns then locks Bruce Betty and General Ross in the room and mockingly informs them it'll only be temporary anyways. Ross starts cursing at Stern's betrayal and Stern's gloats about how he's going to become the Leader of a brave new world were everyone is a gamma mutant. They all thought they were better than him well now he's the one in control.
Ross eventually snaps in the confinement and blames Bruce for the whole mess. He decides the he'll at least kill the man who set everything in motion with the gamma bomb if he can't stop Sterns from recreating it on a massive scale. Betty is trying to get him to stop but Thaddeus refuses.
Bruce can't fight back well (due to being restrained) but eventually he transformed into the Hulk and knocks General away. The Leader declares that this is impossible and that he could rid of the Hulk. The Hulk plans to finish off General Ross but Betty stops him and unlike Ross, the Hulk listens to Betty and stops fighting. The Hulk then smashes through the wall freeing the three of them. Betty stays behind to make sure her father remains alright while Hulk stops the Leader.
The Leader gives a speech about how the Hulk should be agreeing with him in a world where everyone is like them the Hulk doesn't have to run away and be hunted out of fear by small-minded men like Thaddeus Ross. The Hulk responds by stating something to do with how he's going to smash things. The Leader sighs and states that it's unfortunate that they couldn't work together but that the Hulk is nothing but a simpleminded brute.
The Leader then starts using various defenses and parts of the facilities to attack the Hulk alongside his gamma mutated animals. The Hulk powers through everything and the Leader keeps innovating and coming up with clever new ways to use the automated systems to try and stop the Hulk but he ultimately fails. The Hulk smashes through the control area where the Leader is hiding in bends a piece of metal around him so that he's pinned in place. The Hulk spots the gamma bomb the Leader built but can't disarm it. The Leader taunts the Hulk saying he's not smart enough to stop the bomb. The Hulk responds by saying Banner is and forcibly transforms back into Bruce Banner who then disarms the bomb. The Leader says that the world would have been beautiful if they were all gamma mutants, Banner responds that he and the Leader are just ugly monsters. He then leaves and says goodbye to Betty saying that he's going to look into a cure but that he's still not safe to be around.
The movie cuts one last time to a small diner where Rick Jones is waiting to meet someone Bruce Banner walks in and they talk. Bruce says that he looked into Sterns' cure and he theorized that it didn't work because Bruce was exposed to much more gamma radiation than the Leader or the gamma animals were. Rick mentions that now Bruce has to live with the big guy. Bruce states he hasn't given up trying to find a way to be normal and to help people but that being the Hulk isn't the worst thing in the world. The movie ends around here.
A mid-credits scene could be Phil Coulson of SHIELD finding where a Jennifer Walters lives and knocking on her door. The door opens (but we don't see Jennifer so we have freedom to cast whatever actress we want) and we hear Phil ask what the person can tell him about her cousin Bruce Banner.
The final post-credits scene sets up a new movie.
Some Thoughts
I think this works decently well. I like the fights well enough and I think it's fairly concise all things considered. Every element involved is introduced before the end. The cure not working on Bruce I feel is something that is decently enough explained in the movie and it does kind of run on emotional logic a bit.
I felt I needed to weaken Ross' character in order to make the Leader more impressive but I think the main villain shuffle is fairly well handled and though the climax is tricky, we've seen a lot of the set pieces before and it's an inventive fight. Plus with the gamma animals killing the people in the base ahead of time through a clever plan of Sterns' we get to see our villain be a threat in a similar sort of "fight" in order to build tension. I also think one thing I handled well is I kept Sterns' skillset contained. He's smart but I don't have him building giant robots or physics breaking deathrays or anything like that. He just has gamma based technology and he takes control of an already existing control system
I wish I could do gammaworld and Ross better but I think I did them well enough and that this is a solid if not perfect script.
Things this movie sets up
Who the Hulk is and how his powers work as well as the dynamic between him and Banner
Who is General Ross and what is his deal
Who is Betty Ross and what is her relationships with others/basic skills set as a soldier of some stripe
Who is Rick Jones and why is he important to Hulk stories going forward from here
The Hulk being capable of growing and evolving
Potential more mystical stuff regarding the Hulk (since Bruce is only theorizing about why Sterns' cure didn't work we can reveal that he was wrong in another movie and add in a mystical element if we want to)
Jennifer Walters is introduced very loosely
How did SHIELD find out about Bruce's past
It lets us make more gamma powered individuals if we want to since the powerset was shown to be semi replicable.
Final words
I'd appreciate any thoughts or feedback I could get on this. I did a lot to try and improve it and take in people's ideas and make it a movie pitch we could more generally agree on as the basis for the first Hulk movie.
Ross insults and blusters at the Hulk but Banner keeps his cool. They arrive at the base where Stern's greets them over the intercom. Ross then takes Bruce a chamber where Sterns remotely performs a procedure that supposedly would prevent Bruce from being the Hulk. The procedure is done. Sterns then locks Bruce Betty and General Ross in the room and mockingly informs them it'll only be temporary anyways. Ross starts cursing at Stern's betrayal and Stern's gloats about how he's going to become the Leader of a brave new world were everyone is a gamma mutant. They all thought they were better than him well now he's the one in control.
Ross eventually snaps in the confinement and blames Bruce for the whole mess. He decides the he'll at least kill the man who set everything in motion with the gamma bomb if he can't stop Sterns from recreating it on a massive scale. Betty is trying to get him to stop but Thaddeus refuses.
Bruce can't fight back well (due to being restrained) but eventually he transformed into the Hulk and knocks General away. The Leader declares that this is impossible and that he could rid of the Hulk. The Hulk plans to finish off General Ross but Betty stops him and unlike Ross, the Hulk listens to Betty and stops fighting. The Hulk then smashes through the wall freeing the three of them. Betty stays behind to make sure her father remains alright while Hulk stops the Leader.
The Leader gives a speech about how the Hulk should be agreeing with him in a world where everyone is like them the Hulk doesn't have to run away and be hunted out of fear by small-minded men like Thaddeus Ross. The Hulk responds by stating something to do with how he's going to smash things. The Leader sighs and states that it's unfortunate that they couldn't work together but that the Hulk is nothing but a simpleminded brute.
I don't get why Sterns attempted to cure the Hulk if he's later trying to convince the Hulk to join him.
I think this part would be better if Sterns lied about the attempt to cure the Hulk after all, injected Bruce with something that will force a transformation despite his willpower (and maybe something he thinks that will allow him to control the Hulk or make it permanent or something, or to induce a chemically enforced rage state, etc.), locking Ross and Betty in the room with the Hulk to guarantee their deaths.
However Betty is able to calm him down despite the additional difficulty, and the movie continues from there.
I feel like this change makes the Leader come off as more intelligent and crafty especially planning wise, and Ross come off just ever so slightly better by removing the scene where he attempts to kill what he thinks is a cured Bruce "just cuz".
I don't get why Sterns attempted to cure the Hulk if he's later trying to convince the Hulk to join him.
I think this part would be better if Sterns lied about the attempt to cure the Hulk after all, injected Bruce with something that will force a transformation despite his willpower (and maybe something he thinks that will allow him to control the Hulk or make it permanent or something, or to induce a chemically enforced rage state, etc.), locking Ross and Betty in the room with the Hulk to guarantee their deaths.
However Betty is able to calm him down despite the additional difficulty, and the movie continues from there.
I feel like this change makes the Leader come off as more intelligent and crafty especially planning wise, and Ross come off just ever so slightly better by removing the scene where he attempts to kill what he thinks is a cured Bruce "just cuz".
Fair that's a solid improvement and I think if we do the movie we ought to go with your adjustment.
I think I wanted to give Ross a moment of "he's the real monster" as well as have a cure not work to leave an easy backdoor for mystical stuff and it led to a weaker moment that hurt the script overall.
Just to make sure there's no misunderstanding what happens is in the altered version is something along these lines:
The movie is the same until General Ross brings Banner and gives him over to Sterns to remotely cure. Instead of providing him with a cure Banner starts forcibly transforming into the Hulk. Ross curses Sterns for lying and betraying him and Sterns gloats that he just did as promised and "cured" the Hulk of Bruce Banner. He then locks a berserk Hulk in with them and gloats that soon everybody will be perfected like the Hulk and he's going to be the Leader of the glorious new world. Hulk slaps Ross out of the way but Betty gets in the way and shields her downed father and that gives the Hulk enough self-control to stop. He instead smashes the wall and proceeds to head to stop the Leader.
The movie then more or less continues as normal but the one minor change is that the Leader utters that it's impossible that the Hulk could turn back to Bruce Banner after he sees it happen and Banner states he thought so too but he's not going to be complaining about being wrong here. He then disarms the bomb and things continue as normal.
The scene at the end with Rick is altered where instead of talking about a cure Bruce talks about how he still hasn't figured out why the Hulk gave up control and turned back into him when confronting the Leader and Rick emphasizes that maybe the Hulk isn't so bad. Bruce unhappily concedes that Hulk isn't a total monster but still states that he's going to be on his own for a bit while trying to cure/get used to the Hulk but he says that he considers Rick a real friend of his.
That's more or less what the proposed change is right? Are there any further tweaks to make?
I think I wanted to give Ross a moment of "he's the real monster" as well as have a cure not work to leave an easy backdoor for mystical stuff and it led to a weaker moment that hurt the script overall.
Yeah that seems good. I don't think we need to give Ross the moment of him being the real monster (yet?) especially if we want to use him in the long run, especially for stuff like the Thunderbolts and such. He's an emotional patriot that tries to do the right thing, but sometimes does the wrong thing for what he thinks are the right reasons, and has a hang-up regarding the Hulk. I think that's a fine character and it shows that he can be a great antagonist without needing to be evil, a villain, or a monster.
Edit: But also have moments where he can be doing the right thing, (I'm thinking if we end up doing Thunderbolts)
This feels like a reach. Like you're working backwards from a conclusion to desperately make things fit. I don't think this is a good enough reason. Even if do concede to Tony keeping it out of sentimental reasons, him going and using the thing he preserved as the base of a new armor, when he could just build a new armor using that inspiration that's entirely separate from the object he's sentimental, feels really painfully forced and contrived.
He's not using the armor as a base? Where'd you get- no, the idea was for him to study the armor, using it as a framework to build his own, separate version.
I mean if we already have people taking tiny scraps of Obadiah's armor and making functional suits that can compete with Stark tech, what impact does stealing from Stark directly have after that? Seriously it's just doing the same thing but again. I'm not saying the solutions I came up with were perfect but rather they're better than using the actual physical probably mostly if not entirely destroyed Iron Monger suit as the basis of new armor.
I also don't get what the advantage of introducing the tesseract earlier is so why would we even bother doing that?
