FH Mini 116 – The Definitive Action Hero Ranking Pt. 1

[0:00] Hi, floppers, before we start this episode,

[0:02] I just wanted to remind you,

[0:03] we are in the middle of Flop TV season two.

[0:06] That's right, the one hour internet televised

[0:08] Flop House TV show is here for you

[0:11] the first Saturday of every month through February.

[0:14] Just go to theflophouse.simpletics.com

[0:17] and get your tickets or season pass

[0:19] for this all new Flop House TV stuff.

[0:22] We're covering movies we've never covered before,

[0:24] we've got video segments, it's amazing.

[0:27] Just go to theflophouse.simpletics.com

[0:29] for Flop TV season two.

[0:31] This time, it's personal.

[0:33] Hey, hey, this is a Flop House mini.

[0:40] My name is Stuart Wellington.

[0:41] I'm one of the hosts of the Flop House podcast

[0:43] and I'm joined by my two co-hosts.

[0:45] They are Dan McCoy and Elliot Kalen.

[0:48] Hey, thanks so much for joining me guys.

[0:50] Now, you're welcome.

[0:51] Here at the Flop House podcast,

[0:52] we normally watch a bad movie and talk about it.

[0:54] But on the off weeks for a Flop House mini,

[0:56] we kind of do whatever we want.

[0:57] We do silly games, we goof around, we have a lot of laughs.

[1:01] This week, we're deadly serious this week.

[1:04] Now, I do have to preface this

[1:06] with the fact that I wrote this mini

[1:08] and the sequel to this mini

[1:11] before the results of the 2024 election.

[1:16] So, and we're recording it afterwards.

[1:19] I'm gonna let people do their own research into that.

[1:22] That's what Dan told me.

[1:23] No.

[1:24] Something tells me for the next four years,

[1:25] we're all gonna be doing our own research

[1:28] about a lot of things.

[1:29] Yeah.

[1:29] So, that may, so I wrote this before,

[1:33] but we're recording it after.

[1:34] So that may color some of the content.

[1:36] Interesting, okay.

[1:38] Let's find out.

[1:39] So, as I said-

[1:39] Like a blast from a more innocent time.

[1:42] Uh-huh, so as I said,

[1:44] this is a deadly serious episode of the podcast.

[1:46] Deadly is important because what we are talking is

[1:48] we are doing the Flop House official rankings

[1:52] of the best action heroes in cinema history.

[1:57] Now, in order to qualify, just to be in the running,

[2:00] these are out of the top 20,

[2:02] you need to be a character that has been in multiple movies

[2:06] with one specific exception that is Flop House related,

[2:10] and I think it's important.

[2:11] Very interesting.

[2:12] And no character can be represented more than once,

[2:15] or no actor can be represented more than once on this list.

[2:18] There is one like kind of edge case that you can argue,

[2:21] but we don't have to get into that.

[2:23] So both the transporter and Hobbes can't be on the list?

[2:27] That's the one specific thing is that,

[2:30] well, we'll get to it.

[2:31] Oh, okay.

[2:32] That's a good, Eliot read my brain.

[2:34] Wow.

[2:35] But Eliot scooped out my gray matter and ate it,

[2:38] and then knew what I was thinking.

[2:39] Nibbled it on up, yeah.

[2:40] To clarify though, a character,

[2:43] a character can be played by different actors.

[2:45] Yes.

[2:46] But different actors cannot be represented more than once,

[2:48] other than this mystery case.

[2:50] Except for one edge.

[2:52] Well, Eliot nailed it.

[2:53] The one edge case is that Jason Statham

[2:56] could theoretically be considered to be in this list twice.

[2:59] Theoretically, okay.

[3:00] Theoretically.

[3:01] Scientists say.

[3:02] It's been hypothesized.

[3:04] As I said, there are 20 on here.

[3:07] That's a lot.

[3:08] So we're gonna have to split this mini into two,

[3:10] otherwise this would be a maxi.

[3:12] We're just doing a mini.

[3:13] It's its own franchise.

[3:14] Yep.

[3:15] So we're just gonna, this is just a mini.

[3:16] So we're gonna split into two

[3:18] with the official rankings at the end.

[3:19] Steven Seagal is the maxi.

[3:23] So there are gonna be some,

[3:24] so this list of 20 was compiled by me,

[3:26] Stuart Wellington, movie expert, okay?

[3:29] If somebody is not included in here,

[3:32] it is either my choice,

[3:33] or if it's something that actually upsets you,

[3:35] it was Dan's choice.

[3:39] I'll just take it.

[3:40] Once again, Eliot comes out smelling like a rose.

[3:44] So we are gonna do the first 10,

[3:45] and then next mini we're gonna do the second 10,

[3:48] and then there's gonna be a final resolution.

[3:50] Now, eagle-eared listeners will say,

[3:53] hey, this sounds-

[3:54] Eagles are known for their ears?

[3:55] Mm-hmm, they are.

[3:58] These eagle-eared listeners will be like,

[3:59] hey, this sounds a lot like the top 20 horror villains

[4:03] of all time list that you did before.

[4:05] It is similar,

[4:06] except there is going to be one specific difference,

[4:08] which is I am not putting in my rankings.

[4:11] I've already written my rankings down

[4:13] on a secret ballot, okay?

[4:16] So we won't know the final tally

[4:19] until the very end of the second episode.

[4:21] Seems like subverting democracy is a trend these days.

[4:24] That's me.

[4:26] It's mainly to keep our listeners in suspense.

[4:28] Yeah, okay.

[4:29] Okay, so again,

[4:32] after we determine the hero,

[4:35] or heroine, or heroes in question,

[4:38] we will then judge them on three categories.

[4:42] Radness, how cool they are, how fun they are,

[4:46] how their clothes look,

[4:47] they have quippy one-liners, whatever.

[4:49] Attitude, bad attitude, you know.

[4:51] Second is badness.

[4:52] That's how tough they are, what their body count is,

[4:55] how effective they are at being an action hero.

[4:58] Yeah, but it doesn't contain bad attitude,

[5:00] which is part of radness.

[5:01] Which is part of radness.

[5:02] Thank you.

[5:03] Yeah, that's a very important,

[5:04] thank you for asking that important question.

[5:06] Then the final third category, of course, Lucky Dip.

[5:09] That's where we randomly roll

[5:11] and the game gets a little bit crazy.

[5:15] Eagle-eared listeners will remember

[5:17] in the horror movie, Villains 1,

[5:19] it led to some kind of interesting results.

[5:24] It really sank the xenomorph.

[5:25] Yeah, the xenomorph, yeah, yeah.

[5:26] Xenomorph seemed to be headed for number one

[5:27] until that Lucky Dip turned into an unlucky slip

[5:30] for the alien.

[5:31] Thank you.

[5:32] I was looking at the Flop House subreddit

[5:33] and some listeners were very upset about the results there.

[5:37] I think one zonomorph was very unhappy.

[5:42] People on Reddit were upset?

[5:44] Yeah.

[5:46] Don't worry, Dan,

[5:47] they're gonna be a lot happier from now on.

[5:47] Dan.

[5:48] Just kidding, they're never happy.

[5:50] Since Dan is our maniacal game master,

[5:52] he's going to be rolling the 20-sided die

[5:54] for these results.

[5:55] I'm gonna pass you the 20-sided die.

[5:57] I'm very excited, I have a job.

[5:58] Okay, so you have a job, Dan.

[6:00] So let's pick our first hero.

[6:03] That's an eight.

[6:04] Okay, this one's classic, okay?

[6:07] We got Jason Bourne.

[6:09] You might know him from the movies,

[6:11] The Bourne Identity and Supremacy.

[6:15] And the Ultimatum, right?

[6:16] The Bourne Ultimatum.

[6:17] And Ultimatum.

[6:18] But not the Bourne Legacy?

[6:19] That was a different guy, right?

[6:20] Or was it not called Legacy?

[6:21] It's a different actor.

[6:22] Is that still Jason Bourne?

[6:23] No, no, no, Legacy is a different character,

[6:25] a different actor.

[6:26] It's like a different character

[6:27] who was in the same program or something like that?

[6:29] Yeah, that would make sense.

[6:30] Okay, so it should've been called the Bourne Classmate.

[6:34] Yeah.

[6:35] Okay, so speaking of the Bourne Classmate,

[6:37] we're talking about Jason Bourne here.

[6:40] The Bourne Identity kind of changed

[6:43] the look of action movies for a while,

[6:45] at least in big budget action movies.

[6:47] So where do we rank old Jason Bourne in radness?

[6:54] Here's the thing, he has a certain amount of,

[6:56] for me, he has a certain amount of radness

[6:57] by being a man of mystery,

[7:00] a man of few contained action,

[7:05] but every action is important.

[7:07] But he's mostly not a cool action hero.

[7:13] His deal is like he is trying to figure out

[7:16] what his deal is, you know?

[7:18] And so-

[7:19] Aren't we all?

[7:20] Yeah, that's the thing.

[7:21] So I think I'm gonna-

[7:22] Ich bin ein Bourne Linner.

[7:24] Yeah, well, Alex edited that out, it was too funny.

