Fan-Casting DC's FIRESTORM: Part 4

Click here to review part 3.

In the previous post, I outlined my vision for Firestorm: The Nuclear Man, the first movie in a film franchise based on the DC Comics superhero, Firestorm.  Inspired by the first couple Firestorm comics by Gerry Conway and Al Milgrom, and borrowing heavily from the origin tropes utilized in Spider-Man and Iron Man, the movie finds college football star Ronnie Raymond fused with the mind of the brilliant physicist Martin Stein and gifted with amazing powers to transmute matter.

Additional powers include: flight, fire hair, puffy sleeves.

So, you ask, what are you going to do for an encore?

Relax, I shout, I'm getting to it!

Who's Who?

As I detailed last post, there are two options for the protagonist.  The star could be Ronnie Raymond, played by Reid Ewing.

If so, his father is Edward Raymond, played by Tony Goldwyn…

…and his girlfriend is Doreen Day, played by Dianna Agron.

Or the star could be Jason Rusch played by Donald Glover.

If so, his father is Alvin Rusch played by LeVar Burton…

…and his girlfriend is Gehenna played by Yifei Liu.

Either way, the hero of the first movie is written like Ronnie, and for most of this post I will refer to the lead character as Ronnie.

The Sequel

The second movie in the Firestorm movie franchise is called The Fury of Firestorm.  In typical sequel fashion, we witness an escalation in Firestorm's profile as well as the danger level.  The main villain strikes at the heart of the hero, leading to a profound and momentous character death.  The fallout of this death leads Firestorm down a path of anger and aggression.  When Firestorm at last confronts the murderous villain again, he must avenge his fallen friend without succumbing to darkness and losing himself in vengeance.

In the beginning of the movie, we find that some time has passed--a couple months to a year.  Ronnie is still in college, preparing for another football season.  Professor Martin Stein (David Strathairn) hasn't fared so well.  The nuclear meltdown that created Firestorm and Multiplex in the first film has tainted his credibility.  He lost his teaching job at Hudson University.  His relationships are pretty strained.  Maybe he's started drinking.

The one thing Professor Stein has committed to is halting the proliferation of nuclear reactor devices based on his own notes and inventions.  When we first see Stein in the sequel, he has chartered (or stolen) a helicopter and taken it to an offshore oil refinery or ship called The Neptune Explorer.  There, a scientist is creating a nuclear powered bathysphere for deep sea observation/exploration.  Stein tries to stop the experiment, and in the process, a research technician named David Drake is caught in the bathysphere when it sorta/kinda explodes and is transformed into Typhoon.

Typhoon/David Drake (Clifton Collins, Jr.)

Clifton Collins, Jr. plays a great thuggish bad guy, and that's what I was looking for in Typhoon.  Once given his incredible powers to control winds and rain and effectively become a giant storm, the actor's performance would be a lot of motion capture for CGI.  I also thought his ethnicity would bring a new, different intensity to the character.

So Typhoon emerges, literally mad with power and ready to destroy the oil rig/ship and everyone onboard.  Stein summons Ronnie (somehow), which comes at an inopportune time for the young man.  Maybe he's about to score in practice, or maybe he's about to score with Doreen.  Either way, he is transferred to the site the bathysphere meltdown and merges with Stein to become Firestorm!

Firestorm fights Typhoon over the water and has to stop the raging storm from devastating a coastal city.  Of course, thanks to Stein's brilliance, they come up with the saving formula to stop Typhoon.

This is all in the first fifteen to twenty minutes of the movie.  Typhoon is not our main villain; this intro is just an excuse to showcase another super villain with a power he haven't really seen before.  After that, we see more of the state of Ronnie and Stein's relationship.  Ronnie actually feels smothered by the older man, who wants to use the powers to fix his own mistakes, while Ronnie wants to enjoy his normal life.

Things between Ronnie and Stein begin to sour and they get into a fight.  At the same time, an old friend walks back into Stein's life.  Doctor Crystal Frost * was a student and research assistant of Stein's, and they were lovers at one time, before she went to Antarctica to study cold energy.  Crystal wants Stein's help in creating a lab at Hudson University where she can experiment on thermafrost.  Stein, at first, wants nothing to do with it, but she convinces him.  She wants to resume their former romance, but he rebukes her advances.

He helps her build the thermafrost lab, but something in the experiment goes wrong and the cold energy affects Crystal on a subatomic level, transforming her into the nightmarish Killer Frost.

Killer Frost/Crystal Frost (Mena Suvari)

For the part of Killer Frost, I wanted an actress who is beautiful, sexy, and young-but-not-too-young.  She shouldn't look like a college student, but she should be desirable to both Stein and Ronnie.  Mena Suvari has a history of enticing an older man in American Beauty, and I think there's a psycho chick in her waiting to get out.

Frost survives the accident and is put in a containment chamber where her new physiology can be studied.  Ronnie and Stein fight over the professor's culpability in the accident and say some harsh words to each other.  While Ronnie and Stein are basically breaking up with each other, Frost awakens and busts out of her containment field.

To live, she must now drawn heat into her body, which causes everything around her to freeze.  She kills the other doctors, kills the security guards that come after her.  Ronnie and Stein temporarily table their fight and become Firestorm so they can stop Killer Frost.

Their first fight with her goes horribly, tragically wrong.  They throw every energy blast and matter trick they can think of but they cannot stop her.  Killer Frost uses her power back at them, reducing the temperature so much that Ronnie begins to lose consciousness.  Killer Frost forces them to separate, and Ronnie and Stein fall to the floor as individuals.  Ronnie is out cold (pun!) and Stein staggers in a kind of daze.

Frost captures Stein in ice.  She's a little nuts, a little jilted ex-lover, and she blames him for her present condition, even though she begged him to make the thermafrost lab in the first place.  Killer Frost kisses Martin Stein, drawing all of his body heat into her, killing him.

Yeah.  Killer Frost kills Professor Stein.

To Be Continued…

* Crystal Frost is a ridiculous name that could only exist in comics.  The second Killer Frost was named Louise Lincoln, and maybe this one needs a name like that so it's not so distracting.