I wasn’t even born when the first issue of 2000AD arrived back in 1977 costing the sum of 8p in Earth money but I like many other British kids soon discovered the thrill power of 2000AD.
Personally as much as I like X-Men and Batman comics have never really been about superheroes for me, maybe it’s the distinction between growing up in Britain and the U.S, depending on your age comics were either the knockabout charm of The Beano and The Dandy (which were phenomenally popular back in the day) or the distinctly more edgy 2000AD.
2000AD wasn’t about heroes with powers rescuing people or kids getting up to mischievous hi-jinks, it was about imaginative and sometimes nightmarish dystopian sci-fi, brutal and harrowing war stories and fantastical adventures usually with an anti-authoritarian spirit and often with themes that were far more adult than anything else available to British kids at the time. As the excellent book Thrill-Power Overload and the recent documentary Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD demonstrate 2000AD would become a national treasure to British comics fans with its fan base spreading overseas.
As much as the likes of Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Bill Finger, Bob Kane, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are credited for their work in laying the foundations for the American comics you see today (I think Walter Gibson’s The Shadow is criminally overlooked in this aspect personally) 2000AD’s John Wagner and Pat Mills are fundamentally important to British comics.
2000AD’s most famous character Judge Dredd would go on to be just one character in a vast dystopian sci-fi universe which inspired two films (although we don’t really talk about one of them) with Judge Andersen, The Dark Judges, The Angel Gang, Chopper, Jack Point and P.J Maybe just being a handful of characters that inhabit the dark but blackly comical future which would become so popular it got its own publication in the form of the still on-going Judge Dredd Megazine in 1990.
There’s more to 2000AD than Judge Dredd though, Slaine, would filter a Conan style fantasy through Celtic mythology, A.B.C Warriors, the story of a team of robot soldiers built for a brutal war, Strontium Dog, the adventures of Johnny Alpha a mutant (no not like the X-Men) bounty hunter in the irradiated wasteland of the future, Rogue Trooper, the harrowing tale of a betrayed genetically engineered soldier in a hellish war of attrition burning with vengeance and plenty more besides.
So here’s to more years of 2000AD and more zarjaz stories blowing people’s minds.
Star Trek Horizon is a fan film, released on Friday, 26th Feb 2016, 2 days ahead of schedule, following 3 years of production. Set in the Enterprise time period, it follows the NX-04 Discovery and her crew during the war between the Coalition of Planets and the Romulans, and runs to 1 hour and 42 minutes.
The quality overall is very good as fan films go. It shows a lot of ambition, with a wide scope, and a number of well-implemented skirmish scenes – you generally see a maximum of 5 or 6 ships at a time. While a Star Trek film naturally tend to focus on the bridge, they use a number of other locations well, and had some outdoor/planet hell type scene. The lighting is, unfortunately, quite dark, and this in combination with the slightly blurry film-grain effect they have used offset the good quality of the FX (The 3D models were very good) and costumes are authentic and well made. I must admit though I sometimes checked if it was playing in HD or SD. While the actors definitely aren’t professionals, their passion and enthusiasm for the project covers a multitude of sins.
Sadly the weakest parts are the several occasions where the Enterprise shares the screen. The Captain of the Discovery hails them, and since they of course don’t have Jonathan Archer, there’s a simple message relay from the comms operator. It may have benefited from simply not mentioning the Enterprise and focusing on other starships of the time period like the Columbia, or maybe even some Andorian Guard vessels.
Overall, I feel that Star Trek Horizons gets a solid 4/5 from me on first watch – I’ll no doubt come back to it again over the weekend.
There are two things that I enjoy in this world.
Well, there are lots of things, but among them, two are cards games and espionage; that is to say reading/watching spy stories, not actually partaking in espionage… Honest. You can’t prove anything!
Now while my hard drive is slowly wiping itself of anything incriminating, let me distract yo-I mean, umm, talk to you about this new card game that’s been sent to me by the lovely people at Wilderland Campaigns.
