Speaker 1: On the beck Dog Cast, the questions asked if movies
Speaker 1: have women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends
Speaker 1: and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy zef
Speaker 1: invest start changing it with the beck Del cast. How
Speaker 1: does the song start? I could see awake just to
Speaker 1: hear you dreaming or something like that. Why is sleeping
Speaker 1: fouing dreaming? I could spend my life in this sweet surrendoum,
Speaker 1: I just scared my cat, I guess last in this moment,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you sing about your daughter like that? If you
Speaker 1: saw raw silent footage of Ben Affleck shoving a am
Speaker 1: Cracker down your daughter's pants, wouldn't you write that song?
Speaker 1: To listen with you? Is a moment including the Graham
Speaker 1: Cracker thing. I don't want to close man, okay twisted?
Speaker 1: Is this twisted father's singing a song about his daughter
Speaker 1: or is this a man singing a song about a
Speaker 1: woman he's in love with? Look, my mom and I
Speaker 1: have really discussed this over the years and come to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that it can be read either way if
Speaker 1: you don't have the context of armageddon. I don't want
Speaker 1: to close my eyes. I don't want to fall asleep
Speaker 1: because I miss you, babe, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: miss a thing. Can't be described to describe how you
Speaker 1: feel about how much you love your child. You don't
Speaker 1: want to miss a moment of their childhood you love
Speaker 1: them so much. Also personal history between Steven Tyler and
Speaker 1: liv Tyler. She didn't know that she was his daughter,
Speaker 1: and I believe he didn't know either until she was
Speaker 1: like eleven or twelve, So he missed a large portion
Speaker 1: of her childhood. So it perhaps even makes sense that
Speaker 1: he didn't want to miss a thing. He'd already missed
Speaker 1: so many things eleven years worth. I know. Damn God.
Speaker 1: The Live Tyler paternity story. It lives on with our
Speaker 1: greatest roller coaster band, Aerosmith. Have you ever been the
Speaker 1: Aerosmith roller coaster? I have not, but I've heard you
Speaker 1: tell of it many times. I won't shut up about
Speaker 1: it because it's so shocking to me that they haven't,
Speaker 1: like changed the band. It's like, but but they can't.
Speaker 1: Where is this at again? It's at Disney World. It's
Speaker 1: at Disney World. It's called the rock and roller Coaster.
Speaker 1: My parents and I like made eight Well, my mom
Speaker 1: my dad thinks Aerosmith is corny and for losers because
Speaker 1: he's a punk, right, But my mom opposite of a punk,
Speaker 1: and so went the first time we went to Disney
Speaker 1: World when I was like thirteen, it was a big
Speaker 1: deal for her. She doesn't like going on roller coasters,
Speaker 1: but she loves Aerosmith so much, and she's like, even
Speaker 1: though the roller coaster goes upside down, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: on it because I love Steven Tyler and the thing
Speaker 1: is about the rock and roller coaster. I would love
Speaker 1: to know more about the history of it because it
Speaker 1: is so themed around the band and the lore of
Speaker 1: the band Aerosmith, that it would actually be kind of
Speaker 1: challenging to re theme, like it's it's so specific. I
Speaker 1: don't know how they pulled it off, but I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's a very long YouTube video I could watch and
Speaker 1: find out. It's an awesome roller coaster. It's like Steven
Speaker 1: Tyler in in the video you watch in the line
Speaker 1: and he's like, come on, guys, we're gonna be late
Speaker 1: to the recording studio, and you're like, yeah, exactly. Well, anyways,
Speaker 1: I don't think this song plays in the roller coaster
Speaker 1: because it's kind of slow but it would be funny.
Speaker 1: It should It could be one of those like lazy
Speaker 1: River ride songs. The Arasmith lazy river is kind of
Speaker 1: a cruel, diabolical idea. How many have you ever read
Speaker 1: studies about how much human ship ends up in the
Speaker 1: lazy river? No, and I don't want to know. Never
Speaker 1: go in a lazy river. I would. I feel confident
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of pists in there, but people
Speaker 1: poop and definitely, I mean the piss goes without saying,
Speaker 1: there is some physical I read about it once. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a scientist about as much as Bruce
Speaker 1: Willis is and Armageddon, Like, I read about it once,
Speaker 1: and there is some sort of physical effect that, like
Speaker 1: a lazy river has on you that like loosens up
Speaker 1: that butt hole. It makes it easy to just right
Speaker 1: out right out. What's the name of this show? This
Speaker 1: is This is the Bechtel Cast, And I'm Caitlin Toronte.
Speaker 1: Who are you? Thank you for the reminder. I'm Jamie Loftus,
Speaker 1: and this is our show, um where we take a
Speaker 1: look at your favorite movies or you know, impactful one
Speaker 1: could say deep impactful movies. And we are bringing a
Speaker 1: disaster movie to you today. We're bringing Armageddon, directed by
Speaker 1: Michael Bay because Caitlin and I were looking at genres
Speaker 1: we haven't covered in many moons, and action and disaster
Speaker 1: have been kind of, you know, few and far between recently,
Speaker 1: So we chose the biggest goofiest one we get requests for,
Speaker 1: and we're going to analyze it from an intersectional feminist lens,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it's going to do great. Um, what's
Speaker 1: the metric we use as a jumping off point for discussion, Caitlin,
Speaker 1: It's the Bechtel cast. No, if that's the name of
Speaker 1: the show, let me try again. Yep, yep, it's the
Speaker 1: Bechtel Test, which is media metric created by queer cartoonist
Speaker 1: Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace Test. She included
Speaker 1: it in her comic Likes to Watch Out For from
Speaker 1: n originally just as a kind of one off joke,
Speaker 1: which has since been used as the media metric that
Speaker 1: we now know and love, which requires our version. There
Speaker 1: are many versions, but ours requires that there be two
Speaker 1: characters of a marginalized gender who have names, who speak
Speaker 1: to each other, and whose conversation is about something other
Speaker 1: than a man, and for our purposes, we like it
Speaker 1: when it's a media conversation, maybe one of the size
Speaker 1: of Texas even God. And you know, this movie has
Speaker 1: a lot of words in it, but words spoken between women.
Speaker 1: Don't be ridiculous. You're yeah right, Oh you silly billy.
Speaker 1: What do you have space dementia? You'd have space dementia
Speaker 1: to think that this movie would pass the back tole test.
Speaker 1: But nevertheless, it made half a billion dollars and a
Speaker 1: lot of people still really liked this movie. It's true
Speaker 1: and I will say it is a Aerosmith got my
Speaker 1: mom in the theaters, but she loved this movie. Wait, okay,
Speaker 1: so let's so, Jamie, what is your relationship and your
Speaker 1: mom's relationship where importantly relationship? Um, I don't have a
Speaker 1: huge relationship with Armageddon. I have a huge relationship with
Speaker 1: the Tyler family, more so Stephen. To be honest, because Aerosmith,
Speaker 1: they're blessed in band. We're very proud of them, and well,
Speaker 1: you know, but not the Boston Punks. And that's where
Speaker 1: my dad comes in. But I you know, I grew
Speaker 1: up around aeron Smith, posters and music. So my mom,
Speaker 1: my mom loved this movie. I remember that we owned
Speaker 1: it on VHS, and I remember being too young to
Speaker 1: watch it and that was really long, and that I,
Speaker 1: in spite of saying for a couple of years that
Speaker 1: I wanted to be an astronaut, I think I said
Speaker 1: it because it sounded good. Because I was stunningly disinterested
Speaker 1: in space. Um, I didn't really want to watch any
Speaker 1: space movies. I remember my mom being like, you can't
Speaker 1: watch Armageddon. You could watch Apollo thirteen, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I would I would really not want to do that.
Speaker 1: Sounds sounds boring. Is actually a pretty solid movie. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that's the Tom Hanks one. I also haven't seen Deep Impact.
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen Contact until we watched it, and I
Speaker 1: quite liked I'm more interested in space now, getting defensive.
Speaker 1: I saw I saw different chunks of it growing up,
Speaker 1: but I never really took the initiative to watch it
Speaker 1: all the way through. Um so this is my first
Speaker 1: time watching it all the way through. Oh and I
Speaker 1: remember when The Army when the Ben Affleck commentary track
Speaker 1: leaked a couple of years back, because that was a
Speaker 1: treat more more kind of Boston Cannon present here. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've never seen it all the way through before. I
Speaker 1: was preparing for this episode and wow, wow, wow, I
Speaker 1: will say I think Michael Bay wanted me to laugh
Speaker 1: and cry. I did laugh. I didn't cry. I didn't cry,
Speaker 1: even when the movie said so. I didn't cry because
Speaker 1: when someone was dying, I'm like, I don't know who
Speaker 1: that is. You cut to them and away from them
Speaker 1: so quickly that I didn't catch you mean the scene
Speaker 1: and then I looked at it and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I guess he's gone. You mean the scene where they're
Speaker 1: like we lost Grouber and everyone's like, Grouper? Are we
Speaker 1: supposed to care about Grouper? We haven't even met him yet?
Speaker 1: And I thought it was kind of bizarre that they,
Speaker 1: I mean, because Bruce Willis was always going to be
Speaker 1: in this movie, even when it was being written, Like
Speaker 1: why Bruce Willis there's already a Grouper associated with him,
Speaker 1: Hans groupers Gruber. You're gonna put another grouper in a
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis movie, bad idea. I still don't know who
Speaker 1: Grouper is. I'll be honest. This movie was cutting back.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that that was like I learned
Speaker 1: that that was a huge criticism of it at the time,
Speaker 1: to where it was cut so quickly that it's like
Speaker 1: it kind of gives you a headache and it's hard
Speaker 1: to tell, yeah, because the pace. I mean, even Michael
Speaker 1: Bay has admitted that the movie was edited very quickly
Speaker 1: and that his visual effects supervisor had break up. He
Speaker 1: gave no more information than that, which is kind of
Speaker 1: a funny way about how Michael Bay talks. He'll say
Speaker 1: something horrific and then just like start another sentence. But Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were characters that I assumed had died in the
Speaker 1: Like there's a point in the movie where you lose
Speaker 1: a couple of characters, and I was like, oh, I
Speaker 1: haven't seen quote unquote the woman in a while. I
Speaker 1: guess that she died, but she didn't. She just disappeared
Speaker 1: for thirty five minutes, but I guess she was there.
Speaker 1: And fine, what's your history with this movie, Caitlin. I
Speaker 1: had seen it before a couple of times. Uh. This
Speaker 1: movie came out when I was twelve, so I was
Speaker 1: among the many tween girls of the time where watching
Speaker 1: this movie was like a rite of passage. Really, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was like I didn't realize it was one of
Speaker 1: those yeah yeah, interesting at least among my my friend group.
Speaker 1: I believe you. I just didn't know. Oh yeah, you
Speaker 1: watched it sleepovers. If you had like a boy girl hang,
Speaker 1: if someone's like mom would let you have girls and
Speaker 1: boys over, then you'd watch this because it's horny and
Speaker 1: Ben Affleck puts an animal cracker on Live Tyler's boobs
Speaker 1: and when people get all tense during that. Probably I
Speaker 1: don't know. It was so many decades ago I barely
Speaker 1: remembers are so twisted, um, but I do remember the
Speaker 1: kids crying during the sacrificial Bruce Willis scene because she
Speaker 1: does say daddy, she really does um. And the song
Speaker 1: and the Aerosmith song played at every school dance from two,
Speaker 1: I mean probably even after I graduated high school, which
Speaker 1: was oh four, it was like the slow song. If
Speaker 1: the Armageddon song came on, you better fucking fund yourself
Speaker 1: a hetero dance partner and slow dance your night away.
Speaker 1: I feel like it still gets like pretty decent wedding
Speaker 1: play to this day. Sure, And it is my maybe
Speaker 1: like number to go to karaoke song because this song
Speaker 1: slaps as a karaoke song. It's hot. Tip for everybody,
Speaker 1: can I shut up? The composer of this song, she's
Speaker 1: kind of an icon um. She's an interest, or at
Speaker 1: least an interesting character for She's also like a boomer
Speaker 1: woman who occasionally tweets, and her tweets are not like offensive,
Speaker 1: but they are inscrutable in a way that people seem
Speaker 1: to find worthy of discussion. Anyways, her name is Diane Warren.
Speaker 1: She I believe she eventually won, but she's like, she's
Speaker 1: like a famous songwriter and composer, um who for a
Speaker 1: very okay, so for a very very long time. She's
Speaker 1: been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song,
Speaker 1: including this one uh one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
Speaker 1: twelve thirteen times, never won, and then they gave her
Speaker 1: an honorary award last year. I think because they were like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, we gotta give Diane some we keep
Speaker 1: snubbing her. She's written like a lot of iconic songs.
Speaker 1: This one might be the most famous. But she also
Speaker 1: know well she did if I could turn back time
Speaker 1: by share because you loved me, Celine Dione. She's kind
Speaker 1: of in charge of weddings, Um, how do I live
Speaker 1: without you? Leanne Ryan Rhythm of the Night. I mean
Speaker 1: she's bangers, she's got bops, she's got hit, But I
Speaker 1: mean I don't want to miss a thing that's right
Speaker 1: up there. So then we have to extend the Lord
Speaker 1: because I didn't realize Steven Tyler didn't write that song.
