k o m p l e x i f y

The face of monsters is changing, and it’s not pretty.

Or rather, it is pretty, and that’s the problem.

Once upon a time, vampires were undead bloodsuckers who lacked reflections, were scared of lower-case t‘s, and could be dispatched by a stake, sunlight, or garlic.   Werewolves were infected lycanthropes who transformed under full moons and could be killed by silver or cured by hierarchical murder.  Zombies were infected animated corpses that sought to eat your brains but could be taken out with a double-tap to theirs.

In other words, monsters were, well, monsters: scary and evil.

But lately, things have begun to change.  Vampires avoid the sun not because they’ll burst into flames, but because they’ll burst into FABULOUS!  Werewolves transform not into hideous man-wolves, but into overgrown Labradors.  Zombies may not have brains in their heads, but they sure as hell have product in their hair.  It’s almost as if someone said, “Hey, monsters are great for the nerds and geeks and goths out there, but what about the popular and attractive people? What about their needs?”

Apparently, one person was brave enough to answer that call.  Legend has it, she studied the movie Underworld, which involves an ill-fated love story set against an age-old battle between vampires and werewolves, and identified 5 areas for improvement by which the whole thing could be made palatable by the clientele of Abercrombie and Fitch, namely

1. All monsters should be more hunky and less bitey.
2. All traces of action should be removed.
3. The heroine must be the daughter of an recognized authority figure and be prettier than all her friends.
4. The heroine must, at all times, have at least two handsome, antagonistic suitors with awesome hair vying for her attention at all times.
5. Despite all the things going for her, the heroine must spend all of her time feeling, like, totally unloved and unpopular until the audience’s patience runs out.

And Stephanie Meyers wrote Twilight.

Now, to be honest, I haven’t read Twilight or the rest of the so-called saga, although to be fair I did try, only to give up at the reveal that vampires were descended from sparkly sparkly disco balls instead of bats.  (I have, however, seen the resulting movies, which can be summarized as:

• Twilight: A romance between an expressionless, emotionless, not-quite-human teen… and her vampire boyfriend. (I contend Kristen Stewart jokes will never get old.)
• New Moon: Bella spends the first half of the movie trying to get her werewolf friend to take off his shirt, while spending the second half trying to get the vampire to put his shirt back on again.
• Eclipse: Basically the same thing as Underworld, but with camping instead of latex and guns.
• Breaking Dawn: Wait… I have to sit through two movies for this?  Oh, hell no.)

Nevertheless, the same 5-step process above  can be — and has been — applied to any manner of monster story, converting the traditionally flawed geek/goth-centric movie version into the new and improved ones we see today, fit for popular girls… a process we here at komplexify call Twilightification:

That is, if we twilightify the vampires and werewolves of Underworld, we get the Twilight saga.

What about zombies, another staple of movie-monster fare?  Start with a well-established zombie flick, but replace their undead cravings from “brains” to “Beiber,” add a few Shakespeare references, and boom:

Can one twilightify invading aliens?  Start with a classic alien invader — say, the body snatcher type — add two hunky love interests and the words “Stephanie Meyer” to the title slate, and voila:

What about twilightifying a generic monster?  Start off with the most iconically generic monster — “The Beast” — and change his beastly affliction from monstrous teeth and hair to unsightly tattoos and facial piercings, switch things up by adding two feuding girlfriends, and you have it:

In fact, fairy tales are apparently ideal for twilightification.  For example, change the big bad wolf into Twilight-style werewolves but retain the heroine’s unique fashion sense, add two hunky suitors, and boom:

What about witches and dwarves?  Add a second love interest, Thor say, and boom:

Even non-monster movies can twilightified!  For example, take a popular Japanese movie  in which high schoolers are dumped on a deserted island and made to kill each other for sport.  Make the heroine pretty, give her two suitors, and avoid the gore and bam!

Behold the new face of monster movies: fangless, clawless, and devoid of all horror.

At least it has dreamy eyes.  And rock-hard abs.

[ Chris Pine and Karl Urban are running through the red-plant forest from War of the Worlds while being chased by the natives from Raiders of the Lost Ark. ]

Chris Pine: This opening scene shows us that this is not your parent’s Star Trek movie!

Karl Urban: No… it’s apparently your parent’s Steven Spielberg movie instead.

[ They escape by cliff-diving, where the starship Enterprise is resting on the bottom of the freaking ocean.  They enter the bridge, which still looks like an Apple store's Genius Bar, and contact Simon Pegg in engineering, which still looks like a Budwesier brewery. ]

Simon Pegg: Cap’n, it’s time to go.  The salt water’s corrodin’ the nacelles and floodin’ me kilt.

