Midweek Mention... Armageddon

Armageddon

Dan: Okay, big spoiler

Big

spoiler for this film Harry doesn't make it Okay, okay, just for anybody out there hoping that maybe there's an Armageddon 2 where Harry comes back. That's not,

Sidey: to happen.

Dan: is true life though. Harry's not coming back. You've just got to let him go. I've let him go,

Sidey: I've let him go.

Dan: Well, okay, I've,

Cris: watched it. He's

Dan: him back, but I have to let him go time after time and I, this time, I watched it with Nelly and she was, She was in

Reegs: it's that

Sidey: I think Riggs was in tears as

Dan: Well,

Sidey: We've mentioned it before, you've mentioned it before, that this is one of your favourites.

Dan: is, for me and my sister, it's like our, Our film that we will watch together and we know the

Sidey: We double figures?

Dan: Yeah. Oh yeah. Double figures I reckon. I reckon probably just about double figures, but over the years,

Sidey: So that's ten and a half hours, so it's a lot. It's nearly like a full day's worth of viewing.

Dan: Oh yeah. I would say six

Reegs: And just to name it, this is The Thinking Man's Don't Look Up, Armageddon.

Dan: Armageddon. Yeah. The one that inspired all those that came after.

Reegs: And was

also copied from the idea of Deep Impact.

Dan: Impact. Potentially.

Possibly so. But the, the true story of how Harry Stamper and his drilling operatives were, managed to save the world from Armageddon.

Sidey: Yeah, this is right in Riggs sweet spot.

'cause it's Michael Bay. Yeah. Who's a big fan? Huge. Brooke Heimer. Yeah. All that stuff. Yeah. So you can expect some

Reegs: a million different you know, screenwriters yeah,

Dan: Anybody

Sidey: Abrams.

Dan: Yeah. Anybody that's written anything, anybody that's blown up a car, anybody that's ever been in a stunt had something to do with this movie.

Sidey: I mean the cast is stellar.

Reegs: Mm-Hmm.

Dan: yeah.

Sidey: Willis. Nice to see Bruce Willis, wasn't it?

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I've had a couple of we did the

Sidey: Do you know why?

Dan: as well.

So

Sidey: Yeah, he said last week. Do you know how Bruce Willis came to be involved in this? It's quite, I didn't know until I was researching it.

So he

Dan: imagine they needed somebody to save the world and is only one guy

Sidey: but it's even more interesting than that, Dan, because he was directing, I think, his own comedy.

Right. Called Broadway Brawler, and it was a huge piece of shit. Yeah. And unsalvageable. Saved by the title. Unsalvageable, it was. So, they cut a deal with him that It's like, see, not pay him. And, and basically it was gonna be a huge write off and says, you've basically fucking cost a load of money.

You're gonna have to sign up for a three picture deal with this studio. This was the first film and the other two were 6 cents and unbreakable. It's decent.

Cris: Great, yeah,

Dan: it's a nice little

Cris: yeah,

Sidey: But otherwise he would've been nowhere near this sort of thing.

so

Dan: by default, really. And for the fact, if you need somebody to save the world, back in the, sort of, 90s, you were calling

Reegs: Michael Bay.

Dan: All of the above, yeah.

Sidey: Does it start off with a sort of intro to meteors hitting the earth?

Reegs: Yeah. We get a bit of narration from Charlton Heston talking about the dinosaurs being wiped out, and then it smashes to the title card with a fucking asteroid just going straight through. I mean, it's a Michael Bay

Sidey: however many million years later

Reegs: Yeah. Yeah. And

Dan: you that that meteorite hitting and it was about the size of I don't know.

It was, it was smaller than the one that is

Cris: miles wide,

Dan: six miles wide or whatever, and it wiped out the the dinosaurs

Sidey: 000 times bigger than any something like that.

It says

Dan: it's a big one. And,

Sidey: it's bigger than that. Dan was

Dan: and you see the, the They're kind of fireball enveloping the, the earth and then just a few thousand years later life begins again and we are part of that and they say, well, it's all over until the next or something along those lines and we know another big.