[7:28] As much as I like three out of four

[7:31] of the Jason Bourne movies,

[7:34] I will give him only a three in this particular category.

[7:37] Okay, we got a three from Dan.

[7:40] Where's he ranking for you, Elliot?

[7:43] I thought I was gonna be the harsh one.

[7:45] I was gonna give him a four for a similar reason,

[7:47] that I feel like it's a cool premise for a movie,

[7:52] but he as a character is not a cool character.

[7:54] I don't think people fantasize about not knowing your past

[7:58] and being chased for no reason

[8:01] that you can fully understand.

[8:02] People fantasize about discovering

[8:04] that they're actually killing machines, but-

[8:05] Yeah, I mean, I kind of fantasize

[8:07] about not having regrets or anything.

[8:10] No, but he's full of regrets.

[8:11] That's true.

[8:12] He's a very unhappy character,

[8:13] and I feel like John Wick,

[8:15] who I'm sure we'll be talking about at some point,

[8:17] is unhappy, but in a romantic,

[8:19] almost like German romanticism way.

[8:23] I feel like Jason Bourne is unhappy

[8:24] in a like too real, too real unhappy way.

[8:27] So I'm gonna give him a four, actually.

[8:28] Okay, so that's-

[8:29] Because he can kill someone with a,

[8:30] I mean, I guess this goes into badness, though.

[8:32] He can hurt someone with a rolled up magazine.

[8:35] I forgot about that.

[8:36] Yeah.

[8:37] Was that someone, a spider, or maybe a dog?

[8:41] I mean, we all have that.

[8:42] We can all hurt, yeah, a spider with a rolled up magazine.

[8:45] It was a puppy dog's nose

[8:46] after it had gone on the carpet, yeah.

[8:49] Okay, speaking of that, let's talk about badness.

[8:51] How much of a killer is this guy?

[8:53] How bad is this dude?

[8:55] Yeah, I'm gonna, he is a bad dude.

[8:57] This is where he is gonna excel,

[8:59] because he has so many skills

[9:03] that he doesn't even know how many skills he has.

[9:07] I'm gonna give him-

[9:07] He doesn't even have a particular set of skills.

[9:08] He might have all the skills.

[9:10] Yeah, I'm gonna give him a nine in this.

[9:12] I'm gonna go high.

[9:13] Oh, good, that's a big score.

[9:14] I'm gonna do the same.

[9:16] I'm also gonna give him a nine

[9:17] for that same reason that he is unstoppable.

[9:19] You know, he's just a, his body count is not enormous,

[9:23] but it's the fact that his, but his ratio,

[9:26] his hitting average is very high.

[9:28] Yeah, he's an action shark.

[9:30] He never stops.

[9:31] And not a lot of collateral damage.

[9:33] No, that's true.

[9:34] That's a good point.

[9:35] A lot of these guys, they are blowing up buildings.

[9:38] There's a lot of bystanders get hurt.

[9:39] No, he is targeted.

[9:40] So if anything, he's the most community-minded

[9:45] of the action heroes, maybe.

[9:47] Yeah, I mean, he's, yeah,

[9:49] he's an efficient killing machine.

[9:50] In a way, like, a big part of his,

[9:53] his like radness comes from the way

[9:55] other people talk about him.

[9:56] Yes.

[9:57] Oh, fuck this dude.

[9:58] Yeah.

[9:59] Okay.

[10:00] It reminds me of, sorry, just to slow it down for a second unnecessarily,

[10:03] it reminds me of a story that Orson Welles tells in the book,

[10:05] This is Orson Welles, where he talks about this play called Mr. Wong or Mr. Woo or something like that,

[10:10] and he goes, it's the greatest part you can have,

[10:12] because the whole first act, everyone's just going,

[10:14] so have you heard about this character? Have you heard about this mysterious gentleman?

[10:17] Where do you think he is right now?

[10:18] And at the end they say, Mr. Woo is arriving,

[10:21] and there's a big entrance with lots of drama,

[10:25] and the actor walks in, curtain, first act over,

[10:28] and he says it's the greatest role, because you get huge applause for doing nothing in the first act.

[10:33] It's like Fortinbras, right guys?

[10:36] Yeah, yeah, Fortinbras is just like that.

[10:37] When he shows up, the audience goes nuts, because they've been hearing about him all play.

[10:41] This guy!

[10:43] Oh shit, he's here?

[10:45] Dan, somebody wake up!

[10:48] I mean, I have to say, I played, so in college,

[10:52] I played Picasso in the play Picasso at the Lapin Agile,

[10:55] which is a 90 minute play.

[10:56] Similarly great role for the same reason, yeah.

[10:58] He comes in about a third of the way through maybe,

[11:01] and prior to that, everyone's talking about what a real cool fuck machine this Picasso is,

[11:06] and it made me feel like I was never going to be able to pull this off when I made the entrance.

[11:11] No, you did it, you did it.

[11:13] If only you got to play Elvis in that play.

[11:15] Elvis is the real plum role, because he's barely in it.

[11:17] Yeah, he's good.

[11:18] So Dan, why don't you roll for our lucky dip category?

[11:21] Sure.

[11:22] This might make or break old JCB.

[11:24] It's a 17.

[11:26] 17!

[11:27] Okay.

[11:28] This, man, this is a fucking good roll for him.

[11:31] How likely, on a scale of 1 to 10, is Jason Bourne going to win gold in an Olympic category?

[11:39] That's a 10, right?

[11:41] Yeah, that's a 10.

[11:42] Especially if it's like biathlon or something.

[11:44] He nailed it.

[11:45] Even fucking, I bet if he fucking did breakdancing, he would kill it.

[11:48] For sure, for sure.

[11:50] I didn't even know I could do this.

[11:51] Yeah, yeah, like put on like a fucking Aphex Twins song or whatever.

[11:54] What was the fucking, wasn't that like the fucking Chemical Brothers or some shit?

[11:58] Who was making all the music for those movies?

[12:00] Aphex Twins?

[12:05] Alex, throw on some Aphex Twins sounds.

[12:08] But not so much that we have to pay for it.

[12:10] No, no, please don't.

[12:12] Okay, yeah.

[12:13] All the breakdancers throwing on Depeche Mode and stuff like that and just going nuts to it.

[12:18] Yeah.

[12:20] I mean, okay, so 10s across the board.

[12:22] Man, he crushed it.

[12:23] Okay.

[12:24] JCB, not bad.

[12:25] He's going to be way higher in the rankings than I would actually put him if you asked me to rank my favorite action heroes.

[12:30] Okay.

[12:31] That's fine.

[12:32] Well, maybe, more than anything, I mean, obviously this is Deadly Series.

[12:36] We need to come up with a firm ranking.

[12:38] Yes.

[12:39] But it's really like it's kind of here to make you question and think about things.

[12:43] Yeah.

[12:44] Think about cinema.

[12:45] The process.

[12:46] Mr. Willis, our next action hero.

[12:50] Oh, that's another 8, so I've got to re-roll.

[12:52] That's fine.

[12:53] I will go up to the next one.

[12:54] Okay.

[12:55] Guys, Mr. Indiana Jones.

[12:58] Oh, man.

[12:59] Wow.

[13:00] Indiana Jones.

[13:01] My guy.

[13:02] He's a guy.

[13:03] Oh, boy.

[13:04] He is that.

[13:05] Boy, is he ever a man.

[13:07] You might know him from such movies as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Temple of Doom, Crystal Skull,

[13:14] The Last Crusade, and Dial-O-Destiny.

[13:17] I still haven't seen that one.

[13:19] Dial-O-Destiny.

[13:20] I haven't seen that one yet.

[13:21] He was also in a bunch of comics, stuff like that.

[13:24] A TV show.

[13:25] The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

[13:27] Own TV show.

[13:28] Okay.

[13:29] So, yeah, we got some movies here.

[13:31] What do we think?

[13:32] Where does he fall under radness?

[13:34] I think he's going to do pretty well on that.

[13:37] Yeah, I think so.

[13:38] Do you want me to go first or no?

[13:41] You go first this time because I want to see where you're going to go.

[13:44] He gets a 10.

[13:45] Come on.

[13:46] He can wield a whip.

[13:47] He can punch a Nazi.

[13:48] He can also teach an archaeology class.

[13:50] This guy, because you know what the sexiest part of a guy is?

[13:53] His brain.

[13:54] And also, if you look like Harrison Ford, double sexy.

[13:56] Yeah.

[13:57] Yeah.

[13:58] I think you've convinced me to go actually a little higher than I was going to go on

[14:01] radness.

[14:02] Here's what I thought initially was going to take the radness down, is that one of the

[14:08] things I like about Indiana Jones is he's not like an unstoppable machine.

[14:13] He is not.

[14:14] I guess that's bad.

[14:15] I think that falls under badness.

[14:16] That's true.

[14:17] He's like Beyonce.

[14:18] He's showing you the work.

[14:19] He does show you the work.

[14:20] He's showing you that he's working hard.

[14:21] Yeah.

[14:22] If he gets hit, you can tell it hurt him.

[14:24] He gets tired.

