To begin, a short foray into my foundations of cinematic quality:
Love is damn beautiful. That seems to be the word on the street at least, and my purpose here is not to counter that fact. What I have a problem with is the “falling” part. I don’t fall in love easily. My heart doesn’t stand on the corner begging for affection with a sign that says, “will break for food.” This applies to all aspects of my life, most relevantly, movies. It takes awhile to get me in the sack, no matter how good the cinematic blow job may be. It takes reflection, analysis, and multiple viewings before I will even let a movie hold hands with me. I need to know where the relationship is going. I need to know that after years of being together, it won’t let me down and my feelings will not flutter away. The Big Lebowski, Robocop, Jaws, and others like them, all share very deep, loving, and highly sexual unions with my brain parts. They are films that have passed the one true test of quality that I, and Matt Damon, have full faith in. That test (Clark Griswold drum roll please) is time!
Time. The enemy and surveyor of all things. The proven god of us all. The one thing we can’t escape or destroy. The only thing Doc Brown ever invented something for that actually worked. I invoke the mighty name of Mr. Damon because this past summer in an EW interview, he was asked what he thought of awards and awards shows. Matt responded by calling them “fucking bullshit,” an answer which, in and of itself, is great alone, but he went a genius step further and stated “The only way to judge a movie is 10 years down the line.” Check the interview out here:
How absolutely right you are sir, and might I add how because of that statement I shall forgive any bad movies you may have done, which thankfully, isn’t a lot. While I am not as militant as Mr. Damon (I have a 5 year rule.), time is the only judge that seems to be overlooked by most of the world, including the pretentious film community. Hell, even the Academy doesn’t think ahead. Planet of the Apes (the real one with Charlton Heston, not the fake one made by the demon-possessed former-genius Tim Burton) didn’t win Best Picture in the year of its release and the film community and the fans still talk about it to this day. What did win best picture that year? Marty? I don’t know, you don’t know, and none of us care.
My point here, if I have not pounded into your head beyond reason yet, is time has the only true say in what is good or bad. Any critiques that are made before an acceptable number of years have passed are just opinions and opinions alone. This is why when a current piece of cinema sucks the vans deferens out of me with its crafted perfection (ala There Will Be Blood or Hot Fuzz) I don’t get down on one knee and offer up a commitment along with Hallmark’s finest. I keep it in a place of honor on the back burner where it shall stay until half a decade later when love, true love, can be allowed to blossom properly with tender, repeat viewings. It can also be used as an example of how much some other current movie sucks compared to the genius of years past. That philosophy might seem ignorant, but coupled with glorious nostalgia of my youthful years gone, it’s just chock full of bliss. Bitter old men are we who cling to what was good and damn what is now, Foolish young men are they who praise without hindsight. Yes, I wrote that quote, and yes, I’m trying too hard. Feel free to put that sentence on any bathroom stall, or perhaps get it tattooed on your epidermis, but please, give me credit for the quote, and if possible, send a picture of the affected area.
Is 2008 too late to file a complaint from 1995? I’m sure it is, but when I was “filing” it back then, verbally, to any one of my half-conscious barely listening school buddies they didn’t seem to know or care what I was obnoxiously “filing” about at the top of my lungs. Several times since the mid point of yester-decade I have brought up this very complaint only for it to dwell upon deaf ears. It’s not that I felt no one knew what I was saying. It’s that no one and I mean NO ONE, seemed nearly as mad at the obvious blasphemy, the inarguable cowshit, and the narrow minded piss poor thought that went into putting NEON FUCKING LIGHTS ON THE BATMOBILE!!!
Sorry, that’s thirteen years of pent up anger flowing out of my fingers like a hummingbird’s neck laceration. Yes, the movie I am of course talking about is the beginning of the end, before the beginning, of the Batman franchise…Batman Forever, Joel Schumacher’s second most hated film, only trumped by the Batman movie he made after it. However, I am not going to rag on Batman and Robin, because the fact that it was without one single doubt a rotting nest of fungus was never as big a surprise to me as it was to those around me. All my friends, parents, teachers, co-workers, and neighborhood chums somehow laid a thick layer of forgiveness on Forever, so much so that it blinded them to the incessantly bright globs of guano being squeezed out on the screen. I always assumed it was their love of Jim Carrey as The Riddler that helped the retinal detachment, but that doesn’t seem sufficient enough. You see, I am not going to even complain about the shortcomings of the movie itself. Bad or good, it was…as The Dude might say, “whatever.” Personally, I will always be a bigger fan of the two Tim Burton films, and the Christopher Nolan film isn’t too shabby either. My main problem simply lies in the clear cut truth in just looking at the Forever Batmobile itself. That is where all the glaring awful signs of this old misfire lay. Why point out the corny dialogue, campy sets, the fact that Two-face acts like The Joker, or the painful addition of Chris O’Donnell as Robin, when the foremost crime hasn’t even been addressed?
