Thundrax - the Movie

Thundrax – The Movie” was a motion picture that (extremely) loosely depicted the first three years of his superhero career. The script was watered down by the director, and the film is considered a bomb, though an enjoyable one.

Cast

Thundrax: Alexander Skarsgard

Craig Carson: Liam James

Jack Carson: Robbie Amell

Shamus: Bruce Willis

Black Spectre: Željko Ivanek

Dark Prowler: Aaron-Taylor Johnson

Avenger: Josh Lucas

Cryo: Michael Dorman

Flux: Chris O'Dowd

Impulse: Roxanne McKee

Tempest: Jennifer Lawrence

Talon: Lucas Black

Barricade: Omar Sly

Angela Kumiko: Rila Fukushima

RCMP SWAT Captain: Wayne Smith

Eileen Carson: Fiona Shaw

Vanguard: Henry Cavell

Dr. Destroyer Jr.: Kellan Lutz

Voice of Dr. Destroyer: Lance Hendrickson

The movie's original screenplay (by the superhero Smokin' Mirrors) was heavily revised by director Jack Spyder. It had a 70 million dollar budget.

Following the release of the movie, a heavily edited version of the movie was released onto the world wide web. There are reports that an artificially intelligent computer was responsible for the drastic alteration the footage; if so, this would make it the first film extensively altered by an AI within forty eight hours of release.

(The reports were true -- the altered version was done by Kivioq, the AI of Toronto's Starforce team that Craig led in 2002.)

The bootleg version of the movie was immediately pulled from youtube by Warner Brothers, but is still available on many torrent sites. Over two hundred lines of dialogue were restored to the original version of the script, and one critic who saw it stated “it drastically improves the film”. Spyder has not commented on the altered version, but a spokesman for SAG says that Hollywood remains opposed to “unauthorized overdubs”.

Synopsis

There's an ad for “Carl's Gym” (“visit our new Hudson City location!”) and then the movie starts. The WB logo morphs into the faceplate of Dr. Destroyer.

Destroyer: For three months, humanity has lived under the benign rule of the Destroyer. For three months my will has run unchallenged across this entire planet, thanks to my “thought protection satellites”.

Destroyer: For three months, I have allowed you to live with the symbols of the old, obsolete world from which I rescued you, but the time has come for them to pass.

Destroyer: Every church, temple and cathedral will be demolished. Every statue and monument will be toppled. Every flag shall burn. And we will begin with this...

Pan out to show the Statue of Liberty.

Destroyer: In the world of the Destroyer, there is no need for the illusion of liberty. Vanguard, once you stood against me as my greatest opponent, liberty's champion.

Destroyer: Now, destroy her, and bring an end to this foolhardy experiment called – America.

Close up of Vanguard fighting against the command, and then shouting “NO!”

Pull back to show young Craig Carson leaning forward to watch the scene on television, clearly enthralled.

His brother Jack turns it off, and declares that he hates superheroes. Craig objects, “But that was Vanguard!” and they briefly scuffle.

Jack roughly throws Craig back in the chair and tells him to grow up. “But don't you want to be one?” he asks. Jack tells Craig that only one in a million people get superpowers and since mom died, they don't have time for idle fantasy.

Cut to Craig working in a fast food restaurant. A TV news broadcast in a corner mentions Black Spectre and his Brotherhood of Terror running amok.

Craig asks his boss who Black Spectre is. His boss answers that he's a former hero with radiation powers who tried to absorb the radiation at the Chernobyl explosion and went insane.

Craig wanders back after work, sees a woman on the roof of a building, poised on the ledge. He climbs up to talk her down, and she says “you are worthy to possess the power of living thunder!”

A lightning bolt strikes him. He falls from the roof and lands hard. He wakes up, naked, in a hole in the parking lot, in his Thundrax body. He is surrounded by a SWAT team.

An overly long chase scene follows. In the end, after the panicked naked Craig destroys police cars and lots of other property, he is cornered by the SWAT team. Then Black Spectre with his sidekicks Tempest, Talon, and Barricade shows up and casually kills the cops, while Dark Prowler watches and cracks jokes.

Thundrax almost attacks Prowler.

Black Spectre: Enough! From the power you have displayed, this glorious, glorious chaos, you are truly worthy to join my superhuman elite!

Tempest: Love the wardrobe, stud.

Black Spectre: Join your thunder with my power of radiation, and we shall bring about a beautiful darkness and control human destiny!

Thundrax: Huh?

Thundrax jumps away. Barricade wonders if they should go after him, but Black Spectre confidently says that with the police after him, he has no place to go.

Thundrax returns home, and hides in the attic while Jack sits at home, watching the A-Team. He fingers through pictures of his mom, but pushes the ones he finds of his father aside brisquely. Jack investigates the noise but Thundrax manages to hide. He falls asleep and wakes up as Craig.

