You know who could totally do better?

[seriousfic]

Mysterio. From Spider-Man.

Think about it. His power is to create illusions which are indistinguishable from reality. Think that could come in handy for special effects? He even used to be a special effects artist. And yeah, maybe he thought he'd get more respect playing at being Dr. Doom, but the "robbing banks and hearing fishbowl jokes" angle isn't working.

Here's what you do. Use your holograms and robot doubles and shit to film an incredibly fan-servicey, never-happen-in-a-million-years fan trailer, like... oh, say... a Doctor Who/Star Trek crossover. Bonus: When you're finished, you have an Amy Pond robot.

Note: This Livejournal does not condone sex with celebrity robot doubles. That's how Cylon wars get started. Use your celebrity robot double only for scintillating conversation and multiplayer games and deviant sex... SHIT!

Now post it online and say you'll post more if you get a million dollars or so in your Paypal account. Say, who likes spending disposable money on bullshit? Nerds, that's who. And what're the Avengers going to do about it? Nothing, that's what.

Be sure to come up with a cover story, like you went to an alternate universe where Firefly was never canceled and you came back with the box set for Season 2. If that happened today, I would say "Sounds legit." Now imagine the average citizen of the Marvel universe, who repeatedly believes that Captain America is an evil villain and Norman Osborn is a beloved hero. Frankly, if you ask for them to give you an eyeball, they'd probably go for it.

So now you have a million dollars, or eyeballs, whichever. But why stop there? Tons of movies started with nothing more than a fan-trailer. Tron: Legacy, Sky Captain And The World of Tomorrow, etc. You might get a development deal, where a studio will give you hundreds of millions of dollars to do the special effects for a movie, which you can do on the cheap (I'm assuming Mysterio's illusions are cheap--he keeps coming up with new ones, yet he never succeeds at robbing anything...).

Or you could just troll Legend of the Seeker fandom with interviews about a third season on Starz. "Since we're not on network television anymore, Kahlan and Cara's relationship can be a lot more explicit..." It'd be the most villainous thing Mysterio has ever done.

ETA: Unless, of course, you were set upon by an even greater evil than yourself: Copyright lawyers.

ETA2: But seriously, fangirls, how much would you pay to see, say, a ten-minute mini-movie of Matt Bomer as Nightwing, running around, beating up bad guys, and being a precious flower? Or whatever your favorite fan-casting is?

ETA3: Make Jon Hamm robot double. Put him in a Superman costume. Get a fiver from every Superman fan in the world.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I agree, of course a lot of bad guys could make money if they used their tech for real stuff rather than trying to kill Superman or Spider-Man. Heck, old fishbowel could go the producer route and steal money from the studios. Or even THE PRODUCERS route

I mean, he could have a robot double of say, Megan Fox/Halle Berry/whoever, and say "Yup, I got the hottest star in Hollywood for my play/movie. Want to invest?" Then let the cash roll in and split town when the show bombs

Speaking of Sky Captain, why not robot doubles of old actors? Be the manager of Bela Lugosi, or Vincent Price and rent them out to movies.

and, speaking of alternative worlds, what if there were bootlegs? I mean, someone (in the Marvel U) actually went to a Earth were LotS had a 15 year run and sold the DVDs. Could that count as a crime?

[alara-r.livejournal.com]

This falls under the tv trope "Cut Lex Luthor A Check". *Most* Spiderman villains would actually do better if they used their powers to make legitimate money.

(I had a dream once about a gender-swapped Magneto who was maintaining her hold on Genosha and keeping the world off her back by bribing the world with CHEAP ELECTRICITY. Yeah, you go try to assassinate the person who is, IN PERSON, providing a third of the world's power supply. See who lets you get away with that. It was a fucking awesome plan, honestly, and I wish "ideologue/terrorist with electric/magnetic superpowers" wasn't *so* specific because damn, the original fic I could come up with on that premise...)

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

Pretty much every villain with mind-control powers could make a mint as a babysitter. "You don't want to keep your parents up all night crying for no reason. You want to sleep for the next twelve hours."