#steve dies due to accumulated injuries after

[trashpocket]

platonic!stobin and what if: steve died in s3 and became a ghost to haunt robbie (and eddie can sometimes see n hear him too)

[reaperdaughter]

Since I will literally take forever to get a full verse info up, some handy dandy info for the I'll Be Seeing You verse

Kelly was born in 1916 the youngest child of Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt. She was born after her father died and her mother only found out she was pregnant with her a few weeks before her father boarded the steam liner that would cause his death.

Kelly is a mutant and was born with the following set of powers. Delayed aging which manifested around the age of 26. Kelly ages much much slower than the normal human, allowing her at the physical age of 107 to still look in her late 20s, early 30s. She was also born with superhuman strength, senses, stamina, durability, speed, agility and reflex.

The Vanderbilt family was essential in helping fund the SSR and Kelly went to work with them during the war. It was through the organization that she would meet and form a lasting and deep friendship with Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter and Howard Stark. She would also fall in love with James Barnes while they were serving Europe with the Howling Commandos. Kelly wasn't on the mission with the train, due to the suspicion that she may be pregnant. She wasn't, but the regret and speculation of what might have changed had she been there never leaves her.

After the presumed death of both James and Steve, Kelly spends 10 years trying to find James body in an effort to get closure and also bury the man she loves at home in New York. It isn't until the 60s that she reaches out to Peggy, wanting to do something more than feel like a ghost in one of the many family homes. Her old friend puts her to work as a field agent for SHIELD.

In 1985 she finds out about Zola working for SHIELD, that Peggy and Howard not only knew about it but were involved in bringing the man there. The fight is the worst the friends have ever had, with the mutant woman walking away from SHIELD forever. Kelly never speaks to Howard again, she only sees Peggy again in 1991 at Howard and Maria's funeral. The interaction is strained between the friends and it can never truly be like it was

Kelly and Tony had always had a relationship that modeled more of cousins than an Aunt and nephew. Looking for something totally different, she reaches out to him in the early 2000s to help her totally recreate herself. She wants away from Nick Fury and his attempts to bring her back into the fold, away from the Vanderbilt name. Tony helps her move the money she's accumulated into offshore accounts, purchase the building that Steve and Bucky had lived in Brooklyn and created a whole new identity for her.

Kelly Barnes goes to medical school and becomes a surgeon, eventually becoming the Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery at New York Presbyterian. Her Chief of Surgery knows who she is, knows what she is. It had been impossible to hide from a nephew of Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan. He'd had a picture of her and the others hanging on the wall in his office when she first interviewed there (it’s since been taken down) When Tony is taken in 2008 and comes home needing extensive follow up surgeries, the only one he trusts to do it is his cousin.

She's in a 9 hour surgery the day Steve Rogers goes running barefoot through Time's Square, 15 minutes down the street from her OR. Tony holds off telling her, unable to figure out how to say the words out loud. He keeps meaning too until it's too late and New York is attacked. She's not in the hospital, a late start and a planned overnight shift means she's home in Brooklyn when aliens come from the sky. She fights, does her best to keep people safe and triage the injuries she can until it's over and the threat is done and she heads for the hospital and her job. It's nearing 3am when she finally, finally catches a glimpse of blonde hair and a familiar uniform on the TV, all but collapsing in a panic attack in the middle of the ER.

[introvertguide]

Apocalypse Now (1979); AFI #30

The next movie on the AFI list that we watched was the famous Vietnam Era war film, Apocalypse Now (1979). Even though the movie only received lukewarm reviews on release and was a modest success, the movie is now considered a classic being ranked highly on the AFI film registry (#28 and #30 a decade later), the Sight and Sound Poll (#12), and #6 on a director’s poll of the greatest films of all time. There was some initial recognition as the movie was nominated for 8 Academy Awards and took home 2 for Best Cinematography and Best Sound and both were well deserved. There was actually quite a bit to the making (and almost not making) of this film that I would like to discuss, but first standard brief summary:

SPOILERS!!! You all should know by now but I don’t want hate mail for neglecting to mention it.

The story is really about two people at its core: a Special Ops Officer named Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) goes crazy when entrenched in Vietnam and starts killing civilians and anyone who doesn’t agree with him. To stop Kurtz, a specialized troop named Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is sent down a river through Vietnam and into Cambodia to kill the rogue Kurtz with “extreme prejudice.”

The movie begins when Captain Willard is recruited and then escorted to the mouth of a river that will take him to Kurtz. His escort is the air cavalry, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall), who fly into a beach possessed by Viet Cong. Kilgore picks this point of entry because he is a surfing fan and wants that specific beach so he can have an opportunity to catch some waves. It does not go well and he calls in a napalm strike on the tree line of the beach. This is when Kilgore says his famous phrase, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

Willard takes a small river patrol boat to go up that river with a small group. The boat members are Mr. Clean (Laurence Fishburne), Lance (Sam Bottoms), Chef (Frederic Forrest), and Chief (Albert Hall). The boat goes down the river and runs into increasingly strange situations. There is a USO show, a standard boat search that goes very wrong, and a bridge outpost that is build every day and blown up every night. 

Not everyone on the boat survives, but the remaining members make it to the end of the river to be met by a group of jungle natives and soldiers that all worship Kurtz like a god. There are dead bodies (and body parts) everywhere to show the madness of Kurtz and his soldiers. Willard realizes that he respects Kurtz but will have to kill him. 

