Zero: The Reposting

[Invictus]

While most of the Comix! material has been reposted to our new home, there's quite a lot of wonderful stuff from our other universes which also deserve to see the light of day. This is not a call for restarting old (or even completed) universes, but here is the general thread for posting old articles or universe-related stuff that you thought was pretty nifty and would like to share again. I'll lead with something.

Originally from 20XX:

The “Walking Film”

Also known as the post-ironic action-thriller, the “Walking Film” is a genre that attempts to take tired old clichés of the action film genre and exploit them to their logical limits, creating a strange, self-conscious breed of parody that captured the imagination of many viewers (and some critics), securing its place in entertainment history by making cinema audiences not be able to take Hollywood action movies seriously for almost a decade.

The progenitor of this genre was John’s Walk, directed by the now world-famous J. Garro Travand. The film consisted of nothing but the titular square-jawed hero slowly walking away from an explosion for two straight hours. Such a scene, often used by filmmakers during the transitive period between last and this century, already showed signs of tiredness before the Apocalypse, and now the treatment given to the scene in John’s Walk (which was to say, the entirety of the movie) pushed it into patent absurdity. The entire film only used one camera angle during its entire length, focusing entirely on the protagonist and the explosion behind him, constantly flinging pieces of flaming debris that land around the protagonist. Occasionally it would zoom in on him never-changing expression or his bare, oiled chest, and also turn to slow motion during the frequent action scenes where mooks would rush from the side and attack the hero for no reason, highlighting with gratuitous detail how the hero casually overpowers them without breaking his stride. There are also several scenes where the hero inexplicably pulls firearms from behind his back and empty them at some target off screen, while requisite sound effects play. There was no dialogue in the film except for a non-sequitur stream of macho one-liners, which the scriptwriter (also J. Garro Travand) did not bother to distinguish between internal and external monologue. All the while, the explosion behind the hero continues to explode, getting quite obvious to attentive viewers that it was a series of expertly-cut repeated shots. The film ends when the viewpoint suddenly stops and the hero walks into it, and then a blackout followed by credits.

Released by a minor studio with modest hype, John’s Walk generated massive sales and tore the movie critic society in half. While the film was technically competent and excellently paced to be hypnotic, overall reviews were not favorable due to its nature, and many conservative pundits lashed out at it. However, voices of approval came from some critics and academics saw the film as a subversive satire aimed at serious action films selling nothing but sex and violence at the audience, as well as viewers simply did not take the film seriously and appreciated it for its tongue-in-cheek humor value. There is in fact an apocryphal account of one famous blogger who became disgusted by the film’s obvious attempt to exploit his love for action films and walked out. Just after he came out into the fresh air, he suddenly got the film, went back in the theater and enjoyed the rest of it. Huge box office earnings catapulted Travand and John Fernandez, the only major actor in the film, to stardom. After John’s Walk was voted “The Most AWESOME Film of the Year” by the popular Flicks Magazine, Travand announced his desire to do a sequel, although Fernandez declined to stay on because he “didn’t want to be typecast.”

The sequel, Joe’s Walk, was released the follow year, starring the rising Asian star Jenova Chung. Filmed on a much larger budget, the movie showed many technical and stylistic improvements, although Travand refused to compromise his core premise that the there was only one character, and that he was walking away from an explosion. Fully half an hour longer than its predecessor, the film’s main difference from John’s Walk was it managed to portray the entire Campbellian Hero’s Journey in its plot, while the last film practically was an unconnected string of “cool” scenes. Jenova Chung plays Joe, the titular hero of film, and convincingly portrays a character who transforms from a meek, suited businessman (who runs and cowers during the beginning of the film) into a rugged, ragged-shirted hero by the end, taking up the slow, confident gait so familiar in John’s Walk. Because of this, many fans consider Joes’ Walk to be a prequel of John’s Walk. The film also featured considerably more dynamic gunplay and martial-arts scenes than its predecessor, in which Chung dives, rolls and somersaults towards the camera’s direction, but again never ceasing to move away from the omnipresent explosion behind him. The protagonist also shows an unprecedented degree of interaction with the explosion behind him, having actually to dodge some of the flaming debris. All these new elements earned the film a higher critical score than Travand’s initial effort, although many Travand fans turned away from Joe’s Walk because it “compromised the purity of the style”. Nevertheless, the film earned more than double that of John’s Walk, not only turning the franchise into a cultural phenomenon but also spawning a host of copycat efforts. While their premise were the same, critics agree that few of them have the same cinemagraphic flair as Travand’s efforts, or included too many elements that tipped the final product off the fine line between seriousness and absurdity that the Travand films walked.

