6 Unsung Geniuses Behind Classic Movies

Note to readers in the real future: The thing on the bottom right is called a "mailbox."

John scribbled out pretty much every futuristic Hill Valley technology you craved for as a kid, all the way down to Griff's automated baseball bat and rhino boots (which were apparently based on Bell's actual footwear at the time).

John Bell: design guru by day, the Iron Shiek by night.

What '90s kid didn't grow up wanting their very own go-go gadget hate crime bat? Remember the disappointment when you realized they didn't really exist? And now, 30 years later, we're still waiting for that groundbreaking extendo-bludgeon technology!

Oh, wait ... no, we're thinking of these:

Fuck you, gravity.

That's right, you shits. Along with the entire aesthetic of Back To The Future's vision of 2015, Bell designed the Holy Fucking Grail of fictional toys -- and consequently, every child's first taste of profound disappointment for the real world. Thanks, John! Any other ways you'd like to dominate our childhood fantasies like some kind of one-man dreamland cartel?

Fuck ...

... off.

Hold onto your butts, because along with the entire futuristic world of Back To The Future, it turns out that years after a brief career break, John came back to once again pull an entire world of wonder out of his skull like some kind of twisted magician. Dude personally designed everything in Jurassic Park, from the main gate and T-Rex paddock, to the fucking ID badges and embryo chambers, to that godforsaken Barbasol can (a brand Bell personally chose for the film). As he describes it, the production designer put him on a "long leash," and as a result, his illustrations often were chosen by Spielberg for the final film ... meaning that nearly everything you visually associate with Jurassic Park came directly from this guy. He is your god now.

Besides Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's '60s mushroom stash, we mean.

There are at least a dozen people, ranging from concept artists to costume designers, all contributing to the look of the MCU ... but it's Ryan Meinerding, Marvel's Head of Visual Development, whose name seems to show up at every corner. In fact, all of those outfits you see above were modeled after his own designs.

His mom's refrigerator door hasn't had an uncovered spot in decades.

Let that sink in for a moment: Meinerding personally designed every version of Captain America, including the old-timey suit in the first film. He also did the Mach 1 Iron Man suit and Odin's helmet, and if you enjoy Daredevil's new suit ... well, that's his, too. Along with being the show's costume designer, Meinerding is Marvel's go-to visual department supervisor, which is a fancy way of saying that he gets to be in charge of how the Avengers look, and to sketch out awesome shit like this:

They could film his drawings, call it Infinity War, and maybe ten percent of viewers would notice the difference.

Like a figurative Johnny Depp, Meinerding wears many crazy hats and won't stop moving. But this is only one side of the superhero coin -- the other being substantially more charred in texture ...

No interns' faces were mutilated while perfecting Two-Face's look ... that we know of.

Who do we thank for Catwoman's goggle ears or Bane's mercenary chic? That would be Lindy Hemming, costume designer for all three Nolan Batman films, and the one responsible for 90 percent of 2008's most cliched Halloween getups:

His girlfriend is 2016's.

Describing it as "Vivienne Westwood meets Johnny Rotten," Lindy based Heath Ledger's Joker off a combination of comic influence and punk rock icons. She also personally designed Bane's French revolutionary bomber jacket from scratch, and was responsible for everything Catwoman wore, down to her goddamn underwear. And that's not even mentioning every freaking Batsuit from rubbery start to finish.

For the lack of nipples alone, she deserves both an Oscar and a Nobel.

And now that she's also designing the costumes for the upcoming Wonder Woman film, Hemming is scooping up DC heroes like they were Pogs. Not to mention her budding monopoly on costuming unbridled sociopaths, as the Clown Prince isn't the only iconic murderer she's worked on...

Because total disregard for human life is no excuse for looking shabby.

Like every other superhero, it's this stylized way of kicking ass that makes up a substantial chunk of who Black Widow is. And that's all due to the fighting abilities of Heidi Moneymaker -- a name and face you'd attribute to a Bond Girl, but with all the combat agility to put 007 in the dirt like a child's forsaken hamster.

No silly Hollywood strings required.

Fucking something. Here, have some more:

Few others can look this badass while getting chucked into a goddamned car.

And while we're at it, here she is jumping off a truck going 40 mph in Fast & Furious:

Note Vin Diesel, the "hero," sitting on his ass the whole time.

If you haven't figured it out yet, Moneymaker was big into gymnastics. She's appeared in everything from Mr. And Mrs. Smith to Serenity to The Expendables to one of the Crank films. But all of that is dogshit compared to not only performing as, but helping to design the fighting techniques of everyone's favorite deadly redhead. Unless you count costumed reds, in which case we would have a clear tie:

If you aren't caught up with Daredevil, you're at least familiar with the bone-breaking fight scenes between a wheezy Matt Murdock and various mook hordes. The Devil of Hell's Kitchen manages to keep the upper hand though a combination of pain tolerance and whole-bodied force, like some kind of drunk ninja -- a physical presence we can attribute to stuntman Chris Brewster, who not only performs all of Daredevil's fights, but also choreographs them with the show's star. Here he is seen at his other job:

Oh right, it's probably worth mentioning that Chris doesn't just double for Daredevil, but Captain Goddamn America:

If they had given him anything but a shitty wooden shield, it would've been unfair.

