Registry of the Evolved Database
File #05 Jul 2009 13:13
| Name |
Avery Maxwell Quinn |
Aliases |
Max |
| Status |
Registered Evolved (Tier 2) |
Ability |
Electromagnetic Pulse Generation |
| Gender |
Male |
Race/Eth. |
Caucasian |
| Birthdate |
July 1, 1979 |
Age |
31 |
| Height |
6'3" |
Build |
Athletic |
| Eyes |
Brown |
Hair |
Brown |
| Parents |
Gary and Janice Quinn |
Siblings |
Eldest of three brothers. |
| Marital Status |
The entire Russian Ballet |
Children |
|
| Profile |
Max Quinn is a soldier turned stuntman turned action star. He's original came to New York to film his first feature, called Multiple Man.
Recently, he manifested an Evolved ability while the set of Multiple Man was attacked for a second time. Needless to say, his film career is over and it is unlikely the movie will ever see the light of day. Plus, now electronic equipment tends to glitch out or fry around him. No more Nintendo Wii!
|
|
portrayed by
Josh Hartnett |
Avery Maxwell Quinn was born in Syracuse, New York. His parents, Gary and Janice Quinn, ran a hardware store. It was a real mom and pop operation and employed their three sons in shelf stocking and key cutting. Not a glamorous life. Max was a quiet, but physically active young man. He and his brothers often got hurt emulating wrestlers or action movies. Max was particularly enthralled with the TV show American Gladiators and the stunt magic of David Copperfield. He watched action movies nonstop. Max was fascinated by things that looked a lot more painful or dangerous than they actually were.
Max's father didn't particularly approve of his son's obsession. Gary always wanted to be in the military, specifically the army. But poor eyesight and an injury sustained to his knee prevented him from ever achieving that goal. All three of the Quinn boys grew up with the expectation that they would join the military, an expectation that Max as the eldest was the first to fulfill. His father sold it as the real version of the action movies Max enjoyed. He could have chosen the Air Force or the Marines, but instead he chose the Army, and infantry. It was simple, straightforward, required him to use his brawn and follow orders.
After basic training, Max was stationed at Fort McNair for a year and half before being deployed to Somalia. During the course of his four-year enlistment, Max did two tours as part of the UN Peacekeeping delegation. He considered saying in the Army after his four year active duty commitment was complete, but opted instead to be placed on inactive reserve status.
Max's entry into stuntwork came through a friend of his he had met in the Army. Marcelo Peterson's father happened to be a stunt coordinator who sought out people with military experience to work in film and television. For Max, it was a dream come true. For the next three years, he split his time between the Army Reserve and stuntwork. He moved to LA, trained hard and started to perform more and more dangerous stunts. He was called back to active duty just before his reserve status ended and did a few months in Iraq before finally fulfilling his military obligations.
In 2005, he was placed on 'separated' status with the Army and dedicated himself full-time to stuntwork and training. He began to develop his own unique fighting style that brought him to the attention of a producer from Spike TV. Despite his acting experience being entirely physical until that point, he was asked to audition for a series of made-for-TV action movies bankrolled by the station. He secured the role after he performed a stunt for the producers based on a combination of his own unique fighting style and parkour. He was a new kind of action hero for changing tastes. He was strong, All-American and a former soldier. But he combined that image with a more graceful and fluid aesthetic that was popular due to influences from Japan and China. They were eager to market him.
The made-for-TV movies turned into a miniseries, then a short-lived TV series with a whole lot of explosions, a whole lot of stunts and sex and very little character development or plot. The show was called Breakwater and followed the exploits of an ex-Marine who kicked the crap out of terrorists. Basically, it played to Max's strengths. His acting slowly improved towards the end of Breakwater's run. The show had high ratings for the first few episodes, but faltered due to poor writing and very expensive, movie-quality stunts.
Breakwater may not have been a success, or a very good show, but it got Max noticed. His agent suddenly had more work for him than he could handle. Mostly the work he was offered was for a featured role (that meant moviegoers could actually see his face rather than playing random thug 1, 3 and 9 in a big action sequence) but he was also offered something a lot more surprising - a starring role in an action movie with a sizable budget. Or rather, he was asked to audition. The process was highly competitive and Max studied intensely with an acting coach to bring his abilities up to par. It was clear he was never going to be the next Oscar winner, but the script required his physical abilities more than his acting ones.
Max almost didn't get the role. It was only by a stroke of luck that the director of this new movie happened to catch a screener of Max's showpiece stunt in a film his colleague was directing. Max played a featured thug who battled the hero. The director saw something in that performance that made him believe that Max had star quality after all. He knew he had a winner when he found himself cheering for the thug.
