The Silzer Project - Part V

And here were are at the end of this mess. I honestly almost deleted the previous entries rather than write this one out, out of a combination of internal cringe over something I wrote in my teens and just not wanting to type this out. But, doing this was intended to be an exercise in getting this all down in one place and putting the ideas to bed for now. Whilst I cannot currently see a way I can realise the Slizer story, having it out there means I may get some feedback, suggestions or even just have the chance to think more myself when I finally go to hit "Publish" and get the eureka moment I've been looking for. Also though, this sprawling story was something I made up in my head playing with Lego growing up, and whilst it's not good and not something I'd really want to properly published, I'm not so down on it that I can't see the good ideas I had and maybe file them away in my mind for future use.

Slizer - Finale

With a new war looming on the horizon, the powers that back the Slizer Team begin to fracture, and a mad scrabble for the control of the Slizers begins. Most of the alien members of the team just bugger off with their Slizers, the rival to Calvin (he had a name with lots of contestants which I don't remember) takes the Ice Slizer and uses it to front a military coup and take over his native government. Now in control, he withdraws from the Slizer alliance and starts reinforcing the border, though states that there will be no aggressive action from their military. Meanwhile, another alien empire is starting to arm themselves with large war machines intended to fight the Slizers. Seeing the writing on the wall, the more insect-like alien race takes full control of the Slizers, though the human pilots and some soldiers loyal to them maintain their own small area of the compound. The insect aliens only have control of three Slizers, Millennium, Blaster and Flare, and the pilot of the Blaster Slizer, Butterfly (the insect aliens take on names of familiar bugs and get surgically modified to be more humanoid when working with other races) is reluctant to push back against the human pilots too hard.

As the insect-like aliens want better control of the Slizers than they have, they build several more and give them to their own pilots. The introduction of the Speed, Justice, Space, Shock, Time and Stealth Slizers swings the war back into the favour of the Slizer Force, at least until the rebel leader finally emerges. It turns out that Calvin has been alive all this time, kind of. You see, the Slizers were always more alive than anyone let on, requiring a symbiotic bonding with a pilot, of which only Calvin met the requirements so far. Now being neither Calvin nor the Jungle Slizer, our hero is leading the revolt of, basically, the working classes of the Century against the Slizer Force and, by extension, both of the alien races that had been backing it. In an classic "the enemy of my enemy" situation, the newer alien empire and Calvin's forces cooperate to keep the traditional power structure on their back-foot. The rebellion are making slow progress until Butterfly and the remaining human Slizer pilots defect over to their side and Calvin makes the choice to focus on the alien race now led by his former rival. This means that the two opposing forces of Slizers are fighting opponents without them and the war progresses in their favour quickly.

As clearly I was watching Anime by this point, the wars get settled by big fights between individuals, usually involving swords and/or mechs. Calvin and his rival have a big duel as the rebellion lay siege to the alien planet, that Calvin wins because he's superhuman at this point. Butterfly and Calvin have started a relationship during this time, with Butterfly steadily modifying herself to be more "human" during this time as Calvin becomes less human the longer he's bonded with the Jungle Slizer. The new alien power finally breaks against the insect aliens and the remnants of the Slizer force and the Century is now a stand off between two groups armed with super weapons. Peace negotiations start, with the main thrust being that time travel must be banned and the Slizers must be destroyed. As Calvin and the pilot of the Millennium Slizer are both part of their Slizers (the latter through deliberate cyborg modification), they decide to settle it in a big one-on-one fight, which Calvin wins, though the Slizer part of him is badly damaged and goes dormant. In order to maintain the peace, Calvin agrees to go into exile in case the Slizer emerges again, Butterfly goes with him and the remaining human heroes travel back in time one last time to ensure that they are locked in a predestination paradox to carry out all these events.

So there we go, that's the story. I'd say something clever, but honestly, I'm pretty over this and glad to be done. See you next time.

The Slizer Project - Part IV

When I stared on this, I thought it would probably take three articles of reasonable size, not what's now looking to be five somewhat longer ones. Now we're getting to the part of the story I really remember better, not only because I was a teen when I was thinking it up, but also because it started to occur to me how far the story had come since it started. A group of friends traveling through time, having adventures, had now become an interstellar war over the control of alien super weapons. Yes, it's juvenile, but I was juvenile, literally and figuratively, at the time. To this day, I still like when stories progress to a point far beyond where they started, when such progression makes sense each step, but leads to a journey of wide scope. Think Dragon Ball going from an adventure to find some mystic orbs to a multiversal battle for survival. Anyway, on to the next step.

