OK, here it is. Here’s the great idea I’ve been humping on about for ages now. But first, let me tell you how it came to be.
It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was at home watching Poirot on the tebly-box. He was doing the usual, using the little grey cells, making Hastings look like a cock, all the usual that you expect from the diminutive Belgian. Oh, and by the way, David Suchet is Poirot. There can be no other. Don’t even come round here with your Peter Ustinov bollocks, or I’ll kick your face off. Albert Finney? Fuck off, more like.
Right, so there he was, and he was doing the “get everyone in a room so I can be clever to as many people at once as possible” bit where he reveals who did it. And then he said something that made me spit my chicken soup all down myself – he said, “There’s just one thing that bothers me.”
Now, if you’re anything like me – and I know I am – then you’ll realise that that is Columbo’s catchphrase. I leapt to my back paws and accused Hercule there and then of channelling other detectives to help him solve stuff. He didn’t answer me, of course, due to him being a fictional character locked away inside a TV, but he knew I had him bang to rights, I could tell.
So I started thinking about how handy it would be if they could work together – and maybe enlist the help of Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Morse too. Why not? So this then became an idea for some kind of film – preferably not starring Arnold Schwarzenegger at all. Say, for argument’s sake, there’s a kid with an eccentric uncle who is absolutely mad on detective stories, and has a great library of detective fiction – literary and cinematic – which he keeps in a locked room in his house. One day he fails to turn up for something, and upon searching his house he is found inside the locked room, murdered! A lightning bolt strikes the house at that exact moment of discovery, and the detectives he so loved all miraculously appear, summoned by the forces of justice to solve this heinous crime, all working together.
Pretty good idea, isn’t it? Well keep ‘em pinned back, because that’s not it.
I then turned to my DVD shelf and thought about what other excellent collaborations could exist of this kind, and I came up with the Ultimate Forces of Good and Evil. Yes, that’s right – it’s capital letters time. We have arrived at the Idea itself.
On the side of Good, we have the Order of Action Heroes. Note, this is not meant to include superheroes as such, that can be dealt with by X-Men, LXG, Heroes, the Marvel/DC universes etc., although it’s not always 100% possible to define what is super and what isn’t. I have however addressed this problem with the following statement: “it’s my list, if you don’t like it make your own.” Saffron and I had a good think, and came up with the following list of 18 members of the Order of Action Heroes:
- Indiana Jones
- Cpt. Jack Sparrow
- Connor MacLeod
- John Rambo
- James Bond
- Harry Potter
- Maximus Decimus Meridius
- Ellen Ripley
- Lara Croft
- John McClane
- Han Solo
- Beatrix Kiddo
- Robin Hood
- Yoda
- The Man With No Name
- Aragorn
- Jack Bauer
- The Doctor
The list was 20 until I typed it just now, at which point I formally kicked out Blade and Eric Draven for being too Super in their Heroism, and being too comic-book generally. This is not about superheroes, and as I say, it’s my list and I’ll cry if I want to. Who would be leader? My vote would be for James Bond, but Yoda might just edge it on seniority.
But our coin only has one side so far. To restore the balance we must flip it over and reveal the Council of Evil. (Insert theatrical evil laugh here.) This has fewer members than the Order, but the accumulated power of this much evil would be pretty substantial. The 13 (there had to be 13, really…) members of the Council of Evil are:
- The Joker
- Darth Vader
- The Master
- Professor Moriarty
- Lord Voldemort
- The Kurgan
- Davy Jones
- Ernst Stavro Blofeld
- Sauron
- Freddy Krueger
- Pinhead
- The Wicked Witch of the West
- Hannibal Lecter
Eh? Scary, huh? Imagine that lot in one room together, all arguing about who should be leader, and who ordered the lobster, and it’s not my fault that Hannibal ordered so much Chianti, I’m not paying for it etc.
So there you go, that’s the idea. It would work best as a series of comics, though a TV-series in the vein of Heroes would work too. I don’t have the resources to work it up into anything useful though, so if anyone wants to use it for anything drop me a line on clive at clivemurray dot com.
Do so without notifying me, on the other hand, and I’ll either sue you into oblivion or get the Council to pay you a visit. Sorry and all that, but it’s not often one has an idea so good as to threaten the very fabric of existence.
As you were,
–c.
You missed off one vital member of your Council of Evil
Oooh, you’re right, I likes it! But there’s just one thing that bothers me …
Vader – should he be up there, given that unlike all of the others he had a last minute moment of redemption? Surely it should be his corruptor Emperor Palpatine instead. If you have any doubts, just ask yourself who has the most evil voice.
Also, can I lobby for “Slippery” Jim diGriz to be in the Order, or is it just restricted to heroes who’ve been in Movies? Plus, Number Six?
[...] I have decided to ratify what I shall now call the First Jones Amendment, so Vader is off the Council of Evil, to be replaced by Emperor Palpatine. I also welcome Number [...]
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