i got bored and made my own Cinematic Universe

don't know about y'all but i started my new years off right in quarantine wife tested positive for kovid so we hunkered down for about a week till we were both in the clear i wish i had been given a heads up because i tell you what three days in it starts to get pretty boring i had a whole slew of new year's to-do's that had to be placed on the back burner new videos were on hold until amazon delivered some props i finished all the books i was reading i cleaned and organized my office twice and then it dawned on me austin haven't you been waiting for such a time as this to catch up on the marvel cinematic universe you keep telling yourself that the next broken leg or botched oral surgery or unexpected snow day that leaves you confined to your home will be the opportunity to snuggle up on the couch with some hot cocoa and speed through the thirteen some movies you've still inexplicably neglected to watch from marvel's ever growing collection of interconnected films now's your chance the marvel movies are the biggest hollywood blockbusters of all time and a staple of american culture they tell finely crafted and intricately woven stories across multiple installments featuring state-of-the-art visual effects and breathtaking action sequences and i totally will watch them eventually i promise but even as my coveted stricken wife fired up disney plus and scrolled over to black widow offering me a spot on the couch beside her i took one look at the screen contemplated adding yet another character's backstory to my ever shrinking brain capacity for franchise lore and could not help but think i don't know why i don't know why maybe i haven't watched them because i don't care for particular characters maybe it's because i'm now so far behind that the thought of binging so many movies feels like a chore maybe it's because i feel they're all so perfectly produced that they've become formulaic in their flawlessness boring in their bravado sure thor is technically superior but i'd rather watch napoleon dynamite the winter soldier has impeccable choreographic sequences but orson welles chimes at midnight that'll stick with you rough edges and all what's wrong with me why am i such a movie snob are over commercialized popcorn film franchises just too mainstream for me maybe but on day four it finally dawned on me in my self-imposed isolation i didn't just want to consume entertainment i wanted to create then it hit me i should make my own cinematic universe one that i would want to watch so that's what i did the first thing i needed of course was a ragtag group of superheroes i didn't want some top shelf perfectly crafted caped crusaders i wanted off-the-wall underdeveloped comic book characters and concepts that nobody in their right mind would think to adapt for the silver screen so i went looking in the bargain bin of creativity known as the public domain for those unfamiliar the public domain is a legal realm where no exclusive intellectual property rights exist for a work in the united states select works from 1964 or earlier fall into the public domain if their copyright was not officially renewed by the rights holder when previously legally required to do so why does that matter well from the year 1938 to 1956 the us went through what is now known as the golden age of comic books the superhero genre burst onto the scene and as kids flock to the newsstands and stores publishers took the kitchen sink approach and created thousands of characters and comic book series and had to specifically file paperwork with the united states government to extend those copyrights further and while the big hitters like superman batman and wonder woman obviously got renewed the thing is a ton of these superheroes were complete flops that didn't even last for a dozen stories thousands of characters that these publishers didn't bother to renew the copyright for because nobody was reading them as we speak there is an immense catalogue of abandoned characters that anyone can pick up and begin making derivative works with most of them are trash but you know what they say one man's trash is another man's multi-billion dollar movie franchise i have been combing through these forgotten heroes in search of true diamonds in the rough from which to lay the foundations of my new multimedia empire i'm calling it the bargain bin cinematic universe and this is phase one it begins like every good super team does with a generic milk toast nobody turned a strong man in tights except our guys wearing briefs with leopard print meet jim randall who appeared in daring adventures comic book issue number 18 a wimpy and timid office clerk who finds himself falling head over heels for his employer's new stenographer linda thompson he works up the courage to walk her home one evening and as you can imagine she lives on the city side of town full of young ruffians the pair stumble upon linda's little brother andy getting beat up by a gang and jim two cowardly to act gets his face caved in by a dude named duke not only does jim fail to save the day he is utterly humiliated and loses the respect of linda who's looking for a man not a weak kneed sniveling mouse that night while curled up in bed and licking his wounds jim is visited by atlas the greek god of strength atlas has been watching the earth for a long time and is getting pretty sick and tired of all these cowardly and weak men walking around and jim's timidity was the straw that broke poor atlas's back he berates jim's docile attitude in health life strength are man's natural birthright that you can build your body in the image of mine to you i am part my secret of strength atlas teaches jim and i am not making this up a series of secret exercises that will build his body and give him the strength of atlas jim travels to his uncle's ranch in arizona and starts this divine workout regiment and before page four is even halfway finished has transformed into a magnificent man of muscles and i love this his uncle's like hey one last thing and then he takes his glasses