The Absent-Minded Professor (1961)
Professor Ned Brainard is a bumbling but brilliant chemistry professor who is, as the title indicates, so absent-minded that he has to put a reminder in his lesson plan that he's getting married that evening. Stopping by his laboratory to run some quick tests before he goes to get married, Brainard discovers he's invented a "new form of energy," flying rubber, or "flubber." It's a substance that, when energy is applied to it, it creates more energy, but only as long as the energy is applied to it, and only--well, it would take a scientist to explain it. Basically, it's grade-A technobabble.
However, Brainard loses track of time and misses his wedding by twelve hours. This is apparently not the first time this has happened, and his fiancee Betsy has had enough. She turns for comfort to Professor Shelby Ashton, an English professor from a rival college. Ned has to win her back and decides that flubber is the way to do it. He initially tries to explain to her how great his new discovery is, but she's having none of it. He next grafts flubber onto the soles of the basketball team's shoes to help them win, but Betsy thinks he's being a jerk when he tries to take credit.
It's also worth noting that the reason the team needs help to win is that Professor Brainard has flunked their star player, Biff Hawk, the son of local businessman (read: loan shark) Alonzo Hawk. Medfield College, where Ned teaches, is deep in debt to Hawk, who is looking to foreclose on the loan and tear down the college to build commercial properties. So flubber is also going to save the college.
Ned also makes his car flubber-powered, which somehow gives it the ability to fly. He mostly uses this to terrorize Professor Ashton, but he's spotted flying by the Hawks. Alonzo Hawk approaches Ned and tells him that he (Hawk) can approach the government and get them to pay millions for the formula. Ned wants no part of Hawk's plan, which he sees as blackmail, and decides to sell it to them directly.
Hawk sabotages Ned's meeting with the government by swapping Ned's flubberized Model T for an ordinary one. However, Ned and Betsy trick Hawk into wearing flubber-soled shoes which keeps him occupied while they recover the car. They fly to Washington, D.C. and, after being mistaken for a UFO and almost shot down, meet with the military, who are very interested in the secret of antigravity.
Son of Flubber (1963)
Professor Brainard and Biff Hawk, now Brainard's top pupil, are going to Washington to get paid for flubber. However, the government has declared flubber to be top secret and, well, basically takes it without paying for it. Brainard returns empty-handed to find that the IRS is planning to tax him based not on what he actually has, which isn't enough to pay the paperboy, but on what he estimated his income to be based on flubber. Meanwhile, Alonzo Hawk is still looking to foreclose on his loans to the college.
Ned decides to create something new since he can't make flubber anymore, and creates flubbergas, which he plans to use to control the weather. Turns out, it does more than that: it can negate gravity, can create clouds, and in one experiment causes windows all over town to break. This gets the attention of Alonzo Hawk, who issued the insurance policies on all those windows. He's upset at losing money, but has a proposition: he and Brainard can buy up glass companies and then make a fortune by replacing the windows they break. Way to think big.
Ned doesn't like this plan, either, and Hawk vows to bring him down. There's also a subplot with Biff and his friend using flubbergas to win the football game against Medfield's rival college. Ned ends up on trial for damage caused by flubbergas, but the day is saved when it turns out the fallout from flubbergas has created "dry rain" which makes the land superfertile, causing crops to grow to freakishly huge size. Everyone wins, except Alonzo Hawk.
Fitting it into the WW4C
Professor Brainard is definitely a superscientist in the Reed Richards mold: he makes amazing creations which end up not changing the world. However, unlike Richards, who got fabulously wealthy off of his patents, Brainard has horrible luck when dealing with the government.
Medfield College will turn up again in the Dexter Riley movies. The movies were filmed in California, but flying east at basically driving speed (in a Model T, no less) gets Professor Brainard to Washington D.C. without much trouble. The college itself is probably located somewhere in the midwest, perhaps in Ohio or western Pennsylvania.
Alonzo Hawk will also show up again in one of the Herbie movies, trying to run an old woman out of her home so he can tear it down. There's really nothing good about him. Biff Hawk does not show up again in the movies, however, which makes his post-college future an empty slate for us to write on. Probably he becomes a superscientist like Professor Brainard. Maybe he uses his science skills to become a superhero in the mid-to-late 1960s and 1970s.
Flubber was taken by the government and kept top secret. Flubbergas was created to make money for the Brainards and the college, but since Medfield college is in financial trouble again by 1969's The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (and since vegetables as big as a man aren't commonplace), it seems that flubbergas didn't see widespread distribution, either. Maybe it was also taken by the military, or maybe it had a side effect that made it impractical to put into wide use. It's unclear what else flubbergas might do, after all. It might cause people to develop superpowers with too much exposure (or it might just be good for one big crop and then deplete the soil again).
Professor Ned Brainard is a bumbling but brilliant chemistry professor who is, as the title indicates, so absent-minded that he has to put a reminder in his lesson plan that he's getting married that evening. Stopping by his laboratory to run some quick tests before he goes to get married, Brainard discovers he's invented a "new form of energy," flying rubber, or "flubber." It's a substance that, when energy is applied to it, it creates more energy, but only as long as the energy is applied to it, and only--well, it would take a scientist to explain it. Basically, it's grade-A technobabble.