Thundrax returns to high school, where he's attracted to lead cheerleader Angela Kumiko. During a conversation with her, he gets turned on when she turns around and bends down seductively, and immediately involunarily transforms into naked Thundrax! He flees the school, steals some clothes from a mall, runs away from a mall cop, and goes into hiding. He spots the superhero team SUNDER: Shamus, Avenger, Cryo, Flux, and Impulse fighting VIPER. He joins in, and has a big hero moment throwing a huge VIPER brickbuster who was about to kill Shamus through a van.

Shamus: Thanks!

Avenger: Thanks for what? Why didn't your powers detect that guy?

Flux (examining a module): I think this was blocking all psionics. Also, we better get this guy to a hospital, fast.

Thundrax: What?

Flux: Concussion, multiple cracked ribs, a punctured lung...

Avenger: Great. People are going to think I did it!

Cryo (to Thundrax): You need to go now, meathead. This team doesn't need you poisoning our rep. We don't need killers on our team.

Thundrax: Killers?

Avenger (sarcastically): Yeah, we're all good little girls and boys who would never take a life.

Shamus, however, takes him under his wing. A training montage follows where Shamus teaches Thundrax how to control his powers. Shamus asks Thundrax about his parents, and Craig mentions that his mom died of cancer a few years back, while his dad abandoned his family when he was 5. He only has his big brother. Shamus refuses to answer any questions about his past.

Craig returns home to find he's been suspended from school for truantism, and Jack grounds him for a month. Craig stays in his room, leafing through comic books, and transforming back and forth between Craig and Thundrax in claps of thunder, driving his brother crazy (though he comically never sees him as Thundrax.

Thundrax and SUNDER go on a successful crimefighting spree, taking out VIPER, PLUNDER, Malachite, the Hunter-Patriots, and Negative King. “SUNDER No Longer Rhymes With Blunder, Thanks to Thunder” is the headline in the Vancouver Herald. However, Black Spectre is not worried about the heroes in the least. He has a plan scheduled to go off at the opening of Expo 86, Vancouver's World's Fair.

Craig discovers that life as Thundrax is no picnic. His grades are slumping, and Jack is pissed. Furthermore, he finds that his brother hates Thundrax.

Meanwhile Black Spectre is ready to pull his big plan. First he decides to lure SUNDER into a trap, an office building where he's planted a bomb. The heroes beat a cadre of VIPER agents, and Thundrax again notices that Prowler doesn't kill people when he gets the chance. However, Black Spectre kills Shamus, and the building blows up, and the team blames Thundrax because he was too busy rescuing people to save Shamus. At Cryo's insistence, they kick him off the team, though Flux and Thundrax have become friends and even Avenger's started to come around.

Flux traces the Brotherhood to a floating island base, but it's a trap set up by Dark Prowler and the team is captured – Black Spectre needs them alive to serve as an energy source for his new experimental reactor, which apparently feeds on the power of superhumans! With it, he'll set off a supervolcano, wipe the Pacific Northwest off the map, and trigger global cooling and chaos.

Dark Prowler's trap works perfectly, but Thundrax is still at large. Black Spectre places a call to Dr. Destroyer, and asks for firepower to take out his last enemy. Destroyer sends his clone son (Kellan Lutz).

Thundrax and Destroyer Jr. have a fifteen minute fight sequence that trashes Vancouver (probably killing thousands) as well as their clothing. In the end, Thundrax strangles D-Junior, and the villain reveals the Brotherhood's plot and location (even though there's no way he could have known), then flies away, his body starting to dissolve.

Thundrax heads to Spectre's underground base and beats each member of the Brotherhood in succession. He finally faces Prowler, who is lamenting that Spectre is actually serious about blowing up Vancouver. Thundrax gives an inspired speech that convinces Prowler to free Thundrax's teammates, then goes off to confront Spectre.

Spectre, sitting at his controls, sees Thundrax come in.

Black Spectre: In five minutes Thundrax you and your precious city wil be brought low by Fire and Ash! *Evil Laugh* All you love those innocent people all consumed! Nothing can stop the reactor now, the reactor core will meltdown and you can do nothing to stop it.

Thundrax: But why? Why destroy the city?

Black Spectre: I am the king of chaos! Does chaos need a reason? Of course not! I destroy for the joy of destruction, of course! Mwahahaha!

Thundrax: You're sick! And twisted! A sick and twisted madman!

Black Spectre: And you're redundant and obsolete, fool! With you and your kind destroyed I, the living god Black Spectre, will consume this world as the source of the abyss! Mwahahaha!