The story continues, our heroes having been victorious against the Razors, but only barely, the decision to introduce four more Slizer units is made; Millennium, Blaster, Spark and Flare. The shadowy alien forces backing the project put more of their own in the larger and more "powerful" units, shuffling Calvin's friends around to lower places in the hierarchy. This causes friction in the team and with 12 Slizer units in the field, the humans find themselves most often under alien command and split up across multiple deployments. Meanwhile, a rival concern in The Century offers a new weapon to the Slizer team, a new and more powerful biomech; the Toa. Yeah, look, at this stage, Bionicle was a thing and I was trying to fold that story into my own and it never really worked. Basically, it was a set up for a tournament arc (can you tell I was watching Dragon Ball Z at the time too?) where the Slizers faced their opposite number in the Toa. It wasn't the best idea, but it led into the next arc, where things really kick off.

During the fight with the Toa, Calvin and the Jungle Slizer disappear. The green Toa is found defeated and mutilated, but there is no trace of what happened. For a while, the team is looking to recover their missing teammate, or rather, Calvin's friends are looking for him, while the aliens want to recover the Jungle Slizer before it falls into the wrong hands. The leader of one faction of the aliens, called "Mantis" by the humans because they can't pronounce his clicking name, pilot of the Millennium Slizer, was badly injured in the battle with the Toa and whilst he recovers, he becomes more antagonistic as time goes on and there is a major fracture in the Slizer team, with the human members even being kept from their Slizers unless a mission is happening. This starts to cause problems when a revolt of workers living in The Century begins to get violent and the various factions that fund the Slizer operation start to disagree over how to handle it, with one faction even leaving and taking the Ice Slizer with them. The stage is set for a possible civil conflict with our human protagonists caught in the middle. Meanwhile, rumors of something like the Jungle Slizer being spotted in conflict zones begin to circulate.

The Slizer Project - Part III

When we last left the Slizer saga, a war for control of the technology of Time Travel had ended with the Slizer forces remaining intact and Time Travel being kept in the hands of the powers that be. At this stage of the narrative, you can tell that Anime had started to hit the West and the stories I was making up drifted to more of that style. Certainly the focus of the Slizer stuff moves more towards individual characters rather than epic space wars and the like. Those of a certain vintage will start to recognise more specific Lego sets and brands in the story too, as I had more money of my own and could decide on my purchases.

In the wake of the war, eight pilots chosen from the Slizer team and the aliens and future people with who they work to take on the responsibility of the new Slizer weapons. At this point it's probably worth mentioning that the name "Slizer" is recurrent in the narrative, first appearing as the name of the "Ship" that our heroes traveled through time in and now being revealed to be these weapons. There's a whole thing about a predestination paradox that will come full-circle at the end, but it's probably not as clever as I think it is. To begin with, there are eight Slizer units, Judge, Energy, Jungle, City, Fire, Ice, Sub and Rock, each with a set pilot who must attempt to "bond" with the unit on a mental level. Each unit has its own specialty, though some are more esoteric than others, so the team has to learn a new synergy whilst putting aside their differences to become an effective unit. Of course, all the time, war is brewing again.

One of the big reveals for this arc is that the "big bad" behind the antagonists is actually Daniel, the person who invented time travel and started the group's adventures and betrayed them before Calvin got stranded in the Old West. Daniel is doing a "Kang The Conqueror" bit by working with different versions of himself from across the time stream. As the conflict ramps up again with small incursions and raids, the new technology of the Slizers and the new dynamic of the team keeps putting our heroes on the back-foot. Calvin teams up with his main rival, an alien in the team whose friend he killed way back in the "time traveling adventure" days, to investigate and uncover the enemy base without the Slizer weapons. This doesn't quite go to plan and the Slizers have to come in to save the day, but this is essentially the "team coming together" moment. Some of the inter-member conflict continues, and will play a role later, but the Slizers can work together and the conflict starts to go their way once again. Daniel, however, escapes and rebuilds his group.

Needing something to strike back against the Slizers, Daniel sides with another alien faction that fought in the previous war against the Slizer forces and starts designing a new weapon; The Razors. Much like the Slizers, the Razors are biomechanical weapons, somewhat alive, and requiring a living "pilot" to operate. Whereas the Slizers grow to accommodate their pilots and the synergy provides more power, the Razors feed off theirs and pilots burn out after a while. Due to the limited numbers of both Slizers and Razors, the two sides play around each other and skirmish for a while, with neither coming off the better. Getting impatient, Daniel decides to take a run at the Control Centre of the Slizer organisation, using all the Razors at once and even piloting one himself. All the Slizers launch in response and the largest battle since the war takes place. In the chaos, Calvin and Daniel find themselves squaring off; although Daniel's more powerful machine puts him at the advantage, Calvin and the Jungle Slizer achieve a higher level of synergy than anyone else for a few moments and get the win. Seeing their leader killed, the rest of the enemy forces retreat or surrender, though most of the Razors are destroyed.

