The Train Ride of Season 2

So, as I mentioned in my last post, I cranked out a rough draft of the Deadpool episode pretty much right after we filmed Ultimate ASSIST ME! At the time, we had a vague idea for a few episodes. We had talked to our friend Dj about playing Chris Redfield, Andrew really wanted to film a Captain America episode and had some ideas. We also toyed around with Kenny (you guys might have seen him in the latest Christmas Special as Booker T) playing Nathan Spencer, Lyndsey playing Tron Bonne. We just kinda tossed around ideas as to what our options were, and what might work for a season arc.

I suggested to Max that first things first, we select our villain. He did that pretty quickly (I can't reveal who it is, because it's not officially revealed until late in season 3). Aside from the "big bad" he picked as the villain, Max wanted a grounded merc type badguy to do most of the dirty work - a nice contrast from the hammy Wesker in season 1. He decided on Taskmaster, so we knew Deadpool and Taskmaster would be in season 2, and I think we picked Chris and Phoenix not long after that.

So we shot Deadpool around Christmas time. My first draft featured Deadpool punting Ammy off the balcony, and ultimately being buddy-buddy with Max and Doom. Max had actually really grown to like Wesker as a character, and wanted Wesker to come back as an ally. So he had me rewrite an ending where Deadpool tries to kill Max, and Wesker tricks him into blowing himself up to save the day. Most of my second draft of Deadpool is exactly what you see in the final product. There were two major changes - the dream sequence at the beginning was rewritten (I think by Max, but Simmons probably helped too). In my version, Doom was simply having an alcohol fueled nightmare, and woke up to Wesker yelling at him from the TV. The other guys had the idea to tease our main villain as using his power to influence Doom's psyche - a plot point I wish I had thought of. It worked really well.

That idea expanded into part 2 of Deadpool, which was the other real change from my script. My script had two alternate scenes for part 2 (which became part 3) of Deadpool, that were to be based off of audience votes as to whether or not Deadpool should kill Max. We were going to film both (one hilarious version had Deadpool toss an enchilada out the window and smack X-23 in the face as she casually walked by) and then Max would use whatever fit with the audience vote. However, he and Simmons had this idea to use that gag to tie the villain even further into the plot, and so ASSIST ME! Is Over (aka Deadpool part 2) was born.

This is why at cons I say nobody on the crew can really take full creative credit for the story. It's such a team effort in the end that even though I write the basic script, we've all contributed something to the humor you see.

Over the weekends where we shot Deadpool and the Christmas Special, we talked about the overall plot of season 2. The ending of the season went through many variations in the planning phase. There was a version involving Chris and Jill helping fight the badguy, while BSAA agents fought his lackeys (he's a real bad ass, so taking on four or five heroes totally works for him). We also locked in our plans to use Chris and Phoenix as the next episodes, so we figured out how they'd work into the plot. Max and the guys had given me some basic ideas for the Chris episode (namely the zombie outbreak, BSAA agents with him, etc.) and I wrote a rough draft soon after that.

With the Chris episode I tried to do something different. In fact, each episode I try to use a different type of comedy fitting to the character portrayed. Deadpool was wacky and zany (like he should be) and so I wanted Chris to be funny by accident. Like he thinks the world of himself and he's a total dudebro. Dj was down to play Chris that way, so we wound up with the broiest Chris Redfield imaginable.

I still remember writing the zombie fight scene at the end to be simple (mostly the guys holding the zombies back at the door) because Max was concerned about blocking that many actors in his living room. So I wrote a simple fight scene, but when filming day came we had all these zombies in awesome makeup (done by Vergil actor Sean and Strider actor Ben) and I think the option to do this big epic swarm in the living room was too tempting for Max to turn it down.

The Chris shoot was probably the first time I felt stressed out during the shoot. There were a lot of extras, in makeup and acting for a lot longer than I had expected they'd have to, we were all really tired by the end and just trying to get the last shots done so we could go home. A bunch of us would gather on the balcony whenever we weren't on camera because even though it was like January or February, it was so fucking hot in the living room with that many bodies, it was unbearable.

But we got it done. God knows how, we got it done in one weekend. We were all stressed and tired, but when it was done we were like "alright, let's go to fucking Denny's" and it was all good.

We got together next to shoot the Phoenix episode. That was actually the last script I wrote for season 2 chronologically. The last were already written, and I was kinda fresh out of ideas for Phoenix. I wrote it just after the sexual harassment "scandal" at Cross Assault. We were just about to film, and I was like - dude, this is perfect. Besides being educational, ASSIST ME! has an air of FGC commentary to it. Max likes to keep it light, I guess. Because he hated that I wrote Doom to quote Aris basically verbatim when talking to Jean Grey.

Good lookin' guy. Big hit with the ladies.

Of course, I wrote it so that Doom got the short end of the Phoenix-stick for it, but both Simmons and Max were concerned the audience would hate Doom for it so the whole thing had to be cut. Admittedly, my Phoenix script was probably the weakest one I'd written. The only thing they kept from my script was the ending, where Jean tries to psychically determine who the main villain is and gets owned for her trouble. But I dug that ending, so I'm glad it was kept.

Not long after this Max told me about how he was going to have to move, and at the time wasn't sure how that was going to affect production. We also got contacted by CAPCOM to do another project (which turned into RETRO ASSIST ME!), and we knew there was no way we were going to finish season 2 in time.

And that's because at first, season 2 was going to play out much like it did, but there would be 6 episodes instead of 4. After Phoenix was Taskmaster. The following episode was going to be Morrigan (a very early draft had both her and  Felecia, but Max didn't want to squeeze two tutorials into one video) and then the finale episode of the season with the villain reveal, showdown, etc.

Now, we had very little time to wrap the season. We had a completed Taskmaster script (the 6-man fight had been there since the beginning because I wanted to capture the essence of the 3 on 3 fights from the game, and was itching to give Ben some proper screen time as Strider) but only a few weeks to film it before Max had to move and we had to start work on Retro.

It should be noted that for Retro, CAPCOM gave us a way bigger heads up (we were in talks with them before E3, and at E3 pitched them the idea of the BttF parody). But because of Max and Jessica's sudden need to move, we had to scramble.

We cast my buddy Todd Graziano as Taskmaster.

Seen here in his "Old Snake" cosplay.

I envisioned Taskmaster as the polar opposite of Deadpool. Serious, military precision, cold and calculating. Todd was a US Marine, and I thought he could bring some of that military purpose to the role. We had (I think) settled on Ben voicing Tasky because he had this awesome gruff voice he could put on for it, so we got together with Todd and filmed all we could.

Todd got called out on personal business in the middle of filming, so we had to slap the Taskmaster costume on Simmons and Ben to get all the shots in the living room. We were literally on the last weekend in Max's first place when we shot the fight scene. It was hectic figuring it all out, but we got all the indoor stuff, the shot of us walking down the alley, etc. We wound up getting back together later to shoot the outdoor stuff with Deadpool, MODOK, and Taskmaster, and shot Taskmaster's garage scene at Max's new place after the move.

I suggested to Max that we basically make the Taskmaster episode the end of season 2. We worked the move into the story (that last shot in Taskmaster of Max saying goodbye to his home was legit, dudes). It hadn't been designed that way, but it worked. Wesker had returned as a hero after his questionable tenure as a roommate in season 2, the immediate threat had been beaten, and now the team had to relocate. Felt like a good season finale to us, and with Retro right around the corner, we figured we could pick it up afterwards and expand the rest of the story into a third season.