Missile, well, Comet, Asteroid, whatever the fuck, Rock, is about to hit

Sidey: yeah.

The size of Texas.

Dan: of Texas.

Sidey: are leading the charge that hit first, because we get a whole load of smashy and nicey, don't we? Yeah, yeah. Is it Manhattan or somewhere? Yeah, because the Twin Towers get

Dan: there's

Reegs: first of all, we get the, we get the space shuttle in orbit.

Sidey: Oh, that's true. Yeah, we do.

Reegs: And this is a complicated scene because, you know, Michael Bay, you know, wants us to simultaneously think that being a scientist makes you a pussy, but also NASA is the greatest achievement of all humankind, but also wouldn't it be really cool if we just blew it up as well? So you get all that complicated stuff going on all at once.

Dan: the first five minutes. And you're right, so the first inklings that NASA has got there might be a problem. Is the space station and

Sidey: there's a fellow doing a spacewalk he's doing some repairs and he goes first I

Reegs: Yeah.

Dan: all

Sidey: it in his visor

Reegs: you do, and then you get a shot of debris, like, and it sort of tears through the American badge on his thing. Like you're doing a really bad war movie if somebody like shot it.

Yeah.

Dan: but that that wouldn't have helped him anyway, because there was a bigger rock coming that went

Sidey: It's like uh gravity but better.

Dan: Yeah,

yeah. And and so you're right. We get the first asteroids that have hit Earth. And we realize some heavy shit is coming. Obviously, the people there have been massively disrupted and

Cris: Well there's about 10 minutes of explosions.

Dan: the news then comes through to

HQ

at NASA and they realize,

Sidey: well, you've got a fellow looking at the air traffic control thingy radar.

And he says, but bogeys, bogeys coming in and there's fucking like hundreds of them just raining down and the city gets fucking walloped. Yeah. And two towers. Yeah. They get fucking smashed

Dan: get fucking smashed.

Sidey: Some lulls. Yeah, some lulls on the rig

Dan: in the middle of an oil rig in the middle of the sea and there's, there's various

Reegs: golf balls at Greenpeace, presumably because caring for the environment is for queers as well, or something,

Dan: that. Yeah, yeah, well they've got a big old diesel boat there as he points out, so what are they doing with that?

He's more concerned with the fact that The young guy called AJ, a young drilling operative,

Reegs: It's not the, it is not just drilling for oil, right.

Dan: drilling for oil, his daughter the beautiful Liv Tyler, is

Reegs: she's got a thing going with him. He's keen to discuss her virginity with pretty much everybody on the on the oil rig including Steve B's.

Blatantly underage, attracted weirdo, and a visiting bunch of Chinese officials slash investors?

Sidey: Yes

Reegs: and they're talking about her virginity and that sort of thing,

Dan: they're all intrigued in this argument because she's just been found in bed with AJ who's now running around the,

Sidey: they're trying to shoot him. He's got

Dan: because yeah Harry Stamper, Bruce Willis has come back and he isn't, he isn't happy that somebody is, is trying to deep drill his daughter. And yeah, the, the

Sidey: don't know. It's not immediately. I mean, it's sort of clear, but she keeps calling him Harry and it's not as a few seconds until it's like, Oh, dad. Yeah. And then there's this whole thing about absentee mother and he's just dragged her along various drilling assignments and she's grown up in this laddy world, lads

Dan: assignments. She's grown up in this environment. And

Reegs: also Ben Affleck is super hot as well,

Sidey: Everyone's hot in this.

So the rest of the crew, you've got a guy, you've got Michael Clark Duncan, nice to see him, um, Steve Buscemi we've mentioned fricking Owen Wilson, I'd completely forgotten he was in

Dan: early

Reegs: Yeah, and he was in a very early role. He'd only done Bottle Rocket, I think it was,

Sidey: Right, okay, yeah, but he's, like, doing Owen Wilson stuff, and And then we get a sort of flashback to HQ where it's like someone running into the office saying this is a fucking world ender this we've got and I think they know that it already it's a world ender but someone runs in with a piece of paper that says like 17 days it's like it's got 18 days till we're all fucked and so they have to come up with a plan

Reegs: a plan. And their plans are largely ridiculous, aren't they? The ones that they come up with,

Dan: All of them, in fact, actually, Riggs.

