The film was released by Universal Pictures in North America on November 24, 1999, and received largely negative reviews, but was a box office success grossing $212 million worldwide.
Plot
In 1979, a Vatican City priest witnesses a comet arching over the full moon, prophesying the birth of the mother of Satan's child. A corrupt cardinal insists that the child must die to stop Satan having sex with her, but the Pope rejects that plan as contrary to God's will and instead sends a Vatican-trained priest called Thomas Aquinas on a mission to find and protect the newborn baby. Meanwhile satanists in New York City have identified that baby, Christine York.
Twenty years later, during late December 1999, Satan possesses an investment banker at a restaurant. He then passionately kisses a business associate's wife without her consent, leaves the restaurant and causes it to explode. The following day he is assigned ex-New York City Police Department (NYPD) detective Jericho Cane (alcoholic and depressed since his wife and daughter's contract killings, for which he blames God) and his friend Bobby Chicago as his private security. When Aquinas tries to kill the banker, the pair prevent him, listen to the priest's ramblings and then hand him over to the NYPD. Marge Francis, an NYPD detective, tells Jericho that Aquinas has no tongue.
Jericho and Bobby investigate Aquinas's apartment, finding his tongue in a jar and messages and symbols written in blood on the walls. Jericho questions Father Kovak, a priest who knew Aquinas, who had been sent to New York before disappearing. However, Kovak refuses to tell him much else about Aquinas. Later in the evening, Satan confronts his head priest, the doctor to whom Christine had been taken just after her birth. He reveals that Satan's followers are ready to enact his plans.
An orphan since an early age, Christine now lives in an apartment with her guardian Mabel, one of the nurses who delivered her and also (unbeknown to Christine) another Satanist. While Christine dreams of the doctor's wife and daughter having sex with Satan, the doctor's family merges and suddenly transforms into her. The day after his visit to the doctor, Satan enters Aquinas's hospital, and crucifies him on the ceiling. After he is presumed dead, a doctor reads read "Christ in New York" carved in Latin into Aquinas' skin and when he revives a police officer under Satan's influence shoots him dead.
Jericho instead understands the carving as meaning Chris or Christine York and as he and Chicago begin searching for someone of that name they happen across the cardinal's Masonic Vatican Knights attempting to kill Christine. However, Satan then appears, immolates Chicago and a police car, and sets the apartment on fire.
Jericho fights off the Knights then Mabel and he and Christine flee. Marge and another officer, both revealed to be Satanists, demand that Jericho surrenders Christine. Jericho instead kills them both. Satan resurrects Marge to rally the other Satanists to do his bidding. Jericho and Christine take refuge in the church's crypt, the base for Kovak and his Vatican research team. He tells Jericho and Christine that Satan must impregnate her between 11pm and midnight on New Year's Eve to usher in the Apocalypse.
Christine stays in the crypt under Kovak's protection, and back at Jericho's apartment Satan confronts him and tempts him into giving up Christine in exchange for resurrecting his dead family. After Jericho resists his temptations, Chicago appears, and the two agree to retrieve Christine. At the church, Jericho again stops the cardinal and his Knights from killing Christine.
Satan reappears and kills the Vatican clergy. Chicago betrays Jericho, leaving him to be beaten and crucified by Satanists, revealing that he made a pact with Satan in exchange for his resurrection. After Chicago leaves with Christine, Kovak finds and rescues Jericho. After his recovery, Jericho tracks down Satan to his lair, kills Marge again and rescues Christine.
In the ensuing fight, Jericho convinces Chicago to resist Satan's influence. Satan later kills Chicago for breaking their pact. Jericho destroys the lair, escapes with Christine into a subway tunnel and boards a train. Satan follows them, killing the train's driver. Jericho fires a grenade, destroying the train car Satan was in. Satan leaves the banker's irreparably damaged body to die and instead pursues Jericho and Christine non-corporeally.
