Note: I was planning on doing the Dexter Riley movies next, and thereby finishing up the series on Medfield College. However, Neflix is being uncooperative. So, here's Underdog.
The Plot
Underdog's humble beginnings are as a bomb-sniffing police dog in Capitol City. Unfortunately, he's pretty out of place. For one thing, in a field dominated by German Shepherds, he's a Beagle. For another, his sense of smell is off-kilter. In particular, bombs and pork smell the same to him. After an embarassing incident involving the Mayor, he ends up jobless.
He gets captured by dapper but diminutive evil geneticist Simon Bar-Sinister and his dimwitted associate Cad. Simon Bar-Sinister (or, SBS, as I'll call him) is experimenting on animals to give them superpowers as part of an evil scheme to . . . well, do typical villain stuff. Our hero escapes, but not before he's doused in chemicals, giving him amazing powers. Also, in the course of his escape, he blows up SBS's laboratory on accident.
He's found and taken in by Dan Unger, a security guard at the building where SBS does his research. Dan is a former cop who is having trouble raising his teenaged son Jack on his own. He thinks the dog, which he names Shoeshine, will help endear him to Jack. Jack isn't thrilled with Shoeshine but then discovers that Shoeshine has superpowers: he's strong, he's fast, he can fly, and he can speak.
Jack is smitten with Molly, a reporter for the school paper. Shoeshine is smitten with her dog, Polly. Shoeshine ends up rescuing Polly (and incidentally Molly) from muggers, and he and Jack decide that he should become a superhero. Jack fashions a costume for him out of one of his dad's old varsity sweaters and a blanket, and Shoeshine becomes Underdog. Underdog rhymes when he talks because he saw a hot dog vendor doing it as a way to get people's attention. Thing is, he's improving his rhymes and so a lot of them are less than spectacular.
While Shoeshine has a thing for Polly, Polly has a thing for Underdog. Also, while Underdog is becoming the hero of Capitol City, SBS (now scarred and living in the sewers) is planning his revenge on Underdog. He discovers Underdog's secret identity and captures Dan and Jack. (At this point, Dan discovers that Shoeshine is Underdog, and there's some family bonding as Dan reveals that he gave up being a cop because after Jack's mom died, he didn't want to risk dying as a cop and leaving Jack alone.) SBS agrees to let the Ungers go if Underdog surrenders his powers. He does.
SBS creates three new dogs with the powers of Underdog, all German Shepherds, and begins his new plan: he'll place a bomb on top of city hall which will spread a mind-control gas out over the city, making him the ruler of Capitol City. Problem is, there's no more Underdog. Shoeshine, however, sniffs out the bomb (well, he sniffs out some pork and reasons that there's no reason for there to be pork on top of City Hall) and sets out of save the day without any powers.
Inside City Hall, he encounters SBS and the German Shepherds. In a turn of events, he manages to spill SBS's stash of power-granting pills, and swallows one. He also disposes of the German Shepherds by reasoning with them. SBS, after all, is just using them. Why should they let him boss them around? Turns out, they don't even have proper names; they think their names are Attack, Maim, and Kill. SBS takes one of his own pills and gains superpowers, but it's not enough to defeat Underdog. Underdog grabs the bomb, which is just a bundle of dynamite with a timer, gets the mind-control formula off of it, and buries the bomb deep in the park. However, he can't escape the blast in time, and he's propelled into space, then crashes back to earth.
Fortunately, he's also basically indestructible, so he survives and lives to fight another day. SBS and Cad are imprisoned.
Fitting it into the WW4C
This is a pretty easy one. He's a dog, but he's also a Superman-level superhero. Simon Bar-Sinister is a good villain, filling a Lex Luthor role pretty handily (actually, since Peter Dinklage plays him, he might be too good for what's really a fairly ordinary movie).
More interesting in terms of world-building is that the dogs (and cats) can all understand each other, and Shoeshine doesn't realize he's speaking English until Jack understands him. In the WW4C, then, animals have their own languages which can be learned if not necessarily spoken by other species. A conversation with a dog or cat may not be terribly interesting, but it's possible. This also fits in with the Witch Mountain movies, in which telepathy is used to talk to animals. It's not that they don't think like people; it's that we can't understand them.
From the standpoint of modeling Underdog's powers in a roleplaying game, the biggest problem is how fast he can fly. At one point in the film, he flies around the earth in a couple of seconds to catch a Frisbee. (Show-off.) I estimate that requires a flight speed of, oh, in the area of 40 million miles per hour. At the climax, he can't outfly the explosion from dynamite. I couldn't find a figure for how fast dynamite explodes, but a C-4 explosion expands at about 8,700 mph if the internet is correct (and it's certainly not powerful enough to propel someone into space). Fortunately, since I'm not going to worry about game statistics until the new superhero RPGs come out this summer, I can put that problem off for another day.
