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The Rock with Miles Gray · The Bechdel Cast

0:00
Speaker 1: On the bell Cast, the questions asked if movies have
0:04
Speaker 1: women and them are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands?
0:08
Speaker 1: Do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef in best start
0:13
Speaker 1: changing it with the Bedel Cast. Hello and welcome to
0:16
Speaker 1: the Becdel Cast. My name is Caitlin Rante, my name
0:19
Speaker 1: is Jamie Laftas, and we're here to talk about how
0:21
Speaker 1: women are represented in the movie and are awesome? Women
0:26
Speaker 1: are the best? I love women too. Okay, Well, as
0:31
Speaker 1: long as we've got that out right at the topic,
0:33
Speaker 1: that's critical. Yeah, our listeners need to know that we
0:37
Speaker 1: are allies to women. What if they came in, like,
0:41
Speaker 1: what if they're not allies to women? I think that'd
0:43
Speaker 1: be kind of like an insidious fun place to start. Oh,
0:46
Speaker 1: like you know that podcast Analyze Fish. Like it's like, yeah, oh,
0:50
Speaker 1: this is a podcast where you convince me to like fish.
0:53
Speaker 1: Where this is a podcast where you, Caitlin convinced me
0:56
Speaker 1: Jamie to like and respect women. I'm like, you know what,
0:59
Speaker 1: I not sold, Well, they kind of seem like idiots. Well,
1:04
Speaker 1: the movie we're talking about today, I know we're we're
1:06
Speaker 1: recording in a different space with different I think you
1:08
Speaker 1: should just address what's going on. We are recording in
1:11
Speaker 1: our normal building, right, normal structure of Meltdown Comics, But
1:16
Speaker 1: we're in a uh not normal space right because a
1:19
Speaker 1: bunch of things have happened. We haven't recorded in a while. Um,
1:22
Speaker 1: some things have happened since then where Maltdown Comics. The
1:25
Speaker 1: historic comic book store in Hollywood, California is closing down,
1:31
Speaker 1: which also means the comedy venue that I do the
1:34
Speaker 1: programming for is also closing down. So yeah, we're recording
1:38
Speaker 1: in a different podcast studio which is adjacent to our
1:42
Speaker 1: normal space. But an Aristotle is not here. He's not
1:45
Speaker 1: here today. Did you and ours have fun last night
1:47
Speaker 1: at the movies? Yes, we saw a Pacific room too.
1:50
Speaker 1: Oh that's so. I liked it better than the first one.
1:53
Speaker 1: That's good. What was better about it definitely more women, um,
1:57
Speaker 1: a more streamline story that was easier to follow, not
2:00
Speaker 1: a billion characters who all looked the same and therefore
2:02
Speaker 1: you don't know who's doing what. That's good. And John
2:05
Speaker 1: Boega is a much more charismatic leading man than Charlie Huntum,
2:09
Speaker 1: I mean, John Beega is very hot, John Bayoga, listen,
2:15
Speaker 1: let me just go off the rails very unpopular opinion JK.
2:20
Speaker 1: John Beaega very high well cool, full body paralysis every
2:23
Speaker 1: time John Beega is visually in front of me in
2:27
Speaker 1: any resolution. Hey, folks, this is an example of a
2:30
Speaker 1: conversation that would not pass the Bechtel tests. Interesting because
2:35
Speaker 1: we're talking about a man in the Bechdel Tests, which
2:39
Speaker 1: podcast is inspired by. I have a lot of for
2:43
Speaker 1: the movie we're talking about today, I have a lot
2:45
Speaker 1: of asterisks to the Bestel test. What would you kind
2:48
Speaker 1: of have to I think even in a movie where
2:51
Speaker 1: women are certainly not the focus, and if they are,
2:54
Speaker 1: they better be pregnant as well, I think that that
2:59
Speaker 1: is Yeah. So the Actel test requires that a movie
3:03
Speaker 1: has two female characters. They have to have names, they
3:07
Speaker 1: have to talk to each other, and with our version
3:09
Speaker 1: of the Bechtel test, they have to have a at
3:11
Speaker 1: least two line exchange. So one woman says one thing,
3:14
Speaker 1: another one woman responds to her, and neither of those
3:17
Speaker 1: can be about a man. Shall we demo? Yes? Let
3:19
Speaker 1: us demo? Okay, Jamie, what's your favorite flavor of soup? Hi, Caitlin,
3:25
Speaker 1: I think soup is hot water and it is a
3:27
Speaker 1: big old racket and I don't believe in it, Jamie.
3:30
Speaker 1: I agree, hot water with flavors in it? What are
3:34
Speaker 1: you vitamin water but left in the sun? Stupid? That
3:38
Speaker 1: passes the back to Certainly, it doesn't have to be
3:41
Speaker 1: good writing. We have to say over and over and over,
3:43
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be good. So we'll figure out
3:46
Speaker 1: whether or not this movie passes the Backtel test well
3:49
Speaker 1: talk about is portrayal Lemon infuriating, infuriating to This movie
3:53
Speaker 1: is infuriating to me at a number of levels, so many,
3:56
Speaker 1: but on this level specifically, because it just this movie
3:59
Speaker 1: is the ultimate proof that the Betel test is flawed.
4:03
Speaker 1: Is flawed. Yeah, you can pass it and horrendous showing
4:10
Speaker 1: up a lot of things. And we'll get to that
4:12
Speaker 1: discussion later on. But first let's introduce our guest. He's
4:16
Speaker 1: wearing a great jacket. It's so soft, it's so tanned.
4:20
Speaker 1: Can I just say it is a hand me down
4:22
Speaker 1: of a Frenchman. I'm wearing a Frenchman's hand me downs
4:27
Speaker 1: and that's the only way to live. I mean, there
4:29
Speaker 1: couldn't be a better backstory for this very nice jacket.
4:32
Speaker 1: We're thrilled to have him. Yeah, the voice you just
4:34
Speaker 1: heard is that of the co host of The Daily
4:37
Speaker 1: ZiT Guys, Oh my God, how stuff works Network, Miles Gray. Hi, Hi, welcome.
4:43
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. I am really
4:46
Speaker 1: excited when you first asked me to do this. I
4:49
Speaker 1: was just sure what movie we would do when you
4:51
Speaker 1: were like, what movies do you like? Like in jes
4:53
Speaker 1: like I love The Rock also knowing full wether this
4:56
Speaker 1: is a terrible movie, but I'm so glad we picked it.
4:59
Speaker 1: I'm because I rewatched it with a critical eye because
5:03
Speaker 1: I think I was telling Caitlin before, like every time
5:05
Speaker 1: I've watched it, it's just kind of been like on
5:08
Speaker 1: and that was the last time. My thought was maybe
5:10
Speaker 1: like eight years ago. So to watch it now with
5:12
Speaker 1: the critical eye in this is like a t n T,
5:15
Speaker 1: Like you turn on t n T and this is
5:17
Speaker 1: on in the middle of it. I think by law
5:20
Speaker 1: it had to be on at some point at least
5:22
Speaker 1: twice in one weekend, like whether it's t NT or
5:25
Speaker 1: f X, it was always on. And it's one of
5:27
Speaker 1: those movies. It's one of my favorites, where you do
5:30
Speaker 1: I've seen Bits and Peace. This is the first time
5:32
Speaker 1: I've seen the movie all the way through I will
5:34
Speaker 1: say thirty six hours ago. I'm improving. But this is
5:39
Speaker 1: one of those movies that I've seen chunks of over
5:41
Speaker 1: the years, and it's always the T n T edit
5:43
Speaker 1: where it's like, that's not what Sean Connery said in
5:46
Speaker 1: the movie, but I'm not quite sure what he actually said.
5:50
Speaker 1: Think I know what you're talking about. I love a
5:51
Speaker 1: t NT edit. My name's Buck, and I came here
5:55
Speaker 1: at a party. That's all. This is happens when you
6:00
Speaker 1: meet a stranger in the Alps. The other one from
6:03
Speaker 1: Big Lebowski a stranger in the in the what does
6:09
Speaker 1: the original met a stranger in the Alps? That's I mean, truly,
6:15
Speaker 1: the ultimate creative challenge is to be the one who
6:18
Speaker 1: edits for T T. Yeah, and then but even though that,
6:21
Speaker 1: you have like the freedom to just be like, honestly,
6:24
Speaker 1: I think meet a stranger in the Alps is the
6:26
Speaker 1: only thing that's gonna work. And they're gonna like, alright,
6:28
Speaker 1: fuck it. You know what. He's a pro. Yeah, he's
6:31
Speaker 1: a pro. He knows how to make words sound like
6:33
Speaker 1: other words without context. Whoever did kill bo One did
6:37
Speaker 1: a real bang up job and I love them there.
6:40
Speaker 1: I have not seen that part. That's that it really is.
6:42
Speaker 1: I came here to party. My name is Buck, and
6:44
Speaker 1: I came here to party. Feminist icon Buck, lots of
6:49
Speaker 1: lots of feminist icons in The Rock, which is a
6:52
Speaker 1: movie that for all you idiots out there like me,
6:56
Speaker 1: the Rock does not appear one time I was waiting
6:59
Speaker 1: for a Rock cam. Oh, he does not come. Dwayne
7:02
Speaker 1: Johnson not in this movie. Dwayne Johnson absent, which already
7:06
Speaker 1: is like, do I like this movie? Hard to see?
7:09
Speaker 1: So you hadn't seen bits and pieces of this before?
7:12
Speaker 1: I mean very bits and pieces. I knew that Nick
7:15
Speaker 1: Cage and Sean Connrew were in a movie together and
7:19
Speaker 1: found that to be interesting. I didn't remember that it
7:23
Speaker 1: was a Michael Bay joint and that that adds a
7:26
Speaker 1: lot peak. This is well, this is a peak Bay.