Speaker 1: Is Diane Warren? Is it a coincidence? Or is Diane
Speaker 1: Warren writing how she thinks Steven Tyler fields when he
Speaker 1: thinks about not being around for live Tyler's childhood? Hard
Speaker 1: to say, hard, so hard to say. The point is
Speaker 1: I did see this movie a couple of times as
Speaker 1: a youth, but I never liked it because, you know why,
Speaker 1: if there's going to be a disaster movie that I'm
Speaker 1: going to watch a lot during this time frame of
Speaker 1: the late nineties, it's going to be Titanic. I was
Speaker 1: too busy watching Titanic every day to care about Armageddon.
Speaker 1: So it's true, and this movie is clearly trying to,
Speaker 1: you know, pull from the Titanic playbook a bit tearl
Speaker 1: Harbor even more. Michael Bays saw Titanic and he's like, shit,
Speaker 1: I have to do that, and then he did a
Speaker 1: fucking terrible job. But he really did try to replicate
Speaker 1: Titanic with Pearl Harbor, and he mentions. He mentions in
Speaker 1: one of these interviews, he gives retrospectively, UM. I believe
Speaker 1: it's interview where he apologizes for making the movie. Um.
Speaker 1: But then later he's like, I was misquoted. I didn't
Speaker 1: mean it. I do think he was misquoted because I
Speaker 1: read the full interview and it did. It was a
Speaker 1: very clicky title. It's like he didn't apologize, he just
Speaker 1: contextualized why the third act is really sloppy, which it is.
Speaker 1: But he mentions James Cameron in that interview. He says,
Speaker 1: I called James Cameron and asked, what do you do
Speaker 1: when you're doing all the effects yourself? But the movie
Speaker 1: did fine, So he's sort of also admitting that the
Speaker 1: effects look kind of like baffling and and and shitty.
Speaker 1: They're shitty. It's pretty shifty about it. He I know
Speaker 1: there's no fire in space, but it is a movie,
Speaker 1: and most people don't know that he's a bad man.
Speaker 1: But that is iconic, that's funny and it's true. I
Speaker 1: honestly I didn't read the highlight reel from the Armageddon
Speaker 1: commentary soundtrack, which goes viral every so often because it
Speaker 1: is like very ridiculous. Oh, I have some quotes that
Speaker 1: I am prepared to share when the time comes. I yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there was a great round up on the
Speaker 1: Ringer about it. But I will say that I watched
Speaker 1: the whole movie before going through that, and it did
Speaker 1: not ping for me. Once that there was a fire
Speaker 1: in space. I didn't think about it because I'm a
Speaker 1: popcorn girl, which I don't know. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: We're not scientists, famously, not in stem. We won't even
Speaker 1: read a book like be serious. Um, alright, should we
Speaker 1: get into it. Let's get into it. Let's take a
Speaker 1: break first though, really ear upe for this. All right,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Okay, and we're back Kitlin. What
Speaker 1: the hell happens in the movie? I'll again, I actually
Speaker 1: do think I need a few things. Um, I needed
Speaker 1: a few blanks filled because I honestly, until the credit
Speaker 1: scene where liv Tyler has the picture of the four
Speaker 1: characters who died at her wedding, I was not who
Speaker 1: made it. I knew Bruce Willis died, sure, but a
Speaker 1: few of the guys have the same haircut. I thought
Speaker 1: the guy that was banned from seeing his son died,
Speaker 1: and I was like, well no, but then he he didn't.
Speaker 1: He lived, and and continued to blow off the courthorder
Speaker 1: that he couldn't see his son, and we were cheering,
Speaker 1: and we were cheering. So I actually don't really know
Speaker 1: who died. All right, Well I will tell you, okay.
Speaker 1: So we begin with voiceover from I think Charlton Heston
Speaker 1: is what I saw in the credits, if I'm remembering correctly. Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about a talk about a bad person, seriously,
Speaker 1: an iconically bad person. Yeah, he is describing a huge
Speaker 1: meteor or meteorite or asteroid. I don't know the difference,
Speaker 1: and I didn't look it up, but one of those
Speaker 1: things hit the Earth millions of years ago and caused
Speaker 1: the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. And they're like, and
Speaker 1: it will probably happen again, it's just a matter of when.
Speaker 1: It's so dramatic and also completely unnecessary. And that's how
Speaker 1: you know you just started watching a Michael Bay movie
Speaker 1: right exposition there, And I bet it cost a million
Speaker 1: dollars studio for a reason. Okay, So then we cut
Speaker 1: to present day. Ak we are in space ever heard
Speaker 1: of it? Suddenly a meteor shower strikes and blows up
Speaker 1: a space shuttle, and then New York City gets pummeled
Speaker 1: by these meteors or meteorites or asteroids. Did you did
Speaker 1: you know? Simply don't know. There's like a dog in
Speaker 1: the New York scene, and for some reason, whatever happened
Speaker 1: with the dog, which I think the dog just like
Speaker 1: bites a Godzilla toy. Yes, that costs what That's what
Speaker 1: Michael Bay said in the commentary. He's well, he's not
Speaker 1: gonna tell you why, He's just gonna tell you it costs.
Speaker 1: He also said Ben Afflex, Oh, Ben Affleck's teeth cost
Speaker 1: twenty dollars. This is a movie much like an Angel
Speaker 1: gets gets its wings and after gets their teeth. When
Speaker 1: Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay say, I hate looking at
Speaker 1: your mouth. It looks disgusting from an up angle. According
Speaker 1: to me, he keeps saying in the commentary and in
Speaker 1: other interviews that like I had these little baby teeth,
Speaker 1: and you know, Jerry Bruckheimer, we've talked about on the
Speaker 1: show for years, for the better part of a decade
Speaker 1: at this point, we talked about if you're in a
Speaker 1: j Jerry Bruckheimer movie and you're going to get a
Speaker 1: close up. Guess what, babe, you need a new set
Speaker 1: of choppers. You're you're gonna get new teeth, and they're
Speaker 1: gonna be big. They're about a foot tall. They're gonna
Speaker 1: be all the same length. We're gonna be blindingly white.
Speaker 1: And so Ben Affleck got his teeth for this one,
Speaker 1: and they sent him to Tom Cruise's teeth guy. Oh sure.
Speaker 1: Michael Bays says in the interview that he that Jerry
Speaker 1: Bruckheimer had worked on a quote unquote plane movie, which
Speaker 1: is how he described Top Gun, which is weird. He
Speaker 1: said Bruckheimer had worked on a orse Jerry had worked
Speaker 1: on a plane movie. When Michael Bay talks about Jerry Bruckheimer,
Speaker 1: it does sound like Seinfeld episode descriptions because of how
Speaker 1: he talks. He kind of talks like Jason Alexander does
Speaker 1: and I weld, and he's always talking about a guy
Speaker 1: named Jerry who's doing something, um weird. So I told Jerry, God,
Speaker 1: he's got those baby teeth. Jerry, I don't know what
Speaker 1: to do. You're like, that sounds like SEINFELDT. Yeah, anyways,
Speaker 1: it's true. Okay, So the movie what happens we cut
Speaker 1: two various like government and military officials such as the
Speaker 1: head of NASA, this guy named Truman played by Billy
Speaker 1: Bob Thornton I love when he's serious, as well as
Speaker 1: General Kimsey played by Keith David. There's also a guy
Speaker 1: with a huge telescope named Carl who is extremely verbally
Speaker 1: abusive to his wife and his wife Dottie. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: but it's Michael Bay movie, so his verbal abuse is
Speaker 1: a joke. It's supposed to be funny. Yeah, And everyone's like,
Speaker 1: what is what the hell is going on? And soon
Speaker 1: they figure out that an asteroid the size of Texas
Speaker 1: is on a collision course to Earth. No matter where
Speaker 1: it hits, it will wipe out all of life as
Speaker 1: we know it, and it will hit Earth in eighteen days.
Speaker 1: Cut to Harry Stamper that's Bruce Willis. He is the
Speaker 1: owner of an oil rig. He discovers that one of
Speaker 1: his employees, a j that's been affleck and his teeth
Speaker 1: and his teeth credited separately. Yeah, the whole package has
Speaker 1: had sex with Harry's daughter Grace, that's Live Tyler. And
Speaker 1: he pulls out a gun and starts shooting at a
Speaker 1: j on an oil rig. Okay, just a second. It
Speaker 1: is very silly and action movie and testosterone. Michael bay
Speaker 1: choice to make Bruce this open fire on an oil
Speaker 1: rig that he owns to protect his daughter, who he
Speaker 1: would absolutely kill along with everyone he knows if he
Speaker 1: shot the wrong area of the oil rig, which is
Speaker 1: most areas you really shouldn't shoot a gun on an
Speaker 1: oil rigue. What I find more interesting and like a
Speaker 1: lot of what I thought was like interesting about watching
Speaker 1: this movie was like the very I don't know, Like
Speaker 1: Michael Bay does a lot of like hypernationalistic imagery and
Speaker 1: ideas that he pushes in his movies, and I don't
Speaker 1: think he wrote this. I mean there's like credited writers.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like we don't really know who wrote
Speaker 1: this boofy. That's part of the mystery, But I don't know.
Speaker 1: Just like thinking about how it was very plausible to
Speaker 1: have the hero of your movie be the owner of
Speaker 1: an oil rig. I don't think that that would happen,
Speaker 1: at least in a way that would be mass appealing today,
Speaker 1: because I like Bruce Willis character is very much like
Speaker 1: a working class hero, which is a part he plays
Speaker 1: very well. But the fact that they choose and that
Speaker 1: it's important to the plot that he is like not tycoon,
Speaker 1: I guess, but like he's certainly doing fine. He owns
Speaker 1: a fucking oil rig. Like I mean, I think he
Speaker 1: might be a tycoon because he's the best driller in
Speaker 1: the world. So Ben Affleck has some thoughts on that.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to talk about it. But no, I
Speaker 1: I wrote down like the irony of these oil drillers
Speaker 1: saving the planet from an asteroid only to go back
Speaker 1: to Earth and absolutely destroy our planet via oil drilling.
Speaker 1: That's like that's what he has returned. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess he doesn't return, but you as I mean
Speaker 1: as Bushemy just going back on the oil rig. Also,
Speaker 1: Bushem's character diabolical for a lot of reasons because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of heavy Like they're insinuating that he is
Speaker 1: a child set offender correct over and over as a joke,
Speaker 1: which is I was not particularly surprised that this director
Speaker 1: had no issue with that. But in any case, on
Speaker 1: top of the nudge nudge wink wink about that, he's
Speaker 1: also they're like they're like Steve Bushemi's character is a genius,
Speaker 1: which means he knows better than to do what he's doing, right,
Speaker 1: which is diabolically plunge the Earth for its natural resources. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they saved the world, but they're going to come
Speaker 1: back and kill it somewhere. Thanks guys, It'll just take
Speaker 1: a little longer than an asteroid would. They killed Owen Wilson,
Speaker 1: that was bald. He is one of the ones who die. Yes,
Speaker 1: they got his ass. Yeah. Okay, so we meet harry A.
Speaker 1: J and Grace. We cut back to I don't know,
Speaker 1: they're at the Pentagon or something. All these officials are
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what to do about this asteroid
Speaker 1: and how to save humanity, and they're like, well, we
Speaker 1: can't blow it up from the outside, but we can
Speaker 1: blow it up from the inside. Fun idea if we
Speaker 1: drill into the asteroid and plant the nuclear weapons inside.
Speaker 1: Not as fun an idea. Yeah, and there. I guess
Speaker 1: should we wait to share Ben Afflecks thoughts on this,
Speaker 1: because he does point out in the DVD commentary something
Speaker 1: that I don't know, like, it never occurred to you
Speaker 1: when you're a kid, right, Like it wouldn't have occurred
Speaker 1: to me. I guess maybe it would have occurred to
Speaker 1: me now, But I Bennett already said it. I wonder
Speaker 1: if I had that thought even as a youth. I
Speaker 1: don't know what Ben says on this infamous, famous and
Speaker 1: infamous DVD audio commentary, but it's the audio commentary for
Speaker 1: the Criterion Collection. Addition, because he's in the Criterion Collection,
Speaker 1: which so many people have pointed out, what a bizarre
Speaker 1: choice that is, because is the Criterion Collection is usually
Speaker 1: like art house films, forgotten classics, you know, stuff that's
Speaker 1: usually a little more obscure, definitely not mainstream blockbusters like this.
Speaker 1: What did Michael Bay do? Like I do not know.
Speaker 1: Jerry Bruckheimer promised the president of Criterion Collection, New Teeth
Speaker 1: if they put Army get In in in the collection, come
Speaker 1: on right. So the commentary is I think I have
Speaker 1: this right. It's Michael Bay, Jerry Bruckheimer, Bruce Willis, and
Speaker 1: Ben Affleck. Ben Affleck's portions are him like roasting the film.
Speaker 1: Apparently he's doing an extended parody of the film Sling Blade,
Speaker 1: which stars Blay Bob Thornton. He's also making silly sound
Speaker 1: effects during any elaborate stunt scenes, which my favorite example
Speaker 1: is when he makes like a bunch of slurpy sounds
Speaker 1: when someone's going down the oil rig and then Prucess
Speaker 1: like two stunt men almost making this. So he's roasting it.