Meanwhile, Dark Prowler frees SUNDER from captivity. He starts mocking the captive heroes and says they owe him an apology. Avenger takes a pen and writes “apology” on his knuckles and lays him out out with one punch.

Avenger (walking away, badass style): You didn't even accept the apology, asshole.

Meanwhile, the power starts to fluctuate in the complex.

Black Spectre: What? The power? Someone has freed the heroes!

Thundrax: You're finished, Spectre!

Black Spectre: I think not, Blundrax!

They fight.

Meanwhile, the rest of SUNDER reach the overloaded reactor. Flux could shut it down if it were cooled down.

Cryo: I was wrong about Thundrax! He's a real hero, and I've been a poseur all along! But not today! Dammit, not today!

Cryo steps into the reactor and begins to cool it down.

Impulse: Cryo, no!

Cryo: I love you. (explodes into a billion special snowflakes, cooling the reactor.

Meanwhile Spectre notices the power fluctuate.

Spectre: Fortunately, I have a back up! (pushes a button, a backup reactor lowers down from the roof), its shielding exposed. Powered by the greatest source of radiation on this planet, me!

Thundrax: Hasn't anyone ever told you that no nukes is good nukes?

Spectre blasts Thundrax into near unconsciousness.

Spectre: Have you ever felt the blessed calm after a storm dies? This time it's your storm!”

Shamus suddenly appears out of nowhere.

Shamus: Eat lead, gamma breath! (draws a pistol and fires repeatedly)

Spectre: What? You trenchcoated fool! You think bullets can stop me?

Shamus: No, but he can!

Thundrax grabs Black Spectre

Thundrax: Everyone knows that nuclear power sucks! Let's find out how much!

Spectre is thrown through the opening and dies. Thundrax goes to help Shamus.

Thundrax: Shamus, how?

Shamus: I'm a ghost, kid. I can go anywhere I like?

Thundrax: I'm-- I'm sorry. It was all my fault.

Shamus: Your fault for what? I've always been a ghost. That's how I could read minds.

Thundrax rejoins his team. The mountain blows up, saving the city from the supervolcano eruption. Meanwhile, Destroyer's clone son returns to daddy. crawling to him and dissolving at his feet. Destroyer looks at a computer screen showing Thundrax being honored at the opening of Vancouver's World Fair. “This invites reprisal...” he says, and the last thing you hear is Destroyer's maniacal laughter.

Quotes

Jack: "He's larger than life. And we're just... life! And that plain sucks!"

Black Spectre: This world's fair is opening with a bang!

Craig's Boss: Between Black Spectre and VIPER, I'm moving to Calgary!

SWAT Team leader:It's a naked man! Shoot him!

Black Spectre: Hello Albert? This is BLACK SPECTRE! I'm just about the biggest fan -- love the destruction.

Reviews

Thundrax - The Movie received a 22% favorable rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 18% rating on Metacritic. Some of the more interesting critical responses include:

“A witty and original script destroyed by elements shoehorned by the director that serve no real purpose.”

“Directed with the subtle aplomb of a drunk throwing bricks.”

“Now we know why there are so many riots in Vancouver.”

“Phoned in performances have never been so dull and lifeless.”

“Alexander Skarsgard is okay in the title role, and Bruce Willis is surprisingly poignant in the under-utilized part of Thundrax's mentor Shamus, but Željko Ivanek as Black Spectre is hopelessly miscast as the villain.”

“So bad that you'll wish Black Spectre had succeeded in detonating that supervolcano back in 1986.”

“Buried amid the pedestrian action sequences and explosions is a legitimate and affecting drama about a man who grows into a respected hero but still achingly searches for a father figure.”

“Lightning will strike twice before they make a sequel to this turkey.”

“Kellan Lutz as Dr. Destroyer's clone son is the biggest of this film's many bizarre directorial inclusions.”

“Mr. Carson will need to save the world at least three times to make up for this fiasco.”

“Skarsgard's many shirtless scenes are sure to please his fans.”

“A formula picture kept from falling too far below the bar of mediocrity by Skarsgard, Willis, and Aaron-Taylor Johnson's hilarious Dark Prowler.”

“Aaron-Taylor Johnson as the insane Dark Prowler deserves his own movie.”

“A fantastic Viking metal soundtrack. The advice to 'Buy the soundtrack, skip the movie' has never been more apt."

"Oh look! Yet another B-list hero gets his own movie! I swear the increased ticket prices are to pay for the fumigators that they'll need to bring in to remove the stench of this crap! Still, it's better than Green Lantern."

Box Office

Thundrax the Movie was released on September 11, 2013. It garnered a disappointing but respectable 26.1 million dollars on its opening weekend, and eventually grossed 93.4 million internationally. It was released on DVD on December 11, 2013 to modest sales.

