DAY 11: Disasters!

Is the Alex Proyas who directed this and Gods of Egypt the same guy who made The Crow and Dark City?

Because wow.

If you read the critics, they said things like ‘absurd,’ ‘messy,’ and ‘overly serious.’ But once I saw Nicholas Cage dodging a train and screaming at — spoilers! — aliens, well…this was for me.

It’s not good. But it’s for me.

Knowing is a mixtape from a maniac of every major disaster possible, leading up to an extinction-level solar flare. Plane crash? Got it. A prophetic time capsule in an elementary school that sages dates, death tolls and the exact coordinates of major disasters like the Oklahoma City bombing, September 11 and Hurricane Katrina? Sure, why not? It’s very America first in that way. And along the way, Cage and his family — his wife died in the first event — are there for so many end-of-the-world moments.

Rose Byrne is Diana, the daughter of Lucinda (Lara Robinson, who also plays daughter Abby), who made those prophecies. At some point, Cage thinks — yes, I will only refer to him as his name and not his character’s name — thinks he can stop the end of the world. 

I can only imagine that Proyas had a Road to Damascus moment, because this feels like a religious film, bringing in Matthäus Merian’s engraving of Ezekiel’s vision of a UFO, along with whispering alien angels who like to steal SUVs. 

Speaking of those critics — I’m not one, I’m just a dude who watches too many movies — hated the pivot from sci-fi thriller to cosmic, angel-infused religious allegory. I love how hard it swings for the fences. It goes from “MIT Professor solves a riddle” to “Interstellar Arks and White Trees of Life” in about 20 minutes. It’s bold, it’s bananas, and it doesn’t give a fuck what you think. It’s like Proyas saw Signs and said, “I can raise you a twist, M. Night.”

Most people will tell you it’s a failure because the science is absolute bunk.

Look, if you’re coming to a movie where Nicolas Cage spends two hours deciphering numbers on a closet door to figure out when the world is going to end, and you’re expecting a lecture from Neil deGrasse Tyson, you’re barking up the wrong tree. 

Proyas said at a press conference for the film, “The science was important.” I wanted to make the movie credible. So, of course, we researched as much as we could and tried to give it as much authenticity as we could.”

Well, let’s just say the real-world scientists didn’t exactly hand out a gold star.

The critics were waiting with their calculators and textbooks, and they had a field day. Ian O’Neill over at Discovery News pointed out the obvious: those solar flares aren’t exactly going to turn our cities into charcoal. That’s just not how physics works, folks. Then you’ve got Erin McCarthy of Popular Mechanics, who called the movie out for mixing up actual science with straight-up numerology. She rightly noted that the film confuses mathematical modeling—the stuff that actually runs our world—with mystical, occult-style number crunching.

The IMDb goofs page for this is, as you’d expect, packed.

Maybe they also reacted to the tone shifts, which are violent mood swings. It’s grim, it’s moody, and it features one of the most hilariously nihilistic endings in modern cinema as — spoiler — everyone dies right after Cage makes up with his angry old father. 

Then the kids ride those space arks to a place where the Tree of Life lives. 

The end.

Who the hell came up with this idea?

The road to the screen is often messier than the movies themselves. Back in 2001, novelist Ryne Douglas Pearson walked into a room with producers Todd Black and Jason Blumenthal. His pitch was a total hook: imagine a 1950s time capsule being opened, only to reveal a list of every major disaster that’s happened since, and it ends with the cryptic “EE,” standing for “Everyone Else.” 

Naturally, the majors got their hands on it first. It was set up at Columbia Pictures, and for a minute there, it was a hot potato. You had guys like Rod Lurie and Donnie Darko’s Richard Kelly attached to direct. Can you imagine a Richard Kelly version of this? Southland Tales follow-up? Please, Mandala Effect, activate.

Writers Stiles White and Juliet Snowden were to take a crack at the script before Proyas came on. He was hooked because the script wasn’t just a disaster flick; it was a character study about how knowing your own end date would absolutely wreck your life.

But guess what? As wild and critically hated as this was, it made $80 million on a $50 million budget. Guess who liked it? Roger Ebert. He gave it four out of four stars and proclaimed, “Knowing is among the best science-fiction films I’ve seen—frightening, suspenseful, intelligent and, when it needs to be, rather awesome.”

In short: Cage gets apophenia, starts seeing patterns in everything, it rips off a lot of Childhood’s End, yells stuff like “I’m not saying that 81 people are going to die tomorrow, okay? I’m just trying to understand why this is saying they will!” and it ends with him answering his dad like this:

Rev. Koestler: This isn’t the end, son.

John Koestler: I know.

If he had said knowing instead of know, I might have suddenly run into the streets of my small city and screamed, “KNOWING!” as if Pee-Wee had said the secret word.

Proyas hasn’t made a movie — outside of shorts — since Gods of Egypt, but he has said he’s making his own version of R.U.R., which would be interesting after I, Robot. I’m lining up for the first day because he has the insane energy I want. 

I also understand why normal people would absolutely hate this.

Two hundred solar flares out of five.

You can watch this on Tubi.