Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick in Today's film on Weird
Speaker 3: House Cinema is the nineteen ninety four sci fi action
Speaker 3: thrill ride Time Cop, starring Jean Claude, Van dam, Ron
Speaker 3: Silver and Mia Sarah. I had seen this movie before,
Speaker 3: but not in a long time, and boy was this something.
Speaker 3: If you want to be transported mind and body back
Speaker 3: to the year nineteen ninety four, watch Time Cop. Time
Speaker 3: Cop is a time capsule, not only because it has
Speaker 3: scenes of characters going to mals in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 3: which is a kind of site that I'm sure many
Speaker 3: people our age can't help but be profoundly stirred by.
Speaker 3: But it's also a type of movie that I think
Speaker 3: used to exist, and I don't know if it still does,
Speaker 3: if there are still movies like this, I don't know
Speaker 3: what the examples are, but it is essentially an R
Speaker 3: rated action movie for kids. Action movies nowadays are all
Speaker 3: they're all PG thirteen, you know, because they want to
Speaker 3: get all the I guess younger teenagers in the theaters.
Speaker 3: But this movie is definitely R rated, does not shy
Speaker 3: away from the F words and the blood squirting everywhere,
Speaker 3: but it is not at all a dark, gritty, morally
Speaker 3: ambiguous tale of depravity and revenge, the kind of thing
Speaker 3: you might expect from an R rated action movie. Instead,
Speaker 3: it's like a live action cartoon. It is a goofy, goobery,
Speaker 3: brightly colored slapstick fest with non stop kicks to the groin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true. Warning up front. If you have like
Speaker 2: a groin strain or anything, and you don't want to
Speaker 2: watch people get injured in the groin, then you might
Speaker 2: want to wait on this movie un til you're heeled up.
Speaker 3: I was trying to think of other movies in this category,
Speaker 3: like the you know, the cartoonish action movie with a
Speaker 3: high silliness factor and a well earned R rating. I
Speaker 3: haven't seen it in a long time, but I think
Speaker 3: Demolition Man was another one like this and came out
Speaker 3: around the exact same time. But the other thing I
Speaker 3: want to say is that, at least from my perspective,
Speaker 3: time Copy is awesome. I was shocked how much I
Speaker 3: liked this. This movie is dumb as hell, but I
Speaker 3: thought it held up really well for what it is.
Speaker 3: The ninety eight minute runtime just races by the movie
Speaker 3: will lower your IQ by several points, but I thought
Speaker 3: it was truly entertaining, a spectacular amusement.
Speaker 2: I agree on all of that. Yeah, it's a very
Speaker 2: tight film. It didn't give you any opportunity to really
Speaker 2: be bored by the proceedings. Great action, as we'll discuss,
Speaker 2: and when it comes to the IQ points, Absolutely don't
Speaker 2: think too hard about the time traveling this movie. Don't
Speaker 2: look at the light Marion, because if you do, you're
Speaker 2: going to break something. So be prepared. I'm not saying
Speaker 2: it's still a fun exercise, but just know you are
Speaker 2: going to run up against the wall if you try
Speaker 2: and figure this out, if you try and chart this.
Speaker 2: In fact, I found at least one blog post online
Speaker 2: where somebody tried to create some charts to understand the
Speaker 2: various time travel shenanigans in this movie, and they just
Speaker 2: threw their hands up as well.
Speaker 3: This is not primer, This is not where like you
Speaker 3: charged it out and it actually does all make sense.
Speaker 3: This is just like, I have no idea how these
Speaker 3: people got here this time. It just doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people started traveling through time and it's a mess
Speaker 2: which I mean is kind of that kind of the theme.
Speaker 2: So embrace the messiness of this film. Now when it
Speaker 2: comes to time travel, this is our fourth proper time
Speaker 2: travel movie on Weird House Cinema. It comes up occasionally.
Speaker 2: It's like a side gimmick. I think I had to
Speaker 2: remind myself of this. But in The Eliminators the Mad
Speaker 2: Scientists and that also does time travel. But it's not
Speaker 2: a time travel movie. Our time travel movies have been
Speaker 2: free jack transfers to and time after time prior to.
Speaker 3: This, all movies with their own unique pleasures. But I
Speaker 3: think this is our first martial arts focus time travel movie.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, this one is a definite martial arts picture.
Speaker 2: I would describe the martial arts action in this film
Speaker 2: as not being it's not about epic stories. Like I
Speaker 2: think I've said before, a proper action sequence, be it
Speaker 2: with swords or fisticuffs, it needs to tell a story,
Speaker 2: and especially in a martial arts movie, your fights need
Speaker 2: to tell stories. In some movies, those fights are like
Speaker 2: novels within the film. In this book, in this book,
Speaker 2: in this movie, time time cop, the fights are more
Speaker 2: like short stories but they're really solid short stories.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know if you agree with this. I
Speaker 3: was divided on the action scenes. Basically, I thought all
Speaker 3: of the all of the action scenes involving gun, most
Speaker 3: of those were kind of in I don't know, I
Speaker 3: could take them or leave them. They were kind of
Speaker 3: standard nineties action slop, you know, close up of one
Speaker 3: person shooting, close up of another person shooting a bunch
Speaker 3: of like barrels exploding in the meantime. But the hand
Speaker 3: to hand fights and like knife fights and all that
Speaker 3: that was top notch, really really good stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely, it's the melee that is where the
Speaker 2: amusement in the entertainment is here. I mean, that's why
Speaker 2: you have Van Dam. Mean, it's okay if Van Dam
Speaker 2: fires a gun in an action movie, but it's not
Speaker 2: really what you want to see. Yeah, unless he's doing
Speaker 2: the splits at the same time, and then I guess
Speaker 2: that counts.
Speaker 3: Oh he does a world class jump splits in this movie.
Speaker 3: But the other thing I would say is that the
Speaker 3: hand to hand fight scenes are excellent, but they're excellent
Speaker 3: in a cartoony way. They don't come off as particularly
Speaker 3: like realistic, plausible fights. There's like there's one I've got
Speaker 3: in mind where there is a knife fight where the
Speaker 3: characters are just it's like a sword duel. So what
Speaker 3: you expect to see in a sword dou in a
Speaker 3: movie as characters slamming their swords into the other person's sword.
Speaker 3: That makes more sense with the sword because you might
Speaker 3: be using it to try to hit and parry. But
Speaker 3: there's a scene in this movie where they're doing that
Speaker 3: with like six inch long knives. They're just like slamming
Speaker 3: their knife blades together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a plus, this is definitely a movie where
Speaker 2: I guess our lead character gets extra points if he
Speaker 2: does a quality kill if there's like a fatality move involved.
Speaker 2: So it's you know, it's very based in all of that. Now,
Speaker 2: to come back to the time travel aspects of this,
Speaker 2: I want to I want to go back to a
Speaker 2: continuing conversation we've had Joe in previous time travel episodes.
Speaker 2: I guess, particularly time after time, you talked about time
Speaker 2: travel story types. I thought you might refresh everyone's memory
Speaker 2: on this and figure out exactly where time coop falls
Speaker 2: into all of that.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, so these were story categories I created. This
Speaker 3: is not like a you know, a accepted literary framework,
Speaker 3: so don't go trying to cite this in your film
Speaker 3: or literature classes. But these were the basic types of
Speaker 3: time travel stories I could think of in our Time
Speaker 3: after Time episode. So the first one was what I
Speaker 3: called Journey to Time Island. This is a time travel
Speaker 3: story that uses the future or the past primarily just
Speaker 3: as a setting. It's a hostile setting for an adventure narrative,
Speaker 3: so it might as well be Skull Island or an
Speaker 3: alien planet in a Star Trek episode. It's just an
Speaker 3: unfamiliar setting where characters must face unfamiliar challenges. Second type
Speaker 3: of story is what I called phish out of Time.
Speaker 3: This is usually what you find in time travel comedies.
Speaker 3: It is the time based equivalent of the fish out
Speaker 3: of water plot, where most of the tension, its comedic tension,
Speaker 3: comes from people not getting it, not understanding local conditions,
Speaker 3: not being able to adapt to the expectations, and the
Speaker 3: social taboos and stuff of the time to which they
Speaker 3: have been transported. Time after Time had some of that
Speaker 3: with you know, HG. Wells walking around in nineteen seventies
Speaker 3: cities and being scared of the traffic and then going
Speaker 3: to the Scottish breakfast restaurant where he enjoys Palm Fritz.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, McDonald's.
Speaker 3: Okay. The third category was what I called fresh eyes
Speaker 3: for bad Eras. This is primarily a story that tries
Speaker 3: to comment on the particular features of the time in
Speaker 3: which they are set, usually the present, but sometimes the future,
Speaker 3: and sort of have social commentary about it. So the
Speaker 3: time traveler is able to bring fresh eyes to look
Speaker 3: on the present and see how wrong it is. Usually
Speaker 3: notice bad things about it that you know, all of
Speaker 3: the Krono locals have just learned to ignore. I think
Speaker 3: there are two main subtypes of the fresh eyes for
Speaker 3: bad Eras plot. One is like, the modern world sucks,
Speaker 3: and this is observed either by somebody from the future
Speaker 3: or from the past. And the other is, if we
Speaker 3: keep this up, look what the future is going to
Speaker 3: be like, it's going to be bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: This is a great one, of course, because it's always
Speaker 2: that chance to visit the like the dystopian or post
Speaker 2: apocalyptic future and realize, oh, this is a bad course around.
Speaker 2: We've got a course correct, because look at all these
Speaker 2: flaming barrels in the street.
Speaker 3: That's right, okay. Fourth category of story is what I
Speaker 3: called debugging history. This is one that focuses kind of
Speaker 3: on the butterfly effect or on the consequences of actions
Speaker 3: across time. It's where people are trying to isolate a
Speaker 3: variable in the progression of history and human life and
Speaker 3: maybe alter it in order to fix something that goes wrong.
Speaker 3: It's primarily concerned with consequences of decisions and long term
Speaker 3: ripple effects. A great example of this is Back to
Speaker 3: the Future.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 3: And then the last category is what I would call
Speaker 3: the time travel arms race story. This is the type
Speaker 3: of story that is actually the most focused on time
Speaker 3: travel itself, and the kind that focuses on time travel
Speaker 3: as a mechanism. It takes it seriously as a mechanism
Speaker 3: and usually as a weapon, something that grants you god
Speaker 3: like power. These plots often have competing time travelers, like
Speaker 3: maybe both the heroes and the villains have access to
Speaker 3: time travel, and they're often like trying to go back
Speaker 3: further and further to get ahead of the other one
Speaker 3: or change something or fix something. And it recognizes time
Speaker 3: travel as a dangerous, chaotic, uncontrollable power. Essentially. In fact,
Speaker 3: I would say this type of story is the one
Speaker 3: that best fits Time Cop. I think Time Cop is
Speaker 3: a time travel arms race movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a I think that's that's a
Speaker 2: good comparison to make, because yeah, time travel technology is
Speaker 2: just straight up compared to atomic power in this movie.
Speaker 2: And the way it is explored is it's explored is
Speaker 2: this thing that is ultimately a great threat that has
Speaker 2: to be controlled. There are discussions on should it be
Speaker 2: policed or should it just be banned out right or
Speaker 2: prevented in some manner. So absolutely like this is a
Speaker 2: time travel arms race all the way.
Speaker 3: There is a part of the mood, Well, we can
Speaker 3: discuss the implications of this, but I did think it
Speaker 3: was funny. Whereas this character who's a politician, is like,
Speaker 3: we shouldn't be trying to police the use of time travel.
Speaker 3: We should just ban it.
Speaker 2: But I mean, I get, I get. I think what
Speaker 2: he was saying there is like, why are we paying
Speaker 2: for time cops that are going out like after the
Speaker 2: fact and trying to fix things and chase people down
Speaker 2: when maybe we need to be carrying out real world
Speaker 2: strike some time travel facilities, which I think they also
Speaker 2: allude to trying to do that's going on. Maybe they
Speaker 2: just need that we need to double down on that.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Yeah, I guess so. So, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think Time Cop is an arms race plot. It's not
Speaker 3: really especially concerned with social commentary or satire. There's a
Speaker 3: little bit of that, but what's there doesn't really depend
Speaker 3: on the time travel mechanic. It is mainly concerned with
Speaker 3: the implications of time travel as a technology and inevitably
Speaker 3: as a And you know what, I think I would
Speaker 3: sort of agree with the spirit of the movie, which
Speaker 3: is that if time travel to the past were invented,
Speaker 3: it would immediately be misused, two disastrous effects. I think
Speaker 3: that's likely true, and I think, as the movie says,
Speaker 3: it's quite plausible that the invention of time travel would
Speaker 3: be far worse than the invention of nuclear weapons. Just
Speaker 3: a genuine nightmare.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all of history just swirling the drain pretty much,
Speaker 2: all right. So the elevator pitch on this one, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's basically in the title. You don't even really need
Speaker 2: to go further than Time Cop. But basically the pitch
Speaker 2: is time crimes are happening throughout all of human history,
Speaker 2: and it's up to a single government agency and one
Speaker 2: incorruptible time cop to police them.
