T w e n t y S i d e d
After 15 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I’ve come to associate a lot of actors with their prominent superhero roles. This leads to situations where – like all old men – I find myself thrashing around, invoking the wrong names for things because I can’t remember the right ones.
Perhaps I’ll be talking about the Sherlock movies and someone will ask me which particular version of Sherlock I’m talking about. I’ll find I’m suddenly blanking out on the names of Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, so I’ll say something obnoxious like, “The one with Iron Man and the guy who played Captain Marvel’s boss.”
In the spirit of that sort of lethological mishap, here are several more movies described by someone who only knows actors from their parts in superhero movies. See how many you can name. Note that some of these are trivial and a few are deliberately unfair because I’m like that.
- Commissioner Gordon tries to teach Mr. Fantastic to be a better drummer.
- Hela, Magneto, Skurge, and the Red Skull are part of a force working to stop a demon from taking over the world, while Ulysses Klaue pursues his own agenda.
- The Hulk and Iron Man team up with Mysterio in the hunt for a serial killer.
- Mystique and Star-Lord get bored and shag.
- Aquaman and Thanos must stop Polka-Dot and Erik Selvig from killing their boss.
- Green Lantern and Thanos team up to stop a psychologically disturbed kid from starting a fire.
- Johnny Storm picks a fight with Captain Marvel’s old boyfriend.
- Thor and Baron Zemo’s rivalry on the racetrack goes too far, but underneath the insults and feuding they still respect each other.
- Lex Luthor and Spider-Man have a falling out after starting a company together.
- Electro and the Punisher perform robberies for Lex Luthor, but they don’t trust Luthor’s getaway driver.
- Thanos and Samwise Gamgee are part of a heist to steal the treasure of a 17th century pirate.
- The Mandarin is dying of cancer, so he steals Deadpool’s Body
- Batman uses his wealth to avoid being prosecuted for his racist crimes, and it’s up to Nick Fury to bring him to justice.
- Deadpool and Iron Monger are ghost police officers working to stop Sebastian Shaw’s gold heist.
- Green Lantern is trapped in a computer simulation run by Korg.
- Hancock and the Grandmaster team up to stop an alien invasion.
- Black Widow is a computer owned by The Joker. He’s too shy to flirt with her at first, but Lois Lane encourages him to go for it.
- Killmonger tries to get a date with Valkyrie, while Stakar Ogord teaches him to fight.
- The Grandmaster visits a zoo run by Nick Fury.
- Daredevil and Nick Fury get in a fender bender.
The list probably has too much Nick Fury in it, and it would probably be more challenging if I included more pre-2000 superheroes, but there you go. I imagine the crowd will hammer this out fairly quickly, but I’ll post the answers later just in case.
EDIT: As promised, here are the answers. The list was solved in the comments after about 6 hours, but here are the answers so you don’t have to hunt for them:
- Whiplash
- Lord of the Rings
- Zodiac
- Passengers
- Dune
- Deadpool 2
- Scott Pilgrim
- Rush
- The Social Network
- Baby Driver
- Goonies
- Self / Less
- Shaft (2000)
- R.I.P.D.
- Free Guy
- Independence Day
- Her
- Creed
- Jurassic Park
- Changing Lanes
The Best of 2015
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2015.
Spider-Man
A game I love. It has a solid main story and a couple of really obnoxious, cringy, incoherent side-plots in it. What happened here?
id Software Coding Style
When the source code for Doom 3 was released, we got a look at some of the style conventions used by the developers. Here I analyze this style and explain what it all means.
What is Vulkan?
There's a new graphics API in town. What does that mean, and why do we need it?
Grand Theft Railroad
Grand Theft Auto is a lousy, cheating jerk of a game.
1 – Whiplash
2 – LOTR
3 – Zodiac
4 – This could be a number of them. Passengers?
5 – Dune
6 – Deadpool 2
8 – Rush
9 – The Social Network
11 – The Goonies
14 – R.I.P.D.
