Movies. We all like them. Some of us like a little escapism, others want something profound that can generate debate about its hidden meanings. Whether you’re into Steven Seagal marathons, the what-felt-like-ten-hours rape scene in Irreversible, or quaint Japanese animation, one thing we can all agree on is that movies are better than real life. Well, apart from that rape scene in Irreversible. That was fucking sour. Much like getting raped in real life, one would imagine. Art imitates life once more.

Anyway, that scene notwithstanding, I am a firm believer that movie lives are better than real lives. They’re more exciting. They cut out a lot of the boring bits. The pointless stuff. You never see anybody stood waiting for a bus for forty minutes and their iPod dies like it does to me. Movies don’t spend time showing us stuff like that. They cut to the chase. It takes months to train for a heavyweight boxing match in real life. Rocky does it in a four minute montage with a kick ass soundtrack. It’s a better life.

Now, I’m the first to admit, it’s not perfect. Obviously, if you’re a henchman working for Auric Goldfinger, then your life expectancy will be low. But I’m willing to bet that the health benefits and Christmas bonuses he dishes out will be much better than the pittance you’re getting from your job in Subway. Plus, you know, you get to travel, you get a gun, and when you die, you can have “thrown off satellite antenna during struggle with James Bond” emblazoned across your tombstone. How old is the average henchman? 40? Fuck it, what happens after 40?

Your hair starts falling out, kids think you’re square, you’ve got to get up three times a night to take a piss, all your favourite bands are now deemed “classic rock”, and then you keel over in your arm chair watching Corrie and give up the ghost. All your best years are at the start. Official. I’d happily sacrifice longevity for an awesome life working for a Bond supervillain. You give me twenty good years working for a company that cares with decent health insurance for my widow, and I’ll happily let 007 drop me into a tank of piranha on his way to saving the world.

And so while thinking about how much better movies are than actually being alive, I decided to construct this, my favourite five ways in which movies make our real lives seem inferior. I’m calling it, Five things that make movies better than real life.

Yeah, I know.

1. If you’re Asian, you probably know martial arts.

If you’re watching a movie and a Chinese guy turns up, there’s a pretty good chance that somebody is going to get a roundhouse kick. It’s a given. Ladbrokes probably wouldn’t even take the bet. Die Hard 4.0. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I seem to remember even Data managed to get one in in The Goonies. In Kill Bill they actually have places to put swords next to the arm rests on planes. Imagine that. If you tried getting on a plane with a sword in real life you’d do a stretch in the big house. In the movies, that many Japanese people carry swords with them that they have a place to put them next to the drinks holder on flights.

Asian people know kung fu. It doesn’t matter how old they are, if they’re male or female, or what line of work they’re in. It doesn’t matter if they’re a seventy year old bus driver; some motherfucker trying his luck to get on for a half when he’s clearly seventeen is going down. Big time.

In real life, what are Asian people? They’re barmen, and doctors, and people living on benefits watching Jeremy Kyle. They’re the same as us. And like us, some will know kung fu, and some won’t. It’s a normal life. But in the movies, our Eastern cousins are a force to be reckoned with. Almost always wise beyond their years and gifted in hand to hand combat. It’s a better life.

2. Your pets are generally safe (as long as they don’t have a starring role)

I think one of the saddest moments of my life so far was when I got home from school one day, went into my room, and discovered that my mother had thrown away the box I kept my Monsters In My Pocket in. I loved Monsters In My Pocket. I had them all. And she didn’t even ask, man. She just threw them out. Or worse, gave them to charity for some alleged orphans to enjoy. Well, guess what mother? It was me that broke your kettle in 1999. I put lemonade in it because I wanted to see what warm lemonade tasted like. And then it broke. And I said I didn’t know why it was broken, when really I did. So now we’re even.

Aside from that, one of my saddest days was when my dog died. I liked my dog. I mean sure, it used to chew my jeans whenever I tried to leave the house. It used to bark at me just for walking down the stairs. It used to frighten children who dared to walk past the house. In fact, it was a general nuisance. But damn it, I loved that hound. I would have had her stuffed and turned into a coffee table if only my mother had let me. Anyway, it was traumatic stuff when she died. Something no 23 year old growing boy should have to go through.