It’s called Sub Rosa – Spies for Hire and is a tactical bidding game where you, the player, are the head of an international spy agency (I like to think I’m the head of Isis from Archer) and must spend their resources to recruit the various free agents that are randomly dealt at the start of the game.
These agents each have different abilities which, using special tokens available to each player, you can use to manipulate the game by either moving agents around or preventing them from being bid upon in a turn.
This game has been created by Robin David, who is no stranger to the tabletop gaming market, having a number of print and play games under his belt including The Martian Investigations, a sleuthy detective game which has received a number of good reviews from various sites.
I feel it is at this point where I should say that the game is currently still only a prototype, albeit a complete and working prototype, but this did lead to a few issues during my playtesting which I’ll cover in a moment. The game is looking to be put up for crowdfunding on Kickstarter later this year and I do suggest that you keep an eye out for it because this is, downsides aside for a moment (I’ll get to them) a very quick and fun experience that does offer a good level of depth from such a small game.
This game is in full swing between three players.
I found Sub Rosa to be aesthetically very charming, with interesting character designs that tick a number of spy genre trope boxes. However, with the game currently being only a prototype, I found the lack of a full instruction manual to be a bit of struggle when getting my head around the game but after a few games and a bit of head knocking, we figured it out and found the end result to be a much smoother and fluid experience but without a much more detailed and in-depth instruction manual, I can’t be sure that the game we played was in fact the game as intended, so I still found the overall experience to be somewhat hampered by this.
The tactical element of the game, however, I found to be very enjoyable. It keeps players on their toes – Do they want to make a push for that extra agent, or should they conserve resources to maintain their existing staff and try and hold on for another turn? Do you want to offer allegiances to try and push another player out and claim their agent(s) with a calculated joint effort? Do you risk everything and stab your ally in the back, taking their agent while their resources are diverted elsewhere?
This is the sort of game where you can really sink your teeth into the plotting and scheming and will no doubt cause an argument or two, but all’s fair in love and espionage (so I’m told).
I feel as though, once funded and polished a little more, this game will definitely be one to watch.
As mentioned, the game itself flows very nicely and does encourage a lot of player interaction, so it’s a good one for a game night with a few friends, maybe takeaway and numerous beverages of your choosing (please drink responsibly).
But, for the moment, until I see a more detailed instruction manual and a few more bits of polish, I don’t feel as though I can give a higher rating to this game.
Don’t read this as it being a bad game – it’s most certainly not! Read this as encouragement to watch out for this game and fund it when it hits Kickstarter later this year so that it can get the backing it deserves and we, as players, can get the fully realised game that I know Sub Rosa can be.
If, in the meantime, you want to give the current prototype a try, Sub Rosa is available for free as a print to play game here.
Until next time, I’ve been Craig, but perhaps it’s all just been a cover.
Picture the scene: it’s a normal Thursday, and I come home from a hard day at the office, kick off my sensible-but-actually-pretty-cute work pumps and curl up in front of the computer for several relaxing hours of slack-jawed Facebooking before bed. But amidst the videos of animals doing adorable animal stuff and photos of hot cosplay girls that I depend upon to supply the warm fuzzy feeling I’ve been missing ever since I quit codeine, I found a metric shittonne of grade-A idiocy that caused me to fall into a state of what is medically referred to as “utter tittyfucking lunacy”.
Oh, and look. Bad grammar. Of course.
I had what the Victorians so eloquently diagnosed “a fit of the vapours” (also known as “twenty minutes of incoherent shouting”) and had to be brought round with a bottle of pixie dust waved under my nose. And then I thought I should channel the red mist into something productive, and so here it is: Comics (Shockingly!) Older Than Superman!
FULL DISCLOSURE: I got all the information in this article from Wikipedia, TV Tropes and Google. Because that’s how easy it is to not be wrong, you guys. SO easy.