Jericho and Christine arrive at another church, where he renews his faith in God and prays for strength. Satan appears as a winged creature, possesses Jericho and attempts to rape Christine. Responding to her pleas, Jericho resists long enough to deliberately impale himself on a nearby sword, sacrificing himself to prevent Satan's endgame. At the stroke of midnight, Satan is sent back to hell. Jericho sees his wife and daughter waiting for him in the afterlife and dies peacefully. Christine embraces him as the world celebrates a new millennium. The ambulance then arrives and takes his dead body away.
Alternate ending
After Satan gets sent back to Hell, Jericho dies from his wounds, and Christine tearfully embraces his body and thanks him for saving her life. Suddenly, God removes the sword from Jericho's body and heals his wounds, bringing him back to life. Christine is surprised and glad Jericho is back, and they embrace before leaving the church together.[citation needed]
Directors Sam Raimi and Guillermo del Toro were offered End of Days, but turned it down due to other projects. Marcus Nispel was going to direct the film, but he left because of budget and script problems and was replaced by Peter Hyams.[6]
The role of Jericho Cane was written for Tom Cruise, but he chose to work on Magnolia and Arnold Schwarzenegger was then cast in March 1998.[7]Liv Tyler was the first choice for the role of Christine York, but she declined over contractual issues. Kate Winslet was then set to play the character, but she dropped out and Robin Tunney replaced her. According to Hyams,
Jim Cameron was the kind of godfather of me doing that film, because of his relationship with Schwarzenegger. He told me I was doing it! ... End Of Days was going to be Marcus Nispel, but it wasn't working somehow, but they had Arnold and a start date, and Jim came to me and told me I had to do it. This was the first picture Arnold had made for a couple of years. I think he had a heart thing. So this was Arnold coming back. And he wanted to try to make something good, and to take some chances. I applauded that. And we had very, very good actors around him, like Gabriel Byrne and Kevin Pollak and Rod Steiger. It was a very enjoyable experience. Half way through shooting I told Arnold I thought he should die in this movie. Of course Universal blanched at the idea, so I shot the ending both ways, and everybody agreed that the dying ending was the better one.[8]
In 2016, actress Miriam Margolyes complained about Arnold Schwarzenegger's behavior on set.[10][11] In 2022, Margolyes' reported that he farted in her face while on set.[12] Schwarzenegger did not respond to the allegations.[13][14]
The film's soundtrack primarily contains tracks by industrial rock and alternative metal bands. It features "Oh My God", the first song released by the "new line-up" of Guns N' Roses. During the editing of End of Days, soundtrack songs were overlaid in scenes that are usually silent in thriller films. In several scenes, a sample from Spectrasonics' "Symphony of Voices" is heard. The score for the film is composed by John Debney and conducted by Pete Anthony.
Release
End of Days opened on November 24, 1999 and was released on DVD and VHS on April 18, 2000.[15]
Reception
Box office
End of Days grossed $31 million in the United States and Canada from its five-day Wednesday opening. With a gross of $20.5 million in its opening 3-day weekend, it ranked third place at the US box office behind Toy Story 2 and The World Is Not Enough.[16] The film went on to gross $66,889,043 in the United States and Canada and $145.1 million elsewhere, for a worldwide total of $212million,[1] against a budget estimated at $100million. Although it was profitable because of strong international revenue and DVD sales, its final numbers fell short of Universal Studios' expectations. Schwarzenegger received a salary of $25million for his role in the film.[17]
Critical response
Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an 11% 'Rotten' score, based on 103 critic reviews with an average rating of 3.8/10. The site's consensus states: "An overblown thriller with formulaic action scenes and poor acting."[18]Metacritic gives the film a weighted average score of 34/100 based on 33 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.[19] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.[20]
Newsweek wrote that "Peter Hyams's lurid, FX-happy thriller slams pieces of a dozen other movies into a noxious new compound. It has to be seen to be believed, but who'd want to?"[21] while Mark Kermode called it "idiotic beyond the point of redemption, this sinfully stupid farrago manages to insult audiences and critics, Christians and Satanists alike, reducing 2000 years of fertile mythology to the level of an incoherent pop video.".[22]USA Today called Schwarzenegger's performance "among his worst" noting that he "seems to have trouble with his lines and doesn't get to make his trademark wisecracks".[23] The Los Angeles Times's critic Eric Harrison called it "bloodless as a cyborg, and it feels as if it has been assembled according to diagrams supplied by someone who studied every successful sci-fi action thriller and then multiplied the findings by 10".[24]The New York Times wrote that End of Days is "as incoherent about its mysticism as it is about anything else".[25]