Speaker 3: Couldn't have said it better myself. That's right.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: It's probably worth noting as well that this is our,
Speaker 2: I think, our first true cop movie. And by that,
Speaker 2: I don't mean a movie that has cops in it
Speaker 2: or concerns police work or cops saving the day. I
Speaker 2: mean a movie that has this like blank cop, like
Speaker 2: Maniac Cop, RoboCop, Scanner Cop, and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hyphen cop movies, yes, though most of them don't
Speaker 3: actually have a hyphen.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I would not say I am especially fond of cop
Speaker 3: movies in general, but I love sci fi or supernatural
Speaker 3: hyphen cop movies almost as much as I love sci
Speaker 3: fi or supernatural wrestling movies. And I'm going to pitch
Speaker 3: some ideas right now for aspiring filmmakers. Lych Cop. I
Speaker 3: may have suggested that one on the show before, but
Speaker 3: if not, there you go. You can have it. Take it.
Speaker 3: I give it to you.
Speaker 2: Natural regression from Maniac Cop, I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, how about Predator Cop. Yeah, it's got
Speaker 3: like the blades and the and the and the like
Speaker 3: the razor frisbee.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, that I could see that happening.
Speaker 3: Mars Cop. That's pretty surely somebody you know that if
Speaker 3: they haven't made that, go and do it. How about
Speaker 3: Druid Cop.
Speaker 4: M Druid Cop.
Speaker 2: Druid Cop could work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's some mistletoe badge element you could play with there.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Shark Cop Shark Cop.
Speaker 2: Shark Cop does seem to exist on the Z grade
Speaker 2: level at least I did a little searching around. Nothing
Speaker 2: that anybody needs to seek out. But great minds think
Speaker 2: alike when it comes to Shark Cop.
Speaker 3: And why not in the end lawnmore Man Cop.
Speaker 2: I mean, we live in a world where we have
Speaker 2: more than one scanner cop movie. So yeah, lawnmower Man
Speaker 2: Cop just makes sense.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think we're about to do the trailer, right,
Speaker 3: should we do the trailer?
Speaker 2: Yes, let's listen to this trailer. It's a good one.
Speaker 3: Well, hold on before we play it. I want you
Speaker 3: folks out there to listen for this. So this is
Speaker 3: a classic ninety style in a world trailer and it
Speaker 3: says one man, not once, but twice.
Speaker 4: All right, here we go.
Speaker 5: We're all alone, no chaperone, head get on of the.
Speaker 6: World and plumba.
Speaker 5: That's miss became. There's something wild about your child's.
Speaker 6: Let me be outrage.
Speaker 3: Join Partner, Thanks partner, Let me go Max, I'm not
Speaker 3: hurting anybody. Good to take you back in the year
Speaker 3: two thousand and four, time travel is a reality.
Speaker 4: Charge for the violations of TEC Code only penty.
Speaker 5: Time travel intend to.
Speaker 3: Alter the future and the crime. And it turns out
Speaker 3: going back in time as a pretty easy way to
Speaker 3: make money.
Speaker 2: I think you got yourself and shipping of gold, and
Speaker 2: you're taking a general way.
Speaker 3: The genie is already out of the bottle.
Speaker 4: The technology is there now.
Speaker 3: One man, you hear the name Aaron McCole is about
Speaker 3: to take the ultimate power trips. He's gonna be president.
Speaker 3: You're gonna need the press. You don't need endorsements.
Speaker 4: You don't need to either the truth if you need
Speaker 4: money or to enforce the laws of time.
Speaker 3: Are we still together in ten years? Am I dead?
Speaker 3: When that is determined to stop? Here I can go
Speaker 3: back to save her. This comeback.
Speaker 2: It's not going back to still money.
Speaker 3: Stay here, Walker, my future, your dad. I think it
Speaker 3: planned to fore ahead. Jean Claude, Down Down, Run Silver Da.
Speaker 4: Mia, Sarah, Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2: This is a kind of a funky trailer where it
Speaker 2: starts off with that old timey nineteen twenty nine opening
Speaker 2: before we get that noodling guitar riff to let you
Speaker 2: know it's not the past anymore, baby, and then we
Speaker 2: get the whole time travel scenario laid out for us
Speaker 2: with dramatic narration by If I'm not mistaken, this is
Speaker 2: Don la Fontaine, the voice of God himself. It's sometimes
Speaker 2: a little hard to track down credentials on these trailers,
Speaker 2: but I'm like ninety nine percent sure this is Don Lafontaine.
Speaker 2: And eventually they also go ahead and cap it off
Speaker 2: with Another thing I love in particularly nineties trailers is
Speaker 2: they just use James Horner's Alien score at the end,
Speaker 2: that building bump bump bum bum bum bum bump bump
Speaker 2: bump music. And you know, even though that's obviously not
Speaker 2: the score for this film, they were like, Nope, that
Speaker 2: Alien's score that really gets into people's bloodstream. We've got
Speaker 2: to use that as much as possible to sell our films.
Speaker 3: You have ten seconds to clear minimum safe distance. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it worked.
Speaker 2: This movie did like financially clear minimum safe distance. And
Speaker 2: then so this is a successful film, made money, made
Speaker 2: people happy.
Speaker 3: I didn't go deep into the critical reaction to Timecop.
Speaker 3: But it seems critics were sort of divided on it,
Speaker 3: and a lot of the people who did like it
Speaker 3: kind of gave it middling positive reviews. They said, like,
Speaker 3: it's an okay ripoff of Terminator. Sometimes I read stuff
Speaker 3: like that and I'm like, these same critics were giving
Speaker 3: positive reviews to Steven Segall and Hard to Kill. What
Speaker 3: was wrong with people? Like they just did not know
Speaker 3: how to have fun correctly?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a movie that it's it's kind of
Speaker 2: like it's you know, it's like Ketchup in French Fries.
Speaker 4: I guess, you know.
Speaker 2: It's like you can say, oh, we need to deconstruct this,
Speaker 2: you know, what could we do to improve this set
Speaker 2: or the other. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: it's it's ketchup in French fries and and that's going
Speaker 2: to that's going to please most of the people who
Speaker 2: ordered it, knowing what they were ordering. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't get some of the criticism that it got, Like
Speaker 2: Ebert gave it two stars, But again, Ibert Ebert's always
Speaker 2: kind of an interesting litmus test for films like this
Speaker 2: because Time Cop is exactly the sort of film that
Speaker 2: I could see Roger Ebert giving at.
Speaker 3: Least three stars too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe even a little more, you never know, But
Speaker 2: in this case he was just very much in the
Speaker 2: middle of the board on it.
Speaker 3: Well, it reminds me of Ebert's statement about how when
Speaker 3: you're a child and you have the choice to watch
Speaker 3: either Gamera, Guardian of the Universe or Air Force One,
Speaker 3: the child knows that Gamera is better. But then when
Speaker 3: you get older and more mature and you think yourself wise,
Speaker 3: you think no air Force One, that is more realistic,
Speaker 3: that is better. Then when you get older, once again
Speaker 3: even wiser than that, maybe you gain true wisdom instead
Speaker 3: of the fake, pretentious wisdom of young adulthood, you realize
Speaker 3: no Gamera is better.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: If you want to watch Time Cop before we get
Speaker 2: into the discussion here, well, lucky you. It's widely available digitally.
Speaker 2: It's also on DVD and Blu Ray, though I don't
Speaker 2: think it's been given any special treatment on Blu Ray
Speaker 2: over the years. I could be wrong, but I didn't
Speaker 2: find anything. All right, let's jump into the discussion of
Speaker 2: the people who may this film. The director and cinematographer
Speaker 2: is Peter Hyams born nineteen forty three. He was born
Speaker 2: into a kind of show business family Broadway in theater,
Speaker 2: and he eventually started off his career in TV journalism
Speaker 2: in New York City, in Chicago and then Chicago. In
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty six, he reported from Vietnam, I Believe for
Speaker 2: New York City CBS affiliate, and it was during this
Speaker 2: basic time period that he got into documentary filmmaking. He
Speaker 2: sold his first screenplay, t R. Baskin to Paramount Pictures
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy and it was produced in seventy one
Speaker 2: that had Candice Bergen in the leading role. He started
Speaker 2: directing as well on TV movies at first, but then
Speaker 2: in seventy four he directed the comedy Busting, starring Elliott
Speaker 2: Gould and Robert Blake as cops. Then came a pair
Speaker 2: of dramas out Time and Pepper, both in nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 2: but then in seventy seven he directed the fake Mars
Speaker 2: landing thriller I Guess you could say It's a conspiracy
Speaker 2: thriller capricorn I, and a number of big films Fought,
Speaker 2: including eighty one's Outland, a gritty space western starring Sean Connery,
Speaker 2: Peter Boyle and also a very early performance from Clark.
Speaker 4: Peter.
Speaker 2: So, I think we talked about Outline before. Have you
Speaker 2: seen Outland, Joe?
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 3: This is one of those movies. I really don't know
Speaker 3: if I've seen it or not. If I have seen it,
Speaker 3: it did not make an impression, but I know about it.
Speaker 3: It's supposed to be like a remake of High Noon
Speaker 3: in Space, right, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Remember digging it many years ago.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It might be too grimy for me now, but it's
Speaker 2: like a grimy space western with Sean Connery as the
Speaker 2: new sheriff in town. Peter Boyle is the corrupt mine owner,
Speaker 2: and then a lot of people's heads blow up.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, maybe if I watch it I can figure
Speaker 3: out if I have already watched it.
Speaker 2: Another big one from Hyam's was two thousand and was
Speaker 2: the two of the film from nineteen eighty four. Actually,
Speaker 2: I'm already getting my ears confused here due to the
Speaker 2: time travel anomalies. But twenty ten, the Year We Made Contact,
Speaker 2: released in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 4: He directed that as well.
Speaker 3: The sequel to two thousand and one, A Space Odyssey,
Speaker 3: which twenty ten generally got pretty positive reviews, but it
Speaker 3: seems like, I don't know, just kind of a misguided
Speaker 3: idea trying to make a sequel to two thousand and one.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not a film I've seen in its entirety before.
Speaker 2: I had some friends were fans of it and like it.
Speaker 2: Though you obviously go into it with certain understandings, like
Speaker 2: you know, it's not going to be two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: It's not the timeless classic the two thousand and one is.
Speaker 2: But I've heard it's interesting as a mid eighties sci
Speaker 2: fi movie. Now, the late eighties saw Hims direct some
Speaker 2: mainstream thrillers, but then in the nineties we got ninety
Speaker 2: two's Stay Tuned. One of the many Changing Channels movies.
Speaker 2: This is the one that starred John Ritter. It would
Speaker 2: be interesting to come back and watch one of the
Speaker 2: many Changing Channels films in the future, because there were
Speaker 2: a number of of them. I want to say Charles
Speaker 2: Band was involved in at least one of these. It
Speaker 2: just kind of a weird bug that got into everyone's
Speaker 2: mind based on the whole wide realm of cable television
Speaker 2: and satellite TV channels. And then of course came time
Speaker 2: cop He followed this up with another Jean Claude van
Speaker 2: Dam film, Sudden Death co starring Powers Booth. Then came
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety seven's monster film The Relic, followed by a
Speaker 2: ninety nine's End of Days that's an Arnold schwarzenegtive versus
Speaker 2: Satan movie. Then there's a two thousand and one Musketeer film,
Speaker 2: the two thousand and five film Adaptation of A Sound
Speaker 2: of Thunder, which, if I remember correctly, is one of
Speaker 2: our listener's favorite films, or at least one that he
Speaker 2: regularly communally watches with some friends.
Speaker 4: Is that the case?
Speaker 2: Do you remember this, listener mail?
Speaker 3: Maybe? Well, this might have come up after I mentioned
Speaker 3: the movie adaptation of A Sound of Thunder, which I
Speaker 3: noted as being quite bad. Well, it's an adaptation of
Speaker 3: a Ray Bradbury story about the like the Butterfly fact,
Speaker 3: so it's a you know, time travel thing, but I
Speaker 3: think it ends up with these like lizard baboons attacking
Speaker 3: people in the future, and it's got Ben Kingsley obviously
Speaker 3: thinking about what time the bank closes while he's shooting
Speaker 3: his scenes.