Experimental shuttle with an engine that was charged with some macguffin was my answer to how they got the technology. Crimson Dynamo survived going at relativistic speeds by being inside the ship (it's a sci-fi way to Rip Van Winkle him).
And you don't see how those two ideas would work out, how they're compatible?
Beyond that, I feel that at this point in our culture the idea that "we found alien artifact that let's us do cool shit so we don't have to spend centuries researching this" is just lazy writing at this point. Not to mention, the Soviets were a lot further than the US in actually producing the rocketry involved, there's no reason they need to cut corners when they could just as easily utilized something akin to the opening scene of Farscape, by utilizing Earth's gravitational pull to slingshot around the planet to get around faster and that utilizing a combination of cyrogenics and shody radio equipment would work just as well, if not better than 'we figured out FTL, and we haven't turned it into weaponry'.
The Soviet's didn't use the technology because they believed it to be a failure due to losing contact with him. That's why the CIA doesn't have it because the tech was deemed a failure. They developed it on their own and after human testing decided it was a failure. Literally almost every question following this can be answered with "they thought it was a failure after its first test so they didn't look into it more". Like it's not tight sci-fi but I think we can get some suspension of disbelief on super-tech and I felt this falls under it.
A) That does not excuse the Soviets from not figuring out a way to weaponize their knowledge for use in a MAD event, B) why would the CIA know it's a failure, all they'd have a grasp on is the fact the Soviets were using it and the next day all knowledge of it gets disappeared and you're telling me the paranoid wouldn't try to figure it out?, C) how is this not exactly what you accused me of? That you're working backwards from the conclusion?
Also asking if he had Cosmo with him is a complete non-sequitur as that's you introducing a problem the premise on it's own doesn't inherently invite. Cosmo can simply not be with him and therefore that's not a question that's asked.
Seeing as there's prior president with Laika, I see no reason they wouldn't have attempted their FTL experiment by animal testing first before they sent up a manned mission, especially on a prototype propulsion method they have no idea works on humans or not, or what the side effects would be, so asking about Cosmo is a valid question.
And if they had done that testing, why would they assume it wasn't already a failure and not send the Crimson Dynamo up into space?
As for ripple effects again one test that was deemed a failure and indefinitely scrapped because of it. There for next to no ripple effects (because you don't hear about an idea that is never considered successful).
About rocketry and the Space Race at large? Where the US would have absolutely used the knowledge the CIA [you've stated] would have of the failure and broadcasted it to all the world to hear of the USSR's failure?
You're missing the point of the objection. My issue is not that it's unfeasible to make new suits or that we need to stick to hard sci-fi rules or anything like that. My issue is that having Obadiah Stane's Iron Monger suit be a weapon that falls into the wrong hands and is used as the basis for people developing new Iron Man suits is nonsensical from a character perspective (it doesn't make sense for Tony to let this happen) and it completely and totally undermines the theming and triumph of the first Iron Man film if we make Tony's efforts to keep weapons out of the wrong people's hands literally not matter or succeed in any meaningful way.
It doesn't make sense for Tony to let it happen, doesn't mean that by his own action or by others it couldn't. There's any number of storylines where his judgment has been compromised, from Demon In A Bottle to the original Armor Wars to all those times he lost control over his company. But ultimately it was a rough idea for if we wanted to jumpstart the various other armor projects with minimal effort from the other groups without having to grab at genius-level intellects from other properties.
It's not an issue of it not conforming to reality perfectly and being 100% realistic (trying to do that with a Superhero movie is an exercise in stupidity you have to allow for some contrivances and suspension of disbelief) but rather it being a completely and utterly pointless assassination of the themes and narrative arcs of the story in order to cross promote stuff for the sake of cross promoting stuff. I don't see a reason why using the Iron Monger suit specifically is any better than having someone just make the tech on their own (which isn't great but in my opinion is significantly better because it doesn't shit all over the achievements the characters had in Iron Man 1 for the sake of something as arbitrary as connectivity).
I'm not trying to make it realistic, I want the worldbuilding to remain consistent across the next few movies since it will be the groundwork for the rest of the series to work off of. The point I was making about the point of convergence is about how far back we need to start implementing reasonable and consistent changes to the world at large, I was asking those questions because they need to be asked, because a lot of those changes need to be properly set up first, and introduced slowly into the franchise.
It prevents people from nitpicking basically. 'Where was Wakanda in WWII, shouldn't the Dora Milage have shown up for the vibranium in Cap's shield' or 'What was Captain Marvel doing while New York was being invaded, shouldn't have Nick Fury paged her as soon as shit started happening? And why didn't the Wizards help?' or 'Where were the Eternals when Thanos was running amok'.
I would much rather have Stane and Leader just be smart enough to build another suit without needing a fragment of the Iron Monger suit then have them use the physical Iron Monger suit as the basis for another villains suit.
Edit: IRL I don't remember people asking questions about "how was Vanko smart enough to make suits for Hammer?", or "How was Killian smart enough to make Extremis?". Like people can be smart and invent stuff independently of somehow having access to Tony Stark's stuff.
I agree that Stane would have the knowhow, since he already did it once, that the Leader would more than likely puzzle it out, and that other people could probably figure out the principles behind the armor, what I was saying is that if we want to do it in the next few years, there needs to be a shitton of resources and people being moved around for the suits to be built up in a relatively quick timeframe. Reverse-engineering just cuts a lot of that time down, but isn't ultimately necessary.
I'm not a fan. It feels contrived to have everything come together like this. If you want to have Rick Jones give Bruce information the brilliant scientist can't get himself then I don't feel like he ought to be connected with Jennifer. It feels like it's trying too hard to throw everything in at once. Let thing develop organically and slowly instead of randomly having Bruce run into the person he needs who has ties to his cousin/half-sister who he also conveniently doesn't remember is in the area and they just happen to help him in exactly the manner he needs before dipping out of the movie.
While I have no doubt that Bruce Banner would be intelligent to figure it out, when he's stressed the fuck out and has very limited control over whether or not he Hulks out since all of this is brand effing new to him [on top of him being pursued everywhere], why wouldn't he turn to a specialist in a field he hasn't really focused in (assuming we're going the many flavors of Physics PhDs he has in the comics and the MCU) in a time of need? I mean, he doesn't even need to be in the same room with Rick for all the computer hackery to happen, and while there are probably better ways for him to be introduced to Bruce, having Jennifer and Rick in close proximity to each other just kind of makes sense.
This feels like an unnecessary change. Like I don't see it being a massive point of failure that she couldn't get her parents to report Brian to CPS and prevent the death of Bruce's mom. It's an issue adapted by literally having one line of dialogue where Jennifer says she tried and failed to convince her parents to do so if she's explaining the background to someone else. Or in a conversation with Bruce apologize for not doing enough to help him despite trying to get her parents to do this.
Like I don't see the need to heavily overhaul the relationship between the two when we can fix the same problem with a single line. It feels to me like you're taking a cleaver to fix an issue that needs a scalpel.
It's not really an overhaul, it's like three additional characters that were never going to be relevant to the plot being adapted out.
- Uncle Morris: Jennifer's dad, a former Sheriff, who should have been the one to step in long before Bruce's mom got killed, and in whose some 30 odd appearances has been mostly relegated to wandering in and out of Jennifer's life with various love interests that kind of only barely interact with her own development and narrative as a hero. He mostly feels tacked on tbh.
- Aunt Elaine: Jennifer's mom, hasn't really made an impact since her debut, beyond her getting killed off by a random drunk driver and a 'journey unto Hades' storyline.
- Aunt Susan: Hasn't been too relevant since the '80s, made less than a handful of appearances.
Better change it to a nobody enlistedmen, preferably E1 Private or E2 PFC, since the US Military generally does not keep janitors anywhere close to classified sites like this. Changes the narrative from 'he was just a nobody' to 'he was a nobody with no prospects, joined up for some' and from that have a lot of interesting narrative elements come into play.
How big of a time jump, because even with his increased intellect it still took a shit load of time for him to absorb all the knowledge from books and even for his symptoms to start showing through, at least in the comics. Even then, it would probably take some time for Ross to get the resources and clearances for Sterns to create the necessary material to track Bruce via gamma signature, not to mention building up a relationship of trust (of whatever source).
He's not using the armor as a base? Where'd you get- no, the idea was for him to study the armor, using it as a framework to build his own, separate version.
I feel that regardless of whose hands Stane's armor is nominally in control of, there's going to be enough fragmentary pieces of it from their battle that some were missed in Tony's scavenging; to be absolutely fair, most of those fragments are absolutely useless except as paperweights or for metallurgical study. But fair, the US Government has little to no material of it in their hands, the majority of it being in Tony's hands...originally with no purpose other than just a memory of what was and basically an ugly art installation, before Tony uses the framework for the armor for another project, say Hulkbuster?
In that case, how do Crimson Dynamo or Titanium Man get their headstart on their armorsets? What's the idea for the next one, 'cause I'm kinda digging a take on Demon In A Bottle + Armor Wars, though I do realize it might be a little bit of a retread between it and the OTL versions.
If what you're talking about having the villains develop their tech using Stane's people/Stane himself and merely using the blueprints/general specifications as a base then I have no problems with that and even listed it as a potential solution to the problem I had with the above statement. Admittedly I said that it makes sense to have them take Stane out of prison and use his knowhow but that's cause I'm trying to cut down on loose elements in a potential script (we don't have to introduce a new character to show where the knowledge on the suit came from).
That being said it was really, really unclear that you were talking about what you seem to be talking about now as at some point you shifted from the quoted statement above which is talking about the physical pieces of Stane's armor.
This is cut off. Also telling me that it's "realistic" isn't very convincing. We're writing stories about character's who are a super genius who invented a revolutionary armor in a cave with a box of scraps, a green rage monster powered by radiation, a Norse god who is also a magic space alien, a super-soldier who was perfectly preserved by falling into the Arctic and more. The inherent premise is unrealistic and thus we do not have to adhere one to one to reality.
Realistic does not mean better and it can often times mean worse, especially when it interferes with narrative elements. Unless you are arguing that this fundamentally is something that will break the audience's suspension of disbelief than the argument of "it's more realistic" is basically not worth all that much inherently.
A) That does not excuse the Soviets from not figuring out a way to weaponize their knowledge for use in a MAD event, B) why would the CIA know it's a failure, all they'd have a grasp on is the fact the Soviets were using it and the next day all knowledge of it gets disappeared and you're telling me the paranoid wouldn't try to figure it out?, C) how is this not exactly what you accused me of? That you're working backwards from the conclusion?
