The Dark Knight - Christopher Nolan (2008)

Rating: 10/10

When confounded by the mayhem that The Joker unleashes on Gotham City, and the ever-growing knowledge within himself that the people of his city are as prone to criminal urges as any super villain, Bruce Wayne builds a surveillance system that lets him keep an eye on everyone. This happens towards the end of the film. The idea that heroes with very powerful moral convictions about justice and freedom could lose faith in those very ideals is one of the big underlying themes of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. This film, more than any other graphic novel adaption sees the true potential of the medium which thrives on polarized archetypes - the good guy and the bad guy, the superhero and the supervillain. By using these archetypes to discuss the meaning of justice, vengeance, and very human flaws, The Dark Knight breaks from it’s genre trappings as a superhero movie and becomes an almost Shakespearean epic that works on every level.

I use the word ‘almost’, because the movie is not without it’s share of problems. There are subplots that don’t quite fit into the narrative, there are elements that are a bit too forced, and a large number of dialogues are expository in nature.  But these flaws can be easily overlooked due to the searing performances by the entire cast, a deft script, and the assured direction by one of the best filmmakers in business today.

After the watershed reboot of the Batman franchise with Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan tackles a problem that a superhero can pose to the society - escalation. With criminals being pushed into a tight spot by Batman, the city’s mobsters turns to a “better class of criminal”. And that criminal is The Joker, played brilliantly by the late Heath Ledger. He has no backstory, and he has no motive. He is, in his own words, “an agent of chaos.” He is the anti-thesis to everything that Batman, with his rigid adherence to a moral code, tries to be.

Gotham city has three heroes that the Joker targets. Batman - the vigilante who takes law into his own hands because he does not believe the justice department or the law enforcement is capable of eradicating crime. District Attorney Harvey Dent - the “White Knight” who fights to bring justice using the law. And Lt. James Gordon - a policeman who fights the criminals on the street along with the corruption that exists in his police force. What these three men have in common is the desire to bring order to the city. And what Joker tries to do is break that order and break the three men. He breaks them by targeting their loved ones and the ideals they stand by. He tries to show that when pushed to the limit, the innocent will make the same decisions that a criminal would. And throughout the movie, Joker creates numerous situations where he tries to and sometimes proves this hypothesis.

When Bruce Wayne faces a villain of Joker’s caliber, he sees what Batman would have to become to stop him. He realizes the Batman isn’t enough to inspire people, and that in the new DA, Gotham finally has the true hero that it needs. Harvey Dent’s story arc is the backbone of the movie. It’s his rise and fall that underscores the film’s grand theme, which is defined in Dent’s own words - “that you either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” And true to those ominous words, seeing the futility of his struggle to bring justice using the law alone, Dent becomes Two Face -  a man who kills based on the outcomes of the toss of a coin. What pushes him over the edge of sanity is the realization that everything is merely a result of chance.

Heath Ledger’s interpretation of the Joker is the greatest performance in a movie so far, this year. His eyes are filled with malice and he walks with his head bent a little forward, like an animal on the hunt. He licks his lips, swallows his saliva and always has an eagerness for a kill. It’s an amazing transformation for an actor known for his melancholic performances. Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent gives the DA’s story poignancy and tragic gravitas. Gary Oldman plays Lt. Gordon as a hardened policeman with rigid convictions. Michael Caine is delightful as Alfred. He plays the servile butler with an ironic glint in his eyes, knowing that he is more than that, that he is a father figure and a mentor to Bruce Wayne. Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox adds credibility to a minor role.

Surrounded by loud performances, Christian Bale is easy to overlook. As in all his previous films, Bale is a very generous actor. He enhances the performances of his peers. It’s his understated performance as the angst ridden Bruce Wayne and the vigilante Batman that holds the movie together.

Christopher Nolan arranges the movie around easily discernible cores. There is the love triangle between Dent, Wayne and Rachel Dawes - played with fiery presence by Maggie Gyllenhaal. There is the ideaological battle between Dent, Gordon and Batman on fighting crime. And then there is the conflict within Wayne about his chosen path as Batman. The Joker is the instigator, commentator and often the catalyst for all these conflicts. The result is an action packed philosophical journey into darkness, out of which only a few of the major characters come out and that too damaged and transformed.

The Dark Knight is being sold as the best summer-action-blockbuster-superhero movie ever. That is not enough of a description for this film. What is being overlooked by the marketting gurus and the media reviews is how much more than that this film is. This is a groundbreaking film - audacious in it’s ambitions to discuss grand themes using well established characters, and inventive in it’s execution of these ambitions.

