Ep. #314 - Gemini Man

[0:00] On this episode we discuss Gemini Man

[0:05] Not to be confused with Gemini Dan my new podcast where Dan McCoy reads horoscopes for Gemini's

[0:11] You know, I am a Gemini

[0:31] You

[0:41] Hey everyone, welcome to the flop house, I'm Dan McCoy

[0:45] No, I'm Stuart Wellington

[0:46] I'm Elliot Kaelin trying to pick up the cues a little faster than everybody else today and Dan

[0:51] We've got a special guest with us today, don't we? Yes

[0:54] We've got our well, I mean, she's our editor on this show Jordan Cowling

[0:59] She also is an associate producer at max fun. She produces

[1:03] The wildly successful as you described it podcast. I'm odious and appears on it as well. That's true

[1:11] Hello, Jordan

[1:12] What's up? Who's?

[1:14] whoa

[1:18] No, but that's Jordan's catchphrase that's Jordan's classic

[1:24] Yeah, and now that we've introduced Jordan we're gonna swerve away from Jordan for a moment

[1:28] and we're going to just take a brief moment to remind listeners if they know already and tell them if they don't know that we

[1:35] Are going to do our live in your house show

[1:39] Saturday June 6th at 9 p.m. Eastern 6 p.m. Pacific the flop house will be doing our online version of one of our live

[1:45] Stage shows we're gonna have presentations. We're gonna talk about the movie Howard the Duck

[1:49] We're gonna try to in some way simulate the idea of audience interaction

[1:53] We're not quite sure what we're gonna do with that. It probably will just involve Twitter or something

[1:56] You will find it at youtube.com

[1:59] Slash C slash the flop house podcast and you can find all the information about it at the flop house podcast calm

[2:05] It will be for charity and there'll be a list of our approved charities

[2:10] On that website the flop house podcast calm and if you donate and send us the receipt

[2:14] You'll be entered into raffles and stuff and we'll go into that in more detail later. Now, it's back to Jordan Jordan

[2:20] That's June June 6th at 6 p.m. Pacific, so that's right six six six

[2:27] We're officially devil worshipers now, June 6 6 p.m

[2:31] Pacific time 9 p.m. Eastern for people on the East Coast at 6 6 9 3 more than the devil Jordan back to you

[2:38] Okay. Well, this is a podcast

[2:41] You probably know that what do we do on this podcast?

[2:43] We watch a bad movie and we talk about it or you know, maybe we don't know ahead of time

[2:49] Sometimes it turns out to be good. Sometimes it turns out to be bad. Usually we've been led to believe it's bad and

[2:55] On this episode as I said in the beginning in the introduction, wait, is this my mental?

[3:03] Are we last year at Marion Madden all sudden? Hold on Jim and I man was what we watched starring William Smith

[3:10] Directed by flop house fave Ang Lee. Yeah, I mean, I mean I do like him a lot. Is he a flop house fave? I

[3:18] Mean he's a fave of mine

[3:20] Okay, but we've I don't think we've ever done an Ang Lee movie

[3:23] No, it's kind of a joke cuz he makes good movies because this is a comedy podcast and I make jokes sometimes

[3:28] Logic checks out now Jordan you were interested in doing this movie and I believe there's a drink geographical reason

[3:34] Yes, I've spent the last 10 years in in West Philadelphia not born and raised

[3:39] but the playground is where I spent most of my days and I wanted to do when you guys had had a

[3:45] Giving me like a selection of

[3:47] Movies that I could pick from I saw this and I was like, yeah, we're gonna definitely gonna do a Will Smith movie

[3:52] I regret that decision, but

[3:58] See as we go along

[4:00] Well, we'll see what the reason is for that regret now. I do have a question now be on the playground of those days

[4:06] What were you doing there? Chilling?

[4:08] Max and relaxing. Oh cool. Yeah

[4:10] Yeah

[4:15] For some reason that is I cannot remember so many things and yet the lyrics to that song are buried so deeply in my brain

[4:22] I'm sure on my deathbed. I'll be croaking them out

[4:25] Through my dementia at my grandchildren, and they'll be like he wasn't raised in West Philadelphia

[4:29] Why is he saying these things at the end of his life dad thought he was raised in West

[4:33] Philadelphia

[4:36] Yes

[4:37] Imagine that later in life. He lived with his auntie and uncle in Bel Air, though

[4:42] Yeah, it's a good song. It's a good theme song

[4:46] It's a solid theme song tells you the story exactly what you knew now Stuart. I believe you are the summary man today for Gemini

[4:53] Man, I am. Yeah, exactly. So

[4:56] the movie opens in

[4:58] Belgium we're introduced to Henry Brogan played by Will Smith

[5:03] And that's right. I was Moses Jones himself Will Smith

[5:12] Fell into my trap I

[5:15] Feel like osmosis Jones would have been a bigger hit cuz Will Smith's a huge name

[5:21] He was the devil in that one dumb Colin

[5:25] Oh

[5:26] Tale right. Yeah. Yep, and he was a genie in Aladdin

[5:30] So he's and now he's and now he plays a clone. So he's portrayed a number of science fictional and mystical characters. Yeah

[5:37] Okay, so we open up. Oh I hit the wrong button. We open in Belgium

[5:43] Henry Brogan played by Will Smith is an assassin and he uses a

[5:47] High-powered sniper a sniper rifle to carefully shoot a bad guy who is riding on a high-speed train

[5:54] It's an almost impossible shot, but he is just yeah, he's kind of a dead shot if you will

[6:08] So he literally like this is a very fast-moving train

[6:12] He literally makes the shot of this guy through a window of the train from Hills

[6:18] Like it looks like like a mile away or more now

[6:22] Why he has a man on the train? Why doesn't that man just kill the guy?

[6:27] Well, actually, that's a good question guys

[6:29] I think it's probably a lot easier to get away from an assassination if you're on the train with the body

[6:34] Then if you are a mile away, you just walk away. Yeah, but I mean like you could poison them

[6:39] You know, it could be a subtle killing. It doesn't need to be like Dan Dan that come on

[6:43] You've been reading too many Agatha Christie books. That's not how that's not how anybody does it poison him

[6:49] Dan were you really hoping that they were that the movie is gonna open with poisoning and the guy and then the whole thing's a

[6:54] murder mystery

[6:56] Why not so

[6:59] He manages this impossible shot and then we cut to a little bit later Henry's hanging out on his

[7:06] Isolated home all by himself. It's in the country. It's nice. You know, he's wearing sweaters. He looks great

[7:12] But you know what? He's retiring. He's getting old. He's lost a step

[7:15] He's the best killer in the world according to his handler Dell

[7:19] But he's you know, he's worried that you know what they told him. He might kill someone

[7:23] You know what? They told him when they assigned him that handler

[7:25] What's that? They said dude, you're getting Adele. No. Oh, I guess that makes sense

[7:30] Cuz his his handlers name still but he misunderstood he was like Adele the singer is gonna be my handler. No, no

[7:36] No, yeah, and I said, you know, you're not getting Adele you're getting Adele wait

[7:39] But you just said yeah Adele the singer rolling in the deep that one and they were like, no, no, no

[7:44] No, hold on. Let me write the sentence out for you. And that's when he finally understood what they were saying

[7:48] Now when when Jordan came to us to be our editor

[7:53] Which I was very excited about because it was right when I was getting burned out that she appeared

[7:58] We were told that she enjoyed the show but watching her face as Elliot talks

[8:06] She doesn't like that part, okay

[8:09] Her favorite part of the show is when we sign off at the end and she's like, ah, it's over

[8:13] My favorite part is when the song goes done

[8:20] Yeah, then your curse is lifted for another I'm kidding

[8:23] I absolutely love this show and I'm so happy to be on the show and talk about this really really silly movie

[8:31] It's in some way silly in some ways serious we'll get to that later

[8:36] But yeah, so uh, so he's the best of the best. He's the best superkiller, but he's getting tired of it

[8:40] He can't look at himself, but he's also got a weakness guys. He's got a conscience. He doesn't want to shoot little kids

[8:47] He has developed this conscience

[8:50] 72 kills into his life as an assassin and that was one of my biggest problems of the movie right off the bat is

[8:57] I wasn't quite sure why we were supposed to sympathize with this guy who was like because he's Will Smith Dan

[9:04] That's why we sympathize with him

[9:07] No, I know that that's what the movie makers count on but I was like, oh

[9:12] 72 kills in you've suddenly realized that maybe shooting people is bad

[9:16] Now that now the clue to that might be also that this script apparently was floating around Hollywood trying to get made for about 20

[9:23] Years, and it was it was one of those blacklist scripts, right?

[9:26] I wasn't just for the for the people who are tuning in

[9:29] blacklist scripts are scripts that James Spader writes down in his little black book and then

[9:34] Brittany Murphy's always trying to steal it and it only when he's got a hat on. Yeah

[9:39] No, of course

[9:41] Stu is of course goofing black blacklist scripts are scripts that a guy puts on a list claiming that they're the best scripts that

[9:48] Haven't been produced and then when they're made into movies, they're always a bad

[9:52] Yeah, they're not there. I don't know. I've ever seen a blacklist movie

[9:55] That was that turned out to be a good movie. Yeah, but I haven't seen them all. I don't know but uh this

[10:00] It feels like a late 90s, early 2000s premise, where we love assassins and we love people who shoot people.

[10:07] To be honest though, people still like that. Like, why is Deadpool the hero of this movie?

[10:11] Because he feels bad about himself? Like, he kills lots of people.

[10:15] But this is a movie that a lot of different stars, they tried to make it with at one point or another.

[10:20] And I think it only really works with Will Smith at all.

[10:23] Because he's got so much natural charisma, and I totally buy him as someone who is, like, the best at something,

[10:32] and now wants to get out and they won't let him. But also because, hey guys, guess what?

[10:36] He's now the Tommy Lee Jones of the Men in Black. That's right.

[10:40] He's no longer the new young guy who's joining the secret government group.

[10:43] Now he's the old guy who wants to leave. And now it's, like, full circle.

[10:49] Okay.

[10:51] We all start as Will Smith and we end up as Tommy Lee Jones. That's life.

[10:53] One thing that stood out to me in this movie is that there was almost a complete lack of charisma from Will Smith that I could pick up on.

[11:02] Well, it was... I'll give you that it's the least charisma that I think Will Smith has ever had in a movie.

[11:07] And there's...

[11:09] What about that one with his son where they're trapped on that planet?

[11:12] Oh, you're right. After Earth. That was...

[11:13] Where he plays, like, Cypher Rage or whatever is his character's name?

[11:18] He's just... I don't think that's his name.

[11:20] I think that's a different one.

[11:22] Well, he's a shell of a man. But you have to admit, he's really good at fighting.

[11:28] But so, Stuart, he just wants to be in a boat, right?

[11:32] Yeah. So we're introduced to our other lead of this movie.

[11:36] That's right. We're introduced to Danny, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

[11:41] And she is a... She's just a grad student who just started working at the local marina.

[11:46] Now, she and Henry have a little bit of fun. They do a little bit of flirting.

[11:50] He's... I actually think he's pretty good at flirting for a murderous loner.

[11:54] You know, for a guy who lives all by himself and just kills people.

[11:57] You know, he's got some...

[11:59] I mean, this is... I will say, this is, like, mild flirting, though.

[12:02] Like, when we're watching...

[12:04] I would even go as far as to call it small talk.

[12:06] Yeah. Like, well, Audrey was worried that she was going to end up being his love interest.

[12:11] And there is, like, something like a 16-year difference between them or something.

[12:16] But...

[12:18] Yeah, but she's... Isn't she dating Ewan McGregor in real life?

[12:21] That's about the same...

[12:22] Look, I'm not going to cast aspersions on anyone's real-life dating life.

[12:29] I'm just saying that it's a bad habit of movies to always have this happen

[12:34] with an older man and a younger woman.

[12:36] But to the movie's credit...

[12:38] I mean, I would date either of those guys. They're great.

[12:41] Again, I'm not saying that. I'm just pointing out, to the movie's credit,

[12:45] it does not shoehorn in a romantic thing between them.

[12:49] Like, there's actually a scene where, like, he says something like,

[12:55] oh, if he was the younger version of himself, maybe.

[12:57] Like, because there is, spoiler alert, a younger version of himself in this movie.

[13:02] Yeah, well, it's on the poster, so I think that's okay.

[13:05] That's a spoiler.

[13:07] But I think, one, Dan...

[13:10] The poll quote, I think, from this episode is that Dan would not deign to date

[13:14] either Will Smith or Ewan McGregor.

[13:16] They're too old for him. No fogies.

[13:18] It's kind of weird, though, because I think, like, between...

[13:21] If you compare the two of them, I feel like Ewan McGregor's, like,

[13:25] later career stuff has been a little more exciting than Will Smith's stuff.

[13:29] Why don't you guys discuss?

[13:31] But also, I would say that I bet you there was an earlier version of this script

[13:35] that was where they did have a relationship.

[13:37] Just like, there's a scene where, later on, where she has to strip to show

[13:42] that she's not wearing a wire, and it's handled as tastefully as that can be done,

[13:46] where she's off camera for most of it.

[13:48] And I guarantee you there's a version of this movie that could have been made

[13:51] 20 years ago where it's a woman who takes off all her clothes on camera for that scene.

[13:55] Like, it feels like there are times when this movie is kind of trying to fight

[13:57] what the movie, the shape that the movie is in.

[14:02] I'm sure that original script, Henry lived in, like, a warehouse that just had a bunch of, like,

[14:07] curtains draped around, and he would be practicing his karate in his, like,

[14:12] like, underpants for a bunch of it.

[14:13] But he's also a huge fan of whatever band they made a deal with

[14:17] to have on the soundtrack.

[14:18] So, like, Garbage or something like that.

[14:20] Like, he's huge with, or, like, I don't know, Chumbawamba or something.

[14:25] What's the band that did the Walking on the Sun song?

[14:29] Smash Mouth?

[14:30] He's a big Smash Mouth fan.

[14:32] I had the same thought, though, Elliot, with that scene later on

[14:35] where she's asked to strip to show she doesn't have a wire.

[14:37] Because it was, like, Ang Lee, like, shoots it, like, so...

[14:43] Like, he does not want the camera to be ogling her.

[14:46] Which was kind of, it was like a nice...

[14:50] Much to Dan's anger.

[14:51] It almost makes you wonder, it almost makes you wonder why they left that part in.

[14:54] Well, that's what I was going to say.

[14:55] It was a nice way of handling it.

[14:57] But I'm like, you know you can just cut that scene, right?

[14:59] Like, you can just change the script if you don't want to be exploitative.

[15:05] But anyway.

