Action Smackdown Rules
With fall around the corner, it’s Smackdown time!
In the past two years, The Correctness has brought you a Smackdown. Year One was the Superhero Smackdown, which was quite popular and contentious to some. Year Two was the Villains turn, and a bonus Team Smackdown. All of these were presented with tasty sidecards brought to you by RobbieRobTown.
So this year, we’ve decided to move the smackdown out of the comic book world, and on to the big screen. It’s Action Smackdown! pitting 16 of your favorite action heros/movie tough guys and gals against each other for the prize: bragging rights.
To avoid some of the confusion of the past, we’re going to try and lay out the rules as clearly as possible, and refer you back to them when you’re confused.
1: HOW THE PARTICIPANTS WERE CHOSEN
Once we had the idea to use Movie heroes, we spitballed for a while, asked our friends on facebook, and even asked you. We mulled over the possibilities, argued for a while, and then came up with the list.
2: ELIGIBILITY
We wanted to make this a Smackdown amongst recognizable heroes, so we decided that the person had to be in at least 2 movies. There is one exception to this rule: Malcolm Reynolds. He’s only appeared in one movie. But he’s pretty awesome, and he also has a good half season of TV to draw from. So he’s in.
Also, it’s the character, not the actor. So, while Arnie has been in a lot of films, we would only consider characters he’s played in more than one movie.
3: NO POWERS
Next, we limited the participants to “normal human”. No powers, no advantageous implants, etc. If we’ve missed one of these, you can mock us for it in the comments. This clause eliminated people like Riddick, Superman, (not Batman though, we discussed him at length, and determined he’s still to awesome for this to be fair) and Alice from Resident Evil.
4: THE BRACKET
The bracket was built by Admin_Rock, after he grew tired of no one else doing it. He (well, I) placed the candidates in the frame with the following pre-determinations:
-Didn’t want Indy vs Han in the first round, they go on opposite sides. Note: This does NOT mean they will fight in the final. My personal opinion is that Solo is a total wuss, and will be crushed early.
– Split the women up. We only have 4 action women in the bracket, so I decided they wouldn’t fight each other right away. They can make it or break it on their own, no easy path for anyone.
– Bond and Bourne were also split up, as they’re a bit similar in the whole superspy thing.
That’s it. No masterminding, no intentional placements so as to give someone an advantage. Pretty much used the order we had them listed in with the above considerations.
5: NOTHING IS DECIDED
The fanboys on the net love to cry “FIX!!” at every opportunity. Nothing is fixed or decided. Each week, we’ll have 3 of weigh in on the fight at hand. Our rule is that we don’t read each other’s piece until we’ve already written ours. TBinns loves to read mine and then hack on me in his, maybe this time he’ll follow the rule (though I don’t think he’s ever changed his decision based on anyone else’s.)
6: THE FIGHT
We realized quickly that the guy with the gun as an advantage over the guy without one (see Raiders of the Lost Ark). So the fight will be as such: Arena battle as usual. Contestants are made aware of one another 48 hours prior to fight. If a character is known for a weapon (sword, whip, phaser, .44 Magnum), that weapon will be made available in the fight, at the top of a 10 foot 4×4 in the center of the arena. This gives the H2H guys a small advantage early, which should be balanced quickly.
Fight is to the death.
So that’s that. Any changes or additions made after today will be date stamped.