Speaker 2: I guess I haven't seen that one, but there was
Speaker 2: a Ray Bradberry theater adaptation up.
Speaker 4: It was pretty good, all right.
Speaker 2: So for Peter Hyams, his last movie, his last directorial
Speaker 2: credit was twenty thirteen's Enemies Closer, and that one also
Speaker 2: starred Jean Claude van Dam as the villain, apparently at
Speaker 2: Hyam's request, like they brought him in. He's like, hey,
Speaker 2: I'll direct this, but I know who you need to
Speaker 2: cast as the villain is John Claud Bend And.
Speaker 3: It worked well together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess. So, you know, the three different films
Speaker 2: they worked on. And his son, John Hyam is also
Speaker 2: pretty much in the Jean Claude van Dam business, having
Speaker 2: worked on two thousand and nine's Universal Soldier Regeneration and
Speaker 2: twenty twelve Universal Soldier Day of Reckoning.
Speaker 3: I did not realize the Universal Soldier series had hit
Speaker 3: the colon abstract noun phase.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep they did. And you know, I think I
Speaker 2: remember reading some not bad things about these these later
Speaker 2: Jean Claud van Dam Universal Soldier movies, you know, Regeneration
Speaker 2: and Day of Reckoning. I can't remember which one is
Speaker 2: supposed to be good, or if they're both good.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Take that with a grain of salt.
Speaker 3: I got an idea. Jetson's Meat Flintstone's kind of crossover event.
Speaker 3: It's Universal Soldier meets hell Raiser. What do you think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it'd be good for the hell Raiser franchise. I
Speaker 2: think it needs that kind of shot in the arm
Speaker 2: cross it over, cross it over. There was a you know,
Speaker 2: speaking of it, there's a tangent, but there was a
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was any good or not.
Speaker 2: I think I looked at one of them. But somebody
Speaker 2: did a hell Raiser versus.
Speaker 4: Cabal.
Speaker 2: What is it Night Breed hell Raiser versus Nightbreed comic
Speaker 2: book back in the day like that. That sounds interesting,
Speaker 2: Go for that.
Speaker 3: But they're both Clive Barker things, aren't they.
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, okay, yeah. I mean you could go outside
Speaker 2: the Clive Barker. I mean, you could keep it in
Speaker 2: Clive Barker. It could be hell Raiser versus raw Head Rex.
Speaker 2: That could be interesting.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, he has a rich world, rich literary world
Speaker 2: that he created. Now, speaking of comic books, we should
Speaker 2: note that Time Cop is based on a Dark Horse
Speaker 2: Comics comic book series by the same name by Mark V.
Speaker 2: Hayden and Mike Richardson, who also have story and screenplay
Speaker 2: credits on the film. Richardson also created the comic book
Speaker 2: The Mask and yes it is the Mask that is
Speaker 2: the basis for the Jim Carrey movie. And Mark had
Speaker 2: a story credit on the first movie you mean the
Speaker 2: first Mask movie, the first Mask movie, The Mask Starr
Speaker 2: starring Jim Carrey, that also came out in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2: So this was a big deal for these two. The
Speaker 2: dark Horse Comics world really got to come out firing
Speaker 2: and all cylinders here, and both of these individuals remain
Speaker 2: active in writing and producing now, specifically Mark v. Heiden
Speaker 2: on this he has screenplay, story and comic series credit.
Speaker 2: Born fifty six. After nineteen eighty four, he went on
Speaker 2: to write an episode of Perversions of Science. This is
Speaker 2: a would be sci fi tales from the Crypt with
Speaker 2: a terrible VR sexy robot as the show's keeper. And
Speaker 2: then there he did nine episodes of the Time Coop
Speaker 2: TV series, and eventually such shows as Smallville, The Battlesarcalactica, Reboot, Heroes,
Speaker 2: Falling Skies, The Kind of Flash in the Pan twenty
Speaker 2: nineteen reboot of Swamp Thing. I don't know if that
Speaker 2: might have been good, but it just came out at
Speaker 2: a bad time and seemed to have some platform issues,
Speaker 2: and he has production credits on all of those. His
Speaker 2: next project is actually writing and eping a hell Raiser
Speaker 2: series for HBO Max. I did not know this was coming, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I have my doubts about it. I mean nothing against
Speaker 2: this creator. I just have doubts that there's anything left
Speaker 2: in the tank on hell Raiser that is.
Speaker 3: No prible a twenty six episode season arc cannot solve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll see. I mean, I wish them
Speaker 2: the best. I hope it's good, all right. Mike Richardson,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, screenplay story comics series also credit
Speaker 2: on this also EP born nineteen fifty, the founder of
Speaker 2: dark Horse Comics. Mike's writing credits have been limited or
Speaker 2: more limited compared to his partner on this film, mostly
Speaker 2: character credits on Mask franchise stuff, but he served as
Speaker 2: executive producer on such films as twenty sixteen's The Legend
Speaker 2: of Tarzan, twenty nineteen's hell Boy That's the more recent
Speaker 2: hell Boy film, and both RIPD movies. In comics. However,
Speaker 2: it's notable that he was also a writer on the
Speaker 2: Star Wars Crimson Empire comics series that I've heard good
Speaker 2: things about. And he also apparently wrote on Time Cop
Speaker 2: the comic book. All Right, you know, you didn't come
Speaker 2: here to hear about the people who wrote this, though.
Speaker 2: You want to hear about Jean Claude van Dam, who
Speaker 2: plays Walker the titular Time Cop nineteen sixty. Yep, it's
Speaker 2: the Muscles from Brussels, Dutch born martial artist turned actor
Speaker 2: who also studied ballet for several years in his teens.
Speaker 2: And I've read that Jean Claud van Dam himself has
Speaker 2: attributed ballet for the grace of his movement, so he
Speaker 2: kind of combines the grace of ballet with the power
Speaker 2: of karate.
Speaker 3: He is very graceful, and what he lacks in Arnold
Speaker 3: Schwarzenegger type of bulk he has in agility. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of like jumping and the kind of impossible kick
Speaker 3: postures in this film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's a lot of fluidity to the way
Speaker 2: he moves that works well on screen as well. So
Speaker 2: he and a friend moved to Hollywood in the early
Speaker 2: eighties to seek acting glory. So his early credits are
Speaker 2: mostly I mean most of it aren't even even credits
Speaker 2: those uncredited background roles for the most part, but he
Speaker 2: ended up befriending and sparring with Chuck Norris. He also
Speaker 2: did some bodyguard work at Norris's bar called Woody's Wharf,
Speaker 2: which is apparently still around under different ownership. You can
Speaker 2: you can look it up as a website and everything.
Speaker 2: But his first role, Jean Claude Vandam's first real role
Speaker 2: of note is the villain in the bonkers movie No Retreat,
Speaker 2: No Surrender, in which and I think I've seen this.
Speaker 2: I think I watched the riff tracks version of this,
Speaker 2: a riff of this. The plot is Kurt McKinney is
Speaker 2: training with Bruce Lee's ghost so that he can ultimately
Speaker 2: defeat even the Russian Krashyinsky played by Jean Claude Van Dam.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna feel like I'm losing my mind if I'm
Speaker 3: wrong about this, but I think this is the movie
Speaker 3: that I saw Rift live by some former cast members
Speaker 3: of Mystery Science Theater three thousand.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, now I'm unsure. Maybe I know I saw
Speaker 2: it Rift, but I'm a little foggy on if it
Speaker 2: was on the screen or live or what. So one
Speaker 2: way or another. We've seen this gem of the motion
Speaker 2: picture for the most part. However, this was not people's
Speaker 2: first in their introduction to Jean Claude van Dam. For this,
Speaker 2: we really need to consider night He mediates. Blood Sport
Speaker 2: one of the most iconic Western martial arts films of
Speaker 2: that era. It introduced John Claude Van Dam's just I
Speaker 2: guess his trademark move, which is doing the splits while
Speaker 2: violently punching or shoving somebody in the crock. Probably a punch,
Speaker 2: I guess, Maybe it's a chop. I can't see because
Speaker 2: he's all up in there.
Speaker 3: This was parodied in Mortal Kombat because this is also
Speaker 3: what Johnny Cage does in the Mortal Commer character. Johnny
Speaker 3: Cage is a parody of Jean Claude van Dam.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and blood Sport. This is a film I haven't
Speaker 2: seen in a long time, but I remember it being
Speaker 2: a lot of goofy fun. It has Donald Gibb in it,
Speaker 2: plays this lovable biker. Bolo Jung is in it playing
Speaker 2: this just you know, super intimidating martial artists, and then
Speaker 2: Forrest Whittaker is in it as well. I do not
Speaker 2: remember Farrest Whittaker from this film.
Speaker 4: But he is in the credits.
Speaker 3: It's like he's playing a fed of some kind. Hmm, okay,
Speaker 3: it makes sense, you know, it's interesting. I don't quite
Speaker 3: think I realized that John Claude van Dam doing the
Speaker 3: splits and punching someone in the crotch was his signature move.
Speaker 3: But of course it makes sense with the Johnny Cage
Speaker 3: connection and in time cop I don't think he ever
Speaker 3: does that, but he does both elements of that independently
Speaker 3: multiple times. So there are prominent splits and prominent groin
Speaker 3: punches and kicks.
Speaker 2: It's weird to try and figure out, Like maybe it's
Speaker 2: just I mean, the splitz make sense, like this is
Speaker 2: a great physical stunt that he is capable of. If
Speaker 2: there is even a faint reason to have him do
Speaker 2: it in your film, you go ahead and incorporated into
Speaker 2: the plot. It's what the people want to see. The
Speaker 2: violence to the crotch. However, while part of that original
Speaker 2: trademark move is not necessarily required, but I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe there's some sort of thematic link there, Like the
Speaker 2: idea of doing the splits is maybe kind of painful
Speaker 2: in your mind. If you cannot do the splits yourself,
Speaker 2: and therefore it's just a short walk to somebody just
Speaker 2: being like punched in the groin.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of it into Time Cup, though in
Speaker 3: Time Cup there's at least I think one major kick
Speaker 3: to the groin. There's a scene where he's like sort
Speaker 3: of drumming on a guy's groin with sticks, and then
Speaker 3: there are there in the Final Showdown, there are some
Speaker 3: guns to the groin of the villains.
Speaker 4: Yes, so, I don't know.
Speaker 3: It seems like it was a recurring theme. It was
Speaker 3: on their minds for some reason.
Speaker 2: And somehow us describing it makes it sound more violent
Speaker 2: than it actually comes off in the film. I don't
Speaker 2: know why that is, but I don't know. It's very
Speaker 2: video game esque, I guess in the end. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 2: back to Jean Claude van Dam. In nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: he ventured into sci fi properly with Albert Pyune's Cyborg,
Speaker 2: and then there's just a whole string of Van Dam flicks.
Speaker 2: There's nineteen nineties Lionheart with Brian Thompson, nineteen nineties Death Warrant.
Speaker 2: That one was pinned by David Goyer. There's nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: one's double impact. This is double the Van Dam in
Speaker 2: which he plays twins and also Bolo Jung is back
Speaker 2: to beat up on them.
Speaker 3: You know, Van Dam was optioned to play the Twins
Speaker 3: and dead Ringers.
Speaker 2: That would have been a very, very different film.
Speaker 3: It's we need it.
Speaker 2: I don't know that we've done it. Have we done
Speaker 2: a Twins movie before?
Speaker 3: No, I don't think so. I don't want to do
Speaker 3: dead Ringers.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I don't want to do dead Ringers either.
Speaker 2: But there's there's a lot to say about it because
Speaker 2: on an acting level, it seems like actives of a
Speaker 2: certain caliber will get to play twins at some point,
Speaker 2: and it's you know, it's like the challenge of it.
Speaker 2: But then also you get people like Van Dam and
Speaker 2: I love Van Dam's performance, but he's not on the
Speaker 2: acting level. He's not the pure acting talent where you're like,
Speaker 2: I need him to play opposite himself as twins. You know,
Speaker 2: it seems like it's better left for like the Jeremy
Speaker 2: Irons of the world.
Speaker 3: I'm sure there is a good Twins movie we could do.
Speaker 3: We'll have to come back to that.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right. Ninety two he does Universal Soldier This
Speaker 2: is Roland Emericks Super Soldier movie in which he takes
Speaker 2: on Dolph Lundren and and he also starred in ninety
Speaker 2: three's Hard Target from John Wu opposite Lance Hendrickson, and
Speaker 2: then ninety four he was in the feature film adaptation
Speaker 2: of Street Fighter, a film of such just crazy good
Speaker 2: casting and Bonker's energy that I think we will have
Speaker 2: to come back.