[14:25] Like, some of the best moments are him being like, oh, God, I got to deal with this shit

[14:29] now.

[14:30] Like, so, but, you know, he's got the whip.

[14:34] He's got the hat.

[14:36] Cool hat.

[14:37] Leather jacket.

[14:38] Yeah.

[14:39] He's Harrison Ford.

[14:40] You can't do much better than that.

[14:41] I'm going to give him a nine.

[14:42] Ooh, big scores.

[14:43] Okay.

[14:44] Now, let's talk about badness.

[14:45] You got something.

[14:46] You got something that needs action.

[14:47] Are you going to call Indiana Jones?

[14:48] So, here's what I'm going to say about that, is this is going to be a hard one for me to

[14:49] parse because so often when we think action, we think fighting, and as a fighter, he is

[14:50] not great.

[14:51] I would give him like a five or even a four at times, but when you're thinking action

[14:52] in terms of action, he's not great.

[14:54] in terms of action, he's not great.

[15:06] in terms of stunts, then I would give him a nine.

[15:09] So I'm going to balance it out, and I'm going to say like a seven, I think, because the

[15:15] thing is, he's not super tough.

[15:17] He's just never – I mean, he's tough in that he can take punches, but he's not super

[15:20] tough in that – he's not Jack Reacher who's just grabbing people's heads and smashing

[15:24] them in his palms.

[15:25] You know what I'm saying?

[15:26] Yeah, yeah.

[15:27] Yeah, I – yeah, because he is like a bad penny, he always turns up, I will give him

[15:31] an eight.

[15:32] He is an energizer bunny of an action hero.

[15:36] Like part of the thing is like he is committed to doing what he's doing.

[15:41] Yeah, and he's got a pretty good hit rate.

[15:43] Yeah.

[15:44] I mean, I feel like all our – it's not like, oh, he won all his movies.

[15:51] This guy loses every single time.

[15:52] I mean, it's a mix.

[15:53] I think he is a guy who often – he is often the – as much as he has bad luck, he's often

[15:59] the recipient of good luck.

[16:01] When he's fighting that Nazi in Raiders of the Lost Ark, he doesn't beat that Nazi.

[16:06] The plane propeller beats that Nazi.

[16:07] Yeah.

[16:08] Like in Temple of Doom, there are a number of parts where it's like the environment

[16:14] is really helping him out in these – like in the beginning of Raiders, it's like he

[16:18] doesn't get that idol from Alfred Molina.

[16:21] Alfred Molina is killed by a bunch of spikes.

[16:24] He gets luck on his side.

[16:26] Well, that's what I was going to – similarly, like I would say that he has a good hit rate

[16:30] in that, yeah, he like survives and the villains don't.

[16:34] But like it's always kind of a mixed decision when it comes to like how it personally works

[16:38] out for Professor Henry Indiana Jones.

[16:42] If you see that first movie, again, not to just keep going to Raiders, but it's the

[16:45] best one.

[16:46] If you keep going to it, he does not defeat the villain.

[16:48] God defeats the villain at the end.

[16:49] Or rather, the angel of death does.

[16:51] Like it's – he's a guy who is often in the wrong place for a while and then ends

[16:55] up being in the right place at the exact right moment.

[16:57] So that's why he takes a hit on bad – but at the same time, if you need someone to jump

[17:01] across a chasm, he can usually do it.

[17:04] Yeah.

[17:05] He's one of your top guys.

[17:06] Yeah.

[17:07] Dan, give me a lucky dip roll for old Indiana Jones here.

[17:11] Sure.

[17:12] That's a five.

[17:13] Okay.

[17:14] Okay.

[17:15] Okay.

[17:16] All right, guys.

[17:17] On a scale of one to ten, you go out to brunch with a bunch of friends, including Indiana

[17:23] Jones.

[17:24] The waiter hands him the bill.

[17:26] How likely is he to be able to handle this complicated brunch tab?

[17:32] Here's where I feel like it's going to fall down a little bit.

[17:34] I think that he's a smart guy.

[17:39] He's a professor.

[17:40] So certainly the actual act is not going to flummox him, but I think that there's a certain

[17:50] amount of the actual Harrison Ford grumpiness in there, impatience, so I'm going to give

[17:55] him a six.

[17:56] I don't think he's going to want to do it.

[18:00] This is where you and I – we're thinking the same way, but we're coming to different

[18:02] conclusions.

[18:03] I'm going to give him a nine on this because I think he's going to look at it.

[18:07] He's going to start doing that math.

[18:08] He's used to doing some kinds of math because he has to calculate the age of various artifacts.

[18:12] He's going to get flummoxed, and he's going to go, screw it, and just throw down a bunch

[18:15] of money and say, let's get out of here.

[18:17] He's going to pay the bill rather than do the math, I think.

[18:19] He will cut the Gordian knot in a similar way that he shoots the swordsman is what you're

[18:24] saying.

[18:25] Yes, and do you want to be with the guy who's able to do the math or do you want to be with

[18:28] the guy who's going to pay for brunch because he doesn't want to do the math?

[18:31] That's a good point.

[18:32] Okay, doing well so far.

[18:35] Let's do our third hero, Dan, roll the die.

[18:41] That's a 13.

[18:42] 13.

[18:43] Uh-oh.

[18:44] We are in the John territory.

[18:45] It could be any number of Johns, yeah.

[18:50] There's many Johns, and we have the aforementioned John Wick, Mr. Keanu Reeves.

[18:56] You might know him from such movies as John Wick, John Wick 4, John Wick 3, John Wick

[19:02] 2.

[19:03] It's true.

[19:04] I do know him from all of them.

[19:06] That's the proper order to watch them in.

[19:09] John Wick, how does he rank in terms of radness?

[19:14] I mean, look, he's got to rank high in terms of radness.

[19:18] The only thing that cuts him down a little bit is there's a lot of sadness in there too.

[19:23] He's motivated by sadness, which slightly cuts the radness, but he looks so cool.

[19:28] He looks very cool.

[19:29] He's got the suit.

[19:30] He can do whatever.

[19:32] It's kind of like the beard and hair combo.

[19:35] It doesn't work on everybody, but it works for him.

[19:37] Sure works on a very handsome man like Keanu Reeves, yeah.

[19:39] I'm going to give him a nine for radness.

[19:42] I'm going to go a little lower.

[19:43] I'm going to give him a seven for radness because I think it's easy to mix up his radness

[19:47] and his badness, and I feel like the suit looks great.

[19:51] The whole look looks great, but personality-wise, again, he's not a guy I want to be.

[19:58] He's cool to me in that this guy's always going to be cool.

[20:00] But again, he's super sad all the time, and I'm sad enough in my real life.

[20:03] Yes.

[20:04] I don't.

[20:05] It doesn't make me cool that my family tells me that.

[20:07] So so I'm going to give him a seven just because it's hard to you look at him and he's so cool

[20:12] to look at.

[20:13] But the more you spend time with him, I feel like the less cool he seems and the more the

[20:16] more kind of just sad and and mopey.

[20:19] Also I got to say, I think for me, he loses a little bit of points in the like coolness

[20:23] category because knowing that that suit is like bulletproof or some bullshit like I fucking

[20:29] hate it.

[20:30] I forgot about that.

[20:31] Yeah.

[20:32] That's right.

[20:33] Yeah.

[20:34] And like it's bulletproof in the way that like he can be shot a million times and you

[20:36] never see any indication that bullets are even hitting the pursuit.

[20:40] It sounds like you're bruised by it or like the suit doesn't even move.

[20:45] Yeah.

[20:46] It's just like whatever.

[20:47] I'm not a fan of that shit.

[20:49] Creators of the John Wick universe.

[20:51] OK, but I think I think he's going to do pretty good in this next category.

[20:55] And that's badness.

[20:56] How killy is this guy?

[20:58] Yeah.

[20:59] I mean, I might have to like even above my beloved Indiana Jones, I have to give him

[21:04] high marks for badness.

[21:05] I think I think it's a 10 because he is Baba Yaga is feared by, you know, criminals and

[21:14] you know, anyone who's feared by the world.

[21:18] And there's always like a bounty on him.

[21:19] And all these dudes are like, you know what?

[21:21] I'm going to be the one to take him.

[21:23] Yeah.

[21:24] Yeah.

[21:25] They're always wrong.

[21:26] I'm going to give him a nine.

[21:27] Because of that bulletproof suit, which I forget about, because it is less less impressive

[21:31] to me to kill all these people when they can't hurt you the same way.

[21:35] But but you got it.

[21:36] I mean, he's so good.

[21:37] They're not in different ways.

[21:38] Aiming for the head.

[21:39] It seems like a very small was he's aiming at everyone's head like, oh, yes, well, that's

[21:45] what makes him so good.

[21:46] That's what makes him a professional.

[21:47] You know, he figured out the.

[21:48] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[21:49] I'm going to give him a nine because he's certainly, you know, he's unstoppable.

[21:55] Yeah.

[21:56] He's doing well.

[21:57] Lucky dip treats our boy, John Wick, the seven.

[22:02] Oh, OK.

[22:04] This he's going to struggle here, I think.

