End of Days

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End of Days is a 1999 supernatural film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Schwarzenegger plays Jericho Cane, a retired police officer, who tries to commit suicide because his wife and daughter are killed while he is doing his job. He gets a job of protecting a Wall Street banker.

Unknown to him, the Wall Street banker is possessed by Satan, who plans to unleash chaos by having sex with Christine York, the Chosen One to bear his child. Now Jericho has to protect her from Satan in order to save the world.

The film is possibly the darkest in Arnold's career, containing very little cheeky dialogue and demoting Arnold to a tough but ordinary man instead of a traditional Action Hero.

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Tropes included:

• A Form You Are Comfortable With - Gabriel Byrne plays Satan, and the female extras were very, very comfortable with this.
• The Ahnold: The writer pitched this script on how great it would be to hear Arnold Schwarzenegger say "I'm sending you back to Hell!" to the Devil. But when pitching End of Days to the man himself, he suddenly realised that "I can't 'do Arnie' to Arnie!" Fortunately Schwarzenegger said the line himself, thus avoiding any embarrassment.
• Awesome McCoolname: Jericho Caine.
• Badass: Jericho, but to more realistic levels.
• Bad Boss: Satan.
• Bittersweet Ending: In the end, The End of the World As We Know It was averted, but Jericho sacrifices himself to do it, although, Jericho can finally be with his family again.
• Bond Villain Stupidity
• Car Cushion: Jericho throws Satan out of a window and he lands on a parked car. Of course, seeing as how he's Satan...
• Cat Scare: The Trope Namer.
• Christianity Is Catholic: And how. On New Year's Eve, the only people left in Manhattan are militant Catholics and equally militant Satanists (who subscribe to the Catholic interpretation of Satanism, of course).
  • More the way Hollywood views both. The theological issues with this movie could fill entire encyclopedias.
• Complete Immortality: Satan mocks the hero for thinking he can beat him, since "you are just a man, and I...am FOREVER".
• Curb Stomp Battle - Jericho is brutally beaten by a large mob of satan worshippers in a bleak aversion of Schwarzenegger's usual One-Man Army routine.
• Cult Soundtrack: It features B-sides and remixes by Rob Zombie, Powerman 5000, Everlast, Eminem, Sonic Youth, Korn, Limp Bizkit and Guns N' Roses.
• Deconstruction/Playing Against Type: Instead of depicting Arnold as a practically unstoppable force of nature that can destroy almost everything in sight, this movie depicts his character, Jericho, as being genuinely flawed, such as being suicidal, not being able to do the death defying acts that the other heroes Arnold has played (not counting the scene where he has no strings to hold him down), and, in the end, there was not any other way to stop Satan from causing the End unless Jericho killed himself, but, at least Jericho can be with his family again.
  • In interviews, Schwarzenegger said that he took this role because he thought it was the perfect script to make his return to action movies, which makes the Playing Against Type part even more weird.
• Death Equals Redemption
• Deal With the Devil - You really would find it surprising what you'll agree to when you're on fire.
• Demonic Possession - by Satan himself.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: Victor Varnado, a real-life albino, plays the Evil Albino.
• Distressed Damsel - Christine
• Driven to Suicide - Jericho, after losing his wife and daughter to the thugs.
• Every Car Is a Pinto - including a subway
• Evil Albino - The imaginatively named 'Albino'.
• Evil Is Petty / For the Evulz - Satan does a few evil things just for the Hell of it.
• Evil Stepmother - Subverted with Mabel. She was raised Christine well enough except for keeping that dark secret from her.
• God Is Good: Helps Jericho resist possession and reunites him with his family.
• Heroic Sacrifice - Jericho's death in the end.
• Hollywood Atheist
• Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday - New Year Has Come.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight - Jericho to Bobby, and Christine to Jericho.
• Impaled With Extreme Prejudice - Jericho jumps on the sword of a statue of the Archangel Michael to stop his possession.
• Knight Templar
• MacGuffin Girl - Christine York.
• Meaningful Name - Christ in New York Christine York.
• Religious Horror
• Police Are Useless - One officer on discovering an elderly, injured man crucified to the ceiling with scalpels with no ladder or other platform in sight, suggests that he did it himself. Jericho asks how he could have got the last scalpel in, which, yes, is certainly one reason to doubt this theory.
• Poor Communication Kills - Everything could have gone much more smoothly if the Church had just spent five minutes to explain everything to Arnold and Christine- or, even better, not tried to have Christine killed every opportunity they got. If they had tried to protect Christine, and not assumed she was a Satanist simply because the Devil chose her, there would have been far less bloodshed.
  • The Church did try to protect Christine. It was an extremist fringe group that tried to kill her.
• Redemption Equals Death - Bobby Chicago
• Secret Circle of Secrets - Jericho's superiors in the police are part of it.
• Significant Monogram - Jericho Cane.
• Six Is Nine - The Number of the Beast is 999
• The Gods Must Be Lazy - No explanation is given as to why God is nowhere to be seen while Satan trashes downtown New York.
• Three Way Sex - The devils beds a cultist's wife and daughter.
• We All Live in America - The end of days does not take place in the Holy Land or in Rome but... in New York.
• Unconventional Smoothie - Jericho mixes one in his apartment consisting of coffee, pepto-bismol, Chinese food leftovers, remnant beer, a slice of pizza found on the floor, possibly more as the camera cuts away for extended periods during the process. Just before drinking, Jericho remarks that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
• Unflinching Walk
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him? - Well, "her" to be exact. The Vatican's plan to stop Satan from ever reaching Christine is to simply kill her first.
  • That's the plan of the secret society of Catholic knights, who are the only members of the Church who have a plan. The Pope's plan is to pray.
• You Fail Religious Studies Forever - The film isn't overall that bad, except when the priest explains that 1999 was the year Satan returned because is was the Number of the Beast upside down!... except for that pesky "1" at the end. Epic Fail.
  • It's the 999 that matters. The Beast will attempt to return at every 999 (999, 1999, 2999, etc). On the last day of that year.