Now, you watch a movie, and chances are, the dog is going to make it. I know, I know, Marley & Me, Turner & Hooch (warning: I just spoiled those films) but there the dog had a starring role. The death brings an emotional crux to the story. If there’s a dog in a bit part, it’s an almost guarantee that it’s going to live. You gotta keep the kids happy.

Never is this rule of thumb more apparent than in the classic Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum movie, Independence Day. Let’s set the scene for everyone that doesn’t remember this cinematic landmark: Will Smith’s wife/girlfriend/hooker is making a break for it after an alien spaceship starts hovering over New York City. She’s taking her kid, and her dog Boomer with her, and she’s quit her job as a stripper. There’s panic on the streets. Mayhem. Suddenly the alien ship starts opening as if it is about to do something. People stand slack jawed in anticipation for this life changing event. Suddenly, the ship let’s loose with a laser cannon that literally obliterates the Empire State Building. And as the fire starts filling the streets, destroying all that dare stand in its path, our heroine manages to drag her child through a fire door into a tunnel and to safety. But what of Boomer? “Boomer!” she shouts desperately. And then just in the nick of time, who comes along?

You guessed it. Good old Boomer. He brings you your paper on a morning. He catches a frisbee. He outruns the fallout from alien spaceships weapons of mass destruction. He makes the Andrex puppy look like a right dick. Fuck off, Andrex, we’ve got Boomer here.

I’m as happy as you are that Boomer made it. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have some questions. Boomer leaps triumphantly to safety amid an epic crescendo in the score and we’re supposed to be happy. Sweet, the dog made it. But like half of New York was just wiped off the map. There’s millions that have been turned to ash thanks to an inferno cruising through the city without warning. That’s Hollywood, baby. Millions of people can die terrible deaths, but as long as the cute animal makes it we can still call it a happy ending.

3. Men, regardless of age or looks, can still pull attractive girls

Hollywood works in a mysterious way. It’s like a lot of actresses act from their early twenties to their maybe thirties and then disappear off the map. You’ve obviously got your Dame Judy Dench and your Meryl Streep, but they’re an exception, not the rule. Look at someone like Megan Fox. Does anyone really believe she was hired because of a stirring portrayal of Lady Macbeth in a play directed by Patrick Stewart? She was hired because anyone that has a penis instinctively wants to put it in her. It’s not even our fault. It’s just human nature.

Once Megan is pushing forty nobody is going to want to look at her and nobody is going to want to watch her act. And so she’ll end up making a sex tape or something or going in Celebrity Big Brother to try and cling on to the bottom rung of the ladder of fame for as long as possible. It’s sad but it’s true. There’s far too many women in Hollywood that are only there because they’ve got it going on in the tits and arse departments.

Men, on the other hand, don’t have this problem. Men age a little more gracefully, sure. But for men in Hollywood, being super hot isn’t a prerequisite of getting the job. Being funny, being a famous rockstar, reputation… there are other ways in. I mean, how old was Clint Eastwood in In The Line Of Fire? Surely, pushing seventy. And sure the girl he got it on with wasn’t a cracker, but she was at least thirty years his junior. Look at Bruce Willis in Sin City. Sixty years old, and he’s having to turn down a rutting in the shower from Jessica Alba. He has so many options he can turn that down.

In real life if I go to a nightclub when I’m sixty I’ll have drunken louts stealing my walking stick and local skanks getting their pictures taken with me so they can laugh about that “sad old man” they saw drinking flaming sambuca and trying to recapture his glory days. I can’t pull an eighteen year old now. What luck will I have in twenty years? If I’m the leading man in a movie however, it matters not.

The leading lady will be implausibly young and beautiful and I will have my way with her because I’m the leading man, and leading men don’t need to be buff, or good looking, or for her to even have been alive when he first found a hair. They just need to act. Let’s face it, When Harry Met Sally was a hugely successful rom-com and is still a firm favourite within the genre to this day. Billy Crystal was never, ever good looking, and he was porking Meg Ryan before she turned into a moose.

