"Twaining"
Huh. Been a while.
So I’ve been thinking: there are several rules about monster movies that one should always keep in mind when viewing – or perhaps acting in – such a film. The ones I’ve noticed are as follows:
1. If you get bitten by a creature, you won’t make it. Period.
2. The more attractive you are, the better your chances of survival… but note that your chances of dying in spectacularly gruesome fashion (relative to the chance of dying from ordinary monster carnage) increase exponentially.
a. Corollary: If you’re attractive but are a bitch/asshole, you’re gonna die and it’s gonna be nasty.
3. When given the choice of taking a tunnel or a bridge to escape New York, take a bridge.
a. Corollary: If the monster is really large, consider taking a tunnel. Large monsters like attacking bridges.
4. It’s okay to break the law when necessary.
5. Your phone/car/whatever might work, but no one else’s phone/car/whatever will. Be prepared to defend your phone/car/whatever.
6. Small monsters want to get inside you. Large monsters want to get you inside them.
a. Corollary: If you have a monster inside you, kill yourself.
i. Subset: If you are incapable of killing yourself (whether due to physical reasons or due to being a wuss), it is acceptable to ask another cast member to kill you.
7. If someone asks you if you’re a god, you say “yes.”
8. Injuries that might kill a minor cast member (e.g. impaling, helicopter crashes) will not kill the stars.
9. If you are in love with another cast member, s/he will die. If you’re lucky, you might die together.
10. If you have a brother/sister/parent/aunt/uncle/relative/best friend and they have a smaller role in the movie, they’re gonna die.
a. Corollary: If you are protecting a child/niece/nephew/adoptee/dog/future leader, you’ll probably make it.
11. No one who needs to be rescued ever lives on the first floor.
And in case you’re wondering what the heck “Twaining” means (and no, it’s not Elmer Fudd talking about kiddie bike wheels), Mark Twain once said: “Why put off until tomorrow that which you can just as easily put off until the day after tomorrow?” So… there you go. My new term for procrastination. Twaining. Yippee.
posted by ab @ 11:42 PM
4 Comments:
6. Small monsters want to get inside you. Large monsters want to get you inside them.
Zen simple, unassailably correct.
To your list I will add this one, more applicable to action movies than monster movies, but undeniably true:
"Villains, bad aim. Heroes, GOOD AIM!"
Very astute, and also undeniably true. I'd like to add a corollary:
If you are the hero of the movie, your accuracy has an inverse relationship to the number of bullets you have remaining.
You forgot the most important one- the scarier, bloodier, slimier, or more traumatizing the alien/monster/disease/natural disaster is, apparently the more romantic it is, because the hero and heroine always fall into each other's arms at the end. Why hasn't someone thought of bottling and selling monster slime as an aphrodesiac?
Who says no one's thought of it? Hm?
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