But the one they settle on is

Is getting Harry Stamper, or the

Sidey: this is, this is basically the, the, the, the overarching,

Reegs: core driller there is.

Sidey: is the, the overarching question of the whole movie.

Is it easier to train astronauts to drill or to train drilling? guys to be astronauts, which Ben Affleck asked and was told to shut up.

Reegs: he was told to shut the fuck up by Michael Bay. It's great. And in the comment, there's an absolutely legendary commentary track for this, but where Bruce Willis and Bay, who hated each other at this point, and Bruckheimer and Affleck are all doing a comedy. It's brilliant. It's on YouTube if you want to watch it.

I do highly recommend it. It's way better than watching the film. And Affleck goes off for about five minutes just to completely destroying the central premise and how stupid it

Dan: Oh, but he took the fucking money alright, didn't he? Yeah, yeah.

Reegs: done as well. They said he had little baby teeth. So they had his, all of his teeth

Sidey: Yeah,

Dan: Yeah, yeah. And just so they could smash him out again, I guess. But

Sidey: got Keith David in

Reegs: it's got Keith David in it as well. Do I've got to talk to the president?

Dan: And there's loads of those kind of lines where, you know, there's Somebody will set somebody else up or down for the fall or up for the great line, you know Oh, what the fuck do you know? He's pretty much the smartest man in the world you best Listen to him and all those kind of lines that come in afterwards for us all to be brought along with the fact Yes, actually it makes clear sense the best way in to stop an asteroid the size of Texas hitting the earth is to send up a load of unprepared roughneck drillers on an astronaut

Sidey: Well, I suppose the point is that they're really just passengers. They're just sitting on a thing, right? Which any, like, us four here could sit on a rocket and get set up.

They don't really Because there are other traits

Reegs: is, is, wouldn't it be cool if a bunch of really blue collar guys saved the world? That is really

Sidey: And then, because when they get there I was just thinking about practicalness, I'm like, nothing that they do when they get there is particularly, like, they point a drill at the ground and press go, and if it breaks they just swap it

Reegs: it breaks, just swap it

Sidey: well,

Dan: And they, they, as long as they go, they've got like one million drill bits which they have brought with them. Then

Sidey: you've gotta have a fail safe. And

Reegs: Anyway, they get there and they do, I can't believe, this movie is fucking, it's made for people whose attention span is about 30 seconds but it's also about 4 years long so

Sidey: it's an hour of getting to the. Asteroid. And then when they land on

Reegs: it's an hour and a half!

Sidey: and a half. Yeah, yeah. And I had forgotten.

Dan: of your seat shit.

You can't believe it as they send them up. Okay, it's a big emotional moment.

Reegs: Let's talk about, there's a few bits we've missed.

Sidey: is your first time, right? Yeah. How, what, like, were you digging it up to this point?

When they get, when they I

Cris: I have to say I've watched not intently, but I was actually, I found it quite funny until they actually got on the asteroid.

Dan: Then it's

Cris: And once, once they got there and it started to just overcomplicate things with, it just, it just became, it just became. Too complicated

Dan: it's a,

Cris: for a fairly simple job. And I understand you have to, you know, with it,

Sidey: Build the

Dan: the world, it's never that easy.

Cris: but there's, and, and when the guy pulls out the gun, I was like, that's it, I'm done

Reegs: get

Dan: jumped way ahead. But, but we, we do get to this point

Sidey: so where there's the flight. Where they go up. Then there's,

Reegs: oh, there's so many bits

Sidey: to the drama of getting to the asteroid and one of the ships doesn't make

Dan: Yeah, we're not even

Reegs: We've missed so many bits we haven't talked about. I don't wanna miss a thing properly. Really? When he puts, he

Sidey: oh, but who cares?