A) it wasn't a question I thought relevant because I did not think the average movie going audience would be intensely concerned with how the soviet's could potentially weaponize a technology we in story point out as a failure
B)The CIA do try to figure it out. That's how they learn that it was deemed a failure
C) This is not what I was criticizing you of because I'm happy with not having this be the specific way the Crimson Dynamo gets his armor. This was an example of something I thought could work better and didn't compromise the previous movie. As stated earlier I was arguing under the assumption that you were still talking about the physical Iron Monger suit being used when I talked about this idea as it was originally. My statement about it feeling like you were working backwards to reach a conclusion was about having Tony use the Iron Monger suit as the physical basis of the Hulkbuster. I did not have an issue with him looking at it and using it as inspiration to build a new separate and distinct armor (I considered that better if not exactly great since it still feels like it's shoehorned but it's not actively bad) and I take even less issue with it just being the schematics. My criticisms no longer apply if what you are arguing for now is not what you were arguing for initially but if you don't make it clear to me that you are no longer talking about the physical pieces of the Iron Monger suit then I won't be able to understand that you've shifted over to a new idea instead of trying to just make your old one fit.
Seeing as there's prior president with Laika, I see no reason they wouldn't have attempted their FTL experiment by animal testing first before they sent up a manned mission, especially on a prototype propulsion method they have no idea works on humans or not, or what the side effects would be, so asking about Cosmo is a valid question.
And if they had done that testing, why would they assume it wasn't already a failure and not send the Crimson Dynamo up into space?
I was operating under the assumption that the average movie goer does not in fact understand the history of Russian space exploration and thus would be able to ask these questions.
I won't disagree that asking these questions may or may not be valid (I still am willing to argue that Cosmo being aboard the same ship as the Crimson Dynamo is a separate question unrelated to everything else as it's related to the existence of a character who doesn't need to be there) but I simply do not think they are reasonable.
Like asking how does Iron Man properly propel himself with his tech is a valid question or how did Howard Stark's inventions affect the development of the United States post-war economy are valid questions but they're not reasonable because they're about topics we can fairly safely assume people aren't too interested/invested in.
There is of course a sliding scale to this stuff but I think you're going too nitpicky on the details and asking unreasonable, if still technically valid questions.
That being said I don't think there are no problems with the origin I came up with I just think it by and large works.
About rocketry and the Space Race at large? Where the US would have absolutely used the knowledge the CIA [you've stated] would have of the failure and broadcasted it to all the world to hear of the USSR's failure?
Again I assumed that it was a good enough answer that a 2010 era movie goer would be able to suspend their disbelief enough that they wouldn't have to ask questions about how an event in the marvel movie affected the alternate universe's space race. I think it's reasonable to expect some level of suspension of disbelief in movies and when the movies core premise relies on some suspension of disbelief you can get away with more.
It doesn't make sense for Tony to let it happen, doesn't mean that by his own action or by others it couldn't. There's any number of storylines where his judgment has been compromised, from Demon In A Bottle to the original Armor Wars to all those times he lost control over his company. But ultimately it was a rough idea for if we wanted to jumpstart the various other armor projects with minimal effort from the other groups without having to grab at genius-level intellects from other properties.
Again I assumed you were talking about the physical pieces of the Iron Monger armor to make another suit. If this is not the case than the critique is not relevant. I'll bold exactly what I vehemently disagree with, the physical parts of the Iron Monger Suit should not be used as the basis for how people figure out to make a suit on Iron Man's level. If that isn't occurring then I'm probably not as opposed to it.
I'm not trying to make it realistic, I want the worldbuilding to remain consistent across the next few movies since it will be the groundwork for the rest of the series to work off of. The point I was making about the point of convergence is about how far back we need to start implementing reasonable and consistent changes to the world at large, I was asking those questions because they need to be asked, because a lot of those changes need to be properly set up first, and introduced slowly into the franchise.
It prevents people from nitpicking basically. 'Where was Wakanda in WWII, shouldn't the Dora Milage have shown up for the vibranium in Cap's shield' or 'What was Captain Marvel doing while New York was being invaded, shouldn't have Nick Fury paged her as soon as shit started happening? And why didn't the Wizards help?' or 'Where were the Eternals when Thanos was running amok'.
You will get nitpicks no matter what you do. What you're trying to do is futile and functionally impossible. I agree that there is some degree of consistency needed but I will argue that trying to solve all nitpicks across the board is impossible and pointless.
Every nitpick you listed below from the OTL movies isn't a major flaw in the movie. It didn't affect the series bottom line, it didn't affect ratings, it didn't really affect reviews by actual movie reviewers and not anonymous people on the internet and it doesn't make them less enjoyable to watch. The fact that assholes on the internet can go "well why didn't this happen?" doesn't make it worse. People can nitpick the shit out of Lord of the Rings and J.R.R. Tolkein is likely to have written a better more solid story and world than either of us can come up with.
I think what you're trying to do comes from a good place but is ultimately misguided and isn't actually going to make the movies better stories in any appreciable way.
Edit: We are in no way required to make our story consistent with reality. We only need to be consistent with the rules we ourselves set in place and the audience accepts as not violating their suspension of disbelief. So long as we provide sufficient justification for stuff that the audience buys it, we don't have to craft a foolproof unbreakable world that confirms to what would've happened if we introduced the fantastical element in a fully realistic and explored way that holds up to scrutiny when a person with a lot of knowledge on the subject chooses to go and find problems.
I agree that Stane would have the knowhow, since he already did it once, that the Leader would more than likely puzzle it out, and that other people could probably figure out the principles behind the armor, what I was saying is that if we want to do it in the next few years, there needs to be a shitton of resources and people being moved around for the suits to be built up in a relatively quick timeframe. Reverse-engineering just cuts a lot of that time down, but isn't ultimately necessary.
Again my question comes back to the story. If it's not necessary for the story to function what does adding it to the story give us that makes it worthwhile. Any addition we make to a movie fundamentally cuts off options and is time we could spend on something else (this is true of every aspect). This means if something is included and it's not necessary there needs to be a reason why it was included even if not always a particularly deep or meaningful one provided the addition isn't harmful.
While I have no doubt that Bruce Banner would be intelligent to figure it out, when he's stressed the fuck out and has very limited control over whether or not he Hulks out since all of this is brand effing new to him [on top of him being pursued everywhere], why wouldn't he turn to a specialist in a field he hasn't really focused in (assuming we're going the many flavors of Physics PhDs he has in the comics and the MCU) in a time of need? I mean, he doesn't even need to be in the same room with Rick for all the computer hackery to happen, and while there are probably better ways for him to be introduced to Bruce, having Jennifer and Rick in close proximity to each other just kind of makes sense.
Alright. Let's ignore the fact that you are arguing that Rick Jones, a character you described as "attending a college" and historically has very little to do with hacking or computers (he ran a radio show in the comics once. He was also Bucky for a bit but I don't think that makes him suddenly qualified to fight on the level of Captain America), as a specialist. I can concede that we can make Rick Jones a very different character and that while it's weird that Bruce in the middle of the movie remembers a family friend whom we've never seen on screen before and audiences likely haven't even heard of before it can be done. You've admitted that there are probably better ways to introduce them together and I agree with that and I don't want to fight unnecessary battles.
Why does having Jennifer and Rick in close proximity to each other "just kind of make sense". It doesn't particularly make sense to me, so please explain it to me so I can understand it. What is the relevant connection that means these characters need to appear together when only one of them (Rick) even has a potential role in the story you've discussed?
I'm not convinced having Rick Jones and Jennifer show up together at the same time is a particularly well thought out or even good decision beyond just going in for the cool factor (it's neat. I'll give it that much. As a comic fan it would be cool to see but that doesn't make it good or worthwhile on its own. A less cool option that leads to a better story is better).
It's not really an overhaul, it's like three additional characters that were never going to be relevant to the plot being adapted out.
- Uncle Morris: Jennifer's dad, a former Sheriff, who should have been the one to step in long before Bruce's mom got killed, and in whose some 30 odd appearances has been mostly relegated to wandering in and out of Jennifer's life with various love interests that kind of only barely interact with her own development and narrative as a hero. He mostly feels tacked on tbh.
- Aunt Elaine: Jennifer's mom, hasn't really made an impact since her debut, beyond her getting killed off by a random drunk driver and a 'journey unto Hades' storyline.
- Aunt Susan: Hasn't been too relevant since the '80s, made less than a handful of appearances.
Overhaul might be too strong a word to have used. Maybe the question would be easier to understand if I phrased is as "why are we making this alteration here?". Keeping Jennifer as Bruce's cousin makes it a more accurate adaptation and would please fans who want us to stay as accurate as possible. What does changing that detail that doesn't prevent a fully functional story, and costs very little effort to keep, give us? What makes changing the relationship between Bruce and Jennifer from cousins to half siblings worth deviating from the source material? It can't just be the potential "plothole" you mentioned because that can be fixed with a single line of dialogue.
Make an argument for why this alteration makes a better story or a more interesting story or in some way benefits us to go through with as opposed to pointing out how it wouldn't be problematic to include. It wouldn't be problematic to change the nationality of Steve Roger's father from Irish to French and we'd have to adapt very little if anything out but why would we make that change when keeping it benefits us more by pleasing long term fans who are interested in adaption accuracy?
Better change it to a nobody enlistedmen, preferably E1 Private or E2 PFC, since the US Military generally does not keep janitors anywhere close to classified sites like this. Changes the narrative from 'he was just a nobody' to 'he was a nobody with no prospects, joined up for some' and from that have a lot of interesting narrative elements come into play.
That's a change I take no issue with and would happily include in the final product. It adds to the story and while I was trying to pay homage to the character's origin by making him a janitor like in the comics, making him a nobody enlisted man adds to the story by giving additional context to why Ross trusts and works with him, while costing us very little and is more realistic (I don't particularly think realism is a key factor but it's a nice bonus).
How big of a time jump, because even with his increased intellect it still took a shit load of time for him to absorb all the knowledge from books and even for his symptoms to start showing through, at least in the comics. Even then, it would probably take some time for Ross to get the resources and clearances for Sterns to create the necessary material to track Bruce via gamma signature, not to mention building up a relationship of trust (of whatever source).
I figured I'd stick to an indeterminate amount of time but in my head it was somewhere between 3-6 months. I didn't have an exact number because I didn't think the exact amount of time was particularly relevant to the delivery of the narrative. Does it really make the story worse in any meaningful day if the time skip is 4 months, 6 months or a year? If you've got a specific time frame you like I probably won't have any issue including the exact number unless it's like over 5 years or something and even then my biggest worry is wasting effects/makeup budget on making it look like characters have aged in order to keep the audience satisfied and accepting of the passage of time as opposed to a story issue. I don't think the exact length of the time skip is something that the narrative needs to worry about because it's functionally the same story unless you start making it a many year time skip.
Relativistic Crimson Dynamo is a bit of nonsense. Perhaps it could be presented as an unsuccessful experiment, which by its nature should not have been done at all, and that in the end it was considered unsuccessful and led the USSR to lose the pilot and the suit, after which this line of research was closed.