Speaker 1: And there's one part where he says, I asked Michael
Speaker 1: why it was easier to train oil drillers to become
Speaker 1: astronauts than it was to train astronauts to become oil drillers,
Speaker 1: and he told me to shut the funk up. So
Speaker 1: that was the end of that talk. I love, and
Speaker 1: he does a great Michael Bay impression. Maybe I actually
Speaker 1: don't really know what Michael Bay sounds like. I would
Speaker 1: never listen to him. It makes him sound like a
Speaker 1: fucking creep, so I'm like, yeah, it's probably what he
Speaker 1: sounds like. Yeah, what does he say? He says, I
Speaker 1: was like, you mean it's a real plan at NASA
Speaker 1: to train oil drillers and he was like, just shut
Speaker 1: your mouth. It's great. Yes. So what happens in the
Speaker 1: movie is that NASA recruits the world's best driller, Harry
Speaker 1: Stamper Bruce Willis, who is gonna like train the team
Speaker 1: of ast So originally he's going to train the team
Speaker 1: Fasternots to be drillers and to use a drill of
Speaker 1: Harry's patented design to drill into the asteroid plant. These
Speaker 1: nukes take off and then detonate the bomb from Afar
Speaker 1: and Harry's like, you, you guys can't do it. I
Speaker 1: need to do it, and my team needs to be
Speaker 1: up there with me, and they say okey dokey, They're like,
Speaker 1: sounds great. Bruce. I'm not saying the oil drilling is easy.
Speaker 1: I know it's not. I disagree with it politically, but
Speaker 1: I know it's not an easy thing to do. But
Speaker 1: I think Ben Affleck is correct to point out that
Speaker 1: the reverse would be much easier, or to say, no,
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis, go fuck yourself. We're going to have you know,
Speaker 1: an even you can't bring all of your weird friends
Speaker 1: to space. But Billy Bob Thornton is like, all right,
Speaker 1: I guess you can bring all of your weird friends
Speaker 1: to every last one, but not your daughter for reasons unclear,
Speaker 1: even though we're like, oh, she's so smart, she's so capable,
Speaker 1: but it's not even considered that you would be able
Speaker 1: to go. No. What happens next is what I found
Speaker 1: to be one of the most baffling scenes, because Bruce
Speaker 1: Willis is like, I'm doing this and I'm doing it
Speaker 1: with my friends. So then the government goes around and
Speaker 1: starts rounding up the team, which is Michael Clark Duncan.
Speaker 1: He plays a character named Bear Steve Bush Emmy is
Speaker 1: Roundhouse or something. What's his name hound dog? I don't know, rockhound?
Speaker 1: Um is that true? I think his name is Rockhound.
Speaker 1: And then liv Tyler is like, we call him that
Speaker 1: because he's a hound, because he's horny. I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: that is what the Steve Bushey character. I know that
Speaker 1: we've somewhat retired the bushemy test, however, the name of it,
Speaker 1: the name of it. However, for this one episode, I
Speaker 1: feel like the idea of the original term is pretty
Speaker 1: spot on correct where we'll talk about that later, but
Speaker 1: I was like, jeez, Louise, there was like that. I
Speaker 1: think we've referenced it in every episode we've discussed Michael Bay.
Speaker 1: But there's that oral history that came out in g
Speaker 1: Q years ago now, and there's like, I forget who
Speaker 1: it is, Um, yeah, it's Billy Bob Thornton who mentions
Speaker 1: Steve BUSHEMI looking around the table read for this movie
Speaker 1: and saying, what the funk are we doing here? Which
Speaker 1: is fair. I just hope that they. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: guessing that they, you know, we're all able to to
Speaker 1: get get a nice little house out of this and
Speaker 1: hopefully they don't think about it too much. They tied
Speaker 1: Steve Bushemy up, they taped my boy up. Well he
Speaker 1: had space dement charge Jamie, but then like he didn't right,
Speaker 1: like did he? I think he got over it pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: I don't know, sneezed. It was gone unclear what was
Speaker 1: going I have just like I don't know what is
Speaker 1: going on in for the entire last hour of this movie.
Speaker 1: My gosh. I also only that's cannon. Yeah. I went
Speaker 1: on an Instagram stories tirade about this movie, but mostly
Speaker 1: about how the third act of this movie. So they
Speaker 1: start drilling on the asteroid, which is effectively the beginning
Speaker 1: of the third act. But when they start drilling, there
Speaker 1: are fifty minutes left of the movie, which means there's
Speaker 1: a fifty minute third act, which is absolutely obscene. That's
Speaker 1: so long for a third act. I can't fathom it,
Speaker 1: and yet it happened. Um Okay, So they're rounding up
Speaker 1: the team. It's all these guys. It's also Owen Wilson.
Speaker 1: It's a j that's been Affleck's character in this like
Speaker 1: getting the team together montage. And here's what's baffling. They
Speaker 1: were all just on Harry's oil rig the day before.
Speaker 1: Basically no time has passed since Harry was like rooted
Speaker 1: for this project. Somehow these guys have dispersed all over
Speaker 1: the country and the whole thing with this movie is
Speaker 1: like there's not enough time. There's only eighteen days until
Speaker 1: the asteroid's going to hit the earth, so like, how
Speaker 1: did they have to? Also, Ben Affleck has started his
Speaker 1: own oil drilling company in the interim in a single day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: any questions, Yeah any? He's like, I love that. He's
Speaker 1: like even though Ben Affleck even like with workers rights,
Speaker 1: you could ruin Bruce will As his life if he
Speaker 1: shot you in the leg at work, right, But he's like,
Speaker 1: best move on and start my own oil company overnight. Uh,
Speaker 1: no one will shoot me in the leg. That no
Speaker 1: one can shoot you if you own the business, which
Speaker 1: I which is not true. People can still shoot you
Speaker 1: if you own the business. True. All the gun play
Speaker 1: in this movie is so fucking goofy. I mean, like
Speaker 1: the lines where I laughed out loud il Weld to
Speaker 1: borrow a term. Someone says someone in like the NASA
Speaker 1: brain Trust is like, how bad is it going to be?
Speaker 1: And someone's like, basically the worst part of the Bible.
Speaker 1: I was laughing when Bruce or no, it's it's maybe
Speaker 1: Steve bushevy he says, man, why do you got a
Speaker 1: gun in space? Laughing he's got space dementia? Of course
Speaker 1: I'm laughing. And it's when when Steve Bushey has space dementia?
Speaker 1: Is when he he has this machine gun which they've
Speaker 1: brought to space for some reason, different from the like
Speaker 1: the handgun that's behind this like lock and key, secret, oh,
Speaker 1: top secret. Only use this handgun if you need to
Speaker 1: shoot the oil drillers or something. Chekhov's full ass artillery
Speaker 1: is Checkov's militia is in this. But they have these
Speaker 1: like enormous guns that they bring to space for what
Speaker 1: for the for the movie, for the big movie, for
Speaker 1: the big scene. Oh my god, it's so goofy. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can be mad. It's to be clear, we're going
Speaker 1: to be joking around for a lot of this movie.
Speaker 1: It's a horrible movie. I mean it's like the worst
Speaker 1: and we're not even like pushing back against really many
Speaker 1: opinions by saying that people hated it when it came out.
Speaker 1: It's still suck shit. But but the Criterion collection loved it.
Speaker 1: Someone help someone held Mr Criterion at you know, Space
Speaker 1: Bazooka point and they're like put it in who knows?
Speaker 1: And and this movie, and I think the most forced
Speaker 1: way that we've covered in a while is about fathers
Speaker 1: and sons when it very much does not have to be.
Speaker 1: You can cut out Ben Affleck's character and just let
Speaker 1: live Tyler got But but they would never do that,
Speaker 1: and so they have to create a convoluted b boopy
Speaker 1: boopy boop. And now it's still about fathers. Since unbelievable,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about it. So the team assembles and they
Speaker 1: start prepping for this job and this journey through space
Speaker 1: fun montage. They get medical and psych evaluations, they start
Speaker 1: training for how to be in space. Billy Bob explains
Speaker 1: the plan for how they're going to go into space.
Speaker 1: Stop at a Russian space station to refuel, then slingshot
Speaker 1: around the moon, catch up with the asteroid from behind,
Speaker 1: land on it, and then drill baby, drill to eight
Speaker 1: hundred feet. This is the most like American sounding bizarro
Speaker 1: nonsense in the entire world, and you're just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna shot around the moon. Honestly, I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I guess that's I'm sure they're going to
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, And they did. The Wikipedia, uh scholarly
Speaker 1: Journal of course page for this movie is mostly about
Speaker 1: how a bunch of scientists have debunked all of the
Speaker 1: like quote unquote science in this movie. Sure well, And
Speaker 1: it also sounded like per affleck that Michael Bay, because
Speaker 1: his movies are so needlessly expensive, he had a number
Speaker 1: of NASA consultants on set and just ignored them all
Speaker 1: the time. So it's like not surprising at all that
Speaker 1: nothing makes sense. But I also thought it was funny
Speaker 1: where we're always like, you know, you have to build
Speaker 1: consulting into your budget if you're going to do something
Speaker 1: you don't know, but he did, and then he was
Speaker 1: just like, shut up, don't need to shut the funk up.
Speaker 1: His fire is happening in fire is happening in space,
Speaker 1: You NASA fucking dorks, Like it was yeah, yes, um, okay,
Speaker 1: So they're going to do this whole plan to shuttles
Speaker 1: are going to go to the asteroid and once they
Speaker 1: freedom and independence come on perfect writing no notes. Once
Speaker 1: they land, they will have eight hours to plant the
Speaker 1: nuclear bomb and leave before it's too late and the
Speaker 1: asteroid hits the earth. Meanwhile, A J is like, hey, Grace,
Speaker 1: marry me. In a scene where Bruce Willis is watching
Speaker 1: them make out, watching from behind a oil rag. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the set is that they're on. They're
Speaker 1: sitting in an oil contraption. He's peeking from behind a
Speaker 1: curtain like he's Cia Knightly and Pride and prejudice watching
Speaker 1: them make out. And then he's like, all right, I
Speaker 1: guess they're making out, and he walks away. And then
Speaker 1: two seconds later ben Affleck is like, will you marry me?
Speaker 1: And she just smiles and then he puts the ring on.
Speaker 1: She doesn't even say yes. She does not say yes. Okay,
Speaker 1: So that happens. Then we get more scenes of like
Speaker 1: training and space simulations. Now it's only like twelve days
Speaker 1: before the ask terroid makes impact. Tension is high. Harry
Speaker 1: is like, hey, Billy, Bob Thornton, you gotta let these
Speaker 1: guys spend time with their families. We gotta get morale up.
Speaker 1: And this is when we get the scene where Ben
Speaker 1: Affleck puts animal crackers on liv Tyler down her pants
Speaker 1: on her boobs, and it's supposed to be sexy, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people felt that way. I don't know
Speaker 1: if people didn't think that, yes, and this is around
Speaker 1: the time I would say that the character of Grace
Speaker 1: that is established disappears goes away. They did. I was
Speaker 1: interested in because I mean, and I do think this
Speaker 1: is like looking back at Michael bay movies we've covered,
Speaker 1: I think this is kind of like Serial Behavior for
Speaker 1: his movie, where I feel like he almost tries to
Speaker 1: trick you by setting up a woman at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the movie who like there's stakes to her. It
Speaker 1: seems like she might be able to do something. But
Speaker 1: then sometime early in the second act they're like, well
Speaker 1: but but that's not gonna happen. She's she's daughter and
Speaker 1: she's wife, and that's sort of how the rest of
Speaker 1: the movie goes. But I was surprised at how much
Speaker 1: they established Grace at the beginning and for how little
Speaker 1: they did with her, because she could speak Mandarin, like,
Speaker 1: she was like well respected at her like at the job,
Speaker 1: she had all of these like well, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that in the characters. Actually, I was just like so
Speaker 1: frustrating that they're like but by the time you get
Speaker 1: to animal Crackers, she's gone, She's left the building. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's girlfriend forever now. So the boys are enjoying their
Speaker 1: night off. Meanwhile, a small asteroid or several of them
Speaker 1: hit East Asia, which promptly in Shanghai, Shanghai, which prompts Dottie,
Speaker 1: the woman married to the very verbally abuse of guy Carl.
Speaker 1: It prompts her to leak the information about the huge
Speaker 1: asteroid that's you know, that's global killer that's coming to
Speaker 1: Earth to kill every one. She leaks this to the press,
Speaker 1: so now everyone in the world knows about this impending doom.
