Thursday, November 27, 2008
Life Size Mego (or: Why I Loved Thanksgiving)
If there was one thing I loved at Thanksgiving growing up (and there were many things), it was getting to see the Marvel superhero float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. This float couldn't stay onscreen long enough, as far as I was concerned, and it was the one element of the parade that was completely above reproach. This was serious.
Looking back at one of these clips just makes me shake my head while smiling... Saying it doesn't hold up too well is almost completely wrong. These scenerios are just flat out insane. Did a six year old weave this narrative together? Maybe that's why it played so well when I was young.
It's strange enough that the entire adventure is set to the Back to the Future theme, but when Robocop (Robocop?) comes in and Power Man (a character with whom most of the viewing audience couldn't have any familiarity) makes an appearance... what? Captain America then tosses Hulk, who is caught by Green Goblin and Doctor Doom? Why would bad guys catch the Hulk? I mean, I know Hulk was never the unproblematic hero that Captain America was, but come on...
But as I said in my previous post about Megos, this was just one step closer to these beings existing in the same world my scrawny self occupied, and I couldn't get enough of it. I'll miss the parade this year, I'm sure, but I'll still be thinking of these epic battles rolling down the New York streets.
Happy Thanksgiving.
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5 comments:
Happy Thanksgiving, bro. We caught a little of the parade this morning and the Sesame Street float was pretty great...
Hope your turkey was awesome!
Was that Emma Frost down there, too?
I think so. Maybe. I'm still trying to figure out the Robocop Power Man bit.
So robocop was in there because Marvel was publishing a Robocop comic? http://tinyurl.com/58acu6 Crazy!
It took me a couple of watches to realize that Cap actually ermerges from a giant comic book.
Thanks for that link, Alan. I'm ashamed to admit it, but after seeing those covers, I think I might have actually owned an issue of Robocop in my younger days. So that solves that mystery (as to why he was included in the float). Now why is everyone cheering at the end when the villains and heroes have come together in catching the Hulk? Is this a (prescient) metaphor for the modern economy? A critique on pluralism? Or did a choreographer just do a lot of meth before phoning this one in?
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