The Family of Freaks

"Doom Patrol"

In 1989, the Advanced Research Group Uniting Super-Humans (ARGUS) founded a specially designed team of unusual men and women to wage a shadow war on the forces of a French terrorist only known as "Le Brain". Le Brain's collective of nefarious individuals proved too dangerous for the US military, so ARGUS provided Agent Niles Caulder with whatever he needed to collect individuals "with nothing left to live for".

We see a scene from 1990, where a young woman bursts out of the side of a building in Moscow, Russia. She is 10 feet tall and slowly growing taller, shrieking and avoiding people in her run. Chasing after her are several police cars and a black van. She yells for them to go away and flips a few cars over. Now between 30 to 35 feet, she hides behind a cold mountain. A voice in her head tells her to calm down, doing so allows the girl to shrink back to her original size. The black van pulls up over the ridge and three men exit the van and introduce themselves as The Doom Patrol.

2015, the girl from all those years ago reappears-seemingly the same age as before-in Hollywood, California. Her name is Rita Farr and she is enjoying the poolside with her to-be-husband Steve Dayton. Both are successful actors, with Rita a high profile actress and Steve a wealthy stunt-man. Monitors in a van show images of Rita, with two men watching her. When Steve goes to take a call, Rita heads over to the rest room. She is grabbed by a disguised man who she quickly knocks down, but she finds out this man is Larry Trainor from her Doom Patrol team twenty-five years ago. He is otherwise known as The Negative Man. Larry and Rita sneak off, but Steve spots them. Steve chases down the van they leave in on his motorcycle and manages to sneak behind the van onto a cargo jet before it flies off.

The jet lands on Blackhawk Island, home base of The Doom Patrol. When Rita walks in, she meets her old teammates Cliff "Robotman" Steele and Niles "The Chief" Caulder. The Chief-now in a wheelchair-is asked by Rita where all his other "soldiers" ran off to, to which The Chief replies "they're all either dead or ungrateful". Robotman and Negative Man are the only members who agreed to come back to the DP, Chief wanted Rita forcefully taken in because he knew she'd be the hardest to convince. The Chief explains their old foes have returned and ARGUS has asked him to put the team back into action. When Steve makes himself noticed, Robotman catches him at Chief's request, but Rita vouches for him. Although The Chief hates the idea of having him around, Rita refuses to help if Steve can't be there too. Chief gives a refresher to the team on their enemy: The Brotherhood of Evil.

After Le Brain was believed dead following the first Doom Patrol's mission to assassinate him, it was discovered by overseas agents that the terrorist was able to put his brain into a robot body (think R2-D2). Le Brain's Brotherhood includes the immortal tyrant General Immortus, his super-intelligent gorilla Monsieur Mallah, and the elastic subject of mad science named Madame Rouge. Along with an army of android soldiers, Le Brain has slowly been tying his roots into many European governments and planning to exact his revenge on America and it's "superheroes".

To be sure they still have the teamwork they used to, The Chief pits them against ARGUS training droids. Steve watches as Negative Man projects a human-shaped energy apparition to phase through the robots and deprogram them, his body laying limp until the apparition reenters him. Robotman demonstrates great strength and endurance against the robots, feeling somewhat sorry himself for crushing his "non-human-brained cousins". Rita steps up in her old uniform and grows to large size to destroy some robots. The Chief briefs them on a covert mission tomorrow, but says "at ease" when he gets a call.

With Negative Man anti-social as usual and Robotman needing to recharge, Steve can escape their teasing and have time alone with Rita. Rita explains that before she was an actor, she was dragged into human trafficking as young woman and ended up part of an experiment conducted by Le Brain in Paris. Le Brain took fifteen young women and subjected them to tests. Only two survived: Rita-who's elastic/size changing powers got her name Elasti-Girl among The Doom Patrol-and Madame Rouge-who's powers were perfect and she was brainwashed by Le Brain. The experiments made it so Rita's emotions controlled her powers until The Doom Patrol helped her fix that, but a side effect was that she couldn't physically age. Rita is actually forty-five years old, Steve is thirty and he assumed she was younger, but happily accepts Rita for who she is. The Chief is on call with ARGUS' General Eiling, refusing to let the team be part of ARGUS' superhuman soldiers, claiming the team is for espionage only. Eiling reminds The Chief that The Brotherhood of Evil has something ARGUS wants back. When he leaves the call room he is approached by Negative Man, who tells him to lay off Steve and Rita. Implying some kind of relationship between The Chief and Rita.

The first mission follows Rita sneaking into a party in Paris, a party held by Madame Rouge. She is planning to sneak in and recover some files retaining to a weapon Immortus has been working on. In the van outside, Steve waits with Negative Man and Robotman as backup. Something goes wrong as android soldiers attack the van and distract Rita's backup and Rita fights Rouge in the office. Against The Chief's orders, Steve leads the men into the party to get Rita. This results in Rouge burning the building down and the DP barely escaping. The Chief berates the team of disobeying their orders and sends everyone to their rooms while he works on a response plan to The Brotherhood's sped-up operation. Rita talks to Chief alone later while he's making a plan, and she seems to still have feelings for him, but loves Steve more. Steve had been sneaking around and didn't hear the second part of their conversation. Angry at them both, Steve enters the DP trophy room and finds a weird helmet, upon wearing it he attacks the DP, but is defeated.