[15:06] So anyway, but I think, and later on, I think it's implied, I mean,

[15:10] it's the young Will Smith we are told is a virgin.

[15:13] And it's kind of implied that the older Will Smith is a virgin.

[15:15] Which makes me think that the kind of light, small talk flirting he does

[15:19] is actually supposed to be not that attractive.

[15:21] So that he can deflect women who are drawn into his natural charisma.

[15:25] It really comes off to me.

[15:26] This was the point in the movie I nicknamed Henry sensitive incel.

[15:32] Because he really came off as a creepy guy to me.

[15:37] Especially with that relationship with Danny.

[15:39] Which was really weird.

[15:40] Because I wouldn't judge anyone, you know, for an age difference in a relationship.

[15:44] You know, as long as two people are consenting adults.

[15:47] But there was an age difference between the two Fresh Prince and Fresh King characters.

[15:54] Yeah, he was kind of a weirdo.

[15:57] Yeah, I think it's a weird, but it's also, I think that if you,

[16:00] I would read it as that flirting is him trying to flush out whether she is a spy.

[16:05] Which is the thing that he, which is ultimately subjective.

[16:08] But I think you're right.

[16:08] Sensitive incel is a good way to describe it.

[16:10] Especially because when you clone someone, it involves their cells.

[16:14] And going in the cell.

[16:15] Yeah, well we're jumping all over the place.

[16:16] Let's get back to Stu here.

[16:18] Yeah, we're jumping all over the place like a regular Gemini man.

[16:20] Yeah.

[16:21] So instead of jumping all over the place, we're going to jump onto a boat.

[16:24] Where Henry takes a boat out to see his friend Jack,

[16:27] who has a matching tattoo with him, so they clearly have history.

[16:31] They are hanging out on Jack's yacht.

[16:33] Yacht's just one of those guys who wears a shirt buttoned down to about the middle of his chest.

[16:38] And he's old, but he's got a young girlfriend.

[16:40] You know, he's one of those guys.

[16:42] And he's ex-intelligence.

[16:43] He's like retired a little bit, but he's still, you know, he's still cool.

[16:46] But he's still got his finger in the game.

[16:48] Because he just got information that Henry's last hit,

[16:52] who he thought was a bad guy, is not actually a bad guy.

[16:55] That he'd been lied to by his contact at the DIA,

[16:59] which is a government organization that he seems to take hits from.

[17:05] Now this character was one of several where I'm like,

[17:08] all these older white guys want to show that they're real cool with Will Smith,

[17:11] and that he thinks they're really cool friends.

[17:13] Like there's just a string of them throughout where it's like,

[17:16] his different bosses and buddies that he works with who are all like,

[17:19] hey man, great to see you.

[17:20] And he like gives them a big hug.

[17:22] And I was like, all these guys want to brag to their kids, I guess,

[17:25] that they're big friends with Will Smith.

[17:27] But I don't think it came off as realistic.

[17:29] Do you guys think so?

[17:29] Elliot, I think you may be misunderstanding something about the movie.

[17:32] He's not playing himself, Will Smith.

[17:35] He is a man who is employed by them.

[17:38] I thought it was called Will Smith, Gemini Man.

[17:42] I mean, it probably would have done better in theaters under that title.

[17:46] Although it's not like people didn't know that Will Smith was in the film.

[17:50] To be honest, how different would the movie be if he was not a government assassin,

[17:54] but he was Will Smith, movie star, and he found out he was cloned?

[18:00] I mean, I feel like that's an interesting idea that they're like,

[18:02] this guy has made the studio so much money,

[18:04] they now need to replace him with the younger version.

[18:07] I mean, in a way, that's such an interesting meta-commentary

[18:10] on the current state of digital effects and whatnot.

[18:13] That's what After Earth was supposed to be.

[18:15] What's his son's name?

[18:16] Jayden?

[18:17] Jaylen?

[18:18] He was supposed to be the new Will Smith, except he can't act at all.

[18:22] Do you think it's possible that he's a clone that they just raised as his son,

[18:25] and they were like, this is how I keep going?

[18:27] I think it's absolutely possible.

[18:28] In fact, it is.

[18:29] That's exactly what happened.

[18:34] As a former, not exactly native of Philadelphia, but resident,

[18:37] you're privy to that sort of information.

[18:42] Oh, that's great.

[18:43] While they're having this conversation,

[18:46] we cut to a secret chamber somewhere in a government building where

[18:52] the leader or head of the DIA, a woman who goes by Lassiter,

[18:57] and Clive Owen, everybody's favorite English guy.

[19:04] My favorite English guy is Sherlock Holmes.

[19:07] I know he's fictional, but he still qualifies.

[19:08] I think your second favorite English guy is Michael Caine, right?

[19:11] No, he's just the English guy most associated with me.

[19:16] Oh, I see.

[19:17] And of course, my favorite English guy is the beefeater on the beefeater gin bottle,

[19:20] because I like his hat.

[19:23] And Jordan, who's your favorite English guy?

[19:25] John Boyega.

[19:26] Oh, actually, that's a good call.

[19:29] Okay, so Clive Owen is playing a character named Clay Varus,

[19:36] and the two of them are surveilling Henry and Jack on their yacht using some kind of a drone,

[19:41] I'm assuming.

[19:42] And they listen into the conversation.

[19:44] They realize that Henry knows that there's something up,

[19:47] and they decide he's too big of a risk and they need to get rid of him.

[19:51] He cannot retire.

[19:52] They're going to kill him or retire him permanently.

[19:57] But his former boss,

[20:00] D.I.A. wants to handle it internally, though Clive Owen thinks he should use his own team,

[20:05] a thing called Gemini.

[20:06] Now I want to say something here.

[20:09] So if he was retiring anyway, did he really need to know this information?

[20:15] Because it seems like this is the information that triggers Clive Owen to want to kill him.

[20:20] This is like the only loose end that really needs to be tied up with Will Smith.

[20:24] So it's not really nice of his friend to be like, hey, you shot this wrong dude.

[20:30] You're right, Dan.

[20:31] You're right.

[20:32] It was not nice of his friends to tell him that he had been suckered and led to kill

[20:36] an innocent person.

[20:37] He should have just let him just retire blissfully with that stain on his soul.

[20:41] And when he showed up in hell and the devil was like, you killed 71 bad people and one

[20:46] good person, and that's why you're here.

[20:48] And then Will Smith would look up to heaven and his friend Jack would be like, sorry,

[20:51] pal.

[20:52] I just didn't have the heart.

[20:54] He just rides his cloud yacht into the gates of heaven.

[20:56] Do you think that anything Will Smith does in the rest of this film makes up for killing

[21:00] that guy?

[21:01] I'm not really sure what you're.

[21:02] I mean, I was watching the director's cut where every now and then it cuts to God going,

[21:06] I'll allow it.

[21:07] And then at the end, his heart is weighed by Anubis and Anubis is like, you just made

[21:12] it.

[21:13] All right.

[21:14] Yeah.

[21:15] I think there was originally a sequence like in Dead or Alive 2 where the hitman is killing

[21:19] a bunch of people and then sending the money to starving people.

[21:21] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[21:23] And then he grows angel wings.

[21:24] So, Dan, you say the real villain of this movie is not Clay Varus, who without Henry's

[21:28] knowledge clones him and raises that that boy into a murder machine man and then creates,

[21:34] spoiler alert, even more bad stuff.

[21:36] But it's actually his friend Jack who ruined his retirement.

[21:41] That's right.

[21:42] I mean, he was going to go away, not shoot anyone anymore, and now he's got to shoot

[21:47] a bunch of people to protect himself.

[21:51] So, well, with that in mind, we get to see Henry.

[21:56] Remind me to say at the end that the real Gemini was the friends we made along the way

[21:59] because he does end up with a circle of friends at the end.

[22:01] Dan, put that in the notes.

[22:02] Can't you say it now?

[22:03] I think you did say it now, actually.

[22:04] Well, we haven't met the friends yet, though, so the audience forget I said that.

[22:08] Oh, so speaking of friends, Henry and Danny are having a little bit of playful flirting

[22:14] as he ferrets out that she's actually working for the DIA to monitor Henry.

[22:20] I think it was kind of a tip-off when Danny ordered Henry the beer he likes to drink before

[22:26] he arrived.

[22:27] Well, I think it was more of a tip-off when he, like, hassles her very threateningly about

[22:33] whether she's going to be—she's, like, spying on him, and she denies it and denies

[22:38] it and denies it, but then agrees to go to dinner with him.

[22:42] Like, something that I think would only make sense if she was surveilling him.

[22:46] Fair.

[22:47] That's why he's the sensitive incel, because if—I mean, yeah, she was spying on him,

[22:53] but just—if I was a regular woman out on the street and a guy comes up to me and he's

[22:57] like, no, I gotta go to your house, let me buy you a—I would be, like—I would pepper

[23:01] spray him, so I just don't understand why we treat this as normal in this movie.

[23:06] It's not normal.

[23:07] It is the spy equivalent of when a girl breaks up with a guy and the guy's like, give me

[23:11] your reasons.

[23:12] What's your reason for breaking up with me?

[23:14] Because if it's not a good enough reason, we're still going out.

[23:16] In this case, it's like—she's like, I'm not a spy.

[23:19] Oh, yeah, take me to your house so I can search it for spy stuff.

[23:22] Why don't we just go on a date instead?

[23:24] That was probably the wildest part.

[23:27] That's like the equivalent of me, like, lecturing a woman on the merits of a katana and then

[23:31] making her go on a date with me.

[23:34] To be fair, it was—seeing him—to make that impossible shot on the train, I was like,

[23:39] Yeah, it's a movie.

[23:40] But then seeing this scene, I was like, this doesn't make any sense.

[23:43] I want to say that Stewart did it the right way.

[23:45] He made someone marry him and then lectured her on the benefits of a katana.

[23:51] And that's why he's been recording from a storage space the past couple of weeks.

[23:55] Oh, yeah, I guess my family drama is all out in the open, guys.

[24:03] So she admits that she is a spy, right?

[24:07] Yeah.

[24:09] They seem kind of cool with it.

[24:10] Like, they make some jokes and shit, whatever.

[24:12] However, the DIA is not cool with it and they make their own move to clean up this mess.

[24:18] They send a team that kills Jack on his yacht and they kill Henry's buddy Marino while he's

[24:25] out on a surveillance mission.

[24:28] They send a team to kill Henry, but he just—he smokes him.

[24:32] And then he goes and he wakes up Dani, creepy style, and then she agrees to team up with

[24:37] him.

[24:38] And then they go kill some more goons and figure out who's trying to kill him.

[24:43] She agrees to team up with him because they're trying to kill her, too.

[24:48] She kind of does it out of necessity to stay alive.

[24:51] It's not like she's like, you made a good point.

[24:53] But that was one of the points where I was like, well, why did they send anyone to kill

[24:56] her?

[24:57] Why didn't they just reassign her?

[24:59] And then—

[25:00] The only thing I can think of is maybe because she was surveilling him, she also heard the

[25:05] stuff on the boat.

[25:06] I don't know.

[25:07] But otherwise, it does not make sense that they're like—she's not a loose end at this

[25:10] point.

[25:11] No.

[25:12] This was my second favorite part of the movie because he comes to her house, I guess he

[25:15] breaks in, she's sleeping in bed, and he's just like, you're burnt, I'm burnt, everybody's

[25:19] burnt.

[25:20] I'm like, this is definitely insult to nonsense.

[25:25] Yeah, there's a fair amount of presumptiveness coming off of Henry.

[25:31] But there was—I did like the scene when she is trying to get the keys to the boat

[25:34] in the little boat shack, and she gets jumped by a dude, and the whole time I was assuming

[25:39] that Henry was going to save her, but nope, she whips that dude's ass and finds out the

[25:44] information they need.

[25:45] So that was cool.

[25:46] I think Mary Elizabeth Winstead—I mean, she was also in Bridges of Prey, but I think

[25:49] she's really good at these action roles.

[25:51] I mean, I like her a lot as an actress in general, but she just—I don't know.

[25:57] She had a solid competence radiating off of her in this part.

[26:01] She didn't just whip his ass, she like, broke all of his teeth and handed them to Will Smith

[26:07] like someone asked you for change for a dollar.

[26:09] It was pretty badass.

[26:12] And I wonder, Will Smith would be like, ooh, why did you hand me teeth?

[26:16] It was weirder that he just threw them back in his mouth like they were Tic Tacs, and

[26:21] was just like, cool, now I got extra teeth.

[26:24] And he's like, is this your change for the keys?

[26:28] I gave you a twenty!

[26:29] It was a better fight scene than in Last Blood when Rambo just sticks his fingers into a

[26:34] man's sternum—or not sternum, it sticks his fingers and just rips out a man's collarbone.

[26:41] This was almost as nonsensical as a tenor.

[26:43] I don't think that counts as a fight scene.

[26:46] He was fighting the surface tension of the man's skin to get in there and get that collarbone out.

[26:51] I'm wrong.

[26:53] So, there's another feverish meeting between Clive Owen and the head of the DIA, and he's

[27:02] like, I think we need to send Gemini after him again.

[27:06] I have a special soldier to clean up this mess.

[27:09] Whatever.

[27:10] We know who that special soldier is going to be in a second.

[27:13] So Henry then calls another old war buddy with another matching tattoo, a guy named

[27:18] Baron, who's also retired, played by Benedict Wong, who is very charismatic and fun.

[27:24] You may know him as one of the other wizards from the Doctor Strange corner of the MCU.

[27:33] His character's name is Wong, Dan.

[27:34] It's his real last name.

[27:36] It's not that hard to remember.

[27:37] I didn't say I didn't remember his name.

[27:39] I was explaining who he was in a way that would appeal to the widest swath of our audience.

[27:44] Perhaps people who don't memorize character names.

[27:47] All you have to say is he plays Wong, Doctor Strange's assistant.

[27:51] I don't think there was anything wrong with the way he described who he was.

[27:56] I think it raised more questions than it answered, because suddenly I was like, how many wizards

[28:00] are there in the Doctor Strange corner of the Marvel Universe?

[28:02] Does this character have a name?

[28:03] As far as I know, he doesn't.

[28:04] I mean, there are a ton.

[28:05] I mean, there was Tilda Swinton before, spoiler alert, she gets killed.

[28:09] There were the other monks at her Doctor Strange retreat.

[28:16] So, if you're describing Gemini Man...

[28:19] Guess Baron Mordo doesn't count anymore.

[28:21] If Dan was talking about Gemini Man, he'd be like, Will Smith stars as one of many special

[28:26] ops soldiers in Gemini Man.

