Transcript
Speaker: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to your favorite bad movie podcast. It's the only podcast that's brave enough to ask the question, if this movie's so bad, why do you like it so much?
Speaker: We're your hosts. My name is Chris Anderson, and obviously I'm the bear of the show. Interesting. Okay. I'm going to say that I'm the bear.
Speaker: Okay. I wasn't expecting that. Well, I mean, I think it makes sense. I'm i'm a sweetie pie in my own way. Sure. Greg Bossy, my co-host, you're obviously the chick.
Speaker: Oh, sure. Yes. Nice. I could definitely see you as the chick. Love that actor. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No. Perfect. And of course, we have my ah lovely wife, Anna, ah the rock hound of the show.
Speaker: All right. OK, I'll take it. How are you doing, my rock hound? Hey, I'm I'm hey i'm I'm horny. Okay, okay, well, we'll talk more about that later. Classic rock hound. Classic rock hound. That's my personality trait.
Speaker: For sure. But, of course, we wouldn't have our show this week without our very special guest. He is, of course... A global killer.
Speaker: That's why he's our own personal asteroid. Mr. do Joe D'Angelo. are you doing? Thank you very much. i appreciate that. I was hoping for the I was hoping I was be the Will Patton of the of the show. But um yeah, I don't know. It's I'll take that. That's cool.
Speaker: OK, good. Fair enough, because that's where it landed. Just like the asteroid. very ah But this week, listeners, we're talking about the feature length film Armageddon. And if you haven't seen Armageddon and haven't picked up what it's about through cultural osmosis, here's just a brief summary to hold in your mind.
Speaker: An asteroid the size of Texas is going to crash into the earth. And there's only one way to stop it. Send a ragtag band of oil drillers into space to blow it up.
Speaker: Yep. Yep. That's it. That's the plot. That's the whole, that's the plot. Yeah. That's who you get to save the world from wholesale environmental destruction. Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah, the oil drillers. so It makes sense in a dramaturgical sense. Sure. It's got an internal logic. Absolutely. can't deny that It's a delightful, dramatic irony. Joe, yeah you chose Armageddon this week. sure did. Why? i have seen this movie probably a dozen times or so the last time i saw it before last night when i watched it the last time i saw it from beginning to end every scene in a row was when it came out in 1998 i guess in the theaters okay um since since then i've seen every part of this movie
Speaker: um In hotels, um on various TV movie stations, AMC, TBS, TNT, travel a fair amount for work. So that is when i will get back from a long day traveling, sitting, eating food in a hotel room bed And then this is on for like nine. It's like nine hours long with commercials. Yeah, that makes sense. I will. I will watch it from end to end. And if you think that it is difficult to watch, it's a long movie on its own. When you add in commercials,
Speaker: Between all of the events happening in this movie, it is it's endless. It doesn't stop. um But that i have i I have to watch it. I'm drawn to it constantly. Partially because it's it's usually like the only thing that's on. But I've yeah convinced myself that I love this movie. So, yeah. Well...
Speaker: the You know, there's the classic comfort watch, you know, where, you know what, you know, it's not going to disappoint. You know what you're in for. Armageddon is going to deliver. Absolutely.
Speaker: I remember the first time that I saw Armageddon. I have an Armageddon story. This is one of the few movies I remember distinctly seeing ah because I was ah at the time a foreign exchange student in Germany between my oh a junior and senior year of high school.
Speaker: And I didn't speak a lick of German. This was a really dumb decision. I should not have done that. But luckily it was only six weeks. And so I, at one point, went with my host brother, Benny, to go see ah Armageddon. And they couldn't find a subtitled version so that I could watch it in English. There was only the German dub.
Speaker: But I was like, yeah, it's fine. Interesting. oh It's fine. And i remember distinctly when they got to the point where the two, they were showing, explaining the plan. And Billy Bob Thornton is there and he's like, we're going to fly up behind the moon. And Benny leans over me and he's like, do you understand what they, what is happening? I'm like, yeah, they're going to go blow up the asteroid.
Speaker: I got it, man. And yeah he was like, yeah, you got it. Uh, you know, this is like that level of movie where you can just, it's fine.
Speaker: ah and And since then, I've always had a soft spot for it. I've had a soft spot for those sort of early definitive Michael Bay that, you know, Bad Boys, The Rock and Armageddon. Those are all just sort of classic cable action movies that, yeah, you can jump in a half an hour in and that's fine. I think I had seen Bad Boys one at least four times before I found out that ah the two detectives had switched identities at the beginning of the film.
Speaker: Oh, But it doesn't matter. You can just walk in on and like any Michael Bay movie. It's fine. and ah Greg, what's your Armageddon background?
Speaker: So my background is that while I feel like I didn't really have any kind of taste in high school when this came out, I saw the trailer for it and said, I'm not going to see that because that looks terrible.
Speaker: And so I didn't. And all of my friends are kind like, you want to see Armageddon? was like, nope. And then they go to see Armageddon, you want to go? And then like I was in the high school band and we're taking a trip to Toronto and the teacher's like, and on the bus, we're going to show Armageddon. And I thought to myself, that's actually, that works out pretty well because I'm kind of curious, but I would only really watch this if I were sort of forced to watch it. right And so I watched it from a television screen that was about two
Speaker: 15 feet away and i'm talking like a crt like a 15 yeah yeah television screen and i was just like this feels like the way to watch armageddon definitely uh i also that's how i saw a crimson tide the first time another great bus movie the angley hulk for me good choice I would like to tell a story about Michael Bay. It is not my story, but it's a story that I like, and it's going to come up again later. Okay.
Speaker: ah I went to see this movie called it Comes at Night, which is directed by Trey Edward Schultz, and we didn't know that he was going to be doing a q and a there.
Speaker: And so he showed up and he's like, anybody can you know ask questions. And it's a horror slash apocalypse movie. And in it, a dog is killed. And this is a thing that like you don't do in a movie because you're going to lose your audience. It's like a very famous unspoken rule.
Speaker: But when I see that in a movie, I'm like, OK, a dog died. That means anything could conceivably happen. So now yeah I get more on my toes when I see that. But I asked him, because I got a chance to ask a question. i was like, you killed a dog in that movie. Did you like ever take your audience into account when you were writing this? And he said, let me tell you a story about Michael Bay.
Speaker: was like, okay. ah Apparently, after his debut film, which is called Cretia, which is apparently really intense, like he showed it at Cannes or something, and Michael Bay came up to him in a bar, and he was like, saw your movie, really loved it, thinks he's really talented, very excited, but he's like,
Speaker: but you gotta like dial it back. going to lose your audience. There's all these rules and he can't kill the dog. And the guy was just like, then I decided that I was going to make a movie that did all those things immediately. It was like, that's a great story, but also it like,
Speaker: This is Mike. I love the idea of Michael Bay approaching this guy and being like, I like what you did, which is weird because it seems like he probably didn't if he was like has all these rules you can't break. He's also like, you got talent, but you got to dial it back. It's just a hilarious scene to me to think of Michael Bay doing this to a director and also completely seeming to misunderstand what this guy's even attempting to do.
Speaker: Yeah. ah He seems like the kind of guy that's so, he's very much an aesthetic director. Yes. You know, like a visual director. Zack Snyder-like, yes. and And so he could, I could see him just like sort of locking in on the visuals of this guy and being like, well, obviously this guy wants to level up to the point where he's making $160 million dollar movies. Let me tell him what he needs to do to get there. Exactly. It's just hilarious to me. I love that story. That's great. and that's great now Yeah.
Speaker: Now, Anna, what is your background with Armageddon? Zero. I had never seen it until Friday. ah it's it's It's so stupid. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. i I had a good time. i had a good time.