Steve recalls the history of the helmet by wearing it and tells the Doom Patrol its a mind-control helmet created by The Chief. The Chief explains he used it to recruit many members of the team in the past, but after feeling guilty he locked it away and put commands in his member's minds not to ever notice it or remember it. It's called the Mento-Monitor, so Steve takes the supehero name Mento and dons his own costume to lead the team, as the rest of the members don't trust The Chief. The Chief reluctantly allows this and tells them their second mission is in Italy.

Through the streets of Venice, an army of robotic soldiers marches solemnly. In the middle of this bizarre parade, there is an old man on a throne being lifted. When the local police try to arrest the man, they are shot by the robots. The Doom Patrol parachute in and start fighting the robots. Mento gets to the old man and finds out he is a decoy dummy. The real General Immortus walks the halls of Italy's underground machine galleries and finds the blueprints to one of his old designs from the Renaissance. He is attacked by Negative Man's energy shadow, which followed him down the tunnel. Using a distortion device, Immortus traps the energy shadow in a box. He prepares to leave when Mento, Robotman and Elasti-Girl appear. From the escape plane, Mousier Mallah fights the DP. Robotman is dismantled during the fight and his torso and head are stolen by Mallah. Mallah and Immortus escape with Robotman's parts and Negative Man's energy shadow.

When Mento and Elasti-Girl return to Blackhawk Island, they find the DP base destroyed. In the wreckage, they find The Chief. Mento looks for any salvageable equipment, but detects something is off. When he returns to warn Rita about The Chief, he finds the Chief has knocked Rita out and is actually Madame Rouge in disguise. Rouge is backed up be several robot soldiers and Mento submits. The DP wake up in a secret underwater base called "The Cranium". Mento is without his helmet and locked in cage, Elasti-Girl is inside a bubble that adjusts to her size to keep her in a closed area, Robotman's head and torso are attached to a super-magnet, and Negative Man's energy shadow is in an electric cage to keep him away from his body. Le Brain wheels out in his canister body, followed by Madame Rouge, Mousier Mallah and General Immortus. They reveal The Chief tied up, Le Brain then explains with money from European governments, they were able to finish creating the war tool Immortus created generations ago, a "flying bomb". This weapon acts a saucer and travels over countries, targeting locations as it flies. Now that they have the technology, The Brotherhood of Evil plans on bombing every major city on the rim of America, resulting in a wave of destruction centering on the middle of the country. With the DP captured, no one else will know their involvement.

The Chief leaps and manages to shut down the main power to the facility just as Immortus stabs him in the heart. With "The Cranium" soon to fall, Le Brain launches the flying bomb and escapes with Mallah and Immortus. The energy fallout releases the DP and they go to The Chief. As he is about to die, The Chief tells them of a secret energy source in the lowest level of the base and to go retrieve it. He also proclaims his love for Elasti-Girl and his pride in all of them before he dies. Mento gets his helmet back and makes the call: Elasti-Girl and Robotman will find the secret energy source while Negative Man uses his energy shadow to defuse the flying bomb, Mento will try to use "The Cranium" defense systems to shoot the submarine the Brotherhood escaped in. As Elasti-Girl and Robotman run through the base, Madame Rouge shows up, claiming this is her last mission for Le Brain. Elasti-Girl fights Rouge as Robotman gets to the secret energy source and discovers it is actually a man projecting atomic and ionic power.

Mento successfully blows up Le Brain's escape sub and Elasti-Girl defeats Rouge by actually shrinking too small to notice and getting the upper hand on her. Robotman-with the ionic man over his shoulder-and Elast-Girl get to Mento, grab Negative Man's body, The Chief's body and Madame Rouge and get off the base as it fully shuts down and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. They watch as the flying bomb explodes in mid-air and Negative Man's energy shadow returns to his body. Mallah, Immortus and Le Brain wash up on the coast of Florida after a long swim out of the sub, only to be greeted by ARGUS soldiers. The four criminals are locked away by ARGUS and the ionic man-Nathan Adams-is revealed to be one of two US soldiers to volunteer in Project Ion, which gave him the ability to generate various types of energy from his body, but turned his physical body into energy that needed a suit to contain it. Le Brain kidnapped "Captain Ion" during a test simulation and has used him as a battery for several months. Mento, Elasti-Girl, Negative Man and Robotman are allowed to live out normal lives, but are ordered by Eiling to return to ARGUS if they are ever asked. Rita and Steve leave their superhero lives and finally get married, with Robotman and Negative Man in attendance.

After the credits, Nathan Adams walks into an office where General Eiling, Amanda Waller and The Chief sit and watch monitors of the split up DP members. The Chief claims to have faked his death with subliminal suggestions and that now that The Brotherhood is defeated and the DP are back in ARGUS' control, they can be used to their full potential. Nathan nods as he looks over a file labeled "Brother Eye".

Thanks for reading.

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