‘Star Wars’ scribe Gary Whitta wrote an Iron Man and Downton Abbey crossover, and it’s awesome
My wife loves Downton Abbey. I love Iron Man. We can’t always agree on which to watch. If only there was a way to combine them.
Well, the former editor-in-chief of PC Gamer magazine (OK, you might know him better as the dude writing the first standalone Star Wars film, or the guy who wrote The Book of Eli) has a solution in his wonderful Downton Abbey/Iron Man crossover fan fiction. It’s incredible, and I think the BBC needs to get on the phone with Marvel right now to get it filmed.
By “incredible” I don’t mean “an Oscar-worthy screenplay that all film students should study.” It’s obviously written to be a lighthearted, fan-fiction bit of fun. There are jokes about Americans liking french fries and Howard Stark tells Lord Grantham that “coal is for suckers,” but for something just aiming to be entertaining: mission accomplished. I mean, Iron Man’s dad goes to Yorkshire to talk to aristocrats about economics and technology. How is that not kind of awesome?
The experiment in dumb (the good kind of “dumb”) fan fiction relied somewhat on dumb social media activity, with Whitta only releasing the first act of the “Stark Ascendancy” script when one of his Twitter posts got enough retweets, and act two hinges on the same thing.
If I get enough RTs I’ll post the first pages of DOWNTON ABBEY: THE STARK ASCENDANCY on Monday. It’s in your hands! pic.twitter.com/ZPzA2c4vZA
— Gary Whitta (@garywhitta) November 22, 2014
Trying to gauge interest in Part Two of #StarkAscendancy. Original post needed to hit 1000+ RTs, not even close. On verge of cancelation!
— Gary Whitta (@garywhitta) November 25, 2014
But hey, this is the kind of social media movement I can get behind. I need to know more about how the Crawley family factors into Howard Stark’s plans to fight Hitler.
You can read act one of Downton Abbey: The Stark Ascendancy here.