Speaker: I mean, to a certain extent, I think you have to watch it as like a contemporary science fantasy. You have to, you know, if you watch this with like Neil deGrasse Tyson brain, you're goingnna have a miserable time or a great time, depending on like if you're a person that can enjoy that. But I think you can like engage with the film in its a genuine way, the way that it wants you to engage with it. If you can turn that part of your brain off.
Speaker: I mean, I'll be honest, it's not the science fiction that bothered me the most. Okay. There's some issues. There's some issues with this movie. It's ah it's it's the patriarchy, unfortunately. Okay. That's pretty rough.
Speaker: It is very much a fairy tale, and in that sense, it's very much patriarchal. ah
Speaker: I had to take a sip, listeners. You guys want to talk about the context? Sure. Let's do it. All right.
Speaker: I wish had some context about the background of the film. Scritch director, actor's own set. What was going on on screen? I wanna hear some details.
Speaker: Gossips can do all that shit. Can I imagine all the time?
Speaker: Armageddon was released July 1st, 1998. Your director, Michael Bay. And obviously a summer blockbuster, right? You have to release this in the summer.
Speaker: This is back when, like, you would get, at least I would get excited for, like, what's coming out July 4th. Like, am I going see it? I going part of the crowd? Like, what what are we, what's releasing? What's big? The year before, i had gone to see Independence Day yeah in in the theater. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah, very, very relevant to this very big scale disaster from space movie. You know, when did when did Godzilla come out? Was that before or after this? i feel like it probably was after Armageddon because there's that scene in independenceance day at the beginning where the dog attacks the Godzilla thing. And I was wondering, it was like, is that like a comment on that movie? Because the beginnings of those two movies are very similar. um Yeah, I was I was wondering about that. Yeah.
Speaker: I believe they were in production at the same time. And so this was like a jab at the competition. inches This one has a record number of taglines. We've got a grand total of 12. Let's get into it.
Speaker: Tagline number one. It's closer than you think. Tagline number two. Heads up. Tagline number three. Earth. It was fun while it lasted. right Yes. Yes.
Speaker: Yeah. Tagline number four. The Earth's darkest day will be man's finest hour. No. o No. That's the tone. Yes.
Speaker: I'm not into it. Man's finest hour. Exactly. For love, for honor, for mankind. um I think those were on ah character posters. And and ah for love was a poster of grace.
Speaker: Sure. Tagline number something. Take the ride of your life. Sure. Okay. Some low effort taglines in here for sure. Yeah. They were throwing spaghetti at the wall. That's how you wind up with 12 of these.
Speaker: There were no bad ideas. All the time in the world is all they've got. Yeah. That's really interesting, actually. It does make it seem like there's going to be like time stopping time traveling. It's not... yes It's not the right tagline for this film, but it's an interesting one once you actually know the plot of the film.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah. oh Prepare to fight like there's no tomorrow. Okay. Not much fighting. It's not a fighting movie. No.
Speaker: Well, there are people arguing in almost every other scene of this. like There's a lot of yelling at each other. Yeah. There's a lot of interpersonal conflict. Yes.
Speaker: ah Well, that's how you create dramatic tension is people yell at each other. That's a way that's how you know it's serious. Yeah. This is not a movie that paints with small brushes. No.
Speaker: School's out for forever. Wait. Makes no or no sense. I'm hoping that this is like a poster of a bus getting hit with a meteor.
Speaker: That's the only way that makes sense. There's one child in the movie who finds out who his father is after he lands on Earth. yes And also the schools are mostly fine. The schools all survived.
Speaker: Yeah. Time to kick some asteroid. There you go. Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's pretty good. No more taxes ever.
Speaker: Very specific. That's an interesting take. There is. Yeah. That is. That's the target audience of this. Yes. Movie. That's what that's for. Yeah.
Speaker: Last one. Nothing on earth can prepare you.
Speaker: Well, sure. Not best.
Speaker: I mean, they do go through an extensive training sequence. Yeah, they do prepare very much. Yeah, yeah. So in 1996, a screenwriter named Bruce Joel Rubin had lunch with some Disney executives to talk to them about his latest screenplay, a sci-fi disaster picture about an asteroid crashing into the Earth. That screenplay was called Impact. Deep Impact.
Speaker: Shortly thereafter, Robert Ray Poole was hired by dis a Disney subsidiary named Touchstone to write Armageddon. ah Ray Poole had... ah but ah Hang on. I got a little bit turned around. Ray Poole had written Outbreak. That was another movie that he had written. Then they brought on ah Jonathan Hensley.
Speaker: ah who had written die Hard with a Vengeance and Jumanji. He did some rewrites. And those were the first two of nine screenwriters who ended up working on Armageddon.
Speaker: Oh, you can tell. others were yeah Tony Gilroy, and who had done The Cutting Edge and Devil's Advocate, making him part of the Two-Timers Club.
Speaker: ah Shane Salerno, who was at that point a TV writer, but he would later go on to write ah two out of three Avatar movies. J.J. Abrams, who at this point had done Regarding Henry and Gone Fishing, but obviously would later go on to do Lost and Star Wars and Star Trek. Regarding Henry was J.J. Abrams? Yeah. I'm surprised by that. I don't like who I was. ah You got ah Paul Atanasio, the writer of Donnie Brasco and the creator of Homicide, Life on the Street.
Speaker: ah Then you had Anne Biederman, the writer of Primal Fear and Copycat. Okay. Then you got Scott Rosenberg, the writer of Con Air. And last but not least, Robert Towne, the writer of Chinatown.
Speaker: Wow. Okay. Everybody took a crack at it. yeah A real rich stew here. A jambalaya. And I think you can see a little bit of all of these fingerprints on this movie. Sure.
Speaker: I would also like to take a moment to say that I did see Deep Impact in the theater. and i am a Oh, what did you think of that one? I liked it. I'm a bit like you, Chris, with ah Dante's Peak and Volcano, where people are like, I'm gay man. Deep Deep Impact, really, though, if you think about it.
Speaker: Okay. Interesting. Yeah. I'm, I'm an Armageddon house. I've never seen deep impact. You might want to check it out. Yeah, we should check it out. It's a good kind of counter weird counterpoint to this yeah movie. It's it's very, i mean, there's, and that one's a comet hitting the earth. So there's a big difference. um But the um i it's like, it's the thinking man's Armageddon, I guess, is how you could think about that a little bit. And that it sends out astronauts do the job rather than. Yeah.
Speaker: Roughneck oil. Oh, okay. I thought the Earth lost in Deep Impact for some reason. it kind of half does. yeah Yeah. Oh! That's very interesting to me. yeah I tend to like it when the Earth loses.
Speaker: It's definitely the start of me being like, you apocalypse stuff. This is cool. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: Well, Deep Impact did put a ticking clock on things. They didn't want to get beaten too bad to the market by Deep Impact. ah So all these guys didn't work on the script before production started. Some of them got brought in as it went along. ah But they greenlit it after Hensley's second draft.
Speaker: That green light came with $140 million dollars budget, the largest budget for any Disney film to date at that point. To direct, they needed someone with ah experience with budgets of this size.
Speaker: So they brought on Michael Bay, who at this point had found massive success with Bad Boys and The Rock. This obviously having a bigger budget than both, but still very big in terms of budget, very big in terms of box office.
Speaker: Before this, he had mostly worked on music videos for artists like Meatloaf and Tina Turner, and he also directed the Aaron Burr Got Milk commercial.