Reegs: cookies on her

Dan: on a jet plane. Oh, when they're just heading

Sidey: Oh, I hated that

Dan: on, they're so emotional.

Sidey: okay.

right. The bit that I hate that, right. So I saw this at the cinema and I saw it for this today.

That's like the only two times that I've ever seen it. But the time that I saw it, which would have been in 1998 when this came out and it has bugged me to this day. It's when they have their list of requests and one of their requests

Reegs: bring back 8 track.

Sidey: is to not pay tax. I mean, that's the fucking stupidest thing I've ever

Reegs: Wait, but it's another example, that's why I don't like Michael Bay has

Sidey: But he got, he asked them to write down a list. Yeah,

Reegs: and this stuff comes out. Yeah. Isn't it awful to have to pay tax? Well, no, it's sort of

Sidey: But of all the things you could ask for, that's what you, like nonsense. I've had, it's bugged me for about 30

Dan: Yeah, well, you know, they've not got long to think about what they want

Reegs: Do you know what really bothered me then? Right? That armadillo drilling truck that these guys, they start

Dan: You're way

Reegs: We watched First Man, right? And we saw all the, how those things were intricately designed by geniuses, not a bit of spare weight on it, and the guy just fucking rips out a bit. Well, we don't need that.

And puts like a, a, like a a skull. On the fucking gear ship. Oh, come on, man. Come on.

Dan: No, no, you, you, you're jumping way ahead and you've got, all right, you've got this all wrong. You've got this all wrong. Because basically at the emotional moment when we're, they're going up to save the world, we've already.

heard one of the characters has gone to visit his son because he's not sure that he's going to come back. He's obviously estranged.

Sidey: resolves itself really

Dan: and she's the, the mother comes out and says, what are you doing here? You, Max, you can't be here.

Sidey: Well, there's, yeah, there's a restriction. So he's, he, implied to be a violent father. Yeah. Or husband.

Dan: someone they've gone to court and said, oh, it's just a salesman.

Johnny go back inside. I know about 10 minutes late when you realize that wait a minute. He's one of the astronauts. It's gonna go up and save the world He's he's no longer a salesman. He's like that's your daddy

Sidey: There could be some money in it for

Dan: Yeah, it could be some money. I felt that as well. It was a you know, but that's that's the life They don't know they're gonna sell the story to the newspapers make their

money.

Sidey: this is a fucking really long film. So they're going, they're split into two separate craft. Yeah. In case something happens and something does

Dan: Freedom and

Sidey: and and as they're going up.

Reegs: up Oh, just, right, they, we haven't, they go up to the mirror first,

Sidey: first In one

Reegs: in one of the least comprehensible action scenes, like, people are just running down a corridor and shit's blowing up, and you've got no idea why, until right at the end of the scene, they show you some red blobs on a thing, and you're like, oh, that's where everyone's going then, and like, just fucking nonsense.

Anyway, they pick up Peter Stormare, who's

Sidey: like, I think they're going there to refuel, but it's, it's the, the pesky Russian couldn't keep it.

Reegs: He's added to the cast, he's gonna fix

Dan: funny, last time I He's

Reegs: it with a hammer.

Dan: Last time I seen Peter Stormey, I was in I was in Nepal.

just, he just passed along. just wandering along. But

Reegs: So anyway, they pick him up, they go off in the other two shuttles

Sidey: Ben FX one crashes.

And it's fairly brutal with the pilot and co pilot dying, like, pretty graphically they get launched out through the

Dan: Yeah. well, space is a harsh, horrible environment,

Sidey: And no one can hear you scream.

Dan: nobody can hear those, those screams. And yeah, there's, in getting onto the asteroid there's some Some lives are lost. What they've had to do, it's a miracle of science really, they slingshot around the moon.

Sidey: It's just gravity. It's just gravity. That's how it works. It's

Dan: miracle, because they've had

Sidey: It's just science.

Dan: had to get up to 22 and a half thousand,

Sidey: a lot of g force. Yeah, yeah.