15 – Free Guy
16 – Independence Day
17 – Her
I’m drawing a blank on 7, 10, 12, 13 and 18. A couple of them sound familiar but I can’t place them, while the others I genuinely have no idea what they could possibly be.
10 is Baby Driver
I sort of figured it was either that or “Drive”, but I haven’t watched either movie, and I thought it’d be unfair to just google them.
18 is Creed
One hour after this went up, you left the first comment and nailed over half the list. Apparently without Googling. You even got The Goonies, which I thought was sort of unreasonable.
Well played.
I only got LOTR and The Goonies, but then half the superhero characters named I don’t recognise…
I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic or not, but I genuinely didn’t google them. As a matter of fact, considering how many people in my social media circles keep mentioning they remember Sean Astin and Josh Brolin from The Goonies I found this one to be the easiest one.
I don’t only watch superhero movies, you know. As a matter of fact, I saw many of these actors in the movies on this list (like Andrew Garfield and Jesse Eisenberg) before they ever made a superhero film.
For the record: I was being 100% serious. I didn’t realize that people recognized Brolin from Goonies. I wouldn’t have connected those dots on my own.
Ah, OK, then. Sorry, it’s really hard to tell these days. I’m a bit on edge with so many people calling me a “fake fan” and all that crap.
Hey, what the hell? I just realized I missed 19 and 20. Were they not there before? Ah, I would have guessed 19, but not 20.
That’s really interesting, that one was also one of “the easy ones” for me. I managed about half before scrolling down.
I found that an easier one as well but…
It came out when I was a kid
I have young children myself
It was mostly filmed near where I live
I’ve taken my young kids on a movie location tour to all the places they filmed it within the last year right after we watched it
So it is perhaps a bit more front of mind for me than otherwise would be.
Goonies and RIPD were the easiest ones. The latter because I only watched it recently.
7 is Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
I thought it must be because of the ex-boyfriend bit but I totally forgot Chris Evans was in it.
Man, I never watched that movie in its entirety. I remember Chris Evans from it, but not Jude Law.
Jude Law isn’t in it.
Wasn’t Dune the one with Sting and Captain Piccard?
He means the new one, from 2021.
God, an original big budget movie that could bave been great by simply restructuring the story and changing the ending but of course the studio had to fuck it up.
I vaguely remember this film despising (what I presumed to be) its target audience and just devolving into Marvel/Star Wars references at the end to save the day, not even stuff related to video games I think.
I thought Passengers was really good until the last 20 minutes or so, where it devolves into action shlock. The premise with a villain protagonist looked really interesting, but then they had to screw it up because I guess they couldn’t have him be a bad guy. Probably one of those contractual things that so many actors have.
But I really didn’t get that “despising its target audience” vibe from Free Guy at all. Maybe the movie was a bit too safe, but I never got the feeling that it was insulting the audience. Unless you think rich studio executives were the target audience which I don’t see how you could.
19 is Jurassic Park (Nick’s the Other Computer Guy)
20 is Changing Lanes, which would have been better if it really was Daredevil and Nick Fury.
13 is… just the new Batman, I think.
If 5 is Dune, then it got things a bit mixed up. In Dune Polka Dot is openly aligned against Aquaman and Thanos. He works for Selvig, and is helping him try to kill Poe Dameron and his son king Henry V.
How in the hell? I couldn’t do a single one. Nice work man!
17 sounds like it’s been written by an AI
Sorry, but this is cringe.
It’s 2022, and you’re reading a blog where a 50 year old man complains about video games. This entire website is cringe.
I have no idea what you expected.
Old men yell at Marvel movie that ruined his actor memory.
Apparently not cringe ¯\_(?)_/¯
Do not kill the part of you that is cringe. Kill the part of you that cringes.
Don’t listen to him. I found this fun and plan to use it for parties sometime.
Are you kidding me? This was fantastic. I haven’t watched a Marvel movie since Civil War, I don’t watch movies in general, I don’t know actor’s names, but I still got a kick out of reading this list!
