The wildest part? I had seen the end of this movie as a child, like the last minute or so of it, and my dad didn't want me to see it and turned it off (Neville, Charlton Heston's character, was dying; I don't think I grokked death back then, and he wasn't ready to share it with me). I had no idea this 98-minute "entertainment break" would fit into the Great Awakening so well!

Seriously, I had just wanted to take a break, and fill in some missing holes from my childhood. I did that -- and also, those filled holes reflect the current reality! Wild. (How many does it take to fill the Albert Hall? But now sad, because all the music we enjoyed was likely tainted...)

There was a "Planned Parenthood" section in the pharmacy; I had taken a screencap, and just after that the dialog included "birth control pills"!!!

Also race-mixing, Neville and Lisa, the black leading lady.

The movie is full of "apocalyptic one-liners", like the first line as he's driving around an empty city and gets a flat and crashes, somewhat -- "There's never a cop around when you need one." He talks to a statue sitting at a table in his apartment which he plays chess with.

Last night I watched two Deep Mind productions; a movie about AlphaGo which beat the top Go player; and another about beating Starcraft 2 players. So it was neat to see a reference to another game-theory device in tonight's entertainment. :)

There's a scene from Woodstock near the beginning, and it included "walk out in the street"! Copied from the subtitles:

This is realIy beautiful, man. You know, like, you have to realize the turnabout that l've gone through in the last three days. Just to look, just to see, just to really realize what's really important. The fact that if we can't all live together and be happy...

...if you have to be afraid to walk out in the street...

...if you have to be afraid to smile at somebody, right? What kind of a way is that to go through this life?

The news in the movie includes war with Russia and China:

This is your commentator, Jonathan Matthias, with another bulletin. And now, as the Sino-Russian border war continues to rapidly escalate, U. S. authorities are beginning to question to what degree we will become involved in what could swiftly grow into global conflict.

The bad guys are called "The Family" which reminds me of Godfather III.

Dialogue of the bad guys is pretty bad, but includes that they don't want to use technology because it will result in "the curse" all over again. They decry "users of the wheel" -- but they used a device to lob burning objects at his penthouse! That was rather amusing, they're like demoncrats, they really want to be in power but can't do simple math (etc).

More dialog, from news broadcasts in the movie, which matches up quite well with what we're going through (ch-ch-ch-ch-changes, and again, sad):

Already hospital facilities have begun to crack under the strain and civiI-defense authorities state the situation is the same across the country.

Martial law is now nationwide. Major cities in alI parts of the country, New York, Los Angeles report plague victims falling dead in the streets, in their homes, at work.

More news which reads just as they wanted it to be during today's event!!! They want us to shelter in place; stay in our homes; clear the streets and highways!

Whether a state of war between China and Russia still exists is not important any longer. Our fellow countrymen are dying. The very foundations of civilization are beginning to crumble under the dread assault of that horror long feared, germ warfare.

CONELRAD channel. This is a class-one emergency. All civilian traffic is barred from streets and highways. Stay in your homes. Stay in your homes. Those found without specific military orders are subject to summary execution.

In a flashback, Neville goes down in a helicopter, I mean the thing almost pancakes, and he crawls away with no broken bones.

After returning to his apartment/shelter, he states:

l was lucky today. Believe me, l was lucky. He tried a gambit and it almost worked. But ended up a stalemate with the Family down three pawns. What do you think his next move wiIl be?

Endgames are always full of surprises, aren't they?

I burst out laughing just then! They certainly are. Including the surprise of thinking I was filling in a childhood memory gap/movie I didn't see much of (literally, like 30 seconds I think) -- and seeing reference to the endgame we're going through!!!

Wife and I watched the most recent two Marvel movies a few weeks ago; the second one is "Endgame" and has a very similar storyline -- half the people die due to "some technology" (energy stones or whatever), and the good guys' job is to bring them back. Really liked the Dr. Strange bit about the alternate timelines, all of which led to loss except one.

I like Neville's sense of humor, although it does come off a bit dry in most cases. This one wasn't so dry; he was caught by the bad guys, and they took him into "the little room for questioning", and once there he said:

Tell me something, would you? Are you fellas really with the Internal Revenue Service?

