Sidekick Comedy

This is a deleted entry from one of the first articles I wrote for Cracked,6 Heroic Movie Deaths That Could Have Been Easily Avoided. This was actually my favorite entry from it but it got cut because it didn’t quite fit the premise. Please note, I actually love Star Trek: Generations with a fiery passion, never doubt that, not even for a second. Enjoy!

Easily Avoided Heroic Deaths

Star Trek: Generations – Kirk and Picard

Star Trek: Generations was meant to be an epic captain-mash up that involved James T. Kirk coming back for one last great adventure only to end up dying in a manner so terrible that it had a trope named after it (i.e – Dropped a Bridge on Him), a fate usually reserved for the redshirt of the week, not the greatest captain to ever suffer from constant bedroom eye syndrome.

No matter how much we hate the fact that Kirk’s cause of death was “crushed by bridge” it can’t be denied that Kirk died doing something important. The bad guy, Soren, was trying to destroy a nearby sun and inhabited solar system with a rocket, and Kirk needed the device on that rickety bridge so Picard could shut the rocket down. That’s cool. We’re not here about that.

We’re here about Picard and his terrible, no good, very bad plan to save the day.

Originally Picard gets transported down to the planet by himself to try to stop the bad guy, Soren, with a plan that basically consists of “punch him in the face”. Soren brushes Picard off easily however and fires his rocket into the sun which results in an entire solar system being destroyed along with all its inhabitants and the Enterprise and its crew. So overall, not a great day to be Picard, at least not until he wakes up to find himself trapped in The Nexus, a place where you can have anything you desire, no questions asked.

So he’s hanging out in pseudo-heaven with his fake kids and wife, having a great old-fashioned time, but is feeling kind of bad about his whole lack of saving everyone thing and chooses to leave The Nexus to try to save the solar system again. This is either very noble of him or he found those kids as creepy and irritating as we did.

After deciding to leave, Picard’s confronted with a remnant of Whoopi Goldberg who tells him that “time has no meaning here. If you leave, you can go anywhere… any time.”

Anywhere. Any time. Think about that for a second, because Picard most certainly does not. Out of all the choices in the entire universe of choices, he immediately decides he wants to go back ten minutes ago and try to fight Soren hand to hand again, but this time with Kirk as backup. We’re sure you can all guess what would have been a better choice – anything fucking else!

He can go anywhere, any time! How about going back a week and then bringing the whole Enterprise crew with you to stop Soren, without crashing your ship into a planet and getting beaten up by some fugly girl Klingons on the way this time. Or go back two weeks, kick back, have some Earl Gray (hot) and then go to the planet before Soren ever even arrives. Or send Kirk back to his own time and stop Soren eighty years before this happens!

That’s what we came up with off the top of our heads. Obviously the better choice would be to go anywhere that doesn’t involve three old men settling their differences in a fist fight that will determine whether an entire solar system lives or dies. We kind of know that that’s how Kirk rolls, but we expected better from Picard. Really, we could go on for days about the different paths Picard could have taken here instead of bringing only a sixty year old man with him who manages to lose a fight where gravity and inanimate objects are his only opponents.

Suffice to say when you can go back to any point in time, anywhere, don’t pick a time when a solar system was about to be destroyed and you had no weapons or back up.

So I started re-watching Beast Wars from the beginning again and couldn’t get over how utterly ridiculous their names were when you think about it. Now, hear me out. So, they land on the planet and have to create the Beast Modes to survive, that’s cool, but they immediately step out of the chambers in their new forms saying things like, “Hey, I’m a cheetah. No, I’m Cheetor” or “You can call me, Rat Trap” and they all instantly adopt these new names to match their beast modes.

So, did they not have names before they became animals? Optimus and Megatron obviously did, but what the hell were the rest of them called? Were they just numbered or something? Referred to by their job title maybe - Navigator? Wise-sciencey guy? Little-robot-that-for-no-foreseeable-reason-has-a-New-York-Accent?

Did every single character on the show seriously hate their former name so much that they all took the opportunity to rename themselves as soon as humanly possible when they got their animal modes? Isn’t that a little crazy? If you and your friends suddenly all got make-overs forced upon you, would you immediately change your names to match?

I have to say, I find their lack of identity disturbing.

[And then things get more confusing when you’re suddenly named after animals you don’t look like anymore.]

