Religion is Really Boring

The time where Arnold Schwarzenegger went from being one of the biggest Box Office draws in the land to, seemingly, Box Office poison wasn’t quick or sudden but happened over a slow and steady period of time. He had an absolutely incredible run of hits from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s, dominating theaters and releasing film after film that topped the charts. In a given year you could go and see Commando, Twins, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, or True Lies and know you were getting Arnold’s specific blend of action, human, and charisma. But it was a formula, and eventually every formula wears out.

You could try and find the exact point where it all really started to go wrong but, again, it was more of a steady decline. Last Action Hero was a film predicated on his stardom, with the assumption that people wanted to see Arnold play a parody of himself… but they didn’t, and it tanked. But then, two years later he starred in True Lies, another film where he effectively parodied himself, and that time it clicked with audiences. He leaned into the humor for Junior, a reteaming with his collaborators from Twins, and that bombed, but Jingle All the Way the next year was another lighthearted family comedy and that scored well with audiences. It wasn’t one thing, then, but a host of reasons why, over time, his films started to fail.

Certainly by 1997 the luster had come off of Anrold’s bulletproof blockbuster exterior, and audiences were really starting to get bored of his schtick. The string of failures were really started by a one-two punch of bad Box Office performance, with Batman & Robin followed by End of Days. Neither film really played to the actor’s strengths, but while Arnold was just one of many players in the failed fourth BatmanOne of the longest running, consistently in-print superheroes ever (matched only by Superman and Wonder Woman), Batman has been a force in entertainment for nearly as long as there's been an entertainment industry. It only makes sense, then that he is also the most regularly adapted, and consistently successful, superhero to grace the Silver Screen. movie, the failure of End of Days rested solely on his shoulders and, really, it heralded Arnold’s own career high end of days as well.

Going back and watching this film, it’s easy to see why this movie failed to connect with audiences. Set up to play on the fears of the changing of the millennium, End of Days is part religious thriller, part bombastic actioner. At times those parts line up pretty well, if the film moving from shots of demonic terror right into action sequences of high-flying derring do. It’s a bit sloppy, but it all could work if the right actor were at the center of it all. With a more stoic actor, one that could play dark and brooding and really get to the soul of the lead character, a film like this could work. It could have been a film more like Constantine, really. Instead, because of Arnold, it all becomes cartoonishly stupid instead.

The film starts promising enough. In 1979 a baby girl was born, and, per the prophecies kept secret by the Catholic Church, this baby girl will grow, in twenty years, to be the consort of the Devil. He will come to her, consummate with her, and she will give birth to the Antichrist who will usher in the end of days. The Church wants to find this girl but, unfortunately, she immediately falls into the hands of the worshippers of Satan, who start guiding her life towards their master. The girl, Christine York (Robin Tunney), grows up under the eye of her (secretly Satan-worshipping) stepmother Mabel (Miriam Margolyes), never knowing what is in store for her.

Meanwhile, in 1999, a man (played by Gabriel Byrne) becomes possessed by Satan. He is ready to consummate his desires with Christine at the last hour of the last day of the year. Until then he just kind of dicks around, waiting. He hires a crew of security agents, including Jericho Cane (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his buddy Bobby Chicago (Kevin Pollak), and they end up preventing an attempt on the man’s life (not realizing he’s Satan) by a mad priest, Thomas Aquinas (Derrick O'Connor). This sucks Jericho into the mystery: what is going on and why did a priest want to kill a business man? This eventually leads Jericho to Christine, and once the pieces fall into place, he realizes he has to protect her, above all else, or it could spell the end of everything.

