The Fractal Hall Journal

Gillian Anderson’s performance is brilliant, highlighting once again how Hollywood hasn’t found a single actress of her calibre since she was first cast as Scully. Why don’t female characters in film or TV appear to be any good? Because “acting ability” just isn’t considered to be any where near as important as finding a pretty little thing to hang off the hero’s arm. Scully’s one of the greatest female characters ever created, and played by a top class actress. Let’s face it, a character like this is never going to come along again.

There’s one bit, where Scully walks in late to a meeting where the head of her hospital is about to override her decision regarding one of her patients. For a second, I thought the scene was going to go badly south, because it looked like Scully was going to let it slide. You can see every emotion on Anderson’s face, every single missed opportunity and sacrifice she’s had to made over the past decade, every doubt that haunts her. The thing is, I’ve seen too many female characters react by letting something like this slide, then later on (for example) sneaking back to give the patient the treatment anyway. Because that’s just how women behave, isn’t it, Hollywood?

Not Scully, thank fuck. She puts her foot down, reminding all of us that she doesn’t take shit from anyone. It’s a fucking brilliant scene, and don’t try and tell me there’s a single female character in any other movie this year who gets treated with anything approaching the respect Scully does.

She’s completely the heart of the film, and it’s such a damned shame that this film is going to be dismissed just because it doesn’t have enough aliens in it. She convinces Mulder to get involved because it gives him a chance to be pardoned, for them to finally get their lives back, only to watch him get too involved, for both of them to get close to something so unimaginably dark that it taints both them and their relationship. That’s pretty heavy stuff, and something that’s stayed with me long after I left the cinema, something I couldn’t really say about the first film. I have to admit, in plot terms at the start I was a bit worried that it was looking like Carter was just doing another serial killer thing, as if what he really wanted to do was Millennium: The Movie, but when the weird-science twist becomes apparent, like a bolt of lightning we suddenly believe, absolutely, that we’re watching the X-Files once more.

There are negatives, of course. There’s a possible suggestion that being abused as a child makes you catch gay, which is incredibly ignorant. On a fannish level, Mulder gets pardoned far too easily, considering all the shit that went down in the final episode of S9. Does a low-level agent like the one who asks for his help really have that much pull with a military court? If I can get all fan-fictiony for a moment, I’m going to go ahead and assume that because the original trial was so mickey mouse he was acquitted of murder in his absence (maybe with the off-screen help of Doggett and Reyes? Oh, God yes! Fan Wank Supreme!), but was still being chased on the lesser charge of escaping from custody. I can just about believe the Bureau would let that charge go in exchange for helping them find a kidnapped agent.

But, all-in-all, this really is a disturbing, fascinating, engaging film, one that embraces the themes of the original series and takes the characters into darker psychological territory, all the while reminding us why we liked them so much, and cared so much about what happened to them. It’s a far better encapsulation of the show than the first film, and one that to my mind shows how relevant the X-Files remain.

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Before we carry on, I have to admit something. Of all the films that came out in 2007, the one I liked most by a fair distance was Transformers. I must have watched it half a dozen times since getting the DVD. The last time I watched a film this much was Terminator 2 and I was 12. And I’m pretty sure I can argue that it’s objectively a better film than, say, Ghost Rider (which I also kind of liked), although some might say that’s a bit like arguing that punching myself in the stomach is objectively better than punching myself in the cock.

I’m having trouble recalling what my point is.

Wait, what I mean is that my subjective opinion of Transformers is utterly useless to anyone, because it’s a film most consider to be utterly crap that I don’t even have to convince myself I like. Star Wars die-hards may have to convince themselves to like any of the prequel trilogy, but I don’t even have to do that. I think it’s fair to say that Hasbro’s early-age indoctrination systems are awesome and terrible in their power.

I bring this up because what you need to understand is that I know what I’m like. There are things that even I don’t trust my own opinion on. Transformers is one of them. The X-Files, despite the months-long Nostalgia Trip, is not.

And I honestly think that the new X-Files film is objectively a very good film.

Look, I know what bad X-Files episodes are like. I’ve sat through every single one of them. I know the ones where continuity is too dense, where the writers get all strung out on how fucking deep and meaningful they are, where Burt Reynolds turns up and acts like a twat. This is not a bad episode.