Dan: There's loads of G's, there's like, G, G, G, G, G, loads of G's. And, they managed to land unfortunately we know, independence,

Sorry, Independence goes.

Pull myself together there. And, and Sam is down. So Grace, Liv Tyler, she's at mission control with Billy Bob Flaunton, who's pulling all the, pulling all the strings from down, from down on the ground.

And they realize independence has gone with AJ

Sidey: it.

Yeah, she's a bit upset.

Dan: she's a little bit upset, but to be fair,

Sidey: She's made them promise.

Dan: going to be dead in about

Sidey: made them promise to come back.

Dan: Yes. Yeah. Oh, Harry Stamper has said the

Reegs: He's a man of his word.

Dan: his word. He's a man of his word. He's not going to lie to his daughter about not coming back.

He's promised. Come on. Get emotional.

Sidey: let's get it down.

Come on. We're getting

Dan: I'm holding it

Sidey: we get, well, one of them is crashed and the presumed devil, we know they're not, but they're a fucking shit load away from the drilling site.

Reegs: both overshot

Sidey: overshot the site

Dan: actually. And they've found themselves on Like basically drilling through Diamond or

Reegs: No, it's iron plating. BMI's character has already worked, worked out. It's never gonna happen, and has started to lose the

Sidey: got, like, space mania.

Reegs: say space dementia. William Fishnet says it. He looks right at the camera and says he's got space dementia.

Sidey: That was

Reegs: it was my favorite part of the movie, to be fair. And they drill into this stuff and the drill is not working like 50 feet or whatever, the transmission's gone. In fact, at one point Will Patton goes, I blew the tranny. Did you, did you hear that one? I thought was that. So, yeah,

Sidey: They need to get to 800 meters depth to, and the whole thing, the whole crux of it is that, and they've, we've had a nice simulation, is that they need to detonate the nuke at that depth to split it in half so that the left bit goes to the left and the right, and it passes either side of the earth and we win.

Dan: of the earth. At a

Reegs: it's, it's, if you do it too late,

Sidey: it doesn't

Reegs: it doesn't matter whether you blow it up or not, it's,

Dan: It's gotta be far enough off the

Sidey: But there are still fragments hitting earth. My favorite bit of the movie is where Paris gets

Reegs: there's, there's bits

Dan: absolutely tanked. So we see this happening. There's, there's bits that are coming through still. We're not burning up in space. They are getting, they're getting through the, the atmosphere and tanking into some of our best known

Sidey: But we're probably, it's probably about an hour 45 till we get our first bit of drilling.

And

I normally skip straight to that in the content I watch.

Dan: of we, we We've had a couple of episodes where AJ, the young kind of, young gun, has pushed through the drilling and broken

Reegs: Who was he with

Dan: And as they go through camp and he's trying to

Sidey: Who is he with? Who is he with in the car? In the armadillo?

It's him, Michael

Cris: The yeah, Green Mile Man.

Sidey: And which one was Owen Wilson in the first one?

Reegs: dead now, isn't he? Owen

Sidey: I lost track of when Owen Wilson died, I

Reegs: of course you did, because it's fucking incomprehensible, this movie.

Dan: Wilson died upon entry

Cris: Yeah, when they landed, he

Sidey: Oh, okay, because he wasn't a star at this point, was he?

No, that's right, okay,

Reegs: Yeah, you probably didn't see it because the camera was

Sidey: It was a bit of that.

Dan: how they've even got those

Sidey: Every frame, every shot, the camera is moving around, like you say, but not, not necessarily in a crack, but just, it's always,

Reegs: It's always moving.

Sidey: in, in motion

Reegs: motion. And no shot lasts for more than a couple of seconds before there's a

Dan: something.

Because we're on an asteroid, going, hurtling towards

Reegs: of roaring and screaming like an animal at this point.

Sidey: Anyway,

Dan: the most

Sidey: we kind of, we settle into a thing of

Dan: Will they or

Sidey: Bruce Willis crew and they're struggling to break through to, and they're on the clock and William Thickness saying you're not fucking going to do it and they're getting orders from the president maybe they're just going to detonate even though they've been categorically told that that won't work.

