Busy and Such

Sorry for the light posting schedule this week but I have been equal parts busy and lazy. Busy as I needed to finish Secret Agent Clank so that I could return it, thereby allowing GameFly to send me my next review game Hellboy: Seeds of Evil for the PSP. Lazy as once I finished Secret Agent Clank I wanted to watch a movie with the missus and play GTA IV, none of which are conducive to posting.

Speaking of movies, I finished The Ruins and was quite happy with the movie until the ending. Spoilers need to be spoiled in order to have this discussion, so if you wish to see this movie on DVD and don't want things ruined, then run along now.

The movie is about four vacationing Americans and the German tourist they meet while in Mexico, traveling to this archaeological dig site in search of the German guy's brother. Once they get to the temple, one of the Americans, Amy, the wishy-washy girlfriend of Jeff, the take charge med school student, accidentally steps on the vines covering the dig site while their group of people is being yelled at by some crazy villager guy. Once Amy steps on the vines, crazy villager guy gets even crazier, calls his homies, shoots an unfortunately expendable Greek tourist who was along for the ride and makes our intrepid group of five high tail it up to the top of the temple. The villagers don't let the five leave the temple, folks get injured and it turns out that the vines are sentient and will pretty much do whatever they can to kill and eat you.

Bummer.

In the book, everyone dies. I don't remember exactly how, but nobody gets off of that temple alive. It's pretty bleak, and gross, but that's the way the book is. In the movie, not so much. After Jeff and Amy's friends die due to some unfortunate knife action, and well after the German guy had to have his legs cut off and the vines choked him from within, Amy and Jeff hatch a plan to get Amy out of there. Jeff brings her seemingly dead body down to the base of the temple, lies it on the ground, and then walks away from it, around the base of the temple, talking to the villagers and drawing their attention away from Amy. After a very nice speech, he yells her name, the villagers shoot him full of arrows and Amy gets up and bolts into the jungle. She is chased by the villagers, but eventually finds the jeep left by the last group of people, starts the engine and drives off. As she drives off, a vine appears under the skin below her eye and we know that Amy is infected.

Again, bummer.

Here's my problem with that. As bad as it was for everyone to die in the book, they pretty much had to. The vine was growing on their clothes, even in places that hadn't been touched by the vines. The villagers kept watch on the temple, and salted the ground around the temple, to keep the vines out of the surrounding jungle, knowing full well that the vines would spread like crazy and probably kill everything. Amy was probably the weakest character in the group, and while the right thing for her to do would have been to turn around, go back to the temple and take one for the team, I'm pretty sure she didn't do that, so as a result, our world in that movie is probably overrun with killer plants now and we're all dead.

Thanks a bunch, Amy. Loser.

The other problem was that Amy was so whiny that it's not like you really want her to live. The book was much better because you knew that these people were all going to die, it was just a matter of when, and how awful it would be. I had the same feeling while watching the movie, so to then have one of them escape seemed wrong to me. Plus, I don't want to be killed by malevolent plants so Amy needs to die. I've heard that there was an alternate ending, probably more in line with the book, so hopefully in that version, killer vines get a small snack of six tourists, but are denied the main course of our entire planet.

Now I'm watching The Cottage and it's fucking hilarious. Andy Serkis is a genius. Hopefully it won't end poorly.

Have a great weekend.