Problem One, perhaps, appears here. Because it is very much an episode in an ongoing story. That’s not to say it’s impossible to follow if you’re not familiar with the show, as they tell you everything you need to know and avoid any mention of the unimaginably tangled backstory. It’s not even that it looks like a tv show- they may have not had a big budget, but it doesn’t look any cheaper than, say, Gone Baby Gone. In fact, I’d say the look of the film holds up very well next to your typical serial killer/cop drama film, as that’s more obviously the vibe Chris Carter was aiming for rather than the Independence Day stylings of the first X-Files film. No, if it fails anywhere it’s in not giving new viewers, or lapsed viewers, a reason to root for Mulder and Scully.

That’s probably the wrong way of putting it. In an average adventure movie (again, like the first one), you don’t really need to know anything more than X is a bad guy, Y and Z are good guys, you can tell because Y and Z are all funny, cool and attractive and X is shooting at them. You hop on the rollercoaster, things blow up real pretty, and by the end Z has won, X is dead and Y has sacrificed themselves heroically. But, even though theres a set of horrible baddies in I Want To Believe, that’s not what the film’s about. The film’s about Scully, how she relates to Mulder, how her life has irrevocably changed over the past six years, the kind of life she wants to lead, and all the things she’s lost and sacrifices she’s made. Most importantly, it’s about her faith; religious faith, sure, but also faith in Mulder and faith in herself.

And that’s the problem. I think most people want to see her and Mulder decapitating werewolves and shootin’ down UFOs and super soldiers. I think that’s what most people went in to the cinema expecting to see. But that just isn’t the story Carter wanted to tell. That’s where the familiarity with the whole arc of the previous 9 series comes in handy, and that’s what has doomed this film. I’ve got a reason to root for Scully. I don’t necessarily think that anyone coming into the film cold does, or rather I think that because they’re expectations are not being met, they don’t give the story a chance.

Scully’s always been the main character, really. I mean, it’s great to see Mulder again, but he’s essentially a manchild who can’t ever get beyond an obsession with The Truth. The show’s really about Scully’s life, and how she deals with the drama caused by an obsessive who can’t let dangerous weirdness go.

Where the film is different from the series is how dark it gets, and I don’t mean in terms of gore (there are far gorier episodes) but rather in theme. Billy Connolly (who isn’t that bad, thank fuck) plays a paedophile who may be psychic, and the film doesn’t ever shy away from the revulsion the characters feel for relying on such a man. In fact, the way that [spoiler] Mulder wants to give the man credit towards the end shows how far his obsession with The Truth goes; it’s irrelevant to him what his crimes were, however vile. His insights helped to catch the bad guys, and no matter how unpalatable that truth is, to Mulder the truth trumps everything. I think this is an important take on the character, one they couldn’t really pull off on the show. We’ve always taken it as read that The Truth is the most important thing of all. This film confronts us with a truth that is abhorrent.

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I’ve been getting through Dennis Lehane’s first four books recently, finishing the last one in time to catch the film version’s UK release this weekend (well, two weeks ago now, what with the restored post buffer).

They’re all very well-written, readable crime dramas, if not quite as good as Mystic River. Of course, he had about ten years to improve between that one and the first. In fact, it’s easy to see how the former is a culmination of all the things he learned from his previous work, as if he had to figure out what his style was before writing a whole book in that mode.

Because the Kenzie and Gennaro adventures can be summed up, in a way, like film pitches. A Drink, Before The War, with its gang storyline and shady city politics, is like The Shield set in Boston (though it predates the series by a fair bit of time). Darkness, Take My Hand is a typical serial killer whodunit, and Sacred is a Robert Mitchum-type noir. And if Gone Baby Gone is anything, it’s a Hollywood kidnapping thriller, complete with gunfights and action sequences.

Of course, it’s the only one that’s actually been adapted into a Hollywood thriller, but in such a way that it’s not a typical thriller at all.

A lot of people get shot in the book series, which isn’t unusual for the genre. What makes it a little odd is the setting. Because Lehane does a brilliant job of capturing working class life in Boston (I have no idea how accurate it is, only that it feels sufficiently realistic), it’s a bit of a jolt to get into the action sequences that are also a big part of the books. There’s one character in particular, Bubba Rogowski, a psychotic arms dealer who wires up his apartment with antipersonel mines instead of a burglar alarm, who seems completely out of place, and I wondered how they’d handle him in the film. The answer is, he’s downgraded to a minor-league drug dealer.