[22:06] How likely is John Wick going to give a friend good dating advice?

[22:11] Oh, I'm going to give a zero.

[22:14] What?

[22:15] OK.

[22:16] Like a little bit of your thinking on this, I mean, I, you know, I just but because to

[22:25] me, look, he's been out of the scene for a while.

[22:28] Certainly a long time.

[22:29] Yeah.

[22:30] Yeah.

[22:31] He was first.

[22:32] He was married.

[22:33] What is it?

[22:34] Golden oldie?

[22:35] What's the what's the what's the old person dating at?

[22:36] Like silver sneakers or whatever.

[22:37] But he does seem to have he does seem to have found a lasting love in his life and has like

[22:45] that's true that his dog that that empathy he was married.

[22:50] The dog is kind of an extension of his dead wife.

[22:52] Yeah.

[22:53] I mean, he was he was married, but I feel like he got lucky that first time.

[22:57] Look at this guy.

[22:58] He's morose.

[22:59] He's very quiet.

[23:00] Yeah.

[23:01] He has the weight of a thousand murdered souls on his on his heart.

[23:04] I think he found a woman who was who was ready to help him through that.

[23:08] But if he but if you I was like, hey, I like this girl.

[23:10] I'm going to go on a date with her.

[23:11] I think like, like, stare into her soul and show her the pain in your heart and see if

[23:17] she doesn't run away.

[23:18] And I'd be like, oh, I don't know if that's the first impression I want to make, John.

[23:21] That's true.

[23:22] On the basis of him having had that relationship, which is the thing that, you know, I don't

[23:27] believe in a lot of action movie relationships.

[23:31] This one seems to have been meaningful.

[23:32] I'll give him a four.

[23:33] OK.

[23:34] OK.

[23:35] So communication is the key and the foundation of any good relationship.

[23:40] Really?

[23:41] How often did you and your wife talk?

[23:42] Not often.

[23:43] Yeah.

[23:44] I'm thinking it's a red flag.

[23:48] We just exchanged puppies.

[23:50] Ironically, Keanu Reeves and Bill and Ted, I'd give them a much higher grade.

[23:53] Oh, yeah.

[23:54] That guy knows how to show how to tell you how to show someone a good time.

[23:57] Yeah.

[23:58] OK.

[23:59] We're doing good.

[24:00] Let's roll our next hero.

[24:01] That's a one.

[24:02] Oh, heck, yeah.

[24:03] And did I say hero?

[24:04] I mean, heroes, because we got the Toretto family.

[24:07] You would know them from The Fast and the Fierce.

[24:09] That is one thing.

[24:11] I mean, I feel like, oh, we can't parse this team.

[24:15] If we separate the whole team, it's not a whole team.

[24:19] It's like the family as in the larger sense of like families, what's important, not just

[24:22] his family.

[24:23] This is family.

[24:24] Yeah.

[24:25] This is the whole family.

[24:26] Family.

[24:27] Family.

[24:28] Not his family, but the family.

[24:29] Yeah.

[24:30] Yeah.

[24:31] I mean, we can strip it down to the core members.

[24:32] Maybe remove like Hobbs and Shaw.

[24:33] I don't know.

[24:34] Uh huh.

[24:35] I feel like you'd have to.

[24:36] Right.

[24:37] Yeah.

[24:38] They're sort of.

[24:39] Yeah.

[24:40] I don't know that they ever.

[24:41] I mean, they were at a couple of barbecues, I think.

[24:42] Maybe.

[24:43] But their affiliates.

[24:44] Yeah.

[24:45] Yeah.

[24:46] OK.

[24:47] So break out the Corona's boys.

[24:49] I got a question.

[24:50] How many of the Fast and Furious's have you seen?

[24:52] Not that many because I keep meaning to go back and finally watch them all.

[24:55] But I don't.

[24:56] Yeah.

[24:57] I want to.

[24:58] Sit down with the boys.

[24:59] Of all the people I know, I don't think that you necessarily need to do this.

[25:03] Like, I can't imagine you being like coming out of it being like, yeah, I had a great

[25:07] time.

[25:08] Well, so there are certain movies where if I go into it expecting it to be objectively

[25:13] like kind of good, smart, and then it's dumb, I'm disappointed.

[25:16] But if I go into a movie being like, this is going to be dumb, then I can enjoy it.

[25:20] And the thing is, the Fast and Furious movies, where the series is now, just from what I

[25:23] picked up from the later entries, which I'm not as familiar with, I don't know whether

[25:27] like, I feel like you hear people who are like, oh, they're really fun because they're

[25:29] dumb.

[25:30] And then I'll hear people who are like, these are great movies like they're great action

[25:34] movies.

[25:35] And I don't know.

[25:36] I'm worried about not knowing what to what to how to frame it in my mind.

[25:39] I feel like fast.

[25:40] I feel like Fast Five is the high point, right?

[25:43] Probably.

[25:44] I feel like people who are really into the Fast and the Furious movies have bought into

[25:48] this like, family framing in a way that I just to me, I'm like, this is like the barest

[25:55] like placeholder idea of like, we got to have some heart in this movie that they have thrown

[25:59] over it like a tarp, the whole series, like, we just mentioned family and every one of

[26:04] it.

[26:05] But I mean, I do, I guess there is like, I say that it is kind of like weirdly admirable

[26:10] they're like, we're just going to keep adding people and they're all coming back.

[26:14] I love it.

[26:15] Um, so I don't know.

[26:18] So what are we?

[26:19] Ratitude?

[26:20] Uh, sorry.

[26:21] My, my, yeah, my, my little head.

[26:23] I can, I can deal with that.

[26:25] Okay.

[26:26] So we are on ratitude.

[26:27] Ratitude.

[26:28] Where does the Toretto family fall into the category of like coolness?

[26:34] I think this may say more about our opinions of what's cool.

[26:37] I think that's true.

[26:38] Cause I feel like they're, I'm torn because they are objectively supposed to be very cool.

[26:43] And a lot of people think they're very cool, but there's a layer of, um, like toxic hostile

[26:50] misogyny that I feel like that there's like a cloud of that around them.

[26:53] It really stuck out to me during the, uh, the universal studios, uh, tour, the universal

[26:58] studio tour, where there's a, there's a fast and furious section of that, which opens with

[27:02] the characters at a club where it's just a couple of the Toretto family characters.

[27:07] And just these scantily clad women dancing with them.

[27:09] And then a guy walks with a gun and just like, get out of here, ladies, get out of here.

[27:13] And they all, and they're all like forced at a gunpoint.

[27:14] And I was like, and it made me think of, um, the, how, whenever the, the scenes where there's

[27:19] like a, like a, a racing meet and there's always women who are just shaking their butts

[27:23] at the camera and otherwise are not human being characters.

[27:26] And so I mean, I don't know this, this, this, maybe I need to see the full, the full, you

[27:30] know,

[27:31] Yeah, in context, in context, it would make more sense.

[27:34] Because that's part of like the general, like, uh, like vibe of like the movies.

[27:41] And I guess you can't like divorce that entirely, but that's not necessarily the attitude of

[27:45] like with the heroes and like, yeah, they're not, they're not, they're not creeps.

[27:50] They do have a larger number of female action.

[27:55] You know, there's still wildly, wildly overrepresented to be men, but there's like, you know, significant

[28:01] women on the team in a way that is not always true.

[28:03] And like, uh, and like, uh, like Tyrese's character, what's Tyrese, Roman, uh, is kind

[28:11] of portrayed as like kind of a horn dog, right?

[28:13] But he's also like, everyone kind of makes fun of him for, yeah, he's like a, a bit of

[28:16] a goober.

[28:17] Like this is what it's, if you, if you're going to spread it over everyone, yeah, we

[28:19] got to spread it over everyone, people, you got goobers and also they're really obsessed

[28:24] with cars, which like a lot of people think it's cool, but I don't give a shit about

[28:28] it.

[28:29] So I'm going to give him a six.

[28:30] Okay.

[28:31] Yeah.

[28:32] I'll give him a five.

[28:33] Yeah.

[28:34] Yeah.

[28:35] Okay.

[28:36] That's, that's cool.

[28:37] In a way, I feel like a five is fair because it's like, I feel like they're in, in general,

[28:40] like they're like, does like the design of them isn't particularly cool.

[28:44] Like they just feel like a mishmash of just like, yeah, everything that's in an action

[28:48] movie, just put them in the team.

[28:49] Yeah.

[28:50] I don't, I don't get a sense of a real kind of like clear, uh, yeah, clear style or look

[28:54] other than a bunch of guys hanging around guys and women hanging around, you know, which

[28:59] is what they're going for, you know?

[29:01] Yup.

[29:02] Okay.

[29:03] Uh, let's talk about badness.

[29:05] How bad is this team?

[29:08] Now Elliot, if you've only watched the first couple of entries, you would think that their

[29:10] reach is fairly limited here basically, but now they're going into space and there's lasers.

[29:18] I mean, in terms of badness, I'm going to, I'm going to put them pretty high up because

[29:22] similar to Indiana Jones, it feels like the universe has worked itself around them to

[29:27] do, to let them do things that otherwise they would like, I'm sure there's, there's gotta

[29:31] be one where Vin Diesel catches a car that's flying through the air, right?