Speaker: Oh, my gosh. Wow. All
Speaker: Oh, Aaron Burr. yeah Yeah. We would not have a Hamilton without Michael Bay's Aaron Burr commercial. I am 100% certain. Yeah. No, I think you're right.
Speaker: So having ah just worked with him on the Rock Bay, initially wanted Sean Connery for the role of Harry Stamper, the lead oil driller. Crazy. ah Fascinating. yeah Wow.
Speaker: A completely different vibe. That's not bad There's terrible Connery. oh He did soon realize that he was too old to convincingly play a guy working on an oil platform.
Speaker: Yes. That was the problem. Yeah, yeah. Big part of it. ah Luckily Bruce Willis had just gotten, ah the director of the movie Broadway brawler fired.
Speaker: And that ended up taking up the entire production. It was a movie that Bruce Willis had written for himself. He was going to be playing a hockey player, uh, But yeah, he ended up tanking the production. Disney let him off the hook if he agreed to do three more Disney pictures for half his usual rate. And he agreed. So Armageddon got, ah you know, Bruce Willis at half his usual rate. That was part of how they stretched their budget on this one. Probably how they were able to fill up all those secondary roles with all these great character actors.
Speaker: Shooting took about six months. This is one of the few movies to ever shoot on an active oil rig and one of the few movies to ever shoot inside of NASA.
Speaker: Bay was able to get access to both of them basically by just flattering these guys. Not going to the oil rig guys and being like, you know, we're making a movie where the heroes are oil rig guys. And they'll be like, hell yeah, that sounds sick as hell. and then they go to NASA and they're like, this is going be the top gun for NASA. And NASA's like, yes, we always wanted a top gun.
Speaker: i'll I'll give him credit. That's like old-fashioned movie making, I feel like. Yeah. And I think the, i the concept of a top gun for NASA does sort of place this in what it, what it is. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. That makes more sense now.
Speaker: Definitely. It's also the the description here is it's kind of, I'm getting a little nostalgic for like the older version of how blockbusters were made a little bit because from 90, you mentioned 96 at the beginning of this,
Speaker: That's a two year. They stole the idea. Right. And then then that's a two year turnaround to when this movie came out. They filmed it in six, six months. That doesn't happen anymore. Like that's such a cool yeah turnaround for such an enormous movie. um I don't know. And locations like NASA facilities and an oil rig. Like that's got to be so time consuming. Just get it going. Just just just turn these things out a little bit. I appreciate that for sure.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. This is solid craft on display. spo Oh, yeah. If nothing else. Now, ah despite the relatively rushed shooting schedule and the fact that the script continued to face heavy revisions during shooting and that their direct competition, Deep Impact, made it to theaters a month earlier. They missed it by about a month.
Speaker: Audiences still went crazy for Armageddon. It made $553.7 million dollars at the box office on its $140 million dollars budget. The critics, however, were not so kind.
Speaker: What? Roger Ebert wrote, the movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense, and the human desire to be entertained. He might be right. He missed the mark every so often, but I think he was right on this. Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know I find it entertaining. I like, I'm an Armageddon defender. um Okay. I'm the lone man on the panel. That's fine. ah Now, even NASA turned on Armageddon eventually.
Speaker: There was a rumor that NASA used to ask potential candidates for management positions to watch the film and talk about everything that the film gets wrong and that the current record is 168 things.
Speaker: Wow. That's a rumor, but that's what I hear. We report you to side listeners. Action movies of 1998. Oh yeah. This year you also had Deep Impact and Godzilla. Both coming out the same. Got it. All right. Okay.
Speaker: Yep. What a summer. Oh my gosh. This is a wild summer as I recall. You also got Blade this year. m You got Rush Hour. Yep. You got Knock Off from Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Speaker: Okay. You got The Replacement Killers, Chow Yun-fat trying to cross over to the States. Antoine Fou Kwon, not bad. You got Firestorm, the Howie Long smoke jumper action movie. You ever see that one? I've heard of it, never seen.
Speaker: No. It has its charms. ah And you also got Lethal Weapon 4, the one with Jet Li, also part of the Hong Kong invasion. Okay. Okay.
Speaker: But you can see a lot of heavy hitters in that pack. Oh, yeah. like Stacked summer. Stacked year. Yeah. Yeah. You can't complain. You guys want to talk about the plot? Yes. Of Armageddon? Best of luck. Yeah.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I tried to truncate this one. I think we're going to be glossing over lot. There's a lot too glossed over here.
Speaker: Plot bumper, listen to me. I'm gonna give you the plot summary. Come on, baby. Here's the synopsis.
Speaker: Plot bumper, plot bumper.
Speaker: We open with some Charlton Heston narration explaining that a six mile wide meteor killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. And it's just a matter of time before it happens again.
Speaker: As you start a movie. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Pulling in Charlton Heston was a smart play. I think he really locks you in. Like this is a blockbuster. This is an old timey Hollywood disaster movie. You know, he sets the tone perfectly. 65 million years later.
Speaker: A meteor shower rips through a NASA space shuttle. The head honcho at NASA, Truman, as played by Billy Bob Thornton, scrambles to figure out what happened when suddenly the meteor shower strikes New York City.
Speaker: Eddie Griffin, Eddie Griffin's dog, Little Richard, Mark Curry, and Gedi Watanabe all flee in terror as buildings collapse and hundreds of people are killed. And you see a wrecked Twin Towers. This is 100% pre-9-11 movie.
Speaker: Very much. Yeah. and And did you notice that the dog didn't die? Dog didn't die. Classic. Dog gets put in peril. And I said to myself, as soon as I saw it, i was like, that dog is living. That dog. We're not worried about our little friend there.
Speaker: i I do worry, we'll get to it later, but I would assume a dog or two died in Paris and in Shanghai as well. Yes. You don't see them die. It's not filmed. may have i'm going to say some of the dogs in these buildings died. you know sure listen We're not really focused on the death, only the explosions. Yeah. The pre-911-ness of this is interesting in that it is pre-911, but they were getting at something here with buildings and bodies falling from the sky. Yeah, the bodies falling out of the building. A little. That surprised me when I was watching that yesterday. i was like, wow this is this is yeah this is graphic. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah Yeah. Yeah. It was shocking. It's a PG-13 yeah Yeah. No nudity. Yeah. Just checking. Just checking. Back at NASA, ah they move the Hubble telescope to look in the direction of these, where the meteors are coming.
Speaker: And they spot an asteroid the size of Texas that's going to hit the Earth in about 18 days. Exactly 18 days, because they put up as they put up a clock, and it starts counting down from exactly 18 days. Yeah. Yeah, well, we don't show them making the finer adjustments as they learn more throughout the fortnight, know.
Speaker: They really want to hit home this urgency. We have a ticking clock on the earth. Meanwhile, in the South China Seas, we meet the best damn oil driller in the world. Harry Stamper.
Speaker: He's played by Bruce Willis with bleach blonde hair. Love blonde Willis. Yeah, classic 90s Willis. And he's he's great in this. I mean, oh he he doesn't get to have as much fun as I'd like. He has to be like the serious frowny guy, but he's still doing a great job.
Speaker: ah Harry finds out that his daughter slash public relations employee, Grace Stamper, as played by Liv Tyler, has been sleeping with his hotshot employee, AJ, as played by Ben Affleck. Look at the star power.
Speaker: it's crazy. like it starts. ah So Harry chases AJ around the platform with a shotgun and we meet Harry's assorted employees, all played by a who's who of late 90s actors.
Speaker: Before he could shoot him, though, a military guy shows up and he says, Harry, we need you.
Speaker: Harry doesn't do anything without grace. So soon the two of them are at NASA headquarters where Truman explains to them that in about two weeks, the entire earth will be destroyed and Harry is their best chance at stopping it.