However, I would honestly think of something else. I would also note that no one prevents the US government from getting the fragments of armor through the SHIELD-HYDRA agents and their sweeping of the territory. It is likely that in the scene of Nick Fury and Stark there will already be a concept that this is a SHIELD, and not Stark, engaged in "cleaning" the territory.
In the Hulk question, I like the concept of the Harpy as an opponent simply because it forms a good dichotomy with She-Hulk, as a confrontation of reason and rage, as well as the desire/unwillingness to be a gamma fighter. It could also be expanded, what about the idea that Betty Ross gives blood to Jennifer Walters due to acquaintance and ignorance that she is not cured enough from gamma radiation. But these are my thoughts on this question, I just like the concept of She-Hulk who likes to be like that. I think here I am more interested in the concept of She-Hulk as Banner's sister because of the more obvious dichotomy. She wants to be a gamma monster, and Hulk and Banner are enemies. However, as for me, it is better to transmit it through a Harpy by virtue of the same sex and not to violate kinship relations.
Speaking of the concept with the Leader, it would seem interesting to me to show how the Hulk almost loses the fight against monsters and traps until he realizes that being a monster is not enough. We see the beginning of the smart Hulk, when he can start pretending and doing things with a little more planning to trick the traps of the Leader against the banal monster. As a result, there will already be a refusal of the Hulk from what he cannot cope with so that Benner can do it.
I would also like to better show Ross's aggressiveness and militarism in a scene with a subordinate who logically asks if the Hulk can not be a monster? To which he says calculations of exercises and tests that say the time for which the Hulk can destroy most of a large city before he is restrained in conditions of rugged urban terrain and a large number of civilians. It doesn't matter whether the Hulk is actually a monster or not, the very fact of such a significant threat of the death of thousands of people at any moment of aggression is enough to hunt him.
That being said it was really, really unclear that you were talking about what you seem to be talking about now as at some point you shifted from the quoted statement above which is talking about the physical pieces of Stane's armor.
I was talking about the physical armor the whole time, when I said Tony would use it as inspiration to make his own framework I was talking about from a design standpoint, not from a physical standpoint, as was the case the whole way through because I'd hope he'd use a damaged suit.
This is cut off. Also telling me that it's "realistic" isn't very convincing. We're writing stories about character's who are a super genius who invented a revolutionary armor in a cave with a box of scraps, a green rage monster powered by radiation, a Norse god who is also a magic space alien, a super-soldier who was perfectly preserved by falling into the Arctic and more. The inherent premise is unrealistic and thus we do not have to adhere one to one to reality.
Realistic does not mean better and it can often times mean worse, especially when it interferes with narrative elements. Unless you are arguing that this fundamentally is something that will break the audience's suspension of disbelief than the argument of "it's more realistic" is basically not worth all that much inherently.
How is asking "What are some immediate changes to introducing [THING] to the setting and the wider ramifications of [EVENT]?" or "If this [MACGUFFIN] is 50%+ technobable to a majority audience who've never read into the comics or other settings material, why not use something a little closer to home as inspiration?" even coming close to breaking the suspension of disbelief? How many people even remember macguffin plots anyhow, compared to people who are constantly talking about how 'realistic' certain plot elements are? I mean, there's an entire subculture of physics professors talking about the possibility of ion drives, or how Iron Man's ARC reactor function, or the metallurgy involved in the creation of Mjolnir, or those who still argue and despise certain Star Trek elements because it's straight up space magic.
I'm arguing that it's not that hard to change the FTL Rip Van Winkle element to it because on a certain level it will break the setting (especially this early on in our worldbuilding without having built up to it), that having the Soviets trying to set up a colony ship for a potential colony and things did not go to plan so it naturally fell by the wayside can be a compelling narrative. We can even use it make further callbacks to it that can be built upon in other movies, like having it be one of the reasons there are humans in the wider galaxy, that enemy agents such as Richard Rider, Peter Quill or John Jameson [he can be nominally unnamed until the Sony agreement] were there to interfere and were part of the reason Crimson Dynamo is so confused after waking up and why America and the USSR are very quiet about the results of the launch.
A) it wasn't a question I thought relevant because I did not think the average movie going audience would be intensely concerned with how the soviet's could potentially weaponize a technology we in story point out as a failure
It should be considered, if not for the immediate story than as a potential plot point later down the line, and there's not many ways we could use it except as a deterrent for alien incursions...if they still had the McGuffin.
My criticisms no longer apply if what you are arguing for now is not what you were arguing for initially but if you don't make it clear to me that you are no longer talking about the physical pieces of the Iron Monger suit then I won't be able to understand that you've shifted over to a new idea instead of trying to just make your old one fit.
I was operating under the assumption that the average movie goer does not in fact understand the history of Russian space exploration and thus would be able to ask these questions.
I won't disagree that asking these questions may or may not be valid (I still am willing to argue that Cosmo being aboard the same ship as the Crimson Dynamo is a separate question unrelated to everything else as it's related to the existence of a character who doesn't need to be there) but I simply do not think they are reasonable.
It's not about the audience being aware of the intricacies of their USSR space history (other than potentially helping get a hook into the Russian audience), we did the same thing with chimps and I feel that it could be an easy comparison to be made there and maybe an offhand comment "that poor dog" that gets people excited when they see that same dog later down the line, mostly ok.
Like asking how does Iron Man properly propel himself with his tech is a valid question or how did Howard Stark's inventions affect the development of the United States post-war economy are valid questions but they're not reasonable because they're about topics we can fairly safely assume people aren't too interested/invested in.
Even if the audience isn't too invested in the worldbuilding, I still feel it's something that needs to be talked about so it'd be easier for us to think out our characters' descion making skills.
Like why Tony is very careful about going near old Prussia, known IRL as Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast? A few reasons, some of which stem from the regions high Romani population, the civil war that's left the region heavily balkanized, the fact that Russia claims official ownership of that same region, the dictator actually in charge of it and has been used by the West as a buffer state, etc. For now, and until we get our Fox properties back, it can go under the same name as OTL (Sokovia), but when we do...it gets otherthrown, and is Latveria now.
Again I assumed that it was a good enough answer that a 2010 era movie goer would be able to suspend their disbelief enough that they wouldn't have to ask questions about how an event in the marvel movie affected the alternate universe's space race. I think it's reasonable to expect some level of suspension of disbelief in movies and when the movies core premise relies on some suspension of disbelief you can get away with more.
We can suspend disbelief for the American audience, but the rest of the world is a different issue; we can get a wider audience by being a little humble, that other nations have the capability of figuring out complex problems without stealing or utilizing [McGuffin]s, the biggest of which I'm pretty sure'll be Russia. Might even aid in negotiations in getting a Russian actor for Natasha.
I agree that there is some degree of consistency needed but I will argue that trying to solve all nitpicks across the board is impossible and pointless.
I think what you're trying to do comes from a good place but is ultimately misguided and isn't actually going to make the movies better stories in any appreciable way.
I'm arguing for building consistency at this juncture, when we're building up the setting, not for the whole way through. That...that just sounds exhausting.
Alright. Let's ignore the fact that you are arguing that Rick Jones, a character you described as "attending a college" and historically has very little to do with hacking or computers (he ran a radio show in the comics once.
I'm pretty sure I used the words 'post-graduate' which for Rick I figure either means he's working towards a Masters and Jennifer is working towards passing the Bar Exam, but I digress; and that's why in adaptions, you add or subtract qualities that do benefit the character and their place in the story, and why when I brought up the Teen Brigade, his radio show, I thought about what the equivalent in this same time period would be. In 2010, radio shows have been nominally replaced by social media and the Internet, which means that his radio capability being replaced by an interest in computers and communications, and since we want to give him more of a personality than just YouTuber/Streamer/Podcaster, ergo a minor ability in hacking.
I can concede that we can make Rick Jones a very different character and that while it's weird that Bruce in the middle of the movie remembers a family friend whom we've never seen on screen before and audiences likely haven't even heard of before it can be done. You've admitted that there are probably better ways to introduce them together and I agree with that and I don't want to fight unnecessary battles.
I didn't mean that he's suddenly introduced halfway through the movie, it'd probably be more along the lines of Bruce dropping Jennifer off at her new apartment at the beginning of the movie, shaking hands with the rest of her flatmates to show some passing familiarity with them, noticing his setup and then moving on, giving Jennifer a hug before he gets into the car to drive to work, some method of showing the passing the time [like the leaves on the trees] to show how far the project has progressed, and Bruce occasionally listening to Rick's youtube/stream/podcast about...True Murder? Dunno, something that Bruce would find interesting at anyrate anyway.
Why does having Jennifer and Rick in close proximity to each other "just kind of make sense". It doesn't particularly make sense to me, so please explain it to me so I can understand it. What is the relevant connection that means these characters need to appear together when only one of them (Rick) even has a potential role in the story you've discussed?
I'm thinking about it from the perspective that they're broke post-graduates who're paying off student loans while still furthering their education and figuring they don't have to pay as much if there's a group of them sharing an apartment. Figure Jessica Jones is there too, but doesn't make an actual appearance as she's in class or "distant".
Overhaul might be too strong a word to have used. Maybe the question would be easier to understand if I phrased is as "why are we making this alteration here?". Keeping Jennifer as Bruce's cousin makes it a more accurate adaptation and would please fans who want us to stay as accurate as possible. What does changing that detail that doesn't prevent a fully functional story, and costs very little effort to keep, give us? What makes changing the relationship between Bruce and Jennifer from cousins to half siblings worth deviating from the source material? It can't just be the potential "plothole" you mentioned because that can be fixed with a single line of dialogue.
Not so much a plothole and more something that irks me a bit yes, but I figure there's two ways to approach their relationship:
- A) Bruce and Jennifer are greatly impacted by their mother's death, Bruce with bottling his inherited rage issues, greater focus, and seeking ever greater self-discipline, and Jennifer by being more withdrawn, more observational, and a desire for justice, and both relying on each other heavily.
- B) While Bruce and Jennifer became close after he was brought into their household, but he's still somewhat emotionally distant to her even while immensely grateful, due to the sheer gap in experiences between them. [Think a slightly less actively dysfunctional relationship between Eliot and Darlene Anderson in Mr. Robot].
It wouldn't be problematic to change the nationality of Steve Roger's father from Irish to French and we'd have to adapt very little if anything out but why would we make that change when keeping it benefits us more by pleasing long term fans who are interested in adaption accuracy?
I know this isn't what you're going for, but that massively impacts the kind of man he was. As a poor Irish Catholic in NYC in the '30s, during an era where he wasn't even considered white, where because of his identity he wasn't able to get the required treatments for his numerous ailments that were available to any W[hite]A[nglo]S[axon]P[rotestant] regardless of fiscal/social class given more or less leeway, that gave him the perspective to sympathize with the lower class and any number of ethnicities living in NYC during that era.