Director: Christopher Nolan Writers: Jonathan Nolan (Screenplay) and Christopher Nolan (Screenplay) Christopher Nolan (Story) and David S. Goyer (Story) Bob Kane (Characters)

Cast: Christian Bale - Bruce Wayne/Batman Heath Ledger - The Joker Aaron Eckhart - Harvey Dent/Two Face Michael Caine - Alfred Pennyworth Maggie Gyllenhaal - Rachel Dawes Gary Oldman - Lt. James Gordon Morgan Freeman - Lucius Fox Language: English [IMDb Profile]

WALL·E - Andrew Stanton (2008)

Director: Andrew Stanton Writers: Andrew Stanton Jim Capobianco Cast: Ben Burtt - WALL·E Elissa Knight - Eve Language: English [IMDb Profile]

Rating: 10/10

I will say this at the onset - WALL·E is one of the most rewarding experience I’ve had watching cinema this year. What Pixar has achieved here is something monumental. It is an ode to cinema, specifically an ode to the silent era of cinema. Andrew Stanton and his crew have created one of the most lovable and unforgettable characters. The film tells a decent story, it tugs at all your emotional chords, and as an animated film it pushes technology and storytelling within this genre to a new level. This is by far the best film from the studio that also brought us The Incredibles and Ratatouille.

WALL·E, which stands for Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth Class, is a robot left back on Earth to clean up the garbage after the planet becomes un-inhabitable for humans. WALL·E is the only surviving robot 700 years after the humans leave. The film opens with epic wide-angle shots of the desolation that Earth has become. Piles of garbage covers the planet’s surface. And in between these mountains of filth, WALL·E goes about compacting trash and stacking them on top of each other on a daily basis. His only companion is a cockroach, and he kills his free time watching a video on an iPod.

WALL·E’s routine is interrupted when a massive space-craft drops a robot named EVE (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) near his home. He falls in love with EVE the moment he lays eyes on her. EVE’s directive is to find vegetation on Earth, which would enable humans to come back and re-occupy the planet. WALL·E gives EVE a tiny plant that he had found inside a refrigerator. The film follows WALL·E and EVE as they try to get it to the captain of the spaceship in which humans are staying. Standing in their way is a highly intelligent robot controlling the ship’s autopilot. Humans at this point have reduced to fat lazy hedonistic beings who are well taken care off by a large array of robots on the ship.

In terms of narration, plot and the audacity of making a largely silent film, Pixar has taken many risks. But they stick to the tried and tested when it comes to character design. There is a subtle resemblance between WALL·E and ET, and between the autopilot AI and HAL. However, this comes off more as a tip of the hat than mere aping. Visually the movie is splendid, not just in terms of the models, texture and animation, but also in terms of the camera. Though animated, the visual frames mimics those made by  wide-angle lenses perfectly. The saturation and color tones are balanced to make the frames gritty during the sequences on Earth and highly sterile and cold during the sequences in space.

The things that really stand out in the movie is the attention to detail and character development. You will genuinely fall in love with the characters. Though technologically the film pushes animation to a higher level, in the end it is the very human emotions that will stay with you. It’s almost Chaplinesque in it’s innocence and pathos.

Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul - Fatih Akin (2005)

This is not a reviw per se. I just watched Fatih Akin’s [IMDb link] Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul, a brilliant documentary about music in Istanbul. It’s a collage of the different styles of music co-existing in Turkey. They say that Istanbul is where the West ends and the East begins. And the film captures this clash of culture and music in a very personal way, with honesty and directness.

I just wanted to share a couple of videos of some of the songs from this documentary.

Aynur - Ehmedo

Siyasiyabend - Boyle Olur Mu

Mongol - Sergei Bodrov (2007)

Director: Sergei Bodrov Writers: Arif Aliyev Sergei Bodrov Cast: Tadanobu Asano - Temudjin Khulan Chuluun - Börte Odnyam Odsuren - Young Temudjin Honglei Sun - Jamukha Language: Mongolian [IMDb Profile]

Rating: 9/10

The story of Genghis Khan as we know it from history lessons in school, is a bloody one. He conquered and amassed the largest empire in history. Clearly, such a feat could not have been achieved if he had not been ruthless. Sergei Bodrov’s Mongol is a historical epic about the rise to power of Genghis Khan. Bodrov’s Khan is a romantic and affable hero, who started a war to win back a woman he loved. And in the long tradition of historical epics before it, Mongol chooses to focus more on the mythology around it’s protagonist over dry history. The film succeeds by balancing both the historic and the legendary aspects of a hero that clearly requires an epic film to tell his story.