Speaker: It's pretty heavy for the the young, small family. i I appreciate there's a lot of these disaster movies. Volcano is one where it takes a while to really get to the fireworks factory type of a thing. Right. And this movie, there is one scene and then he's at NASA and he's telling they're they're telling him that this is happening. And then the movie just proceeds from there.
Speaker: You just want to get there. And I'm glad that they just they did get to it right away. And yet at the same time, the movie is like almost twice the length of of the movie. Right. It's strange because it's really propulsive, but it feels it's not going anywhere. yeah like Something's always happening. There's always something to look at, but it's almost like a vibes watch.
Speaker: But the vibe is the earth is about to be destroyed. Right. Because it's the same it's the same scene over and over and over and over again, which is, yeah, yeah for sure. And then it explodes. Right.
Speaker: Truman explains that what NASA wants to do is send a crew up to the asteroid, drill a hole along the fault line and drop the nuke down there. They blow the nuke. The asteroid splits in half like an apple.
Speaker: ah Both halves peacefully float past the Earth on opposite sides with absolutely no problem. Definitely. Yeah, no problem.
Speaker: Truman says he needs Harry to teach his crew how to drill. And Harry says you can't teach the fine art of drilling in a fortnight. And the better play here would be to teach drillers how to be astronauts.
Speaker: Truman reluctantly agrees. And this is a, this is a famous contention that Ben Affleck had in the movie on the commentary track on the DVD of Armageddon. Where he's like that. That's absolutely not true. You can't tell me that you can't teach astronauts.
Speaker: um how to operate a drill, but you can teach drillers how to be at. That's absolutely untrue. Uh, and he says that he brought it up to Michael Bay and Michael Bay told him just to shed a degree.
Speaker: To a degree. I think Michael Bay has a point here in only that there's no movie. If the astronauts do this, because if the astronauts do this, nothing bad happens. There, if ah they everything bad will flow from the Russian space station sequence, right? If that does not take place, because there's professionals on board who are doing the work, then I don't think anything bad will happen after that, because they'll be the people who kind of know how to do this kind of thing. So I think that's where maybe Michael Bay was coming from, and that there's no movie there. If there's no oil drillers doing this, this kind of work.
Speaker: Yeah, and he envisioned this as sort of fish-out-of-water comedy, ah and that that is where a lot of the humor in the film comes from, you know, as much as it is an action comedy. Like, it's not a very dour film. there's All the side characters are always cracking jokes. I'm enlightening past a lot of that in my plot description because the comedy doesn't move the thing forward, and we need to keep moving because this is a long fucking movie. Yep. Yeah, ah But yeah, I think you need to, if you made movie about NASA guys going up to blow up an asteroid, then that's a different movie. That's not what the movie You have deep impacts. You have to buy into the community. Yep.
Speaker: So, ah let's see. totatata Harry has them track down his boy's chick, as played by Will Patton, who is his right-hand man, steady, loyal.
Speaker: Bear, as played by Michael Duncan, he's a big fella for the squad. Also, Max, played by Ken Campbell, who's also a big fella. There's sort of an overlap between those two. There is...
Speaker: You got ah Oscar, played by Owen Wilson, a goofy geologist, and Rockhound, played by Steve Buscemi, another goofy geologist. But he's horny.
Speaker: But also horny. Whereas ah Oscar is more like new agey. Uh, so in this sequence, he's like, you're going to have to get these guys. Cause like you give them any time oil men, they just fucking, they cut out, they go crazy. And like the next shot is like bear coming over a hill with a motorcycle and helicopters rising up behind him. And he's like, you're never going to get the bear. You're never going to get the bear. And I was just like, I don't understand what's occurring.
Speaker: Like, I don't know. yes It's been 36 hours since Harry left the oil platform. It's insane. The whole sequence. And it's just like these guys are all over the world. It's like they got all over the world in that short amount of time and are now all fleeing the feds.
Speaker: I don't understand why any of these choices are being made, except that it's pretty cool. Yeah, that's the point. It's because it's pretty cool. You want to show that all these guys are cool and they're colorful and they're fun and they're like a motorcycle and strippers and they're horny.
Speaker: Yeah, they're horny. Yeah. Oh, also, I almost forgot. There's also Noonan. Unknown.
Speaker: They don't show Noonan being caught. He's the only one that they don't show being caught. They never explain what he is. There's just, they cut to a scene where they're all together and now Noonan is there. And it's like, thanks for coming, Noonan. There are a handful of characters that they just completely forget to introduce or or follow up on. People come in and then they leave and then they're sitting at a table and you just expect it to know that this is a guy who's there. It's it's really remarkable, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Too many characters. And Noonan is the definitive extraneous character. Yeah. I love Noonan. They also need to go pick up AJ. You got to have AJ on the team. He's the young hotshot.
Speaker: He started his own oil business in the 36 hours. Yeah, he's already got his own thing set up. He's good. It's crazy to me that like Bruce Willis seems to be like an independent oil driller. like I feel like and they're just like he's handed his own drills. It's like, is this a thing that occurs? Can AJ go off and just like, I'm a small-time oil derrick, man? It's like, is that a thing that a person can do? It's bizarre. I think I would have to watch the Billy Bob Thornton show Landman to know the answer to that, and I have not seen it.
Speaker: He's a man of the land. Yeah, he's the man of the land, the old land man. ah And I think there's also, there might have been more conglomeration in oil who knows drilling since the 90s. It's not like a whole serious question, but it just seems very odd to me. The 30s, the timeline, especially because they get there and like the signs are weathered and faded.
Speaker: Right. Yeah. So... Anyway, Harry explains to the crew that the world needs them and they're all on board. They just have a few demands. And then we had this great demand scene of Harry being like, well, they want to know who shot JFK and Bear wants to sleep at the Lincoln bedroom at the White House for the summer.
Speaker: And oh, yeah, none of them want to pay taxes ever again. And I think as one of the few like straight comedic scenes, this is this really cuts through. This was the thing that always stuck with me that I remember the most from when I was a kid.
Speaker: One of the few things that stuck with
Speaker: Now, from there, ah we get a medical exam montage. ah They go meet the flight crew. They meet Willie Sharp, as played by William Fitchner, who is the the military NASA guy that's going to be flying the spaceships. They're not being taught to fly the spaceships, thank God. They're just civilian passengers.
Speaker: Yeah. And he's got like three other guys. One of them's a gal. They have a pretty gal spaceship person. Uh, then we get, uh, training in NASA facilities montage, uh, set to sweet emotion by Aerosmith.
Speaker: They are in a giant, like 45 foot deep pool. That is an actual NASA pool that they use to simulate zero gravity. uh,
Speaker: What else do they do? Jesus, this movie is so long. They test their equipment. They go over the plan a couple times. and around here is when Benny leaned over to me and asked me if I understood. and I was like, yeah, they're going blow with the rock. ah We find out there's going to be two rockets. They're splitting it up into two rockets. And they're going slingshot around the moon and come up behind the asteroid where they'll dig the hole, drop the bomb, and leave and blow it up and fly home. Easy peasy.
Speaker: Soon enough, it's the day before launch day. And ah Harry tells Truman that he wants the boys to have tomorrow night off so they can blow off some steam. They might all be going to die. a Most of them, they're content to go get drunk at a strip club. Always fun to see Noonan cutting loose.
Speaker: Yeah. ah
Speaker: AJ and Grace, they go spend some time together alone. We get don't want to miss a thing on the soundtrack, we do but like a stripped down version with just the piano.