That's a change I take no issue with and would happily include in the final product. It adds to the story and while I was trying to pay homage to the character's origin by making him a janitor like in the comics, making him a nobody enlisted man adds to the story by giving additional context to why Ross trusts and works with him, while costing us very little and is more realistic (I don't particularly think realism is a key factor but it's a nice bonus).
I mean, that wouldn't be his main MOS (job) within the Army, more than likely being gruntwork that'd been handed to him from a PO'd higher up for any number of reasons, ranging from a personal fuckup to the work just needing to be done, and him staying behind while testing commenced since he wasn't paying attention (headphones in uniform are a big nono but people don't listen) and the failure of his chain of command to get accountability (we can showcase someone getting dressed down for this failure as Bruce rushes to get Stern).
I figured I'd stick to an indeterminate amount of time but in my head it was somewhere between 3-6 months. I didn't have an exact number because I didn't think the exact amount of time was particularly relevant to the delivery of the narrative.
From a legal standpoint it works better in the 8-12 month range, assuming that Ross is trying to go through the proper channels to have Stern treated or to gain approval for Stern's almost meteoric rise through security clearances, unless we actively want General Ross get raked over the coals in his trial for ignoring the proper procedures and regulations, which wouldn't be promising to his career.
@King crimson, you should probably add the changes by @Nystical into the actual script, because while I know you agree with them, the current script is confusing me.
I'd like to add that maybe we could use Ross's nickname as a way to characterize him more. Why was he given the nickname "Thunderbolt," anyway? What did he do to gain that nickname in particular? Is it because he was quick to anger and had a furious temper? Is it because he used shock and awe tactics to cow his opponents into submission? Or perhaps it was because of how he was able to quickly move his troops in a blitzkrieg manner, catching his opponents off guard? View it how you wish guys, I'm just throwing ideas for your benefit.
Also, for some reason, I want Ross to have been a former Drill Sergeant, as it would(for some reason in my head) be more creative in his insults, I dunno. This is a spur-of-the-moment idea of mine. Hey, maybe we could even get R. Lee Ermey as either a consultant or as the actor for Thunderbolt Ross.
On the issue of The Leader trying to cure Hulk - we could keep that, and have it be Leader pulling out the energy from the Hulk with the intent of replicating it more fully.
That he manages to finish his device in the time it takes for Bruce to re-hulk and start smashing shows just how fast he can work.
Relativistic Crimson Dynamo is a bit of nonsense. Perhaps it could be presented as an unsuccessful experiment, which by its nature should not have been done at all, and that in the end it was considered unsuccessful and led the USSR to lose the pilot and the suit, after which this line of research was closed.
This was the general idea yes. The Crimson Dynamo is aboard and experimental ship that manages to move at relativistic speed that they then deem a failure due to almost immediately lost the pilot on and thus then deem the line of research a failure and have it closed. This is a reiteration of my idea as opposed to an adjustment.
However, I would honestly think of something else. I would also note that no one prevents the US government from getting the fragments of armor through the SHIELD-HYDRA agents and their sweeping of the territory. It is likely that in the scene of Nick Fury and Stark there will already be a concept that this is a SHIELD, and not Stark, engaged in "cleaning" the territory.
I have no issue with something else. I'd just very much not want to have the physical tiny fragments of the Iron Man suit be so important.
Yes we could have SHIELD-HYDRA be responsible but if we have it be the case that they are responsible we've either got an explanation that needs to be left incomplete so as to hide their involvement or we need to have that reveal comes early and thus we weaken the impact of the twist when said twist should probably just have its own movie.
In the Hulk question, I like the concept of the Harpy as an opponent simply because it forms a good dichotomy with She-Hulk, as a confrontation of reason and rage, as well as the desire/unwillingness to be a gamma fighter. It could also be expanded, what about the idea that Betty Ross gives blood to Jennifer Walters due to acquaintance and ignorance that she is not cured enough from gamma radiation. But these are my thoughts on this question, I just like the concept of She-Hulk who likes to be like that. I think here I am more interested in the concept of She-Hulk as Banner's sister because of the more obvious dichotomy. She wants to be a gamma monster, and Hulk and Banner are enemies. However, as for me, it is better to transmit it through a Harpy by virtue of the same sex and not to violate kinship relations.
I'm all for including Harpy and I like her as an opponent more than the Leader because it also lets us set up Ross more but I think the thread as a whole prefers the Leader (and I'm willing to bend on this point) and because the Leader is easier to get be the antagonist without fighting with Perlmutter. It's probably better to do a Leader story at this point.
Speaking of the concept with the Leader, it would seem interesting to me to show how the Hulk almost loses the fight against monsters and traps until he realizes that being a monster is not enough. We see the beginning of the smart Hulk, when he can start pretending and doing things with a little more planning to trick the traps of the Leader against the banal monster. As a result, there will already be a refusal of the Hulk from what he cannot cope with so that Benner can do it.
We could do that but we first of all haven't really shown off the Hulk's physical capabilities up to this point in the movie so I'd like to show off that, and I feel it takes away from the point where the Hulk transforms into Banner so that he can use his intelligence, if a big part of the fight scene Hulk was in shows off how he's intelligent. I'm not saying we can't have the Hulk learn over the course of the fight but I think trying to show off the Hulk's intelligence when we immediately turn around and have the Hulk not be intelligent enough for something and thus must turn back into Banner and refute the Leader's ideals of gamma mutant superiority effectively isn't the right way to go about things.
I would also like to better show Ross's aggressiveness and militarism in a scene with a subordinate who logically asks if the Hulk can not be a monster? To which he says calculations of exercises and tests that say the time for which the Hulk can destroy most of a large city before he is restrained in conditions of rugged urban terrain and a large number of civilians. It doesn't matter whether the Hulk is actually a monster or not, the very fact of such a significant threat of the death of thousands of people at any moment of aggression is enough to hunt him.
I mean this feels very much like telling and not showing. I mean we've already got him fighting with Betty at a certain point in the film just bring up that stuff there instead of introducing a new character and having a whole scene dedicated just to it. It seems a more efficient way to more organically convey the same information.
I was talking about the physical armor the whole time, when I said Tony would use it as inspiration to make his own framework I was talking about from a design standpoint, not from a physical standpoint, as was the case the whole way through because I'd hope he'd use a damaged suit.
Ah, I thought you were talking about the physical suit the whole time on everything.
I still object to the idea of Tony keeping and using the one suit he has reason to make sure remains destroyed over all else (the suit that's a very literally a manifestation of his worst fears of weapons getting into the wrong hands) to physically build a new suit around it. Even if we do want to have him preserve it out of sentimentality, why do we then have him turn around and no preserve it to use it as the basis of another armor? It feels like too many hopes to jump through as the one possible answer I can maybe come up with (he's cut off from other resources for some reason so he has to use it) require a lot of bending of any future script both to keep the Iron Monger suit and to use it as the base of the new suit instead of just having him build a suit that looks like the Iron Monger suit and uses the same basic frame that's entirely disconnected from the Monger suit in terms of the physical make up.
How is asking "What are some immediate changes to introducing [THING] to the setting and the wider ramifications of [EVENT]?" or "If this [MACGUFFIN] is 50%+ technobable to a majority audience who've never read into the comics or other settings material, why not use something a little closer to home as inspiration?" even coming close to breaking the suspension of disbelief? How many people even remember macguffin plots anyhow, compared to people who are constantly talking about how 'realistic' certain plot elements are? I mean, there's an entire subculture of physics professors talking about the possibility of ion drives, or how Iron Man's ARC reactor function, or the metallurgy involved in the creation of Mjolnir, or those who still argue and despise certain Star Trek elements because it's straight up space magic.
I'm arguing that it's not that hard to change the FTL Rip Van Winkle element to it because on a certain level it will break the setting (especially this early on in our worldbuilding without having built up to it), that having the Soviets trying to set up a colony ship for a potential colony and things did not go to plan so it naturally fell by the wayside can be a compelling narrative. We can even use it make further callbacks to it that can be built upon in other movies, like having it be one of the reasons there are humans in the wider galaxy, that enemy agents such as Richard Rider, Peter Quill or John Jameson [he can be nominally unnamed until the Sony agreement] were there to interfere and were part of the reason Crimson Dynamo is so confused after waking up and why America and the USSR are very quiet about the results of the launch.
As for people remembering macguffin plots, Pulp Fiction springs to mind as an example that even if it's not always the case, some macguffin plots are remembered. If you're looking for more "sci-fi nonsense macguffin plots that get remembered" we've got the climax of the first Star Wars movie with the Death Star weakness, Avatar (with the blue people) and the Fifth Element as all movies that have a macguffin be remembered for their plot, that are generally well-liked by audience and whose plots are decently remembered by those who saw the movie.
It's not a bad thing necessarily to ask questions about how a detail might affect the broader world but I do think asking "why not use a more realistic version?" is a question that can warrant the answer "I thought it would lead to a more interesting story, wouldn't contradict previously established information and most importantly wouldn't break the audience's suspension of disbelief". I was assuming you were attempting to find reasons against the inclusion of the idea because I hadn't necessarily thought of answers to every question you were asking. I'm not against us making Crimson Dynamo's hypothetical spaceship (I'd actually like to hold off on going through with my idea since I'd like to see Duke William Of's idea first because I think it might be better) more important in the grand scheme of things but I do not think it is necessary for us to do so if that is the case.
It's not about the audience being aware of the intricacies of their USSR space history (other than potentially helping get a hook into the Russian audience), we did the same thing with chimps and I feel that it could be an easy comparison to be made there and maybe an offhand comment "that poor dog" that gets people excited when they see that same dog later down the line, mostly ok.
I mean it's one line about an incredibly obscure Marvel character that in the early phases people will not care about. Like if it's just one line about a dog being involved in a prototype that's fine but at the same time I'd rather not have the character's blatantly point out "that poor dog Cosmo was lost in deep space never to be found again" or something like that and I don't think it would build all that much hype.
I think if we were to go down this path (which doesn't necessarily add much to the movie as is) we need to alter it to be used in such a way to show something about an aspect relevant to the film itself (bring up how the USSR lost the test dog and decided to push ahead to a human pilot anyway or something like that to show what a bad idea it was to put Dynamo on said spaceship). If the line about Cosmo is just about Cosmo then I'd say it should be pruned for the most part so it's not just limply hanging there contributing nothing to the movie it's in.
Even if the audience isn't too invested in the worldbuilding, I still feel it's something that needs to be talked about so it'd be easier for us to think out our characters' descion making skills.
Like why Tony is very careful about going near old Prussia, known IRL as Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast? A few reasons, some of which stem from the regions high Romani population, the civil war that's left the region heavily balkanized, the fact that Russia claims official ownership of that same region, the dictator actually in charge of it and has been used by the West as a buffer state, etc. For now, and until we get our Fox properties back, it can go under the same name as OTL (Sokovia), but when we do...it gets otherthrown, and is Latveria now.