The film begins in midias res with Genghis Khan in a cage. The narrative then becomes a flashback about his young days - with young Temudjin (Genghis Khan’s name) being led by his father Esugei Khan to choose a bride for himself from one of the stronger tribes in the region. Esugei tells his son that a good wife has powerful legs and narrow eyes. Temudjin selects Borte, who is 10 years old, and 1 year his elder. She is from a weaker tribe. Though initially reluctant, Esugei accepts his son’s decision because it is evident by this point that 9 year old Mongolian boys of the Steppes are almost as mature as the men. Esugei is poisoned on his way back, and Temudjin is proclaimed the new Khan.

Upon returning home, he finds his father’s men looting his family assets - sheep, horses, leather skins etc., because the Khan is dead, leaving a weak young boy as the ruler in his stead. In a fit of rage, Temudjin’s mother screams at the looters saying that her son would grow up to avenge this atrocity. Temudjin becomes a hunted boy after that. As he runs away from home, he befriends his future rival Jamukha, who helps him to escape his pursuers. Temudjin grows up as a vagabond, and returns home to claim his wife and his rightful place as the Khan of his tribe. He eventually becomes the Khan of all of Mongolia.

The flashback narrative is driven by a powerful voice-over by Tadanobu Asano, detailing the childhood of Genghis Khan. Odnyam Odsuren gives a very understated and mature performance as young Temudjin. Asano’s depiction of Genghis Khan as a romantic, madly in love with Borte is convincing and believable even though the love story takes place surrounded by violence and arid landscapes. Khulan Chuluun as Borte is both a fragile lover, as well as a fiercely independent and resourceful woman.

Other than a few instances of deus ex machina, the film is flawless. The plot is engaging, the characters are well etched, and the surroundings are well rendered. The film is driven by it’s rich, vibrant and meticulous photography. Tonally, the colors are saturated perfectly to provide an even contrast between the lush and sparse Mongolian landscape. Bodrov’s use of wide angle lenses - inevitable in epic films - is actually quite inventive. The film is well paced - mixing brutal battle sequences with evocative meditations on Mongolian lifestyles in the Steppes, providing a subtle and richly layered character study of a ruthless warrior.

Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered

After reading The Prestidigitator’s most excellent review of The History Boys, I went ahead and downloaded it. The film is wonderful, but flawed. It is highly delightful, and intellectually engaging, but lacks a firm direction. It’s more a film of ideas.

Below is a video clip of one of the songs that a character, Posner, who is a homosexual sings - Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.

One link lead to another. I heard the same song covered earlier by Sinatra and LaBelle [link], Ella Fitzgerald [link], and exceptionally by Silje Nergaard [link]. But the one I really liked is Rita Hayworth in Pal Joey -

Here’s a list of all the covers from Wikipedia [link]. Most of them are available on YouTube.

p.s. Do I have to mention that I fell in love with Rita Hayworth?

Fruit of a Long Wait

Guess what daddy found in Barnes and Noble yesterday?

Fresh off the press and I managed to get my hands on the new Salman Rushdie book - The Enchantress of Florence. Early reviews and my own foray into the first three chapters already hint that this will be an incredible read.

The third chapter was published as a short story in The New Yorker. While reading the short story a couple of months ago, I had a feeling that it belongs within a larger story. And it does. I’ve just finished reading the third chapter, and so far Rushdie has pulled off another virtuoso performance. Fantasy, History, Magic Realism, Hyperbole, and all the other elements of his ouvre are on display here. And boy, does he mix it up so deliciously.

All right, I have to get back to reading.

Memorial Day Weekend Trip: In New York like the New Yorkers

“Lesser mortals go to Times Square to look with awe upon the temple of capitalism,” said Baphie, “but we went there looking for a place to pee.” Daedalus had began digging into his pan seared salmon. Outside Clyde’s, the rain had started falling gently. Baphie felt sad that the trip had ended so soon. “Do you think we would have had more fun in New York if we had gone to all the touristy places?” asked Daedalus. It was an interesting question, thought Baphie. He said, “I don’t know bro, what would you have rather done - take a trip to the Statue of Liberty, or gone to a cheap pub and gotten drunk?” Daedalus gave it some thought and said, “Well, the pub was fun. I guess that was mainly because we went with a good crowd.”