7:33
Speaker 1: Stop that right now, Thank you so much. My coat
7:36
Speaker 1: and I have to go Jean Paul's coat and I
7:40
Speaker 1: have to do and I must go some miles. When
7:43
Speaker 1: did you first see so sorry, when did you see
7:46
Speaker 1: The Rock? Oh my god, I'm sorry. I had to
7:48
Speaker 1: get high after watching the movie because I was so
7:51
Speaker 1: fucked up. I was like, I need weed after seeing this.
7:54
Speaker 1: So you're catching me there, and I also have a
7:55
Speaker 1: piece on the way here. Um. But the first time
7:58
Speaker 1: I saw it was in the theater, so I'm like
8:02
Speaker 1: twelve years old. This was like in the period when
8:04
Speaker 1: there were blockbusters in the summer and you were like, movie,
8:08
Speaker 1: these are like the big tent pole movies come out,
8:10
Speaker 1: and it didn't matter what the funk it was, you
8:11
Speaker 1: just need to see it because it was such a
8:13
Speaker 1: spectacle and the movie like that, It's effect on me
8:16
Speaker 1: was like pretty profound. At the time, I thought I
8:18
Speaker 1: wanted to be like a Navy seal because of the movie,
8:20
Speaker 1: Like it indoctrinated me very well. That is something I
8:23
Speaker 1: had a question about because I was I was too
8:25
Speaker 1: young to see this movie when it came out. I
8:27
Speaker 1: And also it's like even if I was old enough,
8:29
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have been aligned. Like I don't think that
8:31
Speaker 1: this is a movie in the nineties you would have
8:32
Speaker 1: taken a young girl to see, right. Well, you know,
8:34
Speaker 1: it's weird that people would just take their whole families.
8:36
Speaker 1: I remember, like I went with a group of people
8:38
Speaker 1: and like the Little Sister Games, she was like six,
8:40
Speaker 1: and it's just like, hey, the big movies out, let's
8:43
Speaker 1: go to the all see it. By the time I
8:46
Speaker 1: was in middle school high school, there was such a
8:49
Speaker 1: reputation for all the boys who were like getting into
8:52
Speaker 1: the military and the idea of going into the military.
8:54
Speaker 1: It was always Navy, Sales and Marines and like these
8:57
Speaker 1: are the badass branches of the military. And I feel
9:00
Speaker 1: like it's movies like this that really pushed that agenda.
9:03
Speaker 1: And that's such a Michael Bay thing to push a
9:05
Speaker 1: very specific view of very specific branches of the military
9:11
Speaker 1: that like really took hold of young people's brains. And
9:14
Speaker 1: it's weird to watch now and be like, oh, this
9:17
Speaker 1: is why all the boys I went to school with
9:19
Speaker 1: thought Marines were like the fucking coolest is because Ed
9:23
Speaker 1: Harris and his baldass head were doing their best and
9:26
Speaker 1: n like it's just crazy. And the Navy seals too,
9:29
Speaker 1: like the technology they were using and they're just like
9:31
Speaker 1: this superbero type ship. To me as a twelve year
9:34
Speaker 1: old kid, was like very appealing and god like. I
9:38
Speaker 1: remember right after I like begged my parents to buy
9:40
Speaker 1: me like Urban Camel, like that gray and white, like
9:43
Speaker 1: those fatigues that Ed Harrison those guys were, because I
9:46
Speaker 1: was like, that's I'm gonna dress forever. Because of this moment,
9:49
Speaker 1: I feel like you're touching on something very important, which
9:50
Speaker 1: is when young people see movies like this, they're like, Oh,
9:53
Speaker 1: I want to be like that person. So if a
9:55
Speaker 1: young girl saw women being in the military, they'd be like, Oh,
9:59
Speaker 1: I can be in the military. Very two but so little.
10:01
Speaker 1: But I would argue that this is such an inaccurate
10:04
Speaker 1: representation of the military. It's basically like, I'm not saying
10:08
Speaker 1: about this movie specifically for women, but I'm saying there
10:10
Speaker 1: were movies that made like women in stem seem cool,
10:14
Speaker 1: or women in like computer science, or like women in
10:17
Speaker 1: law seem really cool, we would see more women trying
10:21
Speaker 1: to do jobs like that is like a laser guided
10:24
Speaker 1: missile for testosterone. This is film which is kind of
10:28
Speaker 1: like an overarching theme in all of Michael Basbok where
10:31
Speaker 1: even if you get into the Transformers franchise and again
10:35
Speaker 1: I feel like I do this every other episode, but
10:37
Speaker 1: I will direct people to friends of the cast. Lindsay
10:40
Speaker 1: Ellis is really great video essay series on the Transformers series,
10:44
Speaker 1: but there's very strong pro military themes in the Transformers
10:48
Speaker 1: series to where like this is just like a big
10:51
Speaker 1: overarching theme of Michael Bay's work, which is always kind
10:55
Speaker 1: of regarded as like, well, these movies are not good,
10:58
Speaker 1: but everyone's going to see them, so they are very
11:00
Speaker 1: relevant and from what I could tell, and I tried
11:04
Speaker 1: to backtrack and do some research on how this movie
11:07
Speaker 1: was reviewed at the time, which was pretty well. I
11:09
Speaker 1: mean it got three and a half stars from Ebert.
11:12
Speaker 1: It got like this movie was well reviewed, right, which
11:15
Speaker 1: is crazy to watch it now and be like, oh, yeah, great.
11:17
Speaker 1: But but this was like peak block. This is the
11:19
Speaker 1: same year that Mission Impossible comes out. This is like
11:21
Speaker 1: peak action dudes, military adjacent shit is like this specific
11:27
Speaker 1: years when all the big ones come out, and this
11:29
Speaker 1: is the most successful of that year. But even now,
11:32
Speaker 1: just last year, the A V Club wrote this big
11:35
Speaker 1: piece on How the Rock, which is sort off, I
11:38
Speaker 1: feel like I've forgotten Michael bay movie. Now, I don't
11:41
Speaker 1: think so. I see, I had never heard of it.
11:44
Speaker 1: I thought it was a vehicle for the Rock, the
11:47
Speaker 1: rock stars in the Rock. But the movie is so well,
11:51
Speaker 1: it's well. I read a few different pieces of saying
11:53
Speaker 1: like this is Michael Bay is technically, structurally, ETCETERA best movie,
11:59
Speaker 1: maybe not most memorable, but best in terms of putting
12:02
Speaker 1: a movie together with a story that makes sense. Is
12:05
Speaker 1: the closest he's gotten to making a cohesive narrative. But
12:10
Speaker 1: I've never heard of it. See I've heard of it
12:12
Speaker 1: for you. So my backstory with this is I only
12:14
Speaker 1: saw it for the first time almost exactly a year ago,
12:16
Speaker 1: because I remember posting on Facebook because for years I
12:21
Speaker 1: was always like, fuck Michael Bay. I hate him. He's
12:23
Speaker 1: a horrible director and he sucks. And everyone's like, well,
12:26
Speaker 1: have you seen The Rock? And I'm like no, people
12:28
Speaker 1: would be like, that's the one you would like The Rock.
12:31
Speaker 1: The Rock is actually a good movie. So I like
12:33
Speaker 1: heard all the stuff I Caitlin, you will like The Rock,
12:38
Speaker 1: And I think, like, I genuinely think that that is
12:41
Speaker 1: a thing when we're looking at male directors versus female
12:43
Speaker 1: directors or male directors, if you have one good one,
12:47
Speaker 1: they're always like, no, he's actually good, because have you
12:50
Speaker 1: seen this movie that came out twenty two years ago, right,
12:53
Speaker 1: But if it's a female director, if she makes one
12:56
Speaker 1: bad one, it's like all her previous successes are completely
13:01
Speaker 1: but yeah, that this seems to be the one that
13:03
Speaker 1: people direct you to have, like, well, Michael Bay was
13:05
Speaker 1: at one point semi competent. But I wouldn't. I wouldn't
13:09
Speaker 1: like cape for it, like then be like, you know,
13:11
Speaker 1: you would really like the word to say that. I've
13:14
Speaker 1: had no less than ten different people said that exactly
13:17
Speaker 1: to me, Well, yeah, it kind of sucks, but the
13:18
Speaker 1: rocks pretty good, and I think you'd like it. And
13:20
Speaker 1: then I watched it and I fucking hated it. I
13:22
Speaker 1: think maybe it's terrible unless it's like the caveat of
13:24
Speaker 1: like it's the most brainless peak nineties action film. But
13:29
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I would be I would attached so many caveats,
13:32
Speaker 1: wouldn't be like you're going, you know what, I peaks
13:34
Speaker 1: cinema there once I found out this was a Michael
13:38
Speaker 1: Bay joint, and also reading the behind the scenes stuff
13:40
Speaker 1: for this movie is wild and that like there's who's
13:44
Speaker 1: the guy Don, what's his name? Producer? Okay, so Don
13:49
Speaker 1: Simpson in the middle of production for this movie. He's
13:51
Speaker 1: like the big producer who works with Bruckheimer and works
13:54
Speaker 1: with Michael Band. This movie dies of a coke over
13:58
Speaker 1: a few months. Not to laugh at someone's cooke overdose,
14:00
Speaker 1: but this is peak nineties, like toxic male, like we're
14:04
Speaker 1: gonna make a movie about seals, and then one dies
14:07
Speaker 1: of a coke overdose and then like the twist at
14:10
Speaker 1: the end is it's dedicated to this guy who had
14:13
Speaker 1: a coke overdose. There's also I'm getting way ahead of myself,
14:17
Speaker 1: but I do need to say now, Nick Cage is
14:20
Speaker 1: the protagonist technically one of two in this movie. I
14:24
Speaker 1: would say, yeah, I would say technically like the poster protagonist,
14:28
Speaker 1: where you know Sean Connery is like the villain, but
14:30
Speaker 1: not really, Like there's no there's a lot of straight,
14:34
Speaker 1: white male heroes, but are they villains? But there's so nuance.