Karl Urban: That‘s the problem?  This starship is at the bottom of the ocean… Even assuming a ridiculously shallow depth of 500 feet, there should be at least 15 atmospheres of pressure pushing in on this ship from all directions.  How many atmospheres can the Enterprise withstand?

Pegg: Well, it’s a space ship, so I’d say anywhere between 0 and 1.

Urban: What, was it built by Planet Express?

Chris Pine: Never mind the questionable physics, we need to beam Zachary Quinto out of that active volcano before his freeze bomb detonates.

Pegg: Sorry, cap’n, I canna beam ‘im through that volcanic activity.

Pine: Aren’t you the same guy who, in the last movie, jerry-rigged a broken-down transporter to beam the pair of us onto a starship located billions of lightyears away while it was itself moving faster than the speed of light?  And now we can’t beam up a guy less than 5 miles away... because it’s too smoky?

Pegg: Aye.

[ The Enterprise rises from the ocean floor, the sight of which completely destroys the indigenous religion and becomes their new God, the profound implications of which  are never to be considered again during the movie.  Oh, and they beam up Quinto, too. ]

[ Meanwhile, back on Earth in London, Noel Clarke's daughter is dying in a hospital. ]

Benedict Cumberbatch: As a fellow BBC thespian, I will save your daughter by giving her some of my mysterious super-blood, in exchange for which you will suicide-bomb the hell out of a Starfleet bunker.  By the way, I’m totally not Khan.

Noel Clarke: Man, I should’ve stayed on the TARDIS. [ Blows up. ]

[ Meanwhile, back on Earth in San Francisco. ]

Bruce Greenwood: Chris Pine, you’ve violated the Prime Directive, falsified official documents, and violated at least 17 bestiality laws with those two naked cat-chicks in your hotel room last night.  You’ve got no right to be in Starfleet, much less commanding its flagship Enterprise.  You’re off the ship, and back to the Academy.

Pine: Man, this sucks.

Greenwood: On second thought, why don’t you be my first officer on the Enterprise again?

Pine: Awesome.

Greenwood: Let’s hope nothing terribly incapacitating happens to me in the next, say, five minutes so that you’ll get another battle-field promotion to Captain like in the last movie.

[ Cumberbatch flies up in Airwolf, kills him, and beams away. ]

Greenwood: Ah, shit. [Dies. ]

Peter Weller: Dammit!  It turns out that Benedict Cumberbatch, who is totally not Khan by the way, has declared war on Starfleet, but is hiding on the Klingon’s home-world of Kronos.  Chris, I need you to take our most recognizable vessel, violate all of our treaties with the Klingons by entering the Neutral Zone, and utterly murder Benedict without trial by nuking him with these 72 utterly mysterious photon torpedoes, which you will fire without provocation on Kronos, in all likelihood starting an all-out war with the Klingon Empire in the process.  Do you have any problems with this?

Pine: Just one.  If their home world is called Kronos, why the hell are they called Klingons instead of Kronons or Kronians or something like that?

[ Chris Pine gets the gang back together in the Mystery Machin-- I mean, the Enterprise. ]

Pine: All right, gang, here’s the mission. We’re going to take Starfleet’s most recognizable vessel, violate our treaties with the Klingons by entering the Neutral Zone, and utterly murder Benedict Cumberbatch, who is not Khan, by nuking him with these 72 utterly mysterious photon torpedoes, which we will fire without provocation on the Klingon home-world, in all likelihood starting an all-out war with the Klingon Empire in the process.  Do you have any problems with this?

Zachary Quinto: I have a problem with this.  It’s immoral and illogical.

Pine: Shut up.  I’m replacing you as Chief Science Officer with Alice Eve in lingerie.

Simon Pegg: I too have a problem with this.  It’s immoral and dangerous.

Pine: Shut up.  I’m replacing you as Chief Engineer with Anton Yelchin.  Get off my ship.

Anton Yelchin: It’s a good thing our characters are completely interchangeable and don’t have definite roles that have been established for, say, almost fifty years!

Pine: Seeing as how nobody else has a problem, let’s go to Kronos.

[ Pause. ]

Pine: Wait.  I’ve just realized what we’re doing is immoral, illogical, and dangerous.  Let’s do the right thing, and bring in Cumberbatch to stand trial!