A lot of things get that kind of low-key downgrading in the film, whether simplifying the chaotic plot of the novel, the scope of the final conspiracy, or the shootouts. But it’s all necessary, as the tack director Ben Affleck chooses to take is more the realistic portrayal of life in Dorchester, and that’s always been the most interesting part of Lehane’s books. What he keeps in are the impossible dilemmas that face all the characters.

A key scene in the book and the film is the execution of a child molester by Kenzie. Even though the scene is described far more brutally in the book than is shown in the film, the latter is still more horrific. If anything, it’s easier to understand Kenzie’s motivation in the film without his inner monologue. We don’t really need to know why he did what he did, because we’ve seen it for ourselves. Put in the same position as him, it’s easy to see how anyone would do the same thing, regardless of whether the person gunned down was unarmed or harmless. Kenzie’s guilt, however understandable his actions were, effect his judgement for the rest of the film, facing another impossible decision of leaving the missing girl with her kidnappers and a happy, promising future, or returning her to a neighbourhood that has destroyed so many other lives.

The film benefits from not being one of a series, like the books are. It’s the first time we see Patrick Kenzie, so we don’t know all the other tragic things that have happened to him. We don’t know his history with his father, or that he’s had to kill before (I’d assume that, continuity wise, film-Kenzie doesn’t have the baggage of the books), so we find it that much easier to identify with him, although we do get hints of his uncontrollable anger when he pistol-whips a guy in a bar towards the beginning. And even though Casey Affleck’s accent is damn near impenetrable.

It’s a grown-up film for grown-ups, so it’s not necessarily and easy watch. The whole cast are great, and the setting seems really authentic. The only character who gets a little short-changed is Angie Gennaro. In the book she’s explicitly dangerous, not only tough on her own terms but also the grandaughter of an old Boston mob boss. In the film, she just kind of cries a lot, and moans at Kenzie. The whole cast is so brilliant, it’s a fucking shame that they decided to cast the second most important character in the film by essentially looking for the next moderately famous attractive young actress to wander along. In a film so non-Hollywood, it’s typical that the Hollywood mentality still had to piss on the chips, even a little bit.

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Neil Marshall is one of the most interesting British directors currently working, though I suspect he’s sometimes dismissed because of his focus on genre work. As a horror director, there aren’t many people as original or inventive as him.

Both Dog Soldiers and The Descent are brilliant in their own ways. The former is full of snappy dialogue, a great chemistry between the characters, and is gruesomely hilarious, while there’s very little to laugh about amongst the grueling claustrophobia of the latter. In comparison to, say, Edgar Wright, another Brit with a distinctive signature style, while both make fast-paced work Wright’s tend to be more “Pop” (for want of a better word) while Marshall is darker.

As distinctive as Marshall is, his third film once again takes a different tack again to its predecessors. From a buddy-soldier flick to an out-and-out horror, to the Mad Max/Death Race/Escape From New York 80s action-dystopia of Doomsday. And that’s probably what makes the film a little less interesting than his other ones.

The films was seriously entertaining, don’t get me wrong, but it really was a rollercoaster ride that didn’t really stick with me after I left the cinema, unlike the impression his other films have had. And that’s a problem caused by talent, really: I’d say Outpost is probably on par with Doomsday in the entertainment stakes, but it’s not like I had particularly high expectations for the Nazi Zombie Ghosts so it’s easier to be pleasantly surprised.

Doomsday takes all of its cues from other action films, and because of this doesn’t really bring anything of its own to the table. There’s a car chase from Mad Max 2, a troop carrier from Aliens, even medieval combat reminiscent of Excalibur (or, if I were being ungenerous, First Knight). That said, considering the current industry trend of watering down films like Die Hard (Die Hard, for fuck’s sake) so the kiddies can fork over their cash without seeing violence or hearing nasty words, it’s a fucking relief to see a film for grown-ups (though I use the phrase broadly) where nothing is toned down. Not toned down at all.

While I’m on the subject, I’ve got a real problem with the neutering of action movies. I know there’s an economic reason for doing it, but it even takes away the fun of getting into a film you’re too young for for an entire generation. Watching Robocop when you were ten was an essential part of growing up, and it never did me any damage. Although that may depend on how you class the kind of person who writes about it years later on the internet.