Batman is The DARK Knight. He is that which lurks in the shadows of the city, the one criminals fear as more than just a man, but a BAT man, right? This is a character that originated out of death. This is the all-time premiere hero for those of us who champion the serious, brooding, vengeance for everything and everyone that has ever wronged this world. RIGHT? So I ask you, how did the studio, how did the modelers, how did the producers, writers, hell, even the actors let the greatest fictional car in all of comicdom, one that belongs to the Darkest of Dark Knights (DARK!) ever even make it in front of a camera for five seconds while adorned in neon lights? I don’t understand. And, of course, if it wasn’t bad enough, they let Schumacher do it twice, and then the world complained that it sucked… finally. I’m not going to sit here and put all the blame on Joel. People do make mistakes, and hopefully when said mistakes are engaged and you don’t realize it someone (perhaps, I don’t know, DC comics, or any human with a pulsing heart!) will let you in on the fact that you are fucking hell’s vagina.
“Hey, Joel…what’s up, man? That pastry looks delicious. Hey, can I talk to you for a sec?”
“Sure.”
“Yeah well, you realize that there are neon lights on the Batmobile right? Like we have all been talking about it and well, black is kinda Batman’s thing…and he has to be dark and mysterious and all of us feel neon might not be the way to go…you know…heh…its neon.”
“Good point. We’ll take off the neon. Make the whole thing pink…”
“Well, uh…like I said…black is rather crucial to the process.”
“Black, huh? Good…go with it.”
Sometimes that’s all it takes folks. Was it really that hard to say something to the man? Schumacher is not made of complete cinematic evil. I have faith that the man that was responsible for such cool flicks as The Lost Boys, Flatliners, and Falling Down could, with a proper tongue lashing, give the world a viable Batmobile. This is especially considering the fact that it was preceded by one of the top-five coolest automotive creations for film ever. Love or hate the movies, the Burton-mobile was beautifully slick, and not too far off from those that adorned the comics and animated series (two mediums I would think garner the most militant respect from comic fans.) So there, I had to let it out; thanks for reading it. I am hoping that someone, if not all people who read this will say “hey I was screaming that too” or something akin to that, because no one ever felt as passionate about it in my own life as I pathetically seemed to. At such an age, movies were worth such passion, while politics, religion, and relationships were the “stupid, boring” problems for adults to worry about. I must say lastly that this fervent outrage was never derived from comic book foundation, merely a firm love of movies and an incredibly firm hatred of such a lack of respect for an iconic American character. Trust me, I would have been just as pissed if they made a movie where Darth Vader was a sniveling little shit…oh wait…
Now, MY TOP 5 80’s and 90’s SECONDARY MOVIE ENDINGS! A secondary movie ending is one that is usually better known as an epilogue, but for our purposes here, it’s an “ending” that takes place after the main conflict or antagonist of the piece has been resolved or killed respectively.
5. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) Buffy’s secondary ending can be found after the credits. Here we find Paul Ruebens (better known as Pee Wee) still scuffling around in a stairwell humorously groaning and badly faking his extremely long vampire’s death due to a stake in the heart. Taking into consideration the sounds Ruebens makes here, one wonders if the joke wasn’t heinously ripped off by Family Guy in the Willy Wonka parody episode.
4. Short Circuit 2 (1988) In what might possibly be the most hardcore 80’s movie to ever exist, we have a secondary ending that takes place right after the fade out of the final chase scene. A chase scene, mind you, that involves a jewel thief getting apprehended by a Mohawk-wearing-sentient-robot (Johnny 5) to the tune of Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding out for a Hero” and ends with a Tarzan swing (accompanied by the famous Tarzan scream) from a crane onto a speedboat. If you’re like me that is pretty much the gateway to the heavens. Anyway, the secondary ending brings us to an induction ceremony for newly accepted American Citizens, where we see a recently refurbished, completely gold-plated, J5 receiving his citizenship to the colonies. Now the reason this is on the list is the shear brilliance of how this scene invokes the signs of the times it’s in. Only in a movie of this era could a robot, with minimal trouble, glass ceilings, and such a short period of time become an EQUAL member of the human race without so much as one person questioning the moral or ethical problems that accompany it. Then entire plot of the Robin Williams movie Bicentennial Man is a robot trying to do what J5 does in months, over the course of 200 years. This mindset is sort of akin to how in the 80’s sitcom ALF, the Tanner family never even took 5 minutes to bother asking ALF if he knew about any of the mysteries of the universe or life. Instead, they were content with trying to stop him from acting on his “get rich quick” schemes. Those were the days.
