Two Nerds were lovingly trolled by our listener, and ended up watching Knowing, a predestination wig-out starring Nicolas Cage, which was described by Richard as “Kirk Cameron’s screenplay and directorial adaptation of L. Ron Hubbard writing Childhood’s End.” It made us have some Serious Feelings.
This one’s for you, Ian.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL Kirk Cameron LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL Left Behind LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL Arthur C. Clarke
LOLOLOLOLOLOL
I didn’t realize this would turn into a theological rage watch. But I’m tickled that it did.
My far less erudite wtf with this movie is just trying to figure out if this ending was always deliberate from the get-go, or if the screenwriters painted themselves into a big ol’ corner. I vote for corner. I mean, I seriously pose this as a writing problem to people:
Okay. Here’s your Act I: creepy, atmospheric, crazy child scribbling, time capsule, undecipherable scribbling, shadowy figures… And then the act-out reveals via a major SF set piece that the creepy AF scribbling to be accurate prophecies of the times and places of tragedies. And there are a lot of them, stretching into the near future, and the last one is as-yet undeciphered.
So far, so good.
Here’s your Act II: even more creepy atmospheric shit while the protagonists, armed with this new knowledge and more action set-pieces, attempt to avert one of the prophesied catastrophes. They fail. Conclusion: the prophesied future cannot be averted. More creepiness, shadow figures, whispering, &c. And then the act out: the final prophesy states that literally Everybody Else in the world is going to die, like in a week.
So far, so good, I guess, except…
WHAT TF IS ACT III?
I think it was probably planned? At least the writers deliberately sprinkled a bunch of bible quotes and stuff all over it, it the hopes that it would cohere. But it just makes everything so pointless! Why do anything??
It is a shame they squandered all that nice atmosphere with that dumbass ending. I’ve been resisting doing this for a long time because it’s such a bad idea, but Nic Cage is in the remake of the Left Behind movie — 1% tomatometer score! — and I kinda want to watch the trainwreck. Cage’s choice of roles has gotten real weird in the 2000s.
I still think they painted themselves into a corner and then through some Bible over their shameful, shameful footprints.
There is a REMAKE of a Left Behind movie???
*threw, not through
Right? Not even that long ago either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_Behind_(2014_film)
There was a period of time that whenever I went to the thrift store, I could find one, if not more, complete sets of all two dozen (or so) Left Behind books. That and the Twilight Saga.
Oh, Nick Cage. Why can’t he just stick to National Treasure movies? But now I sort of want to see Left Behind?
Do we have a watchalong in our future?
Edit: Oh my god, Lea Thompson is Nick Cage’s wife!!!!
That could be the only way I convince Sara to see that movie with me.
LT + NC IRL???