Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird How Cinema. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In Today, we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about the movie that that delivers on the
Speaker 1: promise when your Titanic sinks. This is the movie you're
Speaker 1: gonna meet. It is Deep Blue Sea, which I feel
Speaker 1: like we're getting into what you might call slightly dangerous
Speaker 1: waters here because it's definitely going to be one of
Speaker 1: the most mainstream films we've ever done. Yeah, it's Um,
Speaker 1: it's also as dangerously close as we've come to covering
Speaker 1: a movie from this century. It's from It's also the
Speaker 1: most expensive film we've ever watched, more than doubling the
Speaker 1: thirty million dollar budget of Free Jack. Um. I should
Speaker 1: also add that it is, without a doubt, the deepest
Speaker 1: and the bluest film that we've watched. Is this also
Speaker 1: the first movie we've done that had its own dedicated
Speaker 1: original pop song to go with it? I guess so
Speaker 1: those those two tracks from that didn't quite Um, Oh
Speaker 1: that's right, I forgot about those. Okay, so never mind,
Speaker 1: I take it back. Oh yeah, we'll also take back
Speaker 1: the Sun Joe because Godzilla versus Hetera had its own
Speaker 1: track as well. That's right too. Okay, so I've just
Speaker 1: forgotten everything, you know what. I think maybe even Teens
Speaker 1: in the Universe had its own music, but its own
Speaker 1: dedicated music video, which we'll get to that maybe a first.
Speaker 1: So this is a thing I love from like big
Speaker 1: budget nineties movies, which is the dedicated popular genre song
Speaker 1: for the movie. So it's not a movie that's a musical.
Speaker 1: It's just got like a song that will maybe play
Speaker 1: on the end credits, and it's often done by a
Speaker 1: musician who's also an actor in the movie. So like
Speaker 1: some of the Will Smith movies and the nineties had
Speaker 1: a song Men in Black or Wild Wild West, this
Speaker 1: movie has LLL cool J in it in a tour
Speaker 1: to force performance and it has the song for the
Speaker 1: original motion picture. It's called Deepest Bluest. My hat is
Speaker 1: like a shark's fin And if you've never seen this
Speaker 1: music video, you must go watch right this moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's got it all. It's got it's got
Speaker 1: water dancing and synchronized swimming, it's got L cool J
Speaker 1: just looking ridiculously jacked. It's got sharks footage from the
Speaker 1: film up into a shark yeah, oh yeah, and then yeah,
Speaker 1: full on morphing into a shark human hybrid. Yeah. One
Speaker 1: thing I like about these songs and music videos like
Speaker 1: you said that used to come out with all these
Speaker 1: blockbusters is they would of course come out as part
Speaker 1: of the hype train leading up to the release of
Speaker 1: the film, and they would, I think, to a large extent,
Speaker 1: inform how the movie was supposed to make you feel,
Speaker 1: you know, so like I forget which Batman movie it was,
Speaker 1: but there were several different tracks. One of them was
Speaker 1: a YouTube track, but then you also had that that
Speaker 1: seal track about what I've been kissed by the thorn
Speaker 1: of a Rose, kiss from a Rose. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: that's for Batman Forever, the one with Valkill, Morris Batman,
Speaker 1: Tommy Lee Jones's two Faced Jim Carey is the Riddler.
Speaker 1: Nicole Kidman as a Batman's girlfriend her Her character's name
Speaker 1: in the movie is Dr Chase Meridian, which, as Rogeriebert said,
Speaker 1: her name sounds like a bank. Uh. That's also the
Speaker 1: Batman movie that has the thing We've talked about several
Speaker 1: times on the show, The the bank vault full of
Speaker 1: boiling acid. Chase Meridian might have worked in a in
Speaker 1: a Cronenberg film. I love a good Cronenberg name, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta be Cronenberg to get away with some of
Speaker 1: those yes. So that song let you know that. And
Speaker 1: I never actually saw Batman Forever, but it informed me
Speaker 1: that this was going to be a romantic, heartfelt affair. Um.
Speaker 1: Songs like that Aerosmith song for that movie about the
Speaker 1: don't was what was that I don't want to miss
Speaker 1: a thing or I don't want that close my e
Speaker 1: I don't know, something like that, but that it made
Speaker 1: you think though that it was about the asteroid. It's
Speaker 1: like the asteroid hopeing it doesn't miss Earth and like
Speaker 1: just do a narrow pass by. Well, I mean it
Speaker 1: told you that, Yeah, this is a disaster film, but
Speaker 1: it's about our feelings in the disaster film, it's about
Speaker 1: our loved ones and all. And likewise, Deepest Bluest I think,
Speaker 1: for the most part, accurately prepares you for the fact
Speaker 1: that this film is just gonna come at you. This
Speaker 1: film is just coming at you like a shark with
Speaker 1: its intensity. Uh. And it um, it might play around
Speaker 1: with you a little bit. It might play with its food,
Speaker 1: but it is going to devour you. It's a song
Speaker 1: full of superlatives, and the entire mood of it is
Speaker 1: superlatives as it as it says, other fish in the sea.
Speaker 1: But barracudas ain't equal to a half human predator created
Speaker 1: by a needle. Then that's that's that's the plot. I
Speaker 1: mean that that's that's accurate. LLL cool J read his
Speaker 1: script for sure. I mean the song is easy to
Speaker 1: make fun of because the premise is so ludicrous. But
Speaker 1: I also want to say I think it is legitimately
Speaker 1: like a well crafted rap song. It has a lot
Speaker 1: of really funny word play in it. Yeah, yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's. It's a sold track, much like J's
Speaker 1: performance in this film, as we'll discussed, is really solid
Speaker 1: um intentionally funny and just the right places, and then
Speaker 1: intentionally cool and all just the right places. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a nice alchemy they manage with his character. So,
Speaker 1: in addition to being the most expensive movie we've ever done,
Speaker 1: probably the most mainstream movie we've ever done. I guess
Speaker 1: it depends on if you count. I don't know, like
Speaker 1: the e Walks movie or something that kind of fits
Speaker 1: in in a strange place, like being part of a
Speaker 1: very mainstream franchise but being a weird sort of outgrowth
Speaker 1: of it. Uh. And being the one of the most
Speaker 1: recent movies we've ever done. This is also our first
Speaker 1: shark movie, right, we haven't done another one. Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Um. I feel like sharks have
Speaker 1: maybe come up just as in conversation, like in like
Speaker 1: Death Moon, they're like, oh, it looks like a shark
Speaker 1: at him, that kind of thing. Okay. Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: shark movie genre is very interesting to me for a
Speaker 1: number of reasons. So I want to talk about a
Speaker 1: few facts. First of all, between the year's nineteen seven five,
Speaker 1: I checked, and there have been over eighteen point six
Speaker 1: billion shark movies produced in the United States alone during
Speaker 1: that time. That's not even counting Italy. That's true. And
Speaker 1: I'm imagining like Carl Sagan, uh, you know, in a
Speaker 1: deeply somber voice saying like there are more shark movies
Speaker 1: on Earth than there are stars in the sky. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and so you've got that figure. I mean, like
Speaker 1: the shark movies are just prolific, copious, you know, the
Speaker 1: world overfloweth with shark films, and yet I can literally
Speaker 1: only think of one shark movie ever made that I
Speaker 1: would argue is good in an unqualified since. I would
Speaker 1: say the closest runner up is probably the movie we're
Speaker 1: talking about today, which is Uh, you know, you you
Speaker 1: can level some criticisms at it, but I think this
Speaker 1: movie definitely works. You can get this one off the lot.
Speaker 1: So they're like a basilion shark movies. Almost all of
Speaker 1: them are in some conventional since at least pretty bad,
Speaker 1: and essentially all of them are in some sense derivative
Speaker 1: of this single original film. You can probably find a
Speaker 1: little exception here or there with something that that has
Speaker 1: a very different approach, but almost all of them descend
Speaker 1: from Jaws, you know, directed by Steven Spielberg, released in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five. I don't really need to introduce Jaws.
Speaker 1: I think everybody knows Jaws, and I mean you suffice
Speaker 1: to say Jaws is a shark movie. It is the
Speaker 1: granddaddy of all shark movies. It's also the granddaddy of
Speaker 1: all summer blockbusters. It's one of the most influential films
Speaker 1: of all time. Yeah, and rightly so. I mean, I
Speaker 1: I watched Jaws almost every year. Rachel and I watched
Speaker 1: it on fourth of July every year. It's a tradition,
Speaker 1: and I never get tired of it. Jaws is endlessly entertaining.
Speaker 1: It has that great seventies character driven quality, you know,
Speaker 1: especially with Robert Shaw as Quinn. I mean, I just
Speaker 1: never get tired of it. But it's somehow it's funny
Speaker 1: that it has spawned this many imitators, and that almost
Speaker 1: all of them mostly fail. And you've had a couple
Speaker 1: of different kinds of imitators. So you've got some like
Speaker 1: one we've alluded who several times but never devoted an
Speaker 1: episode to Lultimo Squalo that you know, the Last Shark,
Speaker 1: or I think it's also called Great White, which are
Speaker 1: just direct scene by seeing ripoffs of Jaws. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that one, we've alluded to that one before. That one
Speaker 1: has a vic morrow and it added playing the Quint
Speaker 1: character or their version of the Quint character. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: and then there are others that are at a greater remove,
Speaker 1: you know, might be several levels of abstraction away from
Speaker 1: their progenitor. And yet still I think it's a fair
Speaker 1: bet that almost none of these shark movies would exist
Speaker 1: if it were not for Jaws. Yeah, absolutely, it's really
Speaker 1: you really can't overstate it's importance, especially if you're talking
Speaker 1: about shark movies, right, So, I think you can kind
Speaker 1: of imagine Jaws as this grand ancestral, great king who
Speaker 1: produced a great, many incompetent warring errors that battle for
Speaker 1: supremacy once there, you know, once the powder Familius has
Speaker 1: passed on into the great hall under the waves. And
Speaker 1: so the movie we're talking about today is one of
Speaker 1: these many warring heirs to the throne, one of these contenders,
Speaker 1: And like a lot of these shark movies, it is
Speaker 1: full of what are in fact conscious nods to Jaws.
Speaker 1: For example, I saw this pointed out by one film critic,
Speaker 1: and this was actually confirmed by one of the writers
Speaker 1: of the movie. How long is the Shark and Jaws?
Speaker 1: What knows to tail? What's the length? Do you remember
Speaker 1: the line? Okay, so well, well Hooper sees that. He says,
Speaker 1: that's a twenty footer, and then Quin says twenty five
Speaker 1: three tons of them? Yeah, twenty five ft? How long
Speaker 1: is the Shark? And Deep Blue sy they say in
Speaker 1: the movie it's twenty six ft long. It's a literal
Speaker 1: one up, and screenwriter Duncan Kennedy acknowledged that this was deliberate.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure whose idea was. It might have been
Speaker 1: Rinny Harland, the director, But I was also reading a
Speaker 1: chapter from a book called Horror Zone, The Cultural Experience
Speaker 1: of Contemporary Horror Cinema, which is a book I've I've
Speaker 1: talked about on the show a little bit before. It's
Speaker 1: edited by a scholar named Ian Conrich, but the chapter
Speaker 1: was by a scholar named Stacy Abbott, and it's about
Speaker 1: the idea of the horror blockbuster, what happens when horror
Speaker 1: movies become like big event type films. And Stacy Abbott
Speaker 1: points out that in the original marketing materials for the movie,
Speaker 1: one of the taglines was quote bigger, smarter, faster, meaner.