Speaker: And it's the infamous animal cracker sequence. The animal crackers scene. Classic. Yeah. Unhinged. Really? Yes. There is. I had a. um I had a weird memory when that was happening of the MTV movie awards that year that this came out. They did a parody of this scene with NSYNC and Lisa Kudrow.
Speaker: And while I was watching it, I was like, I'm remembering this weird parody. And I told my wife and she had to, she looked it up and we watched that. And then we paused the movie watched that. And then we went back to the movie because I needed to like satisfy this strange memory. I remember it was. Yeah. Fantastic.
Speaker: No, that does sound like an itch you need to scratch for sure. And this was an iconic scene. Lynn Tyler was such an icon of the day era, you know.
Speaker: And so to have her with her or tell me out, I'm sure all the guys are drooling. While her dad's song is playing in the background. Yes. Very normal. That's normal. Ben Affleck's pretending to do a nature documentary about whether or not he wants to touch her breasts or vagina. It's very normal. it's yeah He slips an animal cracker into her panties. It's very normal.
Speaker: It's just like what any person would do on any night in any place in the world. Yeah. And then it's launch day. Everybody sings leaving on a jet plane to grace together. It's very sweet. And then they split up into their separate rockets. Harry's like, a don't get killed. The rockets are called the freedom and the independence, which is really funny.
Speaker: Yeah. We're going be free of that asteroid. I'd call it the rock killer. Yeah.
Speaker: All the fellas are cracking jokes as they get strapped in to cut through the tension. And the whole world successfully watches them take off and prays for the success. And throughout the film, we'll get like global reaction shots every now and then. When like a big event occurs, they'll cut to like Calcutta and everyone's like, mmm.
Speaker: Yeah. And then I do want to note, whenever they cut to the United States, they cut to a time travel version of the United States. Yeah, they cut to ah a certain kind, a certain vision of the United States. It's this like 1950s pastiche kind of like time never changed, Main Street kind of thing. It's it's really, really odd. Really odd. A lot of it's shot like a credit card commercial. Yeah. Yeah. That's immediately what I thought. I was like is this a credit card? Oh, no, no. We're just seeing people react. Okay.
Speaker: Well, he was a commercial director. Oh, I know. And you can you can see it. It was just like, it oh looks exactly like a commercial.
Speaker: So the takeoff is no problem. And soon our guys are docking with the Russian space station, which is run by the coolest guy in the movie. Lev.
Speaker: Yes. That is played by keith Peter Stormare. Yeah. He's single handedly maintained this Russian space station alone for the last 18 months. This guy is all about space. And then he's always like, i am a Russian hero. Yeah, you fucking it should be, bro. You're incredible.
Speaker: But of course they play him for laughs because he's a comic Russian. And also his space station is a falling apart piece of shit. There is a fuel leak and the comm systems are down so they can't stop it. The emergency shutoff valve is broken and the whole thing just falls apart and blows up.
Speaker: Fortunately, everyone escapes unharmed and they bring Lev with them. Because they have an extra seat on the the shuttles, I guess. Yeah, you never know when you'll need to pick up a straggler. you know Yeah.
Speaker: You don't have to redo all of your math for that. No. No, no, no. And they don't get all the fuel they need, but they got 90%. You know, they've they've added in this room for error in their plan.
Speaker: They've given themselves themselves a pillow. ah But soon they slingshot around the dark side of the moon and obviously flying a rocket in space when you're not gripped by Earth's surly bonds. your ah The rocket fuel is going to have much greater impact. They're sent up to 10 G's for like nine minutes, they say, which would effectively, as I understand it, like melt your bones. Yeah, they're talking the whole time. yeah like This is really unpleasant. Yeah.
Speaker: But if they thought that was bad, it's about to get worse because they there's a debris field behind the asteroid and ah some debris hits the independence and it crashes to the surface of the space rock.
Speaker: The freedom fares marginally better, but it lands way off target on top of a giant plate of iron. Everyone's alive, though, so they got that going. But with this giant plate of iron that they're sitting on top of, there's no time for them to mourn. They need to start drilling.
Speaker: But there's good news. Not everybody on the independents died. Both the NASA guys died. Didn't really know their names, so that's no big deal. We did lose the most likable member of the Roughnecks, Oscar, as played by Owen Wilson. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Sad to see. ah i loved Owen Wilson in this era of his career. I always found him to be very charming presence. So, you know, it's a shame that he got relegated to solely the first half of the movie.
Speaker: oh And we also lose my boy Noonan. R.I.P. Noonan. Rips. What a loss. We hardly knew ye, Noonan. Good night, guys.
Speaker: Good night, guys. So that does leave AJ, Lev and Bear as the survivors of the independence.
Speaker: So they hop inside their space drill car and they start driving across the surface of the asteroid to meet up with the others. They shoot their way out yeah of the shuttle, by the way. There is a Gatling gun. Yeah. Because I was just like, why is there a gun on the thing? no idea why would you do that
Speaker: I mean, I'm going to say pretty cool my point pretty the 0.01% chance that there are hostile natives. Maybe. You never know what you might have to shoot. On the asteroid?
Speaker: Yeah. This is an American mission. You know, you've got to bring a gun with it. the One of the more famous lines later is Bruce Willis is confused about why one would bring a gun to space, but they had already established that there are yeah two much bigger guns already in space with them yep uncommented on. Yeah, it's an interesting interesting turn of events.
Speaker: Now, things aren't going that well for the crew of the Freedom either. They've only been able to drill 57 feet down from the surface in the first two and a half hours of drilling, because it turns out even the best drillers on earth would struggle drilling in outer space through space metal.
Speaker: yeah who would have Yep. Crazy. ah They have been able to make limited contact with earth and Willie Sharp radios in the bad news.
Speaker: The president orders them to activate the second protocol, which is just just blowing up the nuke on the surface. This is so stupid. This whole sequence can just be cut. It's so unimportant and so stupid.
Speaker: Yeah. Especially, yeah, everyone knows that it's not going to work, but it will at least make them all feel better and feel like they're doing something.
Speaker: Sharp pulls out a gun and orders Harry and his men to stand down. But Harry convinces him to disarm the nuke, which had already started counting down. And then we get a fun bomb counting down sequence. Because there aren't enough countdowns in this movie. I'm going to say there's at least five countdowns.
Speaker: We have nested countdowns in here in that there's a countdown, the side of a countdown, yeah which ten more countdowns, the more tension, which is how you make movies. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. Now, meanwhile, the um Independence crew, they jump their space car over a canyon. It's very exciting. There's ah Lev has to climb out and fix their retro thrusters because there's not enough gravity to pull them back down.
Speaker: Yeah, it's great. It's a little bit hard to read, though. I think the space action is worse than the action on Earth because I think Michael Blay has a hard time conceiving of the three-dimensional space that a low-gravity situation would entail.
Speaker: i think And also the space of the asteroids never well established. Yeah, I think the asteroid looks cool, but it is really difficult when they're moving through it to understand what's occurring. or like it yeah A lot of times, I i just wrote, i it's really hard to read.
Speaker: Yeah. Just over and over again, like, what is happening? Yeah, I wish instead of it being very dark and menacing, I wish it had been super bright and intense. Yeah.
Speaker: Back at the Freedom, Rockhound has gotten space dementia. For some reason. Great stuff. This is great. Of course. No one, I love space dementia in a movie. It's always great stuff.
Speaker: And it really shows how tough Lev is to be up there 18 months and stave off the space dementia. But ah yeah, Rockhound starts messing around with the nuke until Willie Sharp yells at him. And then he jumps on ah the Gatling gun and starts shooting up the whole horizon and almost kills several people.
Speaker: ah Everybody grabs him and they duct tape him to a chair.