And then will the other crew of Ben Affleck, AJ, and Papa Bear, I think he's known as, will they get to the site? Because it's so fucking obvious that they're going to be the ones to

Dan: say day and mixed into all this,

Sidey: this. And that we set into this kind of like rigmarole for a good half an hour. Mixed

Dan: into all this, they bought a gun. Because just in case, just in case people start, you know, losing their shit and, and they have to detonate the bomb beforehand, which, as you say, they know won't work. All the science has told them it won't work. And if there's anything you get a lot from this film, it's science.

And

Reegs: Well, yeah, it's simultaneously a sort of slack jawed fascination with what technology can do and a complete disregard for scientific literacy as well.

Dan: we do, we do shoot our way out. Of the the original kind of. Spaceship on the armadillo. Why it's got fucking like, guns, I don't know.

But it does.

Reegs: does.

Dan: it's got like,

Sidey: it's got,

Dan: it's got rotating machine gun, just in case

Cris: be the Batmobile

Dan: Yeah, just in case there was aliens on, on the asteroid, I guess. So they brought in this, yeah. And

Sidey: Anyway, it's delayed, right? And so

Dan: improbable, some of the

Sidey: it's delayed, but

the

president does give the order. He's constantly on the phone to the general and he says, no, that's it. We're fucking, it's not, they're not going to get to debt before they get to the zero fucking mark. So detonate it. And so this causes Billy Bob to go just, just, yeah, he goes rogue and, and organizes his.

Loyal troops at ground control to

Dan: Just

Sidey: Like, like fucking knack of the comms and undermine all the fucking blah, blah, blah,

Dan: blah

Sidey: And I think they, they, they, they're trying to give them a little bit more time to get the drill going again or whatever. And and disable the remote.

There will be a point where they would, I mean, they have to detonate remotely.

I mean, that's how they get away. Yeah. The plan is always to detonate, right? But they're just trying to detonate, like the president gives the order to detonate while it's on the surface because he doesn't think they're gonna get there. news. Independence

Dan: on the surface because he doesn't think they're going to get there.

From success and they've got about an hour and a half to do it But then the new armadillo aj big bear they turn up they start drilling aj's

Reegs: about them having to evil knievel it over, like, from one asteroid to

Dan: got to save something for the people that are going to go and watch this but there you you then go and See them drilling through and aj ben affleck is is in control again And as they're getting closer and closer on their last drill bit or whatever and time's running out He's saying I can do it.

I can do it. You can trust me. Can you? Oh my god, we didn't know what was gonna happen. But sure enough, Bruce Willis backs him. He makes 800

Sidey: against his better judgment He's never trusted him before

Dan: He's never trusted him before, but on this moment, he trusts him. He's actually right for fucking once, for the first time in the film.

And brilliant. The hole's dug, they have to clear a, a bit of a drill bit out, but they

Sidey: Yeah, that was pretty

Dan: they all manage to get out in time, until we go back up to the ship, we arm the nuke and realize, for fuck's sake, the remote's out of batteries. You know, and nobody's brought any spare batteries, so somebody has to stay.

Yeah. And they're gonna draw short straws. They're going to draw the short straw and who is it? You know, it's going to be

Sidey: baby teeth.

Cris: Styles. It's

Dan: baby

teeth. It's Harry Styles. It's it's David Beckham. It's Ben Affleck. And he's the youngest one of the crew. The fact that they've got astronauts and military there and they had three of them.

If you count the the the Russian guy and the the girl and They got, they had enough people to fly the plane getting back but they've thrown this guy up he's taking the short straw and brave as a lion He's gonna do it and harry stamper says that i'll see

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: Oh, God. Well, nobody saw this coming either, because Harry, just as Affleck steps out onto the asteroid, pulls out his air tube, so he can't

Reegs: Completely unnecessary.

Dan: turns him, flips him back into the chamber and sends him back up, takes the remote detonator and says, Don't worry about this.