Speaker 1: And I will say Dottie outside of what is the
Speaker 1: name of the woman astronaut Watts? Watts? Okay, So Dottie
Speaker 1: and Watts are neck and neck for most active women
Speaker 1: in the story. You think it's going to be Grace,
Speaker 1: and the movie wants you to think it's Grace, but
Speaker 1: it isn't. I would say Dottie has the most narrative
Speaker 1: impact of any woman in the story, but the least
Speaker 1: amount of screen time. Oddly so, she made she made
Speaker 1: a meal of what she was given because if she
Speaker 1: hadn't told And I'm like, also, I was trying to
Speaker 1: put myself in her shoes. And then I was like,
Speaker 1: this movie is so convoluted. I'm going to stop thinking
Speaker 1: about this. I was like, what would I have done
Speaker 1: in Dottie's position, because you don't want to cause mass panic,
Speaker 1: which she kind of does, but she does. But then
Speaker 1: also you don't want to the world to not have
Speaker 1: the chance to make their peace and say they love
Speaker 1: you know, So where I burdened with Dottie's burden, I
Speaker 1: don't know what I would do. I hope I never
Speaker 1: have to think of I hope I never have to
Speaker 1: do that. Fingers crossed. Also, by this time, we've already
Speaker 1: gotten like a lot of like chosen one narratives with Harry,
Speaker 1: and it's like there's I mean, you do need to
Speaker 1: think that he is like so the protagonist because he's
Speaker 1: Bruce willis like, of course he's the protagonist. He has
Speaker 1: he has the energy for it, right, But like there's
Speaker 1: all these like lines where he's like six billion people
Speaker 1: in the world, why me? But no one really is
Speaker 1: able to answer that question. I don't know what like
Speaker 1: we simply don't know. Ben Affleck doesn't have the answer
Speaker 1: to that question, and it sounds like it really haunts him. Okay,
Speaker 1: so Harry and a J and the rest of the
Speaker 1: team plus several astronauts. I think Gruber might be one
Speaker 1: of the astronauts. But even so when they're like we
Speaker 1: lost Gruber, we're still I think so. But which of
Speaker 1: Bruce willis his friends? Is that? Because Bruce Willis has
Speaker 1: like two either two or three, don't really know, two
Speaker 1: or three guys that have kind of like marine haircuts
Speaker 1: that all kind of look like the same guy, and
Speaker 1: one of them is Gruber. I'm pretty sure. No. I
Speaker 1: think Gruber is one of the like NASA guys who
Speaker 1: is like not even really introduced. That's another interesting thing
Speaker 1: about Michael bay movies is they well, actually not exclusively,
Speaker 1: but there are ones that have kind of this I
Speaker 1: don't know, I feel like you can view it like
Speaker 1: there's there's different ways to view it where you know,
Speaker 1: he's very like this movie in particular is very like
Speaker 1: pro working man and pro working class, and like they're
Speaker 1: very much the heroes. But then you can also view
Speaker 1: it as like kind of really anti intellectual, um where
Speaker 1: the NASA astronauts, who logistically would know more than Bruce
Speaker 1: Willis who started being trained as an astronaut less than
Speaker 1: two weeks ago. They're like framed as like the villains
Speaker 1: at many points, so like the losers don't know what
Speaker 1: they're doing. They all die in space even though they
Speaker 1: are trained astronauts. I don't know. Yeah, I mean there's
Speaker 1: there's definitely it's a complex text because I am like
Speaker 1: working class heroes, like that's that's great, you know, I
Speaker 1: love that. But also, just because your hero is a
Speaker 1: working class person doesn't mean that all scientists are also evil.
Speaker 1: It just feels like maybe oversimplified anyways. Whatever, So everyone
Speaker 1: gets on the two space shuttles and they take off
Speaker 1: into space, Harry on one shuttle and a j on
Speaker 1: the other. They stop at the Russian space station to refuel,
Speaker 1: where they meet Lev played by Peter Stormare who I
Speaker 1: think is doing a Grew impression. Okay thoughts, Okay, I
Speaker 1: didn't think of that, I thought because I was like, clearly,
Speaker 1: you know, there's like some Cold War hangover vibes to yeah,
Speaker 1: the Peter Storm character, And I was like, but I
Speaker 1: assumed he was an American doing a Russian accent. He's
Speaker 1: actually Swedish doing a Russian accent. Anyways, no matter, either way,
Speaker 1: it's pretty weird. Um but Grew, Yeah, but Grew's but
Speaker 1: Grew's a hero. That's implying that Grew is playing I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess Grew is actually playing second fiddle too, the
Speaker 1: kind of a lot of characters. Yeah, he is. But
Speaker 1: you know, you would never hear, you know, minions the
Speaker 1: rise of Lev Andropov. You wouldn't hear that. True, it's
Speaker 1: not going to happen. True. Sorry, So grew even and
Speaker 1: that's the growth, the cold hard growth grew false this. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think that um Steve Carell was robbed. He really
Speaker 1: could have He really could have shown his stuff. But
Speaker 1: it could have been a long audition for Grew. True. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So Lev is on the space station and he's helping
Speaker 1: them refuel. But there's a leak and an explosion with
Speaker 1: lots of fire in space, and the whole Russian space
Speaker 1: station explodes. Then they sling shot around the Moon and
Speaker 1: approached the asteroid from behind, but one of the shuttles
Speaker 1: hits debris from the asteroid and loses control and crashes.
Speaker 1: We think maybe a J died back on Earth. Grace
Speaker 1: is sad because it was the shuttle that A J
Speaker 1: was on. But it turns out there are a few
Speaker 1: survivors A J. Lev and Bear. That's Michael Clarke, Duncan
Speaker 1: um Owen Wilson dead dead r I P. I guess
Speaker 1: that Michael basa bottle rocket And it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's get this guy. That's fun. But also I kind
Speaker 1: of forgot that he was in the movie, so did I? Um? Meanwhile, oh,
Speaker 1: the other shuttle overshot their landing by twenty six miles
Speaker 1: and the Boston marathon just the Boston one, though other
Speaker 1: marathons different. Me and Ben Affleck agree it's and Arrowsmith
Speaker 1: of course. Um. Yeah, So they landed on part of
Speaker 1: the asteroid that's like an iron plate, which means it's
Speaker 1: going to be very hard to drill through. I don't
Speaker 1: know how NASA knew the like elemental compounds of the
Speaker 1: different parts of the asteroid, but they knew. Was this
Speaker 1: one of the contested science points of Like, now this
Speaker 1: is one of my questions. I mean, maybe it was,
Speaker 1: but I was like, did they send scouts to the
Speaker 1: asteroid to check it out? Like I don't like a
Speaker 1: basketball like a basketball playing teenager. I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I honestly, I think I went so smooth brain on
Speaker 1: this viewing experience where I'm like, whatever Michael Bay is
Speaker 1: going to tell me about space will be wrong, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to proceed as if it is true. And
Speaker 1: what By the time they arrived and they're like exactly,
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, I mean they're yeah, they're astronauts.
Speaker 1: I just if you think about like things that take
Speaker 1: like what if you spent twelve days on and how
Speaker 1: good were you at it? It's like, yeah, I have
Speaker 1: not been able to learn the you know, steps in
Speaker 1: like one song of anything goes in twelve days, you know,
Speaker 1: like high school theater productions don't come together that quickly.
Speaker 1: How are we saving the world? I've been learning Spanish
Speaker 1: for three years and I can still barely string a
Speaker 1: sentence together, Like these things take time. I guess you're
Speaker 1: no Owen Wilson, but except actually he flopped, he died.
Speaker 1: He flopped. That's how I described people who die in
Speaker 1: a rocket accident. They flopped, flopped ship trying harder. Um,
Speaker 1: so it's gonna be really hard to drill because they're
Speaker 1: drilling through iron, and it makes sense their machinery is
Speaker 1: breaking and their way behind schedule with how deep they're
Speaker 1: supposed to be at this point, and Harry and the
Speaker 1: astronaut guy in charge, Colonel Sharp played by William Fichtner,
Speaker 1: is how you say, it looks like um Killian Murphy
Speaker 1: a little bit. He yes, they have similar eyeballs, um
Speaker 1: big sad eyes. So he Colonel Sharp and Harry are
Speaker 1: screaming at each other. And if the stakes weren't high enough,
Speaker 1: some gravitational space stuff happens and messes with a communication
Speaker 1: between NASA and the guys in space, and they only
Speaker 1: have a few minutes left before they can detonate the
Speaker 1: nuclear ball remotely, and then they'll lose their chance, sucker
Speaker 1: freaking blue. So the President of the US gives an
Speaker 1: order to detonate the nuclear bomb while they still can,
Speaker 1: while they still are in contact and like have the communication,
Speaker 1: even though the whole has only been drilled to fifty
Speaker 1: seven ft when they needed to be eight hundred, and
Speaker 1: Billy Bob Thornton's like, oh no, this is a horrible plan.
Speaker 1: The clock on the bomb starts taking down. Lift Tyler
Speaker 1: tackles somebody. Yeah, yeah, she's like, that's my father up there,
Speaker 1: and you're like, yep, that is her role at this
Speaker 1: time in the plot. If she just has to loudly
Speaker 1: reminders other people of her relationship to the men in space,
Speaker 1: it's true. But yeah, Billy Bob Thornton, he's kind of
Speaker 1: unequivocally like he's like lawful good. I feel like, as
Speaker 1: the movie presents it, Yeah, or maybe a lawful neutral
Speaker 1: because he does go wrong. No love well, I guess
Speaker 1: lawful good because he does eventually make the right decision,
Speaker 1: but he needs to be talked into it. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: can't remember exactly how that plays out. He's yelling at
Speaker 1: Keith David though, and he's like, this is the fucking
Speaker 1: wrong thing to do and you know it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then Keith David's like, I don't know all the freaking
Speaker 1: president so much so, the clock on the bomb starts
Speaker 1: ticking down. They have five minutes to get the shuttle
Speaker 1: off the asteroid before the bomb detonates, and then back
Speaker 1: on Earth like people are stopping the countdown, they're overriding
Speaker 1: the overrides, until finally Colonel Sharp on the asteroid stops
Speaker 1: the countdown so that the drillers can get the job done. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: A J. Bear and Lev are in a space vehicle
Speaker 1: called the Armadillo. They are driving to the drill site.
Speaker 1: They're like crashing around, it's chaos. The asteroid is very spiky.
Speaker 1: They're like, think a lot of spikes. Back the drill site,
Speaker 1: Steve Bushemy develops what I think it's Colonel Sharp calls
Speaker 1: space dementia, and then there's like and then there's an
Speaker 1: earthquake on the asteroid and their drill blows away into
Speaker 1: outer space, so it seems like the mission is a failure. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: smaller bits of the asteroid are hitting Earth. Paris gets
Speaker 1: completely wiped out, chaos erupts on Earth. All hope is lost.
Speaker 1: But then a J shows up in the Armadillo, which
Speaker 1: has the other drill on it. They keep drilling. They
Speaker 1: get to eight hundred feet, but then there is a
Speaker 1: meteor shower on the asteroid, and any question and then
Speaker 1: and it crashes into everybody and it damages the bomb's
Speaker 1: remote detonator, which means that someone has to stay behind
Speaker 1: to detonate the bomb. They draw straws, which they just
Speaker 1: happened to have on the Space Shuttle, and a J
Speaker 1: draws the short one, which I only knew because everyone
Speaker 1: told me that. Not because there's any clear visual information
Speaker 1: that shows that he has the short one. No, because
Speaker 1: they don't. They can't keep a shot on anyone for
Speaker 1: more than like point two seconds sevens And and in
Speaker 1: the music, it's so loud and so fast, and I mean,
Speaker 1: it would be kind of fun to have seen this
Speaker 1: movie in theaters because you're just like, how would you
Speaker 1: know what was going on? But it has to be
Speaker 1: like consuming to not know what's happening. I do want
Speaker 1: to take a moment to point out the rare instance
Speaker 1: where I agree with Roger Ebert in his review of
Speaker 1: the movie. He says, quote, the movie is an assault
Speaker 1: on the eyes, the ears, the brain, the common sense,
Speaker 1: and the human desire to be entertained. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: when he when he hit, he hit, you know, he
Speaker 1: wasn't always wrong. I thought it was funny that Siskell
Speaker 1: gave it a thumbs up, and he was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's kind of fun. I think that's also
Speaker 1: a completely reasonable take on its short Okay, so someone
Speaker 1: has to stay behind to detonate the bomb, and A
Speaker 1: J has drawn the short straw. But Harry had promised
Speaker 1: Grace that he would bring back her fiance safely to earth.
Speaker 1: Did you mean my fiance, my fiance. That's how they
Speaker 1: set it back then? Yeah, exactly. Um. And so Harry
Speaker 1: volunteers his tribute to be the one to stay behind,
Speaker 1: and he saves a J. And he's like, take care
Speaker 1: of my little girl, by the way, I always thought
Speaker 1: of you as my son. And a J Is like, no, Daddy,
Speaker 1: I love you. Don't do this. Everyone has to scream
Speaker 1: daddy of Bruce Willis before he before his spirit could
Speaker 1: be released to Christian heaven, where he clearly wants it
Speaker 1: to go. Like it's so much I did love. Okay,
Speaker 1: one thing I liked about this. I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is a performance choice or it was written in
Speaker 1: the script. I have no idea, but a J not
Speaker 1: a character I love a character I think we should
Speaker 1: write out and replace with Grace. Right. However, I will
Speaker 1: say that he is the most you know. I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of the male characters on this crew
Speaker 1: specifically are defined by their creepiness and emotional repression. A
Speaker 1: J not like that. He is not creepy, and he
Speaker 1: openly expresses his emotions almost all the time. He's a
Speaker 1: pretty straight shooter when it comes to his emotions, including
Speaker 1: telling a grown man that he loves him, which is
Speaker 1: like this weird verb boating thing for a lot of
Speaker 1: adult men in movies and sometimes in the world as well.
Speaker 1: So I did like that, like he was openly crying
Speaker 1: when he was upset, and like it was easy for
Speaker 1: him to tell Grace that he loved her, like just
Speaker 1: stuff that. Like, I mean, again, the bar is eight
Speaker 1: hundred feet inside of an asteroid. But I did like
Speaker 1: that there was like a hero that was like and
Speaker 1: and Owen Wilson as well, like Owen, like the younger
Speaker 1: guys on this crew were more in touch with their emotions,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't, you know, universally positioned as like this
Speaker 1: really negative thing. I was surprised by that too, because
Speaker 1: it seems in direct contradiction to the toxic masculinity that
Speaker 1: Michael Bay layers so deeply into all of his movies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I thought that there were a few elements
Speaker 1: of this movie that I'm like, well, I don't know
Speaker 1: who was creatively responsible for that, because that could have
Speaker 1: been a Ben Affleck performance choice, that could have been
Speaker 1: like one of the nine credited writers adding it in,
Speaker 1: but there was at least one or two male characters
Speaker 1: with like basic emotional intelligence, which I don't expect to
Speaker 1: Michael Bay movie. It's true, so I feel the need
Speaker 1: to point it out. At the same time, though, when
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis is like, I've always thought of you as
Speaker 1: my son, even though you were shooting at him with
Speaker 1: a gun on an oil rig two days ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you know, a J's like, Daddy, I love you.