Speaker: I understand this is the real NASA protocol for space dimension. imagine the debrief that takes place after this mission and the scandal that what NASA had done and how much danger they put the world in to allow this to take place. Like imagine that the hearings and it's just, uh, that's why the movie ends when it does. I think, um, you know what you sound like right now, you sound like the guys that tried to railroad Sully. They brought the plane down. Yeah. You're going to question them now?
Speaker: You're to railroad Truman? ah So, let's see. yeah ah Space dementia. They tape him to a chair. ah Then, if that wasn't bad enough, Max drills into a gas pocket that explodes, killing him and destroying their drill.
Speaker: What could you do? They call up Earth and tell them that they have failed and everyone on Earth is very sad. And and I mean everyone. To emphasize the sadness, Michael Bay then shows Paris getting destroyed by a meteor.
Speaker: But then a j and his crew roll up with their space drill car. Who could have predicted? Drilling is back on, baby. But they got to double time it.
Speaker: That means they need their best hotshot driller, AJ, at the helm. And Harry's finally going to have to trust him. And when he does that, they finally, they're able to hit their target of 800 feet. And it's really funny when they're like, 895 or 795. 797. I'm like, this is probably good enough. You guys could probably already be like excited. This is not as good a countdown as the other countdowns. And they overrun it bit.
Speaker: yeah i mean i'd want a little extra for room so yeah i mean i hope they didn't go too far and oh that's suddenly you've made a ah big mistake uh there yeah it's on on the drilling piece of this i don't know when their actual drilling expertise comes into this at all because as far as i can tell they're just holding down a button that says drill and it's drilling through and then when it stops they have to pull it back and they've They show them like putting wrenches on it and they pull back on the torque. Pull back on the torque. You're going to blow it. The the trend tranny.
Speaker: You're going to blow our only spare tranny. Yes. you know there's There's a lot of jargon and lingo. A lot of monitoring. lot of monitoring and maintenance.
Speaker: Yeah. We got to switch out this drill head, dude.
Speaker: You know, it was like I was there. It's like Michael Mann directed this. and
Speaker: So, yeah, they dropped the bomb down the hole. ah But then the bomb gets damaged in a meteor shower and we lose Gruber. Oh, no.
Speaker: Gruber's dead. i don't even know. Gruber. Gruber. Gruber. No, this was definitely, I can't remember if it was my baddie word. I might have just given you my baddie word.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. No, my, yeah. My favorite line was, we lost Gruber. Gruber's dead.
Speaker: But, let's see. datatata that The good news is they can still detonate the bomb. The bad news is they can't remote detonate it. Someone is going to have to stay there and blow up the bomb.
Speaker: There's just no way of telling beforehand who's that goingnna who that's going to be. There's no way to predict a lot of this. move And how that's going to go down. No, no.
Speaker: I do like that the pilots completely remove themselves from the discussion right away. So what we to is we need two of us to fly this back. So we're not going to part of this at all. Whereas this is not a one man operation up here. I got to be honest with you guys. Yes.
Speaker: I'd be like, what fuck that. How about one of you could give it their best shot? I bet we could fake our way through half of it. ah So AJ, he draws the short straw.
Speaker: Literally Harry, he's like, I'll, I'll see out kid. And as they're about to exit the freedom, Harry yanks AJ's air hose.
Speaker: I need you to take care of my little girl, AJ. he says, and he shoves AJ back inside the space elevator and AJ cries and Harry calls grace on the phone and grace cries. And she touches the TV as they lose the signal.
Speaker: And then the freedom has trouble taking off, but luckily Lev, the hero, is there to fix our horrible American technology. And then the shifting surface of the asteroid makes Harry fall over, and he's stumbling all over the place, and he drops the trigger.
Speaker: then Then he picks up the trigger, and he blows up the asteroid at the last possible second of the 18 days. The Earth wins. Hooray! The space rock loses.
Speaker: The gang makes it back to earth and everyone is happy. Grace and AJ get married as the credits roll. You get to see Lev in his dress uniform. It's great stuff. The end.
Speaker: Final thoughts, five star ratings. Greg, why don't you kick us off? Okay. So what I have to say is that when this movie started, I was having a pretty good time with it. It's pretty bad.
Speaker: The misogyny in it is pretty rough, but it is also sort of laughable. Like we didn't say it, but at one point Bruce Willis says like, ah let's chew this iron bitch up. And it's just like, come on, man. Like this is ridiculous. Like you can't say something like that with any amount of seriousness. Like who writes that down? Who proves it? Who performs it? Like it just mind boggling to me at times.
Speaker: It was pretty entertaining. But then at one point, they're like getting onto the space shuttle. was like, I better take a quick pause here because I know it's a long time. I'm going to take a quick break. And I paused it and I saw that I had watched an hour and five minutes and that there was an hour and 25 minutes left. And I was like, how is there an entire feature film? How is the third act an entire feature film?
Speaker: And the way it's an entire feature film is, as Joe put it, by just nesting countdowns. Like, it's just like, yeah let's interrupt this action sequence for an action sequence. And after while, like, it felt like someone who's kept interrupting their own story to tell another story. And you're like, just finish the fucking story. I am so over this.
Speaker: And because Michael Bay is going to never kill the dog, there is no tension in this movie. You can predict every moment of it, everything that happens. And it's just like, I know how it's going to end.
Speaker: Please just stop. Please just stop. And it's just more explosion and it's more explosions. And it felt after a while, like two and a half hours of watching people get blasted in the face with a cannon from point blank range.
Speaker: And I was like, I can't take any more of this fucking film. So I'm giving it one and a half for watchability. I will say started like a three and it just kept going down and it just kept going down. But there is some interesting stuff in here. If you can stomach it,
Speaker: There's some value, but after a while, I was like, you needed to end this a long, long time ago. Like, a new thing would come up, and be like, I'm going to kill you, right? And I'm just so angry at this. And it's kind of weird. The misogyny is so weird. There's a lot of, like, I didn't have sex an underage girl. That's repeated multiple times.
Speaker: yeah There's this whole, like... very anti-establishment intellectuals, despite the fact that they're relying on NASA and then NASA kind of gets to play the bad boy, which is interesting and makes the Top Gun thing make sense.
Speaker: But like all of it felt kind of weird and it's ah disconnected emotionally. And also it looks like a credit card commercial at points at times. So I'm going to give it a two and a half, two and a half for weird.
Speaker: Okay. What about you? And I'm watchability and weirdness. I ended up with about a three and a half unwatchability. did have a good time, um but really i had a good time because I kind of enjoyed yelling, hollering at the movie. It was eminently hollerable. weirdness...
Speaker: and weirdness Man, i yeah, I gave it one and a half because of how narratively predictable it was.
Speaker: um it is, you know, the premise is weird. The oil roughnecks save the world from environmental devastation, like I said at the top. um But, the you know, the actual beats are not weird at all.
Speaker: That's true. I'd agree with you on that. I gave it four stars for watchability. I think it's very... It's got an all-star cast, and which is a traditional strength of a disaster movie, and it's nice to see an all-star cast here. And there's lots of action. and It is definitely too long. There's definitely fat that can be cut, but it it keeps moving at a good clip, almost like the the same way that... ah Primitive war had dinosaurs every 10 minutes. This has got asteroid blowing something up every 10 minutes. You can hit it like clockwork.
Speaker: And it it just is sort of solid summer blockbuster filmmaking to me. think you need to be able to turn your brain off to just the right location. You know what i mean? If you turn it off too much, you're not going able to lock in. You're not gonna be able to enjoy what it is offering. You have it too much on and you're going to focus too much on the flaws. You need to zone out on the flaws of this movie, I think.