Pegg [ at home ]: Son of a…

[ The Enterprise, sans Simon Pegg, goes to Kronos, but gets a flat tire, which is pronounced as "warp core malfunction" in the future. ]

Pine: My ship is broke.  How should we get Benedict Cumberbatch now?  Who I shall emphasize again is not Khan?

Quinto: The only logical answer should be obvious, Captain.  This is a summer blockbuster action movie.  If we follow the plot from similar such movies such as The Dark Knight or The Avengers or Skyfall, we should chase the villain, have him handily beat our asses for a while before suddenly surrendering, whereupon we shall imprison him in a large glass cell until he reveals his backstory and escapes.

Pine: Sounds like a plan!  Zoe Saldana, come along for comic relief.

Zoe Saldana: Oh no you di’int!

[ They chase the villain to Kronos, where they meet Klingons.  They all get the shit kicked out of them by Benedict Cumberbatch, who suddenly surrenders and is brought back to the Enterprise and placed in a large glass cell. ]

Pine: So why did those Klingons look so weird?  Is this one of the consequences of the whole “Alternate Timeline” thingy established in the last movie?

Quinto: No, Captain.  Klingon faces just get retconned about as often as Time Lords.

Cumberbatch: Two Doctor Who jokes already and not a single mention of Sherlock?  Enough, inferior fools.  Time for my completely unexpected backstory.

[ Pause. ]

Cumberbatch: I’m Khan.

Quinto: You’re Khan?  Khan… Noonien… Singh?  Apparently racebending exists in the twenty-third century.

Cumberbatch: I am a genetically engineered superman from 300 years in your past.  Peter Weller awoke me to design weapons to be used in a new war with the Klingons.  My comrades are asleep in those mysterious torpedoes Peter Weller gave you.  Also, he slashed your tires and is on his way to kill you right now.

[ Suddenly an evil Starfleet ship comes out of warp.  We know it's evil because its big and black and covered with spikes and skulls and stuff. ]

Peter Weller: You’re coming with me, Khan!

Cumberbatch: Is that a Robocop 2 reference?

[ The USS Enterprise warps back to Earth, but the USS MurderDeathKill warps faster and shoots the hell out of it, causing it to suddenly fall out of warp.  ]

Quinto:  That is most illogical.  I do not understand how the almost instantaneous deceleration from faster-than-light speed to a full stop did not cause the crew to be spattered and crushed against the interior walls of the ship, Captain.

Pine: Never mind that… why the hell does warp travel look exactly like the East Australian Current from Finding Nemo?

Simon Pegg: It’s alright, Cap’n.  I’ve stowed meself a’board the evil vessel and have temporarily disabled its weapons and thrusters, ’cause there’s nothing more exciting than watching two ships just floating through space aimlessly for a half hour.

Pine: We need to get over to that ship and stop Peter Weller.  But how?

Quinto: Perhaps we should recycle another plot point from a summer blockbuster.  I suggest we redo the “space jump” scene from our last movie, except this time do it horizontally through space instead of vertically through air.  But let’s keep the sound of wind rushing past for no apparent reason.

Benedict: By the way, I suppose it’s about time for for me to escape and betray you, don’t you think?  What do you say to letting me come with you?

Pine: What could possibly go wrong?

[ They space jump.  Horizontally, this time. It's thrilling, especially when Chris Pine's heads-up display gets damaged by space debris. ]

Chris Pine: Oh crap… I’ve switched off my targeting computer.  How will I ever get through this tiny corridor in space to reach the tiny exhaust port on the big evil Death Ship in one piece?

J.J. Abrams: You know I’m directing Star Wars next, right?  Use the Force, Kirk!

[ He does.  He and Cumberbatch arrive on the evil starship. ]

Peter Weller: How’d you get on my ship?  I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling kids.

Pine: Sorry, old man!  It’s time to arrest you and take you back to Starfleet for your own trial.

[ Cumberbatch instead crushes Weller's skull like a grape with is bare hands. ]

Pine: Or that, you know.  Whatever.

Cumberbatch: Alright, Enterprise.  Beam me my crew in their torpedo-slash-sleeping bags or I’ll suffocate you to death. I’ll give you some time to discuss this amongst yourselves and find a way to outsmart me while I google for some spoilers on Sherlock Series 4.

Zachary Quinto: Get me Leonard Nimoy!

Leonard Nimoy: Why am I in this movie again?  The whole point of the last Star Trek was to establish that you guys were now in an alternate timeline, allowing the franchise to go in new and exciting directions.  Now you’re recycling Khan and Old Spock because you can’t think of anything better to do?  What’s next?  You gonna hit me up to sell cars with you?

