|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This is the End
A film by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg
Plot (Spoiler Alert)Jay Baruchel is in Los Angeles to visit his friend, Seth Rogen. James Franco is having a party at his new house and Jay and Seth participate even though Jay doesn’t really want to go. There are many celebrities at the party, Craig Robinson, Michael Cera, Rihanna, Martin Starr, David Krumholtz, Jason Segel, Kevin Hart, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Mindy Kaling and Emma Watson. Jay isn’t having a good time and asks where he can buy cigarettes. Seth takes him to a store four blocks down. And then suddenly an eruption goes off and Jay sees a bright light shining on certain people and lifts them up and then they disappear while Seth is trying to get a food tray off him.Seth and Jay run back to James Franco’s house. No one felt anything and Jay tries to explain what he saw, but they don’t believe him. Suddenly everyone feels the rupture and run outside to see a fire spreading through Hollywood. Paul Rudd runs to the house freaked out of his mind. A giant hole ruptures from the ground and a lot of people fall in. Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jay Baruchel, Craig Robinson and Jonah Hill make it back into the house. They board up the house with James Franco’s paintings and make a list of the food and drink that has to last until they get rescued. They sleep for the night and the next morning James Franco goes down stairs to find Danny McBride alive. Danny is eating the food and has wasted the water. James wakes the others up and they try to stop Danny. They try to explain to Danny what is happening right now, but he believes it to be a joke. A stranger is at the front door asking for help and he wants to come inside, then something cuts his head off. Danny freaks out and kicks the head away. Things outside have gotten worse. The guys try to figure what this is and Jay believes it to be the apocalypse. Jay looks through a bible and says what is happening. The others don’t believe Jay. The guys pass the time by playing cards, making a homemade “Pineapple Express 2” movie and doing drugs. Emma Waston breaks through the doors with an axe and is relieved to see the guys alive. She was hiding in a drain pipe all this time and after she heard unusual noises, so she ran and found the house. James makes her feel welcome. Then a conversation goes on and then turns into something about raping Emma and she hears it and misunderstands them. She gets angry and swings the axe around demanding the guys give her everything they have to drink and then leaves. James informs the others that there are two water jugs in the basement and the only way to get to it is through the outside. Craig goes, after losing a game of who ever gets a burned match. The door to the basement is locked. Shortly after that Craig runs back into the house screaming. The boys have to break a hole to the basement floor and it takes a while. While he was out there, Craig saw a creature that looked apocalyptic and he only tells Jay. Jay tells Craig what the Bible said and they have to do good deeds and he promises Craig that they’ll get through this. Seth and Jay continue to work on the hole and they fall through. They find the water and bring it up and drink it. Danny McBride drinks too much when they’re really supposed to have one glass of water a day. Danny then pours the water on himself and the guys attack him and take the water away. James wants Danny McBride out of the house because he is a fuck up. Danny says what assholes the guys are and brings up something about seeing Jay in Los Angeles two months back not wanting Seth to know to maintain the illusion that he always stays with Seth. Danny leaves the house flipping the guys off. Jonah Hill tells Jay that he should not be dishonest with his friends and Jay smacks Jonah’s face. Jonah Hill prays to God telling him how much he hates Jay and asks him to kill him, but that leads Jonah to get raped by a demon during the night. The guys need more food and water so they do the match game to see who gets to go to the neighbor’s house. Seth gets the burnt match and decides not to go. Jay goes instead because he has honor and Craig joins him. They find the house and food, but then a demon shows up and chases them through the house. Meanwhile, Jonah Hill is possessed and attacks Seth and James. Jay and Craig return to the house and Jay uses the baseball bat to knock out Jonah. They tie Jonah to a bed and the sit down in the other room. They realize Jay was right about this being the apocalypse. Seth thinks it’s a mistake that they were left behind, but Craig confesses his sins that he killed a person when he was a kid and James admits he did Lindsay Lohan. They can hear Jonah making noise in the other room and Jay has a plan to do an exorcism. It works, but Seth stops Jay and they fight causing one of the candles to fall and start a fire. Jonah Hill is on fire and spreads the fire around the house as he is after James, Seth, Jay and Craig. The house falls apart and crushes Jonah. The guys are now in the open. James suggests they get into his Prius car, then a flying demon lands itself on top of where it’s parked. Craig decides to distract it away so that the others can escape. Craig makes noise and then runs towards the demon. Just as he is about to be killed, a bright light shines on Craig and scares the demon away. Craig is being sucked up into Heaven. The guys realize there is still a way they can be saved by redeeming themselves. Franco suggests they go to his house in Malibu until they can find a way to be redeemed. A van crashes into the Prius and cannibals pull Seth, James and Jay out of the car. Danny McBride is revealed to be their leader. His sex slave is Channing Tatum. Cannibals are going to eat James, Seth and Jay, but James puts on a distraction so that Seth and Jay can escape. James is outnumbered until a light hits him. He rubs into McBride’s face causing the light to go away and James to be eaten alive. It’s just Seth and Jay left until a gigantic satanic being shows up and plans to eat them, but they get eaten, Jay apologizes to Seth for self-righteous and that he was resistant to change when he should had grown with Seth and if he’s going to die then he’s going to die next to Seth. A light shines on Jay and hurts the demon. Seth isn’t being sucked up, but Jay tells him to grab on because he won’t leave Seth behind. The satanic being is trying to attack, but the light is like a force field, but it is losing it’s focus for it won’t let Seth join him. Jay keeps telling Seth to hold on, but Seth realizes he shouldn’t hold Jay back anymore and lets go. As Seth is about to fall down into the satanic being's mouth, a light shines and neuters it. Jay and Seth cheer and get sucked up into Heaven together. Jay and Seth make it to Heaven where Craig welcomes them and shows them around. Craig informs them that anything they want in Heaven they get. Jay has the Backstreet Boys show up where they perform “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” as everyone dances to it. 