Speaker: ah which obviously not everybody can do. For Weirdness, I gave it one and a half stars just because I realized halfway through that this movie looks so much like it was made with AI. But that's because Michael Bay defined like a popular American aesthetic for like the next 30 years that AI is largely drawing from. like This feels like the based image set for every AI movie clip I've ever seen.
Speaker: But what about you, Joe, in terms of watchability and weirdness? Well, five stars on watchability for sure. um The only reason I say that is because I've watched it so many times with commercials in a hotel room, right? So if I'm able, i was thinking about like, am I saying this for others or am I saying this for me? And I think I've watched this, I've sat through five hours of this movie with commercials, I have to give it a five stars. It's that, it's that watchable, right? I've watched. That's as true test as you can find. Oh yeah. How many insurance commercials have I sat through to get to a scene where there's a countdown and then before the countdown is resolved, it goes to another insurance commercial and then, and I've sat through it, right? I've watched the whole thing. um so I have to give it five for that. For weirdness, I think this is a bit weird.
Speaker: weirder that might be what draws me to it more than how i don't know how watchable it truly is because i think it is strange this movie has a very strange worldview um i would say that there's a hierarchy in this movie of like i people in terms of like roughnecks and oil drillers are at like the top tier of society, right? Blue collar men. Right. And then there's like the army under that in some way, shape or form slash NASA in some degree. And then everyone below that is a nerd or a dweeb or somebody that you want to just like stuff in a locker who doesn't. politician. Yeah, exactly. yeah And I think that it has a very like, I know that this worldview is in.
Speaker: brand new, but it has a very contemporary weird, like right wing worldview that is like 30 years ahead of its time in a strange way, I feel. um And it's like a it's like a fantasy for that particular guy. So and and Michael Bay is not that guy, but he wants to be that guy. He loves that guy. So I think it's weird. It's very weird in that respect. So I'll give it like three and a half stars on the the weirdness scale.
Speaker: And it's weird that, um you know, you see right wing, you know, figures trying to like gin up a right wing cultural movement, but they always go somehow more ham fisted than Armageddon. And that's why you like you want to be like, can you tone it back to like Armageddon levels? And maybe this would be like palatable to a general audience. You might have some success, right which is wild to say.
Speaker: yeah I don't think any of us mentioned this. it's The movie's also, like, every one of those characters from roughnecks to politicians, they're all Christian. Oh, yeah. oh Everyone in this movie is, heavy christian like, explicitly Christian in a in a way that really kind of took me aback because, i don't know, you don't really do that in blockbusters these days, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah Yeah. And they would cut to in their world scenes like Mecca and be like, see, even they're taking this seriously. know?
Speaker: I do think that the, the not to get too far into it but I think that like the, the current day, like nostalgia and the right wing isn't for like a past past. It's for like the Armageddon version of the world.
Speaker: Right. So like that's, that's what they're nostalgic for. Yeah. which is also the movie is also nostalgic for an even earlier it's a very weird dynamic that is set up that it's i feel like it ties a bit into like the this this ai imagery like it's coming through culture in a really strange way this movie it's ah it's it's really really weird Absolutely. Well, do you guys want to talk about ah the score of the movie? That's how I was going to kick off the third act of the show. Because the score of this movie is, or by which I mean the soundtrack. I didn't create a second bumper for soundtrack versus score. I was like, that's pedantic. Or is it? I don't know. It is pedantic.
Speaker: Okay. Then here we go. Everybody loves bumpers, so... It's true. I could always just, I was thinking of it the wrong way. It's an excuse to make a bumper. Jeez Louise.
Speaker: Let's talk about the score, score, score. This movie's got a great score, score, score.
Speaker: Time to talk about the score, score, score. This movie's got a great score, score, score, score.
Speaker: So while Armageddon was a massive hit, its soundtrack album titled Armageddon the Album, Was also very successful. It went quadruple platinum in the United States, selling over 4 million copies.
Speaker: o It went to number one on the Billboard 200. It also went to number one in Switzerland, Canada, and Austria. And it cracked the top 10 in Australia, Germany, Japan, and New Zealand.
Speaker: Now, there are four new songs recorded specifically for the soundtrack. You got Mr. Big Time by Jon Bon Jovi. Okay. Haven't heard it.
Speaker: Remember Me by Journey. And these are very much nostalgia acts at 1998, I want to say. yeah They were still recording and putting out new material, but also nostalgia acts.
Speaker: And then you had two from Aerosmith. What kind of love are you on? And i don't want to miss a thing. me What a song. I love I don't want to miss a thing. That is a great fucking song.
Speaker: I have to say that I i hate that song. Really? Even in high school, I was just like, I don't want to fucking hear this song again. It is why, it is sort of specifically why Like, I was a fan of U2, and people were really downplay U2 lot. And i'm always like, what about Aerosmith? It's basically because of this song. I think this song is terrible. It's terrible.
Speaker: Okay. Okay. Well, it takes all time. I didn't like it the time, but I've grown to love it since. I Don't Want to Miss a Thing was Aerosmith's biggest hit. But what would what how do you guys feel? We should get everybody's view on I Don't Want a Thing.
Speaker: Joe, what did you think of I Don't Want to Be Something? kind of miss a time when a score could be that like ubiquitous every everywhere. A soundtrack song. It's like the Titanic right thing. beyond This was inescapable, this song. You heard it constantly. um So I probably did dislike it at the time. I mean, I was, I was 12 years old at the time. I didn't know movies can be bad. I didn't know songs can be bad. yeah I just, I probably did like it, you know, all the same. So, but yeah, like an iconic song. You can't not think of this movie when you hear this song, which you still hear a lot. If you listen to the radio at all, you still can hear this song all the time.
Speaker: What about you, Anna? Oh, I think it's a great song. It's very fun to sing. That is true. This is a great shower belter, Router. i Now, ah it was Aerosmith's biggest hit by a country mile.
Speaker: It's the only Aerosmith single to ever reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Yeah. really Yeah. It was not initially released as a single, but Columbia Records, bound to popular demand and the single for I Don't Want to Miss a Thing, sold 5 million copies in America, 1 million more than the soundtrack album.
Speaker: Wow. That's crazy. That's crazy to me. Now, I'm sure Aerosmith had mixed feelings about the success because it was the rare Aerosmith song that was not written by Steven Tyler or Joe Perry.
Speaker: I Don't Want to Miss a Thing was written by Diane Warren, a professional songwriter who had previously written Unbreak My Heart for Tony Braxton. Great song. Blame It on the Rain for Milli Vanilli.
Speaker: Wow. Yep. Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now for Starship among many, many, many more songs. ah Warren was apparently inspired to write the song when she saw a Barbara Walters interview with James Broland and Barbara Streisand, where Broland said he misses Streisand while they're asleep.
Speaker: Very sweet. And I used to sing this song to my cat, Benny. I just love singing cat. Yeah. ah Now, I think I've mentioned on the show previously that I collect vinyl soundtracks of the movies that we've heard on the show when I can afford them.
Speaker: Armageddon, the album, was not released on vinyl in its initial run, but it was re-released on vinyl in 2016. You can currently find a used copy on Discogs for $286. Ooh! Okay. If so okay know wild budget if we have any generous listeners out there who might want to buy it for me, just send me the money instead.
Speaker: With that, you guys want to play a game? Yeah. Sure. Let's do it. All right.
Speaker: As I ask you this question, The answer will be one of three.
Speaker: I ask myself, what will they answer? Will it be A, B or C?
Speaker: A, B or C? And each time I ask you question, there's one thing that I want to know. it this, is it that, or is it the other?