So Max was cast as Parker Blue in the new movie, Multiple Man. The movie sought to capitalize on the public interest in the Evolved. The synopsis involved an Evolved ex-cop who could temporarily steal the abilities of other Evolved. The movie was to be shot in New York, specifically in Midtown as a way of both pumping money into the local economy and making use of a landscape that came pre-ruined. The movie was to feature scores of complex stunts involving the demonstration of at least a dozen Evolved abilities.
The film has just begun production in several locations around the city. The call has gone out, especially in displaced neighborhoods, for people to be extras. They are billing Multiple Man as a 'hero for a new world', though some have criticized the move of having a non-Evolved man play an Evolved hero.
Max is a good-natured, laid-back man, which might seem in contrast with his chosen career. He is an adrenaline junkie, but he's also a professional who takes his work (and safety) very seriously. He goes at movie work with the discipline of a soldier. To him, a choreographed fight needs to be executed with the precision of a military strike.
Not much phases him and he is nigh-impossible to offend. He's been mocked for his lack of acting ability or the cheesy nature of his movies. It doesn't seem to bother him. That plus his jockish ways has given him a reputation for being a bit slow. He's not, he just has extremely steady nerves and an ability to focus. In his line of work, being distracted or emotional can lead to a fatal mistake.
Celebrity has been weird for him. He never really sought it. All he really did was try to improve his stunt skills. Suddenly having people recognize him has made him retreat. He's actually a rather shy person when he's not in his stunt element. This changes once he gets to know people, or when he's around people like him. Then he can be outgoing and gregarious. He would much rather be 'one of the guys' than the 'star.'
He is a thrill-seeker. When not working on stunts, he enjoys driving way too fast on motorcycles, base jumping, rock climbing, skydiving, et cetera. He's addicted to adrenaline, but he's fairly non-confrontational. He'd rather walk away from a fight than throw a punch. If he's going to get hurt, he'd rather it be while doing a wicked stunt, rather than over a spilled drink.
Electromagnetic Pulse Generation
Max's ability is currently not controlled. He has a form of electromagnetic control that allows him to generate an EM pulse with himself as the epicentre. The size of the pulse can vary from a small jolt that fries a cell phone to a wave that can spread with decreasing intensity for a maximum distance of approximately a hundred feet. Things on the edge of the wave are less likely to be affected than things close to him when he sets off the pulse. He can go for days, even a week without generating a pulse. But then, an emotional reaction, a surge of adrenaline or a slip in concentration triggers pulses of varying intensity. If he concentrates, he is able to generate a pulse that reaches up to seventy feet purposefully. What he cannot do is stop random pulses from happening.
Anything with an antenna or electrical cables has the potential to carry the pulse further than Max's range, causing a potential chain reaction a greater distance than the 100 feet. He has no control over the pulse once it's been triggered.
The devices most susceptible to these pulses are anything high tech. Anything with a microprocessor or complex inner workings could fry (computers, cell phones, MP3 players) with the potential for the loss of data stored on hard drives. Cars with any kind of onboard microprocessor would likely fail, as would some high tech weapons. Older model cars might possibly stall, but would still function.
Conventional firearms might jam temporarily, though they do have the potential to become magnetized. Older, tube-based televisions remain mostly unaffected, but digital flatscreens will fail. Basically, any technology newer than fifteen years old has the potential to be affected, depending on the strength of the pulse, the proximity to Max and the duration of the pulse, as well as the number of electronic components.
If an electrical substation is within his generated field and a pulse is sufficiently strong enough, it will fry and require repairs to get up and running again.
Devices affected by the EMP, from most to least susceptible.
1. Integrated circuits (ICs), CPUs, silicon chips.
2. Transistors and diodes.
3. Inductors, electric motors
4. Vacuum tubes
Close physical proximity to a particularly strong EM pulse can lead to physical pain, difficulty breathing, vertigo, nausea, disorientation and motion sickness. For these symptoms to occur, a person would have to be within five feet of Max when he sets off one of the strongest blasts. These symptoms have the potential to affect Max himself if he sets off too many pulses within too short a time period. Even one burst at his (current) strongest level is enough to knock the wind out of him, make him dizzy and/or cause pain.
Max has the potential to magnetize metallic objects to intense levels, or to de-magnetize it. Though for now the generation of magnetism is a side effect of the EMP and cannot be consciously employed. If he gains control, he will be able to direct a pulse at a metallic object (such as a gun) and charge it with intense magnetism - strong enough to disarm someone by causing the weapon to be attracted to another metallic surface (such as a car.) In order for this potential to be realized, he has to gain control of the EMP.
