S.T.A.R.S
So the other day I was reading a thread on the Escapist forums asking what the best ‘rescue’ moment in an action film was. You know, when the heroes are surrounded, outnumbered and out of ammo. Situation’s hopeless; they’re obviously fucked. Movie’s over, day remains unsaved. And then out of nowhere the music score becomes triumphant and there’s a ‘Fuck yeah!’ moment as a new or forgotten character bursts in and announces “Come with me if you want to live.”
We - and by ‘we’ I mean me, Alex, Anthony and Stuart - all met up today. There was pizza, there was zombie movies and there probably would have been beer if it hadn’t been for the fact that I don’t drink and Alex had work later that day.
Now I hate horror movies. Can’t stand them, I get scared by everything. I couldn’t even watch Goosebumps when I was little. So I didn’t really want to watch some Resident Evil sequel or threequel or whatever.
At the beginning I felt a little like The Girlfriend. I don’t mean that I’m actually going out with any of them, Jesus no. Just no. I mean like they were all thinking ‘God, why did she have to be here? She ruins everything, she just doesn’t get it!’
And I was sat there balanced on the edge of the sofa asking annoying questions because I’m worried I’m not getting what’s going on and not following the plot. And the I’m getting more annoyed after each stupid question, because I get laughed at, so in the end I just give up and it’s a stupid movie anyway I don’t understand why you’re bothering to watch it at all it’s such a waste of time. Just because it’s got explosions and zombies and hot girls and guns and hot girls with guns, why are we watching this……..
It didn’t help that I hadn’t seen the first Resident Evil movie (it scared me too much) so I only had a vague idea of what was going on, and for the first twenty minutes or so I was on Kitchen Duty, ferrying pizza out and making sure that everyone had plates and drinks and oh, is it too bright for you? Sure, I’ll adjust the blinds for you.
See what I mean about feeling like The Girlfriend? So I wasn’t really into the movie. I just sat there being generally irritating: “What’s happening? Who’s that guy? Is he a bad guy? Does he die at the end? You can tell me, I won’t mind. What’s happening now? When does that Milla person show up - is that her? Oh, there’s a zombie!”
I carried on in this vein for a while, half-peering out from behind a cushion. I was pretty much sure that the dark haired woman in the strapless top was Milla Jocovich, or whatever her name was.
[Side note: yes, I get it, sex sells. But a boob tube is hardly practical day wear, let alone to a zombie slaughter-fest. Bonus points for the boots; excellent for running, jumping, booting zombie hell-hounds in the face and other combat needs, but really. The middle of a fire-fight with the undead is not the best time to be hoisting your boobs back into your top. Although I say that as if there’s ever a good time. Sorry, as I was saying…]
I was pretty sure that the young intense-looking woman was this Milla girl. In her wisdom, she’d led her party into a church for ‘safety’ and barricaded herself in just to make sure there was absolutely no way of escape once the inevitable carnage began. They were about to be picked off one by one. Hopefully the first to die would be the idiot who’d decided a video camera would be a better investment than a gun in this time of crisis.
So it was down to this. They were out of ammo, not that it’d been much good up to this point. There were three super-fast, super-strong, super-CGI mutants who were just toying with them. And then…
Milla Whatsherface drives a motorbike straight through the stained glass window of the church, straight over the altar, does a backflip off the bike in midair and it carries on to crash into the first special-effects shambling abomination. Fuck yeah!
There are explosions, there was bullet-time but most impressively there were absolutely no puns, Grissom one-liners or witty banter of any kind.
Wait, second most impressively. This young lady had thought ahead and decided to wear a top with sleeves. The awesomeness continues; the second monstrosity gets pinned under a giant collapsing crucifix and then shot point blank. I honestly do not recall what happened to the third. My brain had shut down from too much awesome. I believe a rocket launcher may have been involved.
We’re meeting up again next week for the next in the series. I cannot fucking wait.