[29:35] He does.

[29:36] Yeah.

[29:37] So like, yeah.

[29:38] So I'm going to have to give an eight for that because that's, that's pretty bad to

[29:41] be able to like treat a car the way you would a Frisbee or a gun or any other kind of handheld

[29:46] object.

[29:47] Yeah.

[29:48] As long as they're touching the car, they're safe.

[29:49] It's, uh, I've talked about this, it's like that, that Hercules villain who like, as long

[29:53] as he's touching the ground, he has strength.

[29:54] Hercules villain.

[29:55] He's got a pretty good rogues gallery, Hercules.

[30:00] Yeah, what issue of Hercules was that in?

[30:02] This is coming from me who is writing a Hercules comic book.

[30:06] So I wouldn't be like, oh yeah, the Sphinx, that's Hercules' arch nemesis.

[30:11] Yeah, that bad guy, the Aegean Stables or whatever.

[30:15] It is true that, like, it seems like, you know, instead of gun-fu, they have car-fu.

[30:20] They can do anything. They can, you know, change physics.

[30:23] I don't know, like, I think I'm still, my personal, like, sort of middling-ness

[30:28] on the series might be...

[30:30] What was your rating score, by the way, Elliot?

[30:32] Eight? Did you say an eight?

[30:33] For which one? I think for Badness.

[30:35] Yeah, I'm going to go one lower. I'm going to go seven.

[30:37] Okay, cool. Now let's see what their lucky dip is.

[30:40] They got a lot of members. I feel like spreading their skills out, they're going to crush this one.

[30:44] Yeah.

[30:44] A 16.

[30:46] Okay.

[30:48] Fitting in a phone booth.

[30:49] Ooh, this is not going to work out so well.

[30:51] I think we actually hit one that's going to be a little bit hard for them.

[30:56] How likely is the Toretto family going to host a good episode of Saturday Night Live?

[31:03] Oh, boy.

[31:05] Wow.

[31:06] I think this is hard for them.

[31:07] I feel like this is a hard one for most of the people who are going to be on this list, but...

[31:11] Well, it depends. There's...

[31:13] I mean...

[31:13] They can't all. They can't all.

[31:15] I mean, the monologue is going to be a mess unless it's just Dom doing it, you know?

[31:19] Yeah, then it'll be good.

[31:22] Well, that's the thing. Like, between all of... If we're talking about all of the actors,

[31:26] like, if you split them all up and just assign them to, like, where their strengths lie, it might be good.

[31:32] Does Saturday Night Live do that, Dan?

[31:34] Well...

[31:34] Well, they barely have 17 people.

[31:37] That's what I'm saying. If you can do that...

[31:40] But if it's the characters of people who are, you know, like these car-based super spies, essentially...

[31:47] Non-performers.

[31:49] I'm going to give them a three on this.

[31:52] Taking some hits on this one.

[31:55] I'm going to give them a three as well, if only because I think it would be a very entertaining episode to watch.

[31:59] Because I'm imagining them just tearing apart that show and just wrecking it.

[32:04] It'll be like that Mardi Gras episode of Saturday Night Live they did in the early seasons.

[32:08] But yeah, I don't think it'll be... I don't think Lauren will consider it a successful show.

[32:13] Yeah, I mean, considering that most people who are professionals can't host a funny episode of Saturday Night Live...

[32:19] Well, there are other issues beyond the host on that one, you know.

[32:23] Okay, so...

[32:25] Okay, now we got number... We're almost halfway through with this first episode.

[32:29] All right, we got number five.

[32:32] Okay, now we're going all the way back to the wilds of Hyperborea.

[32:36] That's right, Conan the Barbarian.

[32:39] Oh, wow.

[32:40] Conan the Barbarian.

[32:41] Played on screen by, what, two different actors?

[32:44] We got Arnold Schwarzenegger.

[32:47] Was there...

[32:49] And there was... What's his name who was in the recent...

[32:51] Yeah, yeah, Momoa.

[32:53] Jason Momoa. That was Jason Momoa, that's right.

[32:55] I feel like... Was there another one? Maybe there wasn't.

[32:58] For some reason, I thought there was another.

[32:59] But there were a lot of kind of movies that they kind of would call it,

[33:04] Conan does this, but it wasn't officially Conan.

[33:07] Yeah.

[33:08] Okay, and was he also in Red Sonja?

[33:12] Yeah, he was in Red Sonja, right?

[33:15] I think so, yeah.

[33:17] Yeah, that's Schwarzenegger, yeah.

[33:18] Drop by.

[33:19] Yeah, he...

[33:20] Do you need any help? No? Okay.

[33:24] So, we have Conan the Barbarian, guys.

[33:27] How does he fall under the category of radness?

[33:32] Um, you know, I am less of a fantasy guy than I think either of you,

[33:38] but he does have like, I don't know, a big cool sword and like straps on his body and stuff.

[33:46] And, you know, I...

[33:48] I don't... Like he says cool things like here about the thing about hearing the lamentations of their women.

[33:52] That's cool.

[33:53] I guess I'll give him an 8.

[33:55] Krom, I've not prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it.

[33:58] This is gonna feel hypocritical after what I said about the misogyny that kind of hovers around the Toretto's.

[34:05] Since Conan the Barbarian is an explicitly misogynist character,

[34:10] but I'm gonna give him probably a 9.

[34:12] Because he is... As far as male power fantasies go, it's hard to think of a better one.

[34:17] Like where he's... Just with his wits and his strong sword arm,

[34:22] he can lay waste to... He can basically do whatever he wants in the world around him.

[34:27] And he wears those furry boots.

[34:29] He's got the straps, as Dan mentioned, sometimes, you know.

[34:32] And he's jacked.

[34:33] And he's jacked as all get out. That's true.

[34:36] And he... What? He grew up just pushing a wheel in a circle? The wheel of pain?

[34:40] I think we're getting into badness territory, which I wanna...

[34:44] Yeah, yeah. Let's get into badness.

[34:45] But I would say... Wait. Before we get... Before we start, I would say, in terms of radness,

[34:47] like, if you set it... Setting apart from the movies, looking at that character as a character,

[34:53] it's hard to find a fantasy character that's more influential than Conan,

[34:57] just in the mold that it's set for the kinds of characters you would see in those power fantasies.

[35:02] So that's pretty... You gotta be pretty rad to do that, you know.

[35:05] Okay, let's move on to badness. How bad is this dude?

[35:09] Yeah, well, this is where he shines, I think.

[35:12] You know, he pushed that wheel for so long that it just got...

[35:16] So he's got that super jacked, yeah.

[35:17] Jacked and then like... Somehow it helped his abs, pushing that wheel.

[35:21] I mean, you gotta brace your core, you know. You're gonna break your back.

[35:24] As someone who, like, carried Audrey's new office chair up the stairs the other day and was like...

[35:32] Did you call it the wheel of pain?

[35:34] I was like, I shouldn't... A, I shouldn't have done this alone.

[35:37] And B, like, this required more core strength than I expected.

[35:40] It was like, is my stomach gonna explode?

[35:43] Anyway, I will say...

[35:45] Yeah, that's a hernia, Dan. You don't want that.

[35:46] Did you have any uncontrolled urination?

[35:49] No.

[35:49] Or did you let out any toots?

[35:50] I had some controlled urination.

[35:53] Yeah, he was controlling the urination in bursts so that nothing would get broken, yeah.

[35:59] I gotta admit, guys, I was doing a leg day at the gym today and I was doing deadlifts

[36:03] and I had a little accidental toot in the middle of a deadlift.

[36:06] I think that's fine.

[36:07] It happens to the best of us.

[36:08] It's the first time it's ever happened mid-lift, though.

[36:11] Before, I, like, braced real hard before a squat and I, like, let off hard.

[36:17] Anyway, the point is a nine. I'll give him a nine.

[36:19] Yeah, let's do it.

[36:20] And I'm gonna give him a ten on badness.

[36:22] Because, you know, he lives in a world of magic.

[36:24] Doesn't he kill a god in Conan the Destroyer?

[36:27] Yeah, I think so. Like, he lives in a world of magic.

[36:29] He does not have magic powers. He just has a sword, again, his strength and his wits.

[36:33] And he lays waste to everything before him, you know?

[36:36] He's wrestling gorillas in the stories, you know?

[36:38] Like, he's... I mean, I'm thinking about the stories, not the movies.

[36:40] But, yeah, I'm gonna give him... He's unstoppable, yeah.

[36:43] And he becomes king by his own hand.

[36:45] Yes, he comes from nowhere.

[36:47] He is literally a slave bound to the wheel.

[36:49] And yet, through his own strength of will and body, he manages to become King Conan.

[36:55] Yeah, it's hard to beat that, yeah.

[36:57] Okay, let's see how Conan does with his lucky dip, though.

[37:01] I got a seven.

[37:02] It's good that he didn't get the brunch one.

[37:05] Ooh, actually, this one's pretty good for him.

[37:08] How likely...

[37:10] Conan arrives in ye olde Transylvania.