The world will not see the third Travand film for five years, as the director’s production efforts was haunted by a series of drug scandals and two divorces. But eventually The Walk III: the Final Walk was released with much fanfare. The three-hour epic had an unprecedentedly large budget and featured the largest and longest explosion in cinemagraphic history. Both John Fernandez and Jenova Chung reprise their roles as the “protagonists” of the film along with newcomers Stephanie Watts, Matt Gammon and Todd Sengal, cumulating in a line of five characters that walk coolly away from the explosion, taking on unprecedentedly large numbers of colorful mooks in set-piece fights that border on the ridiculous. The film marks the only in the series to actually have an established setting (post-apocalypse), provided largely by a bombastic, disjoined narrator voiced by Travand himself. The film’s cinematography reached the peak of the franchise, exploiting every single trick that a fixed viewpoint can provide. The sound and graphics work was widely regarded as top-notch, creating a powerful atmosphere which critics called “a living, dying world” despite how the camera never focused on anything but the protagonists and anything that got in their way. Travand had also seemingly decided to revert the plot to a John’s Walk-like affair, stripping it down until nothing remained but a feeling of desperation, urgency and triumph over impossible odds. Despite the lack of any real plot progression which is the trademark of Travand films, the director nevertheless arranged the pacing and the order of action sequences to create a compelling pseudo-narrative that glued audiences to their seats. Critics and audiences generally agree that The Walk III was the finest of the three “Walking” films, although it was later revealed that it was an unfinished work rushed to release by a depressed Travand. The director himself, despite achieving global fame, declared that he was dissatisfied with the film and began an on-and-off re-filming that lasted until his sudden suicide by bomb in an abandoned homestead near the Deadlands a few years later. One year after his death, his re-filming draft was released by his family as The Walk III: the Final Walk: Director’s Cut, adding yet another half and hour to the film’s length and making several major alterations, including a controversial new ending where the explosion finally catches up with the protagonists and consumes them, after which the narrator notoriously utters "To Be Continued..."

The tide of imitators, tributes and parodies did not abate after Travand’s death. They largely capitalized on the success of the “Walking Film” formula established by the trilogy, although many filmmaking newcomers tried to take the genre in new direction. The most notable of these was The Drive by veteran director Abraham Kaufmann, in which the heroes fled the explosion on a tricked-out car instead of on foot. Its budget was more modest than The Walk III, although it did break the record for the longest and most expensive car chase scene, previously held by The Matrix Reloaded. To be fair, the entire film was one long car chase and despite its modest 105-minute length, many critics agreed that it lacked the tension and ingenuity of the Travand films. Nevertheless, The Drive revolutionized the paradigm enough to spawn its own host of imitators, including The Trip, a stoner comedy, and The Last Drive, a touching romantic tragedy that actually included plot and dialogue. The market eventually reached a glut, perhaps hitting some tolerance limit for absurd parody in the American filmgoing population. The result was a massive crash in demand for action movies that lasted almost a decade, spelling doom for not just satiric but also serious action movies. The depression also drove the final nail into Hollywood’s coffin and American films would never again reach so large an audience in the 20th century. The sometimes violent “Serious Backlash” rose to the surface during the end of that decade, and the “Walking Film” genre was relegated to a cultish existence. However, its influence on camera use, special effects and action scenes has already permanently altered the face of modern filmmaking.

John Fernandez himself was catapulted to action stardom by John’s Walk, which led to a short but successful career starring in many other blockbusters, funny or serious. But he may have doomed his own career with his repeat performance in The Walk III, where he irredeemably typecasted himself and fetched an almost unbearably high salary which did not do him well in the subsequent paradigm shift. He has not starred in any major action film since, instead taking on roles in television series and smaller productions, using his fading star power to cameo in non-action films and commercials. Nevertheless, he still has a major cult following comparable to the actor Mr. T back in the 20th century.

[Artemis]

I remember this! I'm glad you brought it back - this is one of the cooler things you've written, 'vic. Any plans to bring back the rest of the 20XX stuff as well? I'd love to read that London Underground one again.

[Shroom Man 777]

Goddamn I love this. Along with the Monster from Mars, this was like my favorite 20XX piece.

[Invictus]

I remember this! I'm glad you brought it back - this is one of the cooler things you've written, 'vic. Any plans to bring back the rest of the 20XX stuff as well? I'd love to read that London Underground one again.

I've no plans the resurrect the universe in its entirety, because as you probably remember, 20XX's concept was ultimately too big for me to grasp. I do have a similar but more strongly focused setting in the works, though.