Willard is taken by the group and held prisoner, but Kurtz likes him and allows him to roam around. After an undetermined about of time, Willard uses the cover of a ritual bull slaughter to assassinate Kurtz with a machete. Willard then goes back to his boat with the one surviving crewman and leaves. The end. 

This seems like a really short summary for a war epic that lasts for 170 minutes in the short version and over 200 in the extended versions, but very little actually happens in the film. It is a whole lot of voice over, 80s keyboard ambience music, and shots of a boat going down a river. It is supposed to be a film about the decent into madness as Willard gets further from the militarized Kilgore and closer to the vigilante Kurtz. It is hard to really show and not tell emotions of gradual loss of sanity and so there is a lot (I mean a whole lot) of 3rd person narrative. 

I will admit that I am much more of a fan of the story behind the film because almost everything went wrong. The movie was originally set to be directed by George Lucas and have the lead played by Steve McQueen. This did not work out because McQueen did not want to go to the jungle for 4 months. Neither did Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood, or Al Pacino. Coppola took over the job of director and sank some of his own money into the project to get it going since Lucas was busy with Star Wars when the film had accumulated some budget and Harvey Keitel was chosen as the lead. Coppola did not like the character that Keitel tried to give the role of Willard so he was replace with Martin Sheen. It felt like things were good at this point but it really went downhill from there.

The movie had not been completely written and was based on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness (which really doesn’t have an end) and it becomes evident as the movie goes on. The initial attack on the beach that is lead by the helicopters of Kilgore is a scenic wonder and one of the most cinematic things I have seen. The war horrors that are portrayed are brutal and disassociation that Kilgore has from what he is doing and what is going on around him is spectacular. Duvall really earned his nomination for Best Supporting Actor because he steals every scene that he is in. 

The movie was shot in the Philippines and there were many problems with safety for the crew since there was civil unrest and martial law declared in the area that filming was taking place. It was very dangerous and the president of the country at the time did not protect the members of the project like was promised. It continued to get worse because the jungle is very dangerous and the number of military/police in the filming escort was few to none. 

The heat and general environment is very harsh and people who have not grown accustomed to it suffer greatly. All of the crew had constant illnesses and injuries general anxiety. Charlie Sheen had a heart attack and his brother was shipped in to do some of the distance and dark shots. The crew got super antsy and started to do a lot of drinking and drug use with Dennis Hopper in the lead, even getting the teenaged Lawrence Fishburne addicted to heroine. Through all of this, the shoot was way over budget due to weather delays, injuries, and the fact that the script of the movie had not been finished.

To top off everything off, Marlon Brando finally showed up and he was 90 lbs overweight, drunk, and took an immediate hatred towards everybody. He still had a chip on his shoulder about the pay for The Godfather and was there to screw things up for Coppola. The director was reported to be having almost daily anxiety attacks towards the end of the shoot. The toll became apparent since the direct lost almost 100 lbs. during the shoot from stress and general sickness. 

Everything was finally scrapped together and it became apparent that the whole thing was a fiasco. People almost died. The planned out five month shoot ended up taking almost fifteen months. The script was being written while the shoot was occurred. The weather and jungle had done a lot of damage to the tape and the lack of environmental control meant that there was a lot of voice over work. Coppola went bankrupt investing his own money into the project and a lot of it went to a highly overpaid and generally scheming Marlon Brando for a truly terrible performance.

A total of over 200 hours of film was edited down to a film that lasted around 160 minutes and it took 3 years to do. I have been disappointed by the film every time that I have watched it because it is slow and I really hate the sci-fi music and constant voice overs. I love the characters at the beginning and I dislike the new people more at more as the movie progresses. I know that it is supposed to get more and more crazy and unrealistic as the boat progresses down the river, but to me it is like watching somebody that you like get drunk over an evening and turn into an annoying spectacle. 

I want to note that this movie seems to be most favored by directors and others who are in the film business. People who have been on set realize how difficult it was to do the project and that the movie is as any good is phenomenal. Despite the lack of a real ending, the movie does have a definite plot and it follows the narrative almost like the filming was a research project and all of the data was combed to find a story. The film is too long and kind of boring for me, but I can recognize that there was some aspects of genius in the making. In my opinion, none of those aspects came from Marlon Brando.

This series is supposed to be objective so I will deal with the normal questions from my opinion and from a film standpoint. Should this film be on AFI list? I would so definitely from a film standpoint because it is a lesson about how a professional film can be made despite everything going wrong and it is a directorial and editing achievement like no other movie I know. The production wanted a realistic descent into madness in a war time situation and that is exactly what is on the tape. I personally don’t find it as interesting because of the lack of real character development outside of Willard and Kurtz, but I am just one person with my personal tastes and I recognize the accomplishment. Would I recommend it? I think it is good to see and there are a lot of things to learn from the filming. It is well liked generally speaking so I would not dissuade somebody who wanted to watch. I would not actively search this out. It is very long and is extremely boring and weird (not interesting weird) for a lot of the movie and Brando, Hopper, and Bottoms all play parts that just annoy me.  I would watch the film as far as Kilgore is involved (first 45 minutes) and then I would stop it there. 

Side note: I would highly recommend Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’ s Apocalypse (1991), which is a documentary directed by Eleanor Coppola and shows the struggle throughout the making of Apocalypse Now. Really gives a an idea of how stressful and dangerous the whole situation and it also shows what a real jerk Marlon Brando was being during the shoot.