Speaker 1: Don't do this. So even though the movie is more
Speaker 1: about a relationship between a father and daughter, it's still
Speaker 1: manages to end up being about fathers and sons. We'll
Speaker 1: get into that because I was truly, really fucking frustrated
Speaker 1: by that, and like, I feel like sometimes it's like
Speaker 1: the movie is about fathers and sons because they don't
Speaker 1: bother to introduce a woman, just the absence of an alternative.
Speaker 1: But in this they spend so much time introducing liv
Speaker 1: Tyler's character, and then you know, like the like it
Speaker 1: reminds me of Pacific Room the end where Marco Moury
Speaker 1: Marco Morey, Yeah, she's launched out of the climax to
Speaker 1: the movie, And it felt like they had, they didn't
Speaker 1: have to graze. At the beginning of Act two, they're like,
Speaker 1: you're not going to space. I don't know why. In
Speaker 1: my I mean, I didn't have a strong memory of this.
Speaker 1: I sort of like I was hoping because of how
Speaker 1: strong her introduction was, not like writing wise, but like,
Speaker 1: you learn a lot about her. You learn that she
Speaker 1: has a difficult relationship with her father. I'm like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, they might let her go to space. It
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. No, no, no, because she has a lady job,
Speaker 1: which is to talk to people. That was a question
Speaker 1: I had when she's in She's in Houston and they
Speaker 1: have a problem classic Houston famously get it together, right?
Speaker 1: But is she working? Is she there in the capacity
Speaker 1: of work or is she in there in the capacity
Speaker 1: of daughter wife. I don't know, because all that happens
Speaker 1: is Bruce Willis being like, yeah, I'll come on your
Speaker 1: NASA mission if my daughter Grace can go with me.
Speaker 1: But we don't know in what capacity because we don't
Speaker 1: actually know what her job is, right do we just
Speaker 1: know that whatever it is, she's good at it. She
Speaker 1: keeps saying it, and we we agree, I'm sure she is.
Speaker 1: But it's like, what do you mean by that? Oh?
Speaker 1: I mean, to be fair, that isn't necessarily a gender
Speaker 1: specific problem in this movie. I don't know what anyone's doing.
Speaker 1: I mean, we know that the oil drillers drill oil,
Speaker 1: but we don't know why they're allowed to be astronauts.
Speaker 1: And if you ask Michael Bay that question, he will
Speaker 1: tell you to shut the fuck up. I feel like,
Speaker 1: if it was legal, he would have actually shot Ben
Speaker 1: Affleck in the leg for running his mouth like that.
Speaker 1: I think so yeah, um, okay. So the final thing
Speaker 1: that happens is Harry does this like video satellite call
Speaker 1: to Grace. He faced times Grace, and he's like, he does,
Speaker 1: I love you, but sorry Spacetimes Grace, I never get
Speaker 1: a pun in. I feel good. That was incredible, Jamie, thanks,
Speaker 1: I loved it. Um. But yeah, he's like, Grace, I
Speaker 1: love you, by the way, I'm about to die by
Speaker 1: and then the she does daddy, no, daddy, no daddy.
Speaker 1: She and Ben Affleck get to go no daddy no,
Speaker 1: it's true. Be serious. Yeah, well, good for them, um,
Speaker 1: and then the shuttle takes off from the asteroid. Harry
Speaker 1: detonates the bomb just in the Nick of time, he
Speaker 1: saves humanity. The shuttle returns to Earth. You know, everyone
Speaker 1: on board are heroes. A J and Grace reunite and
Speaker 1: get married. The and get married during the credit sequence
Speaker 1: because it's been such a long movie. But with that,
Speaker 1: let's take a little break because I'm exhausted. Exhausted, Caitlin.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. And we are back. Well, it's
Speaker 1: like we've touched on a lot of things, and I
Speaker 1: feel good about that. I think that we were We
Speaker 1: were right to do it. We were so good at
Speaker 1: our jobs. Yeah, I agree, I agree, But where do
Speaker 1: we begin? I would like to go back to Grace
Speaker 1: and some of this stuff we've, like you said, touched
Speaker 1: on already. But she is there because she is the
Speaker 1: daughter and the love interest of two men who are
Speaker 1: far more important to the events and outcome of the story. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So she's not allowed to go into space, which makes sense.
Speaker 1: She's not a driller, and it seems like that's not
Speaker 1: what she wanted to do, which is fine. Fair. Maybe
Speaker 1: she's environmentalist that maybe, But then Bruce Willis would hit
Speaker 1: golf balls at her because there's that boat full of
Speaker 1: protesters who were like stopped drilling for oil and Bruce
Speaker 1: Willis is like, I'm gonna throw golf balls at you,
Speaker 1: and that's supposed to be hilarious and awesome. But her
Speaker 1: not going to space, as we've talked about, means that
Speaker 1: there's no chance that she can participate in this mission
Speaker 1: of saving the world, and she's just relegated to the
Speaker 1: daughter and girlfriend. And it really just exists mostly in
Speaker 1: the story to be motivation for Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck.
Speaker 1: It's like, Oh, I have to succeed so that I
Speaker 1: can see her again, And she's a tool to drive
Speaker 1: a wedge between that because for some reason there needs
Speaker 1: to be conflict between these two guys, which just means
Speaker 1: that she is basically a plot tool and a way
Speaker 1: to further characterize the men and has given no real
Speaker 1: characterization of her own beyond that. Yeah. No, I mean
Speaker 1: I think that is the biggest betrayal of the movie,
Speaker 1: because I mean there's always like in some Michael Bay movies,
Speaker 1: and I am thinking of like how MICHAELA in Transformers
Speaker 1: is set up versus how what happens with your character?
Speaker 1: Where she is set up as a character you may
Speaker 1: or may not like the traits she has given, but
Speaker 1: she has skills, she has interests, she has motivation, and
Speaker 1: she has ability. The way she is shot do not
Speaker 1: quite square with that, but like there is information there
Speaker 1: that is interesting and it's like makes michaela compelling character.
Speaker 1: I feel like Grace kind of falls into that where
Speaker 1: and she isn't shot as exploitatively as later Michael Bay installments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of wonder what the cinematogra if that's like
Speaker 1: Michael Bay brain rot or a cinematography shot. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't really know, but I will say that, you know,
Speaker 1: while her body is certainly lingered on, especially in the
Speaker 1: animal cracker scene, I feel like it's the worst offender
Speaker 1: of it, so of course, and the fact that that
Speaker 1: is a phrase in itself, but like for the I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, as opposed to other Michael Bay
Speaker 1: female characters, she is treated less horrifically, I agree, And
Speaker 1: she's set up as a really like I just can't
Speaker 1: get over. Like, there's three whole scenes in the first
Speaker 1: half hour of this movie devoted to how complicated her
Speaker 1: relationship is with her father and her upbringing. We get
Speaker 1: all kinds of information, we get um the fact that
Speaker 1: she's in this relationship that her father is like irrationally
Speaker 1: hateful towards which is like a whole whatever that million
Speaker 1: times of like if you touch my daughter, I'll kill you,
Speaker 1: and you know, possessive fathership that's very, very toxic and harmful,
Speaker 1: and you know, Grace reasonably saying like these are the
Speaker 1: kind of people I grew up around. Why would you
Speaker 1: be shocked that I would end up with someone like this?
Speaker 1: It's all, I know, a fair point. You also find
Speaker 1: out that there's some sort of resentment regarding like she
Speaker 1: hasn't been dead mom. Her mom left. We don't know why,
Speaker 1: but she left, and it seems like liv Tyler holds
Speaker 1: onto some resentment about why her mom left, which would
Speaker 1: make sense because we've only seen Bruce Willis be an asshole.
Speaker 1: So there's that. We know that she doesn't really want
Speaker 1: to work on the oil rig, but she does, and
Speaker 1: she's very good at it, and she's ready to leave,
Speaker 1: and her dad is desperately clinging to her. It doesn't
Speaker 1: want her to leave. Like, we get all this really
Speaker 1: kind of rich information, and I'm assuming, if I'm giving
Speaker 1: the movie the benefit of the doubt, the only reason
Speaker 1: she's staying is because her to be fiancee also lives
Speaker 1: and works there. Otherwise it's possible she may have already left.
Speaker 1: What is her job? Is she like a liaison between
Speaker 1: the clients who are buying the oil question mark, I
Speaker 1: don't know why the business people come onto the oil rig,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what Bruce Willis means when he
Speaker 1: threatens to send her back to quote unquote the office,
Speaker 1: because great questions all around, what is why does the
Speaker 1: oil rig have the office? It seems like the oil
Speaker 1: rig is the office, that's how when everything else implies,
Speaker 1: But he threatens to sent her back to the office.
Speaker 1: That does not make sense. But even in like the
Speaker 1: fucking maze of not making sense, there's a lot we
Speaker 1: learned about Grace right away, and it sets up at
Speaker 1: least a semi cogent reason for her and her father
Speaker 1: to go on some sort of journey together. And then
Speaker 1: that just doesn't how happen? The thing that made me
Speaker 1: most frustrated from like I mean, from like a Bechtel
Speaker 1: cast standpoint and also a writing standpoint, because I'm just like,
Speaker 1: why would you do this? Like, first of all, it
Speaker 1: becomes clear immediately that what Grace's narrative should be is
Speaker 1: offloaded to Ben Affleck pretty early in the movie. The
Speaker 1: second she agrees to marry him. The plot that belongs
Speaker 1: to Grace is then, uh, that's the dowry that she
Speaker 1: gives to her husband is her entire plot line, and
Speaker 1: she is like severely reduced in screen time. But even
Speaker 1: before Bruce Willis leaves for space, which he does in
Speaker 1: many at least two movies, you know what a legend um.
Speaker 1: But anyways, before he leaves, she forgives him for everything,
Speaker 1: to the point where I was like, then why even
Speaker 1: like I felt like from a like a writing standpoint,
Speaker 1: that undercuts such a large chunk of the movie, because
Speaker 1: if she forgives him before he leaves, and then she
Speaker 1: forgives him again before he dies, why why not just
Speaker 1: not forgive him before he leaves and then it would
Speaker 1: be more like narratively impactful, no matter what the gender
Speaker 1: dynamics are, It's just like, why would you have her
Speaker 1: forgive him twice? So the whole time that he's in space,
Speaker 1: she feels the exact same way, like she hasn't changed
Speaker 1: at all. She's just like, I love my dad, I'm
Speaker 1: not upset about whatever vague thing happened to my mom
Speaker 1: and it's all good like that, I was so frustrated, right,
Speaker 1: that eliminates an opportunity for tension in that relationship. And
Speaker 1: when you're writing a story, you want to like capitalize
Speaker 1: on opportunities for tension, not eliminate them. Number one. Number two,
Speaker 1: I thought what she was forgiving him for, or like
Speaker 1: what she was angry with him for, was his treatment
Speaker 1: of her as it relates to her relationship with ben Affleck,
Speaker 1: which is this whole other thing that we hinted at,
Speaker 1: but it's the like overprotective of a daughter's chastity and
Speaker 1: daddy being like, no, my daughter can't have stuch with anyone.
Speaker 1: And you have all these scenes where she's pushing back
Speaker 1: against her dad, being like, AJ is my choice, not yours.
Speaker 1: You can't tell me what to do anymore. I've been
Speaker 1: more mature than you since I was ten years old, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm an adult, Let me live my life. And then
Speaker 1: Prince Willis literally says kind of an iconic line. He says, sure,
Speaker 1: I may be an immateur father, but I'm also your employer.
Speaker 1: I was like, do you hear yourself talk like that?
Speaker 1: Is what? I guess that that is what Roger Ebert
Speaker 1: is talking about, where you're just like you're just like
Speaker 1: your brain cells are dying as you're hearing it, because
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to believe someone said that out loud and
Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, oh, I'm a terrible father. Well guess
Speaker 1: what I'm your boss to, so take that. It's funny, um,
Speaker 1: but you know, horrible, horrible. And then there's another scene
Speaker 1: because this is this becomes the like conflict between them
Speaker 1: or they like the source of tension in this father
Speaker 1: daughter relationship where he has this arc where he needs
Speaker 1: to accept that his daughter is an adult with her
Speaker 1: own life. But before he gets there and accepts this,
Speaker 1: which he I feel like accepts this to a j
Speaker 1: and not even to her because he's like, you're my son.
