“Go then, there are other worlds than these…” -Stephen King, The Dark Tower
“Two worlds colliding, and they could never tear us apart…” -INXS
There once was a world in which a young man decided to go and see the 1996 movie Space Jam, in a movie theater, while under the influence of LSD. This turned out to be a very good idea. An excellent one, one might even say. At the same time, on a very different world, a much older and wiser man decided to watch the 2017 movie Brawl on Cell Block 99, on a tiny laptop screen, while under the influence of lots of cheap beer, some awesome weed and a bunch of mild painkillers. This also turned out to be a very good idea, but for, as you might’ve imagined, very different reasons. Please allow me to explain why.
You see, the first movie is about an animated bunny-rabbit that enlists the help of His Royal Airness sir Michael Jordan to defeat a bunch of tiny little aliens that stole the talents of some NBA-players and turned in to these giant, hulky monsters and that he, the bunny that is, in all of his fluffy wisdom challenged to a game of basketball, because otherwise the evil overlord of the aliens will ensnare all his looney friends to be attractions at his alien theme park, forevermore. Okay? And the second movie is about a hard-working family man whose wife cheats on him, so naturally they decide to make a baby. He then loses his job and becomes a drug dealer, gets fucked on some deal and ends up in prison, where he has to beat the living crap out of his fellow inmates to keep his wife and child safe. Get it? Right.
Now, you might think that these movies have very little in common with one another (you might also think that both these stories are a little far-fetched, but that’s beside the point. These are, after all, MOVIES. You know: not real?) but you’d be wrong. You see, both these excellent films touch upon the same subject: you must fight for what you believe in. Whether that’s to defeat an animated alien overlord with the voice of Danny DeVito or some truly horrible real life human monsters doesn’t matter: it’s the fight that counts.
And boy, does it count.
While in the one world the lysergic diethylamide acids happily course through that young man’s head, he is watching in awe, with his mouth open, how the big red curtain in front of the movie screen is ever so slightly moving, dancing, almost, (he was late, and therefore had to sit at the very first row of seats in the theater. While under normal circumstances this would be very annoying, in this particular case it was… truly awesome. That red curtain was just the most beautiful thing he had ever seen… And the movie had yet to begin…), in the other world the older, wiser man is watching, somewhat unsettled, how that big bald man is pummeling a variety of human scum into a bloody pulp. He pauses the movie for a moment, cracks open another cold one, rolls another joint and thinks: ‘drugs and movies are SO awesome…! I wish I could do this forever. What a pity, that someday I, like all those sorry sons of bitches in that prison, have to die too. Bugs Bunny, that asshole, probably gets to live forever. It’s just not FAIR!’
While these two movies do have the same underlying theme, there are ways, of course, wherein they are the exact opposite of each other. One is a happy, family friendly tale of fluffy bunnies and cute aliens, the other is a brutal and nightmarish look into the penitential world of violence, murder and decapitations. High praise should be attributed to those parents who take their kids to the one, while swift and steadfast condemnation should promptly be piled upon those wretched beings that let their young ones see the other. One has Bill Murray in it, the other Don Johnson. There are many more distinctions to make between the two, but you get my point. Two very different movies, and yet somehow still the same.
When two worlds collide, what’s usually left is a big pile of rubble, floating through a vast and indifferent universe. Not so in this case. I would like to strongly suggest that you watch these movies back-to-back. Whether you do that while under the influence of all sorts of chemical enhancements, like that young man and that old geezer once did, I leave to you. But I surely recommend it.
Oh, and leave the kids out of it, will you?