The Plot
Underdog's humble beginnings are as a bomb-sniffing police dog in Capitol City. Unfortunately, he's pretty out of place. For one thing, in a field dominated by German Shepherds, he's a Beagle. For another, his sense of smell is off-kilter. In particular, bombs and pork smell the same to him. After an embarassing incident involving the Mayor, he ends up jobless.
He gets captured by dapper but diminutive evil geneticist Simon Bar-Sinister and his dimwitted associate Cad. Simon Bar-Sinister (or, SBS, as I'll call him) is experimenting on animals to give them superpowers as part of an evil scheme to . . . well, do typical villain stuff. Our hero escapes, but not before he's doused in chemicals, giving him amazing powers. Also, in the course of his escape, he blows up SBS's laboratory on accident.
He's found and taken in by Dan Unger, a security guard at the building where SBS does his research. Dan is a former cop who is having trouble raising his teenaged son Jack on his own. He thinks the dog, which he names Shoeshine, will help endear him to Jack. Jack isn't thrilled with Shoeshine but then discovers that Shoeshine has superpowers: he's strong, he's fast, he can fly, and he can speak.
Jack is smitten with Molly, a reporter for the school paper. Shoeshine is smitten with her dog, Polly. Shoeshine ends up rescuing Polly (and incidentally Molly) from muggers, and he and Jack decide that he should become a superhero. Jack fashions a costume for him out of one of his dad's old varsity sweaters and a blanket, and Shoeshine becomes Underdog. Underdog rhymes when he talks because he saw a hot dog vendor doing it as a way to get people's attention. Thing is, he's improving his rhymes and so a lot of them are less than spectacular.
While Shoeshine has a thing for Polly, Polly has a thing for Underdog. Also, while Underdog is becoming the hero of Capitol City, SBS (now scarred and living in the sewers) is planning his revenge on Underdog. He discovers Underdog's secret identity and captures Dan and Jack. (At this point, Dan discovers that Shoeshine is Underdog, and there's some family bonding as Dan reveals that he gave up being a cop because after Jack's mom died, he didn't want to risk dying as a cop and leaving Jack alone.) SBS agrees to let the Ungers go if Underdog surrenders his powers. He does.
SBS creates three new dogs with the powers of Underdog, all German Shepherds, and begins his new plan: he'll place a bomb on top of city hall which will spread a mind-control gas out over the city, making him the ruler of Capitol City. Problem is, there's no more Underdog. Shoeshine, however, sniffs out the bomb (well, he sniffs out some pork and reasons that there's no reason for there to be pork on top of City Hall) and sets out of save the day without any powers.
Inside City Hall, he encounters SBS and the German Shepherds. In a turn of events, he manages to spill SBS's stash of power-granting pills, and swallows one. He also disposes of the German Shepherds by reasoning with them. SBS, after all, is just using them. Why should they let him boss them around? Turns out, they don't even have proper names; they think their names are Attack, Maim, and Kill. SBS takes one of his own pills and gains superpowers, but it's not enough to defeat Underdog. Underdog grabs the bomb, which is just a bundle of dynamite with a timer, gets the mind-control formula off of it, and buries the bomb deep in the park. However, he can't escape the blast in time, and he's propelled into space, then crashes back to earth.
Fortunately, he's also basically indestructible, so he survives and lives to fight another day. SBS and Cad are imprisoned.
Fitting it into the WW4C
This is a pretty easy one. He's a dog, but he's also a Superman-level superhero. Simon Bar-Sinister is a good villain, filling a Lex Luthor role pretty handily (actually, since Peter Dinklage plays him, he might be too good for what's really a fairly ordinary movie).
More interesting in terms of world-building is that the dogs (and cats) can all understand each other, and Shoeshine doesn't realize he's speaking English until Jack understands him. In the WW4C, then, animals have their own languages which can be learned if not necessarily spoken by other species. A conversation with a dog or cat may not be terribly interesting, but it's possible. This also fits in with the Witch Mountain movies, in which telepathy is used to talk to animals. It's not that they don't think like people; it's that we can't understand them.
From the standpoint of modeling Underdog's powers in a roleplaying game, the biggest problem is how fast he can fly. At one point in the film, he flies around the earth in a couple of seconds to catch a Frisbee. (Show-off.) I estimate that requires a flight speed of, oh, in the area of 40 million miles per hour. At the climax, he can't outfly the explosion from dynamite. I couldn't find a figure for how fast dynamite explodes, but a C-4 explosion expands at about 8,700 mph if the internet is correct (and it's certainly not powerful enough to propel someone into space). Fortunately, since I'm not going to worry about game statistics until the new superhero RPGs come out this summer, I can put that problem off for another day.
The idea that dogs and cats have their own languages and can communicate with each other goes a long way to informing movies like "Thomasina," "That Darn Cat," and "The Cat From Outer Space." It appears that the Martian precursors to cats and dogs were a lot more intelligent then people give them credit for.
ReplyDeleteAnd perhaps SBS was able to acquire a sample of the Brainard/Riley formula, and used it to create his super-power pills.