In our next installment of Batman, Super-Asshole, we find Batman finally getting fed up with the frequency that Robin gets kidnapped and basically tells him he has until the light goes out to get himself free, or he’s just gonna leave his ass there.

—— Another panel from DC’s Super Dictionary that also lacks photoshopping.

So, these two snakes were born joined at the head. That’s got to suck and be majorly inconvenient, but don’t go getting upset or anything about the difficult life these guys have ahead of them (PUN!) because these two got surgery in Arizona and now live happy, separate lives.

Here’s a question though, who the hell pays for that? My dog broke its leg once and it cost about $700 for all the vet bills - this is an animal I’ve hugged and cuddled and loved for years, the money is nothing, but I can’t help but wonder who feels the same level of affection for these two snakes that they would dish out insane amounts of money to have them undergo expensive snake surgery. Especially because this means you now own two regular snakes instead of one badass conjoined snake that looks like some kind of mythic creature. These guys could go hang out with the minotaur and you know what the minotaur would say when he saw them, “Wow, you guys are awesome.”

That’s totally what he’d say. He would not say that to two unconjoined snakes however. Lose ten cool points.

For the love of God Batman, Robin’s just been raped in an alleyway, NO, he can’t get home by himself!

—— A panel from DC’s Super Dictionary that amazingly enough has not been photo-shopped in any way.

Why isn’t Y just always a vowel? Would this not cut down on the confusion?

Feeling nostalgic for 60’s Batman and yearning for a little “Biff, Bang, Pow!” I started checking out Youtube clips of the old Adam West and Burt Ward camp-fest and realized that Batman and Robin have survived some truly amazing death traps and that there is absolutely no reason for me not to start listing them in all their glorious details.

For my first installment, I bring you Joker’s man-eating clam, which is exactly what it sounds like.

[I’m a literal person and apparently so is the Joker.]

In this brilliant episode the Joker has captured The Dynamic Duo and his own henchwoman who has of course fallen in love with Batman, because clearly Batman is an emotionally stable guy with absolutely no psychological issues whatsoever and would make a great boyfriend. Anyway, Joker decides to kill them by chaining them into a water vat with a huge clam that is going to eat them, starting with Robin, who doesn’t even survive until the end credits and before he gets eaten has the greatest look of terror on his face I’ve ever seen.

[Acting!]

There are many things that make this death trap classic, the first being the cliffhanger text at the end of the two-parter, which easily makes my top ten list of sentences I never thought I’d post pictures of:

[Well, I don’t think something lacking a throat and an esophagus can ‘swallow’ anything, so no, actually, it hasn’t. More like the Giant Clam has placed him gently in its mouth, which just sounds dirty.]

Despite all the clam-inaccuracies of the episode (i.e. that it’s a fish so counts as the Pisces portion of Joker’s Zodiac crimes), what I think I love the most is that it’s never explained where the hell Joker got the giant clam from. It’s not part of his criminal plot, he never mentions stealing it, or growing it, or anything, it’s just kind of there, I can only imagine because the production company happened to own a giant prop clam and needed to get their money’s worth out of it.

And then it eats Robin.

[Unfortunately not until about five minutes in, but it’s worth the wait.]

After a week of torment where we would have been driven insane wondering ‘how, how will they ever escape, Robin’s already dead for the love of God!” in the next episode we see that Batman is able to perform super-human feats of strength, and breaks free of his chains, a good two minutes after Robin is eaten, which doesn’t seem like it should have been all that helpful to Robin. It’s like lifting a car off someone when they’ve already been crushed to death, but feel free to judge for yourself.

Easter is coming, a time for chocolate and most of all, eggs. And as any true Batman fan will tell you, they’re not brought by the Easter Bunny.

Nope, my Easter Eggs come straight from Egghead himself.

And for the ultimate obsessed Egghead lunatic, you can have your own Egghead statue to thoroughly freak out all your guests with your awesomeness:

Not creepy at all.

Happy Easter Week Folks!

I want to wear Batman and Robin on my feet. I feel this is a noble goal and will somehow make the world a better place and deter crime in some way, but the world has decided to mock me intensely for having this dream. Behold, these shoes exist, but aren’t available to buy:

That sound you just heard over the internet was that of my heart breaking, to be denied such amazing foot coverings. I mean, it was bad enough when they told me I couldn’t have these:

What is this world coming to where you can’t get sneakers with Burt Ward-era Robin symbols on them OR boots with razor sharp blades in them?