Speaker 1: So I think it's possible that could refer to daft punk.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how the the timing lines up there,
Speaker 1: but those are also comparative words, bigger, smarter, faster, meaner
Speaker 1: than what. I think. The unspoken part is pretty well understood.
Speaker 1: It's it's saying bigger, smarter, faster, meaner than the shark
Speaker 1: in Jaws or otherwise Jaws derivative movies that you've seen before.
Speaker 1: It also seems like a setup for like, Okay, you're
Speaker 1: gonna You're gonna make a Shark movie too, bigger, smarter, faster, meaner.
Speaker 1: Pick two? What your was that daft punk song? By
Speaker 1: the way, Oh man, I don't remember. If it feels
Speaker 1: like it's just always been a part of the the
Speaker 1: musical landscape, doesn't it. Oh I just looked it up.
Speaker 1: That was two thousand one. Blue sy predates it, well,
Speaker 1: it it's released, predates um an evolution in my taste
Speaker 1: in music. So uh so it feels to me like
Speaker 1: it's always been there. But another thing about Deep Blue
Speaker 1: Cy is that it displays one of the ways that
Speaker 1: a you know, a grandchild of Jaws the Great, can
Speaker 1: distinguish itself, and that is by fusing with another film
Speaker 1: concept and becoming a monstrous hybrid. And so I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty clear what's going on with the elevator pitch
Speaker 1: for Deep Blue Sy, uh it is that it is
Speaker 1: actually supposed to be And if they made it of
Speaker 1: two different Steven Spielberg movies. On one hand, you've got
Speaker 1: Jaws since nearly all shark movies descend from the King.
Speaker 1: And then on the other hand, you've got Jurassic Park,
Speaker 1: definitely more recent Spielberg feed in and the main source
Speaker 1: for a lot of the plot situation, plot developments throughout
Speaker 1: the movie. You know, it's about people visiting a facility
Speaker 1: to do a safety check up after there is a
Speaker 1: breakout and someone is injured, and then there's stuff about
Speaker 1: like the the animals being smarter than people expected, and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. I mean, it just follows
Speaker 1: Jurassic Park almost to a t. Yeah, absolutely. I'll say
Speaker 1: there's there's one scene in there that also feels very
Speaker 1: Poseidon adventure. So I think there's also a fair amount
Speaker 1: of just disaster movie d NA thrown in here. Um,
Speaker 1: which is good. It helps it helps pat out the film, um,
Speaker 1: because it's one of the problems with any kind of
Speaker 1: a monster movie. What do you do when the monster
Speaker 1: is not actively on screen, actively attacking or stalking? Right, Right,
Speaker 1: have characters just like putting bandages on each other and
Speaker 1: saying like, we'll make it through this. It can't just
Speaker 1: be that, right, Yeah, you gotta have some other set
Speaker 1: pieces in mind other than just the monster and so
Speaker 1: I agree that there are a few other things that
Speaker 1: get drawn on as well. I can see beside an
Speaker 1: adventure definitely, But I would also say that it's not
Speaker 1: just the plot mechanics. Jurassic Park, I think is also
Speaker 1: the inspiration for the sort of scatter shot themes of
Speaker 1: this movie, which, like Jurassic Park, basically reflects anxieties over
Speaker 1: dangers about what could happen when arrogant scientists screw around
Speaker 1: with Mother Nature, which is actually not just Jurassic Park.
Speaker 1: That's more broadly a theme of a lot of sci
Speaker 1: fi horror in the nineties, particularly fears about the emerging
Speaker 1: field of genetic engineering, which was just starting to look
Speaker 1: like plausible reality at the turn of the century, or
Speaker 1: as the turn of the century approach. Do you remember,
Speaker 1: like the Human Genome Project was launched in and then
Speaker 1: completed in two thousand three, So this was sort of
Speaker 1: the limbo period, the sort of what's going to happen
Speaker 1: with genetics period? Yeah, you can basically hear a nineties
Speaker 1: trailer narrator saying in the year nineteen ninety the Human
Speaker 1: Genome Project began, Yeah, and and so forth, and it
Speaker 1: ends up with something about genius Sharks. Yeah, but then
Speaker 1: I wanted to further situate Deep Blue Sea in recent
Speaker 1: film history by adding a note from something else in
Speaker 1: that Stacy Abbott chapter in Horrors own so, she points
Speaker 1: out that before it was not normal for studios to
Speaker 1: release horror films in the summer, like the summer release
Speaker 1: schedule is normally or at the time was normally a
Speaker 1: time um for your mass market blockbusters in genres like
Speaker 1: action and adventure, and traditionally most horror movies were released
Speaker 1: in the autumn, especially around Halloween or around the Christmas season, which,
Speaker 1: in a way I'm still partial to. I like it
Speaker 1: when horror movies come out in October. But there was
Speaker 1: a revolution in this principle in the summer of ninety nine,
Speaker 1: so Abbott writes. Quote. The summer of ninety nine, however,
Speaker 1: marked a distinctive change to this release pattern, with a
Speaker 1: number of horror films opening throughout the summer and making
Speaker 1: a noticeable impact upon the box office. Reconceived through the
Speaker 1: high concept style, either in their reworking of the genre
Speaker 1: or through their marketing. Two of the summer's major releases
Speaker 1: drew directly from classic horror texts as source material. Stephen
Speaker 1: Summer's remake of the universal horror film The Mummy or
Speaker 1: generally from ninety two, and Yen de Buns The Haunting
Speaker 1: and adaptation of the novel The Haunting of Hill House
Speaker 1: by Shirley Jackson that had been previously made in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three by Robert Wise. While Renny Harland's Deep Blue
Speaker 1: c a film about genetically altered sharks, is not a
Speaker 1: remake er adaptation, it clearly not only drew upon the
Speaker 1: cultural memory of Jaws. Uh. And then she says, but
Speaker 1: it also nodded to Jaws through this thing already brought
Speaker 1: up the bigger, smarter, faster, meaner tagline, which seems to
Speaker 1: be looking back. But then she notes about the the
Speaker 1: budgets of these films. So she says, quote, the budgets
Speaker 1: of these three horror films, The Mummy seventy six million,
Speaker 1: The Haunting eighty million, and Deep Blue cy seventy eight million,
Speaker 1: demonstrate the escalation of the horror classic to blockbuster status
Speaker 1: and the expectation that higher investment will bring higher rewards,
Speaker 1: a promise that to varying degrees, paid off. And so
Speaker 1: I think that this is really interesting at this point
Speaker 1: in time. Yeah. Now I'm shocked to see these numbers
Speaker 1: here in front of me now because I didn't see
Speaker 1: Deep Blue Sea until this week. But I did watch
Speaker 1: The Money and The Haunting back in the day when
Speaker 1: the you know the year they came out, and you
Speaker 1: know the Money say what you will and for starters.
Speaker 1: It is also kind of a hybrid. It's kind of
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones meets The Money, say what you about the Money,
Speaker 1: though it it makes an impact, I remember it, but
Speaker 1: The Haunting eighty million dollars, and I think the only
Speaker 1: thing I vaguely remember is Owen Wilson's character got his
Speaker 1: his head bashed in by by something, and that's it.
Speaker 1: I remember nothing. The Haunting I think suffers from bad
Speaker 1: c G. I I recall um, and it's It's weird
Speaker 1: that it is a very limp, banal adaptation of a
Speaker 1: book that is actually just on the page, enormously enlivening,
Speaker 1: lee scary and interesting. If you never read Shirley Jackson's
Speaker 1: The Haunting of Hill House, it is a fantastic ghost
Speaker 1: story and and it will still raise hairs today. I
Speaker 1: think the Endabant movie is a is a prime example
Speaker 1: of really squandering excellent source material. But anyway, with all
Speaker 1: that context, what we have here in Deep Blue Sea
Speaker 1: is a derivative sci fi horror mashup movie positioned in
Speaker 1: the market as a massive summer blockbuster, which was relatively successful,
Speaker 1: which was historically unusual at the time, but in keeping
Speaker 1: with broader trends in the year n something was you
Speaker 1: might say in the water in Well, what do you
Speaker 1: think that was culturally? I mean, was it the you know,
Speaker 1: the dawning of the millennium, was it, uh, you know
Speaker 1: something else. Was it just the you know, the fear
Speaker 1: of you know, genetic um advancements in science. It's a
Speaker 1: good question. I honestly, I don't know. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: clear that it did sustain in a way like horror,
Speaker 1: I think, remained relatively mainstream big business in film through
Speaker 1: the two thousands, even though a lot of the you know,
Speaker 1: the big money making horror movies at the time we're
Speaker 1: I would argue direct um. But it didn't go away.
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, I I don't know exactly what changed then,
Speaker 1: but I do think it's interesting. I mean, it could
Speaker 1: be that there were just a number of big hits
Speaker 1: that were more like the conventional summer movie, but had
Speaker 1: elements of horror in them that preceded this. So Jurassic Park,
Speaker 1: I think, is a great example there. I don't know
Speaker 1: if people remember this, because now nobody really thinks of
Speaker 1: Jurassic Park as a horror movie, but at the time
Speaker 1: people did sort of semi classify it as horror. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I watched it, rewatched all those Jurassic Park
Speaker 1: movies for the last few years, and you know that
Speaker 1: the scarees still hold up. Yeah, I agree. And so
Speaker 1: another thing is, despite the fact that, like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: there are almost no post Jaws shark movies that I
Speaker 1: would really personally argue our good in an unqualified sense,
Speaker 1: I think Deep Blue Sea comes close. It's consciously highly derivative.
Speaker 1: It is you could say, dumb, but like I said,
Speaker 1: you can definitely get this one off the lot. And
Speaker 1: you could tell that a lot of critics, even a
Speaker 1: lot of the snootier film critics, really liked this movie
Speaker 1: against their better instincts. You can read even some kind
Speaker 1: of artsy critics who are I don't know, just writing
Speaker 1: about it as if they sort of can't resist wanting
Speaker 1: to tell you to go see Deep Blue Sea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean part of it I think comes back. I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier how the alchemy of the cool Day's character
Speaker 1: in this Preacher, about how they managed to make him
Speaker 1: just the right level of funny, just the right level
Speaker 1: of cool in a way that works in a way
Speaker 1: that but but but it's the sort of attempt that
Speaker 1: often fails in other pictures, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: that in this film. You can point to where you
Speaker 1: can you can realize they're doing things that are often
Speaker 1: done poorly. Um, but they do so with finesse in
Speaker 1: this film. I agree. I don't think there's much about
Speaker 1: this movie that you could really classify as new or innovative,
Speaker 1: except in a recombinatorial sense. But it has a tremendously
Speaker 1: powerful autopilot at function. And uh and I think you're
Speaker 1: you're not going to be sad you watched it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And on that note, I will will also point out
Speaker 1: that there are at least a couple of really well
Speaker 1: executed twists in this film. So if you haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: if you have any interest in seeing it, um, and
Speaker 1: you've managed to avoid these the spoilers so far, let
Speaker 1: us not be the ones that spoil it for you.
Speaker 1: Go out and see it and then finish this episode.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. Yes, so there there are a
Speaker 1: couple of glorious twists. We will be discussing them. So
Speaker 1: so yeah, if if you would like to see the movie,
Speaker 1: you haven't seen it, you don't want to know what
Speaker 1: they are paused? Right here, go watch right this moment.