Going back to the matter at hand, I’ve seen a couple of reviews that talk about the plot-holes in the film. I didn’t catch any myself, but then I was a little too wrapped up in it to engage the critical bits of my brain too much. I can see why your attention would wander if it wasn’t your kind of thing, though. And Marshall really should get some credit for having such a strong female protagonist in a role that’s usually marked Boys Only, and on a subjective level it was nice to see [SPOILER] Darren Morfitt’s character survive after Spoon, his character in Dog Soldiers, got dispatched last time around. Albeit with just about the best exit line in movie history (to werewolf: “I hope I give you the shits“).

All in all, a fantastic action movie but not much else, with a script that doesn’t quite hold together: a bit of a shame considering the quality of the rest of the director’s work.

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Try this phrase out for size: Zombie-ghost Nazis.

What, you need more?

This one’s best described as a cross between The Fog and Dog Soldiers. It owes a lot to the latter in particular, in that it’s a low budget British military horror film, which isn’t to say it’s a wholesale ripoff. Despite the similarities in execution, there are a fair few differences. The funny, likeable squaddies are replaced by dour, sociopathic mercenaries, and there’s very little humour to be found in the situation. Outpost’s atmosphere of creeping horror and despair is far bleaker, helped by the decaying scenery of the Nazi bunker. Full marks to the set dressers, actually. It really does feel like an ancient, rusting remnant of the Second World War.

Even though the characters are all deliberately nasty, you still find yourself drawn to their side as the horror escalates. It’s got an 18 rating, which isn’t really given out much these days. It wasn’t as unrelentingly gory as I thought it would be, and that works in its favour. Even so, it’s damn well foul enough when things kick off, and there’s plenty here for the bloodthirsty.

Thanks to the film’s age rating, the scarier version of the trailer for M. Night’s The Happening was attached, and it makes the previous trailer look like an absolute cock-up. While we got very little apart from Mark Wahlberg’s wooden, drama-school delivery from the previous one, the grown-up version is a lot more Shyamalan-y. There’s more of a horror movie thing going on, revealing that the danger isn’t just a mysterious disease that’s killing people (as suggested by the last ad), but rather something that’s making people kill themselves in terrible ways. Of course, by now the damage is done, and whoever thought the first ad was a good idea really should get the boot.

But back to the Nazis. All the roles are well cast (and look out for Tyres, the bicycle courier from Spaced playing a very different kind of character), fleshing out what is essentially a cut-rate, barely fit band of arseholes. If the film falters anywhere, it’s in the dodgy pseudoscience that creates the zombie-ghosts, but then again it’s meant to be a low-budget exploitation flick so it’s hardly out of place.

I know there’s an argument to be made that no-one makes good, intelligent films any more. Maybe that’s true. But there’s no doubt that in terms of genre films, we’ve never had a better set to choose from. Because while there’s a lot to like in old horror films, until recently none have really been that clever, certainly not in the script department. But now we’ve really got the hang of low-budget horror that’s genuinely well written, from the recent Spanish films through to British efforts like this one. And Outpost is one to be proud of.

Edit, 4pm ish: Fucking hell, this site is playing up today. I’ve been trying to amend this post all day, with no luck. I’m not typing everything else out again, so the short version: The last paragraph above is batshit crazy. There are loads of clever, classic horror films and suggesting otherwise makes no sense. The film’s good, but it’s not that good. I’ll leave the paragraph to stand as an object lesson in why not to write something while brain-numbingly tired.

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David Duchovny, being interviewed regarding the new movie (in Empire magazine, I think) has mentioned how during the release of the original he’d told everyone that they didn’t need to watch the series to understand the film, when he (and the rest of the production) knew full well that wasn’t quite true. He goes on to repeat the same for The X-Files: I Want To Believe, only adding that this time he’s serious, honest, you don’t need to catch up to enjoy it. Needless to say, while we at the Journal Want To Believe this (if only because the popular success of the release will guarantee we see more of Mulder and Scully in the future), we don’t really believe him. Hence the brain-melting nine season extravaganza we’ve got going on.

The 2008 Duchovny is correct. There’s no way you could fully appreciate the first film without a familiarity with the five series that preceded it. It doesn’t even work as a concept. Let me put it like this: if you walked in off the street with no idea what the show was, or if you vaguely knew it was a horrorish SF thing based around mysterious FBI files, you’d spend the entire movie wondering where the fuck the actual X-Files were. Sure, that’s what the film’s called, but they never turn up in it. They refer to them a couple of times, usually in the context of them being closed down before the film even starts. So straight out of the gate, with the very title of the movie the producers fail.

