End of Days (1999) – WTF Happened to This Horror Movie?

The end of the 1990s was an odd time for cinema and in general. We were in the midst of Y2K, a panic over clocks and computers needing to roll over from 99 to 00, something people feared more than monsters and cults, something people really feared and fearmongered about. It was expected to be something of an apocalypse by some. So of course, Hollywood ran with it. Technology gone wrong, end of days, Satan coming to Earth, etc. We got films like Strange Days, Stigmata, eXistenZ, Virus, The Matrix, and End of Days (watch it HERE), our movie today.

Following a dry patch of work for Arnold Schwarzenegger following Batman & Robin and heart surgery, he didn’t get all that many offers and eventually, it seemed like he would not be coming back. Then, End of Days came his way, and it seemed like a good, if darker than his then-recent work, option, something that could get him back into action, give him maybe some range, and get his career back on track. Somehow, after Batman & Robin and Jingle All the Way, he was almost seen as a comedic, family-friendly guy. Add to that the fact he was aging as clearly signaled by his heart surgery, studios and production insurance companies were worried he would not be able to do the work here, do action work anymore. They were averse to his presence due to this and were not easy to convince to let him take this film on. Somehow, Arnold prevailed and got the part and the film off the ground. However, it wasn’t easy. Between director changes, cast changes, and a reshot ending to please test audiences, the film had a lot going against it. In fact, to this day, it’s not exactly beloved, but it’s worth checking out.

The film has a long and complex history, so we shall condense it to the most important bits. With Arnold cast and cleared, barely, the film had a director in Marcus Nispel. Oh, you mean it lost Nispel. Why? His list of demands. Nispel had a 64 pages long list of demands which got leaked to the press, shaming him into quitting the film. This is the same man who later went on to direct a bunch of music videos instead including for Faith No More, Cher, Ronan Keating, George Michael, Bryan Adams, Mylene Farmer, Terror Squad, The Charlatans before getting to his first feature film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. His video work was interesting, but didn’t really show a style that was his, so it took a while for people to understand what his style was, and most folks still don’t understand why he had such a long list of demands on his potential feature directorial debut. To those watching this happen, it seemed like he shot himself in the foot on purpose.

With Nispel out, the film needed a new director and James Cameron stepped in. Well, kind of. He didn’t step in as a director, which would have for sure have given us a whole other movie here. No, he stepped in and suggested director Peter Hyams to Schwarzenegger. The man had recently directed The Relic, Sudden Death, and Timecop, so he seemed like a good fit. He could handle action, darker themes, and a bit of special effects. The man had started as a jazz drummer, but his film career showed that he would indeed do well here. And well, he did something. One of the main issues reported at the time was how he directed action and how his preference for darker, as in low light, settings led to Schwarzenegger not being to fully see what he was up to and not being able to really see the results in the dailies. The film was being shot in particularly low light for some reason and it led to issues which are partially put on director Hyams and on cinematographer, oh wait, that’s Peter Hyams too, so the blame is solely on him. He opted for darker scenes and no one was there to tell him no. So, here we have a star trying his best, someone who’s career comeback after 2 years away depends on this a bit and a director who seems to have what it takes, but something is off due to creative choices on the director’s part. How about the script? Here the script was written by Andrew W. Marlowe who had previously written 2 episodes of Viper, and the film Air Force One. That’s it. While Air Force One was a good sign, there was a definite lack of experience here unless he had a bunch of uncredited work floating out there. This may have hurt End of Days, but that is hard to tell to be honest as from all accounts, it seems like the studio had a lot of opinions and this may be a case of too many cooks, or a film written by committee with some folks involved who shouldn’t be involved beyond saying yes or no. The changes to the film’s ending do lead to believe in this as the film had one ending, the studio wanted a different one, and a third one was shot when test audiences didn’t respond as expected. The current ending with Schwarzenegger’s character dying is something that seemed to be wanted by the test audiences over a “too happy” ending when he lived.

All of this may have been compounded by the constant changes in actress for the part of Christine York, the female lead, a part that eventually went to Robin Tunney. Before her, Kate Winslet had turned down the part, Jennifer Connelly had turned the part down as well, and Liv Tyler could not go through with the film as she had contractual obligations elsewhere. While we’re looking at people who were almost involved, both Guillermo Del Toro and Sam Raimi passed on the chance at directing this film. It seems a lot of people were seeing something perhaps others were not in the script and what was available to them when they were offered to work on End of Days.