Following the battle, the higher ups of the Slizer programme are concerned about the high Synergy achieved by Calvin but that doesn't hold them back from announcing more Slizer units in production... 

The Slizer Project - Part II

In our last article, I was talking about the silly game I played with my Lego men as a boy and the huge, sprawling narrative and lore that spilled out of that. For those who think this is a big waste of everyone's time, this is forming part of a series of loosely-aligned articles I've begun work on, including the Danton series, where I look over my old notes or take another look at a "bad" piece of media and try to parse out something of value. Sure, many of the ideas I had when I was a child or teen lacked subtlety, borrowed directly from other sources or were just overdone, but there are gems in there that I may as well use, rather than discard.

When we last left our protagonist, who, of course, had my name originally, but got rechristened 'Calvin' in a later draft, had just been arrested for illegal time travel and offered the chance to join the organisation that had tracked him down. Calvin is introduced to the Slizer Team, a military organisation set up by, but independent from, the great powers of The Century. The Century is an area of space and time in which advanced societies exist, finding it once they break the time barrier and conquer interstellar flight; think of it like a 'higher' universe, only much smaller. Honestly, I never got that part down, and it doesn't really make sense, it was just a way to justify the "boarders" of the setting. A big shock awaits Calvin, as most of his former crew of time travelers, except the traitorous Richard and deceased Stephen, of course, are present and also part of the Slizer Team. Calvin and his friends, and a few new characters and former antagonists, mostly aliens, form a unique team within the broader organisation, which is more military in focus, using their experience to travel into history and stop rogue time travelers.

Man, I know I was a literal child when I came up with this stuff, but it's giving me major ACAB vibes now. Oh well, it does get better, I promise. Much like Calvin, his friends have spent time in different periods of history, learning new skills that now come in handy on missions. Combined with the new members, the team takes a little while to gel, but becomes pretty effective at their missions, capturing rogue elements and keeping history intact. As some antagonists recur, our heroes begin to see a pattern and start investigating just why so many incursions into the timestream and The Century itself, are happening. Some investigation soon reveals a broad organisation behind much of the time crime happening, not merely come conspiracy, but a whole revolutionary army looking to overthrow the current hierarchy and liberate Time Travel for their own purposes. Now, as much as I love a good people's revolutionary army, The Resistance here is mostly wrong, seeing Time Travel as a resource to exploit rather than a resource to protect, like the Slizer Team tries to do. With the reveal of the Resistance, the conflict moves to The Century itself, with a full-scale guerilla war breaking out.

Whilst there are definitely some cool spaceship battles and the like, most of the conflict is in small raids, spy games and terror attacks, keeping our heroes guessing as to who they can trust and how to even fight such a foe. As the military industrial machinery of The Century starts to fail under the pressure, the Slizer team makes a desperate decision to take on the Resistance leadership directly, assaulting the planet they're hiding on in a sci-fi commando raid complete with plenty of flying lasers, spaceships and, of course, sword fights. Look, I was a kid, I was just getting into 40k and the minifig I used for Calvin came with one of those cavalry sabres, so a big sword fight to round out the story was pretty much a given. Actually, for a long time this fight was meant to be a big deal in Calvin's journey as a character, being the first time he kills someone deliberately and/or without his own life being in danger. We'll see how that plays out later, but for now cutting the head off the snake has worked to a certain degree, and The Resistance surrenders for the most part.

Victory has been achieved, and peace reigns for now, though some Resistance cells are still active, the Slizer force has control of the Timestream once again. Battered but emboldened, the powers that be look at shoring up their defenses for the next threat, revealing a new hybrid weapons platform that is ready for field testing; the Slizers.

Thinking Out Loud: The Slizer Project - Part I

In the distant future, the most valued resource is access to the time continuum, the key to time travel. Controlled by a consortium of powerful races, the technology is protected by an elite force of warriors chosen from across time and space, who pilot the most advanced weapons systems in the universe, the Slizers!

