Why would a movie about the end of the world make guys cry like a baby? Find out.
The goal of this series is to show that being “manly” and being disconnected with your emotions do not necessarily go hand-in-hand. While the approach to these articles is one of comedy and satire, the emotional core of these movies is very valid. Manly movies often times have the potential to make guys cry, for example:
“The World Ends”
To elaborate, the world as we know it ends. Perhaps there’s still a few rocks floating around where Earth used to be, or perhaps a cockroach survives. The underlying fact remains that Humanity is dead, or just not on Earth anymore. The fascination with movies such as these is that we can see beyond our years. If a tree falls in the forest and no one’s around, does it make a noise? Well, these films ask, if the Earth exists, but all of humanity dies, is it still Earth? That’s sad, yes, but still an interesting exercise in “what if” thinking. These movies can be brutal, action packed, bad (never said these were great films), or good, but the common thread is that they all make guys cry at one point or another.
1. Knowing
Don’t be turned off due to the C-factor. You know, the “Cage” factor…Nicolas Cage is in this movie. The film tries too hard in parts with a plot about a series of number predicting disasters, but the core of the film is that the Sun is sending a solar flare with our names on it.
A friend of Cage wants to take their kids to a series of deep caves to ride out the disaster. At first Cage agrees, but delays to research whatever it is Nic Cage researches. Doing what any sane person would do, she ignores Nic Cage and takes the kids to the cave immediately. Nic finds out, calls her and explains that the flare will reach one mile underground, and that not even bacteria will survive. At first you think this was a generic film about trying to stop predestined disasters, so ending it with this bombshell AND SEEING IT HAPPEN, it’s just heartbreaking. P.S. the kids get taken by aliens to another planet to survive, so…you know…the C-factor.
2. Snowpiercer
Screw you, it’s on Netflix instant and you can get a free trial. Just go see this great movie that was totally snubbed for an Oscar. Humanity botches (or over-succeeds?) at trying to stop global warming and the world is frozen solid. All that’s left is on a self-sufficient allegory for class warfare that looks like a train. Plus Captain America and Hellboy’s dad are there!
There’s dumb parts like when the poor realize they’ve been eating bugs (where else do you think food came from for seventeen years on a train?) but that’s not the sad part. The sad part for me is the fact that everyone dies. No matter how awesome the train was engineered, and assuming the collected ice means unlimited water, and EVEN assuming everything’s recycled…the laws of conservation of matter dictate that eventually there won’t be enough MATTER ON THE TRAIN to recycle into food. Which means all the horribleness and one-percenter bullcrap and murder is just a sad, hollow fight while humanity breaths its last breath. Sure a girl and a boy get off at the end, but what the Hell are they supposed to do? Inbreed until that polar bear eats them? Screw that, I’m sad now.
3. 12 Monkeys
Ignoring the TV series that changes some of the lore, this film starts with the vast majority of Humanity dead, and then ends with a promise that the rest are not long for this Earth. Sure, Bruce Willis is sent back in time to collect a pure sample of the virus for study, but at the end he realizes he’s been in a causality loop. For those in the know, that means everything that happened did so because of what already happened. There will be no successful cure for the disease, because the attempt in finding one is in a loop of failure.
How long do you think it’s going to be before the Terry Gilliam nightmare underground people die off? I give them a month. They are so focused on going back to fix everything in the past that they have no regard for how society sputters out of existence in the present. Boo.
4. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
What does it say that they had to spell out the acronym for us? We’re stupid. That’s what. Anyways …
This film was built from the ground up to make you cry. Parent has terminally sick kid (cry) so they get a duplicate robot but then real kid gets better and mom abandons robot kid in forest (cry). Robo-kid still loves mom (cry) so he tries to find the blue fairy from Pinocchio to make him a real boy (cry). Jude Law and Robin Williams show up and try to make this entertaining in any way, but fail due to the extreme dumbness of the ending.
Robo-kid runs out of power staring at a statue of a fairy, and then Earth falls into another ice age (aside: wouldn’t it be cool if Snowpiercer and this film were in the same universe?) In that time, humans go extinct and robots evolve into blob creatures. Why not? They wake Robo-kid up, clone his mom, and tell him that clone mom will die at the end of the day. GEE THANKS! I, who have lived hundreds of years, appreciate your arbitrary CRAP time limit of 24 hours. Hope she doesn’t want to take a nap, or god forbid use the bathroom! That’s precious minutes wasted! I HATE YOU!
5. Beneath the Planet of the Apes
This was the Ape film where we learn not all humans de-evolved culturally into savages. Sure they got weird psychic big brain heads, and worshipped a nuke, but to each his own. The plot doesn’t really matter, what matters is the ending. The bomb goes off, in case you didn’t see that coming, and everything dies. Everything. It’s suggested the planet isn’t even there anymore.
So we learn in the first movie that an ape society taking over the planet is the future. Now we learn that planetary extinction is really the only inevitable end, for apes and humans alike. So, without the convoluted timey-wimey hand-waiving of the subsequent movies, nothing we do matters. Recycle, build another pyramid, save for college…nothing matters because eventually humans blow themselves up, and then apes take over, and then we blow them up too. Goodie. Aren’t humans the best?
Like what you see? Secure enough in your masculinity for more? Check out more Guy Cry Cinema or watch Dan on No Right Answer, the weekly debate show that knows what’s really important: Pointlessly arguing about geek culture.