Speaker 3: To it at some point, maybe on a Tuesday.
Speaker 4: We'll do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, special Tuesday edition. So the Jean claud van damtrain
Speaker 2: continues to keep on rolling after all of that. Highlights
Speaker 2: include ninety seven's Double Team co starring Dennis Rodman, Mickey Rourke,
Speaker 2: and Paul Freeman of all People. Other highlights include ninety
Speaker 2: nine The Universal Soldier of the Return, two thousand and
Speaker 2: one's The Order There's two thousand and eight's JCVD we
Speaker 2: mentioned Regeneration Kung Fu Panda two also gets into voice acting.
Speaker 2: The Expendables two. Also the TV series Jean Claude van
Speaker 2: Johnson two kick Boxer sequels. I think at least they
Speaker 2: have kick Kickboxer on the name, and then he's also
Speaker 2: a voice talent in minions.
Speaker 3: The Rise of Grouse Grew Is Grew one of the minions.
Speaker 2: I think Grew is the minion Master.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen these movies. He's what they're minions of. Yes, okay,
Speaker 2: all right, so that's our hero. But you can't have
Speaker 2: a hero without a villain. And we know from other
Speaker 2: films if your hero is also like a muscly action
Speaker 2: guy with maybe less acting chops, it makes sense to
Speaker 2: have a seasoned veteran actor to play off of to
Speaker 2: be your antagonist. And that's what we have in this
Speaker 2: film with Ron Silver.
Speaker 3: I love Ron Silver in Time Cop. He is just
Speaker 3: the smoothest, sleaziest Oh he's great.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it's it's a very fun performance. Ron Silver, Yeah,
Speaker 2: plays Senator Aaron McComb. Silver lived nineteen forty six through
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine. He's the corrupt US senator who
Speaker 2: harnesses the power of time travel to advance his own
Speaker 2: political ambitions. Just a really mean guy. Silver himself came
Speaker 2: up on TV and transitioned into small parts in film.
Speaker 2: He starred in the CD supernatural thriller The Entity in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty two. He had a supporting role in eighty
Speaker 2: three Silkwood. He plays a vendor. Apparently in nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: four is Romancing the Stone, which I don't remember. That
Speaker 2: same year he appeared in Hurley Burley on Broadway, followed
Speaker 2: by another Broadway play, Social Security, and then in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty eight he won a Tony Award for his performance
Speaker 2: in the Broadway play Speed the Plow. From there, we
Speaker 2: see him take on some of the biggest and notable
Speaker 2: roles of his career, the lead in nineteen eighty nine's
Speaker 2: Enemies a Love Story, the villain role in Catherine Bigelow's
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety thriller Blue Steel, and the role of Alan
Speaker 2: Dershowitz in nineteen nineties Reversal of Fortune opposite Jeremy Irons
Speaker 2: and Glenn Close as the Von Bulohs.
Speaker 3: So that's a film adaptation of a creepy, real life,
Speaker 3: famous court case that in a lot of ways I
Speaker 3: think prefigures the sort of a true crime podcast obsession.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's I've never seen it in full. I
Speaker 2: remember when it came out as a young person. I
Speaker 2: remember hearing about it through the media, so I have it.
Speaker 2: It's still in my head. It's like Reversal of Fortune
Speaker 2: is a big deal because it was like, there's a
Speaker 2: whole thing about in Time magazine and my grandpa, so
Speaker 2: it must be really important. But yeah, also very much
Speaker 2: a true crime sort of story, and I have gone
Speaker 2: back and watched clips of it, and Silver's great as Dershowitz.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of nuance to his performance. It's really
Speaker 2: fun to watch. But anyway, probably due in large part
Speaker 2: to that villain performance in Blue Steel. He is cast
Speaker 2: as the villain in Time Cop and his old discuss.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of fun. He also appeared in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six is The Arrival, written and directed by David Toohey. Toohey,
Speaker 2: of course would go on to work with Vin Diesel
Speaker 2: on the Riddick movies, and it's still working with him
Speaker 2: on Riddick movies. Silver worked pretty steadily through the rest
Speaker 2: of his career, with one of the highlights probably being
Speaker 2: a recurring role in The West Wing. And it's also
Speaker 2: of note that he directed and acted in a nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three TV movie called Life Pod, which is a
Speaker 2: sci fi take on Hitchcock's Lifeboat huh oh. And this
Speaker 2: is also interesting. Doesn't really reflect his performance here, but
Speaker 2: Silver apparently had a master's degree in Chinese history and
Speaker 2: apparently spoke fluent Mandarin.
Speaker 3: So I had no idea.
Speaker 4: I had no idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so his performance in this film maybe lacks the
Speaker 2: nuance of reversal of fortune, but it's still like he's
Speaker 2: all in and he's not phoned in this baby and
Speaker 2: thinking about when the bank's closing, or at least if
Speaker 2: he is, he's going for the bank as well. Because yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a very energetic performance. And since this is a
Speaker 2: time travel movie, he's playing his character both in the
Speaker 2: future and in the present, or in the present and
Speaker 2: in the past, depending on how you look at it.
Speaker 2: I don't know, two different versions of the same character,
Speaker 2: which is kind of fun.
Speaker 3: I think he's excellent in this movie. He just fantastic
Speaker 3: as the slimy, rich guy politician villain. I don't know
Speaker 3: if this is best to talk about here or later.
Speaker 3: Maybe we should go ahead and do it here, because
Speaker 3: there was something rob You flag this to me, and
Speaker 3: I couldn't help but notice it as well. It's kind
Speaker 3: of unsettling about his character. So I'll just say the
Speaker 3: villain of this movie is a very rich guy who
Speaker 3: prominently who famously has lost a lot of money due
Speaker 3: to some stupid business decisions. He is a narcissistic bully
Speaker 3: who constantly abuses his underlings. He runs for president on
Speaker 3: a theory that he doesn't need endorsements from respected figures
Speaker 3: or the truth on his side. He just needs to
Speaker 3: be on television NonStop. One of his signature campaign themes
Speaker 3: seems to be anti immigration sentiment. He notably eats a
Speaker 3: lot of junk food. He promises that he's going to
Speaker 3: make America like it was the eighties again. Part of
Speaker 3: his pitch for the presidency is that he'll be so
Speaker 3: rich he can't be bought off. And there's one part
Speaker 3: where I can't remember what he did, think he's just
Speaker 3: murdered somebody or something, And the character says, maybe he'll
Speaker 3: calm down after the election, you know, maybe he'll grow
Speaker 3: to meet the occasion once he understands the seriousness of
Speaker 3: the office. So, yeah, interesting character in this nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: four movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's kind of ahead of its time in
Speaker 2: that respect. It's a yeah, great villain role, great villain performance. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's even hard on his past self. So there's in
Speaker 2: a sense, there's negative self talk in this film because
Speaker 2: he he even gives his past self a hard time
Speaker 2: over the gentle food.
Speaker 3: In a scene in which I think he also like
Speaker 3: shoots a business partner in the head.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: The other of the three top build actors on the
Speaker 2: cast is MIAs Sarah playing Melissa. Mia Sarah is born
Speaker 2: in sixty seven. While she had one small role on
Speaker 2: an episode of All in the Family in eighty three,
Speaker 2: her career was launched in a major way when she
Speaker 2: played Lily in Ridley Scott's nineteen eighty five dark fantasy
Speaker 2: film Legend opposite Tom Cruise.
Speaker 3: Legend is a film I think you and I have
Speaker 3: discussed the sort of mixed merits and demerits of before.
Speaker 3: It's a weird movie to go back and experience because
Speaker 3: there's a lot about it that's really good and a
Speaker 3: lot about it that is kind of boring actually, and
Speaker 3: or I don't know, maybe you didn't agree with me
Speaker 3: on that, but it's like the kind of movie you
Speaker 3: can't really recommend because overall it's not that great. But
Speaker 3: also I kind of find myself wanting to bring it
Speaker 3: up a lot. At least Tim Curry in it, or
Speaker 3: the music in it or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has a lot going for and it's a
Speaker 2: Ridley Scott film, so you know, at the very least
Speaker 2: it's going to beautiful to look at. I haven't given
Speaker 2: it a dedicated viewing since I was like in junior
Speaker 2: high or something. I think when I've had it on
Speaker 2: since then, it's been in the background or something. So
Speaker 2: it's one i'd have to come back and revisit. But
Speaker 2: it's one I want to revisit. I have a lot
Speaker 2: of memories about it, but still I know that it
Speaker 2: is kind of up and down now. One note on
Speaker 2: legend that's important for this century is that it was
Speaker 2: filmed in massive studios of course, next to another little
Speaker 2: mid eighties fantasy production, Labyrinth. Yeah, and I wasn't aware
Speaker 2: of this first of these two productions kind of overlapped.
Speaker 2: But also the cast and crew apparently hung out a
Speaker 2: little during the overlapping productions, which I mean mostly that
Speaker 2: just makes me try to imagine David Bowie's Jare At
Speaker 2: the Goblin King and Tim Curry's Darkness the Big Horned
Speaker 2: Demon Dude, like hanging out together and you know, chilling
Speaker 2: between the two productions, but having.
Speaker 3: The minno cheese together.
Speaker 4: Yeh, yeah, something like that.
Speaker 2: But it's also where Mia Sarah first met Brian Henson.
Speaker 2: Of course, the son of Jim Henson, who worked on Labyrinth.
Speaker 2: She would later meet him again and wound up marrying
Speaker 2: him in twenty ten, so her future husband she met
Speaker 2: on between the sets of Labyrinth and Legend. So anyway,
Speaker 2: Mia Sarah kicked it off big with this Ridley Scott film.
Speaker 2: Follow that up with the role of Sloan Peterson in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty six is Ferris Bueller's Day Off, So right
Speaker 2: out of the gate, two big films, one of which
Speaker 2: definitely has I think maybe more of a pop culture
Speaker 2: footprint than the other. Now flash forward to nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 2: She appears in two episodes of a TV series called
Speaker 2: Time Tracks.
Speaker 3: Would you believe?
Speaker 2: This is prior to Time Cop, but it is about
Speaker 2: a time traveling policeman who brings back time traveling fugitives
Speaker 2: from the past.
Speaker 3: So I wonder if that came up in her audition.
Speaker 3: It's like, I've been in this movie already.
Speaker 2: It's like I've got experience you can use, I've done
Speaker 2: this sort of thing before, and they're like, well, it
Speaker 2: just makes sense. So anyway, she does Time Cop after that.
Speaker 2: Let's see, she was in the nineteen ninety seven twenty
Speaker 2: thousand Leagues under the c mini series starring Michael Kine.
Speaker 2: She also played Harley Quinn on the TV the series
Speaker 2: Birds of Prey in the early two thousands, and she
Speaker 2: retired from acting in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 3: So another actor in this movie. I was watching and
Speaker 3: I kept trying to place he is the boss of
Speaker 3: the time cops in the film. And I finally realized
Speaker 3: it's the sheriff for my cousin Vinnie.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is Bruce McGill born nineteen fifty. This is
Speaker 2: not a guy I recognized at all. I didn't even
Speaker 2: draw any connections to other films. But when you look
Speaker 2: him up, you realize, oh, man, this is a longtime
Speaker 2: character actor whose work goes back to I think nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy seven. He played Daniel Simpson Day or d Day
Speaker 2: in Animal House in seventy eight, as well as in
Speaker 2: the And I had no idea this existed Animal House
Speaker 2: TV spinoff Delta House.
Speaker 5: Huh.
Speaker 3: I did not know that was the thing either.
Speaker 2: It existed in some format, but beyond that, just extensive
Speaker 2: TV and film credits, often pretty high up in the
Speaker 2: billing of respectable, you know, for respectable character work in films.
Speaker 2: He was an all Overstone's The Hand in nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 2: That's a crawling hand movie with Michael Caine in and
Speaker 2: he was in Silkwood in eighty three. He was in
Speaker 2: a Tales from the Crypt episode in ninety one called
Speaker 2: The Trap. As you pointed out, he was in My
Speaker 2: Cousin Vinnie in ninety two, eighteen episodes of the original
Speaker 2: mcguiver series, Exit Wounds in two thousand and one, he
Speaker 2: was in Lincoln in twenty twelve, and he's still active.
Speaker 4: Wait.
Speaker 3: I just had to look it up to make sure.
