doomsday
When the world has been laid to waste and civilization is reduced to smoldering ruins, everyone knows it’s finally time to run out and get a mohawk.
This weekend, returning the favor for last week’s moviegoing debacle, I chose to inflict Neil Marshall‘s Doomsday on a friend. Before seeing it, I knew only that Marshall’s other movies had stricken me as lovingly crafted films, ass-kicking and spooky, respectively. Despite knowing that two films don’t quite contain enough material to build a solid reputation (cue yet another mildly exasperated glance at the Wachowski brothers), I still felt I was in reasonably good hands for something that would cater to my tastes, but not necessarily any one else’s. My ideal situation would have been to love the film and have my previous week’s torturer despise it. But no Michael Bay movies were out, so nothing was a sure bet.
In what I can only assume was a feeble, futile show of resistance to my decision, the following quote from the New York Times review was offered: “Homage without innovation isn’t homage, it’s karaoke.” Now, lets not get into the whole issue of how I don’t think humans are capable of original work and to ignore one’s influences is to attempt to consciously construct an illusion of ignorance. Let’s ignore how awesome it is when useless assholes do shit like that instead of appreciating things that are important to them. Instead, let us focus on how fun karaoke is. Sometimes, movies are just a really good time. They’re not always there to make you ponder life’s difficult quandaries, or to alter your perceptions of the world. I find it amusing that a parasitic jackass whose major contribution to the community at large is to bitch about things that other people make (evidently when those things don’t qualify as high art in his estimation) will use karaoke in an attempt to dissuade anyone from appreciating those things. It’s like saying, “Man, this movie sucked so much that it was like eating a fucking parfait.” Well played, idiot.
Different movies serve different purposes, and some are just there to answer questions like, “What if some guy who esteems and reveres a bunch of other great flicks tried to shoehorn all of that awesome into one spectacular movie?” And there are some carefully selected pieces that were kitbashed to form this particular Frankenstein’s monster, including 28 Days Later, Ghost in the Shell, Aliens, the Mad Max trilogy, Lord of the Rings and Pulp Fiction. All of this held wonderfully tenuously in place with general horror, sci-fi and action genre staples. Now, if you know me even a little, you’ll know the above two sentences make it sound like either I made the movie, or the movie was made for me. Sadly, this means I’m empathetic enough to know that this movie probably isn’t for you too, and unless you’ve lost a bet with me, you could go your whole life without ever having to know about it. And by the way, if you don’t know me, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Why do you keep coming back here? How is this even remotely interesting to you? Are there horse socks? You strike me as so very, very bored and lonely.
Against all odds, I did manage to learn one lesson from watching this movie. When a problem or frustration arises in my life, I tend to spend a fair amount of energy dismantling it and searching for reason in an attempt to reverse-engineer a solution. That is not the Doomsday way. Some difficulties defy reason. Some frustrations are repetitious and unavoidable. Some shit is dealt with just by standing there with the “Are you serious?” look on your face for a split second before unleashing an ear-splitting wail of lament. The next time I disappear from these virtual confines, desperately attempting to decipher motives and missteps in the cause of recovery from what has for two years now seemed to be an irrecoverable loss, listen close. Instead, I might just be out on the corner screaming my head off and trying to kick down a stop sign.