Speaker 1: I've always thought of you was my son. And it's like, no,
Speaker 1: you need to be having a conversation with Grace about
Speaker 1: this anyway. It's really fs It's like it's total horseship,
Speaker 1: like the way that yeah, like her plot, and I mean,
Speaker 1: I do wonder it would be probably impossible to actually trace,
Speaker 1: but just to like know at what point, like I
Speaker 1: am can vince that there is a version of this
Speaker 1: script that Grace went to space and you know, I
Speaker 1: just I mean could be again. There there are many
Speaker 1: credited writers and then many others who weren't credited. There
Speaker 1: was something like nine nine writers total, including uh. Credited
Speaker 1: ones are Jonathan Hensley J. J. Abrams. There's also story
Speaker 1: by credits that include Robert roy Pool. There's adaptation credits.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what they're adapting, but um, Tony Gilroy,
Speaker 1: who I'm a huge fan of Mr. And Or I mean, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: Tony Tony Gilroy is amazing. It's um almost rude that
Speaker 1: he implicated in this um and then Shane Solerno and
Speaker 1: then uncredited writers include a guy named Paul, a woman
Speaker 1: named Ann Okay, and Biderman. We've got Scott Rosenberg and
Speaker 1: Robert Town, so a whole slew of people working on
Speaker 1: this project. And Robert town is very famous. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you can't blame any one person for what's happening here.
Speaker 1: I feel like, honestly, Michael Bay is kind of probably
Speaker 1: the most likely culprit for things that we don't like,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. It also sounds like he lets
Speaker 1: actors do a lot of improv in his movies too,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of lines in this movie where
Speaker 1: they're like that was Bruce and you're like, well, I
Speaker 1: guess that that's Bruce Willis's fault. You know it's but
Speaker 1: I what they don't tell you about the Bruckheimer teeth
Speaker 1: is that, you know, they're kind of like, what's the test?
Speaker 1: They they've passed the sentient there, like sentient as humans,
Speaker 1: and so they can make Ben Afflecks Turing test. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Brockheimer teeth have passed the Turing test, and so
Speaker 1: the Brockheimer teeth can just make Ben Afflecks say literally
Speaker 1: whatever whatever they want. Yeah, that will come out in
Speaker 1: his voice. And that's that's the teeth. They're like, you know,
Speaker 1: they're rooted into your mouth and then just kind of
Speaker 1: wired directly to your brain. Yeah, they cost they they're
Speaker 1: equipped with AI the turning teeth. Um. Wow, Jamie, you're
Speaker 1: on a roll. Um anyway, So Harry's arc as it
Speaker 1: relates to Grace is all about, oh, he has to
Speaker 1: accept that his daughter is an adult. There's a scene
Speaker 1: where and this happens after Harry has seen a J
Speaker 1: and Grace kiss, like right before a J proposes, and
Speaker 1: it makes Harry mad that his daughter is in love,
Speaker 1: and there is one of the wildest exchanges of dialogue
Speaker 1: in a movie that I have ever seen. I just
Speaker 1: want to go quickly through this, where Harry is very
Speaker 1: piste off. Steve Bushemy is like, look, Grace is an adult.
Speaker 1: She can make her own choices. She grew up to
Speaker 1: be a hottie. And then another guy chimes in and
Speaker 1: his yeah, she's so freaking hot. And then Owen Wilson
Speaker 1: is like, look, she's a kid coming into her own
Speaker 1: She's exploring her sexuality, she's getting curious about her body.
Speaker 1: Her hormones are pulling her in a thousand different directions,
Speaker 1: talking about her as if she's a teenager, when when
Speaker 1: it's stated just after that that they're the same age,
Speaker 1: and then and then Bear kind of put put the
Speaker 1: pen on everything by saying yeah, so, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: like it's always as if Bear has not listened to
Speaker 1: the entire conversation, because he puts the pin in the
Speaker 1: conversation by saying, yeah, I think we can all agree
Speaker 1: that we all feel like we are her father. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, but they would just say really disgusting things
Speaker 1: about her for a whole minute, Bear, were you listening
Speaker 1: he says, and I quote, we all feel like a
Speaker 1: bunch of daddy's. Yeah, they do say that. They do
Speaker 1: say that, and we and then have no saying that
Speaker 1: we can't do anything about it now. Um so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like she's so hot, she's so hot what a
Speaker 1: certified hottie bear is like, and we are her daddy also,
Speaker 1: and like because we're hitting on her, were her. No,
Speaker 1: that's not the cause and effect he's describing. But it's
Speaker 1: like shocking that he could hear that whole conversation and
Speaker 1: be like, yes, we all have paternal feelings towards this
Speaker 1: young woman truly, And then Harry goes on a pretty
Speaker 1: classist tirade where he's like, I'm not gonna let my
Speaker 1: daughter marry some rough nick. She's better than that, She's
Speaker 1: better than all of us. We'll see. That didn't bother
Speaker 1: me as much because that felt like a because you know,
Speaker 1: because we know where the story goes, Like that was
Speaker 1: one of the more effective things for me, because his
Speaker 1: mind does change about that where I feel like there
Speaker 1: are these generational anxieties of like I don't want my
Speaker 1: kid to end up with someone who reminds me of
Speaker 1: myself because I hate myself and I want whatever, like
Speaker 1: the generation, like I want my kid to do better
Speaker 1: than I did. So that didn't super bother me as like,
Speaker 1: I don't think that he was an inherently classist character,
Speaker 1: because he was advocating for the men he'd worked with
Speaker 1: forever who were of the same class as him the
Speaker 1: whole movie. But I just I felt like that was
Speaker 1: something that he came around on. So that felt like
Speaker 1: one of the only elements of Harry's character that grew,
Speaker 1: not that grew anyways, not that I like, I don't
Speaker 1: like that like him. I think that it should have
Speaker 1: been Harry learning to accept his daughter as an autonomous
Speaker 1: person who wanted to do her own thing, and like,
Speaker 1: there's so many ways you can take that. It's like,
Speaker 1: maybe like live Tyler wants to like work for NASA
Speaker 1: or work as something that he considers to be elitist,
Speaker 1: and he's like, why you're like abandoning your root, fuck you.
Speaker 1: And then they go on this space mission together and
Speaker 1: he's like, all right, I accept that you want to
Speaker 1: do something different than me, but it's still like we
Speaker 1: still love each other and whatever. Do it that way.
Speaker 1: There's a million different ways to do it, but because
Speaker 1: it goes that way, I don't know. I didn't, but
Speaker 1: I didn't mind that because he comes around on it
Speaker 1: and I feel like he was more just like projecting
Speaker 1: of like I don't want my daughter to marry someone
Speaker 1: like me because I suck, and it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you do, suck, you do. But Ben Affleck knows how
Speaker 1: to cry and say I love you, which you don't,
Speaker 1: so he is better than you. Yeah. Um any other
Speaker 1: thoughts on Grace, Um, No, it was just a big disappointment.
Speaker 1: I didn't like how she was reduced to steaks for men,
Speaker 1: literally a like physical steak and movie stakes for the
Speaker 1: two main guys when she was because it, don't know,
Speaker 1: it always just feels like a knife twist to even
Speaker 1: bother to set up the character if you're just going
Speaker 1: to do that. So I was disappointed, and I wish
Speaker 1: that Live Tayler' gotten to do more because I like her,
Speaker 1: and that's all I have to say. I want to
Speaker 1: talk about Dottie and Watts a quick but powerful conversation
Speaker 1: because she's I think the first woman we really meet
Speaker 1: in the movie. Dottie Yes, Yes. Dottie is played by
Speaker 1: Grace Zabriski, who I need to look her up, um,
Speaker 1: because when I was like talking about when I was
Speaker 1: like posting Instagram stories about armaged, everyone's like, I love
Speaker 1: Grace Zabritsky really, but um, I was like, I don't
Speaker 1: know who that is. Um. Anyway, So she is married
Speaker 1: to Carl, who, in a number of scenes is extremely
Speaker 1: verb really and emotionally abusive to Dottie, which, in true
Speaker 1: Michael Bay fashion, is played as a joke. I like
Speaker 1: hesitate to even quote this because it's so horrible. But
Speaker 1: there's a scene that happened. There's a scene where Carl
Speaker 1: is on the phone with Billy Bob and he's like,
Speaker 1: I discovered the asteroid, so I went to name it,
Speaker 1: and Billy Bob's like, okay, He's like, I want to
Speaker 1: name it after my wife, Dottie because she's a vicious,
Speaker 1: life sucking bitch from which there is no escape. And
Speaker 1: then he's like smiling, Michael Bay wants you to go
Speaker 1: ha ha ha ha ha, because that's how he feels
Speaker 1: about women. And we know this and there's proof. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't love that. However, I think that we cannot
Speaker 1: hold how Dottie's spiteful evil jackass of a husband talks
Speaker 1: about her against Dottie herself because I like Donnie. I
Speaker 1: think she is the most impactful woman in the plot,
Speaker 1: and I hate how the movie wants us to see
Speaker 1: her because I want to see her a different way.
Speaker 1: She comes out. She only speaks. I think that it
Speaker 1: does speak to the actor because she only speaks in
Speaker 1: really like hack gendered tropes. But the actor does sell
Speaker 1: it as if like there's like a deep resentment under it,
Speaker 1: because you could just walk out and say those lines
Speaker 1: like Carl, I made dinner ten hours ago, where are you?
Speaker 1: But she says it with like a fury, you know,
Speaker 1: And then she says, do I have a sign on
Speaker 1: me that says Carl's slave? Like she really is, Like
Speaker 1: in my head, Dottie is trapped in this marriage for
Speaker 1: whatever reason. She's going to have an asteroid named after her,
Speaker 1: and then she's going to divorce him, take all of
Speaker 1: his weird FBI money, and um kill him. M yes,
Speaker 1: I like that for her. I don't think the script
Speaker 1: is thinking that hard about it, but I do appreciate
Speaker 1: when that's like there is an underwritten woman in a movie,
Speaker 1: which Dottie very much is, and an actor manages to
Speaker 1: make it feel impactful in like a memorable way, because
Speaker 1: Michael Bay is like not going to give you fucking
Speaker 1: anything ever, because he's evil is evil. And then the
Speaker 1: final Dottie related scene, which happens off screen, but someone
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's Billy Bob receives a text
Speaker 1: message on his Nokia phone from UM that Dottie leaked
Speaker 1: the info about the asteroid to the press. It's not
Speaker 1: clear why she does this, why she leaks the info,
Speaker 1: because the movie doesn't care enough to check back in
Speaker 1: with her and show us her motivation for doing that.
Speaker 1: But I feel like what we're supposed to think in
Speaker 1: the movie is that she did it out of spite,
Speaker 1: which is maybe ridiculous, like to spite her husband. I
Speaker 1: don't know. And there's a there's another woman that I
Speaker 1: don't think we ever get a name for, and I
Speaker 1: honestly could not figure out which guy it was. It's
Speaker 1: the guy that shouldn't be near his son, but is Oh,
Speaker 1: his name is Chick fine. I felt like, I mean
Speaker 1: Chick's wife who we never get a name for. She
Speaker 1: doesn't have the same emotional impact or screen time or
Speaker 1: whatever that that Dottie does. But that's another woman who
Speaker 1: has sort of presented to us as like she's you know, oh,
Speaker 1: this guy's made mistakes in his past. Why won't she
Speaker 1: just forgive him? You know? And because he comes to
Speaker 1: the house apparently illegally, so she tells, you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to be here, you're not supposed to have contact, which
Speaker 1: probably means there's some sort of like restraining order situation
Speaker 1: going on as well. But she still like comes around
Speaker 1: and it's very like We cut back to her two
Speaker 1: more times. The first time is when she finds out
Speaker 1: he is the Space Cowboy hero and she's like, that's
Speaker 1: your daddy, and it's like and then she's like, let's
Speaker 1: get back together. And I'm like, well, hold on, what
Speaker 1: did he do that you broke up with him? Like,
Speaker 1: what did he do? Going to space with Bruce Willis
Speaker 1: will not solve your relationship. And I've always said that
Speaker 1: that doesn't redeem your broken marriage. Yeah, that was frustrating.
Speaker 1: And then there's Watts, the one lady astronaut played by
Speaker 1: Jessica Steen. We really know nothing about her aside from
Speaker 1: her being an astronaut. Um. The way the men talk
Speaker 1: about her is one of the few like focal points
Speaker 1: she gets before they like land on the asteroid and
Speaker 1: start drilling. But there's a scene when they're still on
Speaker 1: Earth and she's like explaining gravity to the oil drillers.
Speaker 1: They're not paying attention, and Owen Wilson is like, is
Speaker 1: it just me? Or is what's really hot? And then
Speaker 1: a few of the guys go like, Oh, yeah she is,
Speaker 1: which is wow, because you never learn anything about her.
Speaker 1: She disappears for large swaths of the movie. I thought
Speaker 1: that she had died. At one point, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: she must have been on the Independence because I haven't
Speaker 1: seen her in a half hour, so I guess r
Speaker 1: I P. But like, she didn't even die. They just
Speaker 1: forgot about her. I just forgot about her until one
Speaker 1: scene towards the end where they have drilled the whole,
Speaker 1: they have planted the nuclear bomb. They are trying to
Speaker 1: take back off in the shuttle but the engine won't
Speaker 1: fire up and she's trying to fix it. She's running around,
Speaker 1: she cannot fix it. Then Lev he's like, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: He shoves her out of the way, hits something with
Speaker 1: a wrench or whatever. He was introduced after her. I'm like, yeah, stop,
Speaker 1: that somehow fixes the problem. So basically, the one chance
Speaker 1: the movie had to let a woman do something, the
Speaker 1: movie didn't let her do it. It makes her seem
Speaker 1: incompetent and bad at her job, has her be violently
Speaker 1: shoved out of the way by a man, and it's
Speaker 1: a man who fixes the problem by bashing an expensive
Speaker 1: piece of equipment with a metal pipe and saves the day.
