Wednesday, July 23, 2008

KGBeast


Anatoli Knyazev (I have no idea how to pronounce that) was a cybernetically enhanced KGB assassin sent to the US to stop the Star Wars program Reagan was pushing in the 80s. When Batman had him as good as captured with a batarang line wrapped around KGBeast's wrist, the Beast did what any good solider would -- he chopped off his own hand. Naturally, since comic book characters in the late 80s and early 90s loved this kind of thing, he replaced his missing hand with a giant gun. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, he's usually just referred to as "The Beast," but I still like to call him KGBeast. It's a funny name.

Pros: KGBeast is a funny name?

Cons: KGBeast is a funny name. Also, everything else.

The gun on the arm is great for camp like Machine Girl, but awful in the Batman Begins context.

How I'd do it: I wouldn't in a million years.

Casting Guesses: Vin Diesel with a horrible Russian accent? But this is a villain from another time, he might have fit in the Joel Schumacher Batman movies if they'd been made in the late 80s, and he would've been played by Dolph Lundgren. Or maybe that guy who lip synched to Gene Hackman's voice in Superman IV.

Verdict: Easily the worst one I've covered yet. Compared to KGBeast, Calendar Man looks like a great idea.

2 comments:

Kirk Warren said...

I think the KGBeast would be a perfect casting choice. I don't know if we even need the costume for him, but the movie could end with his hand cut off and him missing just like the original 10 Nights of the Beast, which I consider one of the best Batman stories ever.

While the Beast has been turned into a joke with the gun hand and other nonsense he's been through since 10 Nights, that first story is more than enough to fill out a movie.

Bill said...

Yikes. Maybe it's just cause I didn't get to it until much, much later (sometime within the last couple years) and it just didn't hold up that well over time, but it seemed pretty awful to me.