Advanced Arch-Nemesisery

It seems that everyone’s favourite toilet-related rhyming slang, Brad “I’m going for a” Pitt, is taking lessons in advanced arch-nemesisery in preparation to play Professor Moriarty in the already-planned sequel to Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. What also seems likely is that Pitt will pop up in the first movie, probably in the last shot, having spent the rest of the film mooching about in shadow as an underlying presence of super-villainy.

All this popping-up-at-the-end-of-a-big-movie is all very well, but one day it’ll be regarded as a deeply unfashionable thing films did in those archaic days of the late noughties / early teens when people had to open their eyes to watch a film, the poor primitive buggers. Samuel L Jackson whiffled about in the shadows in the final scene of Iron Man before revealing himself as Nick Fury, a major character in next year’s sequel, and Robert Downey Jr – as Iron Man’s alter-ego Tony Stark – lurked nonchalantly at the end of The Incredible Hulk, not to get people to go to the sequel (hopefully there won’t be one) but to show the characters in the same universe in anticipation of The Avengers, the destined-to-be-bad-but-brilliantly-ambitious project bringing together Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America and Thor.

Edward Norton is even rumoured to be turning up late to Iron Man 2 as Bruce Banner, at which point the movie world will literally turn inside out and disappear up its own projection booth. It’s getting to be like a series of parties where the most fun guest shows up just as everyone’s getting their coats from the bedroom and everyone’s forced to carry on having fun regardless of the fact that they’re all terribly drunk and there’s no chance of getting a taxi now, they’ll all have to sleep on the floor.

This kind of thing is lots of fun and is clearly designed to get folk excited about the sequel, but I can see it becoming a dated cinema trend akin to outtakes over the credits (massive in ‘70s Burt Reynolds comedies) or casting Kevin Bacon. It’s a little-known fact that Kevin Bacon was in every single film made around the world between 1989 and 1993.

So, The Incredible Suit confidently predicts that when Sean Connery reveals himself (not literally you understand, that would be horrible) at the end of the next Bond film to be Blofeld, or Bond’s evil great-grandad, or Father Christmas, the trend will officially be declared passé and destined to be spoofed in a Keenen Ivory Wayans film at some point in a post-apocalyptic hellish future where all films are made by Keenen Ivory Wayans.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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