Different strokes, I guess.
I rarely watch movies, if I do watch a movie I rather have it be a classic, and dont care a bit about the actors or famous people stuff. I always find it annoying when I watch a review of a movie or some analysis or something, and the guy refers to the actors by their real name, rather than their movie name. “I just watched the movie and I know the guys their names, please call iron man just tony stark instead of robert downy jr.”
I was really confused as to what movie paired Rebecca Romijn with Chris Pratt.
1. Whiplash
3. Zodiac
4. That movie where they get stuck on a spaceship. I forgot the name and didn’t want to look it up.
6. Deadpool 2
8. Ford vs. Ferrari, or that other racing movie (I know what you’re talking about, but didn’t look it up)
9. The Social Network
14. RIPD
15. Free Guy?
17. Her.
Honestly, given I knew jack about Marvel movies, I feel pretty good about this one.
“Mystique and Star-Lord get bored and shag.”
I already did watch Passengers, but now I want to see THAT movie!
19 is xXx, I think.
20 is Changing Lanes.
19 is Jurassic Park.
12 is a pretty obscure pick. Self/less.
13 is Shaft 4/Shaft 2000.
Ah, got there before me on Jurassic Park. Calling it a zoo is a bit of an obfuscation, but it’s needed since Nick Fury is so easy. Though it was Independence Day that told me who the Grandmaster was (never even noticed a name in the movie) via Hancock, and you need both Grandmaster and Fury to get there easily.
I’m surprised you got the Grandmaster from Independence Day, because I was sure that one was Men In Black and was trying to figure out when Tommy Lee Jones played a Grandmaster.
I didn’t even think of Men in Black, but Independence Day is a full-on invasion, and Tommy Lee Jones is good, but Men in Black doesn’t have Jeff Goldblum or the big speech and tearjerker ending of Independence Day. So since I recognized Smith from Hancock I went straight to “welcome to erf”/what was Jeff Goldblum’s name again?/wait he was in a Marvel movie wasn’t he? Oh the zoo is Jurassic Park. The Grandmaster’s name I didn’t recall, but by that point it was already solved. (Those are the only two I got- I don’t watch many movies since I was a kid and only rarely learn actor’s names).
Is there some joke I’m not getting, or am I the first to notice “Stuff” in the title has 3 “f”‘s?
Nah, that’s just a mistake.
For the curious: I don’t normally post on Sundays. This post was bashed out Saturday evening on a whim and didn’t go through my usual cycle of revision and proofing. The idea wasn’t interesting enough to be worth putting real effort into it, but it amused me enough that I wanted to post it and see how people would do.
I believe the list is now solved. Volvagia got the last couple at 11:30am, 5 and a half hours after the post went up.
The list wasn’t insta-solved five minutes after it went live, and it didn’t drag on all day. That’s about what I was hoping for.
Number 5 threw me off because isn’t Polka-Dot not trying to stop but help Erik Selvig kill Paul? He’s the…mentat? For Harkonnen not Atreides.
Oops. I’ve never read the book, and it’s been a few months since I saw the movie. Looks like I lost the plot a bit on that one.
For me, Keanu Reeves stopped being Neo only about 5 years ago so I definitely understand this actor/role dilemma.
Red Skull is Elrond to me but he used to be Agent Smith until LotR came out.
Gandalf uses his magic to move metal around in X-men so these two gave me answer 2.
I don’t watch many movies so that’s the only one I got.
For me Keanu Reeves is still one half of the Wyld Stallyns!
Where in Neo and Marko have to pass their history final with the help of Fillmore (a Volkswagen Type 2 microbus*) in order to play in the battle of the bands!
* taking liberties as I’m not sure what other roles George Carlin might be more famous for than Bill and Ted’s or being a comedian.
Fun fact. Pixar’s Cars was not only the highest grossing film of George Carlin’s career (not necessarily a surprise) but also the highest grossing film of Paul Newman’s career.
