So, there’s this movie coming:
It looks like your bog-standard Supernatural Entity Scary Horror Movie, with the twist being that the main characters are Indian immigrant and the Entity is something out of Indian folklore. OK, sure. We’ve all seen this before, with folk monsters from various ethnicities/nationalities/whatever pestering the appropriate people.
Here’s my idea, though.
Main characters are Popular Ethnic Minority Types… Indians, Japanese, Native Americans, Nigerians, whatever. They end up plagued by some magical critter from their homelands folklore. 80 to 90% of the movie is them on the run from Scary Monster, occasionally bumping into Clueless Standard White Americans. You know, the people who in these stories can be relied upon to be of no help whatsoever, because they have no knowledge of Diverse Supernatural Entity. But one member of the Doomed Ethnic Cast – let’s say a small-ish child, willing to talk to outsiders – explains the problem to Clueless White Guy. The Ethic Cast then runs off, leaving Clueless White Guy to look after them with a look of confusion. But then at the end of the movie, when Scary Monster looks about ready to pounce and kill everybody or send them all to Hell, or whatever it does, Clueless White Guy shows up.
I see two possibilities that I’d like:
1) Clueless White Guy shows up and sees Scary Ethnic Monster about ready to pounce. “Huh,” he says. Then he looks to the empty space to his right and says, “Hey, can you help out here?” Then there’s a rumbling sound that transitions to deep laughter. Scary Ethnic Monster Turns to look at Clueless White Guy, turns to eat *him,* but then stops. Because something from Clueless White Guys ethnic folklore, in this case Thor, manifests, whips out Mjolnir, and proceeds to beat Scary Ethnic Monster into a mess of ectoplasm. When Scary Ethnic Monster is finally destroyed, Thor hefts Mjolnir, leans, back, laughs some more. Winks at Little Kid, turns, pats Clueless White Guy on the shoulder (who hands him a bottle of beer), says, “I haven’t had that much fun in ages,” then walks off/fades away.
Or…
2) Clueless White Guy shows up and sees Scary Ethnic Monster about ready to pounce. “Huh,” he says. “You know what my cultural heritage is?” he asks the monster as it begins to pay attention to him. “Science, bitch!” Whereupon he whips out something akin to a proton pack and converts said monster into nonexistence. I would also accept “Doing some basic research,” whereupon he hits the monster with holy water, garlic, salt, holy books, silver, electricity, UV, ashes, tax forms, white oak, a handful of gerbils, a pissed-off housecat… whatever it is that is appropriate for the particular threat in question.
5 responses to “A Story Idea”
Years ago, catching “Poltergeist 2” on cable, I recall the entity early on killing the Disbelieving, Closed-Minded Scientist(TM) rather than the witch who eventually destroys it.
I had two reactions: first was to recall a Skeptical Inquirer article maintaining that in screen culture of that day, scientist characters were more likely to kill or be killed than any other job description.
The relevant one was to speculate that the entity reasoned that once enough evidence accumulated to convince the scientist of its existence, he’d come up with an even more effective way to destroy it than the witch . . . closing off life in further sequels.
I’m kind of fond of this sort of thing, as long as they do a decent job with the folklore.
When does Hollywood ever let us down with respecting the folklore? Look at how marvelously Disney just did with “The Little Mermaid,” how they’re doing with “Snow White.” Remember the wholly respectful “Santa Inc.?” Folklore is safe in the hands of these people.
In my version, the monsters would confront Clueless White Guy … and he’d sneer at them in contempt. “You’re not real. Fuck off.” And they’d vanish.
Second version: He’d whip out a cellphone and schedule the entities for an IRS audit.
While on general principles I like your #1, it feeds into a common trope I don’t like: the movie shows an ongoing succession of supernatural events (or alien invasion, or monster attacks, or conspiracy stuff, whatever) that cannot be rationally explained away or ignored. And yet Stock Standard Skeptic is shown to be a jackass who refuses to accept actual evidence. Why would you even speak to something that you don;t believe in… and, conversely, how can you *look* at it while you believe it’s not there?
Reality doesn’t present us with reality-defying miracles. But fiction does. If something matches the description of Satan or Cthulhu or a vampire shows up and is clearly raising a ruckus… I might not believe that it’s *actually* Satan, Fallen Angel, formerly second banana to God His Own Self… but I’d going to believe that that very Satan-like thing is actually there.