Survive the Future By Being Ferocious or Fabulous
Stuck in a post-apocalyptic wasteland? According to Hollywood, you have two choices…
Stuck in a post-apocalyptic wasteland? You have two choices…
If movies have taught us anything, it’s that we will, at some point, be forced to survive during some kind of lawless dark period characterized by brutal anarchy. Luckily, we have a choice. We can survive by becoming ruthless, badass warriors of the wasteland, or we can show a little pizazz, whip out those jazz hands, and PUT ON A SHOW! So which will it be? Ferocious or Fabulous?
MAD MAX: BEYOND THUNDERDOME
Ferocious – Max
Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
Lifestyle Pros: As a complete loner, Max can pretty much go wherever he wants, do whatever he wants, and grow the most ridiculous mullet this side of an Ontario beer league. His car is his castle.
Lifestyle Cons: His nomadic life is fueled by deep emotional scars and a thirst for a vague form of vengeance that will never be satiated. Also, he wears a lot of black leather in the scorched earth of post-apocalypse Australia, which is not a good idea. By noon, he goes from looking like Jim Morrison in 1968 to looking like Jim Morrison now.
Fabulous – Dr. Dealgood
Photo: Warner Bros. / Everett Collection | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
Lifestyle Pros: As the official emcee of Thunderdome, Dr. Dealgood is the only man who gets to enter and leave without having to kill anyone or be subject to potential killing. All this because he perfected his Vincent Price schtick and bought a boss coat.
Lifestyle Cons: Like the Ryan Seacrest of the wasteland, Dr. Dealgood needs to supplement his Thunderdome hosting duties with hundreds of other gigs because, honestly, what does he get? Three matches a month, tops? So he is forced to whore himself and his catchphrase out to everything from used cars to Bartertown’s world famous Kentucky Fried Fowl-Like Substance chain (“Ladies and gentlemen….fyin’ time’s here!”).
TRON: LEGACY
Ferocious – Rinzler
Photo: Walt Disney Pictures | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
Lifestyle Pros: Rinzler is the top dog’s right hand man/bodyguard, so while CLU has to stress about keeping order and invading humanity, he can just sit silently and wait to get tapped on the shoulder whenever someone needs a hasty de-rezzing. People get out of your way when they see him, not even realizing that underneath that cool biker helmet he’s actually Bruce Boxleitner.
Lifestyle Cons: Despite once being a highly advanced security program, Rinzler can, apparently, be easily hacked and modded into a half-assed Darth Maul. That doesn’t inspire confidence in his security skills.
Fabulous – Castor
Photo: Walt Disney Pictures | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
Lifestyle Pros: As owner of the End of the Line Club, Castor seems to have a pretty cushy gig in an otherwise bleak and violent computer wasteland. He provides “entertainment,” doing so with flair and a Day-Glo walking stick that would have been absolute catnip to 80s-era Elton John. He’s like a sentient ecstasy tablet.
Lifestyle Cons: While most computer program denizens of this world serve a specific function, whether its being a worker, being a soldier, or dropping fat beats (seriously, who installed that DaftPunk.exe file?), Castor’s whole Cyber-David-Bowie-Meets-Joel-Grey-Inside-Lady-Gaga schtick seems like a puzzling mistake.
ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK
Ferocious – Snake Plissken
Photo: AVCO Embassy Pictures | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
Lifestyle Pros: Snake is such an all-conquering badass that he’s actually famous. Everywhere he goes, people know who he is (but, of course, believe him to be dead and/or short). Snake once instigated another World War and shut off the world.
Lifestyle Cons: He gets arrested with alarming frequency. Also, even though his name is legendary, it doesn’t inspire people to cut Snake a wider path, it kind of makes them want to kill him even more vehemently. Most of his “friends” have or will betray him at some point. Except for Fresno Bob. You know what they did to Bob, huh?
Fabulous – The Broadway Cabaret Dancers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0rTGwBKip4
Lifestyle Pros: Sure, you’re up on a dilapidated stage in drag prancing around for a room full of homeless bums (that is to say, “performing on Broadway”), but one thing you AREN’T is down in the theater basement getting recreationally beaten or passed around like a communal fleshlight for those few hours. Plus, your signature song is pretty great: “Shoot a cop/With a gun/The Big Apple is plenty of fun…”
Lifestyle Cons: The wrap parties involve you getting recreationally beaten and passed around like a communal fleshlight.
THE HUNGER GAMES
Ferocious – Katniss Everdeen
Photo: Courtesy of Lionsgate | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
Lifestyle Pros: Not only does Katniss get to defy gender stereotypes by being a hunter-gatherer, she is enough of a badass to volunteer for the Hunger Games before turning into the fulcrum of a revolution. Considering her other career option was “starve to death,” that’s pretty cool. Also? No vampires.
Lifestyle Cons: “Do you remember how awesome my Sweet 16 was? My mom got me a new quiver of arrows, my aunt promised to take me on a shopping spree at the galleria, and I was forced to kill some of my classmates for the entertainment of the docile masses. Totes awesome.”