4. Terrorists never win

I still recall my eighteenth birthday like it was yesterday. I rolled into my house after a hard day at school, I went to the fridge, I removed the champagne, I walked into the living room and said, “Who’s for champers?” like a fucking hero. Then my family guided my eyes to the television showing footage of the World Trade Centre being obliterated by airliners under the control of terrorists. It was 9/11, a pretty grim day for anyone in the Western world, and I was especially sour about it because it was my birthday, damn it. It’s my party. I shalt not be upstaged.

In real life, it took the Americans a decade to track down the man responsible for the aforementioned tragedy and take him out. It would have taken John Rambo about ninety minutes.

You see, in the history of cinema, there’s only a small per centage of movies where there’s a terrorist attack that isn’t answered by lots of arse kicking, timely quips, and a thumping soundtrack. If you’re in a movie with someone like Schwarzenegger, and you’re planning a terrorist attack, stop. Stop right now. Tell your cell leader you’re going to the shop for a copy of Razzle and then go into hiding in a log cabin in the mountains. Live out the remainder of your days eating Cornettos and watching Only Fools and Horses repeats on Gold. Because if you pursue your terrorist actions then your life expectancy has instantly dropped to “before the end credits”. You are not going to win.

This is the world I want to live in. I don’t like pricks drowning cats for laughs, or gangs of youths beating people up in the street because of the colour of their skin, or religious extremists blowing up innocent holiday makers as part of some absurd Holy war. In real life, these people quite often get away with it. In movie life, we send in Steven Seagal and let the process of natural selection decide who will be around for a sequel.

5. You can pretty much guess who is going to turn on you

Life is full of good people and bad people. It would be wonderful if all these people wore badges to identify their allegiance, but sadly they don’t. And herein lies the dilemma; what if somebody who is your friend, and who you think is a good person, is actually a massive cunt? You’re fucked, sunshine. You’ve bet on the wrong horse.

You can have a mate who you go to the football with on a Saturday. He gets the round in when you’re a little short. You go to the cinema together. You’ve got little in jokes that only you and him know. You introduce him to your girlfriend and you go out on double dates with his girlfriend. And then you come home from work early one rainy Tuesday and find him bending your girlfriend over the kitchen table and taking her up the tradesmen’s entrance. You’ve been barking up that tree for months and she’s never played ball. Now she’s got your best friends balls slapping against her while he goes to town on that ass.

It’s fucked up, but it happens. In the movie world though, it’s a little easier to tell. If you’re a cop, let’s say, and the guy from district comes down to help you find the mole in your unit that is getting all your men killed, and the guy from district happens to be Christopher Walken, you might aswell tell him to not bother getting out of the van and arrest him on the spot. Certain people are almost always going to turn out to be villains. That pig farmer from Babe, he’s a dodgy one. Kevin Spacey, shifty. Walken. John Malkovich. Dennis Hopper, God rest his soul. You want someone trustworthy you want Clint Eastwood or Bruce Willis. Those are the men you can generally trust. Any of those other guys just keep your distance and don’t introduce them to your wives.

It would be so much easier that way. You’d rarely have to worry. Sometimes they catch you out, like with Morgan Freeman’s turn in Wanted, or in Man On Fire where Christopher Walken managed to stay a good guy for the whole movie. But by the by, you can pretty much call it by the names in the opening credits. Never again would you be sold up the river by a so called friend, or treated like a schmuck by a two timing whore of a girlfriend. You’d just introduce your woman to Clint and you’d know that he’d be a gentlemen. And break the legs of anyone who tried it on. It’s never that easy in real life.

And so with that another of our journeys comes to an end. I think there’s been some compelling issues raised here. And if only we all had magic tickets like the one in Last Action Hero, frankly, all our lives would be better. I’m off now. I’m going to go round the Chinese and insult the guy working there until I get a roundhouse from him.