This entry is going to be a little different to my typical fare. Much like my previous "Danton" series, in that I've dug out something from my teens (and this time childhood) and am seeing if there's anything there worth keeping. The Slizer story goes back about as far as I can remember, as it is what the overarching narrative of the games I played with my Lego became. Yes, I was one of those kids who had a story to go with certain toys they owned. Because this narrative spanned years of collecting and little games played by myself, it's pretty muddled, but thankfully, I tried to get it all sorted out at some stage in high school and somehow still have that ancient Word document kicking around my hard drive.

It all begins with a group of academics at a university, one of whom, a Postdoctoral Theoretical Physicist, manages to crack the holy grail of Science Fiction, Time Travel. Taking his friends along with him on the maiden flight (an archeologist, a classicist, a geologist and a physiologist), the team go on adventures throughout history and the near future, meeting famous people, getting into trouble and just having a whole Doctor Who meets Sliders vibe. Throughout their journey, something is stalking the team, something alien. Over time, the stress of the situation wears on the friends, with many wanting to go home, events coming to a head when they're attacked by their pursuer and the Physicist reveals he knows more than he's been letting on and attempts to dump all of his friends in the wastes of history.

We follow the archeologist, our protagonist, by the by, as he is stuck for a while in the Old West, think tail end of the American Civil War. For a few years, he hangs out on the edge of society, trying to preserve history and fix his time travel device with the available technology, ala Back to the Future - Part III, and occasionally dealing with something strange. When the local town becomes the target of an alien with powerful weaponry, our protagonist uses his 21st Century knowledge to rally the town and bring the creature down, though reveals his secrets as he does and decides to leave before his goodwill evaporates in the harsh light of day. Thankfully, the alien craft is able to access the timestream, so we're off again.

Any freedom our protagonist enjoys is short-lived, as he is arrested by the Slizer Force, essentially a militarised "Time Police", as a rogue time traveler, revealing that the defeated alien was there to arrest him and that they've been hunting him and his friends since they first started their journey. Offered the choice to be erased or join, our hero signs up, only to find that his surviving friends, excluding the physicist of course, are alive and working for Slizer Force. Within the broader policing structure of future humans and aliens, there is a team of time travel veterans who act with a little more autonomy and attempt to curb rouge elements without lethal force. As well as the Geologist and Archeologist, the team features characters we have encountered before, and a few new ones. But more on that next time, as this is a pretty good breaking point.

Superhero Media: The Lego Batman Movie

Best Batman film since The Dark Knight. Possibly one of the best Batman films ever; no, really. As I've ranted about more than once on this blog, since the advent of Batman Begins and Arkham Asylum, Batman has had his skills, abilities, wealth and competency built up to mythic levels, to the point where there is essentially nothing he cannot accomplish. It is this version of Batman which is presented in The Lego Batman Movie, having probably the most awesome life ever, beating up dozens of bad guys whilst singing and being thoroughly beloved by all of Gotham. Batman lacks the emotional maturity to admit that he's lonely and overcompensating as a crime-fighter to hide his internalised grief. Holy hell, that's some heavy material for a "Family" film. Into Batman's life come two vitally important people, Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon. Due to a misunderstanding, Bruce Wayne adopts Dick and Babs is the new police commissioner, recruited from Bludhaven, where she cleaned up the mean streets using compassion and statistics. 

What follows is some of the most sharply written pastiche I've seen in years, not only because it tackles a subject dear to my heart, but because it manages to be incredibly funny the entire time. The film The Lego Batman Movie reminds me the most of is Mel Brooks' High Anxiety, in that it readily pokes fun at the weak corners of the Batman mythos like the lack of character growth in 70-odd years and villains like Crazy Quilt and Egghead, yet truly loves and admires the source material. The "I've seen this before" segment alone, which briefly (in Lego form) flashes back through every live-action version of Batman right back to Adam West, is a love letter to all of the mad fun that we've had with the Caped Crusader over the years. The overall "message" of the film, insofar as it has one beyond "we love Batman", is that the character of Batman, and thereby the audience, needs to grow up a little and accept that the "unstoppable badarse" version of the character is not merely only one version of the Masked Manhunter, but may not even be the best version. 

The Lego Batman Movie is, at some level, a passionate argument for a more "fun" version of Batman to come back to cinema; not something so divisive as the Joel Schumacher films, but at least let's get Robin back, ok? Robin first appeared all of eleven issues of Detective Comics after Batman, but he's only been in two of the eight Batman-titled films since 1989, what the fuck? No, I'm not counting The Dark Knight Rises, and neither should you. What about Batgirl, Nightwing, Batwing or Batwoman? There is so much damn potential in Batwoman alone as a film franchise that I can't believe WB and DC aren't looking at it. I think many forget, or willfully ignore, that Batman is a franchise, not just a single hero, and that the other characters help tell the stories. Batman is the inciting tragedy and ethical centre of the team, Robin and Batgirl are the surrogate children, Nightwing the child who left the nest, Alfred the father-figure, Batwoman the tangential "other" everyone is learning to accept and Azreal is the mentally ill cousin who's really good at that one thing you need done on occasion. This film is great, go buy it so that they make more.