Your job now is looking.

Sidey: Doesn't he

rip off? Doesn't he rip off his

Dan: he rips off his patch, says get this to Billy Bob Thorne and look after my daughter. I'm gonna go and save the world. And Affleck is, is kind of a crying mess on going back up.

Sidey: We all were

Dan: We all were, thank you. And then it gets to the, well, probably. The most brave act of a brave individual we've ever seen in the history of

Reegs: Oh god,

Sidey: But it's not as simple as that because there is a bit, there's like a sort of earthquake y run where he falls.

Dan: have to get, they have to get the fuck off Dodge and get, they got this one, there's one plane and they've got to get off. So Harry's waiting for the, the plane to get off and get a bit of distance before he hits the, the, the go button. And he's also got to do it before the, the critical moment.

Sidey: Not before he has a FaceTime with his daughter to say goodbye.

Dan: Oh, This is me, me, me and,

Sidey: want to send you over the edge, but we have to talk about

Dan: I have to, I just had to drink water off just to

Sidey: the lost fluids. You had to literally had to be toweled, you had to be toweled down. Nelly

Dan: can't compute at this time, but he's, he's He's coming back though, isn't he? he's, coming back this time,

but he promised,

he promised

Harry Star. Oh God.

We're both gone. Tears are

Sidey: hangs up on that. He just fucking guns it. And then, yeah, then there's the drama of will he be able to press the button?

Dan: and, and it's, there's another earthquake goes

Reegs: matter because Keith David can do it from the White House.

Dan: No, the

remote

Sidey: gone. The remote's out.

Dan: Reegs. So

Reegs: why did they, did that happen

Dan: after Yeah, they started fucking around with the, the At one

Reegs: Anyway, he does it, he does it.

Sidey: Steve Belushi.

Dan: Yeah, that's him. He's riding it like the,

Sidey: Strangelove. They do the Doctor Strangelove thing, yeah.

Dan: riding the atomic weapon.

Reegs: it does blow up and that's the end.

Sidey: Yeah.

Dan: Not before you get a flash before his, his life flashed before his eyes and he see little, you see little Gracie swinging and

Sidey: thought he could come back like a Doctor Manhattan kind of origin story

or something.

Dan: But we, it doesn't finish there because you do get the return to

earth

Sidey: Well, you've had

Reegs: shake the hand of the daughter of the bravest man I've ever met!

Sidey: Oh, tell

Dan: me you weren't in tears

Reegs: No! there

Sidey: there is lots of stars and bars. You'd had the, the shot at the start of them all slow mo walking out. And now you have the show. Slow mo shot of them all walking, and there's only a few of them left.

So touching.

Dan: don't want to close my eyes.

Sidey: get that

Reegs: And you've seen this film numerous times, and I

bet you couldn't tell me exactly who makes it and who doesn't.

Dan: tell you everything who makes these. No, I mean, people make it, some people don't.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: He's crying so much at this point. There's no way he could keep track of that sort of detail.

Dan: Through the blubber and the snot and the tears and everything, you can't see much, but

Reegs: And they get married, and that's the

Dan: You have a marriage, yeah, and they're all there.

The

Sidey: camera pans over to all their photo, all the dead ones photo. Yeah, Max

Dan: was there. And at one point, oh, bye Max, take care, buddy. Um, yeah, it's, there's not many times you use genius and masterpiece but

Sidey: He's not even trolling you, that's what he thinks.

Dan: this is absolutely

Brilliant.

It is for action movies. It might not be everybody's favorite. But it's right up there with mine as far as just Easy to watch, you know what you're doing. You can finish the lines, you know, it's gonna bring you on a roller coaster of Stupidness things that you're gonna say that would never fucking happen You're just sharing shouting the screen to the point where you're going I can't believe Harry's not coming back!

Sidey: how it's, Riggs, are you on the fence with this one?

Reegs: This one is not for me, the movie Saving Grace is, plays everything fairly straight, there's not a lot of nodding and

Dan: But they do save Grace!