Speaker 1: Always love issuing spoilers for movies that are decades old. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's weird, like this is one. Like I say,
Speaker 1: I didn't watch the year it came out. I watched
Speaker 1: this week and there's plenty of stuff in it that
Speaker 1: was spoiled for me just through pop culture, just because
Speaker 1: the scenes, you know, hit well enough for for audiences
Speaker 1: and people keep rediscovering and they become memes, etcetera. Okay,
Speaker 1: how about the elevator pitch for this movie? I've got
Speaker 1: to Actually, the first one is the only way to
Speaker 1: find a cure for neurodegenerative disease is to create a
Speaker 1: batch of ordinary, hyper intelligent mutant sharks. Fortunately they are
Speaker 1: contained within a cage and will never escape. Uh. Second
Speaker 1: second I would say is ll O cool J has
Speaker 1: written a song where he turns into a supermind freak shark,
Speaker 1: and we need a movie to go with it. I
Speaker 1: don't think that is the actual creative process that led
Speaker 1: to this film, but I want to believe it is. Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's go ahead and have just a little taste
Speaker 1: of that trailer. Then tell me, Mr Franklin, have you
Speaker 1: ever known anyone with Alzheimers? No? What if you could
Speaker 1: end all that suffering with a single till give me
Speaker 1: till Monday morning, forty holis, I'll give you result, little skyrocket.
Speaker 1: You'll stock pricing the most advanced research facility in the world. Wow,
Speaker 1: beneath it's glassy surface, world of gliding monsters of special
Speaker 1: lists is working against the clock. Did someone ordered the
Speaker 1: fish or an experiment to benefit mankind? Sharks never show
Speaker 1: any loss of brain activity as they age, with this
Speaker 1: close to the reactivation of human brain cell, but before
Speaker 1: they can save millions of lives. Told me, I didn't
Speaker 1: see that they recognize that. Good. It's impossible. Sharks did
Speaker 1: not swim back, but they can't. They'll have to find
Speaker 1: a way to save their own. Okay, I guess it's
Speaker 1: time to talk humans. All right. Well, let's start at
Speaker 1: the top here with the director. It is of course,
Speaker 1: Ranny Harlan born Finnish born director. Thus the if I
Speaker 1: don't know if you noticed this job, but there's Finlandia
Speaker 1: vodka in the film, which is prominently featured. I believe
Speaker 1: that is a is a nod to the finished nationality
Speaker 1: of the director. There are a number of nods. There's
Speaker 1: one part where l cool J plays a chef in
Speaker 1: the movie and he has like a chalkboard where he
Speaker 1: has written today's specials on the wall, and one of
Speaker 1: them says finished pancakes. I don't know what Finnish pancakes are.
Speaker 1: How are they different than other pancakes? I have no idea,
Speaker 1: but maybe, I mean, every culture has pancakes, um savory. Alright,
Speaker 1: So what else did Harlan do well? He gave us
Speaker 1: such films as A Nightmare on Elm Street for the
Speaker 1: dream Master. Is that one of the good ones? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one, I mean good entertaining definitely Okay, die hard
Speaker 1: to actually watched I heard two within the past year,
Speaker 1: and it is odd. It's pretty entertaining. It's uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a fun watch, but it has uh. The thing
Speaker 1: that stuck out to me about it was that it
Speaker 1: has a lot of clangers in the in the script.
Speaker 1: So it has a lot of these things that are
Speaker 1: supposed to be like a pithy retort or a one liner,
Speaker 1: but they just don't scan like they just twang like
Speaker 1: an off like an out of tune guitar string and uh.
Speaker 1: And I don't know. I feel like the script needed
Speaker 1: a pass for smoothing. But otherwise, Yeah, a very effective
Speaker 1: action movie. All right. Now I've seen the next one.
Speaker 1: I'm going to mention Cliffhanger. That was the Sylvester Stallone
Speaker 1: mountain climbing adventure film. That movie is a laugh riot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's in the tradition of the Eiger sanction. Uh, but
Speaker 1: with more guns. I think it. Would you want to
Speaker 1: describe it? Um? I don't remember. Yeah, John Liftgal's in it.
Speaker 1: He plays the Batti, right, he's the villain. I remember
Speaker 1: enjoying it and cow made. He made for a tasty
Speaker 1: villain in some pictures back in the day, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Harlan has done a lot of other work. He's one
Speaker 1: of the directors to put out. He did a Hercules
Speaker 1: movie in which Hercules has a buzz cut back from
Speaker 1: that that period in cinema where it seems like we
Speaker 1: had more multiple buzz cut treatments of of of Greek mythology.
Speaker 1: Do you remember these? No? I don't know what you're
Speaker 1: talking about this um. I mean, I can't really define
Speaker 1: it by by the years, but it seems like there
Speaker 1: was a period where you had filmed like this. You
Speaker 1: had the what was it, the remake of Clash of
Speaker 1: the Titans. Oh, okay, more recent years. I thought we
Speaker 1: were going back to like the eighties or something. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: Because you got back to the eighties, I think you
Speaker 1: still had long haired. I think a lot of it
Speaker 1: comes down to the fact that if you're going to
Speaker 1: have a Hercules movie, no matter what you're calling that character,
Speaker 1: if he is is he Hercules or is he Um
Speaker 1: or is he Samson or is he I can't remember
Speaker 1: the Italian variant. Uh. If it's if it's a muscleman movie,
Speaker 1: then what what is your muscleman's hair going to be? Like?
Speaker 1: What is the fashion of the day. So if short
Speaker 1: hair is what you know a hunky muscle dude has
Speaker 1: when the picture is being made, well, then your Hercules
Speaker 1: is going to look like that. That's my theory. I
Speaker 1: think my Clash of the Titans will always be the
Speaker 1: curly locks of the guy who plays the dad and
Speaker 1: Veronica Mars not that dead, not her dad, the movie
Speaker 1: star dad. Oh yeah, Harry Hamlin. Oh that's right. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's my Clash of the Titans. I I recently
Speaker 1: rewatched that one with my son. He's a big fan
Speaker 1: of it. He likes it. It's good. All right, let's
Speaker 1: move on to the screenwriters. Not not all. I don't
Speaker 1: have a lot to say, but I think you have
Speaker 1: some tidbits here. But we had Duncan Kennedy, Donna Powers,
Speaker 1: and Wayne Powers. Uh. Duncan Kennedy also wrote a year
Speaker 1: two thousand episode of The Outer Limits titled The Grid,
Speaker 1: which I haven't seen yet, starring dB Sweeney, but I
Speaker 1: will put it on the list. Yeah. So I found
Speaker 1: an l A Times article from July so. It was
Speaker 1: covering the lead up to the film. I think it
Speaker 1: came out like a week before the film was released,
Speaker 1: and it has an interview with Duncan Kennedy, one of
Speaker 1: the screenwriters, about where the idea for the film came from.
Speaker 1: This was a spec script. Uh so, aspiring ter's out there?
Speaker 1: Who are just you know, you're forging your own path.
Speaker 1: You're not trying to get into the system. You're just
Speaker 1: writing your own idea that here's the inspiration for you.
Speaker 1: So the article reads as follows. As a kid growing
Speaker 1: up in Queensland, Australia, screenwriter Duncan Kennedy witnessed firsthand the
Speaker 1: horrific effects of a shark attack when a victim washed
Speaker 1: up on a beach near his home. Quote there was
Speaker 1: not really much left of him, Kennedy recalled in the
Speaker 1: years that followed, the memory of that attack might have
Speaker 1: contributed to a recurring nightmare Kennedy had about being in
Speaker 1: a passage way with sharks that could read his mind.
Speaker 1: Oh man, why don't these sharks read people's minds? Almost do? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I bet he edited that out of an early draft.
Speaker 1: That would have been better. You should have gone full
Speaker 1: bore sharks can read your mind, and instead in this one,
Speaker 1: they're just they're just so smart. They come off as telepathic.
Speaker 1: They anticipate the humans decisions before they make them. But
Speaker 1: I think that's just because the humans are being outwitted.
Speaker 1: You know, the sharks are better at the chess game.
Speaker 1: I love this though, because ultimately, though the dream imagery
Speaker 1: of sharks swimming after you and flooded passageways. UM like it.
Speaker 1: It only makes a kind of faint dream logic. And
Speaker 1: this film finds a science fictional way of making that
Speaker 1: dream logic plausible. And it works in so many ways.
Speaker 1: Like it's not just encountering the sharks out in the open,
Speaker 1: uh you know to um just to quote Gil Scott
Speaker 1: heron where Jaws lives. No, you're encountering them in hallways
Speaker 1: for human habitation and human movement. They are on our turf.
Speaker 1: They have invaded or are part of our world. Now,
Speaker 1: I love the hallways in this movie. This movie is
Speaker 1: all about hallways, and gimme, gimme. Yeah, they're very nice hallways,
Speaker 1: very well done. As someone who's watching a lot of
Speaker 1: Outer Limits episodes from the nineties, I recognize a nice
Speaker 1: sci fi hallway. But anyway. As so, this article goes
Speaker 1: on to say that Kennedy finally purged to those dreams
Speaker 1: about the sharks in a hallway that could read his
Speaker 1: mind by writing a screenplay about them, which they say
Speaker 1: evolved into the new Warner Brothers thrillers. So perhaps in
Speaker 1: an earlier draft of the screenplay, the sharks could read
Speaker 1: your mind, I'm not sure that they're not clear about that.
Speaker 1: One thing that's funny is reading about market research about
Speaker 1: films that came out decades ago. So another thing this
Speaker 1: article in the l A Times notes is that, uh,
Speaker 1: is that recent tracking data shows that interest in the
Speaker 1: film is very high among its core young male audience,
Speaker 1: though not as high as the interest was for the
Speaker 1: other upcoming film, the blair Witch Project, or maybe not upcoming.
Speaker 1: Maybe at this point blair Witch had already come out.
Speaker 1: I think it came out sometime in like July ninety
Speaker 1: nine or something like. But let's talk about this cast,
Speaker 1: all right. So we have Thomas Jane playing the character
Speaker 1: Carter Blake Thomas James born nineteen nine. And he is
Speaker 1: our he has our shark spurt uh in the film.
Speaker 1: He has UH. He is he's our our lead hunk,
Speaker 1: and he's he's very much in leading man mode for
Speaker 1: this one. Um. You know, he's he's in a wet suit,
Speaker 1: a lot um just just looking real handsome. Uh. But
Speaker 1: he's been in a number of interesting films over the years,
Speaker 1: ranging from Albert Piums Nemesis Cyborg Movie UH to Terence
Speaker 1: Malox The Thin Red Line. He was in the film
Speaker 1: adaptation of Stephen King's The Mist in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: and he had a really a fun recurring role on
Speaker 1: The Expanse. So, for my money, he's one of these
Speaker 1: actors that you know, for a while he was very
Speaker 1: much in the leading man mode, and he's he's gotten older,
Speaker 1: he's kind of um aged into more interesting roles, so
Speaker 1: you'll see him playing supporting roles where you know, he
Speaker 1: still gets to be rugularly handsome and all, but he
Speaker 1: gets to be a little weirder, you know, when we
Speaker 1: get to see the weirder Thomas Jane come out. Do
Speaker 1: I remember? Right in the Expanse he sometimes wears that
Speaker 1: Tom Waite's hat. Yeah, he's always wearing a wearing a hat. Um.
Speaker 1: And he's supposed to be a belter in that, so
Speaker 1: he's I don't know if it really comes off in
Speaker 1: the show too much, but he's Yeah, he's supposed to
Speaker 1: be really tall and thin because he has grown up, um,
Speaker 1: you know, out in the asteroid belt. Yeah, but he's
Speaker 1: a fun character with kind of a noir twist to him. Um.
