You Might Be a Zombie . . . (12 page)

Tensions between the Soviets and the West were already at an all -time high when the operation got under way. The Russians were so certain that Reagan was planning a first strike that the KGB drew up a checklist of events they expected to precede a nuclear attack by the Americans. And then, one by one, they all started happening: Due to the invasion of Grenada, coded messages between Britain and America increased dramatical y, missiles and signals units were deployed to the borders en masse, all the NATO commanders retreated to a single bunker, and a state of DEFCON 1 was announced.

Then came something the Russians hadn’t even bothered to put on the list: a complete simulated nuclear missile launch.

Yep. At the height of the cold war, the Western forces played pretend
so hard
that they even faked a complete missile launch
directly at Russia.

We do not deserve life.

How come we’re still alive?

No one knows
. all of the KGB’s intel igence indicated a real attack. Many believe that the only reason the Russians held off so long was President Reagan’s noninvolvement in the maneuvers. The British and German leaders were both personal y involved, but the Russians decided no real apocalyptic decision would be complete without Reagan’s half senility. Also, they’re such a notoriously passive and sober people.

1. THE CASE OF THE URSINE SUPERVILLAIN

The human race was itching to blow the hel out of itself throughout all of 1962. America was in a state of DEFCON 3, which basical y means that if somebody so much as sneezes they’re getting a nuclear warhead up their ass. So the Duluth Air Defense Sector direction center was natural y in a state of high alert on October 25, the night a security guard spotted a silhouette clambering over the fence. He promptly shot the figure without notice, setting off the saboteur alarm. The alert then relayed to every silo and airbase in the region, presumably advising security to keep a sharp eye out for mustachioed men in black masks and prison-style striped shirts.

Unfortunately, someone had done a piss-poor job of wiring the alarms at the Volk Field airbase in Wisconsin, so instead of the saboteur alarm, the signal set off the main klaxon. If that alarm goes off in DEFCON 3, it means the situation is absolutely not a dril and that all nuclear bombers need to be launched.

And that’s exactly what happened: the pilots took their positions, the bombs were armed, the planes started taxiing down the runway, and everybody in the tower probably started boning in typical end-of-the-world fashion.

How come we’re still alive?

The wheels were just about to leave the ground when somebody managed to contact Duluth with an urgent message: the “shadowy figure” trying to “sabotage the base” wasn’t a spy . . . it was some asshole bear! A car was sent tearing down the runway and barely managed to signal the pilots before takeoff. Another few minutes, and those bombers would have been beyond contact.

One stupid, goddamn, jerk-off bear almost ended the entire civilized world.

MOVIE
audiences pretty much demand happy endings. Very few hit films end with the credits scrol ing over dead puppies and weeping children. But sometimes Hollywood slips one past us, giving us a supposedly happy ending that is actually depressing as hel once you give it a little thought. For instance:

6.
BACK TO THE FUTURE

The “happy” ending

While on a time-travel adventure, young Marty McFly helps his father become less of a wuss and meet his future wife. After returning to his own time, Marty finds that he has a cool new truck, his formerly dysfunctional family is now happy and affluent, and the school bul y, Biff, has been made into an indentured servant.

Wait a minute . . .

Marty’s family doesn’t exist anymore.

Sure the people in his house look the same, but they have completely different personalities from the people he knew and loved before he hopped in the DeLorean. The utterly different direction their lives took basical y gives his parents personalities as alien to him as pod people from
Invasion of the
Body Snatchers
.

Not to mention the fact that every single conversation and interaction with his parents will be based on a history he has utterly no memory of. How long until they push to have Marty institutionalized, since every memory from his childhood is from some bizarre alternate reality that no one else shares?

On top of all that, while the movie wants us to cheer Biff becoming a menial laborer for the McFlys as a nice bit of karmic comeuppance, we can’t help but think that it’s a bad idea to give a house key to the guy who once tried to rape your wife.

But hey, at least Marty got a cool truck out of the deal.