Appendices
Skills:
Parkour
Max is a decent free-runner. It comes in handy being a stuntman, and looks cool too. He knows how to use the terrain to speed up or slow down a chase, how to scale or avoid obstacles and can jump greater than average distances. He's not hardcore into this, and like most of his skills, he learned it for the flash factor.
Physical Toughness
This is one part natural, one part training. Max can take a licking and keep on ticking. He's strong, fast, in really good shape, but more importantly, he knows how to take a hit. He also knows how to fall without getting seriously hurt, how to protect himself and how to absorb the energy of blows to minimize injury. He also has a high threshold for pain. Bumps, bruises, scrapes, sprains and fractures are all just par for the course for a stuntman.
Stunt work
This is a mixed bag skill that involves a bit of knowledge of pyrotechnics, (how to handle them and be safe around explosions, not how to create them) of stunt driving (though that's not his specialty) acrobatics, wire and green screen work, choreographed fights, faked deaths, faked pain, all that.
Military Skills
Although he was just an infantry grunt, Max nonetheless learned military procedure, basic combat, firearms and ordnance, intel gathering and strategy. His specialty was urban warfare. He was not very highly decorated, but he was effective, kept a neat bunk and took orders well. He's a half decent shot, though it's been ages since he fired a gun with real bullets.
Acting
Sort of. Like most action stars, he could never do Shakespeare justice. His acting skills mostly fall into two categories: looking injured or looking badass. He's gotten to do more of the second than a first since he's started to take on starring roles. Still, he's fairly good at memorizing lines and hitting marks, even if he doesn't deliver his lines with a whole lot of skill. Then again, it's the action genre -he doesn't exactly have gold to work with.
Martial Arts
Max's training has been more for looks than for actual attack value. He knows a lot of flashy moves from various disciplines and has cobbled them together into his own unique style. It's a combination of Van Damme/Schwarzenegger/Stalone-esque All-American badass with the fluidity of martial arts. He manages to make a militaristic, hard-hitting style look fairly graceful. That's the trademark that has propelled his career along thus far. It's mostly for show, though. There are a lot of other disciplines that would be far more effective and less flashy. He uses moves that a more serious martial artists could easily find holes in. He's more like a dancer than he is a fighter.
Credits:
Multiple Man:
The story revolves around Parker Blue, ex-NYPD agent and Evolved with the ability to temporarily steal the abilities of other Evolved. The movie has drawn controversy for its portrayal of pro-Evolved factions (in the movie, it's called Firebird, a thinly-veiled copy of Phoenix), an Evolved hero, its use of Evolved to create effects instead of CGI and the fact that some filming is to take place in Midtown.
The movie is no summer blockbuster or Oscar potential. In fact, the movie has gained more press for the controversy surrounding it than any anticipation of the quality of the final product. The film is produced by Paramount Pictures in association with The Linderman Group. To quell some of the controversy, one third of the movie's proceeds will be donated to rebuilding Midtown.
Breakwater:
Breakwater was a made-for-TV movie that became a short-lived series on Spike TV. Max played Sam Luckmann, a former Marine who was supposed to be some kind of Private Investigator, but ended up kicking the crap out of terrorists most weeks. The series featured a massive special effects budget with stunts and explosions rivaling those seen on the big screen. The plots were usually unimaginative and were mostly an excuse to show Max kicking the crap out of people and/or women in bikinis. The show was deemed unprofitable after one season and it was cancelled. But, because of the quality of the effects and stunts, the series has developed a cult following and has seen strong sales of the DVD release.
Think 24 meets Baywatch with a Michael Bay SFX budget.
Logs:
July 5, 2009: Death Imitating Art - A complicated scene for Multiple Man is shot without a hitch. Then something explodes that wasn't supposed to. Six people are killed, a dozen more are injured. The culprits? Humanis First, who disapprove of the movie's Evolved hero.
July 8, 2009: A Paine To Watch - Maxwell leaves a token of condolences at a memorial for people killed by Humanis First.
July 9, 2009: PR Lessons - Max chats up a few people at the Orchid Lounge.
July 11, 2009: Remember, It's Not Real - A day on the set of Multiple Man goes awry when Isis swaps with a stuntman who has illusion abilities.
July 23, 2009: The Manties Of The American People - A night out at the bar with movie folk, Kaylee and Wendy. (Wendy's fault for the log title and the quote from which it came)
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