off and he's like you don't need these pathetic things and just throws them away i guess wearing glasses was like a sign of weakness in the 60s there was a war going on before you know it jim dons a leopard printed outfit inspired by circus strongmen returns to his hometown beats up the mobsters stops a train crash causes a plane crash takes up the mantle of atlas and leaves us with these inspiring words chalk it up to strength the kind of strength that anyone can attain through clean living proper training and use for right and justice the comic book then assures us that there is a thrilling action full atlas story in the next issue this is a total lie there was no next issue the publisher knew that they were going out of business and that this would be their last release also interestingly enough the whole issue number 18 thing was also false daring adventures stamped their first release with issue number nine to make the series appear more reputable what i love the most about atlas apart from its period appropriate fascination and over emphasis on masculinity is the frankness with which it sought to instill its ideas on its readership remember atlas's secret exercises well it turns out each issue was supposed to end with our hero atlas giving kids one of these secret strength building exercises to try at home you do enough of those you'll be pole vaulting over buildings too atlas will kick off the bargain bin cinematic experience and give us an opportunity to construct deconstruct and reconstruct the ideas of strength courage and questionable fashion choices atlas man of might but next my friends let's hit up the gridiron and discover our follow-up franchise in june of 1940 novelty press began a 101 issue publication about a college football star turned superhero named the blue bolt fred parrish a star football player at harvard is practicing punting in a remote mountainous region with two close companions when a storm breaks out the three run toward a tree to seek cover but lightning strikes killing fred's friends he manages to reach his small private plane and for reasons still unknown to me rather than just wait the storm out fires his plane up to try and fly out of the mountains a lightning bolt hits his plane enters fred's body and after the aircraft crashes an unworldly scientist named dr bertoff visits the wreckage and uses the electrified body in a radium experiment to create the blue bolt a superhuman with the power of lightning and enlists him in a battle against the evil green sorceress the blue bolt can fly shoot lightning from his eyes and use a lightning gun he's one of the golden age's earliest heroes and was actually created by the guys who would go on to make captain america though the lightning man's comic book run lasted for several years it never really figured out what kind of story it wanted to be the first arc is filled with fantasy elements but as war stories became more popular fred parrish like most 40s comic heroes eventually enlisted in world war ii to fight nazis when the 50s rolled around and readers wanted something fresh they tried shifting the tone of blue bolt comics again into the horror genre but it never really took and the property was eventually abandoned well guess what the bbcu needs a hero willing to go long and a hot-headed wide receiver who moonlights his thor is just what our series asked for bulk's been bumped to the pros in our iteration and he uses his new found abilities to jump start a fading career and electrify the league with a shocking contract season a motion picture that tackles the ethics of selfish superman and what happens to a hero who can't find a villain blue bulls we're totally giving him a better outfit all right by movie three we're gonna need to borrow some box office cloud a certain web slinging superhero might be cemented as one of the biggest draws in movie history but did you know over 20 years before his first issue hit shelves the comic world had another spider-themed superhero that swung around the cityscape meet shannon kane a sort of afterthought hero from the eagle a four-issue comic book series from 1941. the last few pages of each issue was dedicated to one of the few golden age leading ladies the spider queen the wife of brilliant dr henry kane shannon worked as his close assistant during a government-funded experiment when enemies of the state have the good doctor assassinated shannon carries on his work and using his secret formula for super strong spider web fluid creates a set of special web shooting bracelets that allow her to stick on and swing from walls sound familiar yeah the spider queen movie won't just set up shannon's origins it'll start to connect our universe by introducing british agent 99 the master of disguise who we will probably save for phase two we're not gonna get that far but whatever obviously we need to update the spider queen a bit to fit with modern times so we will she'll say words like snatched fam cap glow up no cap bat the bee's knees yeet no bat she'll clap back on tick-tock am i saying any of this right or or we can give her like a respectful cohesive and compelling character arc i will see spider queen this one will bring up legal issues movie number four let's stick with animals i'm feeling it catman [Music] catman does this guy look familiar to you crash comics introduced the character of david merryweather in september of 1940. the merryweathers are a family of zoologists in burma they're killed during an expedition and little baby david is rescued and raised by tigers he learns the he learns the ways of the jungle and when he reaches manhood he saves one of his adopted brothers from death and his tigress mother rewards him by leading him to human civilization when he arrives to america he finds a country full of villainy and evil and decides to take the title of catman in his crusade against crime this makes any sense they don't even like bother to draw any of it they just put it all in one text box this is the back story moving on look we laughed but this thing went on for like 34 issues crash