Superhero Media: Lego Marvel Super Heroes - Maximum Overload

This is going to be a bit of a short one, for no other reason that that this "film" is around 23 minutes long, so there's not too much to cover. Loki decides that using magic snowballs to "overload" various supervillains (mostly Spider-man's) will be good for a laugh and the Lego versions of Marvel Superheroes have to stop them. It's juts a little short to keep the kids entertained, but it's fun and well executed. The entire thing can be found on YouTube if you're curious. 

The best parts involve Spider-man, who keeps getting left behind by his peers and complains about his "Spider-Angst" until Cap gives him a pep-talk at the end. The incomparable JK Simmonds appears as J Jonah Jameson, he hates Spider-Man and blames him for the Overloads, of course. Also, there's a great Iron Fist reference that gets called back when Danny turns up to help, later on. "Iron Fist isn't a fist, he's a whole guy!"

This was fun. It's not high art, or a must-see MCU tent pole, but it's damn fun and that's all it needs to be. The action will keep kids entertained and there's enough nerdy shout-outs to make it worthwhile for adult fans. Well worth taking a look at when you have a spare half-hour.

Superhero Media: Lego Batman - DC Superheroes Unite

No, this film has nothing to do with The Lego Movie, it is actually a tie-in for the Lego Batman series of video games, specifically Lego Batman 2. Lex Luthor gets the brilliant idea to team up with the Joker and the pair enact a plan to use modified Smilex to brainwash people into electing Luthor as President. Naturally, the Joker betrays Luthor and the Justice League has to take down a giant clown robot before it can destroy the city. As a piece of cinematic drama, Lego Batman - DC Superheroes Unite doesn't deliver, but as an extended trailer for a fun video game franchise, it's pretty good. Yes, it's just a bit of fun for the kids, but it's well done and entertaining enough that I've sat through it twice now; once because it was on before I started doing these "Superhero Media" blog entries. 

I'm struggling a bit with this one because the film was pretty much bang on average, not too many good bits and not too many bad bits. Robin's constant insistence that Batman call the JLA is rebuked in a very Batman fashion for very Batman reasons, Superman is so goody-goody that he borders on annoying and Cyborg is forgettable. One day I'm going to do an entry on why Cyborg's promotion to Leaguer was awkward tokenism, but for now enjoy him failing to be at all interesting. There's also a great callback where Robin thinks Batman's kryptonite hording habit is a tad paranoid, but Wonder Woman thinks it's a great idea. Also, no one seems to like Green Lantern very much, which I'm not sure isn't a reference to the terrible live action film or just a continuation of the joke from The Lego Movie. 
 

If you need something to get the kids into superheroes, or just want something on in the background while you paint, give this a go. It's not great, but there are a few laughs to be had and it's certainly better than most live action DC releases of the past few years. There are a couple of sequels and I may get to them at some point, but the media backlog still looms pretty big, maybe if they show up on Netflix.

Superhero Media: The Lego Movie

I may be a little behind, having only seen this film recently, but the first thing that popped into my head after "holy shit that was brilliant", was "how do I wargame this?" I know of (and have trouble resisting) Brikwars, but I was really struck of just how much the climatic battle of The Lego Movie was reminiscent of something like The Avengers or Justice League: New Frontier, with everyone banding together to fight the villain. Also, if you squint at it a little, the protagonists are a little like a super team. 

So who are the heroes of this interlocking-adventure? The leading plastic man is Emmet, a construction worker, not a lot of playability there until he becomes a "Master Builder" in the third act. In fact, all of the heroes are Master Builders, a cabal of expert Lego-kitbashers who can turn anything into anything else. The only foreseeable obstacle to gaming this hero group is that they all share the building ability, making the entire team Gadgeteers. That thought aside though, the team also includes a Wizard, a magical cat creature, and astronaut, a cyborg pirate and... Batman. 

As family cinema The Lego Movie gets a 9.5 (assuming Who Framed Roger Rabbit as a baseline for 10 in the genre). As inspiration for Superhero gaming, it's worth a look, I'm already scavenging parts for a 28mm Metalbeard.