To sum it up without spoiling any of the yet-to-be-revealed plot, there were three episodes meant to take place after Taskmaster. I wrote two before, that was an error. I had forgotten that one of the episodes was a rehash tutorial of Wesker. It would basically be a changelog for the character between MvC3 and UMvC3, and I think it would have been only one part instead of two.
I have in my records both a 1st draft and a 4th draft for Wesker. Drafts 2 and 3 were probably minimal changes, which is why I don't have copies anymore. The first draft of Wesker starts with Max coming downstairs in the morning and chatting with Wesker, who's moved back in after the events of Taskmaster. Wesker reveals he's still on his Progenitor samples (recall he declared in the Nemesis episode that he had kicked that habit). Max is freaked out, but Wesker tells him that if he hadn't been taking the samples he couldn't have helped them fight Taskmaster.
Anyway, Doom is upset because he had a dream about X-23, so Wesker and Max conspire to get her to go on a date with Doom and use an earpiece to coach Doom through the whole thing. Wesker calls X-23 and does a perfect Doom impersonation by clearing his throat and pinching his nose. A good exchange here:
X-23: "Look Victor, I’m tired of hearing from you. We just wouldn’t work out."
Wesker: "You’re wrong, Laura. Normally Doom would put you down with insults and belittle your tattoos and lack of good hair product. But Doom’s being straight with you. Doom wants another chance. Just once more chance to prove to you he’s the man you deserve!"
X-23 eventually agrees to one date. Then this happens:
Doom: "How did you do it?"
Wesker: "She’s a nineteen year-old girl, Victor. It’s all about impressing her with confidence. And lying."
Doom: "You made Doom sound needy! How is that confident?!"
Wesker: "It takes a confident man to admit his shortcomings."
Doom: "Then how come you don't admit yours?"
Wesker: "Because I don't have any."
This was a pretty fun episode. Basically as Max coaches Wesker through the gameplay changes, the two of them talk to Doom through his earpiece and instruct him on what to do during the date (which takes place at Doom's Latverian manor.) There's plenty of back and forth where Doom says something stupid to X-23, the guys chastise him for it and then he back-pedals and says something else. Also, Max and Wesker give conflicting advice, arguing over the earpiece while Doom stares blankly at X-23, waiting for clear instructions.
It ultimately ends in a full on parody of "A Whole New World" sung by Doom and X-23. When she realizes he's rotten with money, riches, jewels, slaves, and all that good stuff he has back home in Latveria, she has a change of heart and decides to be his girlfriend.
The fourth draft has an alternate intro where it's Doom's birthday and during gift-openings (Strider gives Doom ninja stars, which he promptly throws off-screen and injures a crew member with) Wesker forgot to get Doom a gift, and so teleports out to find X-23 and ask her to go on a date with Doom. He ultimately convinces her just by paying her fifty bucks. The rest of the episode was the same.
The episode ends with X-23 moving in to the (getting very cramped) house. Although the more important thing here was that this episode kinda solidified Doom and Wesker as friends. They still antagonize each other, but ya know.
After that would have been the Morrigan episode.
 |
| By popular request, for reasons that escape me. (Titties.) |
My wife Barrie would play Morrigan, and our friend Kristen would play Felicia. I figured Max could do a double tutorial, like for the characters in Ultimate ASSIST ME!, but in the end he didn't want to cram that much gameplay into the videos. Also, Barrie got pregnant, so that put a damper on her ability to wear a leather corset. In the end we recast Kristen as Morrigan and I rewrote the script just featuring her.
The oldest copy I have from when it was still part of season 2 is marked as the 3rd draft. This was probably the last one before we moved it to season 3. Even then, it's extremely similar so I'm not going to reveal much since it's due to be the next episode out.
The beginning of the episode has Max coming home from getting some fast food. He finds Wesker and X-23 working out in the garage (Wesker has a large pile of punching bags that X-23 is working on with her claws). I guess this was written after the move, given the existence of the garage. When Max finds them, this exchange happens:
Max: "Hey, is Doom around?"
X-23: "He should be upstairs."
Max: "I don't know, I came back with lunch, and put in on the couch, and--"
Wesker: "He's probably eating it."
Max bolts back upstairs. Meanwhile, Wesker takes a turn at the punching bags. X-23 holds it for him, and the first punch sends her flying hard into the wall.
Wesker: "Oooh. I told you, chin down, lean forward, knees apart, Laura... Laura? (she's not moving) ...You'll be fine."
Other than the introduction, the jokes were largely the same as they'll be in the season 3. The ending is different, because originally Morrigan's episode would directly lead into the finale. Now, it's episode 2 of the third season and so the ending is more laid back.
A side note on Morrigan - Kristen was making the costume herself but knew the episode would be delayed for season 3, so when we shot Retro there was no Morrigan costume. I did a quick casting call to find girls for the scene with Captain Commando, and heard back from Nikki Brunetti, who had a Morrigan costume and a C Viper costume. I obviously had plans to implement Morrigan into season 3, but I also had plans for C Viper (including an actress), so I asked her to bring Morrigan to the shoot since she was more popularly requested. So if you're wondering why we recast Morrigan, that's why. We technically already had our Morrigan, just no costume yet.
Anyway, the only other episode that was written was the climactic finale with our villain. Since we decided to take those last two scripts and put them into season 3, we figured we would expand a bit on the buildup to the finale, and thus the ASSIST ME! lore.
Literally nothing ever in the series has gone through as much planning, meetings, rewrites, etc. as season 3. Throughout the series, we've always had this sort of forward momentum. Everything seemed bigger than the last thing we did. Deadpool hit a high point for us comedy-wise, so Chris had this giant zombie showdown, Phoenix had this hard-hitting plot relevant cliffhanger, and Taskmaster had the 3 on 3 fight. Then Retro was shot almost entirely out of the house, which was a pretty new experience for us since our outdoor stuff rarely consisted of more than one or two people walking down the street. Retro had a car chase, a restaurant, a video-game store, and all these locations. Also, I'm an (overly) ambitious writer who likes to make challenges for the production, so needless to say my initial go at season 3 was pretty nuts.
I really liked the idea of the Max dies short film that the guys put together for season 2. I thought short films dispersed throughout the season were the way to go to really thicken out the plot without putting too much clutter in the tutorial episodes. That way, viewers who came more for the tutorial didn't have a ton of live action stuff to skip through. They could just not watch the short films and be better for it.
In the next post, I'll talk about the early stages of what we officially called Season 3.
No comments:
Post a Comment