Speaker 1: We don't know, we don't know why is happening in
Speaker 1: this fashion, but it is and it feels bad to
Speaker 1: look at, Like, yeah, I was, I was quite frustrated.
Speaker 1: I feel like every time there is an opportunity to
Speaker 1: further develop a woman introduced into the story, the story
Speaker 1: instead introduces three more men and you're and that happens
Speaker 1: almost without fail because I think with Grace we get
Speaker 1: to know great like I mean, I guess we do
Speaker 1: meet a j before we meet Grace, but like Grace
Speaker 1: is introduces like a big character. She's so large on
Speaker 1: the poster for Armageddon that you think that she's doing
Speaker 1: much more than she actually does. But then everything that
Speaker 1: is interesting about her is weirdly transferred in a way
Speaker 1: that doesn't quite translate onto a J and then with
Speaker 1: what's her name? What's what with what you see? Like
Speaker 1: she's I mean, I feel like she's kind of she's
Speaker 1: not quite like a shrewd stereotype, but she's very like strict,
Speaker 1: She's very like no bullshit um in the way that
Speaker 1: I think professional women are often broadly characterized. And it's
Speaker 1: like the women who are good at their job can
Speaker 1: also be fun to be around. Not that you know
Speaker 1: it from watching a movie, but whatever. Um, but she's
Speaker 1: you know whatever, she's like a type A like doesn't
Speaker 1: have patience for these guys that makes logical sense they suck,
Speaker 1: but instead is to teach them about gravity. She's the
Speaker 1: only scientist. There's a bunch of like random. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've got like someone who is rumored to hang out
Speaker 1: with underage women and a creep and a bunch of
Speaker 1: other guys that don't know anything about space like I,
Speaker 1: I too would be frustrated. But instead of exploring that
Speaker 1: even remotely, instead of even bothering to build a relationship
Speaker 1: between her and anybody, we build out love instead, because
Speaker 1: reasons like love is a far more memorable character than
Speaker 1: she is, and it doesn't need to be that way.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's like a fault of performance that
Speaker 1: it's like that's what the script does. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm curious, I guess if that is
Speaker 1: something that is Like it feels like a blend of
Speaker 1: this wave of representation of women and just a blind
Speaker 1: of like how Michael Bay is as a creator. It
Speaker 1: feel like there's definitely overlap. But I do think that
Speaker 1: in the late nineties you could really easily get away
Speaker 1: with like early third wave girl power feminism of like
Speaker 1: in the corporate sense of like having women say all
Speaker 1: the right things but ultimately do nothing, which I think
Speaker 1: that like Grace says a lot of the right things
Speaker 1: in the first thirty minutes of this movie. She says,
Speaker 1: like you're not in charge of my life. I want
Speaker 1: to be liberated from you, like fuck you all this stuff,
Speaker 1: but then the right choice is to be daughter to daddy,
Speaker 1: and I mean, and like Watts says a lot of
Speaker 1: the same things where she pushes back on these ridiculous
Speaker 1: men she's surrounded by, but you know, ultimately it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean anything in the story. Absolutely, um, real quick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've touched on some of these already, but there is
Speaker 1: as Michael Bay does, which is too treat things like racism, sexism,
Speaker 1: able is, m etcetera as a punchline. Um many examples.
Speaker 1: I won't even go through specific ones, but there's a
Speaker 1: handful of racist stereotypes being employed there which she did
Speaker 1: not learn from after this movie, which we talked about
Speaker 1: in our Transformers episode keeps doing it. There's ablest language
Speaker 1: there is, Like we mentioned the like what is intended
Speaker 1: to be a joke of the Steve Boushemi character being
Speaker 1: a statutory rapist. There is what I felt were some
Speaker 1: like gay panic jokes when with the butt shots, right,
Speaker 1: they were like being medically examined, and there was all
Speaker 1: these like we're gonna stick this probe in you and
Speaker 1: they're like just fucking ridiculous, Like you're just like grow up.
Speaker 1: Don't forget the woman in the cab at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the movie, who is like, why aren't we moving?
Speaker 1: I want to go shopping because yeah, women be shopping well.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, I mean like yeah,
Speaker 1: Michael bay Is so I mean I feel like this
Speaker 1: kind of ties into the undercurrent of nationalism, and like
Speaker 1: by that, I mean like white em Arian nationalism that
Speaker 1: is like tied into this movie because in all Michael
Speaker 1: Bay movies, because he loves a disaster movie, and I
Speaker 1: don't hate a disaster movie, but the tropes that he
Speaker 1: invokes inside of them are like really frustrating because he like,
Speaker 1: I feel like there's like the vineer Veneers, there's the
Speaker 1: veneer of like being like an international, global, multicultural movie.
Speaker 1: Because you do see a lot of people of a
Speaker 1: lot of different races in this movie, and a lot
Speaker 1: of Michael Bay movies, however, non white characters in general,
Speaker 1: with some exceptions, but in this movie, I would mainly
Speaker 1: just say the General and Bear are exceptions. Those are
Speaker 1: really the only non white characters of narrative impact in
Speaker 1: the movie. But like you see scenes that are supposed
Speaker 1: to be taking place in Shanghai, you see scenes that
Speaker 1: are supposed to be taking place all over the world,
Speaker 1: but Michael Bay, without fail will show you and he
Speaker 1: Michael Bay does show you a very diverse New York,
Speaker 1: but only because he's about to hit it with a
Speaker 1: fucking asteroid, and like he will show you, you know,
Speaker 1: people of color, but he will not develop Like just
Speaker 1: I just feel like his movies treat anyone who isn't
Speaker 1: white as extremely disposable, and so it's like you can't
Speaker 1: like you can hand nothing to him because he's about
Speaker 1: to fucking blow people up, like it's without fail. He
Speaker 1: will do that. He does it in the Transformers movies,
Speaker 1: he does it in The Rock, he does in this movie.
Speaker 1: He does it all the fucking time, like it's what
Speaker 1: he does. I also feel like when he cuts to
Speaker 1: other cities across the globe, and I'm thinking particularly of
Speaker 1: the shots of Shanghai, they look like they're fucking Epcot,
Speaker 1: Like it looks like it looks like not real. It
Speaker 1: looks Yeah, the production design of those scenes, you would
Speaker 1: never know that Shanghai is a modern city because the
Speaker 1: way that it's designed, it looks I don't know, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like Michael Baby being like it's still feudal times
Speaker 1: in China, right, It's not a modern country with a
Speaker 1: modern economy, of course not, which is pretty hilarious given
Speaker 1: how dependent the global movie economy is on the Chinese
Speaker 1: movie economy. Now, that would absolutely not happen now, not
Speaker 1: that it should have happened then, but it's like it
Speaker 1: would be logistically impossible to happen now. Um, It's just
Speaker 1: like I mean, it's disrespectful. I feel like it's it's
Speaker 1: so USA centric and because it's like half the time
Speaker 1: when you hear or half the time when you see sorry,
Speaker 1: when you see other countries, so not always non white people,
Speaker 1: but like often whatever. It's like I think you're supposed
Speaker 1: to believe. You go to Africa, you go to South Erica,
Speaker 1: you go to Asia, you go all over the world
Speaker 1: listening to people being inspired by the American president, and
Speaker 1: then the last shot is always like a white family
Speaker 1: or live Tyler like standing up against an American flag
Speaker 1: and like nodding their head, like it's very very clear
Speaker 1: what's being done. It's like a low simmering propaganda. And
Speaker 1: that's why, you know, like it's part of why the
Speaker 1: movies getting made at the like at least at this
Speaker 1: point in the late nineties, like that was a great
Speaker 1: way to make a really expensive movie, Like that was
Speaker 1: how you made a shipload of money. Is just adding
Speaker 1: in this, you know a lot of nationalistic stuff and
Speaker 1: like a lot of it is in the imagery and
Speaker 1: like who fucking knows if that's in the script. A
Speaker 1: lot of it is kind of the Bruce Willis cowboy
Speaker 1: image where it feels kind of very American dreamy that like,
Speaker 1: it's just a regular guy, a regular American guy saved
Speaker 1: the world. And then even at the end when they
Speaker 1: blow up the asteroid, they do that whole sequence again
Speaker 1: of people all over the world, of all racist creeds
Speaker 1: and genders, celebrating the heroicism of Bruce Willis, cut to
Speaker 1: the American flag, cut to a kid holding a spaceship
Speaker 1: in front of a mural of JFK. And it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we fucking get it, Like it's no surprise that this
Speaker 1: director goes on to work closely with the American military
Speaker 1: to make his shitty robot movies. Also, they're constantly like
Speaker 1: as the movie goes on, they are just more and
Speaker 1: more invoking a Christian God, and you're like, oh, fucking
Speaker 1: king man, Sorry, I just pernicious nationalism and movies is
Speaker 1: a very interesting topic to me. Everyone should read the
Speaker 1: book Red Carpet. Um. Okay, yeah, we talked about this
Speaker 1: on I want to say the Arrival episode which is
Speaker 1: on the Matreon, and I think we might have discussed
Speaker 1: this to some extent on the Dependence Day episode two.
Speaker 1: The phenomenon of Hollywood disaster movies, where a disaster happens
Speaker 1: that would affect the entire planet, but will be a
Speaker 1: story only told from the American perspective, where we see
Speaker 1: Americans are the ones to do the thing to solve
Speaker 1: the problem, the implication being only Americans are smart enough
Speaker 1: and equipped enough to handle something like this, to the
Speaker 1: point where in this movie they do have contact with
Speaker 1: someone from another country, Lev on the Russian space station,
Speaker 1: but the Russian space station has this huge malfunction. Things
Speaker 1: go horribly wrong, people almost die, and it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: if you needed a reminder that Russia lost the space race,
Speaker 1: and remember, here's a Swedish guy doing a weird accent
Speaker 1: in person. I think grew. I'm and it literally, I
Speaker 1: mean it is. It is propaganda, like it absolutely is propaganda,
Speaker 1: and it's not subtle. And that's why I think Michael
Speaker 1: bay for a period of time and not anymore, which
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a coincidence given the shift in
Speaker 1: global politics, Like why he was such a successful international
Speaker 1: American filmmaker when he was because it was intense American
Speaker 1: propaganda at a time where that worked. It shouldn't have
Speaker 1: but it did. And that's why I need to find
Speaker 1: the name of the author, because it really is. It
Speaker 1: was like one of the best books they read last year.
Speaker 1: And I know we don't read books, but I actually
Speaker 1: Donna say, Jamie, have you betrayed me? Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I do actually read books all the fun time. And
Speaker 1: sometimes I'm like, why am I joking around so much?
Speaker 1: Because then people are like, oh, you have one brain cell?
Speaker 1: Like actually, don't, okay. Um. It's a book called Red
Speaker 1: Carpet Hollywood, China and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy
Speaker 1: came out last year by Eric Schwartzel. I think I
Speaker 1: brought it up. I think it maybe brought it up
Speaker 1: in our Top Gun episode, which is I think over
Speaker 1: in our Matreon. But it's a really interesting book about
Speaker 1: how kind of the cultural capital has over a period
Speaker 1: of years shifted from Hollywood over to China and how,
Speaker 1: you know, how global politics kind of influenced that. But
Speaker 1: I feel like these late nineties movies are kind of
Speaker 1: where Hollywood influence is at. I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: like a complete peak, but certainly like a high of
Speaker 1: like pushing aggressive white American values was a way to
Speaker 1: become really really successful in a way that already feels
Speaker 1: very very dated. And that's why we talked about it
Speaker 1: in the Top Gun episode, because in Top Gun it's
Speaker 1: so pro America and there is a very clear like
Speaker 1: they name quote unquote the enemy in a way no
Speaker 1: longer happens in American movies because poting in Top Gun Maverick,
Speaker 1: where they're like, there's an enemy. We're not going to
Speaker 1: tell where it is or who it is, but there's
Speaker 1: an enemy. Because America is no longer the most powerful
Speaker 1: country in the world, you can't just randomly name an
Speaker 1: enemy and not experience a consequence. And anyways, it's a
Speaker 1: really fascinating book. It's very depressing. But in that book, oh,
Speaker 1: that's what I was going to say. In that book,
Speaker 1: there was a high up official. I don't remember what
Speaker 1: their name or position was, but there was a high
Speaker 1: up official in the Chinese Communist government. And normally I
Speaker 1: say communists as a compliment, in this case, I would
Speaker 1: not um, but there was a higher up in the
Speaker 1: government that said like a lot of current blockbuster Chinese movies,
Speaker 1: so like Michael Bay movies of the late nineties, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of heavy nationalist themes. Whether the movie is
Speaker 1: good or not, you know, it depends on the artists,
Speaker 1: but there the nationalism is inherent to it. But um,
Speaker 1: a lot of current Chinese filmmakers were influenced heavily by
Speaker 1: this era in American movies because of how heavily the
Speaker 1: Michael Bays of the world. And everyone points out Titanic
Speaker 1: as like the best American propaganda ever produced because it
Speaker 1: is the best. They're not wrong because we like it
Speaker 1: like it's and everyone likes it, and that's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the most effective propagandists like to build in the
Speaker 1: pernicious values that you're trying to push on people in
Speaker 1: a really appealing, sexy, fun, narratively fun way, like makes
Speaker 1: it a really effective way to deliver a message. But
Speaker 1: but I mean, it's just I think it is kind
Speaker 1: of funny with movies like Armageddon because Michael Bay, I
Speaker 1: think is trying to do that, but he's just like
Speaker 1: not good at it because he's so he's bad at it.