[28:28] They're like, well, no, he's one of the major characters in the movie.

[28:32] I don't know when the last time you saw Doctor Strange was, Elliot, but there are several

[28:37] notable masters of the mystic arts in that film.

[28:40] Now, C-3PO is one of many droids in the Star Wars universe.

[28:46] This was a very needless sidetrack.

[28:50] Next, we're introduced to Darth Vader, one of many Imperial officers in the Imperial

[28:54] Navy.

[28:55] That's the Empire's armada that enforces the Emperor's laws throughout the galaxy.

[29:00] So Benedict Wong in this movie, his character's that like, you know, that type of character

[29:06] that shows up in an action-adventure movie.

[29:08] He's the like, retired friend who only wears Hawaiian shirts and like, can fly a plane.

[29:13] Like, that's, you know, that's everybody's dream.

[29:16] He's totally Burn Notice-ing.

[29:17] He's also the friend in every one of these movies who's like, willing to drop everything,

[29:23] including his home, to help the hero.

[29:25] Like he gets burned too and can't go back, and he's like, well, whatever.

[29:28] I mean, he literally gets burned to death eventually.

[29:31] Oh, spoiler.

[29:32] Spoiler alert.

[29:34] In case you wanted to stop the podcast now and watch the movie.

[29:38] Okay, so Baron hides them out in his home in Cartagena, and he, Henry tracks down, he

[29:47] uses a phone to call and threaten his old handler, Del, and Del kind of spills a little

[29:52] bit of the history of Gemini, which is a private military contractor that is run by, claims

[30:00] Avarice, played by Clive Owen, and they're involved in some way.

[30:05] I don't remember exactly which parts of the background is explained at this point.

[30:10] But it's one of multiple info dumps that are kind of spread out throughout the movie.

[30:13] There's also a brief moment of Baron just watching soccer on TV with his dog that I

[30:18] really liked a lot.

[30:22] So of course a killer tracks them to Cartagena.

[30:26] Henry leads the killer away so that his friends can escape.

[30:31] He gets the drop on that killer, but guys, what makes this killer different?

[30:37] He's mostly computer animation?

[30:39] Nope.

[30:40] Well, maybe, I don't know the actual technical details, but it looks like a younger version

[30:47] of Henry.

[30:48] It looks like a young Will Smith.

[30:49] And guys, I'm going to go out on a limb here.

[30:50] This action sequence is phenomenal.

[30:52] Yeah, it's great.

[30:53] Great action sequence.

[30:55] It goes on for a while, and it's super well choreographed, although there are weird moments

[31:01] toward the end where younger Henry is beating up older Henry using a motorcycle.

[31:09] And older Henry seems only sort of mildly inconvenienced by this, and I kept expecting

[31:13] there to be another shoe that was dropping, saying that Will Smith was a super soldier

[31:17] of some kind, because I had no idea how he's still alive after being slammed with a motorcycle

[31:23] wheel.

[31:24] That he kind of shrugged off getting hit in the face with a motorcycle?

[31:28] Yes.

[31:29] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[31:30] Having seen Pet Sematary 2, I know that a motorcycle wheel is the ideal way to kill

[31:33] somebody.

[31:34] There's also the part where Junior, the young clone, he swipes the motorcycle wheel under,

[31:40] and Will Smith, like a frog would, leaps it in the air just high enough to do it, and

[31:46] it's like you can kind of see the wires pulling his clothes up at that moment.

[31:51] There were moments where it was this amazing action scene, and in the end they kind of

[31:54] ran out of realistic things for him to do, and it briefly became Commando, but that was

[31:58] okay, you know?

[31:59] Why not?

[32:00] It's a movie about clones.

[32:01] Why not?

[32:02] Yeah.

[32:03] And I love that you also, this is an action scene that begins in one place, and it turns

[32:07] into a chase, and you really get a sense of the geography of Cartagena.

[32:11] It looks like a really beautiful city.

[32:13] You really learned the schedule of most of the working people of Cartagena, because early

[32:17] on in the fight there is nobody on the streets, and then suddenly there is tons of people.

[32:21] So it's like they're fighting past when everybody wakes up and showers, and then it's time to

[32:25] go to work, because they were running around the streets of Cartagena just firing guns

[32:29] at each other for a while, and I was like, oh, I guess nobody's up and about, but when

[32:32] it turns into a chase sequence on motorcycles, and you need cars to zoom around, suddenly

[32:36] there are people everywhere.

[32:37] And I'm going to tip my hand a little bit here and say, like ...

[32:39] No, Dan, there's a drink in it.

[32:41] You're going to spill everywhere.

[32:42] No, we said that this is a good action sequence.

[32:48] A lot of the shots, like this movie is shot beautifully.

[32:51] There are a lot of things that could be just boring exposition shots that he finds some

[32:58] interesting way of framing or of doing the choreography of the scene.

[33:06] And it really is like, okay, this script that isn't much of anything got handed to a really,

[33:13] really good director, and you can see that.

[33:16] It is a movie where the whole time you're like, why did Ang Lee make this movie?

[33:20] And I like how bright and colorful most of the movie is, but particularly this action

[33:25] scene.

[33:26] There's a part in this action scene where there's one shot where there's a lot of firing,

[33:31] and then young Will Smith slides down a palm tree and throws a grenade in, and Will Smith

[33:35] just slaps it out of the way, and then it explodes down below him, and I watched that

[33:40] I think three times.

[33:42] Yeah, I watched it almost as many times as I watched that footage of the protester full

[33:47] volleying a gas canister being lobbed at him that was floating around Twitter the other

[33:52] day.

[33:53] Okay, so not to let the real world bleed into this silly movie.

[33:58] Okay.

[33:59] We don't want to let the real world bleed into this movie about a black man whose body

[34:02] is used as property by a paternalistic older white man who pretends that he's a good friend

[34:09] of this young black man and a father figure while using him as a soldier and a tool, and

[34:13] then later develops another young black man who can't feel pain.

[34:16] There's a lot of things going on underneath this movie that the movie is just kind of

[34:19] not dealing with.

[34:20] Oh, shit.

[34:21] Gemini Man is a documentary.

[34:22] Oh, no.

[34:23] Yeah, well, I mean, we'll get to all this stuff over time, I'm sure.

[34:29] Okay, so there's the chase and fight sequence ends.

[34:35] Henry seems to be holding back.

[34:36] He knows there's something up.

[34:37] Junior is, before Junior's able to kill him, and also I kind of like that, like, they specifically

[34:43] show Junior's gun running out of ammo, so that's why he's using his motorcycle to try

[34:48] and kill Henry.

[34:49] Okay, but then the cops show up, Junior runs, Henry is briefly arrested, and then immediately

[34:56] is, gets out of jail.

[34:57] Yeah, this is sort of hand-waved away, like.

[34:58] Yeah, they're like that.

[34:59] I mean, also the fact that they're like, if we're going to go where we need to go, we're

[35:03] going to need a private airplane.

[35:05] Wait, I know a guy.

[35:06] He said that to them on a private airplane.

[35:07] That was the moment where it was like, hold on a second.

[35:10] I do like that they have a little bit of throwaway dialogue, too, as they're leaving the police

[35:14] station where, like, Henry's like, to Danny, who had, like, sprung him from jail, he's

[35:19] like, oh, wow, that was amazing.

[35:21] Oh, that was great.

[35:25] So yeah, so they borrow a jet.

[35:28] We get a little bit of backstory in the two of them.

[35:31] They're on their way to Budapest, where they're going to try and meet up with Yuri, the contact

[35:35] of his former friend, Jack, that had given him the information that Henry's last hit

[35:43] had actually been a bad job.

[35:45] And Yuri's a big fan of Henry and, like, makes specific reference to a lot of stuff that

[35:52] Henry did recently in a way that, you know, like, Henry comments on.

[35:57] I'm like, oh, okay, this is going to be some sort of plot thread, and it does not develop

[36:01] anything.

[36:03] I guess he just has, like, ESPN Henry that he watches at home and knows everything that

[36:09] he does.

[36:10] They're edging into John Wick, I can't remember, you know, those, yeah, John Wick stuff where

[36:16] it's like, oh, he's a famous assassin who has fans who follow his exploits.

[36:20] Like in, there's a certain point in Marvel Comics where Wolverine became famous, and

[36:24] I was like, this character doesn't work for me the same way if everyone recognizes him.

[36:29] I mean, I think it, I could be giving the movie too much credit, but I think it's implied

[36:35] that later on we find out that Henry is being tracked because he has been chipped.

[36:42] And I suspect that Yuri is using some kind of spy satellite to watch this badass assassin

[36:48] battle dudes.

[36:49] But I could be wrong.

[36:50] Very possible.

[36:51] I mean, if I had access to that stuff, I'd watch all kinds of crazy battles.

[36:57] Battle dudes, battle toads, any sort of battles.

[37:02] Battle bots.

[37:03] Okay, so, meanwhile, we cut to Junior, this young assassin that looks exactly like Henry,

[37:10] but a younger version.

[37:11] And he is recuperating in this palatial manor house.

[37:16] And it's the house of Clay Varys, oh no!

[37:19] He's like, they have this, like, weird father-son dynamic, which I wrote down, but is wrong,

[37:24] because they're actually father-son in this case.

[37:26] Adopted son, obviously.

[37:28] But Junior can tell that there's something different or wrong about this job.

[37:33] Clay treats him both as a son, but he's also, like, an emotionally abusive father in this

[37:38] case.

[37:39] He's, he makes Junior, obviously, he's making his son kill people.

[37:44] So that's not good.

[37:45] It's like Varsity Blues, if instead of James Van Der Beek being forced to play high school

[37:49] football, he's being forced to murder people.

[37:51] All over the globe.

[37:52] Thank you.

[37:53] I was reaching for it.

[37:54] Thank you.

[37:55] You know, also, like, I think it's because I watch too many movies, like, this is one

[37:59] of those things that if you're, like, a viewer of a movie, like, you're like, ugh, why don't

[38:03] people realize this thing already?

[38:05] But in real life, you wouldn't realize that you're a clone immediately.

[38:08] But at the same time, like, Henry Jr. seems very, like, it takes him a long time to be

[38:15] like, hey, I look exactly like a young Will Smith.

[38:18] Well, this scene-

[38:19] I've been watching a couple episodes of the new Twilight Zone, and I like it, but it feels

[38:25] like every single episode, the character figures out what's going on, like, three or four scenes

[38:32] too slow for me, and I'm like, no, dude, this is happening, come on, come on, you made a

[38:38] deal with the devil.

[38:39] I mean, I thought it was especially strange that it happened while he was channel surfing

[38:42] and Hancock happened to be playing on FX, and he was like, oh, I look like Hancock,

[38:47] and Clay Varus is like, no, no, no, Hancock's not a real person.

[38:50] I could almost excuse Jr. not recognizing that he looks just like the older Henry, but

[38:56] I can't excuse Henry not recognizing his own younger face.

[38:59] Like, if I saw someone that was me at the age of 20, but that's me, obviously someone

[39:05] has cloned me, because I remember what I look like.

[39:08] Yeah, but he's, you know, he has that face blindness thing that Oliver Sacks writes about,

[39:14] so he actually thinks Jr. is a hack.

[39:17] Seems like a terrible quality for an assassin.

[39:19] Yeah, yeah, that's why, the 72 people, that was two missions.

[39:25] So the weird thing is that we also learned, so we learned that Jr. is a clone, but we

[39:29] also learned that he's called Jr. because he was gestated inside the body of Arnold

[39:33] Schwarzenegger.

[39:33] Movie crossover.

[39:35] Oh, man, that isn't that weird.

[39:37] Check the dates, dude, check the dates, they check out.

[39:40] So this is where we really get a good look at the digital effects of the young Will Smith,

[39:48] and what do you guys think?

[39:49] I actually, I thought that they were pretty good, and like, I really like the emotion

[39:54] that they are able to get out of, like, the young Will Smith face.

[39:58] You know, you guys know me, I'm a...

[40:00] Pretty tough on CGI humans that are supposed to look real. I thought in the scenes where he's not with Will Smith

[40:07] It was really convincing to me. But for some reason every time he was with Will Smith, I would be like, oh, wait a minute

[40:13] It looks like he's talking to a cartoon character version of himself

[40:15] I thought he looked weird in like the first scenes then I think I just got used to it

[40:21] But I will say like I liked the movie first hour because it was so sun-drenched and then the second hour

[40:28] Things got really dark all the time. Like they're always doing stuff at night. And I think it was because they had

[40:36] computer generated Will Smith talking to real Will Smith all the time and it's like

[40:40] We gotta put put this in the dark or else people can be this looks weird

[40:44] I think maybe I've been what I've been watching a lot of

[40:48] Reruns of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air recently, so I wasn't convinced

[40:52] There are certain scenes where the young were junior looks convincing to me

[40:57] There are other scenes specifically the last the final scene where it just looks like a cut a cut scene

[41:03] Definitely as them that last scene where they're where they're like it was like the like wrap-up scene of the three of them

[41:08] He looks terrible. Yeah, it's that's that's arguably the worst movie. We're seeing the whole movie. So

[41:14] Yeah, let me see where we're at. Okay, we get a shot of a like a Gemini training facility

[41:21] Where we see this like team of armored black ops dudes

[41:26] Blowing stuff up in like a like a training course and juniors watching it the whole time and kind of analyzing it

[41:32] and

[41:34] Of course, we're gonna see that black ops team later. They're gonna show up. You don't introduce them

[41:38] It's time on this was when I started asking the question that you really shouldn't ask with this

[41:42] Which is like what was the what's the economics of Gemini because they seem to spend so much money

[41:46] They have a whole fake town

[41:48] Yeah

[41:48] With actors playing townspeople so that they could train like six dudes and they put all this money into cloning one

[41:56] Possibly two Will Smith's as we'll learn like how much are they charging the government on these for their emissions because they seem to spend

[42:02] a lot of it on facilities

[42:05] R&D and that you know clay versus house looks pretty sweet. I'm sure he's raking in a pretty nice

[42:10] Well, the other thing about this too is like you start asking the question, you know

[42:14] I don't think it'll surprise anyone to learn that

[42:17] Clive Owen does not make it out of this movie alive as the villain all villains must be killed even though his name has live

[42:23] in it, yeah, but uh

[42:25] See live early dies. Yeah, then like it's a

[42:29] He dies and then like, you know, basically all the loot is one of those things

[42:33] we're like

[42:33] oh

[42:33] we've killed the villain all the loose ends are tied off because I guess like

[42:37] The idea is supposed to be that he was a loose cannon within the government and they just like are like cutting

[42:43] cutting ties the same way and it's just like

[42:45] They like the government was clearly

[42:48] Putting a lot of money into cloning someone like I don't think that just because they killed the one guy

[42:55] This would stop being a problem. I don't know

[42:57] Well, well they did Gemini was putting money into cloning because Gemini is a private organization

[43:01] And that's why I wonder if there was there

[43:04] I want to see the scene where he's on the phone with his unicorn investors

[43:07] They're like when is Gemini gonna start showing a profit and he like the future of assassination isn't about profit man

[43:12] It's about market dominance. We're disrupting how people are killed. Yeah, there's a there's a scene in the movie

[43:19] That was cut where Claveras went on the Joe Rogan show

[43:23] It's like it's a volume business as soon as we have enough Will Smith's on the street, we'll start making money

[43:32] Numbers and that doesn't really make sense. Hey, I just need another 500 million and maybe someday

[43:38] Okay, so yeah what what you guys are saying is that the government is an evil this one rogue company is evil

[43:44] I mean certainly parts of the government are very evil too, but the rogue company can also be evil. Okay. Okay. Okay. Um, so

[43:52] Wait, I lost my notes. Okay. So

[43:55] meanwhile in Budapest Danny goes to get a DNA test of some blood and

[44:01] And some stuff from Will Smith

[44:04] Including a hat and so she goes to get a DNA test and guys guess what turns out?

