Herr Panzermensch outline

"Take a dozen children, any children. Beat and mix thoroughly until some lumps remain. Simmer for two to three decades; bring to a slow, rolling boil. Skim off the full-blown psychotics, the schizoaffectives, the multiple personalities, and discard. Let cool. Serve with dopamine garnish. What do you get? Something bent, not broken. Something that fits into cracks too twisted for the rest of us." -- from Starfish by Peter Watts

Herr Panzermensch -- Literally 'Mr Tank-Man.'

The idea is to make a realistic action hero movie. Not realistic in the sense of reality -- we already have those in movies like Act of Valor or Black Hawk Down

MEET THE SQUAD
The Squad is made of the usual cliché members, but they’re all a bit twisted
There’s the black heavy weapons guy, the reserved female sniper, the perky girl, the crazy funny guy, the close quarters and kung fu guy, and the super awesome driver, and the engineer.
Aside from this, there’s the action hero himself, in two (actually three forms).
All the members of the squad perform a skill and all interact with each other to varying degrees.

>Lieutenant Jon Fredericksburg:
He’s the unit leader. He’s the action hero. He represents the sort of mindset that you need to accomplish the results of the usual action hero. Mostly quiet. Very pragmatic. He is a foil to Buck and they also embody the two types of heroes that we’ve seen in movies. Buck is the older typical action hero, dumb and headstrong big guy. By contrast, Fredericksburg is the newer modern hero. The one that is self-conscious and unsure of himself; service is thrust upon him and he grows to become a hero rather than starting as one. These are the sort of characters we see in movies like The Matrix or Wanted. While the former action hero appeals more to the fantasy of who we wish to be, Fredericksburg is a parody of the notion of these heroes coming from a person just like the most pathetic common denominator viewer of these movies. Other similar characters are Malcolm Reynolds, the ‘driver.’ Henry Caville’s superman, Doctor Manhattan, and Captain America

>Sergeant Buck White:
 He’s the squad NCO. He’s also the action hero. In this case, he represents what it takes to have the PERSONALITY of the action hero, and the sort of results it brings – not too good. He’s based on literally ever single headstrong action hero ever. Thrust into an absurd world he doesn’t understand, he refuses to accept the consequences of reality, and turns to fatalism. To him, everything’s just a crazy rollercoaster of a dream he doesn’t wake up from, so why not have a little fun along the way?

>Specialist James Dolph:
Heavy weapons guy. He’s primarily the machine gunner. Very bombastic and self-absorbed, but unlike Buck, he doesn’t generally butt heads with anybody. Adopted by a rich WASP family and growing up in the suburbs he tries his best to overcompensate by being as ghetto as possible. Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Based on characters like Sergeant Johnson from Halo and Cole-Train from GOW

>specialist Kelsey Bloodgood
The female sniper. She’s cold and detached. The reality is she’s angry and cruel and sadistic, but her anger burns cold and quietly, unlike Jackson.  She grew up in a broken home and is no stranger to emotional and physical abuse; she’s determined to be stronger than anyone, and to never be a victim to anyone again. Lesbian. There are a dozen or so characters like her, but the one that comes the most to mind is Akemi Homura.

>Private Melisa Tyler
She’s the ditzy funny girl power chick on the team. She can hack it just fine with the rest of the boys but doesn’t have the obvious personality you’d expect. She’s also an abuse victim, but doesn’t show it. She joined the military because she had no sense of direction and wanted basically to be told what to do. She ends up bonding with, and then becoming emotionally attached to Kelsey Bloodgood, who acts as a mentor and a protector, and later a manipulator – no better than Jackson. Dependent Personality Disorder. You don’t see characters like her too much anymore, but she’s a lot like Kalie from Firefly.

>Private Shaun Miller
Edgy wise-cracking funny guy with a really fucked up sense of humor. Friends with Dolph and often acts as his loader. No matter how shitty or inappropriate the circumstance, he’ll make a bad joke about. But when it DOES actually hurt him, it hurts him HARD.  Bipolar personality disorder

>Specialist Connor Jackson
Angry, mean, son of a bitch. He’s an admitted sado-masochist. He’s what it takes to choke someone to death or stab them over and over again and not have a drop of remorse. He grew up in the ghetto and was offered a way out by General Clarke. This makes him used to violence, quick to anger and brutish macho-ism, and gets really pissed at the insinuation that he can’t have it that hard because he’s white, especially at Dolph. Originally viewing himself as a sort of lone wolf, he hates the ghetto because he refused to join gangs, and he sees his life in the army as being no different. He does eventually come to respect Fredericksburg, however. It is important to note that he is immoral, but not amoral. He doesn’t care about hurting most people, but that does not mean he is incapable of caring, just that he often doesn’t. this is important to distinguish between someone who’s an actual sociopath, and someone who’s just an asshole. Based on Kruger, Koobus, and Riddick.