Reegs: enjoy but no, this has got everything that I despise about Michael Bay, awesome macho bros being awesomely macho, disorientating editing sunsets, chaotic cameras whirling around, officials portrayed as insufferable idiots, action scenes that are consistently hard to follow because I

Cris: opinion?

I didn't really understand what he said, but yeah, it was too much, too quick. But yeah, I kind of agree with that. I don't know.

Dan: It

was decent. You loved this, Chris, you

Cris: I've never, I've never watched this before. I've seen the Aerosmith video and that

Sidey: about the same length. That

Cris: That was enough. Yeah, exactly. That was enough for me. Now I kind of understand. I knew Harry was going to die because I've watched the video. so I knew that was from the beginning.

Sidey: beginning.

Cris: My, my, the only, the only part I actually enjoyed was the beginning when they. Obviously, I know this is way over the top, but I found it a bit similar to Suicide Squad when they gather all these misfits and all these pretty much balance together.

Reegs: Well that's the part that's almost vaguely appealing,

Cris: vaguely appealing.

Yeah, exactly. And then, and then they do the astronauts test and all that, and that's kind of funny and goofy and it's, they go to the strip club, last wish, whatever. After that, it's a hard watch.

It's

Reegs: After

that is about an hour and a half of just fucking, oh, it's

Cris: Yeah, again,

Dan: I miss you babe, and I don't wanna miss a

Cris: I was very young when this movie came out, so considering that I knew a lot of, that, that was a big budget, it was like, Armageddon, oh my god, it's this great movie and I never watched it.

Sidey: big, no?

Cris: That's

big, no? That's a lot of money.

Reegs: a lot of

Dan: But what

you get for that is

Reegs: The

highest grossing movie of 1998.

Dan: That's what you get for

Sidey: no,

Cris: No, no,

sorry, it wasn't much to say, I, I I keep saying this, but if it would have been half the length, I think it would have been fine and for the budget and it could have made the story a lot more entertaining.

And as always, you know, my opinion on sci fi for so long time in space and to not be. At least Alien or some of these movies that are really good and they're happening in space They've got a bit of action that is more interesting This was a bit of bickering a lot of I don't know It wasn't for me, but I still watched it, but I lost interest after they got into

Dan: Okay, so three strong recommends. What have you got

Sidey: Oh, this is great. I really enjoyed watching this again.

Dan: It's

Sidey: I'm not even in, not even in a trolling way. I just you know, if you eat, if you eat like a massive chocolate bar, there's no nutritional value. You know, it's not good for you, but you eat it

Dan: and you do it anyway. You enjoy it

Sidey: It is fucking way too long. Bruce Willis said he didn't care for Michael Bay's directing style and refused to work with him ever again. Asked why he did this film, Steve what did you call him? Steve Belushi replied, I wanted a bigger house. Billy Bob Thornton has admitted doing this film for the money and often jokes about the acting in it.

He said it wasn't that.

Dan: No.

Sidey: shows this film during management training programs. New managements are given the task of trying to spot as many errors as possible. At least 168 have been found so

Reegs: is more than one per minute.

Dan: Yeah, it's fairly solid delivery, you know

Reegs: I don't, I, the implores, oh, right, anyway. I've said what I don't like about it pretty clearly, haven't I, so.

Sidey: I've said what I don't like about it pretty clearly haven't I? Yeah, Tony

Reegs: Yeah, Tony Gilroy, I think, and also some of the most egregious product placement you're ever going to see, and I know in our episode later we're going to be talking about adverts, so there'll be some of that, but it's so, like, the Recaro seats one, and the BMW, like, why the fuck has AJ got a

Sidey: a BMW?

Why?

It's just the flag waving, it's the flag waving that really gets me. I just don't like all that patriotism bullshit, but,

Reegs: But why has he got one? There's like no in

Dan: not often we talk perfection, but there it

is.

Cris: Strong. Recommend.

Dan: strong, strong recommend.

Sidey: Oh, no,

it didn't record really because we're going to have to do it all over again.

Oh, it

Reegs: did. It totally did. It totally did.