Cave Paintings (~22,000BC, maybe, who even knows)
The oldest known cave painting is in Chauvet Cave in France, and is widely lauded as the first example of sequential art. That said, I couldn’t in all good conscience include it here, as a Google Image search only turned up single paintings, rather than multiple pictures that form a narrative. I mean, if I’m going to be insufferably smug, I’m at least going to strive for as much accuracy as the tip of the internet can provide.
The earliest example I could find which is inarguably sequential art (“sequential art” being to history students what “graphic novel” is to literature students, i.e. a transparent attempt at making comics academically acceptable) is in the Serra da Capivara National Park in Brazil. The oldest cave paintings in the park could be anything up to 25,000 years old, which predates human settlement in the Americas, but shush.
So, if you think comics began when the first sequential art was produced, this is approximately 23,061 years older than Superman.
Those scratches are gonna seeeeeeeeriously muck up the resale value though.
The Book of the Dead (1,150BC – 50BC)
The cheerily-named Book of the Dead (or more accurately the Book of Emerging Forth into the Light, but metalheads were in charge of the translation) is a combination of fanciful imaginings of the journey to the afterlife and practical spells to facilitate this process. That’s like an Iron Man comic including fully-working blueprints! Or an X-Men comic with an Open University course in Mutant Studies! Exciting!
So, if you think comics began with the first whimsical fantasy of the nuances of good and evil, this is approximately 3,489 years older than Superman.
Also an early example of superpowered beings with animal masks, another comic book staple
The Bayeux Tapestry (1070s)
The Bayeux Tapestry was an embroidery made in England, rather than a tapestry made in Bayeux, but that’s pretty much just nit-picking. Semantics aside, it’s a badass action comic telling the true story of how King Harold of England got shot in the eye and this great country was overrun by the Normans, which made a nice change from being overrun by the Danes, the Vikings, the Saxons and the Romans. When it was all over, a bunch (presumably) of industrious Brits decided to make a 225ft long dramatic retelling of the Battle of Hastings, because once the fighting was over I don’t imagine there was much to do but sharpen your weapons for the next battle, relive the glories of the previous one and die of dysentery.
FUN FACT: Despite being produced by English workers and depicting a battle in England and the death of the English king, it was taken back to Bayeux in France and never given back. A group of comfortably middle-class but artistically dishevelled town criers took to the streets to loudly declare this “super problematic” and “cultural theft”, and that is how Tumblr was born.
So, if you think comics began with the first ludicrously long continuous fight scene, the Bayeux Tapestry is 869 years older than Superman.
OK, so apparently most of it is just scenes of daily life, but there is a lot of fighting in it too! I swear!
Biblia Pauperum (1462)
Biblia Paupernum is Latin for “Paupers’ Bible”, and I use the Latin to make myself sound more authoritative, so nobody thinks to fact-check this article. Thanks, Latin! Shortly after the invention of the printing press, the clergy decided to make a bunch of easy-to-read Bibles to encourage the poor and uneducated to get to grips with the Good Book. On the one hand, increasing access to education would have been a great boon to the great unwashed; on the other, I can’t help but feel bad for all the peasants who no longer had a decent excuse for all the masturbation and sodomy after the soft blanket of illiteracy was torn off.
Not satisfied with merely combining text and pictures, the Biblia Paupernum also introduced comic dialogue, in the form of scrolls coming out of characters’ mouths. A little ostentatious, but Medieval Catholicism wasn’t exactly renowned for its subtlety. And hey, at least they didn’t go all out with sound effects.
So, if you think comics began with the first juxtapostion of text and images, the Biblia Pauperum is 477 years older than Superman.
This page is titled “Resurrection”, featuring Jonah and a weirdly reptilian whale.
Histoire de M. Vieux Bois (1837)
Histoire de M. Vieux Bois is French for “Story of Mr. Old Wood”, and I use the French for the same reason I used the Latin, and also because the English translation sounds just a little bit dirty. The first of these listed comics to have a single named creator – Rodolphe Töpffer of Switzerland – it tells the story of a man who keeps getting into socially awkward situations, mostly involving romantic entanglements gone awry and trouble with the law, and responds to each new embarrassment by attempting suicide. Wacky!