Speaker: Is it this, is it that, or is it the other?
Speaker: Hey everybody, Chris here.
Speaker: At some point during the game, Joe's microphone cut out. So I'm going to try and edit around that, but if things are weird or if you're wondering where Joe went, that's what happened. I do want to mention that at the end, when we asked him if he had anything to plug, he shouted out his two daughters.
Speaker: Joe's daughters, if you're listening to this someday, know that Joe loves you. just as much as Harry Stamper loved Grace Stamper. But in a way, that's probably more normal.
Speaker: Back to the show.
Speaker: That's right. We're playing this, that, or the other. What I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a film title and a plot description. And I want you to tell me if that film had in its cast William Fichtner, Peter Stormare, or Will Patton.
Speaker: Okay. These are interesting. This is going to be interesting, I think. I think so. I think they've got some interesting filmographies. And ah this is a buzz in game. You'll buzz in by saying your own name. If you get it wrong, your opponents will have the chance to steal. Is everybody ready?
Speaker: Yes. Let's do it. Question number one. The Assassin's Code. A rookie detective, the son of a disgraced cop, works to solve his first major case while under the watchful eye of a ghost-like assassin.
Speaker: Greg. Greg? Will Patton.
Speaker: No, I'm sorry, it wasn't Will Patton. Joe or Anna, can you steal?
Speaker: Anna. Anna? Anna?
Speaker: Peter Stormare. You've got it, my heart. You're on the board. Nice. I believe he played the ghost-like assassin. was just saying, I keep thinking he used to play the main character, but he could play any person in Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And a lot of these are going to be playing minor roles. Yeah, it makes sense. You just have to pick up if it's the vibe of a movie that would have them in it. Yeah. Question number two.
Speaker: Passion of mind. Marty is a high-powered literary agent living in Manhattan. Marie is a widowed mother of two living in Provence.
Speaker: Marty dreams that she is Mary, and Mary dreams that she's Marty. Which woman is real? Passion of mind. ah ah Greg? Greg? yeah Fitchner?
Speaker: You got it Greg. You're on the board. Okay.
Speaker: Question number three. The Devil Below. When a group of four amateur adventurers visit Shookum Hills, a remote Appalachian town that was abandoned by, ah that was abandoned decades ago due to a mysterious coal mine fire.
Speaker: The Devil Below.
Speaker: Joe? joe Will Patton? You're correct. You're on the board. It's all tied up. We got a barn mirror, folks. Ooh.
Speaker: Question number four. Memories of the future. A scientist creates androids to replace dead children and help grieving parents.
Speaker: Centuries later, an isolated community of these childlike androids gets a visit from a real human teen. oh Intriguing.
Speaker: ah Greg? Anna. Greg? Fitchner? Greg, he plays the scientist. Okay. Question number five.
Speaker: Clown.
Speaker: A loving father finds a clown suit for his son's birthday party, only to find out it's cursed. Clown. Oh, brother.
Speaker: Anna. Anna? Will Patton. Nope, no Will Patton in that one. Joe? Joe guesses Peter Stormare.
Speaker: You've got it, Joe. Question number six. Belisere the Cajun. The leader of a small Cajun community in the 19th century Louisiana gets caught in the web of murders, lies, and intrigue.
Speaker: Belisere the Cajun. Greg. Greg? Will Patton.
Speaker: You're correct. I feel like he could really play a Cajun pretty well. Yeah. Yeah, I'd buy it. But I think the Belizear was played by Armand Asante. I love Armand Asante.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. All the Question number seven. Gnomes and Trolls, The Secret Chamber. A teenage gnome dreams of tinkering in his room, but his father insists that he must distribute food rations to the animals of the forest. Ha, ha,
Speaker: Meanwhile, evil trolls plot to rob the gnome's secret food chamber. Anna.
Speaker: Anna? Peter Stormare. Correct. That was a Swedish film.
Speaker: Joe, is your microphone working? Okay, i keep on getting some sort of error alert. No problem. It's okay. I'm sure it's... I'm not even worried about it. Question number eight.
Speaker: The Puppet Masters. The Midwestern United States is invaded by stingray-shaped alien slugs that ride on people's backs and control their minds.
Speaker: The Puppet Masters. Greg? Greg? Peter Stormare? Nope, that wasn't Peter Stormare. Anna. Anna?
Speaker: Anna? Fichtner? Well, Joe gets to the point. It's Will Patton.
Speaker: All right. The score is two to three to three with Anna sitting on two. The last question. Oh, boy. American wrestler, the Wizard. Wizard.
Speaker: In 1980, a teenage boy escapes the unrest in Iran and joins an American high school's floundering wrestling team. Greg?
Speaker: Greg? Fitchner? You're correct, Greg. You are our big winner. Gedzoop. Zoop. Zoop. Zoop.
Speaker: Uh-oh, listeners, it's the Batty Awards.
Speaker: Now you're messing with the Batty Awards. Now you're messing with the Batty Awards. Now you're messing with the Batty Awards.
Speaker: Now you're messing with the Batty Awards.
Speaker: Congratulations to all the nominees.
Speaker: That's right. Congratulations to all our nominees. It's the Batty Awards. The awards that we give out to all those little moments, touches, people, details, all the things that make a bad movie so good. Greg, do you have a Batty Award for us this week?
Speaker: I sure do. And I'm going to add this in here real fast because I forgot to do this earlier. Despite everything I've said, i have found a used copy of Armageddon on DVD from the Criterion Collection, and I will be purchasing it, and I will be listening to both commentary tracks on it, which I am fascinated by. Excellent. Nice. And I just love it as an artifact of the Criterion Collection DVD of Armageddon. It's an interesting piece of culture. Yeah, very controversial release for them.
Speaker: a My baddie award is going to Michael Bay for acting because he has a cameo in this. And I'm going to tell you, despite the fact that he's in it very briefly, he proves that he cannot act.
Speaker: No. It is really hilarious. He's like staring at the camera. It's just like, did you not? Have you never directed him? It's so beautiful. It's just a beautiful moment. You just pass in a piece of paper from like two people just staring at the camera. It's like, I love that this is happening. Hats off to you, Michael Bay.
Speaker: What about you, Anna? What's your Batty Award? I'm going to give my Batty Award to the other two movies that Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare made together in the 90s.
Speaker: Fargo in 95 and The Big Lebowski also in 1998. Oh, yeah. oh yeah and And we should mention yeah that ah Steve Buscemi, latest member of the Two Timers Club as well, from his appearance in Zandar. And Bruce Willis. And Bruce Willis. Yes.
Speaker: From North. So yeah, congratulations, fellas. You made it. I'm going to give my batting award, of course, to my most favorite line of the film. We lost Gruber.
Speaker: Gruber's dead. It's such a revealing moment that you're supposed to be like, shit, Gruber. But you have no idea who the fuck Gruber is. And it just reveals the the entire, every flaw with the movie is right there in that one line.
Speaker: Listeners, join us next week when we'll be going back to space. We're going to be talking about Star Trek V, The Final Frontier with returning guest, Mr. Matt Finnegan. Always great to have Finney back on the show.
Speaker: We hope that you'll come and join us. We hope that you'll hit that like and subscribe or maybe even throw a five stars on there. That would be incredible. And guess what? Five stars is free. That's what I always say.
Speaker: And you can find us on Instagram. You can find us on blue sky. You can come join our discord where we're watching movies. We're hanging out. It's great stuff. And, ah until next week, be good and goodbye.
Speaker: Goodbye.
Speaker: Bye.
Speaker: that you would, that you could, and you know that you should, yes you know that you should.