Speaker 1: And I believe he had a He had a fun
Speaker 1: role in the recent Predator movie Um, he played one
Speaker 1: of the mercenaries in that, but he had he had
Speaker 1: like tourette syndrome or something. We had some sort of
Speaker 1: like a twist to his character that made his performance
Speaker 1: a little more noteworthy. I watched that movie on an airplane.
Speaker 1: Oh I did too. It's a great airplane movie. I
Speaker 1: don't recall him being in it, though maybe I missed him.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that was probably me. Okay, So he's are
Speaker 1: our leading hunk for the movie. But also you could say,
Speaker 1: you know, you could discuss the rest of the movie
Speaker 1: and not even mention him and you'd be fine. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he does all the things that his character
Speaker 1: is supposed to do, and and he does well. He
Speaker 1: does it well, but not in a way where this
Speaker 1: is he's not the most memorable part of the film. Um.
Speaker 1: Then we also have Saffron Burrows, who plays Dr Susan
Speaker 1: McAllister born two. I have really not seen her in much,
Speaker 1: so I can't say a lot about her. But she
Speaker 1: was the star of Mozart in the Jungle, and she
Speaker 1: was also in Wolfgang Peterson's Troy Yes, where she she
Speaker 1: seems like an actor who's done a lot, but not
Speaker 1: a lot that I've seen a lot of movies I've
Speaker 1: heard of but never watched. Yeah, like, maybe she's just
Speaker 1: gravitated towards like more serious and mainstream stuff that I
Speaker 1: haven't necessarily seen. I think she was in one of
Speaker 1: those Marvel shows. She was in like Agents of Shield
Speaker 1: or something. Okay, all right, I also never saw that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't see that one either. But uh, let's say,
Speaker 1: but we do have some other people of note here.
Speaker 1: I mean, most importantly, we have Samuel L. Jackson playing
Speaker 1: Russell Franklin. Uh. Samuel Jackson born um a legend and
Speaker 1: also has a pretty legendary scene in this film, which
Speaker 1: I guess we'll get to in a bit. But uh,
Speaker 1: Jackson's always an interesting character to check out his somography
Speaker 1: because you know, he started out doing like all these
Speaker 1: little bit roles and then he eventually evolves to become
Speaker 1: one of the biggest names in Hollywood. Uh. And he's
Speaker 1: always a compelling screen press, you know, whether he's you know,
Speaker 1: Mace Window and study the Star Wars movies or Jules
Speaker 1: Winfield and pulp fiction. Um. But of course he was
Speaker 1: in Jurassic Park, which which was one, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the influences for this film, and I would say
Speaker 1: for the most part, his performance is very much Jurassic
Speaker 1: Park mode. He's very much doing that level of character
Speaker 1: with a little more charisma. Oh, I can see what
Speaker 1: you're saying. I mean, I would say in both films,
Speaker 1: I think the character that he's supposed to be playing
Speaker 1: is kind of the steady hand. He's the guy who's
Speaker 1: there who when everybody else is panicking, he knows what
Speaker 1: he's doing. Yeah, And I guess that's That's something about
Speaker 1: a lot of his most notable performances is he often
Speaker 1: plays a character who's very steady um. And you know,
Speaker 1: you see the extremes of that with someone like Mace Windo,
Speaker 1: who's a very you know, very logical character, uh, very
Speaker 1: cold and calculating to a certain extent, and even a
Speaker 1: character like Jules Jules Winfield. You know, ultimately he has
Speaker 1: this kind of wisdom to it, and he's like he's
Speaker 1: always acting like he's got it figured out, even if things,
Speaker 1: you know, fly off the hand and all at times. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: Fun fact, I don't think I quite realized this, but
Speaker 1: he has a cameo in The Exorcist three playing dream
Speaker 1: blind man and his voice is dubbed in it on.
Speaker 1: I haven't looked up to see exactly what the story
Speaker 1: is on that, but if you rewatch The Exorcist three,
Speaker 1: which we recently uh talked about in passing uh, then
Speaker 1: you'll find Samuel Jackson in there as well. All right.
Speaker 1: We also have Jacqueline Mackenzie playing Janice Higgins born nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, Australian actor. I think one of the main
Speaker 1: things in her philmography that stands out, as she was
Speaker 1: in Romper Stomper opposite a young Russell Crowe. In this
Speaker 1: she's what blonde scientist lady is that she's the marine biologist. Okay,
Speaker 1: I get a little confused time what everyone's role was
Speaker 1: in this operation, Like what does Michael Rappaport do again? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well Michael Rappaport Yeah, born nine seventy plays the character
Speaker 1: Tom Scoggins. And he's at least partially part of our
Speaker 1: comic relief for the film, um, not our primary comic relief.
Speaker 1: He's It's interesting you when I saw his name in here,
Speaker 1: I expected him to be more of the the dirt
Speaker 1: bag comedic character, you know, uh, And he's he's only
Speaker 1: partially that you expect him to be the first guy
Speaker 1: to get chomped, and it's not the case. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: takes a little he gets chopped, believe me, but it
Speaker 1: it takes longer than you need to expect. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: a stand up turned actor, which has become pretty standard,
Speaker 1: a pretty standard career tract trajectory. But Barrapaport did it
Speaker 1: only I think three years into his stand up career,
Speaker 1: and he's really been an established actor for many decades
Speaker 1: at this point, so you'll find him in just about everything.
Speaker 1: And uh, yeah, he's pretty good in this, but again
Speaker 1: I expect him to be more of a comedic dirt bag,
Speaker 1: to be more, you know, just pure shark bait, and
Speaker 1: he's not. I think he is actually supposed to be
Speaker 1: a scientist of some kind. But as you pointed out
Speaker 1: with Jacqueline Mackenzie's character, there are a number of characters
Speaker 1: in here who are vaguely some kind of scientist, but
Speaker 1: it's not clear what they do, or maybe it is
Speaker 1: clear and you I just didn't notice. Now it is
Speaker 1: clear that our main scientist is the character Jim Whitlock,
Speaker 1: played by the fabulous stellin Scars Guard. Scars Guard was
Speaker 1: born ninety one Um legendary Swedish actor and father to
Speaker 1: just an impressive cast of Scars Guards these days. It's
Speaker 1: like they're they're a bunch of them, and they're all
Speaker 1: they're all pretty good, if not great actors themselves. Um.
Speaker 1: I think the first time I saw stellin Scars Guard
Speaker 1: was in the spy thriller Ronan starring Robert de Niro,
Speaker 1: which which has a fun supporting cast, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of like spy action hijinks. But then I subsequently
Speaker 1: saw his work in the nineteen seven Norwegian thriller Insomnia,
Speaker 1: in which he plays a deeply troubled homicide detective and
Speaker 1: he's really good in that. That one got remade by
Speaker 1: Christopher Nolan's starring al Pacino and uh Hilary Swank I think,
Speaker 1: and and Rob Williams. Yeah, Robin Williams plays the killer
Speaker 1: in it, and al Pacino plays the the detective role,
Speaker 1: which I don't think I ever saw it, because I
Speaker 1: just I was really impressed by Scars Guards performance. I
Speaker 1: just couldn't imagine later day Pachino being able to capture
Speaker 1: that kind of a performance because part of like Scars
Speaker 1: Guards performance in that is, if I remember correctly, it's
Speaker 1: just very, very sweaty, and and it's it's really getting
Speaker 1: across the idea that you know, this character has not
Speaker 1: slept and is miserable and is deeply troubled. And uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a memorable performance for sure. Yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: Pacino goes quite that far with it. He just kind
Speaker 1: of seems more spaced out, though I do recall Insomnia
Speaker 1: being a good movie. Well, I mean, get Christopher Dolan
Speaker 1: now stellin Scars Guard of course, has worked with a
Speaker 1: lot of great actors and directors over the years, too
Speaker 1: many to even mentioned here, but I'd say that that
Speaker 1: that we are very excited. I know a lot of
Speaker 1: you are excited because one of his his next big
Speaker 1: roles is he is Baron Harconan in the upcoming adaptation
Speaker 1: of Frank Herbert's Stune. So I'm I'm super excited for
Speaker 1: that because there's always this kind of like rumbleing um
Speaker 1: threat in or there. He has he has in him
Speaker 1: to create this kind of rumbling threat in his voice
Speaker 1: and in intensity in his eyes, and I'm excited to
Speaker 1: see what he is able to bring about with harcon
Speaker 1: And that has not been brought to life in previous
Speaker 1: film adaptations Preter naturally ominous. Yeah, brings full ominocity. He's
Speaker 1: an actor who's capable of bringing a certain weirdness and
Speaker 1: fearsomeness to his characters. But Jim Whitlock in Deep Lucy
Speaker 1: is not one of those characters. Uh. He's he's introduced
Speaker 1: like he's kind of a weirdo like his characters peeing
Speaker 1: into the wind. But we meet him. He's basically just
Speaker 1: a big, big scientist teddy bear and is not that weird.
Speaker 1: He's not really mad in a mad scientist way. He's
Speaker 1: he seems pretty likable. And uh, It's like most of
Speaker 1: the human characters in this they seem fine. I don't
Speaker 1: really want to see any of them eaten by a shark. Uh.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more about this when we get into the
Speaker 1: plot a little bit. But yeah, this movie does I
Speaker 1: think have some serious human villain deficiency. All right. We also,
Speaker 1: of course, we mentioned really we have Llo cool j
Speaker 1: in this plays the character Preacher, who is not a preacher.
Speaker 1: He is a chef. But is it alluded to that
Speaker 1: he was a preacher? Is that why he's called Preacher? Oh,
Speaker 1: I've forgotten that part. He may have been may have
Speaker 1: been he does talk about God. Yeah, so I'm a
Speaker 1: little vague on that, but any rate, this ll cool
Speaker 1: J of course, hip hop legend. Uh. Star of H
Speaker 1: two O, which is the Halloween movie, Star of Mine Hunters,
Speaker 1: but not the good one on Netflix, the bad one
Speaker 1: that I think Renney Harland directed, um, as well as
Speaker 1: the universally acclaimed nine Robin Williams movie Toys. I believe
Speaker 1: you just um yeah, but in this he's Preacher, the
Speaker 1: chef and um. And we'll talk more about his characters
Speaker 1: as we go on, but this, this is a memorable performance.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty early in his filmography, but it's really solid. Oh,
Speaker 1: he's a he's a ray of sunshine in this film.
Speaker 1: And every scene he's in is just delightful. Can I
Speaker 1: mention real quick though, that he shares some scenes with
Speaker 1: a parrot and the parrot is voiced by Frank Welker, Uh,
Speaker 1: the vocal talent legend who who you'll find his name
Speaker 1: in just about any animated film and un many unanimated films.
Speaker 1: Anytime there's any you need some sort of like monster
Speaker 1: voice or something or growls, even Frank Welker is liable
Speaker 1: to show up and do it, And yeah, he's the
Speaker 1: voice of the parrot which Decepticons did he do? Who?
Speaker 1: I don't recall off hand, but he's in the mix,
Speaker 1: like he's he's one of those guys. It's just he's
Speaker 1: been around for a long time born So yeah, he's
Speaker 1: been around for a whole host of like just just
Speaker 1: multiple franchises in the animated genre. Now, before we get
Speaker 1: off the cast, I wanted to mention one more actor quickly.