[37:13] How likely is he to be able to stop a Dracula?

[37:17] Yeah, I would give him a ten.

[37:19] Like, you said it, he lives in a world of sorcery.

[37:23] He's familiar with, I think, cryptids.

[37:25] This is a layup, bro.

[37:27] Yeah, this was...

[37:28] Go chop the shit out of this guy.

[37:29] This was an easy one for him.

[37:30] I mean, I'm going to give him a nine just because Dracula is very powerful, you know?

[37:35] But I imagine every other character on this list, I'm guessing, would face Dracula and be a little bit thrown off and shocked or scared.

[37:44] Whereas for Conan, this is the kind of thing he deals with all the time.

[37:46] Yeah, so...

[37:47] John Wick would not do well against Dracula.

[37:49] We saw what happened.

[37:53] Yeah, I mean, before I can weigh in here, I'm going to have to roll up a barbarian character in D&D

[37:58] and then actually do all the rolls for the entire Curse of Strahd campaign to see how well he does.

[38:03] But we'll get there.

[38:05] Okay, so we're halfway through.

[38:07] I think it's time for a message from our sponsors.

[38:12] This week's mini is brought to you by Aura.

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[38:39] So I know Dan, every time I come into Dan's living room, I see the Aura frame there loaded up with tons of pictures from Dan's various parties

[38:48] and specifically Dan's wedding, which was a ton of fun and it's great every time I see it.

[38:54] My wife, we recently got an Aura frame and my wife filled it up with pictures to give to her father

[39:00] because he honestly struggles a little bit with technological stuff.

[39:04] So it was nice that my wife set that whole thing up for him.

[39:07] So he has pictures of us instead of just pictures of the stuff his wife wants to put up in the house that I shouldn't talk about during an ad.

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[39:53] Those Aura frames are great. It's the perfect gift for an older person.

[39:56] We get them for my parents and my wife's parents.

[40:00] they and they love them. Uh we're also here to talk about Flop TV. That's right everybody.

[40:05] Flop TV continues a pace. The one hour online televisual version of the Flophouse. The first

[40:12] Saturday of every month from September through February. We're halfway through the season.

[40:17] We've done Robocop 2, Breakin' 2, and Caddyshack 2 because this season is all about sequels

[40:22] and we've got coming up on December 7th. I guess in order to celebrate Pearl Harbor

[40:27] Highlander 2, The Quickening. It'll be 9 PM Eastern, 6 PM Pacific. We will be on your

[40:32] computer screen if you tune in. Buying a ticket of course. And we're gonna talk about Highlander

[40:36] 2, The Quickening. Uh these episodes have been super fun. Each episode comes with a presentation,

[40:42] video segments that are totally new and original to this series. I taught people how to breakdance

[40:47] uh when we had the Breakin' 2 episode. Stuart interviewed the uh the skeleton of the gopher

[40:53] from Caddyshack in the Caddyshack 2 episode. Uh that's right that happened. Deal with it.

[40:59] Everything's been super fun and funny and I can't wait to see what these guys and myself have

[41:04] cooked up for our show on December 7th. So go to theflophouse.simpletics.com to buy tickets or

[41:10] a season pass. The season pass gets you six shows for the price of five. It's like getting a free

[41:15] show, a free episode of Flop TV and we hope you can tune in and enjoy it. And if you can't tune

[41:20] in when the show is airing, the video stays up for every episode through February so you can

[41:25] enjoy it at your leisure. Theflophouse.simpletics.com. Say you like video games and who doesn't? I mean

[41:37] some people probably don't. Okay but a lot of people do. So say you're one of those people

[41:41] and you feel like you don't really have anyone to talk to about the games that you like. Well

[41:46] you should get some better friends. Okay yes you should get some better friends but you could also

[41:51] listen to TripleClick, a weekly podcast about video games hosted by me, Kirk Hamilton. Me,

[41:57] Maddie Myers. And me, Jason Schreier. We talk about new releases, old classics, industry news,

[42:03] and whatever really. We'll show you new things to love about games and maybe even help you find

[42:08] new friends to talk to you about them. TripleClick. It's kind of like we're your friends. Find us at

[42:14] MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Throughout history, sirens have captured men's

[42:21] attention, enticed men with their feminine wiles, and fulfilled men's primal needs. The siren's

[42:27] allure persists. They have not. Unless the primal need is I need to be smashed on the rocks. Yeah

[42:33] smash me. Smash me. Smash me mama. Smash me mommy.

[42:43] Why do we do this to ourselves? Strand me baby. Strand me mom. Strand me baby.

[42:48] So yeah this is my brother, my brother, me from Maximum Fun on Mondays. It's just like

[42:53] that. It's just like that but more of it. There's more of that.

[42:59] So let's get back to the mini. We are again doing a definitive rankings of action heroes. We are

[43:07] down five down. We got five more to go for this episode and guys I do humbly request you keep

[43:12] your answers tight. So Dan why don't you roll up our next hero. It's 10. We got a 10. Okay we got

[43:20] Imperator Furiosa from the Mad Max franchise. Oh solid. From such movies as Mad Max Fury Road and

[43:28] Furiosa what a Mad Max story or something. A Mad Max fable. Fable something like that. I don't

[43:33] know what it is. Okay so how does how does Imperator Furiosa fall under radness? Radness

[43:42] this is where she's gonna shine. Yeah. She's gonna crush. Like look sadness in other places

[43:48] has taken a few people down. Here you know what the sadness is not enough to overcome the radness.

[43:54] She lives in a world of madness. Sadness is the only option. She looks super cool. She's got a

[43:59] robot arm. She drives a big truck. I mean it's such a great design. Yeah like yes. Her design

[44:06] feels unique and like immediately recognizable. It's amazing. And when you see her as the one

[44:12] woman who has earned this kind of like place of violent authority in this world of horrible men

[44:19] you know that this is a badass character right off the top. She's had to work 10 times harder

[44:23] than every one of those other war boys to get where she is you know. So wait what was that a 10

[44:28] for you? I'll give it I'll give it a 10 for badness. Oh crushes. 10 for redness. Let's

[44:32] talk about badness. How bad is this this battler? Also very high. You know what I was going to like

[44:40] first you know dock her a little bit because you know like does she have like the kill count or

[44:47] whatever when you're if you're like looking at badness that way. But if you look at it in terms

[44:51] of again working her way up from nothing like the like the size of the fight in the dog as they say

[44:58] I'm gonna give her a nine. I'm gonna give her a nine also like Dan said she doesn't have as huge

[45:02] a body count as some of the others but look at the bodies. She overthrows a tyrant. That counts

[45:07] for a lot. She's not just taking down you know random hit men who got a notification on their

[45:12] phone that there's a contract open on Jonathan Wicksworth. She's taking out the main villain

[45:18] and at the same time unfortunately taking out the greatest guitarist in the wasteland but you know

[45:23] all it goes to show you gotta take the good with the bad so that she gets a nine for badness. Okay

[45:27] now let's give me a roll for unlucky dip Danny. Okay you got a 12. Okay this might be a challenge

[45:36] for all Furiosa can do a convincing lead in a regional theater production of Fiddler on the

[45:43] Roof. Oh I was gonna rate her pretty high until I found out it was Fiddler because in Furiosa she

[45:50] does a lot of performing in order to get through dangerous situations. She has to put on personas

[45:56] but Tevye is a tough one. It's a very verbal role and she does not like to talk very much. Yeah

[46:02] yeah I mean a lot of I think convincing does a lot of work there to like what you think

[46:06] convincing means like could she put on a good performance? Probably. If you want her to be

[46:13] convincing as the specific Jewish man from the specific time and place in history I'm not sure.

[46:21] I mean I think she could she could very much really tap into the idea of a stultifying

[46:26] tradition-based social structure because she lives in a world where even though it seems

[46:31] anarchistic there's a lot of like uh a lot of applied roles that everyone has to play.

[46:36] In class yeah. But I think it's gonna be very hard for her to sing those songs she's just not

[46:39] I don't think it's gonna be hard for her to get across the joy of if I were a rich man you know

[46:43] the joy mixed with bittersweet you know yearning. Even so I'm gonna be generous uh because I think

[46:49] she can do a lot of what she puts her mind to I'm gonna give her a four. Okay Elliot. I'll give her

[46:54] a four as well I think when she says I have five daughters she'll remember the women that she almost

[46:58] took to the Greenland you know. Dan give us our next hero not bad for Furiosa over here. That's a

[47:05] five. Okay we got we got the man himself Ethan Hunt. No mission is more possible than when it's

[47:13] in the hands of Mr. Ethan Hunt played by Thomas Cruz. Uh-huh. You would know him from the Mission

[47:20] Impossible franchise of which there are what like nine of them now eight of them seven? Seven I

[47:24] think. Seven yeah uh yeah well here's the thing about Ethan Hunt. I mean he was in Far and Away

[47:32] also you probably also know Tom Cruise from Far and Away. Sure yeah you would know him from Far

[47:35] and Away yep. He can do nearly anything but it's kind of a part of his character that he is not rad

[47:45] yeah kind of a square he um you know has no he's like kind of a cipher of a person in a certain way

[47:54] um and uh so I think in that area I'm just going to give him a five. Okay yeah I think that's fair

[48:04] I mean there's a certain he has he has this like I think he does a I'm going to chalk part of this

[48:10] up to just Tom Cruise's ability as a performer but he does the like oh shit how am I going to

[48:15] deal with this new development face better than anyone else is. Yeah very good at that. So you

[48:20] set a five for Ethan Hunt on radness. Five on radness. Elliot you want to make a case? I'm going

[48:25] to give him a four because I've always found him to actually I'm going to give him a yeah I'm going

[48:30] to have a four he's in when you see him in motion it's very fun but I've always found him to be

[48:34] the least distinct of action heroes. I don't get a sense much sense of personality or style from him

[48:41] and there's a certain point around Mission Impossible 4 where I was like they should just

[48:44] call this character Tom Cruise like why even bother to give him a fake fictional name. I do

[48:47] want to pump the brakes if you want to see some style you should watch Mission Impossible 2.