The director and cast were not the only ones to see major changes on End of Days, the special effects shifted majorly between pre-production, production, and post-production. Mark McCreery of Stan Winston Studio designed and conceptualized a beast to become Satan in the film, a version of The Devil that would look amazing on the big screen, a design that wasn’t the usual Satan look, one that was approved. Then, it was sculpted by Joey Orosco and sent to be made into a maquette, then ultimately a full-sized version of the creature that they had envisioned to be Satan, a 7-foot tall being with a 12-foot wingspan. According to Stan Winston, it was astounding and towered over Arnold Schwarzenegger while being manipulated by 6 to 9 puppeteers and monster actor John Rosengrant inside the suit. It was something else. For Rosengrant, this meant being inside a suit where he could not breath well and every move had to be calculated and practiced. The Satan scene was shot in an actual church in Los Angeles, adding to the creep factor on set and giving the scene an eerie effects just from the mix of the character and the location. Stan Winston Studios also created prosthetic makeup for Gabriel Burne as he was possessed by Satan and other practical effects pieces. Once all of the practical effects were applied and used in scenes, post-production included visual effects from R&H, who also provided a digital version of Satan for the film from the scan by Cyber F/X. The visual effects did allow them to make Satan even bigger, really imposing, and take him up to 20 feet if they wanted to, something that allowed them to give him one huge wingspan that really worked with the widescreen ratio, but the results of this are barely see in the final version of the film. Another aspect of the film that was done in CGI were some of the backgrounds were added after filming so that they could save time and money filming in Los Angeles standing for New York City and add the buildings in after the fact. This also gave the film a particular look, one that some loved and others hated.

Unfortunately, as it is a 1999 film, some of the visual effects have, well, not aged well. At the time, they may have looked cool, but a quarter of a century later, not so much. Of course, the previously mentioned darkness of the set and cinematography hid more of these practical and visual effects, something that is frustrating and a blessing at the same time at this point. There was a lot of talent in the effects departments, but age has not been kind to the results.

Now, how expensive was all of this? From the difficulties casting to the additional visual effects to change things at the last minute, the film had a large budget to the tune of around $100 million USD, which then ballooned up to $160 million USD once marketing and publicity and all that good stuff came into play. The film was released on November 24, 1999, to get that end of year movie going crowd, hopefully staying in theaters long enough to make it to as close to New Year’s. It was also released the day before Thanksgiving weekend, giving it an extra-long weekend to make money. So, how much did it make? The box office total was disappointing to say the least with a total of $66,889,043 USD in the US and $212 million USD worldwide. It was a failure as this barely making it in terms of profit on a film with such a high budget. It was a gamble, and the gamble didn’t really pay off. The box office for Thanksgiving weekend in 1999 had an interesting mix of film and End of Days came in second, behind only Toy Story 2 which was expected to be a juggernaut of a film and was squarely aimed at a different audience. Toy Story 2 was in its 6th week of release, and it made almost double the box office of End of Days. However, securing the second spot was still a decent achievement. What other movies made money that weekend? Let’s take a look: number 3 was The World Is Not Enough in its 6th week of release, number 4 was Sleepy Hollow in its 6th week as well, number 5 was Pokémon: The First Movie in its 15th week of release. These were followed by Dogma, Anywhere but Here, The Insider, and The Bachelor. The only other brand-new film that weekend was Flawless which came in at number 13, barely scraping by. Thanksgiving weekend is often a solid weekend for films and box office numbers, but family-friendly fare seems to do best.

Now, let’s take a look at how the film did with critics… Well, it was abysmal and still is. According to Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a disastrous 11% from the critics with most of them calling the film a dud, repulsive, idiotic, one of Arnold’s worst performances, never interesting, silly, hooey, and then some. To say the majority hated it upon release and still seem to hate it would be an understatement. But, what about the general public? Those who paid to see the film? Well, the film did just a little less poorly with them, scoring an average of 32%. Some loved it and called it their favorite Arnold film; some hated it with a passion calling the film much worse thing than what the critics said. At this point, it seems the movie is slowly building its fanbase but that may be 24 years too late.

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