Speaker 3: Exit Wounds is the movie with Steven Segal and DMX.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, so hm. That was a fun production to
Speaker 2: work on. I wonder, all right, we also have Gloria
Speaker 2: Rubin in this, playing Fielding another time cop. Ruben was
Speaker 2: born in sixty four. Largely a TV actor prior to this,
Speaker 2: but afterwards she pops up in films such as ninety
Speaker 2: five's Nick of Time, Lincoln in twenty twelve again the
Speaker 2: remake of Firestarter from twenty twenty two. Her TV credits
Speaker 2: include such shows as Homicide, Life on the Street, Falling Skies,
Speaker 2: The Blacklist, and Mister Robot.
Speaker 3: I thought she was good and I was actually really
Speaker 3: disappointed when her character betrays John Claude Van Dam and
Speaker 3: reveals herself to be working for the villain. And I
Speaker 3: was almost shouting no with the TV.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but we find out, I mean, there are
Speaker 2: reasons for her betrayal, and really, I mean, she's kind
Speaker 2: of one of the more interesting side characters in the
Speaker 2: film that I kind of wanted to see more from.
Speaker 2: I kind of this is the kind of character that
Speaker 2: you could have, you know, at least from a narrative
Speaker 2: standpoint and plotting standpoint, you could have used to carry
Speaker 2: a sequel or a TV series.
Speaker 3: I agree. It's also a shame when after her little
Speaker 3: minor redemption arc she she gets murdered by the time goons.
Speaker 3: I feel like I wish she could have sort of
Speaker 3: buttied up with John Claude for the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would have been good, all right, if you
Speaker 2: just a couple of other really actors of note here.
Speaker 2: Scott Lawrence plays the character George Spotta. Is it Spota
Speaker 2: or Spoda? I can't remember what they said. I think
Speaker 2: they call him Spoda Spoda all right, he's a yeah,
Speaker 2: he's a government man. I forget what department he's with.
Speaker 3: I know if they even say he gives like classified
Speaker 3: briefings to they Senate Oversight Committee.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really his only role in the film. As
Speaker 2: he comes in all smooth, he lays out the time
Speaker 2: travel exposition, and then he's gone. Maybe McCombe had him erased,
Speaker 2: but maybe they don't even suggest that, but it's as
Speaker 2: if he was erased because he never shows up again. Now,
Speaker 2: the interesting thing about Laurence if you look him up,
Speaker 2: you see a picture of him. He has a distinctive look,
Speaker 2: so you've probably seen him in stuff before. I know
Speaker 2: i'd seen him in some things. But if you have
Speaker 2: played pretty much a Star Wars video game ever, certainly
Speaker 2: since nineteen ninety four, then you have heard him because
Speaker 2: he's been the go to voice actor for Darth Vader
Speaker 2: in everything that has come out since Star Wars tie
Speaker 2: Fighter in ninety four.
Speaker 3: Really did he do Darth Vader in Jedi Fallen Order?
Speaker 4: He did?
Speaker 3: Yep, Oh okay, I did not realize it was the
Speaker 3: same guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I thought.
Speaker 2: I thought he was really good played through that game
Speaker 2: and I loved it. So, yeah, solid Darth Vader from
Speaker 2: this guy. Now as an actor, non voice actor, his
Speaker 2: credits go all the way back to bit parts on
Speaker 2: Murder She Road and New Heart, La Law, Murphy Brown
Speaker 2: and so forth in the late eighties. But you'll probably
Speaker 2: more likely to recognize him from two thousand and nine's Avatar.
Speaker 2: I believe he plays a soldier in that. And he
Speaker 2: was also a long running character on the TV show
Speaker 2: Jag Jag.
Speaker 3: That's one of those shows you see a lot of
Speaker 3: credits linking there, but I've never seen.
Speaker 2: It, all right, And then finally, the music in this
Speaker 2: film is the work of Mark Isham born nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 2: We've talked about him before. Electronic music pioneer turned highly
Speaker 2: prolific film score composer, skilled on both the trumpet and
Speaker 2: the synth. His early solo music is especially notable. I
Speaker 2: went back and was listening to some of it while
Speaker 2: I was working on notes here, and it's pretty good,
Speaker 2: like some of his I think. His nineteen eighty three
Speaker 2: album Vapor Drawings was released on Wyndham Hill, known for
Speaker 2: putting out a lot of especially ambient electronic music back
Speaker 2: in the day, his work has been held up as
Speaker 2: an inspiration by specifically Boards of Canada. And Yeah, all
Speaker 2: that being said, I can't say this score really impressed
Speaker 2: me beyond like I guess, just doing what a score
Speaker 2: needs to do, but you know, still it gets the
Speaker 2: job done. He also scored the film Blade, which we
Speaker 2: previously discussed on Weird House, which definitely had some nice
Speaker 2: meditative tracks on it.
Speaker 3: I don't really remember the music in Timecop except for
Speaker 3: the music from Aliens and the trailer.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, like I said, it gets the job done
Speaker 2: and that's good, but it doesn't really stand out to
Speaker 2: me beyond that.
Speaker 3: All right, you ready talked about the plot.
Speaker 4: Let's do it.
Speaker 3: This movie has a historical cold open. We are told,
Speaker 3: little Chyron says Gainesville, Georgia, eighteen sixty three.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is filmed in Canada, of course, but the
Speaker 2: setting is only an hour's drive from where we are
Speaker 2: right now. But it's also one hundred and sixty years
Speaker 2: from where we are right now, so take that for
Speaker 2: what it's worth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And of course historical setting means this would be
Speaker 3: in the middle of the US Civil War inside Confederate territory.
Speaker 3: So Confederate soldiers are on horseback. They're clopping along through
Speaker 3: the mud and the rain. They are drawing a wagon
Speaker 3: behind them. They come across a creepy guy with a
Speaker 3: missing tooth standing in the middle of the road, and
Speaker 3: he tells them he knows they're transporting a shipment of
Speaker 3: gold bullion to General Lee. He says they need to
Speaker 3: give him the gold and the soldiers. They keep referring
Speaker 3: to him as a single guy as y'all, and I
Speaker 3: was like, is that a historically based thing? I was
Speaker 3: looking up singular usage of y'all. I found some references
Speaker 3: to it, but I don't know if that was intentional.
Speaker 3: That might just be a bit of confusion there real quick.
Speaker 2: This particular actor playing the stranger is Callum Keith Rennie
Speaker 2: for nineteen sixty. This is pretty early in his career,
Speaker 2: but he went on to work a lot on TV,
Speaker 2: especially Canadian series. So if this guy looks familiar, that's
Speaker 2: why you've probably seen in something.
Speaker 3: He did kind of look familiar to me, but I
Speaker 3: couldn't have said from what. But I mainly just kept
Speaker 3: noticing his missing tooth, which is he's kind of whistling
Speaker 3: through it while he's saying, give me the gold. Anyway.
Speaker 3: They won't do it. They say, no, you don't get
Speaker 3: the gold. So he opens up his coat and reveals
Speaker 3: double laser sighted machine guns from the future and blasts
Speaker 3: all the soldiers. And so this might cause one to wonder, oh,
Speaker 3: what kind of direction is this movie going in? Is
Speaker 3: this like the well worn thought experiment, would you go
Speaker 3: back in time and kill Hitler before he came to power?
Speaker 3: That this could be a similar thought experiment, would you
Speaker 3: economically cripple the Confederacy to cause them to lose the
Speaker 3: war earlier? But no, that is not what's going on here.
Speaker 3: The chronopirates in time cop are They're not concerned with
Speaker 3: disabling Nazi Germany or the CSA. They are after the money.
Speaker 3: They want the gold.
Speaker 2: Now they don't bring this up at all, But I
Speaker 2: wonder if this is how the time criminals rationalize things
Speaker 2: at first. In the same way that the bonejackers and
Speaker 2: free jack steal the bodies of people who are about
Speaker 2: to die in the past, these criminals at least initially
Speaker 2: target the funds of historically losing sides and conflicts. You know,
Speaker 2: so it's not actually, you know, it's not paradox free
Speaker 2: by any stretch of the imagination. But golden treasure often
Speaker 2: vanished during these tense periods in history. So you can
Speaker 2: imagine the time criminals being like, all right, well, nobody's
Speaker 2: going to miss that amber room if we go back
Speaker 2: and snatch it.
Speaker 3: That kind of logic could well be in play. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but we don't ever get that full explanation. So we
Speaker 3: jump forward in time, like one hundred and thirty years
Speaker 3: and see a shot of the Capitol Building. Always love
Speaker 3: a shot of the Capitol Building in a movie to
Speaker 3: let us know we're in Washington, d C. And it's
Speaker 3: got to be accompanied to buy a little title that
Speaker 3: says Washington, DC. But now we know it's nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: four and it says here's the Senate Oversite Committee covert operations.
Speaker 3: So the Senate Oversite Committee here gets a secret briefing
Speaker 3: in which they are told the following. Number one, a
Speaker 3: time machine has been invented by a scientist on our payroll.
Speaker 3: Number two, you can't go to the future. You can
Speaker 3: only go back to the past, and we will later
Speaker 3: learn you can return to the present moment from which
Speaker 3: you came. Number three. This technology is dangerous and it
Speaker 3: should never be used. If you go back into the
Speaker 3: past and make changes, it could have unpredictable catastrophic consequences
Speaker 3: for the future and for this reason, you can't do
Speaker 3: like you can't go back and kill Hitler number four
Speaker 3: because it's so dangerous. We need to create some new
Speaker 3: type of cop, some kind of time cop. And literally
Speaker 3: they say we need to create something called a Time
Speaker 3: Enforcement Commission to police time itself and prevent dangerous unauthorized
Speaker 3: use of time travel. Now this immediately raises big questions like, wait,
Speaker 3: what is the authorized use of time travel? A government
Speaker 3: scientists just invented time travel, and as far as I
Speaker 3: can tell, the only time travel that is then permitted
Speaker 3: is to go back in time and stop other pe
Speaker 3: people from changing the past.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess so. I mean, otherwise, the only thing
Speaker 2: I can think of is historical research. You want to
Speaker 2: go back and see what actually happened at pivotal points
Speaker 2: in history and get a you know, unbiased view of
Speaker 2: what occurred. Or it's just purely tourism. I don't know,
Speaker 2: Like pick any historic moment in the past, you go
Speaker 2: back and you just watch it as a tourist.
Speaker 3: You want to see the Sphinx before the face decayed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, stuff like that. You want to see like
Speaker 2: all of the wonders of the ancient world back when
Speaker 2: they were still standing. You know, I guess that could
Speaker 2: make sense, But of course we know that it would
Speaker 2: never work out like that. I mean, we all know
Speaker 2: the about the butterfly effect, we know about the sound
Speaker 2: of thunder and Ray Bradbury's stories. We know about Homer
Speaker 2: Simpson stepping on dinosaurs. So any of these ideas would
Speaker 2: inevitably lead to chaos and paradox, or at least paradox.
Speaker 3: But despite this knowledge, it doesn't stop them from getting
Speaker 3: into trouble. You know what, you dad your hands in
Speaker 3: the toaster again. It just keeps happening. So this scene
Speaker 3: includes a few bits more of of plot set up,
Speaker 3: and we see them tap Bruce McGill playing a character
Speaker 3: named Matushak to head up the Tec let's see oh,
Speaker 3: And they say that they they've got proof that they
Speaker 3: need these time cops, and they cite the fact that
Speaker 3: terrorists have been purchasing weapons with the use of Confederate
Speaker 3: gold stolen from the past, and the agent here says,
Speaker 3: we had it carbon dated and it's real.
Speaker 2: I feel like another direction they could have gone in
Speaker 2: with this film is they could have had a great
Speaker 2: split second esque buddy cop structure where one cop is
Speaker 2: an historian who's always on about how he can't cause
Speaker 2: ripples in the time stream, and the other is just
Speaker 2: all about busting heads in the past.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well boy, But which one would John club Vandam
Speaker 3: be the nerd or the Harley Stone guy?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the thing. Jean Clave van Dam is
Speaker 2: kind of both in this. He's he's very he's very lawful,
Speaker 2: good until the fight starts, and then he's just brutal.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess these you can still be brutal
Speaker 2: in good in a D and D scenario, but once
Speaker 2: he starts fighting, you know, your your DM may ask
Speaker 2: for some sort of a check on your on what
Speaker 2: your alignment actually is.
Speaker 3: By the way, when I was thinking about this, I
Speaker 3: was trying to remember the name of the Rutger Howard character.
Speaker 3: In split second, it is Harley Stone. I remembered it, right,
Speaker 3: But when I looked that up to confirm, I discovered
Speaker 3: this is also the pen name of what appears to
Speaker 3: be an author of erotic motorcycle books.