3. Wayne’s World (1992) Now, I know what you’re thinking. Yes, Wayne’s World, in all its genius, has three different “didilly-doo” endings to the conflict presented. However, the secondary ending is the one found at the very end of the credits in which we see Wayne and Garth uncomfortably reading magazines. Wayne waxes pretentious and philosophical about the film’s endeavors while Garth meekly states that he simply hopes that the audience doesn’t think it “sucks.” This quiet little moment, and the film that preceded it, are all the more reason to miss the careers of two incredibly talented comedians at the top of their game.
2. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) The entire sequence with Ed Rooney getting on the school bus is beyond the definition of classic. Is it a secondary ending? Yes. Rooney has already lost, and we get to witness his further humiliation. This is for my money, hands down, the best content shown during rolling credits in a film ever. Also, please note that this movie has a third ending after the credits completely end, one in which Ferris Bueller himself comes out in a bathrobe and in disbelief that we are still there, shushes us to go home. It’s nothing compared to the Principal Rooney scene, but you got to admire how much bang for your buck you used to get at the movies. Having such high quality content during the credits is rarely seen in today’s theaters. We are more relegated to outtakes or badly edited character interviews, not additional story elements.
1. Poltergeist (1982) The first ending to happen is the entire house getting sucked into the vortex of “the other side.” We all know this. Then there is the beautiful scene of a fear-riddled emotionally-drained family driving quietly away from their literally broken home. They scuffle into a hotel room to the magnificently eerie lullaby of Jerry Goldsmith’s “Carol Anne Theme.” That has got to be one of the greatest quiet moments in cinema history. Left alone, them shutting the door to the hotel room and the credits rolling would be good enough to still keep this Tobe Hooper/Steven Spielberg classic at the top of its genre for over two decades. Then, only seconds after we are allowed to breath relief, the door swings back open and out comes the cheap hotel TV sliding into the side of the walkway, Craig T. Nelson pokes his head out the door for a peak then goes back in leaving the telly outside to rot. Hilarious, fitting, and completely perfect in its timing, this little moment is the ultimate reward to any viewer who witnesses the tribulations of this family for the past two hours. I still say that Craig T. Nelson should have grabbed a best actor nomination for Poltergeist, but I guess Mr. Incredible’s movie winning “Best Animated feature” will have to sate my thirst.
Honorable mentions:
– Die Hard (1988) – Allen shoots the guy everyone thought was dead thus saving McClane’s life.
– Back to the Future (1985) – The Flying Delorean
– Rocky 3 (1982) – The famous Apollo/Rocky freeze frame fight.
– Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) – Dan Aykroyd asking John Lithgow in the ambulance “Wanna see something really scary?”
– One Crazy Summer (1986) – Uncle Frank blowing up the radio station, Then, subsequently, the Stork brothers showing up to roast marshmallows.
If you think of any other great secondary endings, please let me know.
Comments: 5 Comments
5 Responses to “Opinion In A Haystack: The Neon Mobile”Leave a Reply |
March 11th, 2008 at 4:16 am
Oh Mr. Rose, thank you for finally explaining just what has been irking me, like a splinter of semi-translucent plexiglass sticking into my temporal lobe just far enough to be felt but not far enough to cause damage…that Goddammed Batmobile. I promised my younger self that the Tim Burton Batmobile was going to be the only car I would ever buy, because in complete alliance with your sentiment, it was perfect. The design, the style…just greatness. I’d even take that old ourfitted Mercury original Batmobile over the Schumacher one. I’d take a series of banana crates tied together with shoe laces and bubble gum affixed to a doxen skateboards than that Batmobile. Thank for for giving a name to my pain.
March 11th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
bear, its good to know I’m not alone. thanks brother.
March 11th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Bob, another stellar column…good times indeed.
BTW, love how you call Al “Allen” like you’re in Guyz Nite or something…classic.
-Ian
March 11th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Guyz Nite be thy shit. thanks Ian.
February 2nd, 2009 at 3:58 am
it’s nice to know i’m not the only one who gets wood over the big lebowski.
excellent article.