For this week’s FMP work, I chose task 1 – Invent a Superhero for current times. I chose this task as it feeds into the writing and storytelling side of my filmmaking, something I hope to improve and develop a lot. Throughout this blog piece I will be referencing Mark Kermode’s secrets of cinema video a lot so here it is if you haven’t already seen it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000gg30/mark-kermodes-secrets-of-cinema-series-2-1-superheroes

Current affairs

The first thing mentioned in this video is how superheros were first created out of the great depression so I figured the first thing I should do is to pick a current affair that my character/hero will be born out of. It is no secret that we are currently in the midst of a global pandemic and could really do with some super heroes. Despite this, I don’t want to create a superhero born directly from this virus such as Captain Social Distancing or Hand Sanitiser Woman. For me, one of the most interesting things about this whole situation is how it has shone light on many of the issues in our society which have been largely ignored by governments in recent times, one of the biggest being the growing class divide. In the West, the gap between the poorest people in our society and the richest people has never been bigger and it just keeps growing, the poor are getting poorer, the rich are getting richer and no one seems to be doing anything about it because the media and government, the people that run this country, belong to the group of people benefiting from this situation, the rich.

This seems like a much more interesting issue for a superhero to be based around because it is not as black and white as defeating a global pandemic. There are people opposed to ever fixing the problem and in order to fix it it would require some sacrifice. But after all, isn’t sacrifice what superheroes are all about?

Home

It is very common for superheroes to come from distant planets, be it Superman from krypton, Wonder Woman from Themyscira or Thor from Asgard.

These home planets are all very cool but my favourite superheroes are the ones from earth. People like Batman, Iron man or hawk-eye who have lived relatively normal lives (compared to superman and Thor, I appreciate being a billionaire is not a normal life) before becoming superheroes always intrigue me far more than those who are just super. Because of this, my superhero will come from Earth. This is because I want them to be caught up in human politics and have a strong connection to humanity rather than just turning up when we need them. I also want them to represent revolution and change, things that are ingrained in human society.

Many superheroes also come from made up places on earth, most notably Batman from Gotham City. I love this because it doesn’t tie your hero down to a specific area and alienate any of the audience. So, my hero will come from a fictional town in the United Kingdom which has a similar city layout to Rio De Jenairo in the sense that the rich and the poor are very close together. The city center will be very rich and the further out is very poor. My character lives in the poor section of the city. To make things even more general my character’s home city will only be referred to as The City.

Super Power

Now this is the most important part, what will my hero’s super power be? I find that a lot of my favourite superhero’s powers come from their character for example: Tony Stark was a weapons manufacturer so Iron Man is basically a flying weapon, Dr strange was a doctor so he gets mystical powers (because everyone thought doctors were magic in the past) and Black widow was a Russian spy so her superpower is being a total badass.

So, I figured I would take the same approach with my superhero. I want my character to be part of a rebellious movement, fighting against the rich to give power to the poor (yes he is very much inspired by Robin Hood) so his superpower will be that he can manipulate fire, basically a metaphor for the fires of rebellion, it’s quite on the nose but I like it. He will also have heightened strength because almost every superhero does and it will play into my narrative because he will be into MMA (I’ll come back to that).

Now, there are many superheroes who can manipulate fire such as human torch from the fantastic four who can literally ignite himself, Ghost rider who essentially becomes Satan and El Diablo from suicide squad who can spawn fire from his hands (he also becomes this Mexican fire god thing in suicide squad but I’m going to choose to ignore that).

I decided that my Superhero’s powers will be more like El Diablo’s as his character is also from a poor background, was in a gang and is very against using his powers, something I want my hero to come to be over time. Also suicide squad was one of the most awful films I have ever seen but I really liked El Diablo’s character so I thought I’d pay homage to him a bit as he was the only thing I enjoyed about that film.

I also want my Hero’s power to be a metaphor for gun violence so he’ll be able to shoot it out out of his hands like El Diablo but will not be able to set himself on fire like the human torch or ghost rider.