And as a fan? Well, it’s way better than I remember it.

First things first: the most common criticism is that the film’s actually an extended episode. Which is kind of true. It doesn’t bug me, of course, because I’m watching a fuck-ton of episodes anyway, but I can see why you’d be irritated at having to buy a ticket for something you can watch pretty much for free on a Tuesday night. And if you need further proof you have to be a fan to enjoy the flick, the most interesting thing about the bees and the crops that feature as a major plot point is that they finally explain what the fuck was going on at the start of Series 4. On the other had, they really do manage to widen the scope of the show, with better effects, better location work, better cameras and if that isn’t enough for you then Mulder says “shit”, like, three times. That’s three times as much as Data in Star Trek: Generations.

Joking aside, it really does feel more, well, special than your average episode (the explosion at the Government building at the start is incredibly effective, while the Agent in charge’s willingness to let himself die rather than attempt to defuse the bomb is chilling and a step beyond what’s usually shown on telly), even if it does kind of work against them when the crew have to shoehorn everything back into the pedestrian, lower-budget box to carry on with Series 6. And though I didn’t realise it at the time (having pretty much given up on the series), it pulls off one thing that was absolutely essential to the show as a whole: with one short monologue, it finally defines exactly where the arc story’s going.

Shortly before he (SPOILERSPOILERSPOILER) blows up, the old English conspirator (sounds like a Real Ale, doesn’t it?) explains to Mulder that while the Syndicate always believed they would end up as a slave race, controlled by the Black Oil, they never realised the aliens’ true purpose was to use humans to incubate more aliens. Behind the scenes, of course, their hybrid/Purity Control experiments have been attempting to find a vaccine. In a way, one of the Syndicate’s motives have been, it seems, to save the world. It’s a welcome, necessary attempt to sweep away all the loose threads and reposition the “mythology” of the show, Chris Carter’s way to convince us that this is what we need to know and he’s sorry everything got so confusing. The problem is, they probably should have done this a bit earlier.

I remember quite liking Series 6, but overall I suspect it’s going to be downhill from here.

Bonus continuity misstep: Conrad Strughold turns up in the movie, apparently one of if not the head of the Syndicate. He’s obviously meant to be important to the Project, and shares his name with the mining company that held the genetic records of everyone given a small pox vaccination. He’s obviously meant to be a key characters, and presumably he was meant to show up later on in the series. But he was never seen again. In terms of budget and wasting screen time, that was a bit of a cock-up.

Bonus nerd-out: Seen the trailer for the new film yet? There’s a bit where the screen goes dark, and then you hear Mulder say “Scully?”. Well, I just watched the trailer for the original on the DVD, and ten years ago they put a bit in where the screen goes dark and Scully says “Mulder?”. How awesome is that?

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I don’t know how many people out there have seen this yet (I’m guessing, a lot of you), but just in case I’ll drop a cut in.

(more…)

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Do you know how close the Journal is to becoming a site devoted to cat pictures? This close. You can’t see me right now but I’m holding my right thumb and forefinger really close together. And I’ll be doing so all day for the benefit of those in different time zones.

Fractal Films

Cloverfield (2008)

I couldn’t possibly do better than this here Cloverfield summary.

A thoroughly good giant monster flick with a nice little hand-held camera gimmick, it hit every mark it needed to by doing exactly what it says on the tin. I don’t know why so many people seem to find it disappointing, as I’m not quite sure what else you could demand from a film about a big creature eating people and buildings. It hardly uneventful, and the dialogue was as witty as you’d expect from a guy who used to write for Buffy the Vampire Slayer (cf. AVPR, a movie written so badly the abbreviated title sounds like a tax form). Possibly the viral marketing left too much room for speculation; I remember getting a little overexcited myself when I thought it might have been a Cthulhu Mythos thing.

Interesting to see that a number of reviews mention how much the reviewer loathes people talking loudly in the cinema. Now, this seems to come up a lot, in particular when people talk about why they don’t want to go to the cinema anymore, or why ticket sales are in decline. My question is, is this specifically an American behaviour, or does it happen on this side of the Pond too and I’m oblivious? I honestly don’t remember the last time I got annoyed by someone talking during a film. So either I’m just not noticing it, it isn’t really a problem in South Wales, or (entirely possible) I’m the annoying one doing all the talking.

