No real reason to write about End of Days. I guess it’s because I watched the Netflix documentary on Arnold the other day, and this is also on Netflix. I also wanted to see if I thought this sucked as much as I did when I saw it in the theater. So here are my thoughts on End of Days, a true time capsule of a movie.
You Don’t Have to Like Everything
Growing up loving movies, I used to lie to myself and think that everything I saw in the theater was good. It was just too disappointing to my young brain to imagine that I made a special trip to the theater to see a shitty movie. Two movies finally broke me of this: Mission: Impossible 2 and End of Days. End of Days came out first, so I think it laid the groundwork for me to be disappointed with M:I 2.
End of Days came out when I was fifteen, and I was slowly becoming more critical about movies. Before this, I just loved everything that I chose to watch. For example, I even thought I liked Arnold’s previous movie, Batman and Robin. I was too blind to see just how bad things had become for one of my favorite action stars. Aside from “liking” Batman and Robin, I simply skipped the movies I subconsciously knew I wouldn’t like, such as Junior, Eraser, and Jingle All the Way. As far as I was concerned, Arnold went from True Lies to Mr. Freeze.
By the time End of Days came out, though, I knew something was wrong. A couple years had passed since Batman and Robin came out, and I started to understand that that movie actually sucked. So I knew End of Days was a comeback of sorts for Arnold. I found out years later that it was a legitimate comeback as it was his first movie after having heart surgery. Either way, this R-rated movie about Satan and the end of the world looked cool as shit compared to the childish shit Arnold had been making throughout the late ‘90s.
It finally comes out, and it’s okay. Arnold seems fine, but this isn’t his type of movie. I knew something was wrong when I liked Gabriel Byrne more than Arnold in it (to be fair, Byrne’s role is much more fun than Arnold’s). The dark aesthetic and apocalyptic story was just too late at that point. The movie was clearly ripping off Se7en and The Devil’s Advocate. End of Days had the look and mood of those films, but none of the energy or freshness.
End of Days didn’t end Arnold’s career or anything (politics did that soon after), but it marked the end of an era for me. I finally admitted that my favorite actors could make some mediocre shit. This seems obvious now, but for a teenager who loved movies more than anything it was a real fucking bummer. Because of that, I initially reacted very negatively to this movie. Now that the original disappointment had worn off, I wondered if this movie was really all that bad.
Yeah, it is bad. I don’t hate it, but this isn’t something I plan on ever watching again. It’s too dark, literally and figuratively, and I want some fun with my Arnold movies. There’s no fun to be had here, even with Kevin Pollak being a smartass throughout. I appreciate the grimy production value of the movie, but overall it just takes itself way too seriously and makes very little sense when you try to understand the entire plot.
But the passage of time has improved my opinion of End of Days in one way: nostalgia. But not for Arnold; for Y2K.
Y2K
The Y2K scare was a real fear for me at the time. I wasn’t concerned with the computer glitch issue as much as I was afraid the world was going to end. It seems stupid now, but back then I worried about the world ending way more than I should have. It didn’t help that movies like this existed to remind me about it.
Now Y2K is a joke, and rightfully so. And that makes this movie unintentionally funny at times. A big point of the plot is the fact that the millennium is ending. And according to the Bible (in this movie, at least) that means Satan is going to walk the Earth, try to bang a lady, and then the world will end.
My Y2K fear didn’t involve Satan fucking anyone. I just thought earthquakes and whatnot would end all life. Still, it’s funny to see the general Y2K fear front and center in a movie. Movies date themselves all the time with technology and style and whatnot, but it’s a bit rare for a non-period piece movie to be so concerned with the year it takes place. Not only is the central plot of the movie about the millennium ending, but it’s also in the background throughout the movie, on posters and being discussed on the radio.
Another movie from this time period involved Y2K: Office Space. But in that movie, it was just part of the main character’s job, and it was so boring that he stopped himself from explaining it to another character because it didn’t matter. And that’s how Y2K really played out. Some programmers had to work on some software, and then nothing happened. Because of that, Office Space doesn’t really take me back to that time period. But End of Days does.
The focus on Y2K was the most enjoyable aspect of my rewatch. End of Days may have been a disappointment at the time, and it marked the end of an era in my movie watching. But now it reminds me of a specific fear that gripped me for a short time in a way that no other movie can. And it’s also a reminder of how fucking it stupid it was to have been afraid of a year. So End of Days will always have that, and that’s about it.
Random Thoughts / Favorite Quotes
I imagine the pitch for this movie went something like this: “It's like Se7en meets Devil's Advocate meets Rosemary's Baby, but it's the apocalypse, and with Arnold and Kevin Pollak instead of Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman.”
This came out during the era in which all horror and horror-adjacent movies had to have an edgy soundtrack. Korn, Rob Zombie, Eminem, Creed, Guns N’ Roses, Powerman 5000, and Limp Bizkit are all on this soundtrack. Even though a few of the songs are credited at the end, I can’t recall hearing anything from the soundtrack during the actual film. Although, the Guns N’ Roses song does play during the credits.
I feel a little ashamed, but I actually like the Guns N’ Roses song from this.
What horrible parents allowed their baby to have fake snake blood fed to it by Udo Kier?
Also, how did that nurse know that was the right baby? I really don’t understand how the Satanist group operates in this movie.
And was Udo Kier just camping out down there with snakes? And for how long?
I swear the stupid blender concoction Arnold makes at the beginning is nearly the same shit Brian Bosworth feeds his iguana in Stone Cold.
I like how dirty New York is in this movie. Grimy, shitty New York is my favorite.
Gabriel Byrne is crazy horny in this.
Forgot about the scene with Satan's explosive piss. Wild.
“Why don't you just stop with all this church talk and tell us what the hell is going on?”
Cool to see Hector Salamanca as the Pope.
Udo Kier’s death was so sudden and funny. That dude devoted his life to Satan, and Satan finally shows up, fucks and body morphs his wife and daughter (but that was in another character’s dream or something; still not sure what the fuck was happening there), then punches a hole in his head just for delivering some slightly bad news.
Sven-Ole Thorsen is one of the dudes who kills Arnold's family.
Arnold, after shooting Kevin Pollak: "Stop being such a pussy!"
A lot of the Darth Schwarzenegger YouTube video lines came from this.
I know he says some bullshit about making him feel real pain or something, but it makes no sense for Satan to keep Arnold alive.
Stan Winston made a practical giant Satan suit for the end, but they replaced it in post with a full CG version. What a waste. The CG isn't awful (for the time), but why not just use the awesome suit you already filmed?
Um…if Arnold just waited five seconds, wouldn't things have still worked out? Did he have to kill himself? I'm cool with the ending; I'm just not sure it had to go down that way. I do remember thinking it was kind of cool that he actually died at the end, which is rare in a non-Terminator role for Arnold.
No comments:
Post a Comment