It's ripe for good storytelling. The evil CEO manipulates the System that leads to the death of our hero's family. Full of grief, he tries to get justice to no avail. After a tearful wailing under a thunderstorm at their grave, he swears of justice in favor of revenge. He trains. Plots. Buys information. Has run ins with the Underworld where he learns that revenge is far more dangerous than originally thought. He perseveres, and that triumphant day comes...and revenge extracted. Now those same Systems are after him. They are afraid. They use every means, legality be damned, to find him. They lie and smear but our Hero's work can't be so easily brushed aside. Other villains are now taking note and working to prevent themselves from being next, saving lives. I can't write music for s*** but I'd see that premise.
Not making an exact equivalence here (they differ wildly and I’m not enthused by the assassination route) but how many plays were made about John Brown?
Page turn. This really sounds like the plot of a Steven Seagall or Jason Statham movie. Or a Dolph Lundgren movie. Or maybe a story arc from the TV show Renegade. I can definitely write songs with lots of rhymes, as I proved at a church retreat with this underappreciated classic It’s the tops it’s made out of hops It’s beer beer beer It’s not gnarly it’s made out of barley It’s beer beer beer If you drink too much you get drunk Then you wake up and feel like a punk So you better be careful when you buy your Beer beer beer We had an informal talent show so I wrote this song so my ~6 year old daughter would have a talent. She sang with me. I’m a great dad. Or at least, solidly mediocre.
Yeah, I think the phrase “too soon” comes into play here. Not to mention Harpers Ferry was a precursor to the Civil War, which I’d like to remain the Civil War and not retconned as Civil War I.
Luigi was literally the trope of “Lone Wolf.” Brown at least tried to lead a whole movement. Maybe Luigi is a necessary precursor to a figure like John Brown, but it sure isn’t a good look. edit: I want to say more and add qualifiers, but I also don’t want to paint myself into a silly corner without a legit q&a, back&forth. If you or anyone want to flesh this out, cool. But I don’t want to post an internal dialogue where I get way off tangent, so I’ll show my hand/my thinking slowly. Ultimately, if the US goes full circle on the Nazi-style ethnic cleansing and fascism, where we are about 1/2way I think, then Mangione will be a bright footnote on how we clung to the “it could never happen here” trail. If it doesn’t, I still don’t think he should be exalted a hero, but I also think his crime is a calculated and complex thing to judge.
One problem - he doesn't really have a compelling personality. He's handsome, but not really charismatic, and as far as I can tell, is somewhat unlikable. It's more tragedy than hero. It reminds me how Money Monster ends, without love story or ability to inspire others.
If the target had it coming, he did. If he didn't, he didn't. That's up to you. I don't care one way or the other about the CEO's life.
People who think like you don’t care about a lot of lives, including those who are killed by people of their same race.