End of Days is an interesting movie that, for some reason, does everything it can to be dumber than it should be. The biggest flaw is Arnold, yes, but that doesn’t absolve the rest of the film from all its stupidity. At every turn, and in every twist of the story, the film acts stupidly and there’s really no reason for it at all. Take, for example, the introduction of Satan. He possesses a random dude days before the consummation ceremony, and his very presence on Earth alerts everyone that has been watching out for him. This is, in part, because he takes over the man in a restaurant, and then immediately blows it up (with his Satan powers, we have to guess) before walking out of the blaze cool as could be. If he’d sat back down for dinner, acted normally, and didn’t go all hellfiery on the establishment, would anyone know he was around to stop him?

And why is Satan on Earth so early? Arguably he is only needed for one hour of his time, the point where he screws Christine and puts the Antichrist in her, but he shows up days earlier to… do what? Dick around? Take in a Broadway show? We never actually see that. His followers instantly recognize him when they meet him, so it’s not as if he has to take a week in NYC to introduce himself to people. If he had simply taken over the man right before the ceremony, wandered into the temple, did his job, and left he never would have alerted anyone he was around, Jericho wouldn’t have been hired to protect him, and that wouldn’t have then put the one man who could stop Satan, Jericho Cane, on the case.

Meanwhile, what is with the names of characters in this movie? Many of them are bad, but I think Jericho Cane and Bobby Chicago absolutely take the cake for some of the worst action hero names I’ve seen in a film. Jericho Cane sounds like a joke, like a name the Mystery Science Theater 3000First aired on the independent TV network KTMA, Mystery Science Theater 3000 grew in popularity when it moved to Comedy Central. Spoofing bad movies, the gang on the show watch the flicks and make jokes about them, entertaining its audience with the same kind of shtick many movies watchers provided on their own (just usually not as funny as the MST3K guys could provide). It became an indelible part of the entertainment landscape from there, and lives on today on Netflix. bots would have shouted at the screen during a watching of Space Mutiny. It’s so laughably fake that every time someone said the name I assumed they were slurring their lines, or their character was having a stroke. Who looks at “Jericho Cane” and thinks, “yeah, that’s a perfectly normal name for a character”?

But it’s Arnold that really fails this movie. Say what you will about the actor, there are times where he is effective in a role. Usually that’s because the film is written to work within his limited range, or because all that’s really needed is for him to look like a living special effect. End of Days is not that kind of movie. Jericho is supposed to be an average former beat cop, down on his luck and barely taking care of himself. He’s beaten down, strung out, suicidal, with a lot of darkness resting on his soul after the deaths of his wife and child. One, does any of that sounds like it’s within the acting range of the Governator? Not really. And Arnold was also still super buff during this film, and that kind of body building physique is not something you expect on your average beat cop, especially not one that has spent the last few years barely taking care of himself as he slowly tries to drink himself to death. In both personality, and physical presence, Arnold is miscast.

This really hurts the movie because you’re never able to invest in Jericho’s story. You don’t see him as the kind of schmuck loser that would be living in a dingy apartment (honestly, Kevin Pollack, who plays his partner, would be much better in that role). Worse, Arnold is never able to invest in the tragedy of Jericho’s life. He can’t play dark and brooding and depressed. He doesn’t have the kind of range needed for a character like this, unable to invest in this even the way Keanu Reeves did for his character in Constantine. It takes a certain person to carry this kind of film with this kind of character, and Arnold isn’t it.

The film never really gels together at all, such that by the time the last act hits and everything is supposed to come together, it all really just runs out of steam. At this point the very unsurprising story has played every card it has and it ends up devolving into another generic action film with bad, late-1990s CGI. Nothing works, it all hangs together about as messily as it can, and the final climax ends up being more of a chore to get through. This film simply doesn’t work.

There are ways this movie could have been saved. A different actor in the lead role would have helped, for sure, but the movie also needed a rewrite to be a little smarter, a little better about its story. There are elements here that work, and I think with the right team lead by the right actors, End of Days could have at least been fun. Instead we get a film that shows promise early on before quickly, and steadily, descending into mediocrity. This isn’t a film you can like; it’s one you watch and then set aside, forgetting you even watched it. The greatest trick End of Days plays is making you forget it exists at all.