Speaker 2: Okay, I mean it's a good name for that too,
Speaker 2: all right. So they have a new government body to
Speaker 2: govern time travel. They bring in a guy who used
Speaker 2: to run the DC Police force to run it, because
Speaker 2: that makes sense. But who's gonna head up oversight over
Speaker 2: this program?
Speaker 3: Good question. A grinning ron silver in the corner casually
Speaker 3: offers to do it. Yes, yes, I will accept this
Speaker 3: godlike power. Sure, And this is Senator Aaron McCombe. Let's
Speaker 3: cut to somewhere else. Next we go to a shopping
Speaker 3: mall nineteen ninety four. I guess that's supposed to be
Speaker 3: a shopping mall in the wash In DC area. And
Speaker 3: what can we say to describe this glorious, beautiful setting.
Speaker 3: There's like an A and W, a bunch of Kiosk
Speaker 3: selling what looked like Christmas decorations. There are big camera
Speaker 3: facing advertisements for Nissan and other things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, presumably this is a Canadian mall, because I think
Speaker 2: everything was filmed in Canada. But the interiors are great.
Speaker 2: I did not see a sign for hot pogos aka
Speaker 2: corn dogs, so I was a little disappointed in that.
Speaker 2: But otherwise, it's a great mall environment that we find
Speaker 2: our characters running around in. And we encounter a little
Speaker 2: bit of John claud van dam mall vigilanteism.
Speaker 3: Wait what if this was the same mall as scanners anyway, Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so there's vigilantiism. Wait, but before we get to that. Okay,
Speaker 3: So there's a flirting meet up between Jehan Claud van
Speaker 3: Dam playing police officer Max Walker and Mia Sarah playing
Speaker 3: his wife Melissa, and they I don't know, they meet
Speaker 3: each other. It's like, oh, hi, I would be nice
Speaker 3: if I was married to you.
Speaker 2: Good thing, I am, Yeah, And she makes a crack
Speaker 2: about his english and he's likely it's okay, I know
Speaker 2: all the best words. And then he leans in and
Speaker 2: whispers something in her ear and she giggles. And I
Speaker 2: spent way too much time running through the possibilities of
Speaker 2: what words he could have possibly whispered to her. And
Speaker 2: there are no not dumb choices. They're all ridiculous.
Speaker 3: I assumed he said a bad word.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but even like which one if you start actually
Speaker 2: like like framing it out and thinking about it, all
Speaker 2: dumb choices. There's there's no suave move. I'm glad. I'm
Speaker 2: glad we didn't hear him say it.
Speaker 4: Whatever it was.
Speaker 3: Anyway, she's asking, oh, are you going to take that
Speaker 3: new job with the Time Enforcement Commission, and he goes,
Speaker 3: I don't bake cookies for a living.
Speaker 2: Okay, it doesn't make sense, but okay, yeah, but.
Speaker 3: Oh so there's there's a mugging. Sorry you mentioned this.
Speaker 3: There's a mugging. A dorky looking dude wearing rectangular sunglasses indoors,
Speaker 3: a red bandana on his head, a red and white
Speaker 3: plaid long sleeve polo shirt with the sleeves rolled up
Speaker 3: just a bit to reveal that underneath the plaid polo
Speaker 3: shirt he is wearing a long sleeve white T shirt,
Speaker 3: all of it tucked into jeans, with a belt with
Speaker 3: a wallet chain on, rollerblades with neon green laces, and
Speaker 3: he rolls by and snatches an old lady's purse.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love this obviously like forty year old punk kid
Speaker 2: that they encounter here. And at first I was thinking, oh,
Speaker 2: this is probably a stunt player. So you know the
Speaker 2: stunt players, you know, they look like what they look like,
Speaker 2: and you know. But but I look this guy up
Speaker 2: and I think he has like Shakespearean credits in his background.
Speaker 2: So I don't know all this casting came together.
Speaker 3: But he's got some good stories from the set of
Speaker 3: Time Cop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at any rate, does not look like a punk
Speaker 2: kid who should be snatching purses in a nineties mall.
Speaker 3: Jean Claude van Dam stops him with like the sole
Speaker 3: of his boot to his face. Like he doesn't kick him,
Speaker 3: but he like does a kick pose with his leg
Speaker 3: up at like a you know, a one hundred degree angle.
Speaker 3: It's like way up there the boot facing the mugging guy.
Speaker 3: He screeches to a halt on his rollerblades and then
Speaker 3: he's like, read the soul of my boot, and he
Speaker 3: reads Wolverine and then anyway, so he like scares the
Speaker 3: guy into giving the purse back. So I think we're
Speaker 3: supposed to take from this. Oh wow, he's a really
Speaker 3: tough cop. He's a really cool guy.
Speaker 2: And very lawful. Like you see something bad going on,
Speaker 2: he's gonna jump in there and fix things.
Speaker 3: So at some point while at the mall, Max glances
Speaker 3: up at the mezzanine above them, and he sees a
Speaker 3: couple of weird looking dudes staring down at him. These
Speaker 3: are going to be recurring characters. These are future time goons.
Speaker 3: But honestly, the best way I could describe them is
Speaker 3: that they remind me of the early nineties wrestling duo
Speaker 3: with the Nasty Boys.
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right on this. I think this is something.
Speaker 2: I didn't think of this while I was watching it,
Speaker 2: but something was like sparking in my brain, and yeah,
Speaker 2: strong nasty boy vibes to these time goons. Timegons very
Speaker 2: much in the spirit of the two Timegoons from Highlander two,
Speaker 2: only less extreme, like not that like obviously from the future.
Speaker 2: These guys are blending in a little bit. I didn't
Speaker 2: mark the players earlier, but I think the main ones
Speaker 2: we see are Canadian stunt men Brent Woosey and Steven Lambert.
Speaker 3: Excellent timegoons. I love them, but as soon as Jean
Speaker 3: Claude van Dam glances back, they're gone quick. Note at
Speaker 3: the mall, the music they're playing you might not have caught.
Speaker 3: This is the band Chicago's nineteen seventy single Does anybody
Speaker 3: really know what time it is?
Speaker 4: Huh? Nice?
Speaker 3: Anyway, Max and Melissa they go back home for some romance,
Speaker 3: and then Max gets a phone call saying he has
Speaker 3: to go out on some kind of police business and
Speaker 3: Melissa has something important to tell him him. What could
Speaker 3: it be? But we'll we will have to wait until
Speaker 3: he gets back. Unfortunately, that won't happen because he As
Speaker 3: he heads out the front door, they are suddenly attacked
Speaker 3: again by the science fiction punks, including the Nasty Boys
Speaker 3: and just guys who generally look like Krang's body in
Speaker 3: a trench coat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, again, I think these are all stunt players,
Speaker 2: but they're out. They all look tough and or cruel.
Speaker 2: Even the guys who aren't his brawny have a real
Speaker 2: kind of like lean and hungry look to them. So
Speaker 2: I bought all the all the time goods we encounter
Speaker 2: in this movie.
Speaker 3: So I think you're supposed to wonder, who are these guys, why,
Speaker 3: why are they Why is this couple being attacked? We don't,
Speaker 3: We are not to know for now. But Max is
Speaker 3: shot and left for dead outside, But then it turns
Speaker 3: out he was wearing body armor and he survives, and
Speaker 3: he tries to go back to rescue Melissa, but before
Speaker 3: he can do that, the house explodes in a giant fireball, and.
Speaker 2: His movie just keeps things rolling, because before you even
Speaker 2: really have time to process this, we're off to another time.
Speaker 3: That's right now. It's Wall Street October thirtieth, nineteen twenty nine,
Speaker 3: which would be one day after the so called Black Tuesday.
Speaker 3: This is the beginning of the Great Depression. We follow
Speaker 3: a big wig stockbroker named Atwood who is busy buying
Speaker 3: shares of oil companies and such things while everybody else
Speaker 3: is busy selling. And we see him consulting a list
Speaker 3: of stock prices from a copy of USA Today from
Speaker 3: the twenty first century.
Speaker 2: Uh oh, yep, we have a little white collar time
Speaker 2: crime on our hands here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd imagine if time travel invented, there'd be a
Speaker 3: lot of that. We have a no good time traveler
Speaker 3: screwing up the past so we can get rich in
Speaker 3: the future. I also have to say it's interesting that
Speaker 3: manipulating the past has got to be a lot easier
Speaker 3: if it's an open book test, like you can take
Speaker 3: newspapers from the future with you anyway. Atwood sitting at
Speaker 3: his desk doing financial time crimes, listening to heavy metal
Speaker 3: music on a secret Walkman that he had hidden in
Speaker 3: his bag, and then oh, here's JCVD. Max Walker is
Speaker 3: here to arrest him. It seems Atwood is a time
Speaker 3: cop like Max, but now he's a time criminal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he turned bad.
Speaker 3: And when we see Jean Claude here, he looks very
Speaker 3: different than he did before. He's older. Obviously he has
Speaker 3: been sent back from farther in the future than the
Speaker 3: last scene we saw. So Rob, is it time for
Speaker 3: a digression on hair?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think one of the central messages in this
Speaker 2: film is that you will have better hair in the future.
Speaker 3: I'd say the difference is that he goes from in
Speaker 3: the nineties era. He has a sort of slick pompadour
Speaker 3: with I don't know what you call that is, like
Speaker 3: the is it like the duck back where it's sort
Speaker 3: of like rolled in from the sides in the back.
Speaker 3: I don't know what that is. In the future, it's
Speaker 3: like edge of mullet. But he does look cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like everybody. We also see this with Ron
Speaker 2: Silver's character. In the future, hair is going to be slicker.
Speaker 2: It's just I don't know, like just the wet look
Speaker 2: is in once you get into the far future of well,
Speaker 2: what is it two thousand and four?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, two thousand and four. So maxterrives to arrest
Speaker 3: this guy Atwood. We get an action scene Atwood brings
Speaker 3: in his nineteen twenty nine security guys. There's a guy
Speaker 3: with like a wax mustache who does the backwards fist
Speaker 3: fighting stance, and he just does not stand a chance
Speaker 3: against the future based fighting techniques of our hero. But
Speaker 3: there's exposition in the scene because Atwood reveals that he
Speaker 3: is working for a big time crime boss, and his
Speaker 3: boss is Senator Aaron McComb. That's Ron Silver. He is
Speaker 3: the chair of the committee that oversees time crimes in
Speaker 3: the Senate, and now he's running for president. He's smart,
Speaker 3: he's ruthless, and he will go back in time and
Speaker 3: wipe out Atwood's entire family if he testifies against him,
Speaker 3: so Atwood cannot flip. Another thing is that Atwood also
Speaker 3: explains that Macomb is stealing all this money from the
Speaker 3: past for a specific reason he can get money for
Speaker 3: his presidential campaign. Something about this seemed really funny to me, Like,
Speaker 3: couldn't he just get money from like, if he's gonna
Speaker 3: do crime, couldn't he just get money from some corrupt,
Speaker 3: self interested billionaire in the future. It doesn't seem that hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just just juice the donors a bit. But
Speaker 2: now he decides to go back in time and do
Speaker 2: shady things in the past in order to gain money
Speaker 2: to take into the future or to collect on in
Speaker 2: the future.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Atwood tries to jump out the window at the
Speaker 3: skyscraper to avoid being taken back by Walter to testify
Speaker 3: or not Walter Walker, But then Walker jumps after him,
Speaker 3: and he grabs him in mid air and dials home
Speaker 3: on his time phone in midair to take him back,
Speaker 3: So the dude is captured. Walker takes him back to
Speaker 3: where they came from, which is the year two thousand
Speaker 3: and four.
Speaker 2: He has a far future full of self driving cars
Speaker 2: and fancy guns. Basically those the main two bits of
Speaker 2: technology we see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of computer screens.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but we don't see what they're eating. Don't
Speaker 2: get a sense of like what will smoothies be like
Speaker 2: in the future, What will Roger be like in the future.
Speaker 4: We don't know.
Speaker 3: No, they really don't go into that at all. So
Speaker 3: they arrive at the Tec headquarters in Washington. This place
Speaker 3: is kind of a set from like Aliens. There's no
Speaker 3: normal doors in the future. It's all just like the
Speaker 3: sliding powered pressure locked doors and the spinning red lights
Speaker 3: on the ceiling and all that. So Atwood is taken
Speaker 3: straight to his time trial. No lawyer, no jury, here's
Speaker 3: a judge. You are guilty prepared to die.
