Actor Michael Shannon has a lot to be proud of in his illustrious career, which features riveting performances in films such as Revolutionary Road, the recent sci-fi indie Midnight Special, and the forthcoming Elvis & Nixon. But Shannon might have delivered the performance of his lifetime on Thursday night’s episode of Spike TV’s Lip Sync Battle, an entire television series devoted to — you guessed it — celebrity lip sync battles.
Shannon, who is smart enough to know that the idea of such a show is inherently absurd, hammed it up to glorious extremes while lip syncing to R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World” and the Pixies’ “Here Comes Your Man”. His opponent, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend star Rachel Bloom, hardly stood a chance. Though with LL Cool J hosting and being his usual unfunny self, does anyone really stand a chance? Does humanity stand a chance? That’s a topic for another day. For now, let’s just bask in Shannon’s glow as he turns the stage into a post-apocalyptic wasteland (and sprinkles Pixie dust all over it, to boot). Check out the R.E.M. “cover” above (Shannon’s performance starts around the 1:55 mark), and watch a clip from the Pixies performance below.