Speaker 1: She has a small part in the movie, but Aida
Speaker 1: Turturo is in this She ad Turturo famous for playing
Speaker 1: Tony's sister Janis on The Sopranos. She plays a part
Speaker 1: in this movie, I think operating a communications tower and
Speaker 1: doesn't have many scenes interacting with the other characters, I think,
Speaker 1: until she gets blown up by a helicopter crash, and
Speaker 1: I feel like this is a positively criminal under use
Speaker 1: of a fantastic cast member. So if I had been
Speaker 1: the Meddling studio executive on this film, I would demand,
Speaker 1: you know, if if you're worried about run time, you
Speaker 1: can basically demote any other character's screen time except Llo
Speaker 1: cool J and I guess except for Samuel Jackson's character.
Speaker 1: I say, you could make you could just like remove
Speaker 1: Thomas Jane from the movie No Offense, Tom, I mean,
Speaker 1: you're great, but you can you take that character out
Speaker 1: and promote aid tour Turo, escalate her screen time, make
Speaker 1: her character a kind of vicious and manipulative schemer who
Speaker 1: like convinces one of the sharks to go gnaw on
Speaker 1: somebody who she thinks, I don't know, insulted her kid
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, I think weirdly enough, doesn't she actually
Speaker 1: have human interactions in the music video? Like, isn't there
Speaker 1: a scene at the very end of the music video
Speaker 1: where she's seated around a table with other like crew
Speaker 1: members as if they're on the you know, the ship
Speaker 1: or the base from this film. I believe you, but
Speaker 1: I don't remember this part. Also worth pointing out that
Speaker 1: she is the cousin of John Taturo. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have to admit I'm not super familiar with her filmography.
Speaker 1: Just looking at the list of films she's been in, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I don't think I've seen most of these. Oh
Speaker 1: have you actually not seen the Sopranos? No, it's too late.
Speaker 1: Oh oh, I think it's never too late to go
Speaker 1: back and she's just I don't know how i'd classify.
Speaker 1: She's somewhere between uh, villain and hero in it. Uh
Speaker 1: As I guess a lot of the characters are just wonderful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I believe everyone who says the Sopranos is
Speaker 1: really good. But it's just I don't think at this
Speaker 1: point in my life, I can watch a gangster move
Speaker 1: a movie or TV show unless it has like vampires
Speaker 1: in it or something like it. I need something else
Speaker 1: to drag me in, all right, And you know, before
Speaker 1: we move on to the plot, um, I do generally
Speaker 1: mention the music here, and the music in this film
Speaker 1: is by Trevor Rabin born nineteen fifty four, South African
Speaker 1: born composer who has worked a lot in the summer
Speaker 1: blockbuster genre with scores for films such as Armageddon and
Speaker 1: National Treasure. And uh, I don't have a lot to
Speaker 1: say about this score. It's other than it's it's very
Speaker 1: traditional in terms of what you expect from a blockbuster
Speaker 1: film from this this period. It's it's effective. It does
Speaker 1: everything it needs to do, heightening tension and all and
Speaker 1: reminding you that everything you know, helping you propel you
Speaker 1: through the film like water rushing through a flooded um
Speaker 1: sea lab. But other than that, I did not find
Speaker 1: it that memorable. You know, it's not like that John
Speaker 1: Williams level of which is an insanely high bard to put.
Speaker 1: I should not even really fairly compare other composers to
Speaker 1: John Williams. But you know, it's not the kind of
Speaker 1: film score where I heard it and then I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I need to look this up. Let's see if this
Speaker 1: is unfinal. I think what they should have done is
Speaker 1: just looped deepest blew us under the film. You know,
Speaker 1: it could work in any scene. Really, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and I think, yeah, I would have gone for it, Like, well,
Speaker 1: what if they had what if they had gone for
Speaker 1: like a hip hop instrumental style score. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It would have been too early for that, I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't certainly a film this big wouldn't have taken
Speaker 1: a risk on that. Yeah. I don't recall much about
Speaker 1: the music, but I think it's fine. Yeah, it's fine.
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with it at all. It it totally works. Okay,
Speaker 1: So maybe we should talk about some of the specifics
Speaker 1: of the plot. One of the things that I thought
Speaker 1: was funny was. The more I thought about it, the
Speaker 1: more the plot of Deep Blue Sea resembles the plot
Speaker 1: of Jurassic Parks, almost kind of beat by beat, because
Speaker 1: what happens at the beginning of Jurassic Park there is
Speaker 1: an accident on the island involving one of the animals,
Speaker 1: where someone is injured or killed, and this draws scrutiny
Speaker 1: from the parent company and they're underwriters, and there then
Speaker 1: this spurs and an investigation. Basically, somebody has to go
Speaker 1: to the island to look at it and see if
Speaker 1: everything is on the up and up, and that's how
Speaker 1: our characters get there. Deep Blue cy starts almost exactly
Speaker 1: the same way. Yeah, and it's it's one of these
Speaker 1: these openings to a film that it first seems like
Speaker 1: it's dumb, like it's just reinforcing the standards of of
Speaker 1: the genre, you know, but then you realize that, oh no,
Speaker 1: there's a twist to it. They're winking at us, They're
Speaker 1: having fun with our expectations, because, yeah, the opening, it
Speaker 1: seems like it's just gonna be straight up shark exploitation.
Speaker 1: You have young people, some all I think in swimwear, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, being sexy and on a yacht, you know,
Speaker 1: being sexy, being you know, rich, and being essentially being
Speaker 1: shark bait. You imagine that the sharks are going to
Speaker 1: show up and eat them. It is. The sharks appear
Speaker 1: and it looks like they're about to chop our our
Speaker 1: victims here. But then something happens, right, uh well, one
Speaker 1: of the things I thought was funny. So people young
Speaker 1: rich people partying on a yacht. I think it's a
Speaker 1: doubled hold yacht actually, and is it okay? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was just thinking back to our Pacific Navigation episodes. But
Speaker 1: there's one part where they like knock over a bottle
Speaker 1: of wine on the yacht and it like spills this
Speaker 1: red wine into the water, so it looks like blood
Speaker 1: going into the water like all these other shark movies. Um,
Speaker 1: and then a shark starts attacking their boat and it's like,
Speaker 1: oh God, is the shark going to kill them? But
Speaker 1: at the last minute, no, there is an intervention by
Speaker 1: the brave shark wrangler Carter Blake played by Thomas Jane,
Speaker 1: So these people are saved from shark doom, but by
Speaker 1: Thomas Jane at the last minute. But of course you
Speaker 1: know that this is going to make the parent company
Speaker 1: skittish because because of course, this shark is not just
Speaker 1: any shark. It is a shark that has escaped captivity
Speaker 1: from a research facility in the deep sea. Uh And
Speaker 1: and one thing you pointed out in the scene that
Speaker 1: I had forgotten about was that it has a teddy
Speaker 1: Bear in it. Yea. During the the initial shark attack,
Speaker 1: teddy Bear gets knocked off the yacht and we get
Speaker 1: a scene of it like sinking in the water. Right,
Speaker 1: the innocence literally sinking into the depths. Right, the sinking
Speaker 1: teddy Bear, I think is very akin to the filthy
Speaker 1: discarded doll trope. We've talked about the loss of innocence
Speaker 1: in the face of the cruel reality of shark. Uh.
Speaker 1: But so this sets up the situation of the film.
Speaker 1: We get a kind of corporate bigwig meeting. I think
Speaker 1: the parent company here is some big farm a company
Speaker 1: and uh Dr Susan McAlister is there. This is Saffron
Speaker 1: Burrows and she is a brilliant scientist who is working
Speaker 1: on a cure for Alzheimer's disease along with her colleague
Speaker 1: Jim Whitlock played by Stile in Scars guard and they
Speaker 1: are studying proteins in the brains of sharks as a
Speaker 1: possible treatment for humans. And of course we learned that
Speaker 1: what happened in this opening scene where a boat was
Speaker 1: attacked by shark is that one of their sharks got
Speaker 1: out of captivity. It escaped from its pen and it
Speaker 1: went to go have some fun with a yacht before
Speaker 1: it was captured by by Carter Blake. So here the
Speaker 1: Farmer company decides, well, we gotta have somebody check out
Speaker 1: this facility and make sure everything's you know, everything is secure.
Speaker 1: So they send their dependable executive, Russell Franklin, who is
Speaker 1: played by Samuel L. Jackson. So I think he's sort
Speaker 1: of going to play the role of like all the
Speaker 1: scientists and the lawyer in Jurassic Park, the person who
Speaker 1: shows up to do a safety review and see what's up. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then from here, I don't know how much more
Speaker 1: about the plot we really have to describe in detail,
Speaker 1: because you can imagine exactly what happens. It just all
Speaker 1: hell breaks loose. It's sharka palooza. For the rest of
Speaker 1: the run time, people go running around through a like
Speaker 1: a deep sea research facility as different levels of it
Speaker 1: are flooded by sharks that, as we learn, are not
Speaker 1: just any sharks. Now, they're smart sharks. They are hyper
Speaker 1: intelligent sharks because Dr Stelen scars Guard and Dr Saffron
Speaker 1: Burrows have been very naughty and they have done something
Speaker 1: they're not supposed to. They made the sharks super smart,
Speaker 1: and they made their brains like ten times bigger than
Speaker 1: they're supposed to be in order to get all of
Speaker 1: the protein they needed to you their their research. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like the basic the quote unquote science of the whole
Speaker 1: picture is that sharks are incredibly resistant to various sales
Speaker 1: and illnesses. So, uh, this is where we're gonna go
Speaker 1: to get this special compound. But the brain is not
Speaker 1: big enough. Gotta make those brains biggers so we can
Speaker 1: get enough protein or you know whatever shark juice from
Speaker 1: each shark, and so that requires making them have super brains. Uh.
Speaker 1: They say a number of things about sharks that are
Speaker 1: that are not true, Like you say that sharks don't
Speaker 1: get cancer, which is not true. Right. Um yea, So
Speaker 1: do not come to this film for your shark facts.
Speaker 1: It's even more confusing because there are these lines. These
Speaker 1: shark facts are often delivered uh, you know, with an
Speaker 1: air of authenticity to them, and sometimes they actually bring
Speaker 1: in actual um. They're the halfway dragging real facts into it.
Speaker 1: Like at one point, Thomas Jane's character says, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: they don't actually want to eat us that you know, uh,
Speaker 1: they don't like the taste of humans. But then he
Speaker 1: turns it into a jab at Samuel Jackson's characters um
Speaker 1: um like background or something. But he but he's halfway there, like,
Speaker 1: you know the reality that sharks are not out there
Speaker 1: in the ocean hunting for human beings. Uh. They have
Speaker 1: not evolved to thrive and depend on on apes in
Speaker 1: the water. They have they have evolved to depend on
Speaker 1: things like like seals, um and uh and other game
Speaker 1: things that are going to actually be um. You know,
Speaker 1: they are actually going to sustain them. And so in
Speaker 1: some cases when you have a shark attack, what you're
Speaker 1: having happen is a shark taking a bite out of
Speaker 1: something to see if it's something they would want to eat.
Speaker 1: And when that is a human there, they often will
Speaker 1: say no, thank you, but they've already bitten into a
Speaker 1: human right. And of course, as we'll talk about a
Speaker 1: bit more later, I think obviously anybody who's listening to
Speaker 1: the show at this point, I believe knows this. But
Speaker 1: sharks are not your enemy. You know, the the convention
Speaker 1: of sharks being the monster that relentlessly pursues humans at
Speaker 1: any cost and just wants to wants to kill us,
Speaker 1: all that that is a movie fantasy that that's just
Speaker 1: not real, and it's one that they're able to sort
Speaker 1: of circumvent in this film by having the super intelligent
Speaker 1: sharks that ultimately aren't that interested in eating humans. They
Speaker 1: ultimately just want to escape this facility. But then we
Speaker 1: also have some elements of the film where it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're able to trick them because they are so bloodthirsty,
Speaker 1: So I don't know, they only kind of halfway achieved
Speaker 1: the same. Well, you also get the sense that the
Speaker 1: sharks in this movie don't just want to escape, they
Speaker 1: also like have a grow they hate the humans. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're they're like mad at them for experimenting on them.