[48:53] It doesn't quite work. His hair is crazy and there's that awesome uh that guitar that

[48:58] wrap around shades and that like motorcycle bit where he's like spinning around shooting

[49:04] uh gas tanks. Well that falls under bad attitude for me but yeah that's that's a style

[49:10] that really feels like an experiment in style that the character could not sustain. Yeah yeah

[49:15] uh okay so uh I feel like I feel like Lorenzo Lamas in Renegade has a more distinct action

[49:21] hero style to me than Ethan Hunt does. That's 100% true. Unfortunately Lorenzo Lamas in Renegade

[49:26] is not one of our options. No. So let's talk about badness. How effective is Mr. Ethan Hunt? I mean

[49:31] these are literally impossible missions. And yet he pulls them off. He carries them off with a

[49:37] plot like this is what I love about this is like it is again that kind of Indiana Jones thing

[49:43] of like he shows the effort and I enjoy it and I enjoy that he is like trying the hardest and he

[49:49] gets done uh you know impossible. So I'll give him a 10. He can do the impossible. Okay oh I

[49:56] was gonna give him I'll give him an eight uh it is impossible but

[50:00] I feel like he gets by, yeah, a lot of times on luck, though, but I do like that that's

[50:06] the fact.

[50:07] You know, I like that.

[50:08] My favorite moment in any of those movies, again, is when he's climbing the bridge cliff

[50:11] and he has to swing through the window and he hits his head on the way in.

[50:14] It's great.

[50:15] Yeah.

[50:16] Dan, give me a roll.

[50:17] Give me a roll.

[50:18] That's a 10.

[50:19] Okay.

[50:20] Okay.

[50:21] So this is one of the ones I wrote before the election.

[50:28] So on a scale of one being very likely to 10 being very unlikely, how likely is Ethan

[50:38] Hunt going to be a guest on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast?

[50:43] You know what?

[50:46] Really blowing his cover as an undercover agent.

[50:49] Yeah.

[50:50] I feel like he'd be very unlikely on this.

[50:51] Yeah.

[50:52] I'm going to steer it away.

[50:53] So he's going to get high points for this one.

[50:55] Yeah.

[50:56] I'm going to steer it away from any like political thing and say, like, he just doesn't have

[50:59] the time.

[51:00] Like, he's constantly saving the world.

[51:02] So if unlikely is the high number, I'm going to give him a nine.

[51:06] Wait.

[51:07] So unlikely is the high number?

[51:08] Unlikely is the high number.

[51:09] Yeah.

[51:10] I'm also going to give him a nine.

[51:11] Because the higher your likelihood is, the less I like this character.

[51:14] I see.

[51:15] I think the only reason I could see him on there is if it is part of the mission.

[51:18] Like if it was the first mission impossible and he's still doing the mask stuff for the

[51:21] second mission impossible.

[51:22] I feel like he doesn't do as much with masks these days as he wants to.

[51:26] Yeah.

[51:27] Yeah.

[51:28] Well, look over here.

[51:29] He's complaining.

[51:30] None of masks.

[51:31] But there's the scene in either the first or the second one where he is literally pretending

[51:33] to be like a congressman who's on a talk show.

[51:37] Yeah.

[51:38] So I could see him doing that if it's part of the mission.

[51:39] But otherwise, I will say, Elliot, there's a very good mask bit in the beginning of Dead

[51:43] Reckoning.

[51:44] OK.

[51:45] I got it.

[51:46] OK.

[51:47] Every time I've been on a plane, I'm about to watch Dead Reckoning and then I see it's

[51:48] two hours and forty five minutes long and I'm like, I don't know, I can sit here and

[51:51] watch this for two hours and forty five minutes.

[51:53] Haley Atwell's in it.

[51:55] Maybe not the size of a screen for that kind of like big movie.

[51:59] So Dan said a nine.

[52:00] What are you saying, Elliot?

[52:01] I'll say nine also.

[52:02] OK.

[52:03] Not bad.

[52:04] Mr. Ethan Hunt.

[52:05] OK.

[52:06] Dan, give me a roll.

[52:08] You got a ten.

[52:09] OK.

[52:10] We're back in the Johns.

[52:13] We got this is a classic one, guys.

[52:15] Star of everybody's favorite Christmas movie, John McClane, played by Bruce Willis.

[52:20] This is a movie named John McClane.

[52:22] Die Hard franchise.

[52:24] It's not called John McClane, the movie.

[52:26] John McClane, star of the Die Hard franchise.

[52:28] Yeah.

[52:29] Kind of.

[52:30] I mean, arguably, Die Hard is like one of the best action movies of all time.

[52:36] No question.

[52:37] I've never loved it as much as other people.

[52:39] Yeah.

[52:40] I see how well done it is.

[52:41] But I would say but and for me, often the the weakness is John McClane to me.

[52:48] I find him to be a more irritating character than like a fun.

[52:51] I would not agree with that.

[52:53] My thing is with Die Hard.

[52:54] But it's an opinion.

[52:55] Mm hmm.

[52:56] No, I know.

[52:57] I'm saying I don't agree with your opinion.

[52:58] I hold a different one.

[53:01] I I I like it more as a thriller than I do an action movie.

[53:06] I think it is well constructed like it did a whole you know, a whole genre came from

[53:12] Die Hard.

[53:13] And like it is a clever idea.

[53:16] Well executed.

[53:17] Yeah.

[53:18] But on the action, the action is where it falls down for me, because for the most part,

[53:23] it's just like people shooting each other, then ducking behind things, which I don't

[53:26] find exciting in the same way that I find a set piece exciting, like an interesting

[53:30] stunt exciting.

[53:31] Like, I don't give a shit if you're like can shoot someone else with a gun.

[53:35] Like sorry, America.

[53:36] Yeah.

[53:37] I don't care about that.

[53:38] Dan's not going to boot up Call of Duty after this.

[53:41] Anyway.

[53:42] So what do you say in terms of radness, Dan?

[53:45] Let's talk about the John McClane.

[53:46] Yeah.

[53:48] I feel like he's got some points here, at least.

[53:49] He's got some.

[53:50] Maybe not from Elliot.

[53:51] Yeah.

[53:52] On Wisecracks and Attitude, I'll give him a seven.

[53:55] I'm going to give him a six, if only because I don't like his Wisecracks quite as much.

[54:02] Elliot doesn't like fast talking heroes.

[54:05] I like fast talking heroes that have where I like the material a little more.

[54:09] Oh, yeah.

[54:10] There's something about Bruce Willis that's very like self-satisfied, you know, yes.

[54:14] You know, ain't I a stinker?

[54:15] You know, in a way that I like that coming out of a cartoon rabbit, not quite as much

[54:19] Commander Bruce Willis, especially as the series goes on.

[54:22] The character becomes less and less interested in whatever he is doing at the moment.

[54:25] Yeah, that's fair.

[54:26] OK, so we got let's talk about badness.

[54:31] How bad is this dude?

[54:32] Again, the thing about Die Hard that makes the movies interesting, but maybe not him

[54:38] like the baddest guy is like the whole deal is supposed to be he's just the wrong place,

[54:43] the wrong time.

[54:44] Yeah.

[54:45] He makes the best of it.

[54:46] He perseveres.

[54:47] So I'll give him a seven, but he's not the baddest.

[54:50] OK, I'm going to give him a seven as well.

[54:52] I mean, that's the thing is, he's he's supposed to be kind of an ordinary guy, but he gets

[54:56] through which shows an inner badness that is coming out.

[54:59] But I'm never like the one part I feel the one scene everybody talks about in the in

[55:04] the Die Hard movies, aside from now I've got a machine gun or whatever, is him walking

[55:08] over that broken glass in the first one.

[55:10] And that is more a test of endurance rather than as a test of like, you know, bad kind

[55:14] of action.

[55:15] You know, take out the other guy's ability, you know, and I know that might sound a little

[55:19] hypocritical with what I was saying about Indiana Jones, but I just like him more.

[55:22] Yeah.

[55:23] Yeah.

[55:24] OK, Dan, give me a lucky dip roll for we got a six here, a six.

[55:29] OK, you're going out of town.