14:38
Speaker 1: But if they weren't like white and straight, probably they
14:41
Speaker 1: would just be villains. But anyways, Nick Cage at the
14:44
Speaker 1: end of this movie, the last line he delivers is
14:47
Speaker 1: basically a prequel to National Treasure, where he's like, Babe,
14:51
Speaker 1: did you know who the real killer of cas? I
14:55
Speaker 1: was like, are you reading the fucking back of the
14:57
Speaker 1: Declaration of Independence right now? Dude? Like, are you it
15:00
Speaker 1: was for good? MAUI? Before the way he looks at
15:06
Speaker 1: that microphone is so amazing too. What about Nick Cage?
15:09
Speaker 1: Just like we have to give him a Chekhov's gun
15:12
Speaker 1: style prop that reveals in that scene that we haven't
15:17
Speaker 1: seen yet in the Do they not even have a
15:21
Speaker 1: dog at their house? Don't? At the end, it's like, oh,
15:25
Speaker 1: I guess they got married, but like and then pretending
15:27
Speaker 1: to be like broke because they're like, we're in this
15:28
Speaker 1: shitty VW. Beetle Right, Kansas, Kansas, Walton, Kansas. Oh okay,
15:35
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I was not watching this movie. I just
15:37
Speaker 1: watched it, and I have a picture graphic memory. I
15:40
Speaker 1: was remembering that do you really front pew right leg?
15:43
Speaker 1: You know? That's awesome? No, it's only for The Rock,
15:48
Speaker 1: though it's asking about any other it is. Remember, I've
15:54
Speaker 1: been going to a lot of therapy and I'm being
15:56
Speaker 1: to see it as a strength. Yeah. Sorry, I won't
15:59
Speaker 1: know that. Fine triggered. Um, you're actually activating my coping skills.
16:06
Speaker 1: That's a great way to look at the should do
16:09
Speaker 1: the recap, Okay, I'll do. I'll do this so freaking fast.
16:12
Speaker 1: So The Rock is about so as you said, not
16:16
Speaker 1: the Rock, not Dwayne the Rock Johnson. But the protagonist
16:19
Speaker 1: is Nicolas Cage. His character's name is Stanley good Speed,
16:23
Speaker 1: good Speed. What a reveal He is a like chemical expert,
16:29
Speaker 1: chemicals weapons expert for the FBI. He gets called in
16:34
Speaker 1: to help with this hostage situation that takes place where
16:38
Speaker 1: and Harris's character, whose name is Frank Hummel, is a
16:41
Speaker 1: which is a weird choice. Hummel is a German porcelain statue,
16:47
Speaker 1: was interested in what the deal with the whole hummele
16:50
Speaker 1: thing was. But I crack, yeah, my grandma would like
16:54
Speaker 1: collect hummels. They're like these weird German porcelain, very commercial
16:58
Speaker 1: statues where it would be like Christian horribles in porcelain.
17:01
Speaker 1: And then okay, I know we interrupt, I know we
17:04
Speaker 1: interrupted the thing constantly. But the two writers credited on
17:08
Speaker 1: this movie, who are not, thankfully I think for their
17:12
Speaker 1: own reputations, not visually credited and also because of writer's
17:15
Speaker 1: guilt rules, Sorkin and Tarantino contributed to the script for
17:20
Speaker 1: The Rock. Yeah, so it's impossible to say where these
17:23
Speaker 1: names come from or what these specific things I find
17:25
Speaker 1: interesting comes from. But there are a lot of good
17:27
Speaker 1: writers involved in this movie, but few of them are
17:30
Speaker 1: actually credit. There's like a quote about how Sorkin like
17:32
Speaker 1: wrote quote most of the good dialogue or something like that.
17:35
Speaker 1: I mean, of course there Simpsons. You know, Sorkin loves
17:40
Speaker 1: Coke too, so they're probably all just like flying off code.
17:43
Speaker 1: So it was apparently Aaron Sorkin Tarantino. And then the
17:47
Speaker 1: three credited screenwriters were David Weiseberg, Douglas Cook, and Mark Rosner.
17:52
Speaker 1: So a bunch of freaking men wrote this movie. Cool alright.
17:56
Speaker 1: So anyway, the story is Frank Hummel is like a
17:59
Speaker 1: Marie like black Ops. He was doing things commanded by
18:03
Speaker 1: the government that we're technically illegal and then not compensated
18:07
Speaker 1: fairly or you know, just various injustices were done to
18:11
Speaker 1: like him and his fellow Marines and their families and
18:14
Speaker 1: things like that. A lot is done to humanize the
18:16
Speaker 1: villain in this and which is I think Michael Bay
18:20
Speaker 1: thing that is normally not thought about, right. He well,
18:23
Speaker 1: he literally sets his stakes up in the first thing
18:26
Speaker 1: by talking to his wife's grave. I would say, he
18:28
Speaker 1: screams that his wife, I'm so sorry. His wife's grave
18:33
Speaker 1: says Barbara Hummels, his wife. I was like wife. And secondly,
18:41
Speaker 1: it's the first thing his wife I guess because they're
18:46
Speaker 1: already pre like designing the plots. So he'll be there,
18:49
Speaker 1: and then I'll be Yeah. She she is only defined
18:52
Speaker 1: on her gravestone by her relationship. Yeah, maybe they'll finally
18:58
Speaker 1: listen to me. There. God, when this movie starts with
19:00
Speaker 1: like a Jerry Bruckheimer joint, a Michael Bay joint, You're like, Okay,
19:04
Speaker 1: so there's gonna be a lot of men with veneers
19:06
Speaker 1: in this movie. Crazy. Then you find out the movies
19:09
Speaker 1: about Alcatraz, You're like, great. And then you find out
19:13
Speaker 1: about poor fucking Barbara Hummel. Ed Harris, who is I
19:18
Speaker 1: will say, doing his very best in this whole movie.
19:21
Speaker 1: I love it. I mean, I have such a soft
19:23
Speaker 1: spot for character actors, and Ed Harris has been sidelined
19:26
Speaker 1: his entire life and I love him. But he, I mean,
19:30
Speaker 1: there's only so much you can do. He screams at
19:32
Speaker 1: his wife's grape. He says, I miss you so much.
19:36
Speaker 1: Everyone screams. Movie. Michael Bay's directing style is more screaming,
19:40
Speaker 1: Please scream louder, like, yeah, it's a lot. Hey, the
19:44
Speaker 1: rain is really loud. Imagine she can't hear you through
19:46
Speaker 1: the rain, Ed, you're screaming at her ghost Dad, You're
19:49
Speaker 1: dumb bitch, right, like you know he's like just screaming profanity.
19:53
Speaker 1: Is that everyone at all times, and so no one,
19:56
Speaker 1: no single actor, could be held accountable for whatever atrocities
20:00
Speaker 1: take places in the movie. Okay, so it hare's his
20:04
Speaker 1: character Um. In response to the injustices that he feels
20:07
Speaker 1: has been directed at him, he takes a bunch of people,
20:11
Speaker 1: like tourists hostage in Alcatraz. So eight one tourists are
20:15
Speaker 1: taking hostage. It's the most diverse group of people we
20:18
Speaker 1: see in the entire movie, where there's a lot of
20:22
Speaker 1: there's young people, there's old people, there's black people, there's
20:25
Speaker 1: Hispanic people. There's all sorts of people we'd never see,
20:29
Speaker 1: never check in with them. Yeah, I don't need to.
20:31
Speaker 1: Except for the crying father white hostage death exactly, we
20:34
Speaker 1: see a series of racist caricatures. We see a crying
20:37
Speaker 1: white hostage and then we basically forget that the most
20:41
Speaker 1: diverse seen just reinforces the crazy stereotypes because one cell
20:45
Speaker 1: is like the clueless elderly Asian people and like the
20:49
Speaker 1: angry black dude who's like, man, this is a tour
20:53
Speaker 1: and then they go to like, Okay, well so we
20:55
Speaker 1: have angry black man. Now let's go to sassy black
20:57
Speaker 1: woman and gun. Yeah, it's like and then this film,
21:03
Speaker 1: like you know, that's why I says like peak nineties
21:05
Speaker 1: of sort of like this completely. You know, this was normal,
21:09
Speaker 1: and it's almost like like you could tell people almost
21:11
Speaker 1: had to write these like and then you know we're
21:12
Speaker 1: gonna have to have like a sassy black woman say
21:14
Speaker 1: something here, you know what I mean. It was like, yeah,
21:17
Speaker 1: this movie has all of the great tropes in it.
21:18
Speaker 1: Oh and then like the character who is coated as gay,
21:22
Speaker 1: the stylist who comes in shot. We'll get we'll get
21:26
Speaker 1: to that. But you can't. You can't just bring in
21:30
Speaker 1: a stereotype for two minutes and then discard the character forever.
21:35
Speaker 1: More concisely than this movie, yeah, and truly emasculate the character. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah. Okay.
21:42
Speaker 1: So Ed Harris is holding all these people hostage and
21:45
Speaker 1: has these missiles filled with this the most deadly chemical
21:49
Speaker 1: ever to be known by a man, and he's threatening
21:52
Speaker 1: to fire these missiles on the city of San Francisco
21:54
Speaker 1: if the government does not comply with his demands, which
21:57
Speaker 1: is that he and his group of probably like I
22:00
Speaker 1: don't know, fifteen or so Marine black ops people like him, right,
22:07
Speaker 1: these like rogue marines. They all want to be paid
22:10
Speaker 1: one million dollars each and you have forty hours to
22:12
Speaker 1: do it. So everyone, like people at the White House,
22:16
Speaker 1: the Pentagon, military people, they all gather in this conference room,
22:19
Speaker 1: almost entirely men. They gather up a team basically of
22:23
Speaker 1: I think also Marines, Seals. They're the good guys. They're
22:29
Speaker 1: the good guys. And then they get Nick Cage because
22:32
Speaker 1: of his chemical weapons expertise, and they're like, but we
22:34
Speaker 1: don't know how to get in and save these hostages.