Histoire de M. Vieux Bois was the first widely-produced comic, sold (I imagine) in apothecaries and barber-surgeries accross France and the USA, alongside such esteemed publications as (I’m wildly speculating here) Cutting-Edge Steampunk Fashionand Women’s Weekly Lol Jk Women Can’t Read. It expanded the market for comics, making sequential art a popular medium among the general population. I would have more respect for Töpffer had he not described his work as appealing mostly to children and the lower classes, thus kick-starting the stereotype of comic book fans as unemployed and immature. Good work Töpffer, you wanker.
So, if you think comics began with the first mass-published creator-owned original comic, L’Histoire de M. Vieuz Bois is 102 years older than Superman.
That last panel makes me think this isn’t actually meant to be funny.
The Katzenjammer Kids (1897)
The Katzenjammer Kids, written by Rudolph Dirks and drawn by Harold H. Knerr, first appeared in American Humorist magazine, the Sunday supplement of the New York Journal. It’s widely claimed to be the first comic strip to use modern-styled word balloons, but I would argue that satirical cartoons of the 1700s were the real pioneers… although the lettering in the latter is basically illegible, so maybe there’s a point there. The Katzenjammer Kids still runs to this day – albeit after several changes of title, creative team and publisher – most recently written and drawn by Hy Eisman and published by King Features.
So, if you think comics began with the first long-running, regularly-released ongoing comic strips with recurring characters and the occasional reboot, The Katzenjammer Kids are 42 years older than Superman.
My favorite character is the parrot who acts as a bleak harbinger of doom as the mother beats her children. Seriously, that parrot does not give a fuuuuuuuuuuuck.
The Shadow (1931)
The Shadow started life as a spooky announcer for the radio adaptation of the Street & Smith comic Detective Story Magazine. Listeners grew to love his sinister voice, and kept asking for the Shadow Detective Magazine- so Street & Smith figured they should probably make one. And here we thought pandering to the fanbase was a 21st century invention! So writer Walter B. Gibson was hired to take the radio persona and adapt him into a crimefighting pulp hero.
With his genius-level intellect, expert marksmanship and peak physical condition, plus an affinity for stealth and disguise, and a network of support agents such as socialite Margo Lane and reformed mobster Hawkeye (no relation), he battled mad scientists and super-villains with names like the Voodoo Master, Dr Z and the Silent Seven.
The Shadow currently has an ongoing series over at Dynamite, written by Cullen Bunn and arted by Giovanni Timpano, if you feel like seeing him in action. I seriously cannot overstate how incredibly awesome this guy is.
So, if you think comics began with the first guy to give himself a secret identity, cool codename, sweet costume and gimmicky way of fighting equally ridiculous criminals, I would say that’s a tricky one. But The Shadow is a full eight years older than Superman.
And infinitely more awesome than Batman could ever hope to be. Truth.
Convention season is fast approaching. That means a veritable plethora of conventions, fests and other assorted geekery to sink your teeth into. We here at Geek Pride will endeavour to visit many of these cons to bring you the low down on them. Everything from the biggest mega Expo’s to the smallest local conventions. If it is on, chances are one of us will be there.
One of the first ones we will be attending this year is a relative newcomer. Stoke-Con-Trent is in only its 4th year and is run on the 17th of April.
Included in the confirmed lineup for this years Stoke-Con-Trent are;
The Fifth Doctor himself, Peter Davison.
The ever fierce bounty hunter, and subject of the even fiercer debate on Who shot first, Peter Blake (Greedo).
From Game of Thrones, none other than Miltos Yerolemou, better known as Syrio Forel.
Joining these stars are other actors from a whole range of TV shows and Movies as well as writers and artists from some of your favourite graphic novels and comics.
As with previous years, there will also be an X-Wing replica on show, an Iron Throne and the Tardis itself.
