I am going to Hell

You know I was talking with a friend the other day and was kind of offended when she told me I was going to Hell. But I didn’t argue with her about it. You can’t argue with religion. That’s the beauty of it. According to her religion I am going to Hell. And according to another person’s religion she is going to Hell. So while you can’t say we’re all going to Heaven, you can best be sure we’re all going to Hell.

The Story of Jesus: Another Shitty Hollywood Story

Last night I watched The Illusionist (I’m unemployed. I’m bored. I watch a lot of movies). The movie was ok. The acting was pretty decent. But to me it could have been above average if only they had (not) changed the ending.

See it’s got this kinda plot twist, I guess that’s what it’s supposed to be where it’s revealed Ed Norton’s character faked the death of his former girlfriend so he could get her and save her from having to marry the prince. La di da. Nice story.

The thing about plot twists is that they only work in the seconds when the plot is being “twisted”. Once the viewer has a few seconds to think about it, say after they’ve watched the movie, the twist falls apart.

And so was the situation with The Illusionist. See, Norton’s character faked his girlfriends murder and pointed the blame to the Prince. But it’s really a bad thing to falsely accuse an innocent person of murder, so Norton’s character loses credibility. A truly “good guy” character wouldn’t do something like that. Moreoever, a completely innocent person gets convicted of the fake murder and is jailed. And no one seems to care. An innocent person could have been hung to death and no one comes out to save him.

And then, you think: this guy is an illusionist. This guy can make the dead appear to come to life. Why can’t he just make them disappear together? Why the fake death thing in the first place?

But the truth is this: In Hollywood you can’t have a good guy die. They could let her really die like that so they had to write in the fake death plot twist. Hollywood doesn’t want good people to die. I guess it affects sales. So movie goers don’t want the good guy to die, even if it makes sense to do so.

This reminds me of another movie, Man on Fire. This was almost a great movie. It’s a revenge movie and for some reason I love a well-made revenge movie. And this one really could have been a great one. Denzel Washington’s character seeks revenge for the kidnappers who killed the little girl he was hired to protect. Throughout the movie he inflicts vengeance on bad guy after bad guy. It’s beautiful. And then you find out that the little girl wasn’t really dead and it’s like… what a fucking let down. Like all that bad ass stuff that Washington did didn’t mean as much. It’s a let down. It would have meant so much more if the girl was dead. But Hollywood won’t let the good guys stay dead.

Now that reminded me of the story of Jesus. It’s basically the same deal. Jesus is born and dies for our sins and that would have been a decent story. But nooooo. Someone had to fuck it up and make Jesus “rise from the dead.” Now I’m like so fucking what? So what if he died? He gets to rise from the dead and go to live in heaven, have people worship him for the next 2000 years, and pretty much be equated with God himself. What a let down. They should have just let him stay dead. We can’t have Jesus just die. We’ll lose our audience!

Oh, and then we’re told that Jesus will one day return. The good don’t really die young. They come back and make shitty sequels.