22:37
Speaker 1: We need someone who has been to Alcatraz because like
22:40
Speaker 1: the places, there's like no blueprints and all this stuff
22:43
Speaker 1: has died. No one knows anything, right, So they're like, well,
22:48
Speaker 1: we have one last chance with this guy named John
22:50
Speaker 1: Mason played by Sean Connery, who is the only person
22:54
Speaker 1: to have ever successfully escaped Alcatraz. So they find him,
22:58
Speaker 1: they bring him in. They like through Alcatraz, they get
23:01
Speaker 1: into the prison ed Harris is all like, Candy here,
23:06
Speaker 1: I'm doing my best. He's doing his best. But so
23:11
Speaker 1: most of the Navy seals get killed in the standoff,
23:14
Speaker 1: and the only people who are left of the good
23:17
Speaker 1: guys is good Speed and Mason. So they have to
23:21
Speaker 1: figure out a way to find all the missiles because
23:24
Speaker 1: there's fifteen in them, I think, and Nick Kge has
23:26
Speaker 1: to disassemble them or like make it so the like
23:28
Speaker 1: destroy the tracking chips or whatever, sort of vaguely like
23:33
Speaker 1: a video game directive. Like at some point this movie
23:36
Speaker 1: missiles and take guidance chip, right, and then every time
23:40
Speaker 1: that they do that like a new challenge. I'm like this,
23:43
Speaker 1: at some point the plot of this movie does begin
23:45
Speaker 1: to feel like a bad video again, right, What did
23:47
Speaker 1: you notice? One of the last Navy seals to die
23:50
Speaker 1: is the actor Danny Nucci, who is Fabrizio. He's texted
23:55
Speaker 1: me about this so good I missed it. I straight
23:57
Speaker 1: I straight up slip oh. I. I was like, that's
24:00
Speaker 1: Fabrizio from is Iconic. He's like, it's silver Fox now
24:06
Speaker 1: he is very hot. It's like, yeah, anyway, I thought
24:11
Speaker 1: you'd appreciate that because I know Titanic is. I was
24:15
Speaker 1: genuinely very upset with myself because I went back and
24:17
Speaker 1: I was like, of course that's Fabrizio. But there are
24:20
Speaker 1: so many random b characters. I would say that there's
24:22
Speaker 1: three maybe four in this movie that when their their
24:25
Speaker 1: Navy seals and when they're killed, you heard the little
24:28
Speaker 1: like and you're like, wait, who's that character for they're
24:39
Speaker 1: bleeding out, You're just like, wait, but who is that?
24:41
Speaker 1: Have you heard them speak? It's like senseless killing of
24:46
Speaker 1: Americans killing Americans right, and it's just like, oh, he
24:50
Speaker 1: was a hero. All those scenes. There's like three different
24:54
Speaker 1: scenes where three characters I could not tell you who
24:56
Speaker 1: they were if you had a gun to my head.
24:58
Speaker 1: There's a two minute scene about how sad it is
25:00
Speaker 1: that they died. Dude, just like, whom is that? Well?
25:04
Speaker 1: Speaking of guns, there's a ton of them in this movie,
25:06
Speaker 1: and a lot of them are being shot and fired
25:09
Speaker 1: into other people. So like a bunch of people are dying. Um,
25:12
Speaker 1: good speed and Mason managed to find most of the missiles,
25:17
Speaker 1: but there's like one left and then the green almost yeah,
25:21
Speaker 1: I mean they're all like that. They're all the they're
25:23
Speaker 1: all the missiles and I don't know, I listen, I
25:26
Speaker 1: don't know about missiles. Do I think that they actually
25:29
Speaker 1: look like Nickelodeon slime? I'd be surprised, surprised. I think
25:34
Speaker 1: the art department had a good time with that. Really,
25:39
Speaker 1: they look like like those like, yeah, like a huge colander,
25:47
Speaker 1: major league, they're major league anile beans. These are not
25:51
Speaker 1: for weekenders, do you have Yeah, this is for this
25:54
Speaker 1: is for an ass. Yeah, this is for a real as.
25:59
Speaker 1: This is a you feel an So basically, there's like
26:02
Speaker 1: one final standoff where most of the rest of the
26:05
Speaker 1: bad Marine dudes die, but Nick Cage has to like
26:08
Speaker 1: fun the one last missile. There's this whole fight and
26:12
Speaker 1: then he saves the day, he disassembles it whatever, and
26:15
Speaker 1: then what's his name? Mason is like, oh, now I'm
26:18
Speaker 1: going to have to go back and be in jail again,
26:20
Speaker 1: and he's like, not if I tell them, you die,
26:23
Speaker 1: so he lets him escape. The homie does right help
26:26
Speaker 1: help you fake your friend's death. I hope you guys
26:28
Speaker 1: have that kind of relationship. Jamie what happened to Jamie?
26:32
Speaker 1: And you're looking at her and you're like, she's done vaporized,
26:35
Speaker 1: She's vaporized. She she told me where the anal beads
26:38
Speaker 1: were and then she disappeared. So, yeah, the good guys
26:43
Speaker 1: save the day on the city of San Francisco safe.
26:45
Speaker 1: None of these guys save the day, because if you
26:48
Speaker 1: think about it, all, Ed Harris was really advocating for
26:50
Speaker 1: it was better veteran care. Right. His whole thing was
26:55
Speaker 1: like I want a hundred million dollars eighty three of
26:57
Speaker 1: it for the men that I lost and discarded like
27:00
Speaker 1: that was the thing was like, this is like a weird,
27:02
Speaker 1: uncanny valley situation, much like I would argue the original
27:06
Speaker 1: Ghostbusters the enemy being the e p A like where
27:10
Speaker 1: you're just like, are they really the enemy? Are they? Like?
27:13
Speaker 1: Why are why are we supposed to say that? Where
27:17
Speaker 1: I mean ed Harrison where his practice is perfect, they were,
27:20
Speaker 1: They weren't bad, but he knew when he lost after
27:23
Speaker 1: he was like, I bluffed they called it. So the
27:24
Speaker 1: mission is over right, you know what I mean? And
27:26
Speaker 1: then the other dudes who kind of take over and
27:28
Speaker 1: then Degreed takes over right, you know what I mean.
27:30
Speaker 1: I don't this This movie is very weird and also
27:34
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we'll get into this, but like,
27:37
Speaker 1: there is a male friendship that co coagulates through the
27:42
Speaker 1: course of this movie between Nick Cage and Sean Connery, right,
27:46
Speaker 1: but everything that they are bonding over is completely toxic.
27:51
Speaker 1: Where I do I think it's good to see a
27:53
Speaker 1: movie where two men form a friendship. Yes, I don't
27:58
Speaker 1: think we see that enough, But do I want to
28:00
Speaker 1: see it based on like guns dislike when like you know,
28:05
Speaker 1: they bond on every problematic, weird thing there is possible
28:09
Speaker 1: to bond on, according to Michael Bay and then it's like,
28:12
Speaker 1: but they're friends. It's kind of nice and he should
28:15
Speaker 1: absolutely be in jail because like in the many scenes
28:20
Speaker 1: of destruction in this movie, I would say, we've got
28:22
Speaker 1: hundreds of casualties on our hands that are never addressed.
28:26
Speaker 1: In the city of San Francisco when they're plowing through,
28:30
Speaker 1: there's like a whole who are like flinging, but all
28:34
Speaker 1: the stuntmen rolled away. You know, it's not get caught
28:36
Speaker 1: under the wheels. It's just like that's what the thing
28:39
Speaker 1: is because it reinforces like this nineties sort of like
28:42
Speaker 1: ignorance of like it's like the most consequence free like film,
28:46
Speaker 1: Like that's a film about people like taking hostages and
28:49
Speaker 1: potentially like killing an entire city of people. Like there's
28:53
Speaker 1: and that's what the nineties was, you know what I mean,
28:55
Speaker 1: Like there was like cell phones weren't scary yet, you
28:58
Speaker 1: know what I mean. We had internet enough that it
29:00
Speaker 1: helped improve things. But like things hadn't quite turned to
29:04
Speaker 1: like peak scary. And I think this movie like it's
29:06
Speaker 1: such a reflection because like there's no thought given to anything.
29:09
Speaker 1: This is like right before we get into like the
29:11
Speaker 1: late nineties, like hacker characters of like the Internet scary.
29:16
Speaker 1: Like this is like sort of maybe the last year
29:19
Speaker 1: or so where that doesn't exist any movie. But the
29:22
Speaker 1: three main characters we have in this movie, and hopefully
29:24
Speaker 1: this works as an effective transition, the three main characters
29:27
Speaker 1: we have in this movie are all grounded in or
29:31
Speaker 1: the plot attempts to ground each of them using a
29:35
Speaker 1: female character. So with Ed Harris, we've got his dead
29:39
Speaker 1: wife script Barbara, his wife, I'm so sorry, and his wife.
29:44
Speaker 1: So his wife is dead, so he's mad and has
29:48
Speaker 1: nothing to lose, and that is the basis of what
29:51
Speaker 1: we have to characterize him with. Then we see Nick Kite,
29:54
Speaker 1: and we see first of all, an actress whom I
29:57
Speaker 1: love because she played Brenda on General Hospital. My mom
30:01
Speaker 1: watched General Hospital every night growing up, and we used
30:04
Speaker 1: to recite the names of the characters during the intro
30:08
Speaker 1: and it would end with Brenda and Max. So I
30:12
Speaker 1: knew exactly like it's Brenda. But so this was supposed
30:15
Speaker 1: to be Brenda's you know, breakout role didn't work out
30:17
Speaker 1: because it's a bad role. She's forced to be on
30:21
Speaker 1: top of Nicholas cause she's fucking Nicolas k She has
30:24
Speaker 1: pigtails and a feather bow on, and it's like, there's
30:27
Speaker 1: no hope for this woman. There's no there's no career
30:31
Speaker 1: upwardness going on here. But but she is the female
30:35
Speaker 1: character who I would say is the strongest of the movie.