I will be attending to give you a full run down on the goings on.
In the late 70’s/early 80’s video games ruled the earth. Pixelated adventures such as Pac Man, Missile Command and Space Invaders ate coins across the globe at an alarming rate. The video game giants at the time decided to transfer the excitement of the arcade to the living room.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aNdIILlsh8
A long way from the EA FIFA, NBA Live and Madden franchises
But the industry overreached itself with lacklustre emulations of arcade classics and disastrously woeful movie tie ins such as ET and Indiana Jones (which infamously ended up as landfill in the deserts of New Mexico). Thus, in ’83 video games came crashing down to Earth.
In this well put together and thoroughly educational video, the boys at Ahoy give us an illustrated look at the Video Games Crash of 1983 and ponders the question, could it ever happen again?
Now, in 2016, Atari are bringing back 100 of their most famous classics such as Asteroids, Battlezone and Centipede for Steam, showing a new generation of gamers how it was done, old school style.
Let us know in the comments your favourite classic video game moments.
For those of you who don’t know, Adult Swim’s The Venture Bros is quite simply one of THE BEST animated shows out there and it’s back for only it’s sixth season in twelve years. Hank and Dean Venture are the sons of a caustic super scientist who all live in a Watchmen-esque universe which straddles reality and the popular culture tropes of supervillains and superheroes.
We re-join our titular protagonists as they begin their new life in NYC after inheriting the vast fortune from their deceased uncle Jonas Venture Junior. Now that their status in life has gone up they are reassigned their former bodyguard, “Übermensch” Brock Sampson, as they come to grips with their new found fortune and unwarranted attention from a fresh cavalcade of arch nemeses.
Check out the trailer below.
Much like episodes of Sherlock and My Bloody Valentine albums, new series’ of The Venture Brothers are as rare as ice cubes in the Sahara but that’s a good thing. Unlike other major networks Adult Swim trust writers Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick and do well to leave them alone; quality trumps quantity and it really shows. Venture Bros has a depth and continuity which is rare to see on programmes these days and what’s more it’s extremely funny. Whilst shows like Family Guy and Robot Chicken rub our noses in the pop culture references, The Venture Bros subtlety nods and winks at the zeitgeist; right down to the décor of the sets, directly influenced by the Ken Adam’s James Bond masterpieces. The show by itself is a huge homage to the Hanna Barbera series Jonny Quest and plays on the Boy Scout innocence of the two brothers early on. But as the series progresses it is revealed their state of arrested development is due to the fact they get killed all the time and they are in fact clones with memory implants. Once their army of “pre formed slugs” are destroyed in the season 3 finale their father no longer has the safety net of reanimating them and thus their characters grow into proper adolescents with hang ups and insecurities.
The shows main stars are backed up by a whole host of characters and organisations giving the show’s universe a layered quality and complexity that can only be matched by The Simpsons, which has quadruple the amount of episodes and a thirteen year head start. There are so many that it would be impossible to boil down but, off the top of my head: Pete White, Billy Quizboy, Dr Orpheus, The Monarch, Henchman 21, Action Man, David Bowie (yes he’s in it), Henchman 24, Pirate Captain, Triana, Molotov Cocktease and Col Hunter Gathers are among the finest creations in the series. Even their LGBT characters are refreshingly and lovingly portrayed. Each character is an homage to some form of cult fandom and each character has a full back story with rich histories which intertwine with the core plot.
What amazes me is the lack of following in this side of the Atlantic, not to say Venture Bro’s isn’t watched over here but I feel it hasn’t got the recognition it deserves. Normally the way to gauge the pulse of the masses is to stroll on down to a comic convention and see how many people are dressed in that particular fandom getup. I cosplayed “Henchman 21” with giant orange wings and yellow antennae on my head yet not that many people “got” my costume and I saw no other Venture Brothers cosplayers that weekend. A quick Google of VB cosplayers shows huge meetups at conventions in the States. The show has huge potential for cosplayers as there are so many costumed villains and good guys to emulate. A few people came over and high fived me; we all felt the knowledge that “yes, this show is awesome and we know it!” Kinda like an animated Fight Club. Now with Adult Swim moving to Fox UK in September 2015 and people’s tech savviness to get shows from the US online The Venture Bros is gaining more and more fans over here.