comics ended up making him a headliner for like six years of course the last issue of the comic has him literally jumping a shark of course it does so for the movie honestly i think we handle his backstory just like they did we show a title card for like five seconds and then just jump into the first action scene but if we give the audience enough time to read what's on the card that'd be so awesome catman unleashed no no no i got something better make it a face-off movie with an original villain catman vs mancat and then here's the thing here's the kicker follow me on this we shoot two different endings to the movie one where catman wins and the other where man cat wins we show two different versions of the movie in theaters and we just like never acknowledge it we just let people be confused so stupid i love it next movie this one needs to start setting the stage for the big baddie of the whole series landor the maker of monsters first appearing in speed comics number one it really is just a frankenstein knockoff evil doctor in a spooky castle running creepy experiments to find the secret of life ends up creating a monster monster goes bad chaos ensues you kind of know this story already in the first issue landor is just a kooky and creepy scientist it's actually told from the perspective of two explorers who happened to stumble upon his secret island while he's in the middle of an experiment after the monster gets loose they manage to kill it but a big fire breaks out and landor is caught in the flames the first issue ends with him presumed to be dead obviously he comes back as a creepy ghoul later on this is the kind of story that only works if you camp it up as much as possible i actually enjoyed reading landor because it is a true filler story each chapter is literally just two pages front and back that speed comics drew up and then threw into the publication to make it a little bit beefier and yet it was successful enough to run for 11 issues so just like in the comics arlandor will end his solo movie as a burned crisp but the stage will be set for his comeback as the villain of the bargain bin team-up finale but hold your horses we're not there yet next we need a western imagine a gorilla but with guns [Music] six gun gorilla is like if king kong was an album by marty robbins it's a 15-part 1939 serial about an ape named o'neill who gets taken from africa to the united states and is raised by a colorado prospector named bart masters masters and o'neill become like father and son and the gorilla even learns how to shoot firearms one day masters is murdered by a gangster named tut strawhand and o'neal sets out in a sprawling tour of vengeance if we camped it up with landor six gun gorilla needs to take it even further we are not doing cgi the six gun gorilla is a dude in a latex gorilla suit i don't care how bad it looks that is the point okay one last solo film the last of our standalone movies needs to be stylistically different from all of the others and the only way i want to do that is with little red riding hood now i know this story has been adapted more times than we care to count but it's just so versatile the original tale leaves a ton of room for world building as long as you've got a forest a girl a grandma and a big bad wolf you can pretty much take it in any direction i'm thinking we make a whimsical magical story with a final fantasy nine art style little red gets to grandmother's house but she finds a shortcut there by bending reality and opening rifts in space time and while the first half tells the traditional myth the second half is a mind-bending mix of kabuki theater m.c escher and johann sebastian bach where the disparate elements of our growing cinematic universe are all brought together into the same setting for a grand finale i'm just saying words at this point the phase one finale happens in movie number eight atlas blue bolt cat dude spider queen monkey and little red face off against the final form of landor and his army of homemade horrors seven monsters unleashed on seven continents and just the right number of heroes to save the day the bargain bin cinematic universe teams up in the next great blockbuster entitled i have no idea i don't know i can't think of a good name what do you guys think got a good team name leave it in the comments [Music] why did i do this have i actually been writing scripts for these proposed movies maybe am i going to make them probably not the thing is i think these flicks only work if they are produced with the same hasty and indifferent spirit that the source material was made with back then they were literally just throwing comics together in a couple of days hoping something would click with readers and if it worked they kept going with it if it didn't just throw it in the bin and try something else so for these movies i'm envisioning you take like a first time or a regular reject filmmaker you give them a shoestring budget and like two months tops and you shoot them back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back and you just roll them all out in a single year why am i suddenly so obsessed with this idea i'm not gonna do it this video is sponsored by squarespace they can help you put together a beautiful website in no time start by selecting from one of their many stunning templates and then customize it to your specific needs if you're an aspiring podcaster their audio and video blocks will be right up your alley their all new member areas feature makes it easy to build an online community if you want to sell something they make it easy to set up an online storefront you can get started today by visiting squarespace.com to start a free trial when you're ready to 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Channel: AustinMcConnell

Views: 815,098

Keywords: austinmcconnell, austin mcconnell, austinmcconnel, austin mcconnel, spider-queen, atlas, blue bolt, comics, cat-man, six gun gorilla, little red riding hood, landor

Id: 3gJXg_k5yVU

Length: 20min 40sec (1240 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 24 2022