Incidents at Screenings

While security was increased at showings, as law enforcement agencies anticipated terrorist attacks at screenings, the expected VIPER and Hunter-Patriot attacks did not occur. There were only two significant recorded incidents.

One premiere showing at a theater in Dearborn Michigan was interrupted by a musclebound supervillain who dubbed himself “the Unbelievable Hunk”. The Hunk, a previously unknown villain, did not disclose the source of his disagreement with Mr. Carson, but challenged the Canadian hero to a public brawl. The audience was safely evacuated by the heroes Omegastorm, the Laird and Chaplain America, but the cinema complex was badly damaged in the attack when the supervillain demonstrated high levels of superhuman strength, destroying one of the cinema's main support pillars with a single punch.

The second incident was much more whimsical, as on the third day of its airing in Millennium City, five theaters had their copes of the film replaced with "Foxbat: the Movie", a rather shoddy twenty minute short that looped four times.

Factual Errors

As compiled by SNN's resident movie critic, Christopher Baumgartner, on his "Capes of Wrong" review program.

10. Shamus is known to have been a mutant, not a ghost.

9. Cryo was never killed and is believed to be raising a family somewhere in Western Canada.

8. Impulse was never romantically involved with anyone in SUNDER, and was only a member of the team briefly in 1987. a year after the events of the movie.

7. Avenger did indeed “apologize” to Dark Prowler, but not during an operation involving the Brotherhood.

6. Thundrax denies he ever experienced involuntary costume changes during moments of sexual awkwardness. Also, Vancouver police questioned Thundrax after his origin, but never sent a dragnet against him.

5. The Brotherhood of Terror was never beaten by SUNDER. It fell apart due to internal dissension in 1987. Black Spectre's fate is unknown, it is believed that he was murdered by his former partner, the Master-Mind.

4. The Brotherhood never planned to blow up a supervolcano at the opening of the 1986 Vancouver World's Fair.

3. Dark Prowler has never associated himself with villains who took a life, let alone the Brotherhood of Terror. In fact, he fought against Masquerade, the Brotherhood shapechanger who posed as the mayor of Vancouver in the mid-1980s

2. Dr. Destroyer has never produced a clone son, nor was he ever known to have interacted with the Brotherhood of Terror.

1. Destroyer's world conquest was shown to precede Thundrax's origin, but Craig Carson became Thundrax a year before Destroyer's mind control satellites became active.

Your Character's Review

Add your character's reactions below.

"This movie was the best! I couldn't stop watching it. Thundrax is my favorite super hero, and it was a real treat for me to finally be able to see the movie. I went back and saw it three more times. It had action, drama, and a mullet! Seriously, Thundrax--the Movie was a real treat for any fan. My favorite part is that cliff-hangar ending, with Destroyer laughing at the computer screen." -Stitch

"I generally don't follow the latest movie releases... but when I heard about this one I had to see it! it was great, and I couldn't stop laughing even at the ominous ending scene! although I think the movie portrayed Thundrax as a little too goofy, it was my impression that the comedy was intended. 9.5/10. would be 10/10 but I cant remember for sure if I've ever seen better!" -Sylviana

"Thundrax really deserved better. I personally would recommend Carolyn McGrath's wonderful biography, "Beyond the Storm: The True Story of Thundrax" for a more accurate and honest portrayal of his life. There is more to Craig than just flash and spectacle." - Sparrowhawk

"I can't legally talk about the movie due to contracts with the movie studio, but if you look carefully enough, you might find my true feelings out there somewhere under a psuedonym." - Smokin Mirrors

"The people who rewrote the script had no love for chronology, nor history. It was supposed to be a biopic and instead wound up being a B-movie with an extremely high budget. It's actually charming in its own way now that I see it, and there was much worse stuff on the cutting room floor, but I would like to extend my thanks to the soul who recreated the movie in the form of the original script. All in all, it was an interesting experience and it's a shame it turned out like it did. The director's a personable enough guy, but he had some weird ideas about 9/11. EDIT: I have been told he was talking about the release date of the movie. I owe him an apology." - Mokin Smirrors

OOC Notes

The genesis of the movie was a piece of art commissioned by Oakster. This tied into a plot where Oakster's character Max (aka Smokin' Mirrors), would write a cinema blockbuster about Thundrax.

When Oakster left the game, I decided to run with it as a plotline. Eventually I turned it into a parody of Hollywood's worst superhero blockbusters, with the fiction that Max's script was destroyed when it came in contact with the studio. I didn't want to insult Max's script writing abilities, but I felt for player participation, having a bad movie that they could hoot and jeer at would be a lot more fun than seeing a cool one. Also, it felt less self-aggrandizing.

A grand opening event was held in the Canada PH theater. It was fun for me, and hopefully for the participants as well.