Charlie Wilson’s War (2007)

Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing is just about the greatest thing that’s ever been on television. I even really like the series after his departure, on the grounds that sub-par West Wing is still way smarter than most things that get turded through the airwaves. But as much as I enjoyed Studio 60, this is the first work he’s done for a number of years that’s come close to the former show. It manages to be tragic, moving, hilarious, with a particularly scathing irony aimed at US political maneuvering in light of the eventual result of arming the Afghan resistance. And you shouldn’t need me to tell you how good Philip Seymour Hoffman is in just about anything he does. Perhaps the only significant fault it’s that it sidesteps any mention of oil or petroleum interests, which is, you know, not an inconsequential factor in the history of the region.

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A handful of bit-bombs for your explosive edutainment.

Fractal Films: AVPR: Aliens v. Predator: Requiem (2007)

This film is- hold on, is that nerd getting beaten up by a jock over the misunderstood popular girl? In an Alien film? Sorry, I mean to say that in this film- wait, an alien in a fucking wig? That’s meant to be the big bad guy?

You know what, let me put it like this: Have you ever paid someone to use a car door to paste your genitals?

You have? Ew.

Observing the Idiot Box

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

Being constipated does not constitute acting. That is all.

Well, maybe one more thing. Is that really the correct use of the word “chronicles”? Damn, that word looks strange if you write it over and over. Chronicles. Chronicles chronicles chronicles.

The Unit

This is one manly fucking series. Traumatised soldier back from Eye-raq looking to beat on his wife? Jonas Blaine gonna whup your ass clean across the room ’till the mental anguish is slapped outta ya. Can I get a FIRED UP SHIT YEAH?

Note: Treatment for mental illness does not work like that.

The Shield

Just finished series 4 and started on 5, and all joking aside Glenn Close was fucking awesome and it’s a damn shame she’s only in a dozen or so episodes. That said, Forest Whitaker replacing her as an Internal Affairs officer may well be the scariest character ever written for television and should be a great nemesis for Vic Mackey, aka the everlovin’ blue eyed Thing. Speaking of Mighty Marvel casting, the girl who lives next to Peter Parker in Spider-Man 2 and 3 has a bit part as a drug-addicted prostitute. Crack-cocainarific!

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Director: Hey, aren’t you the guy responsible for stinking up the screen with Batman & Robin and Lost in Space?

Writer: Well, there were other people involved, but sure. Yup.

Director: My God, they were indescribably awful pieces of turd.

Writer: Hey, I’ve won an Oscar since then.

Director: They really should take previous offences into account with those.

Writer: Fuck you very much. Aren’t we meant to be making a film together?

Director: Er, sure. I’m A Legend, or something.

Writer: I Am Legend. A science fiction classic, one with perhaps the greatest thematic reversal and final line in the genre, one that ties the very title of the work into its theme, that shows its hand from the very start yet still remains shocking. Haunting, horrific, a study of how a man becomes a monster.

Director: Yeah, we can totally capture that with, y’know, CGI. Computer-game CGI that’ll be cheaper than using talent. Or having to pay lots of extras. Or the whole boring process of putting makeup on those extras.

Writer: I’ve been thinking. What we should do is make a film that, despite the crap effects, isn’t that bad. Have Will Smith going mad from isolation, the soul-destroying effects of hiding from monsters every single night.

Director: Whatever. Look, this is what we’re doing. Whip out the ending. Then tack on a bit with a woman and child who’ve been led by God- literally heard God’s voice, who’s guided them to Will Smith’s character. Will Smith will learn to believe in his faith once more, and thanks to God’s advice sacrifices himself and gives the woman the cure for monsterhood. Then God will lead her to a troop of survivalists- we’ll really clearly code them as survivalists, with a mountain compound, lots of weaponry, US flags everywhere- and the last scene of the film will show a big church at the centre of the compound, with bells triumphantly ringing the faithful who’ve been spared at the end of the world.

Writer: Which leaves the title of the film meaning what?

Director: That Will Smith is, y’know, a total fucking legend.

Writer: So, we’re actually making Christian armageddon porn?

Director: No, we’re making an absolute fuck-ton of money.

Writer: Hold on- you’re the guy that did Constantine.

Director: What’s your point?

Writer: Shit, even I think you should never have been let near a camera after that.

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