“Isn’t that how it always is? No matter what trip or journey you go on, aren’t the best things that happen to you happen when you are with a wonderful group of people?” Baphie asked, pondering both the large philosophies of life, and the larger question of whether he should have another beer. “Hmm, journeys are not so much about places then. It’s all about the people you meet eh?” Daedalus asked, chewing on the juicy fish. “Well said mein freund Deutsch ohne gehirn, and that calls for another round of beer!” shouted Baphie. And then waving extravagantly at the waiter, he shouted, “Garçon, two more pints of Guinness Stout.”

***

Baphie woke on Saturday morning with the taste and smell of stale beer in his mouth, a slight headache, and the anticipation of a visit to New York City. They had to make a pitstop at one of Baphie’s uncle’s place to help him move to a new house. Daedalus and Baphie had a quick breakfast and headed for the uncle’s home with Tank behind the wheel. Tasha and Banana had left in the morning to their home so that they could sleep properly before the trip to NYC.

You can take a boy out of the war, but you cannot take the war out of the boy. Tank drove his car like he was in a combat zone. But unlike real combat zones, where vehicles had to be driven carefully, avoiding bombs and attacks, Tank’s combat zone had long days spent patrolling deserts and evenings spent playing video games. Thus Tank drove at nothing less than 100 mph, to make up for the harsh reality of a mundane war. Daedalus sat relaxed and pensive in the back. Baphie gripped his seat, his heart pounding at the suicidal antics of his cousin. Perhaps, Baphie thought, Daedalus remained so calm because he had accepted his fate of death in a stranger’s car.

After helping his uncle move, Baphie, Daedalus, Tank and a few other cousins played cricket. Baphie, a man of words and no action was tired and sleepy by evening when Tank said, “Let’s go to New York.”

They picked up Tasha and Banana from their home, and Tank decided to drive Banana’s Camry instead of his car. Banana was some sort of NYC Wallstreet whiz kid. She was being paid an exorbitant amount of money to sit in a nice office with a killer view, and play on her Blackberry. New York City was her witch’s lair, Tank had said.

They found parking after a long drive around Manhattan. Baphie and Daedalus awed at the scale of the city and it’s buldings, and also at how close everything was jammed up together. The Big Apple. The Melting Pot. All true.

To begin the night of fun and frolick, they decided to get a little drunk. And so they did - in a bar, with a cute bartender who looked like Anne Hathaway. Baphie and Daedalus drank things straight up, things in cocktails, and things that were in between - including a sorry excuse for a Guinness beer. Baphie was very particular about how his beer should taste. And the bottled crap was nothing close to his beloved Guinness. Baphie also loaded up on a lot of Red Bull because of all the hardwork he had done during the day, which was now tiring him. They then took a walk down Wallstreet - an empty collection of roads and building at 12 am looking like a set straight out of a disaster flick, and ground zero - an empty vacant space which, Baphie thought, did not have the gravitas of a place that led to so much blood.

After an hour or so of walking, the five found themselves in the same pub, drinking more voraciously. Daedalus and Banana were all over the jukebox providing a playlist of ill-fitting and often jarringly contrasting music. But it fitted the mood -  a mood of extravagant contrasts - very well. Baphie, at one point, in his drunken stupor, sang along to Madonna’s Material Girl. He thought the cute bartender gave him a smile. But then again, it could have been the booze fueling his hubris.

At 3 a.m. on Sunday morning, they went to Times Square. It was windy and very cold. Daedalus, Baphie and Tasha walked around looking for a place to pee. Tank was full tank on booze and asleep in the car. Banana was in the car parked at a ‘no parking’ spot. Finding no place to pee, they returned to the car and urged Banana to drive all of them home as soon as possible.

The journey home was uneventful, and Baphie and Daedalus couldn’t remember what happened. They remember bits and pieces - Banana trying to drive like Tank, Tasha singing an Irish drinking song, ex-marine full tank Tank sleeping like a baby, Baphie’s eyes bulging out of their sockets due to over consumption of Red Bull and Daedalus re-introducing his repertoire of lame jokes.

They woke up on Sunday morning at around noon at Banana and Tasha’s place with the memory of having seen and experienced New York like the New Yorkers do - having lots of fun and remembering half of it.

[To Be Concluded.]