Speaker 1: And this is where we we reach one of the
Speaker 1: one of the flaws in the film. Like nothing that
Speaker 1: fatally wounds the film or anything. But I was about
Speaker 1: thirty minutes into watching it when I realized oh man,
Speaker 1: all these humans are mostly likable at this point, unless
Speaker 1: they're gonna drop some bombs on me later like these
Speaker 1: that we don't seem to have any human villains. We
Speaker 1: don't have bad guys, human bad guys that we are
Speaker 1: rooting against, and that we're being get consumed by sharks.
Speaker 1: That's right. I totally agree with you on on this point.
Speaker 1: I think it's a major oversight of the film because
Speaker 1: usually in a movie about a killer animal, you need
Speaker 1: a human villain to inhabit the spirit of moral evil,
Speaker 1: you know, to be the focal point of not just
Speaker 1: struggle for survival, but of antagonistic drama. You know, drama
Speaker 1: typically is a conflict between people, between humans with intelligences.
Speaker 1: And since giant killer animals in creature movies are not
Speaker 1: really morally bad, they're just hungry, uh, they can't really
Speaker 1: fill that role very well. I would say. The closest
Speaker 1: thing to a villain in this movie, I guess are
Speaker 1: the main scientists like Stelen scars Guard and Saffron Burroughs,
Speaker 1: who are I mean, in a way, they're presented as
Speaker 1: as arrogant and having done wrong and they must be
Speaker 1: punished because they to use a phrase from Edwood. They
Speaker 1: tampered in God's domain, But they are not really villains.
Speaker 1: They're just people who did something bad and need to
Speaker 1: be punished for it. In this movie, I think the
Speaker 1: creators perhaps thought that they didn't need human villains since
Speaker 1: the creatures are not only killer sharks, but hyper intelligent
Speaker 1: killer sharks, maybe leading to the idea that they are
Speaker 1: smart enough to be morally evil. It's kind of a stretch.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really work, and I think they should have
Speaker 1: committed to having at least one of the human characters
Speaker 1: being like a complete jerk. Yeah. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: the Frankenstein scenario, right with Frankenstein's monster, even if you
Speaker 1: have him doing despicable things like he he did not
Speaker 1: ask to be here. He was created, you know, and
Speaker 1: he bemoans this fact, you know, he says that and
Speaker 1: I did not ask to be created, and um and
Speaker 1: and therefore, how much blame can you really place on
Speaker 1: the monster shoulders? And the same goes for a lot
Speaker 1: of these sharks, I mean, for these sharks in this film.
Speaker 1: Another thing that comes to mind is that the not
Speaker 1: only are the scientists themselves not portrayed as particularly like
Speaker 1: morally corrupt or anything. But the ultimate aim of the
Speaker 1: project is totally for the good of humanity. You know,
Speaker 1: it's about it's about curing Alzheimer's disease, which you know
Speaker 1: everybody in the film is on board with. And if
Speaker 1: you're watching it, you're like, oh, yeah, I mean that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Yeah, if you've got to make some giant
Speaker 1: sharks to cure Alzheimer's, then let's let's do it. Like
Speaker 1: what if they had had a point in the film
Speaker 1: where they revealed or even from the answer that they
Speaker 1: made it clear that the start the shark research was about, say,
Speaker 1: creating immortality, you know, for the for the for the
Speaker 1: you know, the privileged and few at the very top
Speaker 1: of the socioeconomic ladder, you know, something of that nature.
Speaker 1: There their twists they could have taken with it where
Speaker 1: you'd be like, oh man, they were there trying to
Speaker 1: do that, and they're making super intelligent sharks to do it.
Speaker 1: That's that's a double whammy of things we shouldn't be
Speaker 1: doing people, And instead, what you get is that these
Speaker 1: are researchers who unethically cut corners in pursuit of a
Speaker 1: noble goal, right, which is a very different feeling for
Speaker 1: characters in a movie. And and you know one thing
Speaker 1: I will point out, I wonder what you think about this.
Speaker 1: I think Stelen scars Guards character in this movie is
Speaker 1: interesting because I think he's a little bit different in
Speaker 1: the finished product than his character would be on the page.
Speaker 1: I think he has written to play harder into the
Speaker 1: role of the arrogant scientist who thinks he's better than
Speaker 1: God and must be punished, but Stelln just doesn't really
Speaker 1: lean into that in his performance. Um. And uh, you
Speaker 1: know there was another I was reading a review of
Speaker 1: the movie by a film critic named John Kenneth Muir,
Speaker 1: and in a retrospective from many years later. Uh, and
Speaker 1: he pointed out something about this movie that as soon
Speaker 1: as I read it, I was like, Oh, God, is
Speaker 1: so true. You can tell as soon as you meet
Speaker 1: him that Stelln is doomed because he smokes cigarettes, which
Speaker 1: is a death sentence in any mainstream movie from the nineties.
Speaker 1: Isn't that true? Huh? Yeah, I guess so. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to I'm gonna have to to think on
Speaker 1: this one. But but but certainly, yeah, we do have
Speaker 1: a notable scene where he's spoking early in the picture.
Speaker 1: But actually the something I wanted to come back to
Speaker 1: about the idea of human villains and intelligence and sharks
Speaker 1: as as a movie monster. There's another unintended consequence I
Speaker 1: think of of having the villains in the movie be
Speaker 1: hyper intelligent mutant sharks. Part of the appeal of a
Speaker 1: shark as a movie monster. Again, this is the fantasy
Speaker 1: movie shark, not sharks in real life. Is is a
Speaker 1: horror rooted in its apparently unthinking, unfeeling, mechanical efficiency. You know,
Speaker 1: as Quinn says in Jaws, it's you know, eyes like
Speaker 1: a doll's eyes, like it's not even alive. It's just
Speaker 1: a machine that kills. So it is. It's not a
Speaker 1: human agent that kills out of animating feelings like hate
Speaker 1: or malice or even sadism. It doesn't have feelings about us.
Speaker 1: We are simply meet. And in this way, I think
Speaker 1: the traditional shark movie with a regular shark actually resonates
Speaker 1: a little bit more with some of the themes of
Speaker 1: oz MC. Horror horror that is rooted in a semantic threat.
Speaker 1: It's not just the fear that you will be harmed
Speaker 1: or the fear that you will be destroyed, but the
Speaker 1: fear that by seeing yourself from the vantage point of
Speaker 1: a truly inhuman intelligence, you will see yourself as an
Speaker 1: object without meaning or significance, just a puny, soft, heterogeneous
Speaker 1: object of about nine degrees fahrenheit UM. And there are
Speaker 1: examples I can think of from movies that I find
Speaker 1: particularly amazingly scary that are on this frequency. One is
Speaker 1: a moment I love. I think I've mentioned it on
Speaker 1: the show before, but uh, from the nineteen version of
Speaker 1: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is a fantastic sci
Speaker 1: fi horror movie. But it is the part where um
Speaker 1: where a couple of the human characters have been trapped
Speaker 1: by some of the the alien replicants who have been turned,
Speaker 1: and one of the humans says to the leader of
Speaker 1: the aliens, I hate you, and the leader of the
Speaker 1: aliens says to them, we don't hate you. Foundly chilling, right,
Speaker 1: because it's it's actually so much scarier that the aliens
Speaker 1: are not doing this out of sadism and malice. We're
Speaker 1: just molecules to them, like they don't hate us. There's
Speaker 1: a there's a great twist and an old thriller novel
Speaker 1: by Jeffrey Household titled The Dance of the Dwarves. It
Speaker 1: takes place I think in South America, and Um, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of the plot concerns this um, these these
Speaker 1: deaths that have occurred that have been attributed to what's
Speaker 1: supposed to be a tribe of pygmies that live, you know,
Speaker 1: deep in the jungle. And so our our character makes
Speaker 1: several attempts to communicate with them and and puts out
Speaker 1: like beads is an offering, you know, trying to to
Speaker 1: make contact, and comes close, but then you reach the
Speaker 1: point where it is revealed that they're not pygmies. They
Speaker 1: are a type of giant river otter, a predatory giant
Speaker 1: river otter with I think some sort of a venom
Speaker 1: um apparatus. And he realizes that that, no, there is
Speaker 1: nothing to communicate with here. These are things. These are creatures,
Speaker 1: These are animals that are hunting me, and there's nothing
Speaker 1: remotely human about them. They're they're you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: giant otters and it's um And just saying it like
Speaker 1: that it might sound kind of weird. If it does
Speaker 1: sound weird, research giant river rotters and maybe that'll turn
Speaker 1: you around, because they can be quite quite fearsome if
Speaker 1: you if you, if you look at them in the
Speaker 1: right light. But but but in the in the book,
Speaker 1: it's very effective. It creates that same sort of level
Speaker 1: where you realize, yeah, you're not dealing with human agency,
Speaker 1: You're dealing with something more primal. Yeah, that that absolutely
Speaker 1: sounds very chilling and and on the same frequency is
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. There was another movie I thought
Speaker 1: of that that had a scene, um that works in
Speaker 1: a similar way, and it's the movie Under the Skin.
Speaker 1: Have you seen this one. I'm familiar with it, but
Speaker 1: I've never actually watched it. Also very much has that
Speaker 1: that that cosmic horror fire. And one of the most
Speaker 1: chilling scenes in it is not even with the the
Speaker 1: alien doing anything to a human. It is a scene
Speaker 1: of an alien just watching, completely dispassionately observing as some
Speaker 1: humans are are caught in a like a riptide and
Speaker 1: are and are drowning in the ocean, and the alien
Speaker 1: is uh, not hateful and not sad, it's just watching.
Speaker 1: But but but anyway to bring everything back to Deep
Speaker 1: Blue Sea by making the sharks in this movie super
Speaker 1: intelligent mutants that are capable of executing plans and capable
Speaker 1: of directed sadism and grudges. I think the movie actually
Speaker 1: loses some of the potential for unsettling, semi cosmic horror
Speaker 1: that's naturally there in animals that don't have human you know,
Speaker 1: that we don't think of as having human like minds,
Speaker 1: like sharks, and it becomes something closer to a movie
Speaker 1: with a villain that has human motives, which is counterintuitively
Speaker 1: more familiar, more comfortable, and more suitable for light entertainment.
Speaker 1: It's easier to you, uh, to to sort of have
Speaker 1: fun and and do light entertainment with a plot in
Speaker 1: which the antagonist hates the heroes instead of just unfeelingly
Speaker 1: wants to disassemble them. At least, I would argue, no, No,
Speaker 1: I think it's that's that's that's a fair critique. It's
Speaker 1: like a few the monster actually despises us and and
Speaker 1: wants to do us harm. Now that true truth be told,
Speaker 1: the monsters do do some harm in this film. I
Speaker 1: think that the first scene where it happens, and it's
Speaker 1: a good good half hour into the film, it really
Speaker 1: takes a while setting things up. But then when when
Speaker 1: stuff starts going wrong, it really starts going wrong, like
Speaker 1: basically Whitlock's character is just moving past the shark that
Speaker 1: they have in this kind of like semi submerged working area,
Speaker 1: and it just kind of casually turns its head and
Speaker 1: bites his arm completely off, just completely rips his arm off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a note on special effects this movie has. It's
Speaker 1: not all. C G I has animatronic sharks, which I love.