Speaker 2: Yeah, time Court is more than a little totalitarian. I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess at least the judges don't have masks or
Speaker 2: hoods on.
Speaker 3: And his punishment is this did not make sense at
Speaker 3: all to me. It is execution by time travel. So
Speaker 3: he is transported back to nineteen twenty nine in the
Speaker 3: middle of the air and dropped like on a car,
Speaker 3: and he's killed by the impact. I thought the whole
Speaker 3: point of the Tec division was to avoid people going
Speaker 3: back and messing around in the past, and so now
Speaker 3: they are executing people for going into the past by
Speaker 3: sending them into the past and dropping them on the sidewalk.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The best I could figure out on this one is
Speaker 2: that by the time they arrested him, there had been like, say,
Speaker 2: like forty four different changes to the time stream, and
Speaker 2: then they did a forty fifth change by stopping him
Speaker 2: mid drop, and so they're actually like correcting it by
Speaker 2: one by just throwing him back in and letting him
Speaker 2: finish the fall. M that's my best. That's The's the
Speaker 2: best I.
Speaker 4: Can do though.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, after all this, Max is very disappointed
Speaker 3: because he knows Ron Silver is behind all of the
Speaker 3: time crimes. But he doesn't have a witness to testify
Speaker 3: against him, so we can't do anything about it. So
Speaker 3: we see a little bit of the day to day
Speaker 3: life of the time cops. We see them, you know,
Speaker 3: trying to pick up signals of time traveling assassins, time
Speaker 3: traveling thieves. They have to go out and stop them
Speaker 3: and all that. Of course, the boss is still Bruce
Speaker 3: McGill playing this guy named Eugene Matushak. The scene is
Speaker 3: interrupted by a tour of politicians who do oversight on
Speaker 3: the Tec, including Ron Silver, who has graciously taken time
Speaker 3: out of his presidential campaign to accompany them. And you
Speaker 3: can see in the office they've got like a dartboard
Speaker 3: with a Aaron McComb for President poster on it. They
Speaker 3: quickly turn that around and hide it. And in this scene,
Speaker 3: Walker gets up in Macomb's face and he's like, I
Speaker 3: know it's you.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: This is a convention of cop movies. You got to
Speaker 3: have the cop, I don't know, be a tough guy
Speaker 3: who like lets the crime boss know that he's onto him.
Speaker 3: But it makes no sense in the context of this
Speaker 3: movie when you know he could go back in time
Speaker 3: and wipe you out of existence, which he does do
Speaker 3: or he does try to do. And also by doing
Speaker 3: this this isn't explored, but presumably Walker ensures that Macomb
Speaker 3: will go wipe out Atwood's entire family from history, who
Speaker 3: presumably did nothing to deserve this, because now he knows
Speaker 3: that Atwood told Walker even though he didn't testify.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's just lawful, good to a fault. He like,
Speaker 2: he comes up to Macombe and he's like, hey, just
Speaker 2: so you know, you were breaking the law with all
Speaker 2: of this. Yeah, it is illegal. I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 2: arrest you one day because that's my job.
Speaker 3: Please don't use time travel to destroy me in the meantime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that's also illegal. Dude, you don't don't do
Speaker 2: that as well, because that's that's illegal. You're just going
Speaker 2: to more crimes. Come on, cut out the crimes.
Speaker 3: Also in the scene, we learned that Macomb missed out
Speaker 3: on making billions of dollars because of a bad business deal.
Speaker 3: Back in the nineties, he was co owner of a
Speaker 3: business that now makes all the super conducting chips that
Speaker 3: power all of the time travel technology. But he sold
Speaker 3: his share in this company right before his partner got
Speaker 3: the patent on the chip, so he missed out on
Speaker 3: the money do anyway. In this scene, Ron Silver explains
Speaker 3: that he wants to eliminate the entire Time Enforcement Commission
Speaker 3: because of the dangers it poses. What if an agent
Speaker 3: goes back in time and makes contact with themselves with
Speaker 3: their own body, and they explained that the you know
Speaker 3: this is in the technical reports quote the same matter
Speaker 3: cannot occupy the same space at the same time, which
Speaker 3: made me think, huh, isn't that, by definition what is
Speaker 3: always happening?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a This is like a rule, an
Speaker 2: important rule in the in the Time Coop universe, and
Speaker 2: it's one that I sometimes I find myself just thinking
Speaker 2: back on in life, just trying to figure out what
Speaker 2: it means, and I never quite can do it, though
Speaker 2: sometimes it does feel truthy enough that if you don't
Speaker 2: think about it too much, you can be like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that absolutely cannot happen. That would be a paradox and
Speaker 2: it would destroy everything. But if you think too hard
Speaker 2: about it, there are all sorts of holes that emerge
Speaker 2: in the logic here.
Speaker 3: But in the context of the movie, literally all it
Speaker 3: means is that, like you can't touch the body of
Speaker 3: your past self because there will be vague disastrous consequences.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of like in the back of the
Speaker 2: future it's a stabt or they're just looking at you
Speaker 2: encountering yourself in the past. It could potentially have this
Speaker 2: devastating effect. But I don't know. I guess the best
Speaker 2: I can do is, like it's like, if you touch
Speaker 2: yourself in the past, then that means the effect is
Speaker 2: coming before the cause, and there's some sort of temporal
Speaker 2: like just a paradox that destroys itself kind of thing happens.
Speaker 2: That's the best I can do.
Speaker 3: But why would that only be touched. I mean you
Speaker 3: could cause all kinds of changes, Like characters talk to
Speaker 3: each other in the past.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well yeah, they breathe in the same room with
Speaker 2: each other. And then you can also argue that like
Speaker 2: if if it's significantly far enough in the future, it's
Speaker 2: not the same matter, like the things have you get
Speaker 2: down to discussions of how how much of your body
Speaker 2: is the same as your body from ten years ago,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: That is a very good point. Okay, okay, so wait,
Speaker 3: villain scene in a villain limo, this has got a
Speaker 3: future villain limo that Ron Silver gets into to talk
Speaker 3: about all of his plans to commit more crimes and
Speaker 3: do evil. Can we talk about the twenty first century
Speaker 3: cars in this film?
Speaker 4: Oh? I love them.
Speaker 2: These are better than the sci fi cars and free
Speaker 2: Jack in my opinion. These big windowless especially the limo,
Speaker 2: the presidential limo looks really nice. This just sleek windowless
Speaker 2: robot car that you climb into and you ride around
Speaker 2: town in.
Speaker 3: They look like big dustbusters on top of a set
Speaker 3: of wheels.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, are some of those like fancy shoes?
Speaker 4: You see that? They're like who wears that?
Speaker 5: This?
Speaker 4: That's what this looks like? All right?
Speaker 3: Well, in the car, Ron Silver gets a breakdown of
Speaker 3: the latest polling results in his presidential campaign. Now, I
Speaker 3: thought it was interesting that a lot of movies of
Speaker 3: this period, if you've got a megalomaniac politician as a villain,
Speaker 3: the movie would be very vague about what his political
Speaker 3: positions were, I guess, for fear of alienating half of
Speaker 3: the audience. But Time Cop doesn't shy away. It gives specifics.
Speaker 3: Ron Silver's constituency is. This is a quote the pro life,
Speaker 3: pro death penalty coal and the quote closed the border
Speaker 3: America for Americans anti immigration faction. Those are his people.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: As I was watching this film right before this scene,
Speaker 2: I was I was thinking idly to myself, I wonder
Speaker 2: if Macomb's supposed to be, you know, of this political
Speaker 2: party or the other political party. And then they just
Speaker 2: straight up and tits tell me yeah, which again, yeah,
Speaker 2: is just not the move you would expect from certainly
Speaker 2: a modern film with a character like this in it.
Speaker 3: Well, his aid says, in order to win, he's gonna
Speaker 3: need a lot more money, and then Ron Silver just
Speaker 3: like smashes his aid's face against the side of the
Speaker 3: car and he's like, don't tell me what I can't do.
Speaker 3: He says elections are won with television, while his aid
Speaker 3: is cringing and holding his bloody nose. He says he
Speaker 3: doesn't need endorsements from the establishment, he doesn't need facts
Speaker 3: on his side. He just needs money and media exposure.
Speaker 3: And to get the television time he needs, he'll have
Speaker 3: to steal fifty million dollars. Clearly, Jean Claude van dam
Speaker 3: is getting in the way of this, so he asked
Speaker 3: this like creepy, silent hinch dude. At the other end
Speaker 3: of the limo to go have a chat with him,
Speaker 3: and then there's a scene of him just like devilishly
Speaker 3: chewing peanuts.
Speaker 2: Yeah again, offering peanuts to to the a that he
Speaker 2: just walloped.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Just a great villain performance by Silver.
Speaker 3: Okay, Next we got an action scene where Walker is
Speaker 3: asleep in his apartment and he is attacked by Macomb's goons.
Speaker 3: I thought this was a really really fun action scene
Speaker 3: and really funny. So like the creepy guy from the
Speaker 3: limo attacks him with a taser, there's another guy there
Speaker 3: who's like a martial artist who attacks him with a knife,
Speaker 3: and there's like a knife duel and the scene also
Speaker 3: has the famous underwear jump splits onto the kitchen counter
Speaker 3: real quick.
Speaker 2: The knife wielding guy who's credited his knife number one
Speaker 2: is James lu born nineteen fifty two. He was in
Speaker 2: Big Trouble in Little China playing one of the gang
Speaker 2: members in the Big Gang Battle. But he was also
Speaker 2: a martial arts choreographer on that film as well, and
Speaker 2: he's been in tons of stuff. He's been like a
Speaker 2: go to guy for martial arts in Hollywood for decades.
Speaker 3: He's great in this scene and this fight is super fun.
Speaker 3: But this is also the fight I was talking about earlier.
Speaker 3: That's really funny because they're just like they just keep
Speaker 3: like clacking their knife blades together, and you know they're
Speaker 3: not that long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right, well Walker.
Speaker 3: After this fight, he gets a new partner. You know,
Speaker 3: his boss is like, this is one of the best
Speaker 3: parts of any hyphen cop movie. You got to get
Speaker 3: a new partner.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 2: And this is where we meet agent Sarah Fielding.
Speaker 3: Right, So they are going to be sent out into
Speaker 3: the field together. Fielding is with internal Affairs, and initially
Speaker 3: obviously they're butting heads, but they're sent out into the
Speaker 3: field together to stop a disturbance in time in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety four that is of course being caused by Ron
Speaker 3: Silver going back in time to do something wicked. And
Speaker 3: this leads to the whole time launch scene. Do you
Speaker 3: want to describe the time launch rocket sled scene?
Speaker 4: Rob, Yeah? Oh my god.
Speaker 2: So we've seen people emerging and re entering like time
Speaker 2: distortion bubbles in the in the past already, but we
Speaker 2: didn't know how they were getting there. We didn't know
Speaker 2: what the apparatus looked like. This is where we find
Speaker 2: out via seeing it, but also some narration between the
Speaker 2: newbie fielding and and and fandamn, you know the old
Speaker 2: hand at this and this is where we realize, oh, well,
Speaker 2: everything in the time Cop headquarters looks like an underground
Speaker 2: bunker because I guess it is. They have some sort
Speaker 2: of like weird accelerator system built in here, and it's
Speaker 2: how they achieved time travel. It seems to involve climbing
Speaker 2: into a rocket propelled sled that is then launched at
Speaker 2: some sort of enormous magnet monolith and if it goes
Speaker 2: everything goes well, then you're going to be like blasted
Speaker 2: through the time bubble to your destination. But if it
Speaker 2: doesn't go well, you're going to be splash it against
Speaker 2: the wall, like the Volmer Twins. Yes, they made well,
Speaker 2: multiple mentions to the vulner Twins.
Speaker 3: I didn't know. It's almost like that was a reference
Speaker 3: to something that like the fans would get, but I
Speaker 3: didn't understand what that was about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or I think you mentioned earlier too. Maybe it's
Speaker 2: a deleted scene. Maybe there was a scene with Volmer Twins,
Speaker 2: Like I want to know more about the Volmer Twins now.
Speaker 3: Apparently they were splatted against the wall. But yeah, what's
Speaker 3: the deal with So sometimes you go through the rocket
Speaker 3: sled and you appear in the past like in the
Speaker 3: air and fall into the reflecting pool at the Capitol.
Speaker 3: And then other times you just like walk into a
Speaker 3: guy's office from the time field.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes you just stroll in coolly, you know, as
Speaker 2: if you just strolled in from the other side, and
Speaker 2: not as if you were just aboard a rocket propelled
Speaker 2: sled that was about to make you vomit. So it's
Speaker 2: very inconsistent in this film. But I don't know, I
Speaker 2: love the inconsistency of.
