Each second that goes by,
each tiny “tick-tock” of the bright green Hulk wall-clock in Kevin Feige’s
office, is conspicuous. The
president of Marvel Studios looks across his desk at Joss Whedon, who tries to
mask his boredom by doodling spaceships on the paper he was going to take notes
in. He fails.
“Guys, I have shooting to do soon,”
Chris Hemsworth says, trying to show both muscular arms and general annoyance
in the way he crosses his arms. He
succeeds. “If this dude
doesn’t show up soon, I’m going to have to leave. I can’t just reschedule this shooting
again, it would be really unfair to—“
The door swings open, and a kid
stumbles into the room. Despite
the warmth, the kid’s wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. The sweat isn’t doing favors for his
unkempt hair, and everyone flinches when he “cleans” his glasses with the damp,
gray cloth he’s covering his torso with. “Sorry I’m late,” he says, a little
too loudly. “I tried to
find where you guys were shooting the Deadpool movie.”
“We don’t own Deadpool,” Joss Whedon
says. “Fox owns Deadpool.”
“Oh yeah, of course,” the kid says,
winking and nudging Joss repeatedly with his elbow. “I mean the Wade Wilson movie.”
“That’s still Deadpool,” Kevin Feige
says.
“Or it’s just a guy named Wade Wilson
with the exact same set of powers ad Deadpool cosplaying as Deadpool—“
“Are we going to actually talk about
the script of Thor 3?” Chris Hemsworth says, clearly
irritated. “I have maybe
twenty minutes. I’m sorry
to be brusque but if I don’t show up the whole shoot gets cancelled, and that’s
a lot of working hours my crew loses.”
“Oh, yeah. Yes, of course.” The kid sheepishly sits down between
Hemsworth and Whedon. “So. Thor III: The Fate of Springfield—“
“Illinois?” Feige says. “Why Illinois?”
“No, The
Simpsons Springfield.”
The room is dead silent, as what the
kid says sinks in.
Joss Whedon breaks the silence. “It’s…it’s set in Matt Groening’s
animated city of Springfield”
“Yes. Well, more like in the universe of Springfield; all the characters are
there.”
“Wait, I’m confused,” Chris Hemsworth
says. “Would this be like Space Jam? Like, am I going to be live-action
next to all of these animated characters?”
“Oh, er,” says the kid, looking down
at his shoes. “That’s, er,
that’s the thing, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’re not in this movie. Thor’s not in this movie.”
Chris blinks several times. “It’s called Thor III,” he says.
“Thor III: The Fate of
Springfield. The
emphasis is really more on Springfield. Don’t
worry, Loki and Odin are totally—“
“Why are we listening to this?” Chris
says. “I need to get to my
shoot. Look, I’m sure
you’re a lovely person, Mr. Sexton, but you’ve already completely missed the
point of—“
“Wait wait wait!” the kid scrambles to
the door, hoping to block the man muscled enough to play a Norse God with his
150 pound pauncy frame. “Just…just
hear me out, okay? You guys haven’t even heard me out.”
Hemsworth looks at his friends. Joss has gone back to drawing
spaceships, and Feige just looks back, sighing. “Look, let’s give him five minutes,”
he says. “Who knows? Maybe
he has a good line that we can use in our script.”
“Oh my gosh, thank you,” gushes the
kid, seemingly unaware that he is being looked at as a source, not a
partner. “Okay, so The Dark World. Great movie. Loki has taken Odin’s place, right? As
Odin?”
The room nods.
“So we cut to Springfield, except it’s
like a medieval Norse village. But
this isn’t like Treehouse of
Horror, everyone is still who they are with all their memories of old
Springfield. Lisa is
sleeping, and she has a vision. Bart,
a lean, well-muscled youth, is dragging a houseboat by a rope. Milhouse is sunbathing on the boat,
next to some solar panels. Suddenly,
this short, dwarf looking guy—right? Huh?” he looks
around excitedly, not registering the looks of confusion and horror on the men
in the room. “This dwarf
guy casts a spell, and suddenly there’s a cave-in.”
“They’re in a cave?”Joss asks.
“No, they’re in the desert. There’s a cave-in, and Bart’s legs are
crushed. Milhouse’s head is
cracked open and his brain is exposed, and Bart tells him to just smash his
brain for a quick death, which he does. Bart,
meanwhile, has to starve, unwilling to eat the remains of his friend. Lisa wakes up, knowing she has to
prevent this horrifying future, and so she becomes Quicksilver.”
“Um, Quicksilver is already in Avengers: Age of Ultron,” Feige
says.
“No, it’s fine. This is a different Quicksilver. She’s Lisa Simpson, and she’s made of
ice. So she’s running
around and beating all these dudes up, and Odin—“
“Is Odin animated, or a Simpsons
character?” Chris asks.
“He’s animated. So Odin is just watching, and then
Comic Book Guy, who saw Dark
World, he jumps down into the lower seats.”
“Wait, where are we?” Joss asks.
“We’re in a movie theater. All of this is happening in a movie
that the characters in the movie are watching of themselves. So Comic Book Guy yells that Odin is
Loki, and plot twist! He totally is! And Loki starts
summoning monsters and illusions and shit, and Lisa realizes that the alternate
future she saw will only happen because
of what she’s doing. So
she stops and defeats Loki.”
“Is that it? Is that the movie?” Feige
asks.
“Not quite. See, while all this is going on, Moe
Syzlak, the bartender, he’s just making out with this hot lady. I mean crazy hot lady. And at first it’s just them making
out, but then it turns to Moe’s point of view and the lady becomes live-action,
and it’s just like a half-hour of lap dance practically. It’s really out-of-place and
degrading, like it’s a weird sex dream or something.”
“I think we’ve heard enough,” Feige
says, “Mr. Sexton, you can—“
“NO I’M NOT DONE,” the kid yells, “so
after the fight is over, everyone is leaving the theater, and somebody is
giving Moe a hard time for making out throughout the whole movie.”
“Wait is this during the credits of
the movie or—“
“Shut up, Chris! SHUT UP I’M ALMOST
DONE! So Moe asks the hot lady out on a date and she’s like ‘ew gross you’re
disgusting I wasn’t making out with you’ and everyone laughs at Ian for saying
Moe was making out with this lady—“
“Hold on,” Joss says, “who’s Ian?”
“He’s a friend of mine from
school. So Moe, who has by
this point morphed into me, he gets the last laugh, even though now he’s
alone. But we cut to five
minutes later, and he meets the lady by the water fountain, and she was in on it! They were just fucking with Ian! So we
exchange numbers and then the movie ends and I have an erection.”
The kid has been saying this all on
one breath; he’s panting, but his eyes are on fire. “This is it. This is Thor III. So? When do we start shooting?”
“Well,” Feige says, just as security
enters the room, “Thor III will
start shooting in a few years. But
it won’t be this version of Thor III. Goodbye, Mr. Sexton.”
Security drags the kid out. He struggles mightily, but no matter
how hard he kicks the floor, it doesn’t do a thing. Three years later, Thor III: Midgar in Springfield? premiers, smashing box-office records
and breaking ground by introducing The
Simpsons into the Marvel
universe. Joss Whedon is
credited as the writer. Nobody
has heard of the kid since then. Some
said he moved to San Francisco, where it was rumored he prospered in dried
goods.
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