[44:10] They're a hundred percent

[44:13] each other

[44:17] Get it get it, okay

[44:20] So yeah, it turns it like so

[44:22] Danny reveals that not only to eyes their DNA similar

[44:25] It is exactly identical the juniors Henry's clone and Henry thinks about it and then he's like, okay

[44:32] I also like that that once I have to assume once he was like, they're like, they cloned you he's like, oh

[44:37] Now the company name makes sense Gemini

[44:41] There's nothing particularly Gemini about like having a private soldier organization

[44:46] But if they're making twins, then the name makes sense and he calls up Clive Owen and he's like

[44:50] Is this why you chose the name Gemini because you were gonna clone someone at some point and Clive is like it's just a happy

[44:55] Coincidence man. My first wife was a Gemini

[44:58] Name the company after her so I named after a star sign. Yep. He's like this company has big Gemini energy

[45:06] He's really into crystals

[45:09] You know how into astrology I am you're such a tourist

[45:16] That would that's a character thing

[45:18] I would have loved is if it turned out that Clive Owens character was really into astrology and was always like

[45:23] Doing junior star charts and he's like, I don't know if it works the same as you because you weren't born you were cloned

[45:28] And we grew you in a vat

[45:29] But maybe if you want that kind of if you want that kind of character work you hire Nicholas fucking cage to do your movie

[45:35] Oh, yeah. Yeah, he would have done star charts for everybody on set. He'd be carrying crystals around. Sure. Yeah

[45:42] okay, so

[45:44] How likely so he's supposed to play the Tiger King in that Tiger King TV show

[45:47] How likely do you think it is that he buys a real tiger to keep in his house to prepare?

[45:51] And we're assuming he doesn't already own a tiger. That's a fair. That's right. I should not have made that assumption

[45:58] Because I keep a tiger in a cage. Oh, okay. Yeah, Nicholas cage

[46:07] So Jordan, you're you're editing

[46:11] You're just editing it on the same scene where where Danny has the line Nelson Mandela couldn't kill a man on a moving train

[46:18] from two kilometers

[46:21] Yeah, cuz he's like why don't they clone nose Nelson Mandela I was like yikes movie what why

[46:30] What why you got a drag Nelson Mandela like and also how do we know he never had the chair

[46:35] That's the thing. Like I like the movie lost a step with me with

[46:40] By not having Will Smith say something like that. We don't know

[46:43] He could have been taught

[46:45] Here's it now here's something about now as well

[46:48] I this is getting a little ahead of us. But as we later learn a junior also has

[46:54] Henry's conscience, which again as we know his conscience only kicked in after 72 kills and 30 years on the job, but

[47:01] Something I learned recently talking to a celebrity dog groomer was that when you clone an animal they look exactly the same

[47:07] But they do not have the same personality because they are raised differently. So here's my pitch for you guys about this movie

[47:13] What if it was the same movie, but the young Henry was totally

[47:17] Totally amoral loved being an assassin was so eager to get old Henry out of the way

[47:22] Because he doesn't want this old man clogging up his face and he could just be would that be a better movie or a worse

[47:27] movie discussion

[47:28] I mean like the movie keeps trying to claim like Clive Owens like we edited it out all of your like

[47:34] Doubt and conscience and I'm like, I don't think so. Like he seems to be basically the same, dude

[47:41] If he could edit that stuff out how come they couldn't edit out jr. Being allergic to bees

[47:48] That's a very good point and it's something that is brought up multiple times for minimal plot development

[47:53] And you think that would be the first thing they're like, they're like we got to send you on a mission to Macedonia

[47:58] Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. It's not near those beehives, right? It is

[48:03] Somebody is lying down in a field of her scene

[48:07] I feel like once he actually does get poisoned like I wish that Will Smith would have said my one weakness bees

[48:14] Yeah

[48:15] Do you think do you think colony collapse all over the world and the demise of bees is just Gemini trying to clear the way

[48:21] To make it so that jr. Can operate anywhere

[48:25] Murder hornets are their latest latest weapon. Yeah. Yeah in the fight against bees. So

[48:32] So Henry Henry meets with Yuri his friends contact

[48:37] In a bathhouse, of course because he's Russian

[48:40] And he gives he gives another info dump. I think it kind of explains all the basics

[48:46] That Gemini has this cloning facility. They're trying to make clone soldiers

[48:50] Yada, yada, yada the Russian that he killed in the first scene on the train was actually of the scientist who was working on the cloning

[48:57] project

[48:58] exactly and that and that

[49:01] The various took him out I guess so that they couldn't share that information. I don't quite remember

[49:05] There's a lot of information, but it's all exactly what you'd expect

[49:08] The only kind of surprise that yuri reveals that he's a big fan of henry's

[49:12] And that he has been watching some of his shootouts. How did this happen? Does it matter? It doesn't

[49:17] He has a uh, he has a guy a delivery guy show up with a phone a bike messenger

[49:23] Thank you, and he has paid this bike messenger to deliver a phone to her

[49:27] Uh, and they call and have a phone conversation. Sorry before that the bike messenger reads

[49:33] A long message about like hey, uh, you know, like you tried to kill me. I'm gonna kill you

[49:41] I know where you live. I know you're like where where you go to get your coffee and the bike messenger seems totally cool

[49:48] delivering this message

[49:51] He got paid a thousand dollars

[49:53] Of course, he'll deliver what he probably thinks it's some prank. He's like, where's ashton in a van somewhere?

[49:59] Where are they?

[50:00] Impractical Jokers. I'm just going to read this message.

[50:02] So, wait, did this guy also just, like, wake up from a really, really long sleep?

[50:06] Dan, it's a 20-year-old screenplay.

[50:08] Okay.

[50:09] Punk'd was still on the air back then.

[50:11] Okay. So, this thing that's not in the movie, because the screenplay is so old, it makes sense.

[50:17] Exactly. Yes, thank you. That's why everyone in the movie is talking about how great The Matrix was.

[50:21] Okay.

[50:23] So, yeah, I did this scene a disservice. It has some humor in it.

[50:27] So, he basically bargains with his old boss for Danny's life,

[50:32] and he sets up an exchange where he will turn her over,

[50:36] but he'll only turn her over to the killer who had been sent to kill him, Junior.

[50:42] And they set up a meet in a castle in Budapest.

[50:47] They're like catacombs. They're like grave catacombs.

[50:52] Yeah, it's like a castle. It's like a tourist attraction.

[50:55] This is where Junior makes to check Danny for bugs because he's nervous that, you know, he's just being cautious.

[51:02] He makes her strip in a both exploitative but restrained scene,

[51:07] and he checks her for bugs, and she the whole time is like trying to get to know him.

[51:14] She's asking him a bunch of questions. She's talking quite a bit.

[51:17] She's explaining what's happening. She's trying to work on his emotions.

[51:21] He takes her to these catacombs, and he sets up a whole bunch of traps,

[51:26] but Henry, of course, gets through all the traps that have been set up

[51:31] because the whole time Danny had been messaging Henry through a hidden bug.

[51:36] And finally, we have old Henry and Junior, the younger version of him.

[51:43] They have a face-off, and they start, you know, they have Junior dead to rights,

[51:49] and they lay out the situation to him, but he is not buying it.

[51:53] Okay, now technically it's not a face-off because they both have the same face on.

[51:57] Oh, okay. So rewind the tape, guys. So it's a face-on.

[52:02] It's a head-on, applied directly to the forehead situation.

[52:07] Oh, wow. I haven't thought about that in a long time, those ads.

[52:10] So, Jordan, is this what you wanted to see from a Will Smith movie?

[52:13] Is a younger Will Smith hitting an older himself in the face with a bone that he grabbed out of a wall?

[52:19] I actually did want to see more of this in the movie.

[52:22] This was one of the only times where the movie was kind of not taking itself too seriously,

[52:27] and it was just kind of silly, and I was having a good time.

[52:30] So, yeah, I wanted more of this. I mean, again, Junior doesn't look real to me in any way.

[52:37] If Will Smith was fighting the younger Robert De Niro from The Irishman, it would have been equally—

[52:44] Or if one of the digital characters from one of Disney's new live-action remakes was battling the animated version.

[52:52] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if they could get Will Smith and then his Aladdin character to fight—

[52:58] Now, I will say, you know, like, Henry gets the best of Junior, like, in basically every situation,

[53:06] and I guess the movie plays it off like, okay, it's because, like, he's cagier most of the time.

[53:12] Like, living so long has—

[53:15] Well, he's more experienced.

[53:16] —given him more experience.

[53:17] But in, like, these fights, I think also you see that they have made the younger version of Will Smith, like, smaller.

[53:27] Like, he's not as jacked as 50-year-old Will Smith, and I think that is to be, like, to give it a way that

[53:35] 50-year-old Will Smith could possibly win a fight with a much younger version of himself.

[53:40] It's possible. I mean, I was watching the behind-the-scenes stuff, and the person they had doing the motion-capture fighting

[53:45] was actually Eddie Deezen, so it makes a lot of sense why Will Smith had no trouble defeating him.

[53:50] Yeah.

[53:51] It's just not a fair matchup.

[53:52] Because sometimes Junior is, like, a little baby Terminator, and then other times they're equally matched,

[53:58] and other times, you know, Henry is able to get the drop on him, so.

[54:02] Yeah.

[54:03] And I feel like, I mean, fast-forward to the very end of the movie, there's a scene where the two of them are walking next to each other,

[54:10] and it feels like Junior is, like, a head taller than him.

[54:14] Yeah, spinal compression as he ages.

[54:16] Maybe he's wearing lifts. Who knows?

[54:19] You're right. Junior's like, no, it would be a stronger movie if it was like, oh, I can't beat myself at my physical peak,

[54:26] so I'll have to out-think him. But there's only a little bit of that. It's usually like, I'm going to out-punch him.

[54:31] Yeah.

[54:32] Like, and the two of them can take so many hits to the face, it's crazy.

[54:37] And especially without wrecking those beautiful faces.

[54:40] I mean, I think they do a pretty good job of having the makeup reflect that they've taken some kind of damage.

[54:46] Some.

[54:47] A little bit. Some.

[54:48] Yeah.

[54:49] Like, as much damage as I would get from, like, falling and smashing your face on the ground.

[54:53] I can't. This guy got whacked with a motorcycle.

[54:55] Yeah, that's fair.

[54:59] He just got a little road rash.

[55:01] Okay, so, as we said, they have a fight.

[55:06] Danny manages to get a hold of the gun, but Henry's holding back.

[55:09] He doesn't want Junior to get shot.

[55:13] They're battling. They end up in the water, which is, as we've learned earlier, Henry's biggest weakness.

[55:19] He's framed of drowning.

[55:21] Danny comes down and shoots Junior in the shoulder to rescue Henry, and Junior escapes.

[55:28] They flee the catacombs.

[55:31] Baron picks up Henry and Danny, and they take that private jet back to the U.S. of A.

[55:36] to shut down the cloning project.

[55:39] Meanwhile, Junior's also back in the U.S. of A., and he confronts his father, Clay Varus, about the whole situation.

[55:48] And I think this is where Varus gives him another one of those, like, abusive dad talks, right?

[55:53] Where he's, like, convincing him that he's doing the right thing, etc., etc.

[55:56] I mean, this is... I don't want to give it too much credit, but this is a slight stab at a more interesting villain, because, like, he's a bad man.

[56:05] I mean, we can all agree he's a bad man, but he does...

[56:08] I don't know, Dan. Name one thing that he does that's bad.

[56:11] He does believe that he loves his son in his own way, and he's trying to protect him throughout the movie, even as he's trying to kill the man he cloned him from.

[56:22] Although the justification of, like, sending his son to kill his older clone to, like, battle his demons seems...

[56:32] No, it's all...

[56:33] ...seems, like, that's a reach.

[56:35] Yeah, I think that's how a psychiatrist would describe it. Nutty?

[56:38] He's kind of like Thanos for me, where he's explaining his motive behind, you know, his evil plot, and I'm kind of...

[56:44] I'm almost like, oh, this guy's got some great ideas. Does that make me a bad person?

[56:51] Yeah, you're like, maybe we should workshop this a little bit. Let's get a little more diversity in your writing than Thanos.

[57:01] Well, and later on, Clay is talking to these guys, the other guys, the heroes, and he's like, I was going to have a whole army of just clones.

[57:09] No parents would ever lose their children again. No real people would die.

[57:13] And Junior is, like, standing right there, and it's like, uh, like, so, uh, like, am I... hold on a second.

[57:21] No, no, no, you're one of the good ones. You're one of the good ones.

[57:24] No, no, Junior, you're like a person clone. You're totally cool.

[57:27] But these other clones, so he's a bad dude.

[57:31] So Henry, Danny, and Baron, you know, they touch down. Baron gives his private jet a kiss. It has served them well this entire movie.

[57:39] They're running through a barn where they get ambushed by Junior, and Junior tests Henry by shooting him in the neck with bee venom,

[57:48] just to prove that he is allergic to bees, because that's the only way to prove that they are clones.

[57:54] And by giving him the antidote, he proves that he's not there to murder Henry, I guess.

[58:01] I guess neither of those tests really prove the thing that they intend to prove, since it's not like Will Smith is uniquely allergic to bees among all the humans in the world.

[58:10] Yeah, yeah, that was kind of...

[58:13] He gives him an EpiPen, and then he goes epinephrine. Like, dude, I know. I'm allergic to bees. I know what an EpiPen looks like.