Quinto: Err…

How about we just take the sleeping dudes out of the torpedoes and just beam over the outer casings with the warheads activated.

[ He does.  The USS MurderDeathKill blows up. ]

John Cho: Oh no!  The Earth’s gravity has suddenly decided to affect us now that we’ve conveniently dispatched the enemy ship.  We’re all going to die!

Chris Pine: Not if I go into the heavily irradiated warp core and fix the delicate but  misaligned nuclear power source by kicking it repeatedly!

[ He does.  The Enterprise is saved, but Chris Pine remains locked in the radioactive room while Zachary Quinto talks to him through the door. ]

Pine: Er… dying act… clever twist on original… Star Trek 2 ending…  let’s not do anything more to make it… cheesy… okay?

Quinto: KHHHHAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN!

Pine: Damn, man. [ Dies. ]

[ Just then Benedict Cumberbatch pilots the surprisingly intact USS MurderDeathKill into downtown San Francisco, destroying several office skyscrapers, killing thousands of people and injuring millions more. ]

John Cho: Sir, Benedict Cumberbatch has crashed his ship into a heavily populated metropolitan area.  There are probably millions of dead or injured people who could use our assistance.  What should we do?

Quinto: Could we completely ignore them and instead beam me down to chase Benedict around for a bit on flying squad cars for awhile?

Cho: Sure.

[ He does.  They fight.  Eventually Zoe Saldana beams down too and they subdue Benedict through a combination of phaser blasts, offensive Vulcan mind melds, and blunt force trauma to the head.  Karl Urban then synthesizes Cumberbatch's blood into a cure for death for Chris Pine, although not, apparently, for anybody else who died in the city. ]

Chris Pine: Well, it’s been one year since those horrible events take place, and since every high-ranking Starfleet officer was either killed or implicated in Peter Weller’s scheme… looks like I get to captain of the Enterprise again!  Kick. Ass.

THE END

[ The post-apocalyptic bio-weapon ravaged future, where the only two habitable places on Earth are England and Australia, which connected to each other only by a single gravity train called The Fall. ]

Colin Farrell: I’m a blue-collar working-class guy just trying to make a living in this dystopian future whilst lamenting about the nature of consciousness and free will in my spare time.  I may also be a good guy or a bad guy in this movie.  Why, I totally don’t recall that I played this same character in Minority Report.

Kate Beckinsdale: I’m a sexy British secret agent with a penchant for tight-fitting black clothes, kung fu, and fully automatic handguns.  I can also leap from impossibly tall buildings and still stick the landing in by latex boots.  Why, I totally don’t recall that I played this same character in the Underworld movies.

Colin: Ack! I just had another completely foreshadowing nightmare involving Jessica Biel!  These secret agent nightmares are ruining my life; therefore, I shall go to Rekall and have them stick even more secret agent dreams into my head.  What could possibly go wrong?

[ Colin walks from his apartment through what the audience definitely recalls as every exterior set used in Blade Runner. He goes to the Rekall office and meets their chief brain scrambler.]

Colin: John Cho from J.J. Abram’s Star Trek?  That would explain all the lens flare in this movie.

So will these new memories feel real?

John Cho:  What is real?  How do you define real?  If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by the brain.  Now, take this blue pill and sit into this chair while I plug your brain into a virtual world in which you are the savior.  Why, I can’t recall any similarities between this and the Matrix movies.

[ Just then a number of evil agents bursts into the room and shoots the hell out of everybody... except Colin, who defeats them with the power of Bullet Time^TM! ]

Colin: Whoa.  I know kung fu.

[ Colin runs home and tells his wife. ]

Kate: Sorry, Colin, but you’re actually a spy with computer-induced amnesia.  I suppose I could use any of the many tranquilizers I keep in my medical bag to subdue you and have you brainwashed again, but I’d rather just kill you.

[ Colin and Kate fight for a while, and then chase each other through a city that consists of a seemingly endless sequence of floating ledges that audiences will recall from Super Mario Bros.  Colin punches a brick, powers up with a mushroom that tells him he's really a secret agent, and escapes by riding The Fall from Australia to England. ]

Colin: This is a cool 17-minute trip with a nifty weightless “gravity reversal” switcheroo in the middle.  But… if the gravity train was in free-fall the whole time, I should experience weightlessness the whole time… so that doesn’t make any sense.

