End of Days is a 1999 supernatural film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.Schwarzenegger plays Jericho Cane, a retired police officer, who tries to commit suicide because his wife and daughter are killed while he is doing his job. He gets a job of protecting a Wall Street banker.Unknown to him, the Wall Street banker is possessed by Satan, who plans to unleash chaos by having sex with Christine York, the Chosen One to bear his child. Now Jericho has to protect her from Satan in order to save the world.The film is possibly the darkest in Arnold's career, containing very little cheeky dialogue and demoting Arnold to a tough but ordinary man instead of a traditional Action Hero.
The Ahnold: The writer pitched this script on how great it would be to hear Arnold Schwarzenegger say "I'm sending you back to Hell!" to the Devil. But when pitching End of Days to the man himself, he suddenly realised that "I can't 'do Arnie' to Arnie!" Fortunately Schwarzenegger said the line himself, thus avoiding any embarrassment.
Christianity is Catholic: And how. On New Year's Eve, the only people left in Manhattan are militant Catholics and equally militant Satanists (who subscribe to the Catholic interpretation of Satanism, of course).
More the way Hollywood views both. The theological issues with this movie could fill entire encyclopedias.
Complete Immortality: Satan mocks the hero for thinking he can beat him, since "you are just a man, and I...am FOREVER".
Curb-Stomp Battle - Jericho is brutally beaten by a large mob of satan worshippers in a bleak aversion of Schwarzenegger's usual One-Man Army routine.
Deconstruction/Playing Against Type: Instead of depicting Arnold as a practically unstoppable force of nature that can destroy almost everything in sight, this movie depicts his character, Jericho, as being genuinely flawed, such as being suicidal, not being able to do the death defying acts that the other heroes Arnold has played (not counting the scene where he has no strings to hold him down), and, in the end, there was not any other way to stop Satan from causing the End unless Jericho killed himself, but, at least Jericho can be with his family again.
In interviews, Schwarzenegger said that he took this role because he thought it was the perfect script to make his return to action movies, which makes the Playing Against Type part even more weird.
Police Are Useless - One officer on discovering an elderly, injured man crucified to the ceiling with scalpels with no ladder or other platform in sight, suggests that he did it himself. Jericho asks how he could have got the last scalpel in, which, yes, is certainly one reason to doubt this theory.
Poor Communication Kills - Everything could have gone much more smoothly if the Church had just spent five minutes to explain everything to Arnold and Christine- or, even better, not tried to have Christine killed every opportunity they got. If they had tried to protect Christine, and not assumed she was a Satanist simply because the Devil chose her, there would have been far less bloodshed.
The Church did try to protect Christine. It was an extremist fringe group that tried to kill her.
The Gods Must Be Lazy - No explanation is given as to why God is nowhere to be seen while Satan trashes downtown New York.
Three-Way Sex - The devils beds a cultist's wife and daughter.
We All Live in America - The end of days does not take place in the Holy Land or in Rome but... in New York.
Unconventional Smoothie - Jericho mixes one in his apartment consisting of coffee, pepto-bismol, Chinese food leftovers, remnant beer, a slice of pizza found on the floor, possibly more as the camera cuts away for extended periods during the process. Just before drinking, Jericho remarks that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
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