[58:20] He's like, I know I'm allergic to bees. I travel around the world and I kill things.

[58:25] You would think I would have a couple of these on me at all times, but I guess not.

[58:29] I was thinking, wait, why does an older Will Smith have one of these?

[58:33] Now I wish I had seen a scene where Junior is like, it's epinephrine. Let me use it.

[58:38] And Will Smith's like, I know how to do it. Just let me do it.

[58:41] And they're just arguing over which one of them is going to give the shot.

[58:43] No, let me do it. You need me to do this. I can do it. I've done this before. I'm older than you.

[58:47] So this is where we find out how they've been tracked.

[58:50] Junior cuts out a tracker that's been embedded in Henry's arm.

[58:55] I guess it had been embedded in him during a previous surgery.

[58:59] Then they are driving to go take out the clone facility.

[59:04] They catch up. They, you know, talk some stuff.

[59:07] But then they get ambushed in a small town that looks, I guess not that surprisingly,

[59:15] a lot like that model village we saw the black ops guys training in earlier.

[59:20] So they get ambushed and a tank shoots their car, killing Benedict Wong's character, Baron.

[59:27] Everybody's super sad. Everybody else gets out.

[59:30] And when I watched this movie earlier in the week,

[59:32] a military style police response to a few people walking down the street seemed crazier than it does now.

[59:41] So I'm glad I watched it a week ago when I was like, well, this is nuts anyway.

[59:48] Yeah, it wasn't quite the fun escape I was hoping for at that moment.

[59:53] So, yeah, so the we find out that various is on site.

[59:56] He, you know, he diverts police away.

[59:58] He's having his own team trying to find him.

[1:00:00] and take out these guys, clean up this mess.

[1:00:03] I keep using that term because that's what they say in action movies.

[1:00:05] They secure the perimeter and so forth.

[1:00:09] At this point, Junior runs away from Henry and Danny.

[1:00:14] And he goes to confront his father. I can't quite tell...

[1:00:18] Did he intend to lead them into that ambush?

[1:00:21] I don't think so. Was he still working for his dad at this point?

[1:00:25] Maybe he's worried they think that. I was understanding it as

[1:00:29] Clay has now ambushed all of them because he doesn't trust Junior anymore to get the job done.

[1:00:35] Because then Clay is really ready to argue with Junior.

[1:00:38] When Junior shows up, Clay isn't like,

[1:00:39] Great job, buddy. Thanks, sonny boy. You did it.

[1:00:43] You let him into the ambush. He's like, What are you doing?

[1:00:46] Clay also tells Junior to run when they're in the car.

[1:00:49] He calls Junior up and is like, Hey, get out of there.

[1:00:54] And this is the scene when he starts arguing with Clay and they have a fight.

[1:00:59] And Junior, the super assassin who is so skilled that he had to be a clone of the greatest assassin in the world,

[1:01:06] gets his ass handed to him handily by Clive Owen, a man who is older than Will Smith, I think.

[1:01:12] And this is the scene where I was like, Why did they just clone Clive Owen?

[1:01:17] I kind of thought that was what was going to come later on, but it didn't happen.

[1:01:21] OK, so meanwhile, Henry and Danny get some guns.

[1:01:24] He goes, My name's not Clive Owen. It's Clive O-1.

[1:01:26] And then Clive O-2 and Clive O-3 and Clive O-4. An army of Clive clones comes out.

[1:01:33] It's a real The Sixth Day.

[1:01:35] And it's Clive Owen from all his movies.

[1:01:37] Croupiers, Children of Men.

[1:01:41] What was that one he did with Julia Roberts?

[1:01:43] Shoot Em Up. Shoot Em Up.

[1:01:45] Yeah. Did he do a movie with Julia Roberts?

[1:01:48] Shoot Em Up? What are you talking about?

[1:01:49] No, not Shoot Em Up. That's Monica Bones.

[1:01:51] That wasn't Julia Roberts.

[1:01:52] No, that's not the one he was talking about.

[1:01:53] And is that the movie where he plays Bones Bunny?

[1:01:56] Oh, Closer. That's what I was thinking of.

[1:01:58] Yeah, it's him from Closer.

[1:02:01] What was that, Jordan? You were wondering if Shoot Em Up was the movie.

[1:02:04] He's a killer who chomps on a carrot all the time?

[1:02:07] That's the one where every time he takes a bite out of a carrot,

[1:02:09] his eyesight instantly gets a little better.

[1:02:12] I love that movie.

[1:02:14] In a smart way.

[1:02:15] What a movie. Yeah.

[1:02:16] That's the movie where he shoots the umbilical cord off a baby that he's just delivered?

[1:02:20] Yep.

[1:02:21] So, Henry and Danny start taking out this kill team quite efficiently.

[1:02:25] I don't know why they've been training so much,

[1:02:27] because they just keep getting smoked.

[1:02:30] Junior fights with Varys.

[1:02:31] Danny gets shot, and they end up holing up in some kind of a machine shop or something.

[1:02:38] It's like a hardware and things you would use to stop Assassin's Store.

[1:02:43] Yeah, so it's like they prepare to make a last stand.

[1:02:46] They only have one bullet left.

[1:02:47] A couple guys run in, and Henry manages to kill both of them with the same bullet,

[1:02:52] because he's just that good, as we've already addressed.

[1:02:55] It looks like things are curtains for them, but of course, Junior shows up.

[1:02:58] He kills the remaining Black Ops guys.

[1:03:00] He rescues them.

[1:03:02] Hooray.

[1:03:02] Well, this is after Will Smith has given Mary Elizabeth Winstead and himself axes,

[1:03:07] because they don't have guns anymore.

[1:03:08] And I was like, okay, I'm ready for this scene.

[1:03:10] But that didn't happen.

[1:03:12] They don't actually fight with axes.

[1:03:14] So, cut to the rooftop.

[1:03:16] Clay Varys has realized that his plan is in ruins, and he has to initiate his plan B

[1:03:23] when he brings in a secret bulletproof ninja who runs around the building parkour style.

[1:03:31] And wears a full face mask helmet.

[1:03:34] Yes, he's like a real Daft Punk, if Daft Punk was a...

[1:03:39] Or like Snake Eyes, who's a ninja.

[1:03:41] No, no, but if Daft Punk was a ninja, that's what he would be like.

[1:03:44] Okay, cool, I guess you get partial credit.

[1:03:46] Instead of being two older French guys.

[1:03:48] I wrote down Scuba Ninja, so that's what it would look like to me.

[1:03:52] Scuba Ninja, yeah.

[1:03:54] But instead of taking a splash into the water, he splashes into our hero's blood as he kicks

[1:03:59] and punches them.

[1:04:00] And they keep shooting him, but the bullets just keep bouncing off.

[1:04:03] And this one bulletproof assassin is beating up all three of our heroes.

[1:04:10] It's crazy.

[1:04:11] And he seems unstoppable.

[1:04:13] They're like blasting with shotguns, they throw explosions at him, it's all kinds of stuff.

[1:04:17] And this is, we learn that he cannot feel pain, but he's being shot in the head.

[1:04:22] Like even if it's not hurting him, it's causing brain trauma, that he keeps getting up.

[1:04:29] I don't know.

[1:04:29] It is unclear the degree to which it's the armor that he's wearing versus his painlessness.

[1:04:38] There is no helmet you can wear that is so strong that if you get shot multiple times in the head,

[1:04:44] it's not going to make it harder for you to get up and keep fighting.

[1:04:47] I mean, this is a special clone helmet.

[1:04:48] We're through the looking glass here.

[1:04:52] They cloned a regular helmet, and they removed the parts of the helmet that break.

[1:04:58] They cloned the best helmet in the world.

[1:05:02] Every part of him is the best.

[1:05:03] They found the best pants in the world, and they cloned them.

[1:05:06] They found the best boots in the world, and cloned those.

[1:05:09] It's Serpentor all over again.

[1:05:11] You can't see, but he's wearing, underneath the shirt, he's wearing the best puka shell

[1:05:14] necklace on a little piece of rope in the world, yeah.

[1:05:16] After much battling and blasting, the bulletproof assassin collapses.

[1:05:23] They have defeated him.

[1:05:24] They go up and remove his helmet, and it's another young Will Smith under there.

[1:05:31] And I gotta say, I mean, even though it wasn't that big of a surprise, it was kind of rough.

[1:05:36] I found this to be kind of affecting, to have this feeling of endless young black faces

[1:05:45] on dead soldiers.

[1:05:47] It was pretty rough right there.

[1:05:48] It was rough, but it was also one of those things, I found, I also felt that way at first,

[1:05:52] and then I was like, why did they send him in the first place?

[1:05:56] Yeah.

[1:05:56] Why are they wasting time with Junior?

[1:05:58] He's better.

[1:05:58] And at this point, he can't even, it's not addressed whether or not

[1:06:04] he can't, the super assassin is dying and can't talk, or if the ability to talk had

[1:06:11] been cloned out of him.

[1:06:12] Like, it's this horrible moment.

[1:06:14] It's a, and that's when Clay comes out and he's like, oh, we were gonna have an army

[1:06:18] of Henry clones, and it was gonna be great for everybody.

[1:06:21] Not the clones, but come on, they're clones, right?

[1:06:23] Who cares, right, Junior?

[1:06:24] Oh, I mean, Junior, I didn't realize you were here, oh boy.

[1:06:27] And this is when Junior has a moral choice to make, guys.

[1:06:33] And it's a moral choice that, after Stuart explains it, I'm gonna go into why I've started

[1:06:37] hating this part of the past few movies I've seen of him.

[1:06:40] Stuart, do you know which one I'm talking about?

[1:06:43] I mean, I don't know.

[1:06:44] So Junior has his super shotgun placed at his father's face, and he's like, I'm gonna

[1:06:51] kill ya.

[1:06:52] And Henry steps up and he's like, no, you won't be able to live with the guilt.

[1:06:56] That's a choice you shouldn't have to make, killing your own father.

[1:06:59] You won't be able to come back from that.

[1:07:01] You'll be irrevocably changed.

[1:07:03] So he takes the gun away, and then he blasts him himself.

[1:07:06] And this is the thing I've seen in a bunch of movies.

[1:07:08] This made me think of Rise of Skywalker the most, where the hero has blown away endless

[1:07:14] cannon fodder.

[1:07:15] People who oftentimes were just maybe ex, in the world of Gemini Man, they're ex-military

[1:07:21] who now work for this evil company, where they're, you know, police officers who got

[1:07:25] kicked off the force or something, and now they work for this other thing.

[1:07:27] And after killing swaths of those, they get to the one guy who's responsible for all

[1:07:31] of it, and they're like, no, don't kill him.

[1:07:34] It would be wrong to.

[1:07:35] The same with Rise of Skywalker.

[1:07:37] How many people has Rey killed in those movies by this point?

[1:07:39] And she gets to the Emperor, and he's like, heh heh, if you kill me, everything will go

[1:07:43] even worse.

[1:07:44] And she's like, I can't do it.

[1:07:45] I can't give in to hate and kill the Emperor, even though she's killed hundreds of people

[1:07:49] in cold blood.

[1:07:50] And the Emperor is murdering thousands of people at the same time.

[1:07:54] This idea that once you get to the person in power, it becomes a moral choice of whether

[1:07:59] to kill them or not, and it's the high road to not kill them, that it's better to kill

[1:08:04] an army of nobodies than to kill the one somebody who's responsible for it is not a thing that

[1:08:08] I buy.

[1:08:08] Hold up, Elliot, though.

[1:08:10] This is not an exact analog, because the reason specifically here is that he's shooting his

[1:08:18] surrogate father.

[1:08:18] Now, the part I find weird is the way where Henry's like, hey, if you kill your dad, you're

[1:08:24] not coming back.

[1:08:25] And then he shoots the kid's dad right in front of him.

[1:08:29] I mean, if I was Henry, I'd be like, this will give you the closure that you need to

[1:08:33] get out of this relationship with this dude.

[1:08:37] This is the Angela Bassett blowing up the car.

[1:08:40] Yeah, exactly.

[1:08:41] Yeah.

[1:08:42] Freud tells us that we want to kill our fathers, and finally, he has the chance to do it.

[1:08:47] I just, it's the idea that, it's more the idea that like, hey, you're never going to

[1:08:52] be able to live with yourself if you kill this guy.

[1:08:54] But I killed a lot of people.

[1:08:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah, but this guy is a movie star, so let me do it instead.

[1:09:00] Or maybe there was something in Will Smith's Contract where he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah,

[1:09:02] but the real me gets to kill the bad guy, not the clone me.

[1:09:05] And Ang Lee was like, but Will, you play both characters.

[1:09:07] Yeah, yeah, but the real me gets to kill him, right, not the clone.

[1:09:10] But Will, you're both of them.

[1:09:11] They're both Will.

[1:09:13] The same way, there's an old story about, I think, Joey Bishop.

[1:09:17] That there's, on the Joey Bishop show, there was a character who was like his cousin that

[1:09:20] he also played, and he would get mad because the cousin had more funny lines than he did.

[1:09:24] And it'd be like, Joey, you're playing both characters.

[1:09:27] Like, why do you matter if the jokes come from Joey Bishop or Joey Bishop's cousin?

[1:09:30] That's what it feels like.

[1:09:31] I do think that the moral issue that comes into play here, actually, for me, Elliot,

[1:09:36] is sort of a different one, which is like, in these movies, they should get to the bad guy

[1:09:43] and not kill him because they're like, they've killed everyone else in self-defense.

[1:09:49] Now they have this man dead to rights.

[1:09:53] Apparently, he's operating way off the reservation at this point,

[1:09:57] based on the way the movie wraps up.

[1:10:00] Uh, you know, so it's like if the movie is like, oh, I'm so tired of killing, take the

[1:10:06] fucking guy in and have him arrested.

[1:10:10] Like it's so weird.

[1:10:11] I think maybe seven years ago I might've felt the same way, but now I'm like, no, the world

[1:10:16] would be better without Clive Owen in it.

[1:10:18] I mean that about the actor Clive Owen too, guys.

[1:10:20] Whoa.

[1:10:21] No, I'm just kidding.

[1:10:22] I love Clive Owen, the actor.

[1:10:23] He's great.

[1:10:24] Shoot him up.

[1:10:25] I love it.

[1:10:26] But that I, at this point, do you really believe that that guy's going to get taken in and

[1:10:29] go to jail?

[1:10:30] Look at Eric Prince.

[1:10:31] He's still out there and he's the same character.

[1:10:33] Well, I, okay, uh, I, I, I just think that the whole point of the movie, like the moral

[1:10:40] like point of it, if there is one, has been like, I'm tired of killing.