Speaker 3: So Walker and Fielding. They bond, they have some banter
Speaker 3: about time travel, and they go back to nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: four and investigate this disturbance. Of course, it is Ron
Speaker 3: Silver trying to change history. Macomb is going back to
Speaker 3: visit himself in an industrial warehouse while his past self
Speaker 3: is in the middle of trying to sell out his
Speaker 3: share of that computer chip company that would have made
Speaker 3: him billions if he'd stayed a partner in it. Future
Speaker 3: Ron Silver talks to nineteen ninety four Ron Silver. He
Speaker 3: tells him to stop eating candy bars, and then he
Speaker 3: kills his business partner and he says, you own the company. Now,
Speaker 3: why would that be the case if his partner was
Speaker 3: just murdered, he says. He says that they can't touch
Speaker 3: each other because the same matter cannot occupy the same
Speaker 3: space at the same time. And then Walker and Fielding
Speaker 3: sting the meeting. They come out and they're like hands
Speaker 3: up everybody, but Fielding betrays Walker turns out she was
Speaker 3: working for Macomb the whole time. And then there's an
Speaker 3: another action scene.
Speaker 4: This one.
Speaker 3: This one, I will say the first half of it
Speaker 3: I liked less than some of the other action scenes
Speaker 3: because it's just a lot of shooting and it's you know,
Speaker 3: standard nineties gunplay slop. But it later turns into a
Speaker 3: martial arts scene that involves a what's it called a
Speaker 3: liquid nitrogen freezing and shattering moment, which is awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because again this has to do with like super
Speaker 2: cool computer parts, and also of course they have big,
Speaker 2: big containers of liquid nitrogen. One of the time, Goons
Speaker 2: gets his arm frozen in a fight with Van Dam,
Speaker 2: and then of course Van Dam kicks that arm, shatters
Speaker 2: that arm. It's a quality kill. One we've mentioned on
Speaker 2: the show before, back when we did an episode about
Speaker 2: the potential science of freezing and shattering biological matter.
Speaker 3: I think that. I think we did a couple of
Speaker 3: episodes maybe on that called something like shatter like shatter
Speaker 3: me like sub zero. I think, yeah, something like that.
Speaker 3: So Walker, So Walker escapes. Fielding is wounded here but
Speaker 3: not killed. Walker goes back to the future. Now Ron Silver,
Speaker 3: he's changed the past and the future has changed as well.
Speaker 3: He's way ahead in the polls now because he's so rich.
Speaker 3: I guess he's like thirty points ahead. He's definitely gonna
Speaker 3: win and become president. Walker convinces his boss Bruce McGill
Speaker 3: of what happened, and they managed to send Walker back
Speaker 3: to the past in the Rocket Sled once again, despite
Speaker 3: the fact that tec is now being ruled over by
Speaker 3: a corrupt Ron Silver, whose goons come in and shoot
Speaker 3: Matuschik and then Walker. So he goes back to the
Speaker 3: past once again. There is a redemption scene for agent
Speaker 3: Fielding in the hospital. She He goes to talk to
Speaker 3: her and she's like, I'm sorry, I worked with Macomb
Speaker 3: and she agrees to be a witness in time court
Speaker 3: against Ron Silver in the future. But before that can happen,
Speaker 3: she is murdered by the Nasty Boys.
Speaker 2: I can't remember if it's this scene or earlier, but
Speaker 2: we do find out like she's only turned and agreed
Speaker 2: to work with McComb because he threatened her parents, right,
Speaker 2: I think that's right. Yeah, yeah, so she had no
Speaker 2: choice in the matter. I mean, she had a choice,
Speaker 2: but she has reasons for turning to the bad side,
Speaker 2: which you know, I thought was some good development.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Like I said earlier, I kind of wish that
Speaker 3: maybe they could have teamed back up and been buddies
Speaker 3: for the end. But alas killed by the Nasty Boys,
Speaker 3: and so now now dude is on the run. Walker's
Speaker 3: running from them and he but then sort of the
Speaker 3: plot takes a sharp turn here because he realizes he's
Speaker 3: come back in time early enough to prevent his wife
Speaker 3: from being murdered by the Nasty Boys. So he meets
Speaker 3: her in a mall, convinces her that it's really him
Speaker 3: from the future, conspires with her in secret to keep
Speaker 3: him secret from his past self. Which is interesting.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there's so much that goes on, like this
Speaker 2: film is. It does such a great job of stringing
Speaker 2: all this together. Because also while he was checking on
Speaker 2: fielding at the hospital he found his wife's pregnancy results
Speaker 2: just on the same tray.
Speaker 3: I forgot about that.
Speaker 2: He's like, Oh, yeah, that's what the secret was that
Speaker 2: or that's not the secret. That's what the news was
Speaker 2: that she was going to tell me. It was that
Speaker 2: she was with child.
Speaker 3: Right, Maybe that's the thing that makes him want to
Speaker 3: go do this instead of just getting on with his work.
Speaker 3: But this leads to a huge showdown at their house
Speaker 3: the night Ron Silver's goons are sent back to kill them,
Speaker 3: but this time future van Dam is there to help
Speaker 3: the two of them in the past, so this turns
Speaker 3: into a long, massive action sequence at and around their house.
Speaker 3: I will say the action here was up and down
Speaker 3: for me. There were some parts that were really great
Speaker 3: others that were less interesting. But the payoff at the
Speaker 3: end when they finally have when they finally confront Senator
Speaker 3: Macomb is so good. It's perfect. It has terrible nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety four CGI. That is one of the most beautiful
Speaker 3: things I've ever seen, And it's the payoff of what
Speaker 3: we've been hearing the whole movie. The same matter cannot
Speaker 3: occupy the same place at the same time. They try
Speaker 3: that with Senator mccomb's body.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now the setup to this is also brain breaking because
Speaker 2: we have the big shootout, all sorts of time goons
Speaker 2: are killed. But finally there's like an explosive device. Future
Speaker 2: Ron Silver has MIAs Sarah held captive and he's like,
Speaker 2: I'll blow it up. You know, it doesn't matter to
Speaker 2: me because my future, my past self is out there.
Speaker 2: He's gonna benefit. And so if I die now, then
Speaker 2: he still grows up to be me in the future,
Speaker 2: so it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: But he grows up to be you, and then you
Speaker 3: come back to the past and die here.
Speaker 2: Hey, are you the head of time travel policing, Joe,
Speaker 2: trust Macomb. He knows how this works. He's the mastermind.
Speaker 2: So at any rate, yeah, I agree that the logic
Speaker 2: it does not make sense. No, but Macomb believes that
Speaker 2: he has the upper hand here. But then oops in
Speaker 2: strolls nineteen ninety four Macomb and he's like, what are
Speaker 2: you doing here? And he's like, well, you left a
Speaker 2: message that I needed to show up here, and he says,
Speaker 2: I did no such thing. Ah, this is this is
Speaker 2: what van Dam has done. He was the one who
Speaker 2: left that message. He orchestrated this and now Macomb's like, well,
Speaker 2: this is just going to be a multiple homicide and
Speaker 2: now it's going to.
Speaker 4: Be a blood bath.
Speaker 2: And then then we get the payoff. We get some
Speaker 2: fun one liners back and forth, but it ends with
Speaker 2: a tussle over the gun and Jean Claude van Dam's
Speaker 2: character kicks ninety four Macomb into two thousand and four Macomb,
Speaker 2: and now Matter is occupying the same same space at
Speaker 2: the same time.
Speaker 3: So yeah, they start melting together and screaming. At one
Speaker 3: point they've got like the two faces and like their
Speaker 3: eyes are joining, and it's it's very well. Eventually they
Speaker 3: turn into what looks like, I don't like a CGI
Speaker 3: version of like an indoscopy procedure, and.
Speaker 2: Then this puddle, and then the puddle it just evaporates
Speaker 2: into nothing. So it's like they just consume themselves and
Speaker 2: are just completely removed from all timelines, though I guess
Speaker 2: they can still remember him, so on some level, I
Speaker 2: don't know. It breaks my brain if I think about
Speaker 2: it too much. But at any rate, Macomb in the past,
Speaker 2: Macomb in the future are gone Macomb. It's as if
Speaker 2: Macomb never existed. And yeah, I remember thinking this. It
Speaker 2: doesn't like I say, the closer you look, the more
Speaker 2: brain destroying it becomes. But how they good here? And yeah,
Speaker 2: it just you gotta Yeah, you can't think about it
Speaker 2: too much. But I do remember loving this sequence back
Speaker 2: in the day. When I saw it in the nineties,
Speaker 2: I was like, this is amazing. These effects are amazing.
Speaker 2: Now it's a bit dated looking. I think the sound
Speaker 2: effects hold up really well. The sound effects help sell it.
Speaker 2: I would not want good effects here. I want these
Speaker 2: effects to be exactly as bad as they are. It's perfect.
Speaker 2: It looks like an after dark screensaver.
Speaker 3: It's beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess you know. It shouldn't look
Speaker 2: too biological. It's not supposed to look like a realistic
Speaker 2: melt because it's not. This is a this is something
Speaker 2: happening with like like a time paradox resolving itself by
Speaker 2: by destroying matter across time lines or something. At any rate,
Speaker 2: it's a quality kill.
Speaker 3: Yes, So the evil Senator Macomb is defeated. Jean Claude
Speaker 3: van dam, Mia, Sarah and their son live happily ever after,
Speaker 3: and we see like into the future and there's like, oh,
Speaker 3: happy family times and it's happy ending. We get some sweet.
Speaker 3: I think, like some sweet two to do kind of music.
Speaker 3: And that's the end.
Speaker 2: Now, when Jean Claude Van Kidd runs out and he
Speaker 2: scoops him up, I immediately was like, Okay, this is
Speaker 2: the happy ending.
Speaker 4: But he doesn't.
Speaker 2: He doesn't remember. He doesn't know this child at all.
Speaker 2: He's gonna have to like go in and get a
Speaker 2: full breakdown from from Mia Sarah about who this kid
Speaker 2: is and what his relationship to him is. He's gonna
Speaker 2: have to look at some photo galleries or something, or
Speaker 2: at least it's not implied that suddenly a full recollection
Speaker 2: of this timeline comes into his mind.
Speaker 3: That didn't make sense to me. I didn't know, and
Speaker 3: I don't know. As with all the time paradoxes, I
Speaker 3: think you just can't think about it. So that's time cop,
Speaker 3: It's time cop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good luck trying to resolve the various time paradoxes
Speaker 2: in this film. Don't do not try it. But all
Speaker 2: that aside, still a super fun nineties sci fi action film.
Speaker 2: Really probably the van dam action film to rewatch on
Speaker 2: it if you're not looking for a pure martial arts picture. Now,
Speaker 2: we of course watched this movie in the future. I mean,
Speaker 2: we're in the future even compared to two thousand and four.
Speaker 2: We would love to hear from anyone who has recollections
Speaker 2: like we do of watching it in the past.
Speaker 3: Did you watch it in nineteen twenty nine?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Oh man, that was another thing I was thinking, like
Speaker 2: if what else did McComb do to raise money, like
Speaker 2: go back in the past. Like maybe as he's running
Speaker 2: for president, they're like, hey, he's that guy who wrote
Speaker 2: that song, Hey Jude and.
Speaker 4: Let it be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he wrote so many classic songs. That's where he
Speaker 2: made most of his money. He invented the mister Coffee.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's just like looking around his house. It's like,
Speaker 2: all right, that guys, get in the get in the
Speaker 2: times led, We're going back to invent the mister coffee.
Speaker 2: Daddy needs a little more money for the campaign.
Speaker 3: He's singing thriller in the commercial for the mister Coffee.
Speaker 2: Yeah, another great, great tune that he wrote. All right, Well, hey,
Speaker 2: if you want to write into us about time travel
Speaker 2: and time cop please do. We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 2: You know, we'll probably discuss those on our listener mail episodes,
Speaker 2: which air in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind Podcast.
Speaker 2: Feed every Monday. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we do core
Speaker 2: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. We're mostly a
Speaker 2: science podcast, but then on Fridays we set aside most
Speaker 2: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a complete
Speaker 2: list of all the films we've discussed so far, you
Speaker 2: can go to letter box dot com. That's L E
Speaker 2: T T E R B O x D dot com.
Speaker 2: We have a profile there it's weird House. We have
Speaker 2: a list there of all the films we've done, with
Speaker 2: links to where you can listen to them.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our audio producer Jjposway. If you would
Speaker 3: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 3: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 3: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 3: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.