For my 2018 Resolution Project, I decided to take a page out of Lane’s book and do my own Silver Screen Resolution (hence the Take Two part of the title). There are a lot of movies out there I haven’t seen but feel like I should have, or movies that I’ve simply wanted to see and have yet to get around to it. With a deadline of some kind, now I’ll have to finally make a point to find them, get them, and watch them. My rules for the resolution are slightly different in that:
- They must be spec-fic (this has not changed).
- The movie will not be one that is in theaters or that would be part of a Sound Off!
- They don’t have to be popular – or even something folks have heard about.
But I’ve decided to take my resolution to the next level as well, since I had more than 12 movies on my list that I wanted to see. And since we’re in “Take Two” mode, I might as well up the ante: I will instead be seeing two spec fic movies per month rather than just one. Why not finish off 2018 with a little prophesying: The Prophecy.
I’d always been vaguely curious about this one. Christopher Walken? A fallen angel? I can dig that. But it wasn’t until I stepped in near the end of the movie while a family member had it on and saw Viggo Mortensen. And then I learned he was Satan.
I’m sorry — what? The King of Gondor is Satan?
I figured I should see this movie.
Spoilers from a 1995 movie.
Turns out, it’s kind of a strange movie. Mostly in its plot, which is the prophecy itself, among other things. After a bit of narratoin telling us a portion of why angels have appeared on Earth, we’re treated to a scene featuring Thomas Dagget (Elias Koteas) who is in his final moments of joining the priesthood. But for whatever reason, he collapses (he seems to see images of an angelic war) and never fulfills his goal. That’s one of the things that never gets properly explored in this movie.
We find out an angel, Simon (Eric Stolz), has come to find a dark soul before Gabriel (Christopher Walken) does. Gabriel’s side on an angelic war wants this evil human soul to lead them in battle and end the stalemate in heaven. The problem? Gabriel’s side is mad that God put humans above them, so they’ve been fighting about it for quite a while. This is another one of those movies where I wonder — if God is supposed to be, well, God, why doesn’t the all-powerful entity put a stop to this nonsense? The angels created by God are slaughtering each other, and ultimately have been fighting for so long that Heaven has been closed. Yes, closed. No souls can get there, so basically everyone on Earth that has died or will die will have their souls stuck in their bodies until said stalemate is over. So where the hell is God during all that? That’s what I want to know — and what I’d ask if I were one of the characters. But I suppose without God’s absence, we’d never have a movie, so let’s move on.
Guess God doesn’t mind his angels being impaled? Weird.
Simon gets into a tussle with one of Gabriel’s lackeys and bails to New Mexico where the body of the dark soul lies. Apparently it’s an old army general who served in Vietnam and was exceedingly awful. It felt really weird to find out this random guy was what we were looking for. We eventually get glimpses into the atrocities this guy has committed, but because we never truly get a sense of who he was when he was alive, it lessens the impact of the soul being the super-important thing Gabriel is looking for. So it’s just a matter of accepting and going with it, which I don’t really like.
But since Simon is already injured and he knows Gabriel is coming, he hides the soul inside a little girl named Mary (of course). Mary really needs to learn not to talk to strangers, but later when Gabriel appears on the steps of a school he’s surrounded by kids, so I guess children can sense an angelic presence, but not if they’re good or bad. This doesn’t bode well for Mary because one ugly soul stuck inside an innocent child tends to not work well (we’ve all seen the Harry Potter movies). Thomas, who is now a detective, and Mary’s teacher Katherine (Virginia Madsen), who is for whatever reason super attached to Mary, join together to try and help Mary against Gabriel and the gross old dude stuck inside her. It’s much more interesting because one might think that Thomas’s priest training would come in handy or something, but instead the solution is way different. It includes the fact that Mary is part of a Native American tribe who still has demon-banishing skills, plus some Lucifer interference. The goal: stop Gabriel by making him question his faith and let Mary’s people do their thing. Problem solved.
Kids dig angels, I guess.
One of the (many) weird things I found in this movie was Gabriel’s willingness to go collect a human soul to actually lead his faction of angels into war and victory. He makes it known that he hates humans throughout the movie. Humans are why the angels are fighting in the first place. He doesn’t care about humans’ pain, he calls us monkeys (not a very good insult, but okay), and basically complains about us all the time. Why he would be so accepting of a human leader is beyond me.
I also never understood Thomas’s part in all this. Simon pays him a visit first. Gabriel bumps into him later. Even Lucifer chats with him. Thomas sees the angel war. Some of them make remarks that sound like Thomas was an angel at some point, but never follow up on it. So why is Thomas able to see this stuff? Was he an angel? Is he an angel? Sort of? No? He claims he’s just a man, so I have no clue as to what his deal is. Did God choose him? At the end, he states that having faith is maybe knowing not all of God’s plan, but just a part of it. Excuse me? Did you just experience the same thing I watched? Because none of that made sense in the big scheme of things. If any of that was God’s plan, it was a pretty shit plan. Allowing your angels to fight to the point that Heaven is shut down — all of which you created — make you a rather garbage omnipotent being. But again, we need to have a movie, so here we are.
Arguably the best parts of the movie were when Gabriel was on scene and when Lucifer shows up. Christopher Walken’s performance as Gabriel was great. He was nice and perky when hanging out with the kids, and a truly awful creature when awakening a woman from death just so she could chauffeur him around (literally). Nasty Christopher Walken is always good stuff because he’s got that voice and the temperament on lockdown. Viggo Mortensen, however, was downright freakish (in a good way) as Lucifer. At the end, blood on his hands after pulling Gabriel’s heart from his chest, he says to Thomas and Katherine, “I love you more than Jesus.” It’s the creepiest damned thing, saying it in a way like the words hurt to utter, but he says them anyway because in his twisted-up mind it might work to try to convince them to both come with him to hell. NO, SIR. GOOD DAY. Viggo Mortensen needs to be the bad guy in more things because he’s damned good at it.
Thomas was SO uncomfortable with this encounter. Understandably.
While a lot of the movie felt disjointed in how it was put together, it was still a decent film, and clearly popular enough to lead to two more movies that continued to feature Christopher Walken as Gabriel. Will I watch those? Maybe. Though I doubt they’ll be much better than this one, which isn’t much incentive, but I watch (and own) plenty of nonsense, so who knows?
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