[1:10:45] So I don't know.

[1:10:47] It just seems weird that like they've got him captured and like every, I guess I'm angry

[1:10:53] more that every action movie has to end with killing being the solution to all of the problems

[1:11:01] in the movie.

[1:11:02] Yeah.

[1:11:03] Then I think maybe Gemini Man's not the movie for you.

[1:11:05] Yeah.

[1:11:06] Yeah.

[1:11:07] So they, uh, so Clive Owen's character is dead.

[1:11:09] We now cut to a college campus.

[1:11:12] There's probably some other bullshit, but we cut to a college campus.

[1:11:15] Henry meets up with his old boss and his old boss is like, all the bad guys are gone.

[1:11:19] It's nothing but good guys now.

[1:11:20] And Henry's like, Hey, even though you let everybody try to kill me, we're cool.

[1:11:24] And that's the end of that scene.

[1:11:26] So, uh, they're Henry, Danny and junior are walking around a college campus.

[1:11:32] Junior is the new cool freshmen.

[1:11:34] He's got a group of friends that he's, he's, he's, and they, they walk around in a denim

[1:11:41] jacket and I just kept being like, he must be so hot, a sweater under a denim jacket

[1:11:46] and it's sunny out.

[1:11:47] Yeah.

[1:11:48] Well, you know.

[1:11:49] Uh, so I mean, sometimes you make sacrifice for fashion.

[1:11:52] I went, so, uh, I mean, I know they walk around and they like tell jokes and shit and then

[1:11:57] they make a point.

[1:11:58] They make a point of saying, Oh, that was the only other clone, which I thought was

[1:12:02] weird.

[1:12:03] They're like, everything's wrapped up tight.

[1:12:06] The this, I mean, I'm assuming this scene was added late in production.

[1:12:12] The end question mark starts rolling on screen and Will Smith pushes it off and goes, Nope,

[1:12:16] that's the ends.

[1:12:17] No unanswered questions.

[1:12:18] No sequels, please.

[1:12:19] I mean, honestly, like there were parts of this last scene that I thought were affecting

[1:12:23] in the sense of like, okay, well now they have this surrogate family, like a thing that

[1:12:27] none of them seemingly had had before, but it goes on at least three times longer than

[1:12:34] you think it's going to.

[1:12:36] It's a very long scene and at the end it's fading out as Will Smith is explaining to

[1:12:40] Junior how he's still tougher than even though he's older and it's just Will Smith talking.

[1:12:45] You don't hear any of the characters as it like pulls back and at some point I was like,

[1:12:48] is he talking to himself?

[1:12:50] Was this all in his head and he's a crazy person wandering around this college campus

[1:12:54] like talking to his imaginary clone?

[1:12:56] Feels like they're making all this effort to identify that like, yeah, we get it.

[1:12:59] You're clones.

[1:13:00] Well, you don't have to tell me again.

[1:13:01] It's the end of the fucking movie.

[1:13:04] I definitely think they added this scene in later.

[1:13:06] It looks terrible.

[1:13:10] It feels really rushed and everything and it feels like it comes out of a different

[1:13:14] movie.

[1:13:15] I mean, this is one where I was like, there's something refreshing about the fact that Junior

[1:13:17] is just going to try to live a normal life now.

[1:13:20] Although he's going to college and they're like, here's your new identity, new passport,

[1:13:25] new social security card.

[1:13:26] And I'm like, how did he get into college without any of that stuff?

[1:13:28] Like did he enroll at college as Junior R clone?

[1:13:32] I don't understand.

[1:13:33] Yeah, because this scene is supposed to take place six months after everything else happened.

[1:13:38] So what have they been doing the past six months?

[1:13:40] Yeah, I mean, probably teaching about all the pop culture that he never got to see because

[1:13:44] Clive Owen wouldn't let him.

[1:13:46] So like they watched all the all the Marvel movies.

[1:13:49] This is a movie called Bad Boys 2.

[1:13:52] Oh, wow.

[1:13:55] Now there's some stuff in it that's not great.

[1:13:57] They do drive through a shantytown.

[1:13:59] But if you can ignore that, we're going to watch all the best movies ever made.

[1:14:05] Pursuit of happiness, concussion, focus.

[1:14:09] Guys, let's wrap this up.

[1:14:11] Let's do final judgments.

[1:14:13] Is this a good, bad movie, a bad, bad movie, a movie you kind of like?

[1:14:20] I'm going to be honest.

[1:14:23] I think I know where Jordan is.

[1:14:25] She seems to have a great distaste for this movie.

[1:14:27] I got to say, I kind of liked it, you know, like the first hour I thought was pretty solid.

[1:14:34] That action sequence was great.

[1:14:36] The middle part, I was pretty bored by when they were started like getting into the moral

[1:14:41] implications of everything.

[1:14:43] And I'm like, this movie is not well written enough to make me care about all these characters.

[1:14:50] But then the end was exciting.

[1:14:51] As long as this movie is an action movie, I think it's fun.

[1:14:55] I think Mary Elizabeth Winstead in particular is good.

[1:14:58] And Benedict Wong is good.

[1:14:59] And I think that this movie probably would have played better when the script was written

[1:15:04] before like we'd already seen the Bourne identity and Looper.

[1:15:10] But that's what I have to say.

[1:15:11] What do you guys say?

[1:15:13] I also was coming down on kind of liked for basically the same reasons.

[1:15:17] Like there's a couple really good action sequences in it.

[1:15:20] I think it is.

[1:15:21] It's a pretty dumb plot for a movie.

[1:15:25] And it like almost touches on interesting things that doesn't quite go all the way there.

[1:15:30] But it might just be that my standards are at the usual level for the movies we watch

[1:15:36] that as soon as I started watching it and I was like, oh, this isn't as bad as I thought

[1:15:40] it was going to be.

[1:15:41] Oh, yeah.

[1:15:42] Oh, this action sequence is really good.

[1:15:43] I was like, OK, this is a solid like, I don't know, we'd say like two and a half star movie,

[1:15:48] something like that, which would be which to me is like it's a Saturday.

[1:15:51] I'm sick.

[1:15:52] This comes on TNT.

[1:15:53] OK, I'm going to watch it.

[1:15:55] Yeah.

[1:15:56] I think it's a movie I kind of like, actually.

[1:16:00] It's this whole time, Jordan, I thought you were going to get really mad at us for saying

[1:16:03] that I kind of like it.

[1:16:04] But then I remember the end of the movie and how silly and how much it made me laugh when

[1:16:08] I saw the final Fresh Prince.

[1:16:14] It doesn't it takes itself too seriously in certain parts, but the action sequences are

[1:16:19] pretty solid.

[1:16:20] I think that this movie could have starred, you know, any number of people.

[1:16:25] I think that they wanted Mel Gibson at one point.

[1:16:28] I could see like a Bruce Willis or something like that.

[1:16:31] Like I, I'm fine with it.

[1:16:33] I kind of like it.

[1:16:34] Yeah, I like it.

[1:16:35] Whatever.

[1:16:37] Yeah, I mean, I think I'm with I'm with all you guys.

[1:16:40] It's I think when the action scenes are moving, it's pretty fun.

[1:16:44] I I actually I thought Will Smith was pretty fun in this movie.

[1:16:51] I thought Mary Elizabeth Winstead was fun.

[1:16:53] I thought Clive Owen was like a good creepy skeleton.

[1:16:57] And yeah, I don't know, like and I don't know, maybe I was like it was both escapist, but

[1:17:03] also it made it made me think about the world a little bit and made me sad.

[1:17:08] So cool.

[1:17:09] Now, I wonder if we so I watch this on my computer, so I didn't see it in the like one

[1:17:14] hundred and twenty frames per second that it was supposed to be projected in.

[1:17:17] And I and that I did you guys see it that way or tell or no?

[1:17:22] I don't.

[1:17:23] I mean, is that something that you is that something that's possible on like normal televisions

[1:17:27] like I I don't know, it looks like a normal movie to me.

[1:17:31] And honestly, I was meant to say something about this, but I forgot.

[1:17:34] I wonder whether like, you know, it's not a great movie, but the outsized critical rejection

[1:17:42] of this movie, I wonder if it was because it was done in that high frame rate that everyone

[1:17:46] seems to hate.

[1:17:47] Oh, yeah.

[1:17:48] Could be.

[1:17:49] Well, actually, I when I watch it last night, but I watched it in Peter Jackson's screening

[1:17:52] room in New Zealand.

[1:17:55] It's Wellington, New Zealand.

[1:17:56] So I'm allowed in.

[1:17:57] Oh, sure.

[1:17:58] Of course.

[1:17:59] So it's a screening room where everything is one hundred and twenty frames per second.

[1:18:01] And also they just insert CGI hobbits into every movie.

[1:18:04] Uh huh.

[1:18:05] Yeah.

[1:18:06] So you thought this whole time that he had a sidekick who is a hobbit.

[1:18:08] It's well, it's weird because every movie comes every every movie you watch there is

[1:18:13] actually twice as long as the original.

[1:18:15] Yeah.

[1:18:16] It's split into three, even though there's no real reason.

[1:18:19] So you watch the Gemini Man trilogy and you're like, oh, it's weird that Junior and Will

[1:18:23] Smith are doing this song about washing the dishes.

[1:18:28] Makes sense, though.

[1:18:29] It was in the book.

[1:18:30] Gemini Man, the book by Gem R.R.

[1:18:33] Mankin.

[1:18:34] All right.

[1:18:35] And we made it.

[1:18:36] I should have said I should have said Gemini Mankin.

[1:18:38] Yeah.

[1:18:39] Next time.

[1:18:40] I think if you if if nothing else, I think our listeners owe it to themselves to watch

[1:18:43] that Cartagena action sequence.

[1:18:45] Yeah.

[1:18:46] Yeah.

[1:18:47] I mean, yeah.

[1:18:48] Wait till it's free somewhere.

[1:18:49] But yeah.

[1:18:50] Yeah.

[1:18:51] I mean, yeah.

[1:18:52] I mean, we're we're I don't know.

[1:18:53] Do or don't.

[1:18:54] I don't know.

[1:18:55] I don't know.

[1:18:56] I feel like it's a little bit of our do a little experience.

[1:18:57] So I went into it being like, this is going to be nuts.

[1:18:59] And then I was like, all right, this is you know, it's just a movie.

[1:19:02] Yeah.

[1:19:03] And we made it through without Elliot ever singing Send In The Clones.

[1:19:07] So it's a win for all of us now.

[1:19:11] Now, now I now I the idea comes in.

[1:19:14] Why couldn't you have done that earlier?

[1:19:18] Hi, I'm James host of Minority Corner, which is a podcast that's all about intersectionality.

[1:19:25] It's hosted by James with a guest host every week, discussing all sorts of wonderful issues,

[1:19:30] nerdy and political pop culture, black, queer, feminism, race, sexuality, news, you're going

[1:19:37] to learn your history, their self empowerment, and it's told by what feels like your best

[1:19:41] friend.

[1:19:42] Why should someone listen to Minority Corner?

[1:19:44] Why not?

[1:19:45] Oh my God, free stuff.

[1:19:46] There's not free stuff.

[1:19:47] The listeners of Minority Corner will enjoy some necessary lols, but mainly a look at

[1:19:51] what's happening in our world through a colorful lens.

[1:19:54] People will get the perspective of marginalized communities.

[1:19:57] I feel heard I feel seen.

[1:20:00] that you need to understand how to be more proactive in your community and this is a

[1:20:03] great way to get started.

[1:20:04] Join us every Friday on MaxFun or wherever you get your podcasts.

[1:20:07] Minority Corner, because together we're the majority.

[1:20:12] Hi, this is Rachel McElroy.

[1:20:14] Hello, this is Griffin McElroy.

[1:20:16] And this is Wonderful.

[1:20:17] It's a podcast that we do as we are married and how's the ad going so far?

[1:20:22] Because I think it's going very good.

[1:20:23] We talk about things we like every week on Wednesdays.

[1:20:26] One time Rachel talked about Pumpernickel bread, it was so tight you cannot afford to

[1:20:29] miss her talking about this sweet brown bread.

[1:20:32] We also talk about music and poems and, you know, weather.

[1:20:36] There is one...

[1:20:37] Weather?

[1:20:38] One time Rachel talked about Baby Beluga, the song for like 14 minutes and it just really

[1:20:42] blew my hair back.

[1:20:43] So check us out on MaxFun.org.

[1:20:46] It's a cool podcast with chill vibes.

[1:20:48] Amber is the color of our energy is what all the iTunes reviews say.

[1:20:52] They will now.

[1:20:58] Hey guys, here's a quick word from Squarespace, one of our beloved sponsors.

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[1:21:47] with that.

[1:21:48] What do you think?

[1:21:49] Go on.

[1:21:50] Sure, let's hear it.

[1:21:51] Okay, here's the problem.

[1:21:53] You live in the United States.

[1:21:55] Your clone is in a laboratory in Hungary.

[1:21:57] How are you going to send it to you?

[1:21:59] Well, Sendintheclones.com sends clones to you from anywhere to anywhere.

[1:22:04] That's right.

[1:22:05] Sendintheclones is the top clone delivery service, getting your clone from whatever

[1:22:10] back to tank it was bred in to your home and you'll remember the name Sendintheclones.com

[1:22:16] because of the jingle.

[1:22:18] Send in the clones.

[1:22:20] Send in those clones.

[1:22:21] Sendintheclones.com, but the URL is not Sendintheclones.com.

[1:22:26] It's actually Sendintheclones.com.

[1:22:28] Please disregard the first part of the jingle.

[1:22:30] It's Sendintheclones.com.

[1:22:31] Now, are you wedded to that jingle, Elliot, or I think there's some edits I could suggest

[1:22:38] you.

[1:22:39] I mean, I paid Alan Menken to write it, so I feel like I can't really afford to get a

[1:22:42] new one right now.

[1:22:43] Okay.

[1:22:44] Well, our second sponsor for today's show is ExpressVPN.

[1:22:51] Now, you know that ExpressVPN can protect your privacy and security online, but did

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[1:24:01] ExpressVPN for free.

[1:24:03] To support the show, watch what you want, and protect yourself with ExpressVPN at expressvpn.com

[1:24:09] slash flop.

[1:24:12] It's crazy that, or amazing, I guess, or crying, whichever Aerosmith title you want to use,

[1:24:17] that our screens have gotten so small that the TV is now the big screen.

[1:24:21] It used to be the little screen, and movies were the big screen.

[1:24:24] Now TV is the big screen, and phones are the little screen.

[1:24:26] Is this another Andy Rooney bit?