The author dressed as Henchman 21 at MCM October 2014
Normally for a review like this I would throw in my top 5 episodes but with a show of such consistently high quality it’s a near impossible task. I would simply recommended a weekend of binge watching in order to get up to speed with season 6. That’s 66 episodes so far including a few specials thrown in to keep the fans happy due to sparsity of new content . One particular moment that brought a tear to my eye was the Season 4 finale which included one of the greatest use of a Pulp song in a TV show. You’ll know it when you hear it.
The Venture Brothers is the jewel in the crown of the amazing Adult Swim channel which is keeping its track record of excellence on a high with shows like Rick and Morty, Metalocalypse, SuperJail, The Boondocks, Black Dynamite and Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law to name but a few. In short, if you haven’t seen this show it is a nerd’s show, for nerds, by nerds.
SPOILERS for The Walking Dead, consider yourself warned.
I am happy to admit I’m a fan of The Walking Dead, but that doesn’t mean I won’t comment when things are stupid or poorly done. Most weeks I take to Facebook and leave a couple of sentences to convey my thoughts, nothing in depth, just a passing comment. Well after the chase scene antics on the latest episode I immediately felt the need to comment this.
Well it seems I have the power to control the world…or, more likely, someone else had the same thought, because lo and behold youtuber 43eyes has done just that. The Benny Hill theme tune works perfectly with the farcical antics undertaken by characters who are supposed very experienced survivalists. It is beautiful and hilarious, bravo 43eyes, bravo.
Youtube has always had a problematic relationship with copyright and content-creators over its many years of being a video-sharing service. Given that it is a place where many are paid for the content they create, now might be a good time to start examining how to give these content creators more power over their channels. Take Doug Walker, also known to many on the internet as ‘The Nostalgia Critic’. Since his first video in 2007, Doug has up over 300 videos…but, due to Youtube copyright laws, you may be hard-pressed to find them all on his channel. In fact, back in January, his channel was refused monetisation due to a strike made against them by Studio Ghilbi. Strikes are nothing new to the channel, but this time something was different – Channel Awesome was no longer receiving money for their videos due to a single strike on their account, whereas usually their videos would have been limited to 15 minutes and only that. 23 days after contacting Youtube for assistance and receiving no response, this video was uploaded.
Less than a day after the video was uploaded and he publicly shared his video on Facebook, the issue was cleared.
Let that sink in for a moment.
23 days through official channels, and no response. A day after they make that fact public, the problem was fixed.
It has gotten to the point where content creators have been forced to go public with their issues in order for Youtube to respond and fix something which should not be an issue. This should not happen, period.
Two weeks later, following up on his words that “this is not the end” in the previous video Doug Walker uploaded an official Nostalgia Critic video to address the issue of fair use and to start the campaign Where is The Fair Use (#WTFU).
Fun Fact: a day after Doug Walker posted the #WTFU video, Fox sent them not one but two copyright claims for their Happening review. As Doug Walker stated on his Facebook, it just “goes to show how on top of current events their online media department is”.
Following his #WTFU video, many other content creators emerged to voice their own opinions and to condone his efforts to establish
Very important video right now. YouTube’s copyright system has been skewed against creators since its inception but the rampant abuse is spiraling out of control. Some of my favorite channels are being crushed while YouTube washes its hands clean of any responsibility. Without Fair Use, many of your favorite channels would simply disappear (including my own) so please spread the word. Support the creators and support fair use. – Markiplier
Comments and Support for Doug’s videos from other prominent Youtubers
As Doug states in his #WTFU video, content creators across Youtube are facing this problem continuously. I know multiple channels which have had their videos and channels be removed due to copyright claims. So, why is it a big deal now? Well, look at what happened – the power of the people moved Youtube to do more work in one day than Channel Awesome have been trying to get them to for three weeks. We were able to get people to notice simply by speaking about the issue.