Speaker 1: He's like not a good movie maker. He's not a
Speaker 1: good Windows movie maker. And I don't I think he
Speaker 1: wants to be able to do what James Cameron did,
Speaker 1: but he just like can't, so he ha ha whatever. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: I will say maybe the one redeeming thing about this
Speaker 1: movie that I don't think actually ends up being very
Speaker 1: redeeming because of the different context and implications. But I
Speaker 1: do appreciate that this is a movie that like champions
Speaker 1: the working class, a champions, you know, blue collar work.
Speaker 1: It's these. But then it's also, like you said, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like, well, these fancy astronaut boys can't do
Speaker 1: the job, so you need a statutory rapist, right, and
Speaker 1: oil drillers who are actively fucking up the planet. We
Speaker 1: need them to come in and save the day, and
Speaker 1: they're like actively implying that these Like I think that
Speaker 1: it's like you have working class heroes and they are
Speaker 1: like not well written, but like entertainingly written characters. They're
Speaker 1: distinguishable from one another, which a lot of movies cannot
Speaker 1: do right. And you have a creep and a statutory
Speaker 1: rapist in a group of like eight guys. Amazing great,
Speaker 1: But I do think that all of those men are
Speaker 1: characterized as kind of buffoons, and so it's like it's
Speaker 1: a like, yea, we have everyone except for Bruce Willis
Speaker 1: is like, well, the working class. They're incompetent, but like
Speaker 1: they really pulled it together. This one time in space
Speaker 1: due to the one guy who is smart, which is
Speaker 1: wild because it's like Steve Bushey's character is eventually revealed
Speaker 1: to be like extremely like a product. He has like
Speaker 1: two doctorates by the time he's twenty two or like
Speaker 1: whatever that Bizarrow writing thing was, and you know, I
Speaker 1: feel like they're heavily like I don't even know what
Speaker 1: they were doing with that character, but I didn't like it.
Speaker 1: I didn't like it. I hope he made an idea
Speaker 1: all one forty million dollars of the ut for saying
Speaker 1: those things out loud. But yeah, to your point, it's
Speaker 1: this movie that's like championing these working class people who
Speaker 1: are characterized largely in stereotypes of working class people because
Speaker 1: they are characterized as being sex offenders and deadbeat dads
Speaker 1: and like people with gambling addictions and like all this stuff.
Speaker 1: So it's like, you're not championing working class people if
Speaker 1: you're just applying all these negative stereotypes to them. No,
Speaker 1: So that doesn't work. Yeah, No, It's like it's the
Speaker 1: classic like Michael Bay trying to have it all sorts
Speaker 1: of ways at once, which I think, yeah, again, like
Speaker 1: gives you like the sheen of well, I represented this
Speaker 1: class not well. And that's how I would say that, Like,
Speaker 1: that's how he treats people across the gender and race
Speaker 1: spectrum as well, of like, yeah, I did represent people
Speaker 1: from across the gender and race spectrum in most of
Speaker 1: my movies, not well. But were they not there? And
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, that's actually not that's not helpful. It's
Speaker 1: not helpful at all. Yeah, And I guess that that's
Speaker 1: what I have to say about it. I do think
Speaker 1: it's funny that Michael Bay was at least advertised as
Speaker 1: apologizing for it Armageddon. He didn't actually apologize for it,
Speaker 1: but he said, yeah, I was made pretty quickly, and
Speaker 1: my visual effects supervisor had a mental breakdown. Can I
Speaker 1: share a few of the quotes from and can we
Speaker 1: swap our favorite quotes from the commentary track? Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean first iconically, Michael Bay, I know there's no
Speaker 1: fire in space, but it is a movie, and most
Speaker 1: people don't know that that is a good one and
Speaker 1: he's not wrong. Most people probably don't know that. Here's
Speaker 1: another phone one. I was very unimpressed when I went
Speaker 1: to NASA, and it shows Michael Bay said that, yes
Speaker 1: you did. He was not. He was like, wait, there's
Speaker 1: no fires in space. Boom, we gotta put him there.
Speaker 1: Here's one from Ben Affleck talking about I've seen I
Speaker 1: don't know which one. I think it was a big
Speaker 1: action set piece, he says, quote it cuts together pretty seamlessly.
Speaker 1: I must say, for something that I thought would look
Speaker 1: like total hoke Um, he says, after remembering how chintzy
Speaker 1: it seemed on set. Um, A lot of boomer were
Speaker 1: two kind of paraphrase David Sims Palavars from blank Check,
Speaker 1: who wrote an Atlantic piece on the Armageddon commentary. So
Speaker 1: shout out to that, David. Let's see, Okay, two other
Speaker 1: Michael Bay things I'll say, He says, making films as
Speaker 1: like a war. I think we've referenced that quote before.
Speaker 1: He sa as, I'm the kind of director who doesn't
Speaker 1: like effects. He says over a sequence of terrible effects. Um.
Speaker 1: And then finally, I wanted to just provide the full
Speaker 1: Ben Affleck teeth anecdote because as a Veneers scout and
Speaker 1: and you know, enthusiast of many years, I truly it
Speaker 1: is my dream that someday Jerry Bruckheimer will walk up
Speaker 1: to me and say it's your time kid, we're getting
Speaker 1: your new teeth. So I say this with love. Michael
Speaker 1: Bay describing how he realized Beneffle teeth wouldn't do. I
Speaker 1: always like low shots that kind of come right under
Speaker 1: your chin and make you a little bit heroic. And
Speaker 1: he kind of had these baby teeth. So I told
Speaker 1: Jerry Bruckheimer, God, he's got these baby teeth. Jerry, I
Speaker 1: don't know what to do. Jerry, he used a very
Speaker 1: famous start in a plane movie that he replaced teeth with,
Speaker 1: so he said, we did it to him, why not
Speaker 1: do it to Ben? So my dentist had been sitting
Speaker 1: in a dentist chair for a week, eight hours a day.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. And what they're talking about is top
Speaker 1: gun in Tom Cruise. But for some reason Michael Bay
Speaker 1: doesn't feel comfortable thing that. But like I've seen it
Speaker 1: before and after Tom Cruise teeth picks. Tom Cruise is
Speaker 1: a poster boy for dentists that want to give you
Speaker 1: expensive teeth. Ben Affleck I kind of wonder as of
Speaker 1: Veneer's enthusiasts, like how long did they hold up? Do
Speaker 1: you have to get them like tuned up like a car?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but they still you know, it's been
Speaker 1: twenty five years since this movie came out, and they're
Speaker 1: fucking chilling there. You know, the same firm. They've lasted
Speaker 1: a few marriages. I'll say, uh true, So you know,
Speaker 1: this is movie definitely sucks. And also I just the
Speaker 1: last production note is that um that I thought was funny,
Speaker 1: and it's like, I guess a pretty well circulated saying was.
Speaker 1: I just always think it's funny when like movies with
Speaker 1: the exact same themes come out at the exact same time.
Speaker 1: Because this movie came out very very close to the
Speaker 1: movie Deep Impact, which was I believe directed by a
Speaker 1: woman and was also successful but made less money than
Speaker 1: Armageddon and sharing from scholarly journal Wikipedia, these movies came
Speaker 1: out two months apart. They're both about blowing up an
Speaker 1: asteroid that's about to hit Earth. It's not a coincidence
Speaker 1: that they come out around the same time, it says.
Speaker 1: According to Bruce jel Reuben, writer of Deep Impact, a
Speaker 1: production president at Disney took notes on everything the writer
Speaker 1: said during a lunch about his script and initiated Armageddon
Speaker 1: as a counter film at Disney, and then nine writes.
Speaker 1: That's why nine writers worked on the script because the
Speaker 1: story had basically been written by another person and they
Speaker 1: just had to kind of shape the same story into
Speaker 1: a Bruce Willis, Jerry Bruckheimer, Michael Bay vehicle of that story.
Speaker 1: And then they just better at the box office than
Speaker 1: Deep Impact. So they just straight up stole the idea
Speaker 1: from another it or yeah, took it to a different
Speaker 1: studio and was like this is our movie now, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they took and like to add insult to injury,
Speaker 1: Deep Impact was directed by a woman, and very few
Speaker 1: movies in were directed by women. And just like Michael Bay,
Speaker 1: just like is fucking evil and lawless, which we knew
Speaker 1: I've not seen and I will say I have not.
Speaker 1: I mean I guess I hadn't seen Armagedon either, but
Speaker 1: like I kind of forgot the Deep Impact existed. I
Speaker 1: knew Armageddon existed. And that's bad. It reminds me of
Speaker 1: this is the last thing I'll say in the episode,
Speaker 1: because we gotta go, We gotta go. It reminds me,
Speaker 1: I mean those stories. Movies are like littered with stories
Speaker 1: like that. But there was this amazing animator named Richard
Speaker 1: Williams who was the animation director on who frame Roger Rabbit.
Speaker 1: He did all of these famous like animations in the
Speaker 1: back half of the twentieth century, and his magnum opus
Speaker 1: was this story called The Thief and the Cobbler, which
Speaker 1: there's a lot of resemble and says in story and
Speaker 1: in setting to Aladdin. He worked on this movie decades
Speaker 1: and decades, and then Disney got wind of it in
Speaker 1: the last couple of years and they're like, oh, let's
Speaker 1: kill that, and then they made Aladdin and no one
Speaker 1: has ever seen the Thief in the Cobbler and everyone
Speaker 1: is seeing Aladdin. Business is evil, kind of like how
Speaker 1: Disney was like, oh, Kimba the White Lion exists, Well,
Speaker 1: we're just going to steal that and make the Lion King.
Speaker 1: I've heard a lot of different versions of that story,
Speaker 1: but yeah, like it. It does feel like it's like
Speaker 1: the same spirit of just like, let's steal that, say
Speaker 1: it was on our idea in a way that we
Speaker 1: don't need to pay anyone or credit anyone, and then
Speaker 1: make billions of dollars forever, and and we love that. Awesome.
Speaker 1: So does this pass the backtel test, Caitlin, Now women
Speaker 1: aren't in the same room to get there. That's illegal.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, that would be nasty, and I'm glad they
Speaker 1: didn't do it. Yeah. No, like, not even fucking close that.
Speaker 1: I don't. I truly don't. Think. We got two women
Speaker 1: in the same room and it's a half hour movie.
Speaker 1: It's obscenely long. Are we going to cover that movie
Speaker 1: women Talking? What? Because? Yeah, I mean, I think that
Speaker 1: would be a fun Matreon thing. I would love to
Speaker 1: cover Women Talking and The Women Okay as a theme,
Speaker 1: because those are both movies that I think are it
Speaker 1: sounds like you know whatever released eighty years apart, but
Speaker 1: similar premises. As far as I understand, I haven't done
Speaker 1: a ton of research on women talking anyway. That was
Speaker 1: just a sidebar. What about our nipples scale, in which
Speaker 1: we evaluate the movie on a scale of zero to
Speaker 1: five nipples based on how it fares from an intersectional
Speaker 1: feminist lens. I will give this movie zero nipples. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I cannot, in good conscience give it more than nothing.
Speaker 1: I won't give it negative. But because we have done
Speaker 1: that before, Yeah, I think maybe even for Michael Bay movies, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is I would say this is not
Speaker 1: the worst Michael Bay movie I've seen by a long shot.
Speaker 1: Um it's one of the better Michael Bay movies I've seen,
Speaker 1: and it's so bad and it sucks and it's sucking sex.
Speaker 1: But um I I think in terms of visual language,
Speaker 1: the movie does not aggressively objectify the women who are
Speaker 1: in the story. It just simply elects to ignore them
Speaker 1: and turn them into wives and daughters. I don't like
Speaker 1: this movie, but there were parts of it that I
Speaker 1: was like, well, I had to watch this movie and
Speaker 1: it wasn't the worst thing that ever happened to me.
Speaker 1: And that's brave. I mean, it does end on a
Speaker 1: high note, and by that I mean it ends could
Speaker 1: still anyway, so you're when it thills across the board. Hey,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening. Listeners, Thank you for listening. This is
Speaker 1: This is the main feat episode. But if you enjoy
Speaker 1: the episodes with just the two of us, we do
Speaker 1: this all the time over in the Patreon ak Matreon
Speaker 1: that's patreon dot com, slash becktel Cast five dollars a month,
Speaker 1: we'll get you two additional episodes from the two of
Speaker 1: us a month. We usually do fun themes, just like
Speaker 1: the women talking theme we just discussed. I can't wait.
Speaker 1: And you can also go to t public dot com
Speaker 1: slash the Bechtel Cast for all of your merchandizing needs
Speaker 1: such as new designs designed by a one Jamie Loftus
Speaker 1: like shrek Ian feminist icon, Paddington and the flobber Mombo
Speaker 1: by Danny Elfman, among all the classics such as feminist icon,
Speaker 1: queer icon, at scabs, dry scabs, you name it, we
Speaker 1: got it. We've absolutely got it. And with that, we
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed this. We we wanted to kind of
Speaker 1: straight into a genre we hadn't been in for a while.
Speaker 1: And with what we'll be back with another episode on
Speaker 1: Titanic in a couple of weeks. So you're going to
Speaker 1: tell them that, oh my gosh, should we not? I'll
Speaker 1: cut it. Um. Well, thank you for listening. We we
Speaker 1: love you, and we'll be back next week with your
Speaker 1: normally scheduled programming. Yeah. Bye bye