Blaine: Seth Rogen said that he didn’t think he and Evan Goldberg could have made “This is the End” if they didn’t know the actors who star in it. It was an idea Seth really liked for a comedy movie where it’s all these people he knows and likes all together. And Seth and Evan talked to them before they even wrote the script to see if they were cool with it like if the movie could take place in James Franco’s house. But they trusted Seth and Evan so it was ok for them. It was surprising for Seth and Evan that they were able to get all these actors they knew they wanted to star in the film. And these actors are really good friends of Seth and Evan and they don’t mind making fun of themselves. Some of things that are in the movie are based on fact like James Franco is really into art. Jonah Hill is suspected to be evil, but he hides it away by pretending to be something he is not by being really nice and Jay Baruchel is the only one who sees through him. Both Jay and Jonah just don’t get along. Danny McBride is a married man with a child, but in “This is the End”, he is the asshole of the movie who then becomes I feel to be the villain after the rest of the guys exile him from the house and becomes the leader of a cannibal tribe. Jay Baruchel is more of a lone wolf and is not really into the whole Hollywood thing. I don’t know if he’s close with Seth Rogen in real life, but he did say he has known Seth since he was eighteen. In “This is the End”, Jay is keeping a secret as well and that is that he and Seth have been growing apart for a while and he doesn’t think of him as a friend anymore. He turns to religion after seeing the people sucked into the sky when the apocalypse starts. I’m glad he realizes friendship is important and what he and Seth has is special. “This is the End” takes place in LA, but it was really shot in New Orleans. And when all the people from James Franco’s party are looking at the burning hills outside, they were actually looking at nothing. The only problem I have with “This is the End" is that James Franco has to die by being eaten alive by Danny McBride and his minions. I don’t want to see James Franco die because I like him. Danny McBride really pisses James off and he really can’t stand him. He let his hate for McBride get to him and that causes the light shinning on James to go away and before it went away I was happy that James was being saved. James Franco didn’t want to die and he argued with Seth and Evan about that, but they told him he has to die. Some people ask why Emma Watson was apart of the project? Seth and Evan wanted to put as they call it the Harry Potter twinkle in the film and the idea made them laugh. What they didn’t want is to bring a female come back because one woman coming back in an apocalyptic situation with a bunch of guys sounded like they could rape her and they didn’t like the sound of it. Emma was open to it though and suggested that they make it a joke. And they made her a bad ass as well by having her carry an axe around. I’m amazed that Emma Watson chose to be apart of something like this with these kind of funny actors. When she got the script she knew it wasn’t her normal type of thing nor her sense of humor, but she took the job because she knows how funny the actors are and she didn’t want to miss out on an opportunity like this. Seth said that Paul Rudd is the only person who came out of nowhere with his cameo performance. Paul had a day off from another movie he was apart of and he decided to make a quick appearance in “This is the End”. And his job was to run down the street freaked out of his mind while carrying a bottle of champagne as housewarming for Franco’s party. Paul has worked with Seth before as a co-star, but he has never worked with Seth as a director. They knew they needed a famous person playing the sexual gimp and they thought maybe Channing Tatum will do it. Seth Rogen had emailed Channing and was honest with him by telling him about the role and that he would be Danny McBride’s bitch and that it would be funny if that was him. Twenty minutes later Channing replies by saying he’s in. It’s really Channing during that whole scene and not someone else while wearing the mask moving around like a hyper dog. I’m not surprised that Channing did all those movements himself because he is a person with physicality. Jonah Hill being raped by a demon is a parody of the 1968 horror flick, “Rosemary’s Baby”. I knew that the first time I saw “This is the End". In “Rosemary’s Baby”, Mia Farrow’s character is taken advantage by the devil and it shows his red eyes and then she says “This is no dream this is really happening.” Same thing happens with Jonah Hill, only his clothes stay on and it’s more humorous than scary. And like “Rosemary’s Baby” it shows the red eyes. The reason why they gave that giant demon at the end a dick is because it’s a joke, he wasn’t supposed to have a dick because the ending was already exciting, but they thought it would be funny if they did add it. I like that they put the song “I Will Always Love You” sung by Whitney Houston in the background during that scene when Jay is being sucked up into Heaven and is trying to bring Seth with him because for me it helps make it funny especially when Seth is falling into the demon’s mouth. I knew Seth wasn’t going to die by being eaten by a demon because what he does is think of someone else instead of himself and he does a good deed. Seth said that original it was going to end with him and Jay getting sucked up into the bright light of Heaven and then it would cut to the credits. But it didn’t work because they said audiences asked them why didn’t it show Heaven? So Seth and Evan had to think what Heaven is like and what people who have earned it do in it. They had people from this time period and other time periods like there’s a cowboy, there’s a knight, there’s a few people from Roman times, there’s a woman from victorian times, king of France, there’s an Indian, an opera clown and there’s a guy who looks like Jesus. I’m happy that Jay, Seth and Craig are the survivors in the end and are in heaven, but I wish James was too. I love the ending because it’s a happy one and these guys worries are behind them and they get to spend eternity having fun and seeing them dance is fun to watch. My rating on “This is the End” is four and a half out of five stars. Music |