Omake Zone 06: The Book was Better
“Good evening, I’m Carl Kramer with your daily dose of movie news. We now go live to Barbara Bana who is live on the scene of tonight’s premiere.”
“Thanks, Carl, I’m Barbara Bana, and the mood here tonight is absolutely electric! Nearly all of Hollywood has gathered at the Mann’s Chinese Theater tonight for the long-anticipated premiere of RONIN!”
“It certainly looks that way, Barbara, has any of the cast arrived at the red carpet yet?”
“Not yet, Carl, but I do think we will be seeing each of the stars in just a few minutes.”
“Now, we’ve been following this story ever since the controversial casting of Scarlett Johansson as Wutaian character Shizune Mai. The debate around that casting was so huge that many people doubted that the production would continue, just based on the backlash.”
“That’s right, Carl--but the casting director made a second controversial decision to cast Samuel L. Jackson as the part-Wutaian Riwin Koucha who isn’t even black, remember that?”
“Yes Barbara, that was an extremely unorthodox choice that was so oddball that everyone seemed to have forgotten what was happening in the first place. In fact, there was that time right after Jackson was cast, and he called that press conference to address the complaints, remember that?”
“That’s right, Carl! It settled all the turmoil and debates!”
“Do we have a clip of that that we can show…?”
/ / /
Samuel L. Jackson stands surrounded by a firing-squad formation of reporters, boom mics, and cameramen.
“I’M RAIWEEN COW-CHART MUTHAFUCKA--THAT’S ALL THERE IS TO IT!”
/ / /
“Wow Carl, even though he completely butchered the pronunciation of the name of the character he’d been cast to play, Sam Jackson really nailed it.”
“He sure did, Barbara. Ever since that emphatic statement, the fans over social media seemed to drop the casting point altogether.”
“They really did, Carl. In fact, Sam Jackson did the same thing when he was cast as Rikku in the Final Fantasy X film last year.”
“Goodness, that’s right, Barbara, I totally forgot about that.”
“Oh, just a moment Carl, it looks like our first celebrity has arrived here tonight at the red carpet…”
“Who could it be? Is it Leonardo DiCaprio who has been cast as Rufus Shinra, or could it be Idris Elba who plays Chanceton Vega?”
“Sorry, Carl, false alarm--it was just Rob Schneider.”
“Ugh, Rob Schneider. He’s in this film?”
“That’s right, Carl--he plays the infamous ‘cactuar’ character.”
“Oh, that’s right, Barbara. That fucking cactuar. Actually on that note, I’ve also heard that famous CG actor Andy Serkis is also in this film.”
“Indeed he is, Carl. But this time, Serkis is not playing a character per se…”
“Come again?”
“Serkis provided facial and motion capture for the completely CG-rendered city of Midgar itself, which is a movie adaptation original feature, not present in the original story. In the movie version, the entire city of Midgar itself is a sentient techno-behemoth which has three transformation modes and five distinct and separately named finishing moves, which the city shouts angrily before and while performing said finishing move.”
“That’s absolutely fascinating, Barbara. How did you find that out? Surely that’s insider information.”
“What can I say, Carl--I’m a bit of a geek!”
“KYAHAHAHAHA...!”
“GYAHAHAHAHA...!”
“Oh, Barbara, you crack me up.”
“One more thing I should mention, Carl--according to some sources, if RONIN is a box office and critical success, it’s rumored that the studio may actually consider making either another film or a stand-alone Netflix series based on some of the RONIN side characters such as Cloud Strife, Aeris Gainsborough, and Tifa Lockheart.”
“Well, Barbara, that’s a big ‘if’, especially considering that no one really cares about those characters…”
“Oh, sorry to interrupt, Carl, but it looks like due to typical LA traffic, the march on the red carpet may actually be delayed. How about we show the latest trailer for the new RONIN movie while we wait?”
“That is a capital idea, Barbara. Do we have that on file? Can we show that now...?”
/ / /
*The following trailer is rated R*
A synthesizer low-note booming noise sounds as the Warner Bros. company logo quickly fades in and out.
TOM CRUISE thumbs through the printed out data files. He is dressed as a Shinra MP.
TOM CRUISE
“No--this can’t be right”
Cut to a group of Turks staring into the sunset, standing at the edge of the Midgar upper plate. Synthesizer boom sounds again, and scene fades back to TOM CRUISE in the monitoring room.
TOM CRUISE
“This can’t be happening…”
Synthesizer booms again and the scene quickly fades to LEONARDO DICAPRIO (RUFUS SHINRA) sitting cross-legged behind his desk. Scene quickly zooms into his blue eye and becomes a mushroom cloud of the GONGAGA mako reactor exploding. The scene quickly zooms out again, but instead of the conference room with RUFUS, it’s the back-silhouetted outline of 4 TURKS overlooking the reactor explosion from a cliff far away. Fade quickly back to TOM CRUISE.
TOM CRUISE
“No, no, no, the Turks don’t exist...”
Synthesizer boom sounds again as the scene cuts to quick shots of each of the members of R0-414 in the following half-second order: VALERICK (MICHAEL FASSBENDER), RIWIN (SAMUEL JACKSON), SHIZUNE (SCARLETT JOHANSSON), and EVAN (NATALIE PORTMAN).