30:39
Speaker 1: I mean, she gets the most screen time, which is
30:41
Speaker 1: maybe a combined total of two minutes. Like most of
30:45
Speaker 1: it is her crying. A lot of this are crying
30:48
Speaker 1: or being like sassy. Where the most I'll argue for
30:52
Speaker 1: this movie is that she seems smarter than the amount
30:57
Speaker 1: of screen time and credit she's given. She doesn't seem
30:59
Speaker 1: like a stupid person. She's costumed like a stupid person.
31:04
Speaker 1: But it's like, you know, there's no depiction of women
31:06
Speaker 1: having jobs in this movie at all, but her depiction
31:10
Speaker 1: is that she is Nicholas Cage's girlfriend. And to add
31:13
Speaker 1: and to raise the stakes, not to necessarily have a
31:16
Speaker 1: female character, but to raise the stakes, we have his
31:18
Speaker 1: girlfriend be pregnant. So whenever Nicholas Cage needs a reason
31:23
Speaker 1: to not be dad. He's like, oh god, baby on
31:25
Speaker 1: the way. And then Branda's brandant right, and then Carla,
31:33
Speaker 1: Carla character's name, but Branda from My General Hospital heads
31:37
Speaker 1: out there, and Ba and Max uh, and then Sean
31:43
Speaker 1: Connery has a daughter, Jade, and then and so there
31:47
Speaker 1: are three female characters anchoring our three male characters, and
31:51
Speaker 1: it's just peak example of like we're only introducing women
31:55
Speaker 1: into this narrative to increase the depth of our male protagonists.
32:00
Speaker 1: One of those three characters is dead and we never
32:02
Speaker 1: see them on screen. We only see his wife. One
32:07
Speaker 1: of them we only see on screen for one scene,
32:10
Speaker 1: which takes about two minutes, a scene that passes. It
32:14
Speaker 1: doesn't though it does. Stacy and Jane we know their names,
32:18
Speaker 1: but they're talking. I mean, are you okay, well okay, yeah, okay,
32:22
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. And then Carla isn't a number of scenes.
32:29
Speaker 1: But the thing with Carla is that she's poises like this,
32:32
Speaker 1: like you said, like kind of sassy, but also like Naggi,
32:35
Speaker 1: a nuisance, like a distraction. Because there's one scene where
32:39
Speaker 1: Ni Cage is like, my girlfriend's coming. She's flying into
32:42
Speaker 1: San Francisco and she's pregnant, and and he's like, you
32:45
Speaker 1: need to focus on the matter at hand. So like
32:47
Speaker 1: she's poised as a distraction. She's just basically is there
32:50
Speaker 1: to cause complications for Tripler. And they're like, oh, your
32:55
Speaker 1: your girlfriend is pregnant. Oh no, she's greg nt. I
33:01
Speaker 1: love that breaking that my present. So she's greg nant. No,
33:09
Speaker 1: And it's funny to the way it's revealed to She's like,
33:11
Speaker 1: how's your day. He's like, the world so fucked up
33:13
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna sick. People would have kids anyways, can
33:17
Speaker 1: take that. Okay, I have a lot to say about
33:20
Speaker 1: that scene. That scene is wild. First time we're seeing
33:23
Speaker 1: a woman in the movie who is not Barbara's grave.
33:28
Speaker 1: There's one woman in the lab there there is a
33:31
Speaker 1: woman hurried out the back of her head running away
33:36
Speaker 1: by bitchet men. Go this, So this is the whole
33:42
Speaker 1: first top ten minutes and Harris screams in a grave.
33:47
Speaker 1: Nick Cage full has matt suit. Someone melts, and then
33:51
Speaker 1: we got to the first speaking female role in the scene,
33:55
Speaker 1: Nick Cage. Before she comes in. Nick Cage is shirtless,
33:59
Speaker 1: playlistic and endless. He's almost naked. The acoustic guitar like
34:05
Speaker 1: rough at the office someone melted when he's playing is
34:10
Speaker 1: so horrible, bending the notes like damn there, and he's
34:14
Speaker 1: like down. And this is like a magic hour for
34:19
Speaker 1: Nick Cage where he does not yet know that he
34:21
Speaker 1: is going to be considered a bad actor by history.
34:24
Speaker 1: I would argue, maybe he's not the worst actor. To
34:26
Speaker 1: be fair, he found out he was nominated for Academy
34:28
Speaker 1: Award on this set. Yeah, he won the Academy Awards
34:33
Speaker 1: leaving Las Vegas. Yeah, this is the film directly after
34:37
Speaker 1: leaving Las Vegas. And this movie helps him get like
34:40
Speaker 1: face off and all, like this movie made him an
34:43
Speaker 1: action it made him that other. It's so funny because yeah,
34:46
Speaker 1: he could have gone like that leaving Las Vegas path
34:48
Speaker 1: possitive or he was probably always meant to be like
34:50
Speaker 1: crazy hair plug dude. This movie sets up National treasure
34:54
Speaker 1: in a crazy way. But but then so okay, So
34:57
Speaker 1: then Brenda comes in and she says, you know, like,
35:02
Speaker 1: how is your day? She says, I had an interesting day? Yes,
35:05
Speaker 1: and then he ignoring her, interrupting her, not giving a
35:10
Speaker 1: funk about what she has to say. I had an
35:13
Speaker 1: interesting day too, And she's like, okay, you go first.
35:17
Speaker 1: I guess and he's like, she's yeah. So rather than
35:23
Speaker 1: taking rather than taking the time to see what her
35:27
Speaker 1: interesting day was or let her speak, he was just like,
35:30
Speaker 1: my thing is more important, and this is all to
35:33
Speaker 1: set up, and we don't find out from what I
35:35
Speaker 1: can talk, We don't find out. I have to assume
35:38
Speaker 1: Carla Brenda. We have to asume Brenda has a job, right,
35:43
Speaker 1: but we don't find out what it is. I was
35:44
Speaker 1: listening so careful, even a hand of what she might
35:47
Speaker 1: do for work. But he's like someone melded in in FBI.
35:52
Speaker 1: And she is like, A'm pregnant. It's like pregnant, I'm
35:55
Speaker 1: granted pregnant. She's like, well, what about what you just said?
36:02
Speaker 1: He's like you just He's like, He's like, what it
36:04
Speaker 1: was like about the world not needing you her babies?
36:05
Speaker 1: Like that was seven minutes ago. Has happened? Oh God?
36:13
Speaker 1: Do we know? Did he say her name in that scene?
36:15
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm pretty sure it's wild. The only
36:18
Speaker 1: time I feel like it's not until ninety minutes into
36:20
Speaker 1: the film I heard the words Carla, are you sure okay?
36:23
Speaker 1: Because I thought maybe missed it. I thought I did too,
36:26
Speaker 1: and I was like, did I just hear her name
36:28
Speaker 1: for the first time? Now I think you only hear
36:30
Speaker 1: it once and it's like half okay, okay, oh yeah,
36:34
Speaker 1: because this movie is two and a half hours long.
36:36
Speaker 1: It's so long, so yeah, to two hours and sixteen
36:42
Speaker 1: minutes long. And I would say, of the times you
36:45
Speaker 1: see women speaking on screen, it's probably only a minute
36:48
Speaker 1: in thirty seconds. Does someone have a super cut of that,
36:51
Speaker 1: because I'm pretty sure it would fit into an Instagram video. Totally, absolutely,
36:56
Speaker 1: absolutely So this is a result of there being almost
36:58
Speaker 1: no female characters in the movie V and almost every
37:01
Speaker 1: single scene populated by tons of men. So for example,
37:05
Speaker 1: the lab where Nick Cage is deactivating the bomb that
37:09
Speaker 1: comes in and they think like Sara and Gas might
37:11
Speaker 1: be in. Um, you see, like we said, the back
37:13
Speaker 1: of a woman's head running away. Every other person in
37:16
Speaker 1: that scene is a man. Then you see a scene
37:18
Speaker 1: where Adheres, his character is naming the terms of like
37:21
Speaker 1: what he wants there in like a conference room. There's
37:24
Speaker 1: two women at the table. Only one of them has
37:27
Speaker 1: one single wine. Granted she is talking about a man
37:31
Speaker 1: being dead and other men being useless. So that's like
37:34
Speaker 1: if a woman has to say anything, it might as
37:36
Speaker 1: well be that men are dead or useless, and and
37:39
Speaker 1: getting back to Brenda, I do think that, like the
37:41
Speaker 1: one thing I was impressed about in that scene we
37:43
Speaker 1: just talked about with the shirtless pantless cage, like everyone
37:47
Speaker 1: melted and she's like, she she is the one who proposes.
37:54
Speaker 1: Oh yes, But I thought was kind of cool that
37:57
Speaker 1: I did make note of that, because I do like
37:59
Speaker 1: to see a representation on screen. It's a subversion of
38:03
Speaker 1: the trope, and not only that we see in movies,
38:05
Speaker 1: but we see in real life as well. I don't
38:07
Speaker 1: know how inspiring it is to aspire to be missus Goodspeed,
38:11
Speaker 1: but I did think it was cool that she proposed.
