After “Hollywood” Hulk Hogan, The Miz and Sasha Banks, the WWE Evil series focused on The Brothers of Destruction. Each episode offers you an interesting point of view on a wrestler, not through his career or iconic matches but through the creation and the evolution of his/her character. WWE Evil is about dissecting the heel, give a different spotlight on it. Brotherhood has been a mythological, Biblical, Shakespearean theme. It is synonymous with love, hate, betrayal, anger… “They forged a bond in mayhem and carnage,” says narrator John Cena. When it comes to Kane and The Undertaker, understanding the brothers’ alchemy needed a study of each of them.
In 1990, Bruce Prichard had to create a surprise for Survivor Series. He decided to bring death incarnated to the ring with the Undertaker. “The reaper of wayward souls, an evil being,” as Mark Calaway, the man who brought it to life, describes him. The fans were stunned by this unusual character who had nothing to say but everything to wrestle. Mick Foley depicts him as “one of the greatest characters of the past 30 years” because he was scary and brought us to this primal fear of death and the unknown. For years, his reign of terror, made of a void of emotions and being impervious to pain, lasted. Until his “voice,” Paul Bearer, betrayed him and sold his soul to Mankind.
The Undertaker character needed a new challenge. Bruce Prichard explains how they built this story of a brother supposedly dead. Its Biblical proportions led to a name, Kane, because “you can’t find anybody more evil than Cain.” In 1997, Paul Bearer revealed the terrible secret of The Undertaker, this brother he let burn in the fire but Bearer saved from the flames. Calaway notices Kane has more layers than The Undertaker, which helped magnify the mystique of the Grim Reaper character.
Kane arrived with a mission of destruction in mind. Driven by the fire, the mask he was wearing scared the fans, but also captured their imagination. Corey Taylor of Slipknot explains, “Putting a mask definitely allows you to tap into something extremely pure.” Glenn Jacobs, the man behind Kane, built him through a fascination for Hannibal Lecter and his dog’s looks. “You don’t know what you’re getting with an unpredictable, psychological monster.” Their story led to iconic matches, wrestling poetry built on fire, fear, mind games, and the use of the supernatural. As Dave LaGreca notices, “Kane and Taker were about the art of storytelling more than anybody else at that time.”
Chapter after chapter, their story was still fascinating to the fans. The Brothers were both on a path of destruction, bonded by their past. Like Mick Foley states, “No one makes better partners than better rivals.” The Brothers became a team that Mark Calaway remembers the wrestlers were legitimately intimated to be with in the ring because they were ultra-dominant. “The more evil that we got, the more it just made people love us.” The Attitude Era made fans want something more real. For Kane, it meant removing his mask. As Jacobs explains, “Kane internalized the fact he was burnt and deformed, but he was not. The mask was a symptom of what was going on in Kane’s mind.” For Corey Taylor, “it became more of a human tortured character.”
“The biggest reason Kane and Taker have endured as long as they have,” says Prichard, “is the characters continue to change with the times. You saw the evolution in front of your eyes.” Jacobs confirms, “you can’t kill what won’t die.” Like the characters it dissects, this episode is a work of art. Showing the storyboards and explaining how the characters were built give a brand-new look to Kane and the Taker. If nothing is more evil than reality, as LaGreca states, it’s because many of us have a brother or a sister. There’s nothing Shakespearean or Biblical to it. That’s why we can so easily relate to the story of the Brothers of Destruction.
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