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Last Update: 02.14.04

As if getting hit by a meteor wasn't punishment enough

Today is Valentine's day, and I thought surely there could be no better way to celebrate it than to talk about the Apocalpyse. For those of you that aren't aware, the Apocalypse happened just a few weeks ago, and as far as I know we're the first critics of it (since the apostle John doesn't exactly count). The Apocalypse is known by many names...Ragnarok, Armageddon, Doomsday...all of these have really cool names that sound like they would be awesome, when in fact the Apocalypse was rather disappointing.

Don't get me wrong...the Apocalypse definitely had some high points, not the least of which was the ultimate destruction of all life. It's just that after all of the time Hollywood has spent pumping up the doomsday mood, the actual thing was kind of a let-down.

First of all, all of those meteors that crashed into Earth and destroyed all life as we know it looked REALLY fake. It looked like somebody did a crappy green-screening job. If I'm going to get crushed and incinerated by something, I at least want it to look cool.

The next mistake was letting Ben Affleck have anything to do with the Apocalypse. If that guy is going to have a role in the Apocalypse it should be "Guy who gets devoured by plague of locusts in scene 12." Speaking of which, the plague of locusts was actually pretty cool. The huge cloud of locusts blackened the horizon and made such a loud buzzing noise that my ears were bleeding.

There were definitely not enough robots and lasers. I've been waiting my whole life for this and I didn't get to see anybody devoured or stomped into dust by a giant metallic death machine. Also, the music was terrible. I was expecting an awesome epic symphonic work, or maybe some Black Sabbath or something awesome and hardcore. There wasn't any theme music for the Apocalypse at all, though, and all I could hear was the people down the hall playing some Linkin Park. Sorry guys, there's a difference between "music I want to die to" and "music that makes me want to kill myself when I hear it."

Although the people panicking and jumping off of buildings when meteors were crashing into them were kind of cool, there should have been a giant dragon that swooped out of the sky and devoured them out of mid-air. As high-budget as this particular Apocalypse seems to have been, I think they could have afforded a dragon or two. They could have given it Ben Affleck's salary.

The four horsemen were a definite high point. When I saw this gang, I knew that not even The Three Guys would want to mess with them. Death wasn't as cool as he could have been. He just looked like some sort of skinny skeleton dude, and didn't even have flaming eye sockets. And the plague of Pestilence, though a cool concept, smelled terrible. Watching in horror as 1/4 of the world's population melts and disintegrates into a pile of pus and blood is kind of cool, but the smell definitely wasn't worth it.

There was definitely some room for improvement here. I'm not exactly expecting a sequel, but if there is one, hopefully it will do a little better. I give it 4 out of 4 horsemen, for potential.