Name

A superheroes name is very very important and almost always has direct connection to their powers. So the first thing I did was to go over to google translate and type in fire, flame, ignite, etc. I translated to Portuguese as part of the story is inspired by the Brazilian Favelas. Two of my favourite results were Fogo (meaning fire) and Acender (meaning ignite). I loved the simplicity of Fogo but Acender caught my attention for a different reason. Acender looks a lot like Ascender which, in climbing terms, is a device which can be clipped to a rope to act as a foothold or handhold, essentially something that helps people climb. My hero’s goal is to help people climb the societal ladder so in short, it works perfectly.

I felt The Ascender was a little too overbearing and Cocky for my hero so I decided that The Ascender will be the name given to him by the media and how he is referred to by the people but Fogo will be what The Nightmen call him (I’ll explain who they are later).

Of course my hero will also need a birth name and when choosing what this name will be I delved into my history knowledge and chose two men who have made great strides in improving the lives of the lower class throughout history: Edwin Chadwick and William Wilberforce. In short, Edwin Chadwick was one of the first men to ever take the health of the lower class seriously in Britain and William Wilberforce was massively influential in the abolishment of slavery and donated a large amount of his money to various charities. So, thanks to these two men, Fogo’s birth name will be William Chadwick.

Alter Ego

Many superheroes have alter egos and those alter egos come in two types. The first is an alien who adopts a human persona to fit in, like Superman’s Clark Kent. The second is a human who adopts super powers but continues their human person when they are not saving the world, like Peter Parker.

I want William to live a normal life until he is given his powers so he will follow the Peter Parker path of alter ego’s, maintaining his Will/Fogo persona in day to day life and only becoming The Ascender when duty calls.

Origin Story

A superhero’s origin story explains how they got their powers, what their goals and beliefs are, what their weakness is, and why they act the way they do.

The first part of Will’s origin story is loosely based on Tommy Conlon’s from warrior. Will is born to a poor family in the poor part of The City. His mother dies during labour and his father turns to alcohol as a coping mechanism and regularly beats his son. Will is always surrounded by violence and, in his teens, he joins an MMA gym where he develops a reputation for being a fearless and ruthless fighter.

This reputation gets him picked by a local gang called The Nightmen. Their name comes from the role of a nightman in the 1500s who’s job it was to clean the cesspits and privies in towns and cities. The Nightmen joke that they were formed to clean up the mess made by the rich people. The Nightmen are heavily political and aim to wreak havoc on the rich, setting fire to and planting small explosive inside anything they can find in the wealthy sector of The City, they do not kill however, just disrupt. The nightmen are heavily inspired by the revolutionaries from Les Miserables, being primarily made up of forward thinking students.

Thanks to his courage, strength and passion, Will quickly climbs the ranks of The Nightmen until he is in a position of power, able to call the shots without getting his hands dirty.

This portion of Will’s story is inspired by Tony Stark. In my opinion, Tony Stark has the greatest character arc of any on screen superhero, starting off as a corrupt weapons manufacturer and ending up as the savior of the universe. Of course, Will cannot begin as a weapons manufacturer as he is born out of poverty but he does still cause violence and pain to others from the shadows, exactly like Tony Stark when we first meet him.

Now the really important part, How does Will get his powers? I decided I would give in to stereotypes and have Will’s powers come from a very predictable source. Within the heart of the poor sector of The City is a nuclear power plant which feeds power directly to the city center and Will’s father is one of the workers there. An accident at the power plant causes an explosion which kills all the workers and unleashes deadly radiation, not Chernobyl levels but enough to affect the health of the poor people living outside of the plant. Will sees the explosion and runs into the building eventually getting trapped by debris. When he is pulled out a few hours later he finds he is the only survivor. The rich make little attempt to clean up the fallout and many lower class lives are lost unnecessarily.

Fueled by rage, Will and The Nightmen plan an attack on The City’s parliament building. Despite the wishes of the other gang members, Will insists they keep in tact their ‘No-Kill policy’ and only set up a small bomb in a bin outside of the building to act as a warning. Will also insists that he carries out the mission himself along with the leader of the Nightmen, Garra (Claw in portuguese) to ensure everything goes smoothly.

Will and Garra sneak into the city center at night but are caught by security guards. The guards pull their guns out and in the panic Will’s new power takes over and he accidentally incinerates the guards (this is the first time Will discovers his power). In the chaos, Will and Garra flee back to the slums.

