Emo Movies

To be absolutely clear on my definitions, I looked up emo on the Web. I found out that emo. comes from a Finnish word meaning mother. Ooookay.....Further research revealed that emo was originally short for emotional hardcore, and has to do with a type of rock music. There's also an emo stereotype, meaning that if something is emo, it's seriously depressed or angry.

I was pondering various things tonight and I thought to myself, "why not make a list of emo movies?" And then I thought to myself, "what exactly is an emo movie?" And so I present to you the love child of those two thoughts, the Two Rules of Emo Movies.

1) In an emo movie, the majority of the cast either dies, or is emotionally distraught.

2) The good guys get their teeth kicked in.

Here's just four examples. And do look out for spoilers. If you haven't seen these movies and don't want to know what happens, I recommend that you step away from the screen and go play outside. Enjoy the nice sunny day.

For the rest of you....

Emo Movie # 4: Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith.

ROTS, as it's known amongst Star Wars fans, was an emo movie from the get-go. Of course, before it opened, everyone knew basically one thing about it. We all knew Anakin Skywalker would become Darth Vader. When you know ahead of time that the main hero is going to become a brutal cyborg killing machine, that is a pretty good sign you're dealing with an emo movie. I suspect many people went ahead and watched ROTS out of a secret hope that maybe George Lucas would mess with all our collective minds and Anakin wouldn't become Darth Vader. Well, Lucas didn't, and Anakin did, and it all went downhill from there. Anakin moves quite quickly from daring fly-boy to mass murderer, slaying Jedi kids and older Jedi, as well as indirectly causing the deaths of Mace Windu and Padme Amidala (incidentally, his wife, and yes, indirectly slaying your wife makes you very, very, very emo), not to mention multitudes of Jedi across the galaxy taken out by Order 66. Oh, yes, and ROTS is also emo because its climatic lightsaber duels feature Anakin vs. Obi-Wan and Yoda vs. Palpatine. Yoda fails to defeat Palpatine, and Obi-Wan doesn't kill Anakin, he just leaves him to die on a lava-beach. Of course, Anakin doesn't die and goes on to become Darth Vader, destroyer of worlds. Oops.

TOTAL BODY COUNT:

Lots. Of defined characters, I count 9-ish, but then there's all those Jedi and Jedi kids and various war victims and so on and so forth. Pretty much everyone dies, except for Yoda, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Palpatine, Bail Organa, Padme's kids, and C-3PO and R2D2. And you will note that most of that list won't make it through the remaining films.

REDEEMING QUALITY

Well, there are some survivors. And it ends with happy music. And a sunset. So there's that.

Emo Movie #3: Gone With The Wind

I actually do not like this movie much. I've only seen it once, and yes, I know it's a classic. But if any movie is emo, this one is. I could go on about Scarlett and Rhett, not exactly cheery role models at all, but instead, let's go right to the body count. This alone should make my point.

TOTAL BODY COUNT:

Well.....Melanie, Melanie's second unborn baby, a Union deserter, Scarlett's mother, Scarlett's father, Scarlett's unborn baby, Scarlett's born baby, Scarlet's first husband, Scarlett's second husband (stolen from her sister)....I count 9 again. I might have missed a few.

REDEEMING QUALITY

Well, at least Scarlett and Rhett are still alive. Granted, Rhett walks out on her right at the end, but at least he got a really great quote.

Emo Movie #2: The Day After.

Ah, yes, everyone's favorite classic nuclear-war movie. Nope, nothing emo about this at all. Okay, maybe a little.

TOTAL BODY COUNT

Lots again. Basically, if you're in this movie, either you get incinerated by the bombs and you die, or you get radiation-sickness and you die. Some people are still alive at the end, but it's pretty much assumed that they're not long for what's left of the world. The movie ends with a cheery note about how, in reality, nuclear war would be even worse than the movie shows. Oy. You can't get much more emo than that. Or can you?

Emo Movie # 1: Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

I assume you all know the basic plot of the first Planet of the Apes. Astronaut makes long space voyage, astronaut lands on strange planet with society of smart apes and stupid men, astronaut finds stupid-girl Love Interest, astronaut escapes from smart apes who want to kill him, astronaut finds ancient ruin and has Shocking Realization that he's been on Earth all along. The emo-ness was only beginning, my friends, because this movie had no less than four, count 'em, four sequels. Sequel number two is the movie we're talking about here.

Beneath the Planet of the Apes starts out like a repeat of the first movie. Another astronaut (Brent something)makes long space voyage, astronaut lands on the same strange planet with society of smart apes and stupid men, astronaut finds the same stupid-girl Love Interest, astronaut escapes from smart apes who want to kill him, astronaut finds ancient ruin and has Shocking Realization that he's been on Earth all along. Then it gets squirrelly. Our boy Brent finds hidden society of mutant-psycho-telepath humans who worship an atomic doomsday bomb and then force him to fight the astronaut from the first movie (played by the late, lamented Charlton Heston), then both astronauts fight the mutants, then everybody fights the smart apes, then Brett and Stupid-Girl Love Interest get killed, then the astronaut from the first movie gets killed. But before he dies, he sets off the doomsday bomb. The screen goes dark, and you get this cute little announcement.

"In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead."

Surprisingly, after killing off all life on Earth, they actually made three more sequels, thanks to the usual deus-ex-machina time-travel trick. Don't they always?