And although that was humor, it also appears that organization is about to go by the wayside, so again, the humor and story aligns with this endgame.

The Family talks like demoncrats as well!

Barbarians? You calI us barbarian? Well... This is an honorable name. We mean to cancel the world you civilized people made. We will erase history from the time that machinery and weapons threatened more than they offered. And when you die the last living reminder of heIl

will be gone.

When he is saved from being burned at the stake by the black lady, she holds him at gunpoint and orders him up against the wall; her dialog includes:

Now, put your hands out. Out. Way out about shoulder high, like they're gonna crucify you, baby.

I remember reading recently here about that pose; that musicians will do it to "appear Christ-like" and that it's almost always blasphemy when musicians do it, since the musicians that make it through their casting-couch gauntlet are compromised.

Then, at the end of the movie, his dying pose was similarly crucifixion-like. Both scenes rang that particular bell.

He meets a guy who was doing his post-doc when the world ended, who recites Neville's paper:

Biowar Pathology Perimeters in Urban and Semi-Urban Environments. Journal of Military Medicine, June, 1974. Incremental effects, countermeasures to toxic agents, and liquid systems delivery. Microbiological Letters, January, 1975. Remember?

Lisa's brother Richie was described as being close to a "tertiary case" which sounds a lot like what we're hearing in the news about the virus being able to mutate, and people in China being re-infected a second and even third time (third and tertiary share a root). He then makes a reference to the Wizard of Oz:

We're not that far gone, but we're on the road. The yellow-brick road. We're off to see the wizard.

Also talks about the virus being more impactful on the elderly, and that children seem especially immune to it! Like the Kung Flu:

When it hit, the older people either died or went to the third stage fast you know, blindness in light, albinism, psychotic illusions, occasional stages of torpor, like Matthias and the things out there.

-What about you? Why didn't you get it?

-I don't know. Some of the younger people have a kind of resistance. l don't know, we just hold out.

Neville and the student are discussing the "turning process" (so it's somewhat a "zombie movie" although they aren't shuffling (every day, again, sad) about and moaning for brains), that a friend of his turned and he had to kill him. Lisa then says:

If the Masonic rites are over, how about Richie?

That's just outta left field! So, she's saying that the Masons are known for having rituals that involve killing? (And/or, zombies?) Wow!!!

A little girl asks Neville, "Are you God?" as he's putting her in a car.

Neville hands Lisa a gun as he's going to refill the generator, and she asks "What's this for?" He replies, "Comfort." :)

Whoa. This next line I didn't notice as I watched it; jumped out at me while reviewing the subtitles. Neville is making a vaccine using antibodies from his own blood, and while doing this says:

l was a very peculiar doctor in those days -- trying to find treatments for diseases that hadn't existed tilI other doctors invented them.

That needs emphasis, I think -- he was saying, back in 1971, that doctors invent diseases!!!

Richie, Lisa's little brother, has a philosophical discussion with Neville about saving The Family using the cure, whether it'd work and whether it'd be the right thing to do, or to kill them all, or to just leave for the mountains like Neville was planning. Richie then goes to talk to them and try to help them, and they end up killing him. Reminds of Seth Rich, a little? (Name even rhymes!)

As they're planning their trip:

Where are we going?

-Away, that's aII. Just away. Someplace nobody ever bothered with. A river nobody ever dammed, a mountain nobody built any bloody freeways to, where everything we do will be the first time it happened.

- Hey, yeah, you got it. That's it. Just like in the beginning of the world. Like we were starting aIl over again in the Garden of Eden. Only this time, we don't trust no frigging snake.

They trash his place while he's held prisoner in a chair. This reminds me of the Simpson's episode where Bill Gates (HA!) "buys out" Homer's internet company; "Buy him out, boys!" and thugs wreck Homer's place. Homer objects, and Doctor Evil says, "I didn't get rich by writing checks!" No, he didn't, and he's got a lot to answer for.

I enjoyed this movie far, far more than I had expected! That's really neat. God bless.