Ouch. Bit close to the bone there for Bruce Wayne.
#1 was confusing the crap out of me because I kept thinking “That’s not right, Gary Oldman was commissioner Gordon and he wasn’t in Whiplash. That was J. K. Simmons!”
I forgot Simmons was Gordon in the Justice League movie (and maybe Batman vs. Superman?) Oddly enough, except maybe his role as J. Jonah Jameson, I primarily remember J. K. Simmons as Tenzin from Legend of Korra.
Alternatively for 7, you could’ve gone with “Superman defends Captain Marvel from her ex boyfriend”.
I totally forgot that Todd was played by former Superman Brandon Routh. I even went over the 7 exes in my head, just to make sure. Never registered.
Also, while looking that up I see Routh has since started playing The Atom on TV. I guess I can add him to my running list of dudes who have played more than one superhero. (Chris Evans, Ben Affleck, Ryan Reynolds, Michael B. Jordan.)
I guess there aren’t enough famous handsome charismatic dudes willing to spend 3 hours in the gym every day to meet the rising superhero demand.
Another fun one: Barring the unreleased 1994 Fantastic Four movie, every movie Human Torch has also appeared as a different character in the MCU (Chris Evans as Captain America, Michael B Jordan as Killmonger)
As someone who only watches Hong Kong action cinema: *whoosh*. I can’t even begin to guess one of them.
Me too. I have no idea who any of these people are. But that’s not surprising given that I don’t watch movies, let alone ones from Marvel, and even when I occasionally do I have no interest in the real-life actors or their other work.
So you do remember the title of that one movie where Bolo Yeung hit Bruce Lee with Jackie Chan?
Here’s another good one
Loki, Nick Fury, and Captian Marvel are recruited for an expedition to a remote island to chart the land and find native wildlife. Along the way they rescue, and are rescued by, Corpsman Dey
Kong: Skull Island.
You know, if you trim that down to just Brie Larson and John C. Reilly, you might end up with a fun Captain Marvel sequel. Stranded on a hostile planet full of crazy wildlife, maybe ancient precursor ruins to explain why she can’t leave and inject some higher stakes in the third act, teaming up with a similarly stranded member of the Nova Corps and forced to do the whole “Enemy Mine/Buddy Cops” routine. I’d believe those actors would have good chemistry.
Edit: Oh, right, and Nick Fury is part of Captain Marvel’s supporting cast AND presently in space. Put him in there too, let him go all badass Space Robinson Crusoe.
If Captain Marvel gets Nick Fury, that means John C Reilly gets Will Ferrell, right?
Is 12 Detective Pikachu? If so, that’s not the same actor as The Mandarin. It IS a classically trained british man though so it’s still very close haha
As the original list has already been deciphered, here’s a few to the pot:
* Loki and the Ancient One are vampire lovers married for more than thousand years.
* Steve Trevor competes with others in trying to kill a witness protected by Batman and Deadpool for a million-dollar reward.
* Hawkeye and his sister stop Jean Grey from abducting and sacrificing children.
* Mystique teaches Rocket competitive dancing.
* The Collector works for Cable in order to take revenge on a cartel drug lord.
Wait, are you sure #2 isn’t the Hobbit?
(That should be the next round of this game. Use the superhero names & plot description to see how MANY movies you can fit into it.)
That would be a great game!
Haha this is great! And also rather worrying! Didn’t get Dune, that’s a hilarious one. Would love to see more puzzles if you think of them.
14. – there’s a character called Sebastian Shaw?? You could have been really mean and called him Darth Vader instead ;)
I just watched the one where Rocket Raccoon, after leaving the Green Goblin’s carnival where he worked with Hellboy, conspires with Hela in a massive grift. Looking Glass extends an apparent kindness at the end, but we know better. It was great.
:D got that from Hela, carnival and grift.
I recognized most of the ones I’ve seen which is only about five or six from this list. Did not recognize Free Guy or Deadpool 2.