38:14
Speaker 1: And then also he was not like, because I feel
38:17
Speaker 1: like sometimes when you see a woman proposed on screen,
38:20
Speaker 1: the mail feels emasculated by it. He didn't seem emasculated
38:23
Speaker 1: by it. He just seemed like, while someone just melted,
38:25
Speaker 1: and I'm a little bit overwhelmed. And then he later
38:28
Speaker 1: does agree to that same proposal. But he does agree
38:31
Speaker 1: to that proposal when she has in pigtails, wearing a
38:34
Speaker 1: feather boa and surrounded by what appears to be five
38:38
Speaker 1: hundred candles and Chinese lanterns. It almost like a crazy
38:43
Speaker 1: who set that up? And it reminds me of the
38:46
Speaker 1: Phantom of the Opera's Lair. That's what it looks like like.
38:51
Speaker 1: The only difference is they're not steep two ft deep
38:54
Speaker 1: in stagnant bog water. That's the only difference. Anyways, Sorry,
38:59
Speaker 1: she does for she procos yes, and I enjoy that.
39:03
Speaker 1: But again, as we say about so many movies that
39:06
Speaker 1: maybe try to subvert a trope for like a split second,
39:10
Speaker 1: I feel like movies like that don't get to do that,
39:12
Speaker 1: and then also hardly portray women or portray them poorly
39:14
Speaker 1: like and only like on the condition that this subversion
39:18
Speaker 1: appears in pigtails and a feather bella. Right, yeah, not
39:22
Speaker 1: the best. But so back to the scenes that are
39:25
Speaker 1: populated by entirely men or almost entirely men, um all
39:29
Speaker 1: of them, right, pretty much because all of the men
39:33
Speaker 1: forrest moments, I think, the only time when you'll see
39:35
Speaker 1: a woman say something yeah, But there's so many opportunity.
39:38
Speaker 1: I mean, like any of the people that and Harris
39:41
Speaker 1: has with him in his like rogue troop of people
39:44
Speaker 1: all men. All the Navy seals are men. All of
39:47
Speaker 1: the government officials who are sort of in the command
39:50
Speaker 1: center giving orders and stuff like that. They're all men.
39:52
Speaker 1: It's just like and okay, granted you can say this
39:55
Speaker 1: is there weren't that many women in the military back then.
39:58
Speaker 1: There weren't that many women are own back in Yeah, population,
40:05
Speaker 1: I don't think my mom was even born then. No, no, no,
40:08
Speaker 1: women are common new thing, which is ours on the
40:16
Speaker 1: table at the time. But like my point is, basically,
40:19
Speaker 1: the movies about military have so little representation of women.
40:22
Speaker 1: In the movies about people in politics, again, there's almost
40:25
Speaker 1: never women in those roles. Yeah. A recent exception is
40:29
Speaker 1: like Annihilation. I think Apportman's characters definitely military, and I
40:34
Speaker 1: can't remember if all the rest of them were, as well,
40:36
Speaker 1: all the rest of the scientists are, they might all
40:40
Speaker 1: be military. It wasn't doing like some whitewashing things that
40:43
Speaker 1: from the friendly adaptation. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, Even so, movies
40:52
Speaker 1: about like the military very rarely have and don't you
40:54
Speaker 1: can be like, what about g I Jane? Okay, cool
40:57
Speaker 1: one example, but another one, yeah, Renaissance man. I think
41:05
Speaker 1: that movies about the military in particular, and movies like this,
41:09
Speaker 1: this is such a specific moment in time where we're
41:12
Speaker 1: at the top of the Clinton administration of like, you know,
41:16
Speaker 1: these movies come out when the country the movie is
41:19
Speaker 1: putting the movie out in is doing well, flying right,
41:23
Speaker 1: Like this movie does not come out during a recession.
41:26
Speaker 1: This movie would not be made right now, and if
41:28
Speaker 1: it was, it wouldn't be made successfully. You know. It's
41:31
Speaker 1: like this is the kind of movie that comes out
41:33
Speaker 1: when people are feeling nationalistic vibes and willing to accept
41:38
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff this movie is portraying. Like this
41:39
Speaker 1: movie would not work right now, and so like the
41:42
Speaker 1: contexts for like this sort of movie doing well, and
41:45
Speaker 1: why there were a million movies very similar to it
41:48
Speaker 1: that we're doing well with similar protagonists and characters and
41:51
Speaker 1: sidelining anyone who wasn't you know, Nick Cage, Tom Cruise, whatever,
41:56
Speaker 1: this action shorting shorts and exactly and and all three
41:59
Speaker 1: of them huge movies that come out in this is
42:02
Speaker 1: like a very specific, weird moment in time where like
42:05
Speaker 1: America is kind of like you know, it's it's very
42:08
Speaker 1: like a moral kind of time, yeah, I mean yeah,
42:12
Speaker 1: And then like I said, there was no need to
42:13
Speaker 1: think about anything that deep because everything, so everyone's needs
42:18
Speaker 1: were met I mean for the most part, like in
42:20
Speaker 1: the country, and again were we were living in the
42:22
Speaker 1: best of times, because I think the nineties basic straight
42:27
Speaker 1: white men's needs were meant what I mean, like I
42:30
Speaker 1: meant like just more from like an economic sort of
42:32
Speaker 1: standpoint of sort of like how the sort of sentiment
42:34
Speaker 1: in the country was Yeah, for sure. And this movie
42:36
Speaker 1: makes back it's budget almost five times. Like, this movie
42:40
Speaker 1: does incredibly well. And the only previous Michael Bay like
42:43
Speaker 1: thing was Bad Boys, which was kind of a fluke
42:45
Speaker 1: because it was an indie movie that ended up doing
42:47
Speaker 1: really well. And so this is the movie that like
42:49
Speaker 1: puts Michael Bay on the black guys. What it's a fluke,
42:57
Speaker 1: put three white guys in a movie Michael Bays. See
42:59
Speaker 1: what happens? Hey, it goes very well, very well. Well,
43:03
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say is that you know, you
43:05
Speaker 1: could argue at the time, oh, it's unteen, not as
43:08
Speaker 1: many women in the military yet, not as many women
43:10
Speaker 1: in government positions yet. But if you put women in
43:14
Speaker 1: those roles in movies, even if it's not necessarily super
43:17
Speaker 1: reflective of how it's working in society, people are going
43:21
Speaker 1: to see and they're gonna say Oh, there's a woman
43:23
Speaker 1: in a government like a general position in the military.
43:26
Speaker 1: Oh there's a woman working at the Pentagon. Oh, I
43:28
Speaker 1: could do that too. And basically it's just upsetting that
43:32
Speaker 1: there were opportunities for several of these characters to be
43:34
Speaker 1: women in this movie. None of those opportunities were capitalized on.
43:39
Speaker 1: And then you have a whole just like the whole
43:42
Speaker 1: whole generation of young people seeing only men being in
43:45
Speaker 1: roles like this, no opportunities for young girls to see
43:48
Speaker 1: themselves represented on screen, and then they're like, Wow, I
43:50
Speaker 1: can't be in the military because yeah, I have complicated
43:53
Speaker 1: feelings about not being represented in a movie like this.
43:57
Speaker 1: I hindsight am ad that, Like, and not to say
44:02
Speaker 1: I'm I'm glad that women are not represented in military
44:05
Speaker 1: roles in movies. I'm glad that women are not representing
44:07
Speaker 1: in military roles in this movie because this is such
44:11
Speaker 1: a toxic, so many steps removed of what the actual
44:15
Speaker 1: stakes of a military job actually is. Like, this is
44:18
Speaker 1: such a false depiction of that whole lifestyle where I
44:21
Speaker 1: feel like young boys like you miss We're seeing this,
44:25
Speaker 1: like you get such a fake idea of what the
44:26
Speaker 1: military is and it's all action and it's all valor,
44:29
Speaker 1: and it's all this stuff that a lot of military
44:31
Speaker 1: movies push on you that ends up kind of militarizing
44:35
Speaker 1: youth and also giving them a total false idea of
44:38
Speaker 1: what being a hero is. And that frustrates me on
44:41
Speaker 1: the behalf of young boys seeing this movie is being
44:44
Speaker 1: sold an idea that is false, and we'll put them
44:46
Speaker 1: in danger one day. And so I'm grateful that, like,
44:50
Speaker 1: you know, you don't see women putting themselves because I
44:52
Speaker 1: would feel the same way if I if I saw
44:54
Speaker 1: a woman putting herself in danger in a very false way.
44:58
Speaker 1: And so it's tricky. I just think Michael Bay should
45:02
Speaker 1: just be in prison and be allowed to make movies
45:04
Speaker 1: because there's no there's with military movies in particular, that's
45:07
Speaker 1: such a tricky genre because it's so rarely depicted accurately
45:11
Speaker 1: because it's you know, it's hard to make a movie
45:13
Speaker 1: about the military that doesn't want to glorify because they
45:17
Speaker 1: all function as recruiting tools exactly. And that's probably I'm
45:21
Speaker 1: sure like with this, like with most films, like whenever
45:23
Speaker 1: you have like scenes depicting any kind of military hardware,
45:26
Speaker 1: like that's with the Blessing of the military. We'll loan
45:30
Speaker 1: you this ship for your movie. But also like we're
45:32
Speaker 1: gonna we have script notes. You can't make it look bad,
45:35
Speaker 1: you can't make it look on cool. That's the trade
45:38
Speaker 1: of a lot of people don't realize. Like if you
45:39
Speaker 1: see tanks and like real ship in films, that's because
45:42
Speaker 1: the military is like they've signed off on it, and
45:45
Speaker 1: like that's what Top Gun was to like that was
45:47
Speaker 1: their Air Force screening tool because they were like, you
45:49
Speaker 1: want these jets, well, let's make sure this is as
45:51
Speaker 1: favorable depiction of the military as possible or like the
45:53
Speaker 1: most like the best version of like, dude, I want
45:56
Speaker 1: to be fucking Goose and ice man, you know what
45:58
Speaker 1: I mean. The military movies on a base level, they
46:01
Speaker 1: it's hard because it's like, you know, they have to exist.