It is something worth talking about. I vehemently disagree with some of the stuff and think what you're arguing for is misguided in being included into a film when it does nothing for it and is just kind of there for apparently no good reason to an audience who doesn't know or care about what you're world building.
Like have we ever shown Tony being careful going around Kaliningrad Oblast? Do we want to take the time out of our movie to throw in this detail and make it explicitly clear about to the audience that this is the case, when the audience won't get to see the reason why for multiple years and it weakens the movie in the short term by eating up screen time we could use to be doing something else and seemingly being there for no good reason immediately discernable to the average viewer (who doesn't know or care about Latveria and so wouldn't know or care why Tony Stark is suddenly being very careful around this one region when the movie itself doesn't explain it to them).
The type of worldbuilding you're pushing for is something I'd be more comfortable including in phase 2 stuff as opposed to dumping it into phase 1 where we need to struggle a lot more with getting the audience to care about all the new stuff we're throwing at them. If we're going to be trying to get the audience to be invested in Tony Stark and his immediate supporting cast why spend time pulling away from details that build them up and instead put in more stuff we want the audience to suddenly care about but can't explain why it's important for literal years in-universe?
I didn't mean that he's suddenly introduced halfway through the movie, it'd probably be more along the lines of Bruce dropping Jennifer off at her new apartment at the beginning of the movie, shaking hands with the rest of her flatmates to show some passing familiarity with them, noticing his setup and then moving on, giving Jennifer a hug before he gets into the car to drive to work, some method of showing the passing the time [like the leaves on the trees] to show how far the project has progressed, and Bruce occasionally listening to Rick's youtube/stream/podcast about...True Murder? Dunno, something that Bruce would find interesting at anyrate anyway.
I'd rather not include Rick and Jennifer in such a moment. It kind of isn't necessary for the greater plot, requires us to frontload the movie with even more exposition and character introduction (we go from a scene introducing Rick and Jennifer to a scene introducing General Ross, Betty, Sterns, the Hulk, the gamma bomb and Bruce Banner's dynamic with them which just feels like a lot to set up in the first few moments of the film ).
Plus the opening is central to establishing what's important in the movie. I just don't feel that Rick and Jennifer are so important to the hypothetical plot that we need to use the opening minutes of the movie (which are very valuable) introducing them if they're not going to be critical to the ensuing story.
For a Lord of the Rings comparison to try and have it be more clear what I'm talking about, Lord of the Rings introduces just Frodo, Sam, the Hobbits, Gandalf and Aragorn in it's early parts because they're the most important characters to the story and most relevant to getting the audience to be hooked in. Legolas and Gimli are saved for later because they're not important enough to need establishing at the very beginning and including them takes away from the characters who are important by simple virtue of spreading things out and eating over each others screentime. Likewise I think Rick Jones and Jennifer Walters are not characters so important to the Hulk mythos that we ought to use the opening to establish them before anyone else when there are other characters who deserve that critical time more. That make sense?
I'm thinking about it from the perspective that they're broke post-graduates who're paying off student loans while still furthering their education and figuring they don't have to pay as much if there's a group of them sharing an apartment. Figure Jessica Jones is there too, but doesn't make an actual appearance as she's in class or "distant".
I mean my question of "what does this add to the movie?" still remains. Are both Jennifer and Rick Jones master hackers that help Bruce with whatever he needs help with? Is there a reason why we're introducing both of them (and fundamentally splitting their screen time which will weaken their characterization pretty much automatically when we're establishing who these characters are) as opposed to just one? How does it make the movie better to do this? How do we organically bring up the mention of Jessica and get the audience to in any way care about her when we'll only see her years later down the line and the audience already doesn't care about Rick or Jennifer? Why does it just naturally "make sense" for them to be introduced together?
I don't think you've answered these questions adequately just yet and until those questions are answered, I think it's trying to do too much all at once. I'd rather let the characters breath and slowly worldbuild as opposed to cramming in all the worldbuilding in as fast as possible and accidentally pulling a Dark Universe or even an Age of Ultron (and Age of Ultron in the OTL had significant advantages this Hulk movie does not and Age of Ultron still arguably suffered from being a movie trying to worldbuild and introduce too much new stuff all at once). Lets keep things on the simpler end for now to get the audience to care and be invested in our primary characters and then slowly build the world out around the characters once we've gotten our audience invested in who Rick Jones' sister or Bruce Banner's cousin/half-sister might be.
Not so much a plothole and more something that irks me a bit yes, but I figure there's two ways to approach their relationship:
- A) Bruce and Jennifer are greatly impacted by their mother's death, Bruce with bottling his inherited rage issues, greater focus, and seeking ever greater self-discipline, and Jennifer by being more withdrawn, more observational, and a desire for justice, and both relying on each other heavily.
- B) While Bruce and Jennifer became close after he was brought into their household, but he's still somewhat emotionally distant to her even while immensely grateful, due to the sheer gap in experiences between them. [Think a slightly less actively dysfunctional relationship between Eliot and Darlene Anderson in Mr. Robot].
Maybe I'm just ignorant or something but I'm not seeing how either of these changes benefit from changing Jennifer from his cousin to his half-sister. You seem to have shifted topics here and I want to make sure I'm not misunderstanding or missing something cause we've both already done a lot of that and I'd want to bring up relevant points of conversation instead of arguing against something you're not actually arguing for.
I mean, that wouldn't be his main MOS (job) within the Army, more than likely being gruntwork that'd been handed to him from a PO'd higher up for any number of reasons, ranging from a personal fuckup to the work just needing to be done, and him staying behind while testing commenced since he wasn't paying attention (headphones in uniform are a big nono but people don't listen) and the failure of his chain of command to get accountability (we can showcase someone getting dressed down for this failure as Bruce rushes to get Stern).
I can try and include some of this stuff but it does need some minor tweaking. Basically just show some of the stuff you're talking about at a later point.
From a legal standpoint it works better in the 8-12 month range, assuming that Ross is trying to go through the proper channels to have Stern treated or to gain approval for Stern's almost meteoric rise through security clearances, unless we actively want General Ross get raked over the coals in his trial for ignoring the proper procedures and regulations, which wouldn't be promising to his career
Alright cool we can have the time jump be 9 months or go with Ross getting in trouble over what he did. Either or is fine with me, that's long term planning that in my opinion falls outside of the scope of the first Hulk movie's plot.
@King crimson, you should probably add the changes by @Nystical into the actual script, because while I know you agree with them, the current script is confusing me.
Considering how Overmind hasn't threadmarked the second version I'm just going to post a new improved version including all of the changes later in a bit.
On the issue of The Leader trying to cure Hulk - we could keep that, and have it be Leader pulling out the energy from the Hulk with the intent of replicating it more fully.
That he manages to finish his device in the time it takes for Bruce to re-hulk and start smashing shows just how fast he can work.
We could but I kind of like Nystical's idea plus the little wordplay on Sterns saying he's going to cure Bruce Banner actually being equivalent to saying he's going to cure polio kind of works better narratively and is more interesting and thus better for the overall story.
So here's a very simple hypothetical skeleton for the movie we've got for Hulk. I'd like to hear people's thoughts on it or if people have problems with it. While it is a movie skeleton written to be one I like, I tried to incorporate other's ideas where I thought it would be possible. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Basics of the plot
The movie opens with General Ross coming to a bomb test site. We meet General Ross, Bruce Banner, Betty Ross and Samuel Sterns. Banner is established as the scientist behind the bomb, Betty is a soldier who is in a relationship with Bruce that General Ross disapproves of and Samuel Sterns is a nobody janitor. Ross demands the bomb be tested ahead of schedule Bruce tries to refuse but eventually gives in despite knowing better.
With the bomb testing going earlier than it should, something is about to go wrong and Samuel Sterns is in the blast zone. Bruce Banner runs out of the safe area to shield Sterns and they both get caught up in the ensuing blast. We hear Hulk roar and gunfire and screaming is heard as the camera pans on the destruction of the gamma bomb but we don't see the Hulk.
There's a time jump and now it's Bruce hiding out in a small town trying to avoid people. He runs into Rick Jones who is nice to him despite Bruce trying to push him away. Bruce eventually goes off to somewhere else when he's confronted by an asshole of some stripe who despite Bruce's best efforts, gets him mad enough to transform into the Hulk. The Hulk rampages through the town but stops when he sees Rick Jones. He detransforms into Banner and then flees into the woods. The Hulk turning into Bruce Banner is caught on video.
We cut to Thaddeus hearing about this. He talks to a now visibly transformed Sterns who says that he can figure out a way to undo the Hulk transformation if General Ross gives him some tools and a lab to work in. General Ross agrees despite Betty's protests.
Rick Jones heads off into the woods to meet with Bruce and give him some food. Bruce attempts to get Rick to leave, but Rick's optimism and friendliness wears through Bruce's shell and he eventually agrees to stick around if Rick can get him a new shirt or something before he leaves. Rick returns to the town to find it's swarmed by the military. Rick is arrested by the military.
People try to interrogate Rick about where Banner/the Hulk is but he doesn't reveal where Banner is due to knowing that Banner is hiding from the military and he doesn't want to sell out his friend. Betty eventually enters Rick's cell to talk to him. She figures out that he knows where Bruce is and that he learned a way to get the Hulk to calm down and detransform. She lets him out if he agrees to take her to Bruce. Rick agrees and they do so. Bruce and Betty have a reunion but Bruce eventually pushes her away because he's afraid he'll hurt her.
General Ross and his forces burst onto the scene and Bruce transforms against his will into the Hulk and effortlessly smashes the military. Ross realizes he underestimated what the Hulk is capable of and orders his men to retreat and regroup. He's the last man to leave. The Hulk runs off deeper into the forest to be alone and Rick decides to chase after him.
General Ross returns to the base and we see Samuel Sterns creating a gamma enhanced rat. Thaddeus Ross is ranting about how he needs something a little more impressive than a big green rat to beat the Hulk. Samuel Sterns promises him that he can give him a way to beat the Hulk if he's just given enough time. Ross agrees to this and sends him off to some secret military base/production facility with a suitably ominous name. Betty then comes in and she has a fight with her father where her father argues that her feelings about Banner blind her to how dangerous he is and Betty responds by mentioning that Ross' feelings about Banner blind him to the fact he's not a threat.
Bruce is back and hiding alone in a cave. Rick comes across him and tries to cheer him up but Bruce yells about how he's a monster who destroys everything he touches. Bruce persists and then Rick points out that the Hulk never hurt him once despite having multiple chances to do so. Bruce remains stubbornly convinced that he is a monster but agrees to wait as he does need a new shirt that Rick can get him but he refuses to stay any longer than that so he doesn't wreck Rick's life despite Rick insisting that this has been a great adventure for him.