Fade to black. Only TOM CRUISE’s narration is heard.
TOM CRUISE:
“This is Jika Thunderson! I need an APB on the following individuals…”
Flash to white as the main theme (“Young Men Dead” by the Black Angels) plays. NATALIE PORTMAN (EVAN ORIS) narrates as various flashes of R0-414’s missions montage in stylized fashion.
EVAN ORIS
(Narration) “You are my unbroken blades...”
EVAN shown charging at full speed aiming and firing her shotgun in a desert.
EVAN ORIS
(Narration) “You are the hammer and the anvil...”
RIWIN (SAMUEL JACKSON) shown leg sweeping a SOLDIER 2nd Class. As the SOLDIER falls flat on his back, VALERICK (MICHAEL FASSBENDER) drives his fist straight down on the SOLDIER’s face, caving his helm in and plunging it into the marble floor with a resounding crack.
EVAN ORIS
(Narration) “You are the fear of death inherent to every soul...”
SHIZUNE MAI (SCARLETT JOHANSSON) shown sliding her wheeled office chair in front of her terminal, perhaps too dramatically, as she turns to face up and over her shoulder.
SHIZUNE
“I can use my computer to hack it!”
MUSIC suddenly stops mid beat as all the other R0-414 Turks stare blankly at SHIZUNE
VALERICK
“It’s a wall.”
SHIZUNE
“So?”
RIWIN
“How you supposed to hack a muthafuckin’ wall?”
Cut immediately to wide aerial shot of CG Midgar city transforming into its robotic form, with shrill disaster music playing in the background. Cut to EVAN grinning sinisterly.
EVAN
“Good girl.”
Main chorus of MAIN THEME (“Young Men Dead”) blares back into life as the main title of the film (“RONIN”) appears on the screen in bold lettering, the title slowly fading into the background.
A 3-second intense montage of:
Explosions
Fights
Turks hanging on to full-speed trains
gun-fu between R0-414 and other loyal Turks
sword fights between R0-414 and SOLDIERs
SHIZUNE and RIWIN having a kung fu fight in a tea shop
EVAN and VALERICK arm-wrestling at a dirty table in a bar, surrounded by screaming, drunken Correlians
RIWIN and VALERICK jumping out of the opposite ends of a Shinra Blackhawk as it explodes, and they both land on the barrel of the Sister Ray cannon at Junon, already breaking into a sprint as soon as they hit the ground
SHIZUNE (SCARLETT JOHANSSON) speaking Wutaian badly
All the members of R0-414 running full speed away from a cactuar
RIWIN laughing as a disguised Don Corneo
KEZU DEPRIEVE (BENEDICT CUMBERBACH) stepping out of a Shinra Blackhawk onto a helipad in slow-motion
SHIZUNE, her face covered in soot, smiling with tears in her eyes as blood flows out of the side of her mouth
VALERICK shouting and standing on a cargo loading platform in a hangar filled with mercenaries who are all raising their fists in rebellion
EVAN wringing her fist out as a SOLDIER standing behind her drops dead a moment later
MUSIC suddenly comes to a stop as the camera cuts immediately to RIWIN (SAMUEL JACKSON), as he sits in the driver’s seat of a convertible. He smiles an evil cheshire grin.
RIWIN
“Shit. All I wanted to do was get the band back together.”
MUSIC resumes again full volume (theme outro only) as the movie information is shown at the end of the trailer.
/ / /
SHINRA TOWER, 66TH FLOOR MIDGAR DISC 02 - JUNE 2005
All the Turks of R0-414 stood in stunned silence.
They were gathered around a highly-modified widescreen monitor that Shizune had just introduced as a “Quantum Viewer.”
Evan Oris blinked.
“What. In the hell. Was that?” Evan asked, apparently still processing the images they had just seen.
“It was a movie trailer?” Riwin said blankly.
“For a movie. About us. I guess.” Valerick added.
“Shizune,” Evan said threateningly slow. “I hired you to innovate--not to waste time making flashy-looking fantasy side stories.”
“But Boss, I didn’t make this!”
“You just called us all down here to try out this new...thing. Then you turned it on and it showed us some kind of weird movie starring all of us.”
“This ‘thing’,” Shizune said. “You can think of this as a ‘What-if’ machine.”
“Bullshit,” Valerick spat.
“Well, whatever it is we saw, I didn’t make that,” Shizune said. “I just made this device which can theoretically view other quantum realities of Gaia. I guess someone made that trailer, I dunno…”
“Is this like that Secondary Existence kind of thing?” Evan asked, trying not to sound happy about having brought it up.
Shizune’s eyebrows beetled as she thought. “I don’t think so…”
“Why were you suddenly black?” Valerick asked Riwin.
“I dunno. Why was Shizune suddenly beautiful?” Riwin said.
“COME OVER HERE AND SAY THAT, I DARE YOU,” Shizune said venomously.
“No thanks, I'll pass," Riwin said with a smile.
“Why was I a frail little waif?” Evan said.
Everyone stood in silence as they pondered questions that had no obvious answers.
“Well,” Riwin said at last, “Jika looked the same.”
