Human Celebrity Gladiator Games
(L to R) Michael Cera, Steve Zahn, and Barry Pepper train over a shield-bearing Mark Ruffalo.
“We who are about to die say ‘f*ck you!’”
- the celebrities, in anger at the Lizard King
The Human Celebrity Gladiator Games was an annual event in which the Lizard King forced human celebrities to fight to the death. It was hosted 4 years in a row at the Staples Center in Los Angeles before the Lizard King left Earth.
Origin
The rebellion against the Lizard King struck many harsh blows against his forces. To lower morale, the Lizard King decided to create gladiator games and force humans to fight to the death. He could never catch any of the significant rebellion leaders, so he chose to force celebrities to fight instead. The games were held in the Staples Center in Los Angeles, which the Lizard King had already renamed back from Crypto.com Arena (the only remotely popular decision of his career).
The 1st year
The first year was the bloodiest. The Lizard King told the forced participants that only the winner would be granted freedom. Eventually it came down to a truel between American actor and filmmaker Steve Buscemi, entrepreneur billionaire-cum-Bond-villain Jeff Bezos, and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Tyson had often spoken of attempts to beseech extraterrestrial allies in the war against the Lizard King — other than the alien folk musician Zyclops, who seemed uninterested in war. The day he announced he’d finally figured out how to communicate with alien life, he was captured and put into the games. Before the truel, Tyson avoided all physical confrontation, using his intellect to stay out of harm’s way. When the final battle began, he held aloft a small metallic object. The roof of the Staples Center was torn asunder and a beam of green light illuminated Tyson’s position. Tyson disappeared.
The games ended with Steve Buscemi, covered in blood and missing his right ear, skewering Jeff Bezos on the end of a long pike. The crowd cheered.
Subsequent years
American actress and producer Viola Davis was imprisoned for the second year’s games. She concocted a plan to eliminate bloodshed and managed to discreetly communicate it to the other prisoners during their gladiator training. Since many of the celebrity gladiators were actors by trade, they staged an elaborate, choreographed fight scene and performed it in the ring. The Lizard King believed it. Davis was the “winner” and left the arena on the shoulders of the audience. Those pretending to be dead simply stood up and shuffled out, lost in the crowd. This plan continued successfully for the third and fourth years.
The fifth year was planned to utilize the LA Kings’ hockey rink for “Gladiators On Ice”, but never took place due to the Lizard King’s departure from Earth.
Film Portrayal
A film was made of the events. All the celebrities played themselves, with the exception of Tyson and Bezos. Tyson was played by actor Leslie David Baker, and the late, reptilian-esque Bezos was played by celebrated lizard actor, ßkwwlth. The film was rather confusingly titled Bloodsport, because I guess they thought it had been a long enough time since the (totally unrelated) original film by that name was released? Not really sure.
The film premiered at Lizard Sundance to a standing ovation. It received widespread critical acclaim. ßkwwlth won Best Actor in a Supporting Role for, as Cassie Heppenstall of The New New New York Times wrote, “convincing hundreds of thousands of movie-goers that Jeff Bezos had actually been raised from the dead.”