Fabulous – Caesar Flickerman
Photo: Courtesy of Lionsgate | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
Lifestyle Pros: The wealthy 1% of Panem are foppish, sure, but Caesar has been given free reign to take it to the next level, fashioning himself into an unholy cross between Tim Gunn, Barbara Walters, and the Madam puppet. Anywhere else, he’d be the object of ridicule, but here he is in his element.
Lifestyle Cons: Despite working his powdered ass off, he will always be the #2 ticket in town behind that annoying little thing where tweens murder each other in cold blood on live television. What more does a “man” have to do, you know?
ROCK & RULE
Ferocious – Omar
Photo: MGM | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
Lifestyle Pros: Despite being a mutated dog living in the bombed-out wasteland of post-World War III America, Omar still manages to dick around with his buddies in a lame garage band while holding no discernible job. The essence of humanity endures!
Lifestyle Cons: Playing it too cool with your way-out-of-your-league mutant girlfriend means she’ll likely be kidnapped and forced to summon an inter-dimensional demon using only the power of her voice. A voice provided by Debbie Harry, no less.
Fabulous – Mok
Photo: MGM | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
Lifestyle Pros: In this rodent-populated new world, genderless fops don’t just survive, they rule. Mok is a pale, rail-thin something that makes Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie look like Bear Grylls, and he’s the most powerful person in Ohmtown. Because the 1980s, that’s why.
Lifestyle Cons: You have done so much of the post-apocalyptic version of coke that becoming the world’s biggest rock icon and the only person not engaging in alleyway knife fights for scraps of food isn’t good enough. You need MORE POWER and, well, we know how those cokehead dreams always fare.
DEMOLITION MAN
Ferocious – John Spartan
Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
Lifestyle Pros: You were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sent away to Cryo-prison, only to emerge over 30 years later to get your job back. That’s the kind of job security people would commit voluntary manslaughter for. Plus, having been around during the, um, “savage” 90s means you are the toughest guy in every room without even trying.
Lifestyle Cons: You can’t swear, shoot people indiscriminately, or put boots to asses on the regular, which severely limits your ability to engage in your hobbies. Plus, sex in the future has become little more than Xbox Kinect, which is a blessing for gamer virgins but tough on dudes who actually get play.
Fabulous – Associate Bob
Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
Lifestyle Pros: By dressing as a Bob’s Big Boy geisha, Associate Bob is given a cushy job and plenty of protection from dirty, beardy sewer dwellers like Denis Leary. They know his name at Taco Bell, so, you know, he’s kind of a big deal. Never met a dinner party he didn’t totally pwn.
Lifestyle Cons: Eating nothing by Taco Bell means you have to scour San Angeles for kimonos that come in “husky.” Not an easy task.
DOOMSDAY
Ferocious – Eden Sinclair
Photo: Rogue Pictures | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
Lifestyle Pros: Eden survived a massive viral outbreak and only lost her eye in the process – an eye, incidentally, that was replaced with a badass remote camera eye that she can pop in and out when stalking perps or making her own deeply unsettling sex tapes.
Lifestyle Cons: Being “the best loose cannon” or “a loose cannon who happens to be the best” or whatever variation Doomsday has come up with means you are the first one tapped for the truly shit work. Like going to Scotland.
Fabulous – Sol
Photo: Rogue Pictures | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
Lifestyle Pros: By tossing in a wee bit o’ punk rock, Sol elevates the entertaining fop into something less “Cabaret” and more Johnny Rotten. Still, he has used what limited resources he has to craft a Cirque du Soleil of murder, and that’s a little over the top.
Lifestyle Cons: Sol is constantly at war with his own father over who gets to have the most contrived gimmick: “Well, my gang are clearly Mad Max-in-1972-Manchester,” “Well, MY gang are medieval knights…” and his enormous Mohawk makes decapitation kind of inevitable, really.
BONUS: Ferocious or Fabulous in Days of Yore
GLADIATOR
Ferocious – Maximus
Photo: DreamWorks | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
Lifestyle Pros: Maximus Decimus Meridius was the greatest and most revered generals in the Roman army and then, after being defamed and left for dead, he rises up to be the greatest and most revered gladiator in the Roman coliseum. The man takes a talent for killing and makes it really work for him, you know?
Lifestyle Cons: Maximus is, after all, a slave, and that tends to limit your options a bit. Also, the current Emperor wants him dead as badly as he wants to bang his own sister, so he’ll keep throwing whatever he can into the ring in a desperate effort to stop Maximus’ winning streak: Tigers, Gauls, flaming sheep, zombies, Beef Supreme in the Ass-dozer…
Fabulous – Cassius
Photo: DreamWorks | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
Lifestyle Pros: Cassius is the Bruce Vilanch of ancient Rome, who dons a Lucille Ball fright wig and some fake eyelashes (oh, wait, would that make him the Kathy Griffin of ancient Rome?) to get the crowd amped for each and every gladiator contest. By virtue of that, he gets to have a lavish life without having to navigate the backstabbery of the Senate or battle it out on the frontlines with the army.
Lifestyle Cons: Even in Rome, where eunuchs on tricycles are considered party favors, Cassius gets zero respect. Think about it – when the stories of Rome’s greatness are passed down, no one is penning odes to the chubby, fey hype men who were basically opening acts for murder.