Speaker 1: I love the animators. Sure, they basically built little shark
Speaker 1: robots for this movie, and they're great. Uh, there are
Speaker 1: some scenes where it transitions to c g I and
Speaker 1: I hate the c g I, which is made especially
Speaker 1: annoying because of the presence of these really great physical
Speaker 1: animatronics and the fact that most of the c g
Speaker 1: I shots are unnecessary. Pretty good for the day, though,
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, yeah, it's ninety nine, so you know,
Speaker 1: this was an era of big, big budget movies having
Speaker 1: c g I. That does not hold up at all.
Speaker 1: What should we go ahead and talk about Samuel L.
Speaker 1: Jackson's big scene, right, the scene this is probably the
Speaker 1: scene that the movie is most remembered for, not probably definitely,
Speaker 1: this is the thing, the thing everybody remembers about it.
Speaker 1: So one thing that's strange about this movie is it's
Speaker 1: sort of in the first third or so, it feels
Speaker 1: like it might have three main characters. One of them
Speaker 1: is Saffron Burrows, the scientist, one of them is Thomas Jayne,
Speaker 1: the shark wrangler, and the other is Samuel L. Jackson,
Speaker 1: the steady handed uh, corporate executive, but who's not just
Speaker 1: like a suit. They set Samuel Jackson's character up so
Speaker 1: that he has a backstory where he's like a heroic
Speaker 1: survivor of of I think a mountain avalanche where he
Speaker 1: was trapped under ice with a bunch of people. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He has some scenes where he's like, oh, you think
Speaker 1: you think sharks are bad, let me tell you about
Speaker 1: snow right, yes, but yeah, and now coming back to
Speaker 1: the Posidon adventure, Like, he does feel kind of like
Speaker 1: the Gene Hackman character in that film. You know, in
Speaker 1: a disaster film. He is the character who can step
Speaker 1: forward and lead. He is the one who can unite
Speaker 1: people and bring them together. Until he is right in
Speaker 1: the middle of giving a speech about ice, I believe
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, you think sharks are bad, let me
Speaker 1: tell you about ice. Ice has a mind, you know,
Speaker 1: it hunts you. Uh, And then he's in the middle
Speaker 1: of of giving this this rousing speech to like get
Speaker 1: everybody motivated to go, say, you know, beat these things,
Speaker 1: and then a shark just like hops up out of
Speaker 1: the water and bites him and just like pulls him,
Speaker 1: pulls in, and then another shark joins them and just
Speaker 1: rips him a pilot. They make it abundantly clear this
Speaker 1: character is totally dead and it's not coming back. I've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of people compare this scene to the
Speaker 1: death of Tom Skarrett in Alien, Dallas in Alien, who
Speaker 1: at the time Alien came out. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of audiences, you know, we see it, having seen it
Speaker 1: many times and knowing about the reputation of it after
Speaker 1: the fact, we sometimes can look at Ripley as the
Speaker 1: main character from the beginning. It's not set up that way,
Speaker 1: Like it is very much an ensemble of characters who
Speaker 1: are given almost equal screen time. And if there's anybody
Speaker 1: who audiences would have been expected to assume was the
Speaker 1: main character who would be the last survivor in the
Speaker 1: film at the end, it was Tom Skarrett. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a it's kind of like a heightened
Speaker 1: twist on the like the death of the would be savior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, probably probably a popular version of this would
Speaker 1: be in Hitchcock Psycho, you know, where you have a
Speaker 1: character that's showing up that is surely going to save
Speaker 1: the day, like they're the presence of law and order
Speaker 1: that is entering into this nightmare world. But then they're
Speaker 1: taking out as well. So yeah, you think Samuel Jackson
Speaker 1: is probably gonna become like the emergent hero of the movie. Nope,
Speaker 1: just gets chomped. He's gone. Um And it is a
Speaker 1: that's a great sequence though, Like it's I wish I
Speaker 1: could see it like for real without having it, you know,
Speaker 1: had been you know, spoiled for me. But that even
Speaker 1: watching it knowing what was coming, it feels like you
Speaker 1: really feel the bottom fallout at that point because it's like,
Speaker 1: oh my goodness, they're really screwed. Like this was there,
Speaker 1: this was their guy. You know, this guy had a
Speaker 1: plan and now he's just completely dead. Uh So I
Speaker 1: feel like it's a highly effective scene that that really
Speaker 1: turns audiences expectation on his head. Yeah. Uh. Now, as
Speaker 1: we said earlier, think there's there's not really much to
Speaker 1: say about plot. Most of the rest of the movie
Speaker 1: is just set piece after set piece of characters sort
Speaker 1: of scrambling around to different places in this space trying
Speaker 1: to get away from sharks. There is a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff in the middle of the movie with LLL cool
Speaker 1: J on his own. Uh. And they're good scenes. Their
Speaker 1: scenes where he's funny and he doesn't have anybody to
Speaker 1: act opposite. It's just him alone, well with the parent,
Speaker 1: him with the parent alone and like you know, hanging
Speaker 1: out in the kitchen or walking around to the hallways
Speaker 1: dealing with the shark. Eventually, L cool J does manage
Speaker 1: to kill a shark by blowing it up with an oven,
Speaker 1: which is a really good scene. But I wonder about
Speaker 1: what you think about this. I get a sense that
Speaker 1: some of this stuff with LLL cool J was reshoots
Speaker 1: and fill in. I I would bet that once they
Speaker 1: had a finished movie they were like, hey, everybody loves
Speaker 1: L cool J. We gotta get more scenes with him
Speaker 1: early on. But maybe they didn't. They couldn't re shoot
Speaker 1: with all of the actors there, so they just added
Speaker 1: more stuff with him on his own. Yeah. I don't know.
Speaker 1: On one hand, it's easy to look at it and think, well, okay,
Speaker 1: this is early in LA col Jay's career as an
Speaker 1: actor that you know, perhaps they didn't know that he
Speaker 1: was as capable, and you know, they came back and
Speaker 1: added more stuff. But then I also read that the
Speaker 1: Erney Harlan like really campaign for l cool J to
Speaker 1: be cast in it. Like I think maybe he knew
Speaker 1: that he had these capabilities, because ultimately he is. He's
Speaker 1: very charismatic. He's able to pull off the serious stuff,
Speaker 1: the wise cracking stuff, and the more comedic stuff all
Speaker 1: in a way that doesn't compromise the character. Like he
Speaker 1: never feels like a comic relief character, even though he
Speaker 1: provides comic relief. Um, he you know, he feels more
Speaker 1: like like a hero in the film, and those winking
Speaker 1: moments where he's he's clearly they're clearly doing stuff with
Speaker 1: this character to uh, you know, to to to again
Speaker 1: play with audience expectations and to maybe you know, get
Speaker 1: a laugh there. He's able to pull it off in
Speaker 1: a way that feels authentic, that doesn't feel like it's
Speaker 1: cheap to anything. Yeah. One choice that I thought was
Speaker 1: really funny was the decision to make his character not
Speaker 1: just uh, not just a chef as a profession, not
Speaker 1: just like somebody who cooks for a living but has
Speaker 1: a genuine passion for the culinary arts, like he considered.
Speaker 1: There's a part where I think he's like recording a
Speaker 1: video of like leaving his his legacy, his testament to
Speaker 1: his children or something, and he's describing his omblent technique. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where you need when you
Speaker 1: when you say it out loud, it sounds kind of hocky,
Speaker 1: but somehow it works in the film. Some somehow that
Speaker 1: it works. It's a very funny touch and it works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want a sequel where like Preacher opens up a
Speaker 1: Michelin Star restaurant and he gets attacked by sharks. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is kind of alarming that they made at least
Speaker 1: a couple of direct to video sequels to this film,
Speaker 1: and I don't I don't think they brought back any
Speaker 1: of the main cast, did they, or or really put
Speaker 1: any kind of money into them. It seems like you
Speaker 1: would have gone for it with a deep blue C two.
Speaker 1: I've never seen any of the Sea wells uh. In
Speaker 1: my mind, I've always classed them in the same category
Speaker 1: as the Starship Troopers sequels, which I also have not seen,
Speaker 1: and kind of don't feel like I should. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it's probably one of those things where on
Speaker 1: a business level, they're like, no, this film was this
Speaker 1: level of a hit. If we spend this low amount
Speaker 1: on the sequel, it will automatically make this much money.
Speaker 1: This is how much you're going to spend on it.
Speaker 1: And they did. Yeah. So the thing that's worth talking
Speaker 1: about with the ending of this movie, apparently the ending
Speaker 1: is a product of a process that I hate in theory,
Speaker 1: but I'm glad it happened here because I think it
Speaker 1: produced a much better outcome. So the ending of this
Speaker 1: movie is allegedly a product of focus groups. Uh. In
Speaker 1: the original ending of this movie, again, this is what
Speaker 1: what has been alleged. I couldn't confirm this, but you
Speaker 1: can find people writing about this. In the original ending,
Speaker 1: Saffron Burrows not only survives the movie, she's the one
Speaker 1: who kills the shark in the end. I guess she
Speaker 1: redeems herself. I guess she realizes that it's bad that
Speaker 1: she cut all these corners in her research and she
Speaker 1: shouldn't have made the super intelligent sharks and regrets it,
Speaker 1: and she she blows the shark up in the end,
Speaker 1: and this one was more ambiguous. But I think it's
Speaker 1: also the case that in the original ending l O
Speaker 1: cool J may have been killed instead of Saffron Burrows.
Speaker 1: And I think one can see why audiences would have
Speaker 1: had extremely negative reactions to this, because you cannot kill
Speaker 1: L cool J. Yeah. Absolutely, he's a very likable character
Speaker 1: in this film. Um, you don't want to see him
Speaker 1: get eaten by a shark. And I will say that
Speaker 1: when I was watching it, I thought he was going
Speaker 1: to get eaten by the shark, because he is attacked
Speaker 1: by a shark laid in the picture in a way
Speaker 1: that looks severe enough that I'm like, oh, he's gone,
Speaker 1: But then he's just got a slight limp later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like they filmed death scene for him but
Speaker 1: then went back on it. Yeah, which which I'm fine with.
Speaker 1: It was totally the right choice. But you know, you
Speaker 1: look at that first film where basically a shark nudges
Speaker 1: still in Scars Garden, his arm fall off. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like he's just like boiled chicken to this monster.
Speaker 1: But J I mean he is, He's made it tougher stuff.
Speaker 1: He's he's really ripped um. But so apparently test audiences
Speaker 1: hated Saffron Burrows character with with some reason. I think
Speaker 1: they they reasoned that she caused all of this, like
Speaker 1: she made the killer sharks, and they did not like
Speaker 1: her surviving and playing a heroic role in the finale,
Speaker 1: So the ending was changed so that instead she sacrifices
Speaker 1: herself to to defeat the sharks and she gets chomped
Speaker 1: into pieces and L cool J survives getting bitten by
Speaker 1: the shark and in the end he helped save the day.
Speaker 1: So I think they kind of flipped the script on that.