46:03
Speaker 1: They are such like the military is a big part
46:06
Speaker 1: of a culture, but it it's it's you can't really
46:10
Speaker 1: unless you have access to stuff that would be very
46:12
Speaker 1: difficult to access, you can't make an accurate depiction of it.
46:15
Speaker 1: And so every time I see like a young person
46:17
Speaker 1: seeing a military movie, it just like makes me feel
46:20
Speaker 1: very conflict because they're being sold a false narrative. And
46:25
Speaker 1: I hate seeing young men being sold a false narrative.
46:28
Speaker 1: I don't want young women to be sold the same
46:30
Speaker 1: false narrative. So I don't know, Yeah, I wouldn't want
46:34
Speaker 1: to be a ten year old girl seeing woman in
46:37
Speaker 1: a movie like being like I'm great at military stuff
46:40
Speaker 1: and then being like I should do the same thing.
46:42
Speaker 1: But it's a fake thing. It's right because I think
46:44
Speaker 1: we need to demilitarize our country. There's two I mean,
46:49
Speaker 1: the military budget to see anyone billion dollars and the
46:52
Speaker 1: education budget is like, here have two dollars for textbooks, mean,
46:55
Speaker 1: while they're like you have eighty jillion dollars for the military,
46:58
Speaker 1: and it's it's like, hey, let's maybe prioritize. So this,
47:02
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a large cultural question, like you know,
47:06
Speaker 1: it's like I feel like it's a very easy answer
47:08
Speaker 1: to be like, we see so many men shooting guns
47:10
Speaker 1: on screen. Shouldn't we see women shooting guns on screen?
47:13
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I think we should see less men
47:15
Speaker 1: shooting guns on screen, and that you know, like, do
47:18
Speaker 1: I think it should be equalized? And should we see
47:20
Speaker 1: female action heroes? Absolutely? Should we see the same amount
47:23
Speaker 1: of female like violent female action heroes? As men, no,
47:27
Speaker 1: because there shouldn't be that many, and so it's like
47:29
Speaker 1: there's so many. I just don't. I just hate saying
47:33
Speaker 1: children being like made to be like you know what
47:35
Speaker 1: would be like very you go girl, cool if you
47:38
Speaker 1: were also extremely violent, like like if you with a
47:41
Speaker 1: fucking fire extinguisher, right, which is cathartic and cool for
47:46
Speaker 1: for any gender on the spectrum. But do you want
47:50
Speaker 1: to show that to any gender in the spectrum when
47:52
Speaker 1: their kids. I don't probably not know. Every movie should
47:58
Speaker 1: be very boring as what I'm saying. Honestly, Michael Bay,
48:03
Speaker 1: you could have just made this a PS about veteran
48:05
Speaker 1: care and say everyone the headache the villain is the
48:08
Speaker 1: one who's pro veteran Care's basically saying, y'all are mistreating
48:12
Speaker 1: the veterans, and they're like, well, and you guys aren't
48:16
Speaker 1: listening to the point that I will fake kill Americans
48:19
Speaker 1: to get my point across because the government isn't listening
48:21
Speaker 1: to your needs. Wow. I mean in a way Ed Harris,
48:25
Speaker 1: Ed Harris I think really does milk money. Milk money
48:29
Speaker 1: with Ed Harrison, he's like the nature guy and like
48:32
Speaker 1: and like his him, his son, his friends go to
48:34
Speaker 1: this city to pay a prostitute because they want to
48:36
Speaker 1: see a woman naked for the first time. I'm sorry,
48:38
Speaker 1: sex worker for the first time because they're like fourteen
48:42
Speaker 1: and they're like, we've never we've not men until we've
48:45
Speaker 1: seen a naked woman. And then they go. Then he
48:48
Speaker 1: wants her to be his mom and like tries to
48:50
Speaker 1: hook him up with Ed Harris. But it's crazy because
48:53
Speaker 1: I think these films came out within a year of
48:55
Speaker 1: each other, and so on one side you have crazy
48:57
Speaker 1: veteran Ed Harris and then like nerd like single dad
49:00
Speaker 1: in Harrison. That's why character actors are so interesting to me.
49:03
Speaker 1: It's like, in the space of a year, they will
49:05
Speaker 1: sometimes do like, Okay, this is how they paid their
49:07
Speaker 1: rent and this is how they spent the rest of
49:09
Speaker 1: their time. Like no one has done a career retrospective
49:12
Speaker 1: on Ed Harris. I bet it's fucking fast. I think
49:14
Speaker 1: the amount of different ship was it a few years
49:16
Speaker 1: before this that he was. The first movie I ever
49:18
Speaker 1: saw him in was Apollo thirteen, which is a movie
49:20
Speaker 1: I watched probably like thirty times as a kid. I
49:22
Speaker 1: don't know why I was on so much. I used
49:25
Speaker 1: to confuse Apollo thirteen and the movie that happens because
49:29
Speaker 1: of the Rock, which is Armageddon, that's the next president. Well,
49:37
Speaker 1: then they'll say that it was John Mason James Bond too.
49:40
Speaker 1: There's that. Yeah, there's like I was looking at weird
49:45
Speaker 1: sh about the movie. There's like what about this James
49:47
Speaker 1: Bond theory? Like, no, I don't need that to be Well,
49:50
Speaker 1: let's get back to those characters because at some point,
49:53
Speaker 1: once it's established in the Cage and Sean Connery are
49:55
Speaker 1: going to be friends, it gets very silly where they're
49:58
Speaker 1: basically quipping at each other for like consecutive minutes through
50:03
Speaker 1: various obstacles. There's there's one line where Nick Cage says
50:07
Speaker 1: something and then Sean Connery replies with, Oh, my days,
50:10
Speaker 1: aren't that exciting now because I just read a lot
50:13
Speaker 1: of philosophy and avoid getting gang raped in the washrooms.
50:17
Speaker 1: And then he says it's not as much of a
50:19
Speaker 1: problem these days. I think I've lost my sex appeal.
50:21
Speaker 1: And it's like, oh, you don't president about rape. God,
50:28
Speaker 1: Like we don't even need to talk about everything that's
50:30
Speaker 1: wrong with there's not time to unpack. But like there's okay,
50:36
Speaker 1: So I hate this movie so much. It's horribly directed.
50:38
Speaker 1: I hate Michael Bay. He sucks so much. Nick Cage
50:41
Speaker 1: overacts every single scene he's in. Every line read of,
50:44
Speaker 1: every line is terrible. Like there's just but I I
50:48
Speaker 1: stand for Nick Cage. I hate him. He sucks, but
50:55
Speaker 1: he's amazing, amazing raising Arizona and I like him Moonstruck
51:00
Speaker 1: and I don't mind him an adaptation and every other
51:02
Speaker 1: movie he's in. He needs to be used exactly. I
51:06
Speaker 1: feel like Nick Cage can be directed very well. Well,
51:10
Speaker 1: there are some lines that he says in this movie
51:12
Speaker 1: that I just want to point out. And then a
51:14
Speaker 1: few other lines from other characters. One of the dance
51:18
Speaker 1: start very coming to theaters again. No, we're getting him
51:25
Speaker 1: to do the read. So if I have a few
51:29
Speaker 1: of my favorite lines, Nick Cage says something like, and
51:33
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to get this line read right,
51:34
Speaker 1: where he's just like, what do you say? We cut
51:37
Speaker 1: the chit chat a whole volume control is all right,
51:46
Speaker 1: whole And he's like, how in the name of Zeus
51:50
Speaker 1: is but did you escape yourself? It's just oh god,
51:55
Speaker 1: there because nerds don't curse, there is but whole so
52:00
Speaker 1: and then Sean Connery says, he makes a really funny
52:03
Speaker 1: joke that we all just laughed, HI laugh at where
52:04
Speaker 1: he says, you're you're between the rock and a hard
52:07
Speaker 1: case say that. I don't know at some point where
52:13
Speaker 1: I think they thought it was the funniest joke in
52:15
Speaker 1: the world. I think I was suffering so much my
52:17
Speaker 1: brain just forgot about that one. I for sure missed
52:20
Speaker 1: some stuff in this movie, so annoyed was just like, oh,
52:24
Speaker 1: she's I had to tune up for a minute. My
52:25
Speaker 1: favorite joke that is not a joke that needs to
52:28
Speaker 1: be fully explained top to bottom in this movie is
52:32
Speaker 1: the rocket man joke. Towards the end, I don't listen
52:36
Speaker 1: to that. So Nicholas catch and another Navy cel who
52:41
Speaker 1: he's about to Gil Nichols says, hey, ever heard a
52:46
Speaker 1: rocket man? And then the guy says, I don't listen
52:49
Speaker 1: to that soft ash ship. And then Nicholas Cage proceeds
52:52
Speaker 1: to explain the joke. Well, I asked, because it's about
52:58
Speaker 1: I only bring it up because it's you pause, You're
53:01
Speaker 1: the rocket man, and then shoots him with a rocket
53:06
Speaker 1: fence post or something. There's so many like quips in
53:09
Speaker 1: this movie where You're just like, could have used a
53:11
Speaker 1: second draft, could have paid Aaron Sorkin a day, right, No,
53:16
Speaker 1: that was Aaron Sorkins. He's like that stays. There's a
53:21
Speaker 1: fun line. I think. I don't remember exactly who says this.
53:24
Speaker 1: It might be Sean Connery, but he says something like
53:27
Speaker 1: losers are blah blah blah. Winners go home and fuck
53:30
Speaker 1: the prom queen. I don't know if you know this,
53:32
Speaker 1: but women are not actually with the people. We are rewards.
