After his death, Bruce Lee finds himself in the underworld, where he
teams up with Popeye, Caine (from Kung Fu), and the One-Armed Swordsman
(the protagonist of a Hong Kong film series) to battle “the Exorcist,” “the
Godfather,” James Bond, Emmanuelle (the main character of a series of erotic
films), Clint Eastwood (dressed as the Man with No Name), Zatoichi, and Dracula
(who leads an army of zombies that look suspiciously like guys in skeleton
costumes.) This film was part of the “Bruceploitation” subgenre that had actors
playing Bruce Lee after his death in unauthorized martial arts films. The film
explains the difference in Lee’s appearance (and, one presumes, the other
characters’) via a character stating that human beings’ features change when
they die and enter the underworld. In the CU, James Bond was still alive in 1977, when this movie was made. Therefore, it obviously takes place in an AU.

The Crossover UniverseTM is a companion blog to the books Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1-2 by Win Scott Eckert, and the forthcoming Crossovers Expanded Volumes 1-2 by Sean Levin. Material excerpted from Crossovers Volumes 1 & 2 is © copyright 2010-2014 by Win Scott Eckert. All rights reserved. Material excerpted from Crossovers Expanded Volumes 1 & 2 is © copyright 2014-present by Sean Levin. All rights reserved.
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This movie sounds like it is going to be either really awesome or really stupid or stupidly awesome or awesomely stupid.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was stupidly awesome, myself. :)
ReplyDeleteIs "The Exorcist" and "The Godfather" the characters from the movies (and theoriginal novels) of the same name?
DeleteApparently, they're meant to be, though they're not referred to as Father Merrin or Don Corleone, respectively, and they don't look at all like either one.
DeleteSpeaking of Bond, what about the appearances of two of his villains, Goldfinger and Blofeld, in the crossoverfest Machiavelli Club from the Sinister Six novels (scroll toward the bottom of http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/gentlemn.htm for a description)? Is that compatible with the CU? Even if they're not compatible, given the sheer number of crossover characters, it seems like it's worth mentioning.
ReplyDeleteFor various reasons, I don't consider the Sinister Six books CU canon, but I will be including them in the AU sections. Several entries in the most recent incarnation of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe treat events from that trilogy as canon for the characters who appear in it, so we have further evidence that Earth-616 is an alternate reality to the CU.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that these stories take place in 616 isn't by itself reason to think they don't also take place in the CU (after all, the Shang-Chi stories take place in both, for example). I would think more important for determining compatibility with the CU would be issues like giving the characters inconsistent personalities, or having a character alive (or dead) when the character is already dead (or still alive) in the CU.
DeleteThe 1990s setting is problematic, for one thing, since I tend to think that Spidey retired in the '80s. There are also more references to and appearances by other Marvel heroes and teams than I am comfortable with. There's also an issue raised by the appearance of SAFE agent Matt Gunderson, who is implied to be the son of Chief Marge Gunderson from the movie Fargo. According to the opening caption, Fargo takes place in 1987. If Matt's the child Marge was pregnant with in the movie, then his depiction as a grown man in the novel creates a chronological problem. It's clear in the film that Marge and her husband don't have any other children.
ReplyDeleteAh, those sound like more compelling reasons for excluding the stories.
Delete