>  Private Geoffrey Palmer:
Intelligent and a pretty boy, he’s the sexy getaway driver of the group. Put him behind the wheel of anything and he’s golden. Grew up in California as the son of moderately rich businessman and took the option of the military to avoid going to prison due to california’s three strikes law (most of his crimes were extremely petty, such as shoplifting a VHS and constantly speeding). It’s not that he enjoys breaking the law, he just doesn’t give as shit, and doesn’t understand why other people are so upset at his violation of petty personal boundaries. Jackson takes him under his wing, respecting his similar lack of respect for everyone else. While he doesn’t enjoy killing at first, he has absolutely no qualms about it (the only thing that stops him is that he sees no personal benefit to it). He is not initially evil, but completely Amoral. He’s also very manipulative and only knows how to live in the moment. He’s all manners and no morals. Antisocial Personality Disorder.

>Private William Karger
He’s the teams rookie and combat engineer. The usual depiction of engineers is the wise old guy, but his personality is from an assessment of serial bombers: cowards. He’s also incredibly, almost boringly average. In a way he’s the third side of a triangle. He’s what would happen if YOU, the audience, were put into the place of trying to be the action hero. He has the potential to be one of the best, but unlike the others in the squad, doesn’t come ‘pre-broken.’ After exposure to combat he comes to enjoy working on machines because unlike people they can be ‘fixed.’ Inferiority complex, generalized anxiety disorder.

>Corporal Zachary Cohen
One of the team’s two corporals.  American Jew. He works most closely and is best friends and a foil to Cpl McKinley. He’s logical and his main skillset involves anything with computers. In this regard, he works with McKinley by taking GPS and other computed data and integrating it with McKinley’s boots on the ground experience. Likes to bicker with McKinley over politics. Represents Democrats. While he’s on the team the two of them represent the best of both sides, disagreeing, but coming together to form a strong consensus.

>Corporal Robert McKinley
The second of the team’s two corporals. Proud Texan. Best friends and foil to Cpl Cohen. His main skillset is tracking and land navigation. He’s also a proud Republican. Balancing Cohen’s mild cynicism is his seemingly unsquelchable optimism. He also views Tyler as a little sister, at least more than the others.

NON INDOMITABLE MEMBERS
>Susan McMullan
The AISSF controller. All members of Indomitable answer directly to her. She has a PhD in Psychology, which she uses to her advantage as a combat controller. As a civilian, she was dissatisfied with her job as all of her male colleagues in psychology wouldn’t take her seriously as a woman while all of her female colleagues would derider her for either not being a true doctor or not studying a ‘real’ hard science. She left the private sector to join the military as an officer and was almost immediately recruited into the CIA, where psychology was a growing field of interest. Prior to serving the AISSF, she worked primarily as a CIA interrogator. She maintains a good relationship with her boss Director Longfield; the two worked together in the CIA and while Longfield is seen as being very socially oldfashioned in regards to women, he was always highly professional in the workplace and gave Susan the respect that her former colleagues didn’t. In many ways Longfield is both a mentor and a father figure to her. Susan has the capacity to be as manipulative as Palmer, as cold and vicious as Bloodgood, and as intelligent as Fredericksburg. Smokes too much. Her inspiration is just about every female voice in the protagonists ear, but in particular she is an amalgamation of Evangelion’s Cpt. Misato Kusanagi and Ritsuko Akagi.

>Dominic Johnson
No one really knows what to call him, but he prefers ‘synthesist.’ He deals with the issues that are usually completely glossed over in action movies – the legal issues. As the head of the legal department, he works closely with Susan McMullan and Director Longfield. He looks at a mission plan, figures out what laws they’ll break on the mission, figures out the best way to either avoid the issue or cover it up, and then during the mission stands by on the bridge to advise Control on the best options to avoid compromising the clandestine nature of AISSF. Susan sees him as a younger Longfield from back in their days at the CIA, and so they work well together. He is secretly a mole for JSOC oversight subcommittee, but General Clarke is aware of this and actively engages him with counterespionage.

>Director Samuel Longfield
While not the leader of the AISSF, Director Longfield runs the general day-to-day paperwork that keeps the AISSF up and running. While he is technically a civilian, Longfield has seen it all. First working in the DIA with General Clarke, then Working in the CIA with Susan, and finally spending time in the NSA before being handpicked by General Clarke for the AISSF project. Longfield then asked Clarke to handpick their own Controller, and chose Susan. Much like Dominic, Longfield worked primarily in legal issues and came to know his way around exploiting bureaucracy. His long work in intelligence has given him many former friends and contacts he can call upon to give him insider information. While professional at his job, outside of it he is a more ‘oldfashioned’ traditionalist. He’s not without his flaws however, and has more and more ‘oh, grandpa’ moments as time goes by. What he is hiding though is that he is really coming apart at the seams and that his unintentionally funny outbursts are a result of severe PTSD; he was at ground zero on 9/11 and saw the first plane hit from inside one of the tower lobbies, killing his friend. He’s based on GitS’s Chief Aramaki and Team America’s Spotswood.

>General Gabriel Clarke
“The most unsettling man is the ‘man from nowhere,’ ‘the war-mad man who has no morals and no home’ that Homer mentions. It is probably best to kill him to be on the safe side.”