A Lesser Shade of Melancholy

3.

“I was a river once, flowing from Hades. All who drank from me, washed away their memories to begin life anew,” she said. “No one could enter the Elysium fields of after-life without drinking my waters.” She waited, gauging my reaction. I did not know what sort of a reaction she expected from me, so I looked away from her and into the fire. The sound of a lone horse carriage on the cobbled street outside filled our room. I could hear her breathe, and felt her eyes on me. She continued -

“No one stayed on my banks for too long, for they were all in search of something on the other side of me. No one came back to me after they drink from me. How could they? No one remembered me, for I am the river of forgetfulness. I’ve been searching for a companion. I flowed, melancholic, searching for happiness in the arms of many lovers. But every time I met someone, he forgot me the next day.”

She stopped. Maybe she finally caught the look of disbelief on my face that I was trying to hide. “You don’t believe me. I should not have wasted my time telling you my story,” she said sounding quite disappointed. “I’ve heard some wild stories from many places Lethe. I’ve spun many wild tales too. But really, how do you expect me to believe this. You jest of course.”

She laughed and said, “I almost fooled you there for a while, did I not?” But there was something awkward in the way she said this. She sounded like she was trying to save face after a folly. And I felt sort of bad that I did not, nay, I could not believe her. “Come, come, the night is still young. What does it matter where I am from or why I am here? Let us make love till the morning light,” she said. She swayed her hips as she walked slowly towards me. We kissed and made love again.

Something had changed in her after she tried to tell me her story. I could feel that her heart was not in it anymore. Maybe I should have acted like I believed her. But what was done was done. We stopped making love and lay away from each other. I drifted off to sleep eventually.

4.

I woke up the next day alone in bed, she was gone. I could not remember her or what had transpired the previous night. I attributed my lack of memory of the previous night to the absinthe I had probably drunk at The Oneiros. The inn-keeper came up to the room and told me that I had to leave or pay for additional stay. She was a stocky matronly woman. Probably French, I thought, as I took out my bag of coins, which as usual felt lighter than the last time I took it out. “You do not have to pay for last night. The lady has paid for the night. You may leave, or pay me if you choose to stay,” she said in her deep, almost male baritone voice.

“Which lady? Where am I?”

She looked at me as if I had lost my marbles. And then she said coldly, “I do not have time for this. The lady you were with last night, she paid for the room. And this place, if you haven’t noticed, is an inn, and I am the inn-keeper.”

“This lady, what did she look like?” I asked her, confused. She glared at me. I did not ask her anything more. I went to The Oneiros. There were no customers in yet. They usually came later in the evening.

“A bit early for a drink tonight, don’t you think?” Grischa asked, placing a pint of ale in front of me. I smiled and took a sip. “Never too early for a pint of your ale Grischa.”

“How was she, your lady friend from last night?” he asked me. I asked him what she looked like, telling him that I was too drunk to remember. He told me that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. And that he could not for the life of him understand why she chose a drunkard like me for the night.

I left The Oneiros troubled. It was only when I reached home that I noticed a piece of cloth in my coat pocket. It was emerald colored silk, and smelled of long forgotten flowers and freshly cut grass. Slowly, my memory of her came back. I could remember everything.

The memory of that one night changed me. I do not believe her story, for how could I remember her if she was who she said she was. But I longed to see her again. At night, I could feel her next to me sometimes. I remembered the words she’d said - ‘I flowed, melancholic, searching for happiness in the arms of many lovers.’ I realized that all my life, I had been searching for happiness in all the wrong places. And that so far, I had gained nothing.

I could not find any real reason to explain why she chose to spend the night with me. Maybe she felt she’d met a kindred spirit. Because she had been afraid of something, and it was evident that she was running from something too. And so far, I’d been running away from everything, drowning my past in vices, trying to forget so much of what happened to me. And even if she was really was who she said was, I knew I couldn’t forget her. How can you not remember the very things that lets you forget all else? When I was young, I was a fool. And then I realized that there is no such thing as happiness, just lesser shades of melancholy.


The Edge of Heaven (Auf Der Anderen Seite) - Fatih Akin (2008)

Director: Fatih Akin

Rating: 10/10

Ever since I started working, I haven’t been able to watch as many films as I hope to. And from the few films I do end up watching, only a handful turn out to be satisfying and/or engaging. So, when I got my hands on Akin’s The Edge of Heaven, I had very high expectations from it. The reason - his previous film Head-On (Gegen Die Wand) [my review] was a thoroughly entertaining and intellectually engaging work. The Edge of Heaven is slower paced, equally edgier and ultimately a more satisfying work from Akin, which left me deeply moved by the end.