Back with Ross and Sterns, Sterns claims to Ross that he can cure Bruce if he is captured. Ross says that none of that helps him catch the Hulk and he insults Sterns angering him but Sterns says he needs more time. Ross angrily leaves and says he'll give Sterns 24 hours to give him something workable or he's going in a cell next to the Hulk. Ross leaves and Sterns mutters to himself that Ross has 12 hours before the earth's new leader takes charge. He then unleashes a swarm of Gamma-enhanced animals (mostly the lab rats he was given) and uses them to murder the people at the facility and take control himself.
Ross finds Bruce with his forces and attempts to take him down. This time Ross has learned and while he's unable to defeat the Hulk he is able to work around him a lot better. Eventually Rick learns from Betty (who tagged along with her father) that there is a cure for being the Hulk. Rick manages to get the Hulk to stop rampaging and destransform and Bruce willingly lets himself be captured and restrained.
Ross insults and blusters at the Hulk but Banner keeps his cool. They arrive at the base where Stern's greets them over the intercom. Ross then takes Bruce a chamber where Sterns remotely performs a procedure that supposedly would prevent Bruce from being the Hulk. The procedure is done. Sterns then locks Bruce Betty and General Ross in the room and mockingly informs them it'll only be temporary anyways. Ross starts cursing at Stern's betrayal and Stern's gloats about how he's going to become the Leader of a brave new world were everyone is a gamma mutant. They all thought they were better than him well now he's the one in control.
Ross eventually snaps in the confinement and blames Bruce for the whole mess. He decides the he'll at least kill the man who set everything in motion with the gamma bomb if he can't stop Sterns from recreating it on a massive scale. Betty is trying to get him to stop but Thaddeus refuses.
Bruce can't fight back well (due to being restrained) but eventually he transformed into the Hulk and knocks General away. The Leader declares that this is impossible and that he could rid of the Hulk. The Hulk plans to finish off General Ross but Betty stops him and unlike Ross, the Hulk listens to Betty and stops fighting. The Hulk then smashes through the wall freeing the three of them. Betty stays behind to make sure her father remains alright while Hulk stops the Leader.
The Leader gives a speech about how the Hulk should be agreeing with him in a world where everyone is like them the Hulk doesn't have to run away and be hunted out of fear by small-minded men like Thaddeus Ross. The Hulk responds by stating something to do with how he's going to smash things. The Leader sighs and states that it's unfortunate that they couldn't work together but that the Hulk is nothing but a simpleminded brute.
The Leader then starts using various defenses and parts of the facilities to attack the Hulk alongside his gamma mutated animals. The Hulk powers through everything and the Leader keeps innovating and coming up with clever new ways to use the automated systems to try and stop the Hulk but he ultimately fails. The Hulk smashes through the control area where the Leader is hiding in bends a piece of metal around him so that he's pinned in place. The Hulk spots the gamma bomb the Leader built but can't disarm it. The Leader taunts the Hulk saying he's not smart enough to stop the bomb. The Hulk responds by saying Banner is and forcibly transforms back into Bruce Banner who then disarms the bomb. The Leader says that the world would have been beautiful if they were all gamma mutants, Banner responds that he and the Leader are just ugly monsters. He then leaves and says goodbye to Betty saying that he's going to look into a cure but that he's still not safe to be around.
The movie cuts one last time to a small diner where Rick Jones is waiting to meet someone Bruce Banner walks in and they talk. Bruce says that he looked into Sterns' cure and he theorized that it didn't work because Bruce was exposed to much more gamma radiation than the Leader or the gamma animals were. Rick mentions that now Bruce has to live with the big guy. Bruce states he hasn't given up trying to find a way to be normal and to help people but that being the Hulk isn't the worst thing in the world. The movie ends around here.
A mid-credits scene could be Phil Coulson of SHIELD finding where a Jennifer Walters lives and knocking on her door. The door opens (but we don't see Jennifer so we have freedom to cast whatever actress we want) and we hear Phil ask what the person can tell him about her cousin Bruce Banner.
The final post-credits scene sets up a new movie.
Some Thoughts
I think this works decently well. I like the fights well enough and I think it's fairly concise all things considered. Every element involved is introduced before the end. The cure not working on Bruce I feel is something that is decently enough explained in the movie and it does kind of run on emotional logic a bit.
I felt I needed to weaken Ross' character in order to make the Leader more impressive but I think the main villain shuffle is fairly well handled and though the climax is tricky, we've seen a lot of the set pieces before and it's an inventive fight. Plus with the gamma animals killing the people in the base ahead of time through a clever plan of Sterns' we get to see our villain be a threat in a similar sort of "fight" in order to build tension. I also think one thing I handled well is I kept Sterns' skillset contained. He's smart but I don't have him building giant robots or physics breaking deathrays or anything like that. He just has gamma based technology and he takes control of an already existing control system
I wish I could do gammaworld and Ross better but I think I did them well enough and that this is a solid if not perfect script.
Things this movie sets up
Who the Hulk is and how his powers work as well as the dynamic between him and Banner
Who is General Ross and what is his deal
Who is Betty Ross and what is her relationships with others/basic skills set as a soldier of some stripe
Who is Rick Jones and why is he important to Hulk stories going forward from here
The Hulk being capable of growing and evolving
Potential more mystical stuff regarding the Hulk (since Bruce is only theorizing about why Sterns' cure didn't work we can reveal that he was wrong in another movie and add in a mystical element if we want to)
Jennifer Walters is introduced very loosely
How did SHIELD find out about Bruce's past
It lets us make more gamma powered individuals if we want to since the powerset was shown to be semi replicable.
Final words
I'd appreciate any thoughts or feedback I could get on this. I did a lot to try and improve it and take in people's ideas and make it a movie pitch we could more generally agree on as the basis for the first Hulk movie.
My big criticism is that Sterns is little more than the BBEG who wants to take over the world because reasons and has little connection to Banner at all.
For motives my idea is that it all starts with how he's disrespected and looked down upon for his low class job, soldier or janitor, and after he gets superpowers...he's still a tool. Ross restrains him, mistreats him exactly how he did Banner, and treats him more like an asset than a person because he's a Gamma mutate no better than Banner just more controllable. This makes Sterns decide that he'll never be respected in society and treated as a tool so he decides to remake it in his image lashing out at the world that wronged him like what Banner could do if pushed over the edge.
For his relationship with Bruce, when he's captured or in some other scene Sterns gets to have a chat with him. He takes this as an opportunity to be real with Banner, maybe it starts with them talking science and Banner finds himself enjoying talking shop with a peer, but then the conversation moves on to their mutations and Sterns notes how despite getting their powers from the same incident they're completely different. Bruce has no control over his powers, the Hulk actually seems to be a different person! So does that mean Sterns isn't really Sterns? Has someone new taken his place?
Sterns then goes off tangent saying that he's read up on Carl Jung, and voices his theory that their mutations gave them what they wanted deep down. Sternswanted a way to change his station in life so he became a genius, then his smile turns dark and knowing, and he asks Bruce if he ever wanted everything that's mistreated or hurt him to be smashed, crushed, and destroyed...or at the very least get someone else to do it. Is it because of how Ross treated...or did it start even earlier? Was there someone who hurt and wronged Bruce even farther into the past, made him angry at the world that hurt him--
At this point Banner yells at Sterns to shut up and Sterns relents, but it hints at Bruce's abusive past with his dad and highlights how Banner and Sterns are foils to each other.
Hulk Pitch 3: Now with Even More Feedback
So here's the updated version of the Hulk pitch/script idea. If people want to keep adding in ideas and giving me feedback I'd appreciate it since I want this to be as good as it possibly can be
Basics of the plot
The movie opens with General Ross coming to a bomb test site. We meet General Ross, Bruce Banner, Betty Ross and Samuel Sterns. Banner is established as the scientist behind the bomb, Betty is a soldier who is in a relationship with Bruce that General Ross disapproves of and Samuel Sterns is a very low ranking soldier. Ross demands the bomb be tested ahead of schedule Bruce tries to refuse but eventually gives in despite knowing better. Ross also yells at Sterns and demands that he get back to work when he catches Sterns slacking off and listening in instead of doing his job.
With the bomb testing going earlier than it should, something is about to go wrong and Samuel Sterns is in the blast zone, unaware the bomb is about to be going off because he decided to wear headphones against protocol and thus misses the warnings to clear the area. Bruce Banner runs out of the safe area to shield Sterns and they both get caught up in the ensuing blast. We hear Hulk roar and gunfire and screaming is heard as the camera pans on the destruction of the gamma bomb but we don't see the Hulk.
There's a time jump (potentially of about nine months) and now it's Bruce hiding out in a small town trying to avoid people. He runs into Rick Jones who is nice to him despite Bruce trying to push him away. Bruce eventually goes off to somewhere else when he's confronted by an asshole of some stripe who despite Bruce's best efforts, gets him mad enough to transform into the Hulk. The Hulk rampages through the town but stops when he sees Rick Jones. He detransforms into Banner and then flees into the woods. The Hulk turning into Bruce Banner is caught on video.
We cut to Thaddeus hearing about this. A visibly transformed Sterns is shown who calls the Hulk incredible and Ross responds by saying that the Hulk is a monster and that he doesn't want to hear how great he is from another gamma freak. Sterns hides his annoyance and furstration at being belittle like this and instead states that he can figure out a way to undo the Hulk transformation if General Ross gives him some tools and a lab to work in. General Ross agrees despite Betty's protests but also tells Sterns that he better deliver instead of screwing up like he did all the time before he transformed.
Rick Jones heads off into the woods to meet with Bruce and give him some food. Bruce attempts to get Rick to leave, but Rick's optimism and friendliness wears through Bruce's shell and he eventually agrees to stick around if Rick can get him a new shirt or something before he leaves. Rick returns to the town to find it's swarmed by the military. Rick is arrested by the military.
People try to interrogate Rick about where Banner/the Hulk is but he doesn't reveal where Banner is due to knowing that Banner is hiding from the military and he doesn't want to sell out his friend. Betty eventually enters Rick's cell to talk to him. She figures out that he knows where Bruce is and that he learned a way to get the Hulk to calm down and detransform. She lets him out if he agrees to take her to Bruce. Rick agrees and they do so. Bruce and Betty have a reunion but Bruce eventually pushes her away because he's afraid he'll hurt her.
General Ross and his forces burst onto the scene and Bruce transforms against his will into the Hulk and effortlessly smashes the military. Ross realizes he underestimated what the Hulk is capable of and orders his men to retreat and regroup. He's the last man to leave. The Hulk runs off deeper into the forest to be alone and Rick decides to chase after him.
