Truesday: All Hole, No Glory
*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors
Normally I would shy away from doing movie reviews, because we have much more qualified people for the job. But, well, I feel it safest for me to occupy my mind this way, for this week.
300 in 300 words.
****[CAUTION: may be considered a spoiler to some, but really, that's just silly]****
We open in Sparta, a place which apparently exists only to breed dick-dancers/warrior-boys. An ironically peaceful place, all things considered. They don’t explain where their women come from, but they do explain that if you’re a retarded, tanned, or six-fingered baby, you get thrown down into a big pit by some old guy, right in front of your mom. She won’t want you either, because you’re a goddamned mutant. Like Hawking or FDR.
But if you are a perfect boy and not booted into the pit, you are trained from birth to fight that big Dog creature, the Nothing’s goon, from The Never Ending Story. With nothing more than a stick. In the snow. Pretty much bald and naked.
You kill it by combining a narrow crevice, your trusty stick, and the hound’s apparent inability to see anything at all. Not a functioning element in that dog's eyes. Completely blind, that pup.
Then you’re a hero and you become king of Sparta, which is when you get your red cape, the secret handshake, some strappy sandals from Payless, your right to next year’s pinewood derby, and one from a selection of super fancy haircuts.
But you still don’t get a shirt.
Then, rather suddenly, while you’re beating the shit out of your own son (probably preparing him to fight with dogs) some darker-skinned types from “Persia” (which is likely short for “Persiastan” or “PersiAl-qaida”, you just KNOW IT) show up with their armies to steal all your white women! And the stupid government won’t step in to save your white women, because unlike you, they’re a bunch of smarty-pants know-nothing pussy bitches! But you’re a REAL man (unlike those boy-fucking book-types in the rest of Greece! Ha-ha, only your infinite wit matches your deep brawn, you devil!), and that means you KNOW how to keep your women in their place. So you hand pick your favorite six-packs with Glamour Shot hair-dos and set off to meet up with the darkies before they sex up your females or expose you to lesser cultures and lure you into their heathen worlds which probably involve voo-doo, curry, and drinking cat urine. Actually, you don’t rationalize that far. They’re weird and dark: that’s enough reason to shed blood. So you and your best bro-hams set off to manifest some destiny.
Your grand plan to halt the march of millions with just your paltry 300? You want to catch the exotic foreigners in a compromised crevice, and then relentlessly pound them with your long spears until they admit sweaty submission. You might even provide some locker-room banter in there to break up the monotony of your victorious pounding sessions. Maybe a massive reach-around or two. Or twenty.
The fight begins after you first stack their slain scouts like corded wood, and then cut off the arm of a fat, black guy who dons a curious reverse-Hitler mustache (full molestache, minus the Hitler portion, which looks really fucking ridiculous but could probably be an awesome social statement of some kind). You go on to slaughter lots of exotic ass, and after several slo-mo fight scenes with the inhabitants of The Temple of Doom, GLORY appears to be yours. We know this because each of your spittle-ridden speeches to your dwindling ranks of underwear models with spears includes that word. Like you’re trying to convince yourself of something. Glory, Glory, GLORY! Okay then.
But then, in a twist of spotlighted, foreshadowed fate, your best buddy’s son gets beheaded by a phantom rider on a white horse, perhaps Gandolf the Dark, and we are briefly subjected to his tear-riddled Cat’s In The Cradle speech about not telling his son that he loved him most. Which pretty much proves he AND his son should have been punted into the pit of dead babies, long ago. But then he goes apeshit on a few thousand Arab-looking guys with eye makeup, so he pretty much redeemed his Sparta-ness right there.
However, after the father-son act got halved, morale is suddenly low. No more singing around the campfires between blood baths. So low in fact, that pectoral nips are pointing, nay: drooping directly south. A depressing scene that would really be boosted by some Orange Mocha Frappacinos.
So you rally your men behind your beard with some phrases you totally lifted from Mel Gibson films, Gladiator (true to theme, alright!), or maybe even The Bad News Bears, and you all fend off some ninjas, a rhino, a mal-nourished cave troll, and those humongo elephants from Return of the King. You’re feeling pretty badass now. Glory. Glory! FUCKING GLORY, MEN! ONWARD TO GLORY, UNTO IT THEN! And then… GLORY, MEN, TO BATTLE! Glory! Glory. Glo..
Yep.
But Golem followed your ass all the way from Sparta and totally tells that crazy wide-eyed bald Indian guy who rode those humongo-elephants you just peaced-out, about the secret goat-herder pass that is THEIR massive reach-around on you and your dance team. Half your crew runs scared into the night, retreating like politicians, and all seems lost. The inner city school is totally going to take the regional trophy now…
Oh HELL no!
Meanwhile, back at the home which you are fighting to save the Freedom, Liberty, and Justice of: your hooker wife cheats on you, then stabs a politician asshole who totally turned her back out the night before, and then we all discover he was taking bribes from the dark people. Which is all pretty much, well, fuck.
This is what you’re risking those abs and that monster beard for? Shit, man. Maybe you should have been chucked into that hole full of dead retarded babies too. Good thing you’re about to die instead of having to go back to that shitstorm, right? Right?!! Up top!
Right before the big, final battle sequence of which you won’t find any Glory, that Second Lieutenant guy from Gondor leaves you, his left eye, and the rest of the frat to die so he can make it back to your cheating wife (who you never bothered to say you loved because love is strictly between you and your hairless-chested bro-hams) so you could return the fairy dog-claw necklace she gave you that was supposed to grant you special powers of heterosexual fortitude or something. Oh, and Gondor man is also supposed to tell your story of Glory to the older beards of the Neighborhood Association in order for the millions of Spartans having picnics in the fields of grain from Gladiator, to oil up their leather cod pieces and go kill that bald Indian guy with earrings in his cheeks to avenge you and the other Kappa Brothers’ demise.
In an unpleasantly familiar turn of plot, it is revealed that Gondor guy has been telling your story to the Parent-Teachers’ Association throughout the entire movie, so it’s all a retrospective really. And he’s been the source of that grating narrative voice the audience has been wishing would shut the fuck up already.
He’s a quitter AND he’s only got one good eye. Fucking mutant pussy. To the baby pit! Retroactively.
Against my better judgment, apparently the council liked Gondor man’s persuasive use of sentences, and his Cyclops ass is suddenly leading millions of rippling abdomens to war against the Persiastanians. He craps out yet another forgettable Gibson speech, and then he screams like a lunatic as his balls rush madly toward the cameraman, and the faces of everyone in the theatre.
And… fin.
That was more than 300 words, sure. But that’s only because I had to list all the movies that went into the writing of this one. It should probably be a much longer list, but I’m not as well versed in movies as our other writers. But I feel confident dialog that good couldn’t have come from just one Michael Bay flick.
I’ve never read the graphic novel, but something tells me that the real fans are going to be mounting their own siege of some crevices in the coming weeks.
