The game of hockey is changing, and some fans are slowly losing some of their favourite parts of the game.
Goon: Last of the Enforcers, which hits theatres in Canada today, in title alone sums up one of those changes. Enforcers are starting to disappear from the game. Most people think of the decrease in pure enforcers at the NHL level, but as told in an excellent piece by Darren Dreger, fighting is disappearing across all levels of the game.
Jay Baruchel made his directing debut in this film and it can be described as a kind of last hurrah for enforcers in hockey. He himself believes that fighting will be gone entirely from the game before long and if there was a third Goon movie, it could be far in the future and following a totally different hockey landscape.
If this is the end of Goon, it was a theatrical goodbye.
Baruchel describes the film as a “hoser puck opera”, and it packs a punch – well, a lot of punches. The fight scenes are intentionally over-the-top brawls in which the characters trade haymakers like they’re in a Rocky film. To the cast though, it’s more like a superhero movie.
“[Doug Glatt]’s not superhuman, but he’s peak human – which is what Logan or Wolverine is. He’s peak human. He has a peak human tolerance for pain and he’s touched by the fist of god, right? His punches land. We really tried to lean into that superhero vibe in this movie.”
If it’s a superhero movie, it’s closer to Deadpool than it is the Avengers, because it definitely leans more on the side of comedy. There’s a lot of raunchiness, a lot of locker room banter and several one liners that fans will be repeating for years.
After all, these are the guys that chose the number 69 because “It’s hilarious”.