However, there were a few mixed reviews. The San Francisco Chronicle stated that "there are moments in End of Days when Schwarzenegger seems to be gunning for an Oscar", but "those moments play like comic relief".[26]James Berardinelli called it "a deliciously bad motion picture"[27] while Roger Ebert stated that "End of Days involves a head-on collision between the ludicrous and the absurd" giving it two stars out of four.[28] In a retrospective editorial twenty years since the film's release, Bloody Disgusting highlighted how the film "is always fascinating and entertaining".[2]
Schwarzenegger later said he thought Hyams was "the wrong director" for the film. "He did not have the potential... I think visually and intellectually to really do something with that movie, but he was recommended by James Cameron, so we thought 'Well he must know.'"[29]
Accolades
End of Days was nominated for three Razzie Awards—Worst Actor (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Worst Supporting Actor (Gabriel Byrne) and Worst Director (Peter Hyams)—and was pre-nominated for Worst Picture, but it was withdrawn shortly before the awards ceremony.[citation needed]
It also received a nomination from the Motion Picture Sound Editors for Best Sound Editing - Effects & Foley as well as two nominations in the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards for Favorite Actor - Action/Science Fiction and for Favorite Supporting Actor - Action/Science-Fiction for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kevin Pollak respectively.
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian and American actor, businessman, former politician, and former professional bodybuilder, known for his roles in high-profile action films. He served as the 38th governor of California from 2003 to 2011.
The Church of Satan (CoS) is a religious organization dedicated to the religion of Satanism as defined by Anton Szandor LaVey. Founded in San Francisco in 1966, by LaVey, it is considered the "oldest satanic religion in continual existence", and more importantly the most influential, inspiring "numerous imitator and breakaway groups". According to the Church, Satanism has been "codified" as "a religion and philosophy" by LaVey and his church. Founded in an era when there was much public interest in the occult, witchcraft and Satanism, the church enjoyed a heyday for several years after its founding. Celebrities attended LaVey's satanic parties and he was invited on talk shows. His Satanic Bible sold nearly a million copies.
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Anton Szandor LaVey was an American author, musician, and LaVeyan Satanist. He was the founder of the Church of Satan, the philosophy of LaVeyan Satanism, and the concept of Satanism. He authored several books, including The Satanic Bible, The Satanic Rituals, The Satanic Witch, The Devil's Notebook, and Satan Speaks! In addition, he released three albums, including The Satanic Mass, Satan Takes a Holiday, and Strange Music. He played a minor on-screen role and served as technical advisor for the 1975 film The Devil's Rain and served as host and narrator for Nick Bougas' 1989 mondo film Death Scenes.
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Miriam Margolyes is a British and Australian actress. Known for her work as a character actor across film, television, and stage, she received the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mrs. Mingott in Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence (1993), and achieved international prominence with her portrayal of Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter film series (2001–2011). Margolyes was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2002 New Year Honours for Services to Drama.
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Blanche Barton is an American religious leader who is Magistra Templi Rex within the Church of Satan, and is addressed by Satanists as Magistra Barton.
Theistic Satanism, otherwise referred to as traditional Satanism, religious Satanism, or spiritual Satanism, is an umbrella term for religious groups that consider Satan, the Devil, to objectively exist as a deity, supernatural entity, or spiritual being worthy of worship or reverence, whom individuals may believe in, contact, and convene with, in contrast to the atheistic archetype, metaphor, or symbol found in LaVeyan Satanism.
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