[1:24:27] Is that what's going on?

[1:24:29] Speaking of people whose names sound kind of like Andy Rooney, Randy Newman just came

[1:24:33] in with another jingle for sendingtheclones.com.

[1:24:37] Randy, you want to hit it?

[1:24:39] Sometimes you got clones and you got to send them around, sendingtheclones.com, because

[1:24:44] you got a friend in me.

[1:24:47] Every single one of your impressions is merging.

[1:24:50] Hey guys, I think you got some Jumbotrons you want to read.

[1:24:57] Yeah, we do.

[1:24:58] Stu, you want to go first, or should I go first?

[1:25:01] I can go first.

[1:25:02] Wait, you go first.

[1:25:03] I got to find it.

[1:25:04] Okay, this message is for Cody Mason, and it's from Gail Kelly, and it says,

[1:25:10] We had to postpone our wedding due to COVID.

[1:25:13] You're quarantining with your future in-laws, and you still manage to make me laugh each day.

[1:25:17] I love you, and I can't wait to get married as soon as we get the chance.

[1:25:20] I hope this message makes you smile, and maybe you'll even get a special Elliott song out of it.

[1:25:24] Here's to more years of love and good bad movies.

[1:25:27] That's a very sweet sentiment.

[1:25:29] I don't appreciate being dragooned into singing a song, but I'm going to do it anyway.

[1:25:35] Wow, the first time he's ever been at a loss for words.

[1:25:38] They didn't give me a lot of hooks.

[1:25:40] Anyway, so you're in a house with your in-laws, and you can't get married right now.

[1:25:46] I guess there's only one thing to do, and that's to go to SendintheClones.com.

[1:25:51] That's right, SendintheClones.com.

[1:25:54] Does that work as a jingle?

[1:25:56] Yeah.

[1:25:58] Yeah, I mean, for today's purposes, yeah.

[1:26:00] Okay, how about this? I'll do it in the persona of Gail, who sent the message.

[1:26:05] Hey, Cody, thanks for all the stuff that you're doing right now.

[1:26:10] We'll get married someday, I promise, at SendintheClones.com.

[1:26:16] Oh, did I forget to mention you can get married at the site also?

[1:26:19] Okay.

[1:26:20] Oh, wow.

[1:26:21] All of the clones are ordained.

[1:26:24] Yeah.

[1:26:26] What, what, what, what, what, what, what, Jumbotron!

[1:26:29] Jumbotron alert!

[1:26:32] Two expatriates from opposite sides of the world

[1:26:35] talk about modern and classic Japanese animation together in Tokyo, Japan.

[1:26:41] Join hosts Ian McAfee and Mark Heath for a highly casual and hilarious

[1:26:48] look at the politics, philosophy, and production of anime.

[1:26:53] Just search for animagnorant, like ignorant and anime smushed together,

[1:26:59] in iTunes slash wherever and subscribe.

[1:27:03] That's A-N-I-M-E-G-N-O-R-A-N-T.

[1:27:11] Do it.

[1:27:12] Hey, guys, I got another song for Gail and Cody.

[1:27:15] Uh-huh, yep.

[1:27:16] Should I go for it? Okay.

[1:27:17] Sometimes things seem sad.

[1:27:20] Sometimes you're gonna get mad.

[1:27:22] Because COVID canceled your wedding.

[1:27:25] And I'm betting COVID took the deposit and put it into its bank account.

[1:27:31] But hey, keep looking for a brighter day.

[1:27:34] Because love is stronger than viruses.

[1:27:37] That's right, love is stronger than viruses.

[1:27:40] The math works out.

[1:27:41] Put a virus and love in a jar and shake it up so they fight.

[1:27:46] And the love come out the winner.

[1:27:48] This is misinformation.

[1:27:50] Of course, sometimes love can give you a virus.

[1:27:53] But hey, that's okay.

[1:27:54] Because love is stronger than viruses.

[1:27:57] And the greatest medicine is love.

[1:27:59] Love, love, from below or above.

[1:28:02] It's love stronger than viruses.

[1:28:04] Sent in theclones.com

[1:28:06] Woof, no thanks.

[1:28:09] Not medically accurate.

[1:28:11] Okay, Elliot, we teased our live show earlier.

[1:28:16] Would you like to give more full information about the live show that is happening?

[1:28:20] If you're listening to this on the day it's released, it is happening tonight.

[1:28:25] This episode comes out Saturday, June 6th, correct?

[1:28:27] Well, today is Saturday, June 6th, if you're listening on the day of release.

[1:28:30] And tonight, Saturday, June 6th, at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m. Eastern.

[1:28:34] That's right, 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m. Pacific.

[1:28:37] The Flophouse will be coming to you live over the internet.

[1:28:40] It's just like if you went to go see the Flophouse because they went to your city,

[1:28:43] but now nobody has to go anywhere.

[1:28:45] We'll be broadcasting from our houses direct to your house.

[1:28:48] What are we going to be talking about?

[1:28:50] Well, a little movie called Howard T. Duck.

[1:28:53] Actually, the movie is called Howard THE Duck.

[1:28:55] I shortened it a little bit, but it didn't save a lot of time because then I had to explain it.

[1:28:58] That's right, George Lucas' classic story based on the Steve Gerber, Gene Colan comics,

[1:29:02] about a duck from another dimension where ducks have boobs,

[1:29:06] gets dropped into Lea Thompson's lap,

[1:29:08] and has to fight alongside Tim Robbins against Jeffrey Jones.

[1:29:11] That's right, it's Howard THE Duck.

[1:29:13] I haven't seen it since I was a kid, and yet clearly I remember more of it than I should.

[1:29:16] I'm excited to watch it again.

[1:29:17] How do I watch this, and why are we doing it?

[1:29:19] Well, we're doing it to interview you, the listeners and viewers.

[1:29:21] But also, we're doing it for charity.

[1:29:23] We're going to have a list of charities that you can donate to during the show.

[1:29:27] It's going to be on our website.

[1:29:28] I'll give you the information for that in a second.

[1:29:30] And if you donate, you'll be entered into Raffles.

[1:29:33] That's right, Raffles.

[1:29:34] I'll explain that in a minute, or rather, Dan will.

[1:29:36] For more information, go to theflophousepodcast.com.

[1:29:39] That'll tell you how to go see it, or I'll tell you right now.

[1:29:41] Go to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash see slash theflophousepodcast.

[1:29:45] Go to theflophousepodcast.com.

[1:29:47] It's all there.

[1:29:48] Go to the Flophouse Facebook page.

[1:29:49] All the information is there as well.

[1:29:50] Dan, tell us about some of these raffles, huh?

[1:29:53] Is that Raffles, the famous literary...

[1:29:56] The Gentleman Cat Burglar?

[1:29:58] Well, yet again, you took the joke right out of my mouth.

[1:30:00] my mouth so i i won't talk about that but i will say

[1:30:03] i want i want to backtrack a little bit i'll say that uh... yes as this is this

[1:30:07] is for charity in the sense that will be asking for donations

[1:30:10] but it is entirely free to watch uh... we're just trying to uh...

[1:30:15] you know use the power of a free to watch live stream to uh... get some

[1:30:19] money out there to some worthy causes

[1:30:22] uh... and yes if you donate to any of the charities that are suggested on the

[1:30:27] website

[1:30:28] or

[1:30:29] you know any charity basically uh... send us uh...

[1:30:33] your receipt if it's over twenty dollars this is just

[1:30:36] this is just mostly actually

[1:30:38] to keep the work down on my end so i'm not deluged by receipts but also to

[1:30:41] encourage generosity twenty dollars or more

[1:30:44] hey that's what you pay for a ticket anyway

[1:30:47] you get entered into the raffle

[1:30:48] and you will get uh... if you win we're gonna pick out three people to get

[1:30:53] prize packs of some flop house merch

[1:30:56] that uh... was to be our touring merch we don't know when we're gonna tour

[1:30:59] because the pandemic but uh... you can have it early

[1:31:02] if you win and this is new merch this is merch that has not been sold on flop house tours

[1:31:06] before all new never been beautiful merch

[1:31:09] never been sold to anyone before so that's

[1:31:12] today currently collecting dust in my basement oh yeah it's gonna be real good

[1:31:16] and dusty so that's saturday june sixth at six p m pacific nine p m eastern

[1:31:23] you wanna hear us talk about howard the duck yes you do are we gonna have

[1:31:26] presentations beforehand like at a live show you betcha we're going to with

[1:31:29] slides and everything that's gonna be at youtube dot com slash c slash the flop

[1:31:34] house podcast or if you don't remember all that from information just go to the

[1:31:38] flop house podcast dot com or our facebook page to find out the

[1:31:41] information uh... and we'll be explaining more about the charity stuff during the

[1:31:45] show itself uh... just remember if you go to the youtube page and you don't see

[1:31:49] it refresh the page and the video should come up that's a little tip

[1:31:52] from a pro that's right a professional youtube watcher i do want to say you

[1:31:57] called it george lucas' howard the duck i want to make it clear that lucas

[1:32:00] produced howard the duck

[1:32:02] it was of course directed by willard heok

[1:32:05] who wrote

[1:32:06] american graffiti and more american graffiti

[1:32:08] uh... temple of doom

[1:32:10] uh... radio land murders

[1:32:13] he also wrote and directed uh... best defense the movie where

[1:32:17] uh... eddie murphy

[1:32:20] was added after bad test screenings to a uh... uh... deadly more comedy

[1:32:25] about uh... a defense contractor

[1:32:28] uh... and howard the duck looks to have ended his directing career that is his

[1:32:32] last directing

[1:32:33] credit so nobody right and george lucas notoriously hands-off when he produces

[1:32:38] things i'm sure he just slapped his name on it and let the director do it

[1:32:42] i just want willard heok to get the uh... credit he deserves

[1:32:48] so uh... that's our show then what we do next on this day uh... next we uh...

[1:32:54] answer letters from listeners

[1:32:56] or just read them hey

[1:32:58] hey send us a letter maybe with a clone in it send in the clones dot com

[1:33:04] uh... this first letter is i can see i can see jordan marking time codes in her

[1:33:08] head cutting all of those

[1:33:11] yeah should i just be should i be clapping should i be clapping jordan

[1:33:15] she's wielding her power with an iron fist

[1:33:18] uh...

[1:33:20] so gus last name withheld

[1:33:22] rights that's a stamp

[1:33:24] hey peaches long-time listener first-time writer i'm in my early

[1:33:28] twenties and i've

[1:33:29] i've been frequently lost

[1:33:31] when it comes to the

[1:33:32] references used on your show

[1:33:34] years of listening and relisting to the podcast have made it that way hold on

[1:33:38] this early twenties guys and hipster raffles the gents have been kept for

[1:33:42] well i don't think that's all our time here at elliott

[1:33:47] if you're a true aficionado of uh... vict

[1:33:51] victoriana maybe you'll uh...

[1:33:54] uh... i'm in my early twenties and i'm frequently lost when it comes to the

[1:33:57] references used on the show

[1:33:59] years of listening and relisting to the podcast have made it feel like i have

[1:34:02] watched on the frequently referenced films just through osmosis

[1:34:06] but i've actually sought out some movies because of how often they come up on the

[1:34:09] show

[1:34:10] i'm wondering what you all would include a flop house essentials list a list of

[1:34:15] movies

[1:34:15] television or other media

[1:34:18] that are frequently referenced or just a good starting point for understanding

[1:34:21] your humor

[1:34:22] some examples that come to mind are robocop

[1:34:25] nightcourt and the road warrior keep flopping in the free world gus

[1:34:29] uh... well you know

[1:34:31] uh...

[1:34:32] ducktales comes to mind of course the classic

[1:34:35] ducktales the cartoon part of the

[1:34:38] uh... new wave of disney uh... television

[1:34:41] uh... cartoons

[1:34:43] uh... the disney afternoon based on the works of carl barks

[1:34:46] who i recommend you seek out

[1:34:49] uh... what else i don't know are there any movies that are essential to

[1:34:54] understanding them

[1:34:56] things i like

[1:34:58] won't talk about

[1:34:59] any movie individually that often

[1:35:02] yeah i don't know this is a tough one

[1:35:05] uh... what was castle freak i would recommend watching castle freak watch

[1:35:09] the special edition that has all the scenes not this one that most people

[1:35:12] watched

[1:35:14] uh... castle freak director by stewart gordon

[1:35:16] r.i.p.

[1:35:17] a king uh... colombo maybe what do we get out

[1:35:21] uh... i think you can go watch

[1:35:22] uh... all that this is a sixty minutes to see any random

[1:35:25] uh... and i guess watch

[1:35:27] ten cash for uh... personal interest alone

[1:35:30] and i guess watch uh...

[1:35:32] i don't know

[1:35:33] uh...

[1:35:34] tango and cash is a good one

[1:35:36] that's basically sums up everything we like about movies

[1:35:40] yeah exactly i think so

[1:35:42] uh... i don't know i think that it's here's here's what i would say much as

[1:35:45] when i was a a lad and i was watching mystery science theater

[1:35:47] and i didn't understand some of their references i'd just looked up

[1:35:50] uh... did some research and back then i'd use books not the internet to find

[1:35:54] out what that thing was and i watched it so just kind of like don't look for a quick

[1:35:58] quick uh... solution

[1:35:59] pick up when a reference is particularly intriguing to you be like i need to find

[1:36:02] out what that means

[1:36:03] sometimes i don't think it's just it's i mean sometimes it's an ad jingle from

[1:36:07] when we were kids and it will be worth looking at save some time and don't you

[1:36:10] know this exercise

[1:36:12] has made me feel almost older than anything else but uh...

[1:36:16] to doubt what that day and that says that says more about your physical being

[1:36:19] that any kind of exercise like this made you feel so old you know jordan i'm led

[1:36:22] to believe that you have listened to the show before is there any uh...

[1:36:26] because they reference you find that we make

[1:36:28] a lot

[1:36:29] that is baffling

[1:36:31] uh... i'm not baffled by any of the references i've been uh... listening to

[1:36:35] the show for much longer than i've been on as an associate producer so i think

[1:36:40] yeah your advice to you know google is your friend if you if it's

[1:36:43] sounds like a

[1:36:45] something cool i would definitely look it up and maybe

[1:36:48] dig into randy newman's back catalog i don't know

[1:36:51] is there was there ever a time was there ever a time you remember listening to the

[1:36:54] show and you were like what are they talking about you used to talk about

[1:36:57] theater a lot more of course now you know no one can really go out

[1:37:01] and see a show on broadway but i definitely remember in the

[1:37:04] in the before times elliot talking about

[1:37:06] different stage plays that i i had never heard of before

[1:37:10] that's also that's that's also a consequence of my having children and

[1:37:13] never getting to go to the theater

[1:37:15] i used to see so many shows so many amazing shows and yet what was the last

[1:37:19] the last play i saw

[1:37:21] i don't even remember

[1:37:23] maybe i never saw a play

[1:37:24] maybe i dreamed it all a beautiful theater dream

[1:37:27] mhm

[1:37:28] okay uh... show on the way it was matilda

[1:37:33] okay i saw that you have a musical

[1:37:35] uh...