And since this thread is for requests, here it is:

Minding the Gap

The London Underground is the oldest underground railway system in the world. Planned and built under the watchful eyes of the Technocracy, it was both the future model of public transportation and large-scale efficiency, a demonstrator for the Technocracy’s grand plan towards the self-ascendance of humanity. For the parties who were behind the Tube’s construction and running, its significance varied depending on how high up the conspiracy they were. On the national level, the British government wanted prestige and to “catch up with the times”, a meme engineered and implanted by Technocratic agents. In the Technocracy’s ranks, there are certainly well-meaning gentlemen who wanted nothing more than the betterment of humanity through science. But at their level, even core ideals must sometimes give way to deadly power politics. The London Underground is a potent ritual which has been ongoing for more than a hundred years. Its lines form an ancient geomantic pattern – a pattern traced by the constant passage of thousands of trains and millions of expectant souls. Over the decades, incalculable power has accumulated within its tracks, as expectation has always been what Progress is about. Those with the right knowledge can tap into this circulating power to perform some very significant acts. They say the Technocracy use this power to keep their supertechnology working, or that they will use it to start an uber-ritual that will rewrite reality on a grand scale. The London Underground is not the biggest reservoir of occult power in the world – there are many other metropolitan subways which get a comparable amount of traffic, and endeavors like the American Interstate system simply dwarf the Tube in scale. But the London Underground is still a large enough target to attract the unsavory attention of the other conspiracies, which battle to control, subvert or sabotage the system every day. They say that the terrorist bombings of 2005 were one such attempt.

The people of London only use a small part of the Underground. Everyone knows there are closed and empty stations that can sometimes be seen as one’s train rushes past them. But there exists many more lines and stations than one would see on the map – trains can reach places the public never knew was possible or ever thought existed. Chances are, most of the closed stations are not really closed. The Technocracy has made secret connections to other subway systems throughout the world, allowing their members to travel to any major city in the world in a day. Other lines reach across oceans, under mountains to secret stations scattered in the most improbable places, leading to many hidden strongholds, retreats and warehouses. There are stations under lost lands, mist-concealed Shangri-las (where high-ranking members of the Technocracy occasionally take a vacation) and even one, as they say, on the moon. The time and distance of these journeys are surprisingly short, for the feeling that subways disassociate traveling from the distances and directions of the world above is no mere suspicion. There are also rumors which say that there are some subway lines which are really closed because not even the Conspiracies dared to use them, because they were dug too deep and opened accidentally into a fiery pit…

The age and sheer scale of the London Underground inadvertently made it one of the most occultly significant sites in Britain. Despite the best efforts of its designers, the Tube is a metaphysical crossing which reaches under the surface of reality and brings strange and unnatural things into the daylight. This has made it the favorite haunting grounds of all sorts of strange inhabitants, parasites and predators, human or not. Whole communities of the Underground use the abandoned stations as hideouts and meeting places, while the bolder amongst them travel quickly by slipping onto the secret lines. Others live underground so they can try to tap the vast power circulating the railway lines, an act as risky as stealing copper wire from power lines. Some inhabitants are blind orphans raised by underground rats; some are just ordinary travelers who for whatever reason can’t find their way out. Terrible creatures lurk in the darkness between the stations. There are psychic parasites that can sneak into the passengers’ minds and suck dry their dreams and passions. The electric lighting in the cabins is what keeps them out, so when there is even the slightest power cut, watch out. There are gigantic worm-like creatures that disguise themselves as trains, letting passengers board them. They then return to the hidden track sections which are their lairs, slowly digesting their trapped prey in months. Other trains are real, but they are used to abduct people to secret underground labs run by the government, where passengers receive mysterious implants and continue their journeys with their memories erased. So, when a train arrives observe it closely; check the number and the destination, check for out-of-date models or strange organic qualities. And for goodness’s sake, do mind the GAP.

Fortunately for people, agents of the Conspiracies constantly patrol the tunnels to suppress unusual occult activities and eradicate the more noisome creatures. Transport for London renovate the stations and replace the rolling stock to maintain control and modernize the system to the Technocracy’s specifications. Covert security operations try to evict the illegal inhabitants and bar the way against the occult groupies and conspiracy theorists that sense the significance of the railways. This has so far kept the unsavory underground out of the main lines, which explains why millions of ordinary Londoners pass through the bowels of the Tube without noticing anything unusual. Only close to the end times did the occult activity break out to the surface, adding to the general chaos in London at the time. But overall no-one completely controls the London Underground – it has simply grown too old and too large to be controlled. Some people say the Tube itself is alive, its life processes arising form the system’s incredibly complex operations and its intelligence gleamed from the psychic resonance of millions of souls that pass through its bowels. Rumors have it that the lines connecting the world’s metro subways were not built by the Technocracy, but a result of the Tube sensing its siblings across the world and growing new connections to attempt to meet them. What if the beast grows too much? Or angry? Or a personality? Then only the conspiracies know what to do.