5.
RETURN OF THE JEDI

The “happy” ending

The evil emperor Palpatine hatches a plan to defeat the Rebel all iance once and for all by giving them the location of his unfinished superweapon and detailing how to defeat it. This plan goes about as wel as you would expect. Our heroes destroy the weapon and kil the Galactic Empire’s two leaders with the help of some genocidal teddy bears called Ewoks.

Wait a minute . . .

That epic battle at the end? That only destroyed one base and a fraction of the troops the empire had at its disposal. The Death Star was taken out, just

like it was two films before, but that didn’t exactly stop them last time. Sure, Vader and the emperor were both blown up, but that wouldn’t destroy the

empire any more than blowing up the Pentagon would dissolve the United States.

What it does create is what’s known in international politics as a power vacuum.
Return of the Jedi
leaves the galaxy with fleets of star destroyers and no coherent power structure to control them. Throw in roving gangs of pissed-off troops desperate for money after their paychecks went up in flames with the Death Star, and you start to realize how bad shit’s about to get.

Soon these power-hungry military officers would form factions and destroy entire planets in their brutal attempts to seize power. Eventual y, Palpatine would simply be replaced by a new emperor, possibly even one competent enough to devise a plan that can’t be foiled by developmental y stunted bears throwing rocks.

4.
SUPERMAN RETURNS

The “happy” ending

Lex Luthor fails to kil Superman by stabbing him with kryptonite and leaving him in a shallow pool of water, and Superman stops Luthor’s evil plan in a thril ing action scene that consists of Superman holding stuff over his head.

Having saved the world again, Superman says good-bye to his son and flies into space.

Wait a minute . . .

And by “says good-bye to his son,” we mean he abandons his crippled, il egitimate son for the second time.

The whole setup of
Superman Returns
centers on earth’s greatest hero knocking up his girlfriend and then skipping town for five years. While he was gone, the combination of human and alien DNA resulted in the child becoming weak and sickly, with Lois mentioning that the child was failing gym class.

(What kind of PE teacher fails a five-year-old for having asthma?)

So how does our hero respond when he returns and learns about his son? By breaking into the kid’s bedroom, tell ing him “good luck with the whole outcast thing, kiddo,” and leaving him alone. Again. So we’re left with a kid with: 1.
superpowers,

2.
gross genetic defects,

3.
good reason to hate Superman.

It doesn’t take an evil genius to see the supervil ain potential, and you know what? If he takes on Superman, we’re rooting for the kid.

3.
JACK

The “happy” ending

Robin will iams plays the titular character, an elementary school child trapped in the body of a middle-age man. By the film’s end, Jack’s formerly intolerant classmates learn to love and accept him for the horrifying genetic aberration he is.

Wait a minute . . .

Al this just makes it even sadder that Jack won’t live to see col ege.

There’s a reason why in other “kid becomes an adult” films the transformation is brought on by some fantasy element. In
Jack
, the main character is instead said to have a rare genetic condition that causes him to age four times faster than normal.

Now, the problem with this is that it strongly resembles an actual medical condition known as progeria. And, sadly, most people afflicted by this disease don’t live past age thirteen, as you’d expect for a disease that makes you age real y, really fast.

Jack won’t get the ending Tom Hanks got in
Big
, where he magical y shrinks back into a child and gets to live out his life as the only twelve-year-old who knows how to make love to a grown woman. Jack, meanwhile, will be walking with a cane by high school. The only way he’s getting laid is if he lives long enough to see the invention of Viagra.

2. THE MATRIX TRILOG
Y

The “happy” ending

Thanks to the triumph of human will and several baffling plot contrivances, Neo sacrifices himself and convinces the machines who are enslaving humanity to not enslave humanity quite so much.

The machines send their Colonel Sanders avatar to announce that any humans who want to be freed from the Matrix will be all owed to do so.

Wait a minute . . .

Hey, remember in the first movie where they said they don’t pull adults out of the Matrix? Because finding out that every experience they ever had was false and that the real world is a frozen wasteland destroys their mind?

Wel , in this new world the whole “al of society is a computer-generated hoax” thing isn’t going to stay a secret for long. How do you think society would react to finding that out? How would major religions react?