The film is divided into three sections. The first one tells the story of Ali, a Turkish immigrant living in Bremen, who asks a Turkish prostitute to move in with him. Yeter, the prostitute, who calls herself a woman of “easy virtues,” agrees to do so because of threats from two Turkish fundamentalists who view her profession as unbecoming of her culture. She however develops an affinity towards Ali’s son Nejat, who is a professor. The plot revolves around circumstances that lead to Yeter’s death and Nejat’s departure to Istanbul in search of her daughter Ayten.

The second story is of Ayten, who is part of an extremist group in Turkey, forced to flee her country to Bremen. There, she befriends Charlotte, a student at a university where Ayten takes refuge in. Charlotte and Ayten fall in love. The rest is a heart-wrenching story of the inevitability of their love. Charlotte dies in Istanbul after she comes in search of Ayten, who was deported from Bremen. The final story is the resolution of the first two, wherein the characters find catharsis through each other.

Like Head-On, The Edge of Heaven discusses the issue related with the co-existence of people from different cultures, having differing ideologies. Starting from immigrant woe, idealism and loneliness, the transformations that each of the characters go through are wrought so intricately that the result is a very poignant and realistic portrayal of loss and redemption. I was intrigued by the performance of the actors, especially that of Hanna Schygulla, who plays Charlotte’s disapproving mother Susanne, and Nurgül Yeşilçay, who plays the confused idealist Ayten.

Fatih Akin, takes a more challenging stylistic approach with this film. He does not force the three stories to fit, but lets them unfold with a steady pace. He doesn’t impose himself on the characters or the plot. The result is a film that is both thematically and stylistically complex. And a very moving and accomplished work from a promising young director.

[Maelstrom - Chapter 05] Samuel Oslo

No one man should have so much power. I had been trying to piece together as much detail as I could find about Maelstrom. I first saw him on the news when he was called Ironbot. He had stopped a speeding car with his hands. It was unbelievable, seeing a living breathing superhero on the TV screen. It was something straight out of a fantasy.

I was not interested in the suite per se. I was interested in the man. The second time he came on screen was four weeks later, when he saved a plane from crashing. His suit was different, it had been redesigned, and now he could fly. What sort of genius could devise something so incredible? Was it one man, or a team of men? It could very well be a government project. I hoped it was not.

The internet was a massive orgy of discussions on Ironbot Maelstrom. As is the case with most such things, he was being called divine by some and evil by others. Some even called him an extra-terrestrial. But the more I studied the suit and it’s motions, the more it became apparant that he was only human. And I became convinced that I could build a similar suit. Such an endeavor would require resources and time.

I made elaborate design sketches. And it became evident to me that I was quite close to building my own Maelstrom suit. It had taken me only a day to design the suit completely. Maelstrom was on the news almost on a daily basis. He’d brought down the crime rate in the city. This was something I intended to rectify. For every hero, there must be a villain. I couldn’t imagine my city of sin turning into some sort of a cub scout camp full of do-gooders.

It was during the crafts hour the next day that I got my hands on the various materials that would be used to build the suit’s main structure. The cardboard was thick enough. It couldn’t stop bullets like Maelstrom’s armor, but it would have to do for now. I traced out the design on the cardboard and cut the various pieces. I glued them together and marveled at my own ingenuity.

While the other inmates were drooling and working on various silly crafts projects, I was on the way to become a super-villain. As I put on the suit, I could feel myself change. The suit transformed me into the super-villain that I always knew myself to be. The nurse smiled at me. I walked over to her.

“Why are you not afraid woman?” I asked her. She burst out laughing. “Why should I be Samuel?”

Insolence!!! “Because I can hurt you my love,” I said and grabbed her. The guards and male nurses rushed over. But I was unstoppable. I jumped at them with blind fury. The suit prevented the needles of the tranquilizers from reaching my skin. I grabbed the baton from one of the guards, and charged down the hallway, swinging the baton hard on anyone in my way.

***

“These are live images from Clearbrook Asylum, where moments earlier, 16 inmates escaped led by Samuel Oslo. Oslo was arrested 2 years ago for bombing the 23rd Street precint station. Authorities have launched a massive manhunt to capture the escaped criminally-insane inmates. But so far, there has been no…”