He's secretly both Captain America and Daredevil, you fucking guys. That's like being Jesus and Jesus's gritty blind kung-fu buddy. Plus he's done mocap stunts for the Iron Man suit, meaning that he's played as many successful superheroes as Halle Berry, Chris Evans, and Ryan "Third Time's A Charm" Reynolds combined.

Take this guy, for example.

Remember Stitch? Stitch was voiced by Chris Sanders, a writer/director/illustrator who has been working for Disney since the '90s, when he began as a story artist for The Rescuers Down Under. Eventually, Sanders worked his way up the ranks until he was asked by the head of animation for any ideas he might want to develop. In response, he showed his boss a long-forgotten storybook he put together 18 years prior:

It's everything you love about Stitch, plus a charming case of jowl-jaw.

Nearly every detail of Lilo & Stitch's bizarre tale was conceived before Sanders was even working as a story artist -- a job that clearly took way too long for him to move up in, as he once put together an entire storybook about Disney's inability to recognize innovation. One such case of "Holy shit, this guy is talented" happened while making The Lion King, when the film's directors were struggling with one last added scene between Simba and his giant ghost father. After hitting a wall, they handed it off to Chris, who, after a 3 a.m. epiphany, returned with these drawings:

*James Earl Jonesing intensifies*

Yeah. That scene. Sanders drewthat scene. How freaking often does one person contribute so greatly to multiple generations of childhood fondness? Apparently, more often than we realize, because we haven't even gotten to Glen Goddamn Keane ... the man who is essentially responsible for every modern Disney princess. No, really -- check out every Disney princess who existed before 1989, and their respective bluebird money shots:

Each bird had more personality than the princes who came later.

Hot, hot stuff, but fundamentally different from the modern look of today's characters, right? That all changed when The Little Mermaid went into production, and an animator then known for villains like The Great Mouse Detective's Ratigan asked to work on the eponymous character ... and drew this:

No bluebirds, because Disney has this weird hangup about adorable animals drowning.

If you haven't figured it out, this pivotal moment in Disney's big renaissance resulted in all of their later princesses being modeled after Ariel. Keane would go on to completely kill it as lead animator in several more films, like Beauty And The Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas.

If you went broke at Disney World any time in the last 25 years, Glen Keane is to blame.

That's but two previously unknown people behind a bombardment of nostalgia, and something tells us we're merely at the tip of the mouse-shaped iceberg. And hey, speaking of iconic art ...

Eddie Murphy so loved how Alvin drew his eyebrow raise that he never stopped doing it, ever.

Go ahead, take a moment to reflect on the fact that you've looked at John Alvin's artwork more than your own parents' faces, and only now learned it. Then take a look at this:

And these:

Had enough? Let's throw in a few more to be safe:

In anyone else's hands, Ernest mugging from inside a pumpkin would've just looked silly.

Somehow, we're not done ... because we have yet to even talk about how Alvin got started in the business back in the 1970s, when he was working as an animator in Los Angeles. His breakout came when a friend asked him if he wanted to work on a poster for an upcoming comedy by a relatively new director, to which Alvin turned in this:

"Excuse me while I whip this out." --Alvin pulling out his brush and canvas

Luckily, that director really liked his more serious take on an otherwise silly film ... and Alvin ended up doing a whole bunch more for him.

So that's Mel Brooks, Disney, and basically everything beloved and successful in the '80s and '90s -- nearly making John Alvin's art the box office Midas touch.

NEARLY.

Being the boss: the ultimate in cutsies.

Going from watching Star Wars to fucking running the show isn't something you achieve by sitting quietly and letting all the dongs to the talking, which is why Kennedy's first job as Spielberg's secretary went instantly screwball when she opted to constantly interrupt meetings, as opposed to taking notes. Instead of shitcanning her, her boss recognized that the words coming out of her mouth were awesome. Kennedy thus landed her first producing gig on Spielberg's film about a horrifying little alien named E.T. -- a story she personally hammered out with Spielberg. She even selected the eyes for the titular character.

Nightmare spheres courtesy of Kathleen Kennedy!

It was during this time that she helped develop Amblin Entertainment with Berg-Man and future husband Frank Marshall, whom she was secretly dating at the time, until George Lucas found out and, according to Kennedy, "told everybody."

Fast-forward through a decade of awesomeness, and Kennedy remained right by Spielberg on the set of Jurassic Park -- a film she not only helped rewrite the story for, but for which she pushed the use of CGI instead of stop-motion. Fast forward another amazing ten years, and there she is still, handing Spielberg the script to Munich. Ten more years after that, and Kennedy is sitting with a hesitant J.J. Abrams, whom she personally persuaded to direct The Force Awakens. Literally every description of this lady paints a picture of a highly persuasive, level-headed problem solver who puts the artists' needs over the studios'. Known pain-in-the-ass director David Fincher has described her in an email as "a DIRECTORS producer" and "all about the importance of DECISIVE MOMENTUM." And to top all of that off, she's also the one to thank for pushing for more women writers and role models in the Star Wars series.

Here she is, clearly torn up over anonymous trolls still crying about Rey being awesome at Jedi stuff.

In other words, Kathleen Kennedy is both the beginning and the end. The Alpha and Omega to your childhood and the childhoods of your children. Now everyone shut the hell up about George Lucas and fucking kneel.

David is a writer, columnist, editor, and office supply stealer for Cracked. Say hello to him on Twitter.

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