So, what now? Now, we don’t stop speaking about it. We talk and talk, and keep this discussion going.
I want change to happen, because I watch these videos and I get enjoyment from them. I want these content creators to finally get the rights they are entitled to – rights which aren’t being fought to be made, but are being fought to be upheld. The Fair Use Law does exists, and is meant to protect those who use copyrighted material for creative content such as commentary, criticism, parody, research, and teaching. So, why is it being so utterly and completely ignored?
I’m Daniel Delargy from Geek Pride, and where’s the fair use?
I’m assuming that we’ve all seen Deadpool by now. We have, haven’t we? Right? Right?!
Yes, of course we have. It was pretty good, wasn’t it? Not the ‘lottery win times a threesome’ that many people made it out to be, and not the incoherent shambles that it could so easily have been without finesse and care from the filmmakers. A solid 8/10, though for a full review you can look here.
I’m also assuming that we all stayed to watch the after-credits scene for Deadpool? We did, didn’t we? Right? Right?!
Wade Wilson’s Day Off
Yes, of course we have.
Anyway, in said after-credits scene, it was revealed that Deadpool (both the character, and by extension the film-making enterprise that surrounded the movie) expects a sequel. Given that the film was Fox’s strongest opening weekend since Revenge of the Sith, it is all but a given that a sequel will be coming. With this in mind, I’d like to review some lessons that Deadpool 2 can learn from other comedy sequels that, well, flopped like a dying fish on a damp boat’s deck.
Don’t just remake Deadpool
The Hangover is quite a good film. Probably one of the funnier ones I’ve seen at the cinema. Daft, asinine, sure, but great nonetheless. An R-rated comedy with famous actors who’d been left out in the wild for a little while that ended up earning serious money at the box office, it was bound to get a sequel.
The Hangover 2, on the other hand, is terrible. Just awful. They took the same premise and plot points from the first film and just moved the location. The characters hadn’t progressed, the comedy remained the same, and it tanked hard.
Producers keen to capture the same magic of a runaway success often believe that repeating the same formula will get the same results, forgetting that what really made the first effort so successful was the spirit under which it was done. Deadpool is great because there was a real focus on getting the character and story right: it feels like a Deadpool comic book brought to life, sappy Hollywood ending aside. They must resist the urge to just remake Deadpool.
Don’t try to create catchphrases
Ace Ventura was a decent enough film, but Ace Venture: When Nature Calls had a decent shot at being a better film… if it hadn’t concentrated so hard on trying to make jokes from the first film into catchphrases. I’m pretty certain ten percent of the script for the second film was copied and pasted.
Chimichangas was said enough times in the first film. Let’s not hear it again.
The fuck did you just say?
Try to evolve the premise
When I asked my fellow Geek Pride writers to name a good-to-great sequel to a comedy film, there were only a few examples. Granted, comedy is a purely subjective medium, but it was a struggle. This is partially because most of the great comedy films are unburdened by expectations and simply get to exist on their own merits. When a second film comes along, the original is inevitably held up as a standard, a comparison that must be beaten.
A second film must evolve beyond the first. To go to comic books for a moment, Iron Man 2 is literally just Iron Man Again. Captain America, however, is a wartime romp with an extended musical number and tells the story of the world that Captain America grew up in, whereas the sequel, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, is about Cap fitting into the modern world. The existing character is well-established, but the setting is so different that the story can go in a completely different direction, whilst still allowing a connection to the first through (hail) Hydra.
Bringing Cable in certainly suggests they’re going in the right direction, and staying true to the comics, but Deadpool’s creators must concentrate on delivering a similar but separate film in Deadpool 2.
Can anyone think of any other bad sequel examples for Deadpool 2 to be wary of? Comment below.
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viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