[55:32] This doesn't kind of apply to Elliott, but you're going out of town on a scale of one

[55:36] to ten.

[55:37] What kind of a job would John McClane do at watching your pets?

[55:40] I have children.

[55:41] I can say he's watching my children.

[55:43] Yeah.

[55:44] OK, you can.

[55:45] Yeah.

[55:46] If you can imagine for you, children are the new pets.

[55:48] Yeah.

[55:49] You know, he seems like a nice man overall.

[55:54] He does.

[55:55] You know, he has his personal life seems to be in shambles.

[56:00] So maybe that says something about responsibility and then like, you know, like the third one,

[56:04] he's just come off a bender, but I'll give him a six.

[56:08] I'll be I'll give him a I also can't stress enough.

[56:11] This guy is constantly in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[56:14] I feel like that would be bad.

[56:15] It's true.

[56:16] That's what I'm giving him.

[56:17] You know what reason?

[56:18] He's watching my my kids or my non-existent pet.

[56:21] You know that a terrorist or a hostage taker or a bank robber is going to show up at that

[56:26] house.

[56:27] Yeah.

[56:28] You know what?

[56:29] I won't be I don't want to be overly influenced, but I'll take myself down to a five.

[56:32] OK, cool.

[56:33] Dan, give me one more roll.

[56:36] It's a 17, 17.

[56:40] OK, this is kind of a almost like a career retrospective.

[56:47] We have the star, the main hero in a police story and police story to that's Chan Cockley.

[56:54] I probably mispronounced that, but that is Jackie Chan's character in the police story

[56:58] franchise.

[56:59] But in a way, this is also going to represent Jackie Chan's career in general.

[57:04] OK, because I feel like almost every character that Jackie Chan plays, at least through his

[57:10] like, you know, great period of movies, is kind of fairly similar.

[57:15] Yeah.

[57:16] Yeah.

[57:17] This is great timing.

[57:18] I was just rewatching police story the other night.

[57:20] That's great.

[57:21] Were you watching it with the family?

[57:22] No, I was.

[57:23] But I was looking forward to the day when I could watch it with the family.

[57:26] Yeah.

[57:27] I mean, part of the point of Jackie Chan's character is a certain lack of redness, like

[57:32] you're supposed to be like, oh, wow, this like funny guy like is able to do this stuff.

[57:38] So I don't know, I I'm going to go as low as a four on this.

[57:43] Oh, OK.

[57:44] I was going to even lower.

[57:45] I'm going to go with a three because he is not he is both not cool and he's also not

[57:49] particularly nice to the people around him.

[57:51] There's a scene in in police story that I had forgotten the scene where he's like answering

[57:54] all the different phones.

[57:56] And I forgot that a woman calls up and was like, I was assaulted.

[57:58] And he's like, oh, what do I do with this?

[58:00] And you're like, no, you're a police officer, Jackie Chan.

[58:02] Like, this is show a little bit more respect to the victim.

[58:05] So the so he's a I would say he is not a cool guy, you know, but also but it's also like

[58:11] he's just he's he's there's like an Archie Andrews quality about him, you know, of like

[58:16] like a goofball who always gets himself into trouble, but then he happens to be a martial

[58:20] arts master.

[58:21] And Archie Andrews is also low on the redness scale.

[58:23] Yeah.

[58:24] Yeah.

[58:25] Yeah.

[58:26] Unless it's like a CW version.

[58:27] Yeah.

[58:28] Okay.

[58:29] Then it's like a thousand.

[58:30] Yeah.

[58:31] Yeah.

[58:32] So let's talk about badness.

[58:33] How bad is this guy?

[58:34] You put him in Ikea.

[58:35] I got 10.

[58:36] Any any item is a is a is a weapon of both hilarity and also bodily harm in his hands.

[58:41] Yeah.

[58:42] It depends how you define badness.

[58:43] Like, he's not like a Terminator, like a like Lobo style badness, like I'm going to like

[58:49] murder everyone.

[58:51] He is very good at what he does and what he does is, you know, hit people with like ladders

[58:57] and stuff.

[58:58] I do think I do think him versus the Terminator would end up being a pretty interesting fight.

[59:04] I mean, that would be great.

[59:05] I mean, he's an amazing specimen.

[59:06] I'll give him an eight.

[59:07] Okay.

[59:08] I'll say I feel like just for the just for the scene and police story that they stole

[59:13] for Tango and Cash, where he stops that bus and the bad guys fly out the window.

[59:17] I'm going to give him a 10 for that.

[59:18] Yeah.

[59:19] So great.

[59:22] Give me a roll on the lucky dip.

[59:23] That's an 18.

[59:24] Ooh.

[59:25] Yeah, I think I'll do okay.

[59:29] If he was on the hot ones, how likely is he to be able to handle the spiciest wings?

[59:35] Oh, he's going to be doing some like comedy takes.

[59:37] Yeah.

[59:38] He'll make it to the end.

[59:39] He'll get to the 10.

[59:40] He'll get 10 on that.

[59:41] I agree.

[59:42] I was going to say the same thing.

[59:43] It's a 10.

[59:44] But he's going to be doing a lot of like reactions that are very funny, but he's going to eat

[59:46] those wings.

[59:47] He'll get through it.

[59:48] Yeah.

[59:50] He's going to be spilling milk all over him while he's trying to drink some of it.

[59:52] Yeah.

[59:53] And then, and then someone's going to fight him and he's going to use the wing to fight

[59:56] back.

[59:57] And because it's spicy, he sticks it in their mouth and they go, ah.

[1:00:00] Oh, I love it. Yeah. Somebody comes to give milk. Yeah, it's great.

[1:00:03] OK, so we got one more for this episode.

[1:00:06] Let's wrap this up, Dan. OK, that's an 18.

[1:00:09] OK, we are this is this character has only appeared in one film,

[1:00:13] but it's an important one. That's right.

[1:00:15] From Conair, we have Cameron Poe played by Nicholas Cage,

[1:00:20] an iconic action hero.

[1:00:22] Iconic action hair, I guess, at least.

[1:00:24] Yeah. And accent. Yeah.

[1:00:27] I mean, for the hair and accent, I think I'll give him a seven.

[1:00:32] You know, there's not much else there to to hang the radness on.

[1:00:36] But, you know, I'm going to give him a five

[1:00:40] just because of my residual love for Nicholas Cage rather than the character

[1:00:43] himself. Yeah.

[1:00:44] Now, how bad is Cameron Poe, guys?

[1:00:48] He does take on a whole plane full of convicts.

[1:00:51] The worst convicts in America. Yeah.

[1:00:55] But I don't think he does it with a lot of bad attitude.

[1:00:59] So I'm going to give him a six.

[1:01:00] I'm also going to give him a five for the same reasons.

[1:01:03] And he takes on a plane full of convicts.

[1:01:04] But the most dangerous one is loose at the end.

[1:01:07] Yeah, that's true.

[1:01:09] I've never played that ending.

[1:01:11] For a comedic take. For a comedic take.

[1:01:13] We have a character who we were already told earlier killed a girl

[1:01:17] and wore her head as a hat.

[1:01:19] And we're supposed to love it, that he's free at the end.

[1:01:22] Yeah, it's a stand up and cheer moment of that year's Oscars.

[1:01:25] OK, so let's give me a lucky dip, Dan.

[1:01:28] Yeah, we got Cameron Poe doing four. OK.

[1:01:32] OK. How likely on a scale of one to ten is Cameron Poe going to make

[1:01:36] a killer Halloween party playlist?

[1:01:41] Uh, I think there's mostly going to be Leonard Skinner on there.

[1:01:47] And Monster Mash. Yeah.

[1:01:49] I'm going to give him a three for this.

[1:01:50] I'm going to give him a two.

[1:01:51] Oh, man. Cameron Poe.

[1:01:52] Oh, I'm sorry, buddy.

[1:01:54] Sorry, Cameron Poe. Three and two.

[1:01:55] Oh, man. He got the exception knocked out, knocked out.

[1:01:58] OK, so that was our that was our first ten.

[1:02:01] Thank you so much.

[1:02:02] This has been a Flophouse mini.

[1:02:03] Stay tuned for our next mini, which will show up in two weeks.

[1:02:07] We're going to get the deciding votes on this one.

[1:02:10] We got ten more down the way.

[1:02:12] I'm Stuart Wellington.

[1:02:13] I'm joined, as always, by my guest hosts, Dan McCoy.

[1:02:17] Elliot Galen guest hosts.

[1:02:18] Yep. This has been part of the Maximum Fun podcast network.

[1:02:22] You can check out other great shows there.

[1:02:24] The show has been produced by Alex Smith, who goes by HowlDoddy

[1:02:27] on various platforms.

[1:02:29] He's a musician.

[1:02:30] He's a podcast producer extraordinaire.

[1:02:33] Thank you so much, Alex.

[1:02:35] So once again for the Flophouse, thank you.

[1:02:38] Bye. Bye.

[1:02:41] Maximum Fun, a worker owned network of artists owned shows

[1:02:45] supported directly by you.

FH Mini 116 – The Definitive Action Hero Ranking Pt. 1

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