In the weeks following the incident, The City places harsh sanctions on the poor as a punishment for what they considered an act of terrorism. Riddled with guilt and confusion, Will leaves the Nightmen and goes into hiding. This upsets Garra who wanted to use Will’s power as a weapon against the rich and incite a full scale revolution. Despite Will’s departure, the seeds of revolution have already been sown and the Nightmen’s ranks are flooded with new recruits and they quickly drop their ‘no-kill policy’ and adopt guerrilla styles of fighting to spread mayhem throughout The City (inspired by the revolution in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay)

At this point Will is forced to decide whether he will remain in hiding or use his powers to save The City from all out Civil War.

Mentor

Behind every great superhero is an equally great mentor, be it Spiderman’s Uncle Ben or Batman’s Ra’s Al Gul, our heroes would not be nearly as super without the people who guide and teach them.

From my limited knowledge of Superheroes and their mentors, I have deduced that their are two different types of mentor, the passive mentor and the active mentor.

The passive mentor is the mentor with little to no knowledge of our heroes power such as Uncle Ben or Martha and Johnathon Kent. These mentors focus more on our heroes heart, helping them control their emotions and influencing them to do good and help others. While they have little influence over our hero’s power they have great influence over how our hero chooses to use that power.

The active mentor is a being who has a deep understanding of our hero’s power and often possesses the same power themselves. They help train our hero in how to use and control their new powers until our hero becomes even stronger than them. The active mentor can also have a big influence on our hero’s morals just like the passive mentor. However, many famous active mentors turn evil once our hero grows in power and it is only when our hero faces them in battle that they unleash their full potential.

For my Story, William will have a passive mentor. I have chosen this because I want superpowers to not exist in my universe before William gets his, to achieve this my mentor cannot have any understanding of his powers.

In Film Courage’s video, ‘How To Write A Great Mentor Character’, Eric Edson outlines six things to keep in mind when writing a great mentor:

1: The mentor can be any person, any age, who passes on skills and/or knowledge.

Will’s mentor will be the owner of his MMA gym, Sean Gunn. Sean is named after Will Hunting’s therapist from Good Will Hunting, Sean Maguire. I have named my mentor after Sean Maguire because like Sean, my mentor will have suffered great loss, a failed career and had a run in with alcoholism. Sean was a promising fighter in his youth but was unable to make it pro because of his problems with alcohol. He will pass on his skills in fighting to Will through Will’s time training at the gym. However, Sean will be unable to help Will develop his fire powers.

Sean’s son was one of the founding members of The Nightmen but was killed by a faulty explosive device on one of their first missions. Because of this, Sean is greatly opposed to the violent techniques of The Nightmen and strongly urges Will not to join them. When Will ignores his advice their relationship breaks down. After the incident at the parliament building, William will turn to Sean and hide out with him. During this time, Sean will open Will’s eyes to the damage The Nightmen are causing and show him how violence is the wrong way of helping the poor and will only serve to make their live’s worse. Ins In the end it will be Sean who convinces Will to come out of hiding and use his powers to save The City from erupting into war.

2: There can be more than one Mentor in a story.

In a way, William will have two other mentors in his story. The first, his father, will inadvertently teach Will what happens if he lets grief and anger control him. This lesson is what causes Will to leave the Nightmen after he discovers his power because he realises they have abandoned politics and are now solely driven by anger over the Power plant accident. Will’s father is directly inspired by Paddy Conlon from Warrior.

Garra will be Will’s final Mentor. As the leader of The Nightmen, Garra will teach Will how to move like a ghost, avoid security, break into cars and buildings and use explosives. Garra will also show Will many secret pathways in and out of The City’s rich sector. William will use of these skills throughout his fight against evil.

3. The Mentor often dies, but not always.

William will be unable to decide whether to follow Sean’s advice and become a hero or stay in hiding out of fear of his powers. Luckily, Will’s decision becomes a lot easier when Sean is killed in the crossfire of a small skirmish between some members of The Nightmen and The City’s police. This will be the inciting incident that inspires William to become The Ascender.

4. The Mentor gives the hero a life saving gift.

Because of his son’s involvement with The Nightmen, Sean knows a lot about Garra and who he is on the inside. In his dying words, Sean tells Will never to trust Garra and to always fight only for the people. This advice will eventually save Will’s life when Garra turns evil later in the story.

