DISQUS

Samir · 8 months ago

Here Here...on the other hand, movies like the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy didn't fair well and that pretty much started with the earth exploding. I'm calling you out Neil, Americans hate watching the World blow up

And we hate Nic Cage, whether he be in National Treasure or Knowing.

Neil Miller · 8 months ago

Thanks for calling me out, but Adam actually wrote this article. :)

Murray Fan · 8 months ago

It's true. This man has no dick.

Mladen · 8 months ago

It wouldn't be fair to call Hitchhikers an apocalyptic film, except in an ironic sense. And if there's anything film-goers hate, its irony

Mladen · 8 months ago

The love for apocalypse goes back way further than that. Its been popular in literature for centuries. Just about every single historic culture and religion on earth has an apocalypse story.

I think 'blowing shit up' is just a bonus. The real draw is our own obsession with the end of the world, which ties into our own fear of death. Most apocalypse stories also imply a renewal or rebirth. Life after death.

Cookie_Garris · 8 months ago

I won't say how I saw Knowing but I would have been sick if I spent money to see it! I rented The Happening and after watching it I walked out in my yard hoping the grass would ease my pain from watching that crap! 31 MILLION?! Was it the only movie playing that weekend?

Adam_Sweeney · 8 months ago

Oddly enough, The Incredible Hulk and Kung Fu Panda both beat it out on opening weekend. Imagine how much it would have made if those films weren't there. (Shudders.)

Samir · 8 months ago

Too bad...I'm still calling you out. Keep Bicycling

RobertFure · 8 months ago

Calling Knowing "paint by numbers" makes me feel like you didn't even watch it - no offense (unless you didn't watch it =P). I mean, look at the movies you listed, like Armageddon, I Am Legend, Deep Impact, etc, most of the time the Earth is spared. There is a happy ending for almost everyone. In Armageddon, the asteroid doesn't hit. In Deep Impact, it does, but you get a rousing speech at the end and all the characters you care about, ofr the most part, survive. Humans always come out on top, the Earth always survives.

Not this time. The movie literally destroys the entire Earth. How much further away can you be from the numbers? It also added a mystery to the plot. No "Hey, the Earth is going to die because of this and now we have to try to avoid/stop it." You didn't know the world was going to die for awhile into it. You thought, somehow that everyone would survive. Then toss in Aliens! Aliens that were Earths inspirations for Angels and thus probably Heaven and God, meaning that those things don't exist. Nic Cage takes solace with his religious father - a father who dedicated his life to something that doesn't exist. Then the Earth burns to death.

Just because a few breeding pairs of humans were dropped on some sweet new planet doesn't mean you can call it a happy ending. The vast majority of almost 7 billion people died. (It's estimated that the human population was as low as 1000-7500 breeding pairs at various times. So theoretically they could have killed 6,768,983,411 people.) The main characters died. There was deeper substance. So while I agree people like to see the World be threatened and big shit go boom, I'd whole heartedly disagree that Knowing was "by the numbers."

Adam_Sweeney · 7 months ago

Doesn't Knowing showing Earth being destroyed qualify as watching the world end? ;)