However, Brainard loses track of time and misses his wedding by twelve hours. This is apparently not the first time this has happened, and his fiancee Betsy has had enough. She turns for comfort to Professor Shelby Ashton, an English professor from a rival college. Ned has to win her back and decides that flubber is the way to do it. He initially tries to explain to her how great his new discovery is, but she's having none of it. He next grafts flubber onto the soles of the basketball team's shoes to help them win, but Betsy thinks he's being a jerk when he tries to take credit.
It's also worth noting that the reason the team needs help to win is that Professor Brainard has flunked their star player, Biff Hawk, the son of local businessman (read: loan shark) Alonzo Hawk. Medfield College, where Ned teaches, is deep in debt to Hawk, who is looking to foreclose on the loan and tear down the college to build commercial properties. So flubber is also going to save the college.
Ned also makes his car flubber-powered, which somehow gives it the ability to fly. He mostly uses this to terrorize Professor Ashton, but he's spotted flying by the Hawks. Alonzo Hawk approaches Ned and tells him that he (Hawk) can approach the government and get them to pay millions for the formula. Ned wants no part of Hawk's plan, which he sees as blackmail, and decides to sell it to them directly.
Hawk sabotages Ned's meeting with the government by swapping Ned's flubberized Model T for an ordinary one. However, Ned and Betsy trick Hawk into wearing flubber-soled shoes which keeps him occupied while they recover the car. They fly to Washington, D.C. and, after being mistaken for a UFO and almost shot down, meet with the military, who are very interested in the secret of antigravity.
Son of Flubber (1963)
Professor Brainard and Biff Hawk, now Brainard's top pupil, are going to Washington to get paid for flubber. However, the government has declared flubber to be top secret and, well, basically takes it without paying for it. Brainard returns empty-handed to find that the IRS is planning to tax him based not on what he actually has, which isn't enough to pay the paperboy, but on what he estimated his income to be based on flubber. Meanwhile, Alonzo Hawk is still looking to foreclose on his loans to the college.
Ned decides to create something new since he can't make flubber anymore, and creates flubbergas, which he plans to use to control the weather. Turns out, it does more than that: it can negate gravity, can create clouds, and in one experiment causes windows all over town to break. This gets the attention of Alonzo Hawk, who issued the insurance policies on all those windows. He's upset at losing money, but has a proposition: he and Brainard can buy up glass companies and then make a fortune by replacing the windows they break. Way to think big.
Ned doesn't like this plan, either, and Hawk vows to bring him down. There's also a subplot with Biff and his friend using flubbergas to win the football game against Medfield's rival college. Ned ends up on trial for damage caused by flubbergas, but the day is saved when it turns out the fallout from flubbergas has created "dry rain" which makes the land superfertile, causing crops to grow to freakishly huge size. Everyone wins, except Alonzo Hawk.
Fitting it into the WW4C
Professor Brainard is definitely a superscientist in the Reed Richards mold: he makes amazing creations which end up not changing the world. However, unlike Richards, who got fabulously wealthy off of his patents, Brainard has horrible luck when dealing with the government.
Medfield College will turn up again in the Dexter Riley movies. The movies were filmed in California, but flying east at basically driving speed (in a Model T, no less) gets Professor Brainard to Washington D.C. without much trouble. The college itself is probably located somewhere in the midwest, perhaps in Ohio or western Pennsylvania.
Alonzo Hawk will also show up again in one of the Herbie movies, trying to run an old woman out of her home so he can tear it down. There's really nothing good about him. Biff Hawk does not show up again in the movies, however, which makes his post-college future an empty slate for us to write on. Probably he becomes a superscientist like Professor Brainard. Maybe he uses his science skills to become a superhero in the mid-to-late 1960s and 1970s.
Flubber was taken by the government and kept top secret. Flubbergas was created to make money for the Brainards and the college, but since Medfield college is in financial trouble again by 1969's The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (and since vegetables as big as a man aren't commonplace), it seems that flubbergas didn't see widespread distribution, either. Maybe it was also taken by the military, or maybe it had a side effect that made it impractical to put into wide use. It's unclear what else flubbergas might do, after all. It might cause people to develop superpowers with too much exposure (or it might just be good for one big crop and then deplete the soil again).
What if one of the unexpected "side-effects" of the inhalation of ionized flubbergas (fluon?) is that it binds with human (and animal) cells, is that it causes the cells to become "supercharged" releasing more energy then expected. Here is the beginning of super-powers cropping up unexpectedly in the populace.
ReplyDeleteThis could be the reason that flubbergas does not become an economic boon. And perhaps food that has been grown on dry-rain changes the cells of the people who eat it. Just some ideas.
That's not bad. I'd say that it doesn't happen to everyone who ate the supervegetables, or the entire town would get powers. But it happens to enough of them that it gets noticed.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this helps because if I'm going to fit "Sky High" into the setting, there needs to be a healthy population of supers--enough that some of them would send their kids to a special school.
Definitely. And the later work on "safe" uses of flubbergas (I still like "fluon" of ionized flubbergas) leads to the system that keeps Sky High in the sky, and allows for the flying busses.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely the supervegetables do not cause everyone to develop powers, though the "modifications" to cell-structure/chromosomes, could lay dormant through one or more generations.
And of course, observing the effects of this experiment could provide the impetus for a "super-soldier program" later on.