5. The Mentor can be dishonest, immoral, or a reprobate

Will’s two other Mentor’s tick this box for me. Will’s father loses his morals to alcohol and Garra, while following a strict moral code, is very dishonest.

6. The Mentor can be negative and teach the wrong way to do things.

I decided I wouldn’t have Sean teach Will anything wrong because Will will open with such a skewed view of reality that he really needs someone to come in with all the right answers, someone like the great Master Yoda perse who only appears for a short amount of time but has all the right answers.

The Villain

No Hero is complete without a great Villain. Be it Magneto, Lex Luther or even Thanos, every superhero has their arch nemesis who they must face off against in order to win the day.

As I have already mentioned, the villain of my story is going to be Garra, the leader of The Nightmen. I have always loved villains who dip in and out of ally and antagonist such as Magneto or Loki but the actual inspiration for this dynamic is from Rapman’s Shiro’s story.

In this short film (the first of three parts) it is revealed that Shiro’s best friends Kai has been going behind his back the whole time and at the end of the video Kai becomes the antagonist. I loved this twist when I saw it and decided it would be an interesting dynamic to put into my film.

After the incident at the Parliament building Garra will reveal to Will that he has been planning a full scale war for years and has slowly been building a massive arsenal of weapons including Bio-weapons that he will arm The Nightmen with when the time is right. Garra hadn’t told Will this because he was afraid Will would oppose it but after the incident at the Parliament building Garra knew a war was coming so he tried desperately to get Will on board with his plan. Of course Will refuses and goes into hiding with Sean.

Garra then gets worried because he is aware of Will’s power and orders The Nightmen to hunt him down while also gearing up to start the war with the upper class, transitioning him into the story’s villain.

Of course, it is very important to write a good superhero but in my opinion a well written villain is far more important to a great superhero film. For me, the greatest written villain of all time is The Dark Knight’s take on The Joker. I watched a video by The Closer Look (an incredible channel) outlining how to write a great villain but connects it directly to The Joker and I figured now is the perfect time to revisit that video.

The first thing mentioned in the video is that the Villain should have more power than the Hero but you should shy away from making it the traditional form of power such as money. Some of Garra’s power will come from The Nightmen but most of his power will come from his reputation and favour with the lower class. Despite his actions having negative repercussions for the poor, Garra will be a well known and loved figure and this will give him a lot of power over Will. Will is trying to save the poor but the poor love the man he is trying to save them from. That dynamic seems quite interesting to me and I’d be curious to see if it would work in a Superhero movie. Of course, once Garra reveals he plans to execute all the upper class he loses favour with the masses and this helps Will to defeat him (because the whole message of the story is how much power we have as long as we stand together).

The second thing talked about is that the Villain has to have a good motivation. Garra’s motivation will be that he is trying to overthrow the rich and take control of the City himself so that he can improve the lives of the poor. This is a strong motivation in my opinion because he has good reason to hate the rich as they have treated him and the people around him terribly for all of his life. This is also the biggest reason why I decided to have Will be a part of The Nightmen in the beginning, so that I could invest the audience in Garra’s motivations and goals so that they could relate to him a lot more even when he turned violent.

The part of the video that has influenced me the most is when he outlines how Batman and The Joker’s goal is the same yet their philosophies differ. I tried to recreate this a bit in my story. Will and Garra both aim to improve the lives of the poor but their methods of doing that are completely opposite. Garra believes war is the only option and The City will only be free once every member of the upper class is killed. Will, on the other hand, knows that simply removing the upper class is only a short term fix and if they want to really improve life for the poor they have to fight diplomatically and turn the rich to their side (he learned this from Sean). Also Will is opposed to killing people.

The next part states you should let your Villain have victories. Of course I cannot write such a brilliant plot like The Dark Knight that has the villain win no matter what in such a short amount of time but I will still give Garra little victories. He will win the favour of the people, he will successfully start the war and he’ll even successfully overthrow the leaders of The City and put himself and The Nightmen into power. But, in the end, I cannot let Garra win outright because I haven’t written my characters or plot to allow that to happen so The Ascender will succeed in stopping Garra carry out his mass execution of the upper class and will also succeed in helping the lower class see the consequences of war and convince them that changing society is easier when we all work together.