General Ross returns to the base and we see Samuel Sterns creating a gamma enhanced rat. Thaddeus Ross is ranting and yelling about how he needs something a little more impressive than a big green rat to beat the Hulk. Samuel Sterns promises him that he can give him a way to beat the Hulk if he's just given enough time. Ross agrees to this and sends him off to some secret military base/production facility with a suitably ominous name. Betty then comes in and she has a fight with her father where her father argues that her feelings about Banner blind her to how dangerous he is and Betty responds by mentioning that Ross' feelings about Banner blind him to the fact he's not a threat. Ross also points out that if there's even the slightest chance of Banner going off like a bomb in a civilian area than he needs to treat him like a monster and a threat to everyone's life.
Bruce is back and hiding alone in a cave. Rick comes across him and tries to cheer him up but Bruce yells about how he's a monster who destroys everything he touches. Bruce persists and then Rick points out that the Hulk never hurt him once despite having multiple chances to do so. Bruce remains stubbornly convinced that he is a monster but agrees to wait as he does need a new shirt that Rick can get him but he refuses to stay any longer than that so he doesn't wreck Rick's life despite Rick insisting that this has been a great adventure for him.
Back with Ross and Sterns, Sterns claims to Ross that he can cure Bruce if he is captured. Ross says that none of that helps him catch the Hulk and he insults Sterns once more, angering him but Sterns says he needs more time to come up with a plan. Ross angrily leaves and says he'll give Sterns 24 hours to give him something workable or he's going in a cell next to the Hulk. Ross leaves and Sterns mutters to himself that he's smarter than Ross. Gamma mutants are better than normal people so why shouldn't he be the leader in charge instead of suffering under the boot of someone who doesn't appreciate him. He makes the decision to turn on Ross at this point. He then unleashes a swarm of Gamma-enhanced animals (mostly the lab rats he was given) and uses them to murder the people at the facility and take control himself and begins planning to make a world where he can be properly appreciated.
Ross finds Bruce with his forces and attempts to take him down. This time Ross has learned and while he's unable to defeat the Hulk he is able to work around him a lot better. Eventually Rick learns from Betty (who tagged along with her father) that there is a cure for being the Hulk. Rick manages to get the Hulk to stop rampaging and destransform and Bruce willingly lets himself be captured and restrained.
Ross insults and blusters at the Hulk but Banner keeps his cool. They arrive at the base where Stern's greets them over the intercom. Ross then takes Bruce a chamber where Sterns remotely performs a procedure that supposedly would prevent Bruce from being the Hulk. The procedure is done, but instead of curing Banner of the Hulk it forcibly transforms him into the Hulk. Thaddeus yells about Sterns lying and betraying him. Sterns replies that he merely did as promised and "cured" Bruce Banner as the Hulk is the superior entity and it's normal humanity that's the disease. Sterns then rants about how Ross and everybody else never appreciated him but that now that's going to change. He's going to make a glorious new world where everyone is a gamma mutant and he's the Leader instead of being a minion for someone else's myopic viewpoint. Sterns then locks them in with the Hulk and falsely apologizes that they won't get to see his new world and then follows that up by saying Ross doesn't deserve to see it anyways.
Hulk breaks out of his restraints and smashes Thaddeus but Betty gets in the way and shields her downed father to prevent Hulk from killing him. This gives Hulk the enough self-control to stop rampaging and instead the Hulk then smashes through the wall freeing the three of them. Betty stays behind to make sure her father remains alright while Hulk stops the Leader.
The Leader gives a speech about how the Hulk should be agreeing with him in a world where everyone is like them the Hulk doesn't have to run away and be hunted out of fear by small-minded men like Thaddeus Ross. The Leader states how becoming a gamma mutant gave him everything by making him smarter than anyone else and that clearly it gave Banner what he wanted since he can no longer be bullied by people like General Ross. The Hulk responds by stating something to do with how he wants to smash things and that the Leader talks too much. The Leader sighs and states that it's unfortunate that they couldn't work together but that the Hulk is nothing but a simpleminded brute.
The Leader then starts using various defenses and parts of the facilities to attack the Hulk alongside his gamma mutated animals. The Hulk powers through everything and the Leader keeps innovating and coming up with clever new ways to use the automated systems to try and stop the Hulk but he ultimately fails. The Hulk smashes through the control area where the Leader is hiding in bends a piece of metal around him so that he's pinned in place. The Hulk spots the gamma bomb the Leader built but can't disarm it. The Leader taunts the Hulk saying he's not smart enough to stop the bomb. The Hulk responds by saying Banner is and forcibly transforms back into Bruce Banner. The Leader says that it's impossible and that the Hulk shouldn't ever want to be just normal Bruce Banner. Bruce agrees that he doesn't understand how or why it happened but that he's not complaining. He then goes on to disarm the bomb. The Leader says that the world would have been beautiful if they were all gamma mutants, Banner responds that he and the Leader are just ugly monsters. He then leaves and says goodbye to Betty saying that he's going to look into a cure because that he's still not safe to be around.
The movie cuts one last time to a small diner where Rick Jones is waiting to meet someone. Bruce Banner walks in and they talk. Bruce says that he looked into why the Hulk gave up control and transformed into him. Rick states that maybe this means that the Hulk isn't so bad and isn't just a rampaging monster. Bruce unhappily concedes that Hulk isn't a total monster but still states that he's going to be on his own for a bit while trying to cure/get used to the Hulk but he says that he considers Rick a real friend of his.
A mid-credits scene could be Phil Coulson of SHIELD finding where a Jennifer Walters lives and knocking on her door. The door opens (but we don't see Jennifer so we have freedom to cast whatever actress we want) and we hear Phil ask what the person can tell him about her cousin Bruce Banner.
The final post-credits scene sets up a new movie.
Some thoughts
I think Ross is a weaker character overall being a less interesting individual and a more blustering over the top general. That being said I like Sterns a lot more and think he is a stronger antagonist even if it cost us keeping Ross out of the spotlight a bit.
I think the cure twist is a lot more solid now and I tried to make Sterns' motivation for turning on Ross a lot more visibly obvious to people so it's easier to pick up on (the line about Sterns joining Hulk in a cage is in the original draft but now I highlighted that stuff by making Ross constantly rag on and threaten Sterns a lot more overtly and repeatedly so that people don't miss it and can understand stuff going on better). I gave just a little bit of a hint towards the psychological stuff that would come later and set up the seeds of the idea that could come later (that becoming a gamma mutant gives you something you want) but I did my level best to keep it in check and not splurge on an infodump.
I think the weakest character of this script as of now is probably either Betty or Thaddeus Ross but they're not bad per se, just a little simple. I do think that there is a lot of future setup in this film for things we can do later and I pointedly tried to avoid killing anyone off so that we can bring them back as appropriate for future stuff if we want to.
As always thoughts and feedback is appreciated and I might attempt to write a fourth version if people keep on pointing out rewrites that are beneficial to the story as the plot we have here is a lot stronger than what I wrote previously.
My big criticism is that Sterns is little more than the BBEG who wants to take over the world because reasons and has little connection to Banner at all.
For motives my idea is that it all starts with how he's disrespected and looked down upon for his low class job, soldier or janitor, and after he gets superpowers...he's still a tool. Ross restrains him, mistreats him exactly how he did Banner, and treats him more like an asset than a person because he's a Gamma mutate no better than Banner just more controllable. This makes Sterns decide that he'll never be respected in society and treated as a tool so he decides to remake it in his image lashing out at the world that wronged him like what Banner could do if pushed over the edge.
For his relationship with Bruce, when he's captured or in some other scene Sterns gets to have a chat with him. He takes this as an opportunity to be real with Banner, maybe it starts with them talking science and Banner finds himself enjoying talking shop with a peer, but then the conversation moves on to their mutations and Sterns notes how despite getting their powers from the same incident they're completely different. Bruce has no control over his powers, the Hulk actually seems to be a different person! So does that mean Sterns isn't really Sterns? Has someone new taken his place?
Sterns then goes off tangent saying that he's read up on Carl Jung, and voices his theory that their mutations gave them what they wanted deep down. Sternswanted a way to change his station in life so he became a genius, then his smile turns dark and knowing, and he asks Bruce if he ever wanted everything that's mistreated or hurt him to be smashed, crushed, and destroyed...or at the very least get someone else to do it. Is it because of how Ross treated...or did it start even earlier? Was there someone who hurt and wronged Bruce even farther into the past, made him angry at the world that hurt him--
At this point Banner yells at Sterns to shut up and Sterns relents, but it hints at Bruce's abusive past with his dad and highlights how Banner and Sterns are foils to each other.
I mean I will admit that Sterns has little immediate personal connection to Hulk in the earlier draft, that's fair, but I think that's an inherent problem with trying to cram in multiple villains in a movie even if we've only got two. Ross is doing the bulk of carrying the emotional stakes for both Sterns and Hulk/Banner and so they have less connection with each other.
I'll also say that I tried to include the very shift in motive you suggested for why Sterns snaps in the original script (Sterns turns on Ross immediately after Ross threatens to put him in a cage next to the Hulk if he doesn't deliver) but I rewrote some things and included additional scenes to highlight that this is the shift even more by having Ross more explicitly constantly rag on and insult Sterns throughout the movie. It's a change that weakens Ross as a character in my opinion but it might be worth it in order to ensure that the Leader works as the central villain and leaves his motivations clear (even if I never want to have to spell out that part explicitly so long as I can show and not tell). I hope it's a little more obvious and understandable what's happening.
As for your proposed changes to include more of the psychological stuff, it's a bad case of telling not showing and kind of cramming in stuff for the sake of getting it in. Like it's not "This is Katana. She's got my back. I'd advise not being killed by her. Her sword traps the souls of its victims" level of bad but it's kind of doing the same thing to lesser extent and is still bad. It's too much of an infodump as is.
I tried to include a tiny bit of your changes (Sterns mentioning that becoming a gamma mutant gave him everything he ever wanted so it has to have given Banner as well is the big point as well as him justifying making people into gamma mutants as a gift that would fulfill their desires as well as part of why he thinks it's impossible for the Hulk to willingly change back into Bruce) but I had to tone it way down to have it not come off as an infodump about Jung and Bruce's abusive past. Let's save that for a bit later when we can actually show it effectively instead of mostly tell it through an infodump. I also think explicitly pointing out how the characters are foils for one another kind of doesn't work well most of the time (There's a reason why "we're not so different you and I" tends to get derided even if it's not inherently bad) and I think we should absolutely avoid spelling out themes in movie when possible.
Again I like the Jung stuff but I'd rather save it for the sequel where we can have the whole movie be about that then uncleanly toss it in to the climax of the movie that's setting up the most basic aspects of how the Hulk and his cast work.
Hey, maybe we could even get R. Lee Ermey as either a consultant or as the actor for Thunderbolt Ross.