Speaker 1: And then I wonder if they may have shot additional
Speaker 1: scenes for l cool J or additional moments for him
Speaker 1: to go earlier in the movie. And I read that
Speaker 1: they also edited out some stuff with Saffron Burrows earlier
Speaker 1: in the movie that makes her character more sympathetic, so
Speaker 1: they kind of leaned into making her less likable. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: I mean, so obviously it sounds like they used to
Speaker 1: focus group. But I'm I'm reminded of the films of
Speaker 1: William Castle, you know, like they could have gone in
Speaker 1: that direction, been like, all right, now it's time for
Speaker 1: audiences to vote to get to kill the shark and
Speaker 1: who will be eaten? That that would have been written,
Speaker 1: that would have gotten people to go see the movie twice.
Speaker 1: I'll also say that the final shark death in this
Speaker 1: film is of course totally Jaws. Uh. It's very reminiscent
Speaker 1: of that final scene where um where the main character
Speaker 1: shooting at the shark with the rifle trying to hit
Speaker 1: the um uh the canistorian its mouth. We have a
Speaker 1: similar but more elaborate science fiction he set up going
Speaker 1: on in the final moments of this film. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are three mind freak sharks in this movie. One gets
Speaker 1: blown up by l cool j in the oven, one
Speaker 1: gets electrocuted by Saffron Burrows. Is that right? And then
Speaker 1: the third one gets blown up and when it's trying
Speaker 1: to escape. Yes, and so we're left with just l
Speaker 1: O cool j Um and our and our shark spurt character,
Speaker 1: Thomas Jane. Yeah, Thomas, they're gonna they're gonna best buds
Speaker 1: for life. Yeah, well they have. They have kind of
Speaker 1: fun back and forth. They're floating on the debris waiting
Speaker 1: to be picked up and uh, and I was waiting
Speaker 1: for it. I was expecting there to be some some
Speaker 1: dark shocker at the end, but it's no, they're good
Speaker 1: to go. Yeah, everybody's gonna be fine. Like I thought
Speaker 1: the rescue boat was gonna get eaten by the shark
Speaker 1: by one of the sharks that wasn't caught, like there
Speaker 1: was a fourth shark, which they allude to. But no,
Speaker 1: everything's good. So I mean makes sense. This is this
Speaker 1: is a big budget summer blockbuster. You want to send
Speaker 1: folks home happy. You know. The snooty film critic in
Speaker 1: me somehow rebels like part of me, part of me
Speaker 1: is like, oh, this is this is such a derivative film,
Speaker 1: And part of me is like, I hate the idea
Speaker 1: that they shaped the ending with focus groups, but I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna lie. I love Deep Blue Sea. It's great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty fun. And and I and to your point,
Speaker 1: this this wasn't a very essential updating of of our
Speaker 1: expectation and regarding shark movies. They did something new with
Speaker 1: the Shark Movie which most shark movies did not do,
Speaker 1: and it was perhaps the last like good innovation, the
Speaker 1: last good pivot in in Sharks floitation cinema because it
Speaker 1: seems like, you know, you see everything that's come out
Speaker 1: in the wake of Shark Nado. Um has. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it's work. People like it, I assume, and
Speaker 1: people view it, it seems, but um I do, I
Speaker 1: do not for my purposes, it has not been a
Speaker 1: a good direction for the shark film, you know. Well,
Speaker 1: as I've said, you know, I don't think there are
Speaker 1: any shark movies other than Jaws I've seen that are
Speaker 1: that I would say are just unequivocally good. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, I've watched probably ten billion shark movies.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, sometimes you just gotta put one on.
Speaker 1: I think the other thing worth noting is that this
Speaker 1: film goes a little fantastic obviously with the idea of
Speaker 1: super intelligent sharks, and it is very mainstream, and it's
Speaker 1: going for the mainstream audience. And I feel like maybe
Speaker 1: there is something to be said for the success of
Speaker 1: films like Shark Nado because they take something like the Sharks,
Speaker 1: something that is like an on an on an innate
Speaker 1: and primal level, we find fearsome. And then, of course
Speaker 1: it's worth saying that this fearsomeness has also been um
Speaker 1: reinforced over and over again by media, um much of
Speaker 1: which is not even fictional. Media but documentary style media
Speaker 1: and shark week style marketing. Um, this has all been
Speaker 1: reinforced and therefore something that is silly with sharks, and
Speaker 1: it takes some of the punch out of the shark
Speaker 1: for us and makes us maybe a little less afraid.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and maybe that gets us to the place
Speaker 1: we should end, which is a little bit of a
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind. P. S A. We know
Speaker 1: a lot of our listeners already know this, but hey,
Speaker 1: sharks are amazing animals. They're really important parts of ocean ecosystems,
Speaker 1: and they're not your enemy. That's right. Let's let's dive
Speaker 1: through some some important realities to keep in mind about sharks.
Speaker 1: Enjoy your sharks ploitation cinema, but but know all of this. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, sharks are important, are important predator species
Speaker 1: that play key roles in their ecosystems. And while they
Speaker 1: can be fear specimens, that doesn't mean they're not vulnerable
Speaker 1: to overfishing. They have a they have relatively slow growth,
Speaker 1: late sexual maturity, and a small number of young per brewed.
Speaker 1: The harvesting of shark fins for shark fin soup is
Speaker 1: internationally a major concern, and according to the International Union
Speaker 1: for the Conservation of Nature, among the the approximately four
Speaker 1: seventies species of sharks, two point four percent or critically endangered,
Speaker 1: three point two percent or endangered, ten point three percent
Speaker 1: are vulnerable, and fourteen point four percent are near threatened.
Speaker 1: And the great white shark letich, of course you know,
Speaker 1: is the jaws species. This is among the threatened species.
Speaker 1: And on top of all this, as far as shark
Speaker 1: danger goes, uh it is. It is certainly true that
Speaker 1: certain species of shark can be extremely dangerous in exactly
Speaker 1: the right circumstances. Like nobody's denying that, but statistically, you're
Speaker 1: far more likely to be killed by, say, an insect
Speaker 1: or a dog as opposed to a shark. According to
Speaker 1: the i s a F Shark Attack Report, there were
Speaker 1: one d and twenty nine and led shark human interactions worldwide.
Speaker 1: In only fifty seven of these were found to be
Speaker 1: unprovoked attacks. The rest entailed thirty nine provoked attacks six
Speaker 1: boat attacks. So this is where the shark bites a
Speaker 1: vehicle of some sort but not a human. One scavenging incident.
Speaker 1: This is where like a body is found, but the
Speaker 1: wounds inflicted by a shark appeared to be postmortem. Uh so,
Speaker 1: you know, the the individual uh likely died in some
Speaker 1: other way and then the shark found the body in
Speaker 1: the water. Um one case that is labeled as public aquaria,
Speaker 1: which I believe means that it's something that's happened at
Speaker 1: an aquarium where a shark was being kept on an
Speaker 1: aquarium environment. Three doubtful cases, six cases where no assessment
Speaker 1: could be made, and sixteen not confirmed. Now it's of
Speaker 1: course important to note that this we're talking about twenty
Speaker 1: twenty so things. You know, we're a little different this
Speaker 1: year in terms of you know, how many people were traveling,
Speaker 1: you know, it's what degree law enforcement, local, and otherwise.
Speaker 1: It was able to weigh in on some of these cases,
Speaker 1: but they drive home that these numbers are more or
Speaker 1: less on par. There there are always fluctuations. Uh So,
Speaker 1: in there were there were thirteen related fatalities, uh ten
Speaker 1: of which were not ten of which were confirmed to
Speaker 1: be unprovoked. And that's above the global average of four.
Speaker 1: But long term trends show a decreasing number of annual
Speaker 1: fatalities caused by sharks. So so, so bear all all
Speaker 1: of that in mind. On top of that, I would
Speaker 1: also add that, following recent trends, um surfers and those
Speaker 1: participating in board sports accounted for most incidents, so six
Speaker 1: of the total cases that we just touched on, and
Speaker 1: your risk of being bitten by a shark it just
Speaker 1: remains extremely low. Uh So, just always keep that in
Speaker 1: mind when you're getting in the water. And I know,
Speaker 1: when you're in the water, it's easy to think about sharks.
Speaker 1: I I always snorkling, but I do think about sharks
Speaker 1: every time I am storkling, So I I know, believe me,
Speaker 1: I feel you on all of this. But you just
Speaker 1: have to remind yourself, like what the numbers say, and
Speaker 1: if nothing else, if you're if you're in the waters,
Speaker 1: you know, just think about like just the sheer number
Speaker 1: of people who get into those waters, and uh and
Speaker 1: and and and how most all of them are not
Speaker 1: interacting with sharks at all. Uh So, I find all
Speaker 1: of that, all of that is comforting. And also I
Speaker 1: should also point out there are some wonderful um resources
Speaker 1: online that give you advice about how you know how
Speaker 1: to avoid sharks in the water, and this these are
Speaker 1: some awesome important tips to keep in mind. So uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: don't let shark exploitation cinema, and U you know some
Speaker 1: of the you know, maybe you know edgeier and more
Speaker 1: exploitive examples of shark documentary steer you wrong, right? I mean,
Speaker 1: as I said earlier, sharks are not your enemy. But
Speaker 1: in fact, I would also say sharks are not your friend.
Speaker 1: I would say sharks are to be left alone. Just
Speaker 1: don't mess with them. You know that you can admire
Speaker 1: them from afar, You can watch great documentary footage. You
Speaker 1: can appreciate sharks as amazing animals, but they mostly don't
Speaker 1: want anything to do with us, and I'd say respect
Speaker 1: their wishes. Yeah, I would say, by and large, we
Speaker 1: are a greater risk to them, uh, you know, than
Speaker 1: they are to us. All Right, So there you have it,
Speaker 1: Deep Blue Sea. I know, I for one would love
Speaker 1: to hear from anyone who saw this when it was
Speaker 1: in theaters or saw it, you know, on home video
Speaker 1: without any spoilers. I'd love to hear your thoughts on
Speaker 1: some of the twists that take place in this film,
Speaker 1: because it definitely has a couple of really good ones.
Speaker 1: Oh and you know, this is probably a good place
Speaker 1: as any for me to mention that, Hey, I wrote
Speaker 1: a short story about sharks. As As you may remember,
Speaker 1: our former co host, Christian Sager, masterminded a weird art
Speaker 1: fiction and non fiction publication called Corridor last year. The
Speaker 1: kickstarter was successful and copies are are said to be
Speaker 1: making their way to their owners. Uh So, if you
Speaker 1: if you didn't get in on that kickstarter, you can
Speaker 1: pre order yourself a copy by going to uh any
Speaker 1: of the Corridor magazine social media platform and following the
Speaker 1: link they're they're on Twitter as Corridor Pubs. Uh and
Speaker 1: they're on Instagram as Corridor Publications and I think that's
Speaker 1: also their handle on Facebook as well. So, yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got a sci fi shark story. If that's your kind
Speaker 1: of thing that you like that, you can read it
Speaker 1: in that magazine, so humble of course it's their kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Check it out and let's see if you're
Speaker 1: if you're maybe your lesson interested that and you're more
Speaker 1: about this weird house cinema stuff. Hey, go to stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your mind dot com. That's the that's the
Speaker 1: the used to be the website now to just shoot
Speaker 1: you to the I heart page for our show. But
Speaker 1: there is a button there you can click on for
Speaker 1: store and if you go there. You can buy yourself
Speaker 1: a Weird House Cinema T shirt. You can get a
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema what, a sticker, a tote bag, you
Speaker 1: can get just about anything except wal Art, and you
Speaker 1: can't get wal Art because their file wasn't big enough.
Speaker 1: But really, I mean it's it's big enough for all
Speaker 1: the other products you could possibly want, huge things. As
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic
Speaker 1: for the future, just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
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