#6. My dude named FART, Final Fantasy III (or VI, if that’s how you roll)
The world needs to be saved from a maniacal, iron-fisted Empire and its power-mad vizier usurper, and only a plucky party of four adventures, drawn from an equally plucky larger group of about 12, can accomplish the task.
One of these guys looks kind of like Guile from Street Fighter, and he’s very powerful, because I let him walk around and punch random forest animals for three weeks.
But lo, my enemy has detected his strength and vulnerability — and has used its mystical powers to “confuse” him. He has robbed the mightiest of my warriors, FART, of his free will and forced him to attack his comrades whilst spinning around with a green circle on top of his head. The combined might of my other warriors is no match for FART.
Only if somebody hits FART in the head so he doesn't kill the whole party.
This would spell the end for the Latter-Day-Light-Warriors and their crusade against Kefka, not to mention Ultros the evil narcissistic octopus, if it were not for the remarkable power of hitting somebody in the head.
All I have to do is hit FART in the head, and the magic is dispelled, he regains his composure, and he once more joins my party so that I can spend twenty minutes figuring out which of the hundred different kinds of gauntlets he’s carrying I can sell for spare change.
The world is saved!
(I’ve always been a bit CONF myself at CONF effects in Final Fantasy. My party members always seem less “confused” and more “enjoying the game playing for the wrong team for a little while.” So, it’s actually kind of cool sometimes, except when your party dies.
And if Final Fantasy characters have one thing in spades, it’s single-mindedness of purpose. Those guys will keep doing the same thing over and over longer than Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. So it seems odd that, as soon as the right sort of enemy shows up, my OCD “FIGHT MAGIC DRINK ITEM RUN” dudes start stabbing their friends, if only because it’s such a departure from their usual routine.)
Don’t forget _Tin Man_:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910812/
How could I?
http://www.tv.com/star-trek-the-next-generation/tin-man/episode/19054/summary.html
The most miraculous thing about Leonard’s injury in Memento is that he is able to remember that he has amnesia. How is it that his head injury stops him from forming new memories, but the doctors were able to inform him of his condition? I haven’t been able to watch the movie since I noticed that inconsistency.
I think that there’s actually a chapter in the Sacks book that deals with anterograde amnesia. The man with the affliction, when confronted with his reality, becomes horrified for ten or fifteen minutes, then slips back into the time ten or fifteen years in the past just before he developed the brain damage. Great read, btw.
Yeah, Leonard talks about this discrepancy at some point in _Memento_ – about if his condition is what he tends to think it is, he shouldn’t be able to remember the actual accident, and how therefore it might not be brain damage – he might just have psychological blocks. A software rather than a hardware problem, as it were.
If that’s true, it potentially changes a lot of the moral implications of what Leonard has done over the course of the movie. But it’s left a bit open-ended.
Oh snap.
I just remembered _50 First Dates_. Similar memory loss to _Memento_. Imagine being a woman and waking up with no idea why you’re clearly multiple months pregnant…
If I wake up being a woman, do I have to like _Moulin Rouge_?
Because that would be a dealbreaker.
I remember Guy Pearce from The Adventures of Prascilla! Queen of the Desert.
It wasn’t Naruto that caused Gaara’s ego death and subsequent alliance with the light side of the force…it was that toad Gamabunta. I think he secretes a hallucinogenic substance from his glands. Gaara embraced his shadow side (Shukaku) and went on to become the Hero. Yep. That’s what happened. Or should have anyway. Most people I know who have experienced head trauma end up worse for the wear. But the toad juice on the other hand…
@Lanthanide
Not _To Wong Fu: Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar_?
It’s so weird that that kind of movie also has a movie pair – like you’ve got Armageddon and Deep Impact, Volcano and Dante’s Peak, Valkyrie and Defiance, and a whole bunch of action stars in drag.
@Amy
I frickin’ love Gamabunta. All fictional characters should get to drink sake with the giant toad boss of the Yakuza.
Very entertaining!!
Is this about serious head injuries or just when people bump their heads? Because if it is non seriuos injuries, the scene in Stir of Echoes where Kevin Bacon’s wife goes into the basement to check if the water heater is lit then gets up and bangs her head on…something above her, that really got me i felt it.