[1:37:36] uh...

[1:37:37] uh... and it's and you're talking about the stage play not not the book right

[1:37:41] no no i saw the book sitting on a stage

[1:37:44] that that doesn't answer that's not a stage play that's all outside the last

[1:37:47] one i saw was probably then twelfth night

[1:37:50] the book

[1:37:51] sitting on a stage yeah maybe it was hamilton by ron churnow it was sitting on a stage

[1:37:56] oh man these just keep being books

[1:37:59] uh... i gotta look back to find when there was one that was actual person

[1:38:03] people

[1:38:04] oh it was probably the adams family

[1:38:07] book of charles adams cartoons

[1:38:10] okay no you know what i think you know i think it was wicked

[1:38:14] the book

[1:38:15] sure these were all books fun home yeah that's another book

[1:38:19] okay

[1:38:20] yep it is

[1:38:24] hey this is a fun game for listeners uh... if you can think of a play that isn't a book

[1:38:29] i don't know go tell it to the marines you know i think you know the last one i saw

[1:38:33] was probably like the monster squad write in a note to the marines

[1:38:36] yeah i'll come to your town

[1:38:39] i think it was probably tootsie

[1:38:41] the screenplay the screenplay of tootsie was sitting on the stage

[1:38:44] okay um... this next scene

[1:38:47] this next scene you know what oh it was it was blue man group

[1:38:50] oh wow where's this going the book

[1:38:55] okay uh...

[1:38:56] this next letter is from adam last name withheld who writes

[1:39:01] adam triver dear flop house i started a podcast about the tv show home

[1:39:05] improvement called home in podcast but now everyone keeps asking me to hang

[1:39:09] their shelves slash refinish their hardwood floor and assuming i'm a

[1:39:12] conservative what should i do question mark exclamation point

[1:39:17] i can't do the voice i tried to do the grunt

[1:39:19] no i'll try it again do the caveman grunt or whatever it is

[1:39:27] that's pretty good

[1:39:29] not bad

[1:39:30] i got one

[1:39:31] more power

[1:39:34] okay what about this

[1:39:36] i'm the baby gotta love me

[1:39:38] oh yeah you did that

[1:39:43] hey do you guys remember when the youngest son got like super into new metal

[1:39:46] that was really awesome near the end of the run he turned really goth so uh... so

[1:39:49] the problem with the that the writer is having is that their home improvement

[1:39:53] podcast people think that he is an actual home improvement guy

[1:39:57] or you think he's tim allen because who else would want to do a podcast

[1:40:00] cast about home improvement or i mean it's like that sopranos podcast

[1:40:04] yeah i i i should like

[1:40:06] uh... this is a obviously a podcast driven a large part by nostalgia

[1:40:11] and uh... the problem he seems to be running into is that's that's about is

[1:40:14] turned out to be uh...

[1:40:17] and not a great

[1:40:18] uh... human

[1:40:20] yeah with the tim allen who went to jail for cocaine sales

[1:40:24] before he was a television star?

[1:40:26] No, the tim allen that ratted out all of his friends

[1:40:31] uh... okay well

[1:40:33] you know that's the one that dan liked, right?

[1:40:35] what, home improvement? that tim allen? yeah i think so

[1:40:38] uh... you know the only one i like is the disembodied voice that does Buzz Lightyear

[1:40:43] yeah when galaxy quest came out dan was like uh... just do some commercials

[1:40:47] about how great michigan is that's what i want to hear from you

[1:40:52] when galaxy quest came out dan's like

[1:40:54] what's up with all these lame actors that aren't tim allen that are in this

[1:40:58] movie

[1:41:00] some sort of rick man, what is this all about? clone them in some sort of

[1:41:03] gemini man

[1:41:05] uh... situation

[1:41:07] they could all be played by tim allen

[1:41:08] in the future all restaurants are tim allen

[1:41:11] anyway

[1:41:12] that's a reference, look that one up. that's a demolition man reference that you've

[1:41:16] rolled into a gemini man reference like a turducken of references

[1:41:21] it's a reference to tim allen being in galaxy quest in the future of

[1:41:25] demolition man

[1:41:27] but he's also a restaurant anyway

[1:41:29] with some gemini man sprinkled on it, interesting

[1:41:33] last letters from jen last name withheld, it's very short

[1:41:36] uh... this is

[1:41:37] regarding canadians having sex i believe

[1:41:40] we asked whether they did it

[1:41:43] and uh... when was that? what possible context? i have no idea

[1:41:47] jen last name withheld

[1:41:49] caravan mountie maybe

[1:41:51] uh... and jen says absolutely not

[1:41:53] so there you have it, canadians

[1:41:55] do not have sex

[1:41:57] okay uh... somebody update that wikipedia article

[1:42:01] uh... drake is a canadian and i'm pretty sure drake fucks

[1:42:05] uh... okay well i don't know this person knows everybody in canada

[1:42:10] drake seems pretty busy cheering at women's basketball games, i don't think he has time for that sort of thing

[1:42:14] rick moranis has kids so i guess

[1:42:18] jordan your eye roll when i brought up drake's wnba fandom was fantastic

[1:42:24] uh...

[1:42:26] well that's letters

[1:42:27] that's our segment called letters

[1:42:29] i guess we need to ask a question, we need to ask does leslie nielsen have any kids

[1:42:33] that's the only way we'll find out for sure if canadians have sex or not

[1:42:37] uh... hey let's recommend movies movies that you can watch

[1:42:41] if you like instead of jim and i man or in addition to, we don't control you

[1:42:45] uh...

[1:42:47] what am i going to recommend?

[1:42:48] i watched uh...

[1:42:50] i'll tell you dan, you were going to recommend galaxy quest but they're all tim allen

[1:42:53] it's a pretty good movie galaxy quest uh...

[1:42:57] yeah of course it is

[1:42:58] no yeah no objections there uh... let's see

[1:43:00] oh i remember

[1:43:02] so i watched uh...

[1:43:04] so raising cain is a brian de palma movie that uh... was greeted with great

[1:43:08] derision

[1:43:10] uh... when it came out and i remember it's also uh... it's also the

[1:43:14] inspiration for a fast food chain that sells chicken fingers

[1:43:18] uh... i watched it

[1:43:21] i think it's localized in like kentucky maybe?

[1:43:26] i watched this movie also as a uh... young man and i thought it was bonkers

[1:43:32] and kind of fun

[1:43:34] uh... but i could see definitely why it was uh...

[1:43:38] disliked

[1:43:39] and then

[1:43:40] recently

[1:43:41] there was a fan edit i believe it was

[1:43:45] that re-sequenced the movie

[1:43:47] uh... per brian de palma's original

[1:43:51] script and original intention for the movie the movie had been re-sequenced by

[1:43:56] the uh... studio

[1:43:58] and he liked it so much that it became the official director's cut

[1:44:02] and i watched that and the movie is still

[1:44:05] uh... a very strange overheated

[1:44:09] movie but

[1:44:10] maybe

[1:44:11] a good version of that like my favorite like he's a very divisive director and i

[1:44:16] don't understand if you don't like him

[1:44:19] and there's some

[1:44:20] stuff that is uh... gross in his

[1:44:23] his filmography but

[1:44:25] i like him the best when he's

[1:44:28] taking absolutely absurd thriller plots and raising them

[1:44:33] raising the absurdity through like pure cinema

[1:44:36] and this movie has a crazy uh... climax that plays on

[1:44:42] three uh...

[1:44:44] planes of height

[1:44:46] simultaneously like you see

[1:44:48] what's going on on three levels and uh...

[1:44:51] just as like uh... an exercise in

[1:44:55] filmmaking it's quite something to see so uh... that's my recommendation see the

[1:45:00] recut version if you can of Raising Cain

[1:45:04] okay

[1:45:06] that that movie was on uh... that movie was on like

[1:45:10] when i first moved to a new house when i was a kid it was like the first time i

[1:45:13] remember moving to a new house

[1:45:15] uh... my parents got a satellite dish so we never had cable or anything and then

[1:45:18] all of a sudden we had a satellite dish which had like everything

[1:45:21] it had like movie channels that would play the same movie

[1:45:24] over and over and over and over all day long

[1:45:27] and Raising Cain was one of the first uh... movies that i saw i watched on one

[1:45:31] of those things so i remember seeing a lot but

[1:45:34] since it was constantly cycling

[1:45:37] i like never knew where it began or ended it was just always Raising Cain

[1:45:41] well also the movie like jumps around in chronology uh... and does weird dream

[1:45:45] sequences so it would be very baffling if you saw it that way

[1:45:49] it made watching Third Rock from the Sun very strange for me because i was so

[1:45:53] used to Raising Cain as John Lithgow's main credit

[1:45:56] i'm gonna recommend a movie called Extraordinary

[1:45:59] it's a spooky comedy

[1:46:02] uh...

[1:46:04] uh... starring Maeve Higgins and featuring a bunch of other people in

[1:46:08] Ireland

[1:46:09] uh... it's about some uh... ghost hunters and uh... evil uh... wizards and

[1:46:15] it's funny

[1:46:16] and Will Forte's funny

[1:46:17] and uh... it manages to be like

[1:46:20] sweet but not overly saccharine

[1:46:23] uh... it's funny and weird and

[1:46:26] uh... though it does have a fair amount of special effects i don't feel like

[1:46:29] sometimes uh... uh... special effects driven comedy can be

[1:46:33] uh...

[1:46:34] i don't know like

[1:46:35] it'll

[1:46:35] it'll be less funny for me but uh... this one worked i liked it

[1:46:39] i'd recommend it

[1:46:40] Extraordinary

[1:46:42] uh... okay Jordan what have you got

[1:46:45] so i wanted to recommend a black film because uh... this week has been really

[1:46:48] trying for the african-american community in america and i wanted to

[1:46:52] recommend uh... 1991's Daughters of the Dust from director Julie Dash

[1:46:58] it's uh... beautifully shot beautifully directed

[1:47:01] uh... i really like it i think that uh... you'll if you haven't watched it

[1:47:05] before it's uh... great film to kind of just decompress to

[1:47:10] and uh... if you've seen it before it's a great film to return to

[1:47:13] and uh... yeah i think it's great

[1:47:15] Daughters of the Dust

[1:47:18] Daughters of the Dust is kind of like a dream vision movie

[1:47:22] it's like a dream vision and it has a quality to it and one thing that i really

[1:47:25] like about it is it's just black people

[1:47:28] in a time period that we don't really

[1:47:30] uh... look at from that angle in in you know american entertainment

[1:47:34] just black people minding their black ass business i love it

[1:47:39] put it on the poster

[1:47:44] i'm going to recommend a uh... japanese movie that's right guys we're

[1:47:48] continuing my strain lately of rediscovering japanese cinema

[1:47:51] uh... i saw a recent movie called Funeral Parade of Roses

[1:47:55] it's from 1969 it's directed by Toshio Matsumoto

[1:47:58] and stars the performer known as Peter

[1:48:00] who uh... you may know as the fool character from Ron

[1:48:04] Akira Kurosawa's King Lear story

[1:48:06] Funeral Parade of Roses it's kind of like

[1:48:09] part retelling of Oedipus Rex part retelling of All About Eve

[1:48:13] part documentary about the nineteen sixties

[1:48:16] what they call in japan the gay boy subculture

[1:48:19] which was kind of the very early stirrings in japan of

[1:48:22] uh... of

[1:48:23] transsexualism and homosexual identity over there

[1:48:27] and part kind of

[1:48:29] Jean-Luc Godard style new wave collage of styles

[1:48:32] and it's in some ways about the way that

[1:48:34] left wing art

[1:48:35] and this kind of new

[1:48:38] for japan kind of like

[1:48:39] exploration of

[1:48:41] uh...

[1:48:42] sexual polarity

[1:48:43] was merging together but it's also kind of a suspense movie where you have to

[1:48:47] puzzle out the back story

[1:48:49] and it's just really

[1:48:51] interestingly put together and the photography is great like the images are

[1:48:54] super sharp and exciting

[1:48:55] and there's all sorts of formal tricks with editing and things like that

[1:48:58] uh...

[1:48:59] that are real neat

[1:49:00] and

[1:49:01] it's just uh... like a real it's just a really unique movie

[1:49:05] funeral parade of roses a movie that is

[1:49:07] a real experience i'll tell you that

[1:49:11] wonderful

[1:49:12] four movies

[1:49:15] four movies

[1:49:16] four action blockbusters all on one dvd at your local video store

[1:49:23] Raising Cane Extraordinary Daughters of the Dust and Funeral Parade of Roses

[1:49:29] now available in one set

[1:49:31] Fled

[1:49:32] Chill Factor

[1:49:34] uh...

[1:49:36] Guaranteed Entertainment

[1:49:40] they would have those dvds where it would be like chill factor

[1:49:43] hard target

[1:49:44] the fugitive and I'd be like how did the fugitive get thrown onto this thing

[1:49:49] that's what you call a loss leader Elliot

[1:49:51] yeah I guess so

[1:49:54] Back to the Future

[1:49:55] uh... Losing It

[1:49:57] screwballs

[1:49:58] like why did they hit why

[1:50:00] Well, that's our show. Hey, guys. Great to be here. Great to see you. Jordan, thanks

[1:50:12] for being here. Jordan, thanks so much for being here. I want to apologize in person

[1:50:17] and on the podcast for the way we consistently forget to credit you at the end of the podcast.

[1:50:23] But we hope you enjoyed your time as a member of the Peaches on camera microphone, as opposed

[1:50:29] to when you're usually just backstage. This has been so much fun. Thanks, guys. Hey, one

[1:50:36] last appeal to watch us on the live stream tonight. And even if you don't, you know,

[1:50:42] donate to a charity. Now's the time. But thank you for listening. We'll be back soon. For

[1:50:49] the Flophouse. I've been Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. I'm Elliot Kalin. And I'm Jordan

[1:50:54] Kalin. Bye. Bye. So Jordan, how many of those send in the clone to think you're gonna cut

[1:51:13] all of them. Thank you. All right. It's good to have somebody on our team.

[1:51:24] Maximum fun.org comedy and culture artist owned audience supported

Ep. #314 - Gemini Man

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