The video ends by stating the importance of making your villain believable and I tried very hard to make Garra’s character and motivations believable but you can judge whether I succeeded or not.

Now I’ll quickly explain why he is named Garra, it is because he loves fighting in close quarters and wears gloves kitted out with claws (inspired by black panther) and I think I mentioned earlier that his name means claw in Portuguese. It is also a loose metaphor to knife crime.

Side Kick

Ah, the trusty side kick. No hero is quite complete without their sidekick so I thought I’d give William his own one. Most sidekicks in superhero films tend to be super themselves; Batman’s Robin, Iron man’s war machine and Captain fantastic’s whole crew are cool and all but my favourite sidekicks are the one’s without super powers, the ordinary folk. I’d say my favourite sidekicks of all time is Commissioner Gordon from The Dark Knight (can you tell I love that film). I love Commissioner Gordon’s character because he’s just a normal person trying to do what he believes is right, no super powers or anything, just like you and me. To honor the legendary Commissioner Gordon, my sidekick will only be referred to as James (Gordon’s first name)

The one danger with making the poor support Garra in the beginning is that it runs the risk of making the poor people look like the bad guys at the start. To try to avoid this I will have my sidekick represent a small pocket of the lower class that doesn’t follow Garra, showing that they do exist.

James will begin the story as a low ranking member of The Nightmen but turns against them when Garra reveals his murderous plan (inspired by Finn from the Disney Star Wars films) and goes to find Will after he learns that he also left The Nightmen.

James was also the only other member of The Nightmen to attend Sean’s MMA gym and was actually the one who made Garra aware of Will and helped him get recruited. Because of this James is able to track Will down and teams up with him. James never actually outright leaves The Nightmen and remains in their ranks acting as a spy for Will.

When designing James’ character I got inspiration from another video with Eric Edson but I didn’t follow it quite as religiously as I did when I was designing Sean.

Love Interest

I wasn’t sure whether to have a love interest into my story but I watched this video by Terrible Writing Advice and they insisted all stories should have a romantic subplot so I decided I’d follow their advice.

If I’m being completely honest I cannot think of any superhero love interests that have particularly interested me so I’m going to try design one from scratch. However I will be drawing some inspiration from other films just none from other Superhero films I have seen.

Like James, Will’s love interest will represent those who oppose Garra and she will do this by belonging to an anti-war movement amongst the lower class. Her looks and bravery is inspired By Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, because of this I will call her Katie.

She will come from a slightly better off family than Will but still be in poverty. My inspiration for this is actually from a book I studied for my GCSEs called The Secret River where the protagonist William Thornhill marries a local girl who he perceives as being quite well off but is actually struggling for money just like him (that’s not a massive part of the plot I just liked the idea).

Like Katniss Everdeen’s romance with Gale in the hunger games, Katie and Will were childhood sweethearts but Katie was forced to break up with Will after he joined The Nightmen as she disagreed with their methods. Will accuses her of being too sheltered to appreciate how much the poor are struggling and they do not speak for a long time. After the death of Sean, Will seeks out Katie as he has nowhere else to hide from The Nightmen and eventually he tells her of his powers.

Throughout the story their feelings for each other will quietly grow again but in the background.

I do not want Katie to just be a love interest though which I why I made her a part of the Anti-War movement. She will eventually play a massive part in turning the population against Garra once he reaches power. This is inspired by every love interest in a superhero film which hasn’t just been a love interest.

Costume

I won’t go into massive detail over The Ascender’s costume because it’s not my speciality. However I do want it to be similar to that of David Dunn from Unbreakable in the sense that it is just normal clothes fashioned into a cool look.

One thing I am sure about though is I want him to wear a stab-proof vest as a direct shout out to Stormzy’s look when he headlined Glastonbury. Stormzy’s peaceful way of protesting the elite upper class is a big inspiration for Will’s character.

Theme song

The final thing a superhero needs is a badass theme song. I don’t have one particular song in mind but if I was to have a collection of artists write a soundtrack for the film the first people I would go to would be Royal Blood, Idles and Rage against the machine. I need a song with political undercurrents but a great energy and passion and I think those artists could really deliver on that.

The song closest to the sound I’m looking for, however, is Royal Blood’s ‘Out Of The Black’. I also love the title because it connects to Will leaving the Nightmen which is a cool coincidence.