In fact, given the known average density of the Earth’s crust, mantle, and core and assuming a frictionless fall, physics says this trip would actually take about 46 minutes, so not only are we not experiencing free-fall, we’re actually accelerating rather rapidly the whole trip, meaning we should instead be plastered to the ceiling on the way down.

And that’s assuming we weren’t already completely barbecued by the intense twelve-thousand degree temperature at the Earth’s core…

You know what?  This is stupid.  I should’ve got my ass to Mars instead.

[ The Fall arrives in England.  A portly redheaded woman announces her stay will be "Two weeks" after which Colin is discovered wearing the digital mask of an Asian man.  This bit of original Total Recall trolling would have been especially clever if it weren't for the fact that the  immediately preceding scene showed the Asian man as one of Colin's assumed identities. ]

Colin: Oh, crap.  I’d better escape through this crowded building while a bunch of sleek white robots hunts me down in collusion with the police.  I totally don’t recall something just like this happening in I, Robot.

[ Just then a sexy chick in latex appears in a souped up car just as our hero is about to be caught. ]

Jessica Biel: Get in!  Quick, before I recall that this looks exactly like Quorra saving Sam in Tron Legacy.

[ Colin gets in.  They flee, pursued by the cops using futuristic cars hovering over a magnetic track.  ]

Colin: Wait, we’re stealing from Minority Report again?

Jessica:  Oops, hold on.

[ She swerves to a side road, in which the cars now float in the air, magnetically suspended below a magnetic track. ]

Jessica: How about we steal from The Fifth Element instead?

[ They crash the car conveniently close to Colin's pre-amnesia apartment, where he discovers an interactive hologram. ]

Holographic Colin: My responses are limited.  You must ask the right questions.

Colin: What, we’re back to ripping off I, Robot?

Holographic Colin: This whole movie’s a rip off.  Be thankful there’s a scene with the hot triple-tittied hooker again.

Listen, you’re really not you, you’re really a bad guy who’s secretly a good guy deep down.

[ The robo-cops and Kate show up at the apartment, where they have a fight inside a smallish cubical elevator that zips along the x-, y-, and z-axes amongst a maze of other similarly moving cubes.  Occasionally folks get dismembered when they try to leave the box from the wrong direction. ]

Colin: I totally don’t recall this from Cube!

[ They escape. ]

Jessica: We need to escape the city and see Mathias, the Kuato-character in this movie, played by Bill Nighy.

Colin: Cool.  The creepy little gut-mutant from the original Total Recall is being played by an actor known for playing the hideously decomposed boss vampire in Underworld and the anthropomorphic squid pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean 2. I can’t wait to see the make-up on him in this movie.

Completely ordinary Bill Nighy: ‘Ello.

Colin: Poop.

[ The robo-cops and Kate show up again, this time with Brian Cranston, who is the evil mastermind Cohaagen.  They kill Bill Nighy, capture Jessica, and attempt to reprogram Colin again by plugging him into another Matrix-style chair.  But because he is The One, he escapes.  Or something.  All these sci-fi movies are starting to look the same to me. ]

Colin: I need to get back on The Fall to stop the bad guys from sending their robo-cops to kill everyone in Australia for some reason or other.  I’ll fight off all these various bad guys in this  multi-story building-like elevator with no means of escape, armed only with this hand-gun.  I totally don’t recall anything like this happening in Die Hard.

[ The building begins to move. ]

Colin: …Or Die Hard 2.

[ The fight includes a number of baddies who bounce around the walls like they're free-runners. ]

Colin: …Or Die Hard 4.

[ Eventually The Fall lands in Australia, whereupon Colin -- who we've already established is sharp-shooting, kung-fuing, super spy -- gets his ass repeatedly beat down by a middle-aged politician. ]

Bryan Cranston: Apparently Breaking Bad is paying off for me!

[ Fortunately, Jessica shows up in a grounded plane and machine-guns the hell out of Bryan and his robot reinforcements. ]

Jessica: I totally don’t recall this from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

[ Kate Beckinsdale shows up one last time for what promises to be a full-on martial-arts throw-down, but Colin simply shoots her instead. ]

Colin: What was that about Raiders?

[ They blow up The Fall. ]

Colin: Wait… in the original Total Recall, my character powers up alien technology that terraforms Mars into a lush, living planet, giving humanity a new place to live and hope for their otherwise dangerously expanding population.  In this movie, my character blows up an elevator, thereby isolating the last two groups of humanity from each other, effectively speeding up their eventual demise.

Jessica: They should have called this Total Ripoff instead.

THE END.