53:36
Speaker 1: Women are rewards that men get to go home and
53:38
Speaker 1: have sex and have sex with because they're waiting in
53:40
Speaker 1: a bed brone for a man to enter. Candles, pigtails,
53:45
Speaker 1: feather po ain't pregnant. I'm gregnant and I'm laying on
53:48
Speaker 1: the bed out with my arms out, just paused. My
53:52
Speaker 1: life is on pause, but not visually gregnant. That would
53:55
Speaker 1: be gress, that'd be gross in it. You put your
53:58
Speaker 1: gregnant in me, greg Nancy, I can't. One last thing
54:06
Speaker 1: I got to say is that we high risk Gregory.
54:11
Speaker 1: We don't see any cats in this movie, but a
54:13
Speaker 1: cat dog A cat is mentioned because Nicholas Cage says
54:18
Speaker 1: that he killed his cat with his chemistry set when
54:20
Speaker 1: he was a kid. He does. So now it's a
54:23
Speaker 1: good time to mention that cats do have eight nipples.
54:26
Speaker 1: This is cat facts with Caitlin. Okay, eight nipples yeah,
54:29
Speaker 1: male cats too? Yes? Wow, do you as a man
54:33
Speaker 1: have the same number of nipples? Because I had like,
54:37
Speaker 1: like I had a male dog that I felt like
54:39
Speaker 1: I couldn't find all its nipples and I was like,
54:41
Speaker 1: oh where these things go? Were you searching actively? As
54:44
Speaker 1: a kid? I was curious because I was like, oh,
54:47
Speaker 1: I was like this cat has at and I'm like
54:49
Speaker 1: in this boy dog when I was like three, I
54:51
Speaker 1: don't know. Well, they dragged on the ground four down
54:56
Speaker 1: when you're just nippy and started to just dreg nip
54:59
Speaker 1: sliding on the you're slipping on your own nips and
55:04
Speaker 1: sorry I brought it up. Sorry I tripped on my nips? Here?
55:10
Speaker 1: Can we? I do want to talk a little bit
55:12
Speaker 1: more about the stylist character. Okay, so I do we
55:16
Speaker 1: have time for a protein pack? He? Oh. There was
55:21
Speaker 1: one character who I would argue is a queer icon
55:24
Speaker 1: who I was shocked only appeared in one Seeing Ranger
55:27
Speaker 1: Bob I think it was who shows around Alcatraz and
55:30
Speaker 1: he's like, this is Alcatraz, and I was like, queer icon,
55:34
Speaker 1: he's amazing. He says something like welcome to Broadway. Right,
55:37
Speaker 1: he literally drops Broadway. I was like, this is such
55:40
Speaker 1: a Michael Bay weird view of queerness. But for for
55:43
Speaker 1: the Ranger Bob character, it really works for me. He's
55:46
Speaker 1: wearing khankies, a very tight wool socks, very confident. He's like,
55:52
Speaker 1: welcome to Alcatraz. It's basically Broadway. And I was like,
55:57
Speaker 1: what a queer icon. I love him. You never see
55:59
Speaker 1: him again, Like many great potential be characters, he disappeared.
56:04
Speaker 1: What's a matter? Fells? Something wrong with the tour? And
56:06
Speaker 1: then yeah, I mean comma fellas comma queer. I amazing,
56:12
Speaker 1: loved it. Hey fella, so confusing queer icons but just
56:16
Speaker 1: old timey people, so brag. I have a few game
56:23
Speaker 1: ol friends. I know I have friends you guys, And
56:28
Speaker 1: I asked them how they felt about representation of characters
56:32
Speaker 1: like this stylist who are coded as being gay but
56:36
Speaker 1: not necessarily explicitly stated. So one of one of my
56:40
Speaker 1: friends said that, um, if a movie character is gay,
56:42
Speaker 1: they want to know because the character explicitly states it,
56:45
Speaker 1: not because the movies relying on like harmful stereotypes to
56:49
Speaker 1: communicate that information. Another one of my friends said that
56:53
Speaker 1: they're okay with like a feminine gay men being portrayed
56:55
Speaker 1: on screen because that is how some gay men present,
56:58
Speaker 1: but they would want that content to be made by
57:01
Speaker 1: like a gay creator, like a director and stuff like that,
57:04
Speaker 1: because when it's someone like Michael Bay, who was notorious
57:07
Speaker 1: for treating all of his characters like archetypes and stereo antagonistic, Yeah, yeah,
57:12
Speaker 1: I would. I would direct people to a documentary that
57:14
Speaker 1: I saw a couple of years ago I really enjoyed,
57:16
Speaker 1: called the Gay Word for a further exploration of how
57:21
Speaker 1: gay characters are depicted by like especially straight, often male filmmakers,
57:25
Speaker 1: and also gets really deep into the gay villains trope
57:29
Speaker 1: that is popular for decades and decades of just like
57:32
Speaker 1: how code gate characters appear on screen, and depending on
57:35
Speaker 1: who the filmmaker is, how that affects how harmful it. Yeah, yeah,
57:39
Speaker 1: what you called the gay Word? Great? To check it out?
57:41
Speaker 1: I sure will. Yeah. There's a line that Ed Harris
57:44
Speaker 1: says at some point in the movie that goes like this,
57:46
Speaker 1: mars are his wife Menacing is a name before the
57:57
Speaker 1: year she was born. His life, his fucking wife. Literally,
58:06
Speaker 1: But again, it's like we're talking about the coding of
58:08
Speaker 1: a movie. His wife is saying he's got nothing to lose, right,
58:14
Speaker 1: that's it. That's why it says his wife before it
58:16
Speaker 1: says like ninety seven. You know, it's just drives me crazy. Okay.
58:22
Speaker 1: Ed Harris says, man your posts men, which is I
58:26
Speaker 1: think the fiecest statement of this movie. It's just like
58:29
Speaker 1: using man as a verb to do your job and
58:33
Speaker 1: then just be like man, man, man your post men,
58:36
Speaker 1: as long as your manage, make sure man what you're
58:38
Speaker 1: doing it man that man cannon man life alright, his wife,
58:44
Speaker 1: his wife, his life. Okay, I mean, I mean it's aggressive.
58:54
Speaker 1: Just watching, I'm pretty sure I'm not listening, but I
58:56
Speaker 1: felt like it was. The text was so big, it
58:58
Speaker 1: was like the size of the right. It was like
59:00
Speaker 1: his life, his life, his wife, Barbara. Does anyone have
59:07
Speaker 1: She's she's the predicate to a sentence exactly name the subject.
59:14
Speaker 1: Does anyone have any of the thoughts about the movie?
59:16
Speaker 1: Shame on anyone who would try to tell you it's
59:19
Speaker 1: a good movie. It's not a good movie. If anything,
59:21
Speaker 1: they're conflating their nostalgia for for a time when they
59:24
Speaker 1: were younger and couldn't have any like an adult thought
59:27
Speaker 1: about or like critical thinking about the films they saw,
59:30
Speaker 1: like the only when I think really about the feelings
59:32
Speaker 1: I have about it, it's purely the nostalgia of it,
59:36
Speaker 1: rather than like, man, when I fucking need to get inspired,
59:39
Speaker 1: I watched The Rock. I'm like the last time I
59:41
Speaker 1: watches Like I'm so hungover that the Rock is on
59:44
Speaker 1: in the background, and even then I'm not going to
59:46
Speaker 1: turn it off. And it's only because the remote is
59:49
Speaker 1: like on the floor across the room and I cannot
59:51
Speaker 1: get I wanted to say something really quickly. We didn't
59:54
Speaker 1: really talk about the Jade character. I would say this
59:58
Speaker 1: is again just a big, not surprisingly missed opportunity by
1:00:02
Speaker 1: Michael Bay where we're presenting with a female character who
1:00:06
Speaker 1: does not seem stupid. She we see her at her college.
1:00:11
Speaker 1: You know, she's meeting up with her convict father and
1:00:14
Speaker 1: brings a friend. This tracks for me. It's like, if
1:00:17
Speaker 1: you're going to meet your father who's a convict, don't
1:00:19
Speaker 1: show up alone. She cops to this openly. She questions
1:00:23
Speaker 1: what he's telling her, which makes sense if your father
1:00:26
Speaker 1: is a convict, but she's still ultimately in the space
1:00:29
Speaker 1: of the one scene she really appears in is characterized
1:00:33
Speaker 1: as property to the male character, to the point where
1:00:37
Speaker 1: Sean Connery says to her, like, you're the only proof
1:00:42
Speaker 1: that I exist, which which totally just I'm like, well,
1:00:46
Speaker 1: that's all she is to the plot. And so it's
1:00:48
Speaker 1: it's a bummer to see people like characters like her
1:00:52
Speaker 1: and like Brenda, not Brenda, Brenda actually Carla. But it's like,
1:00:56
Speaker 1: you see these these women who appear to have some
1:00:59
Speaker 1: potential Jill as a character just ultimately be discarded, and
1:01:04
Speaker 1: like seeing the Jade character as like, because I didn't
1:01:07
Speaker 1: really know what this movie was about, I certainly didn't
1:01:09
Speaker 1: remember her. I was like, oh, man, I hope she
1:01:11
Speaker 1: comes back. She never never. Yeah, Well, they're like they're
1:01:15
Speaker 1: mere existence or like it's sort of heightened by or
1:01:18
Speaker 1: it's exactly connected to their ability to procreate as men. Exactly.
1:01:23
Speaker 1: You're you're a verification that my dick works for Jade,
1:01:27
Speaker 1: and because you're you're gregnant. Now I'm going to be
1:01:32
Speaker 1: a hero due to your ability for gregnant. I have
1:01:34
Speaker 1: to live because you're Greek net The conversation about Jade
1:01:39
Speaker 1: leads us to whether or not this movie passes the
1:01:41
Speaker 1: Bechdel test. It doesn't. Here's why. So there's only there's
1:01:46
Speaker 1: only one opportunity where this could potentially happen, and it's
1:01:49
Speaker 1: where Jade and her friends Stacy, both the characters are named,
1:01:52
Speaker 1: go to meet John Mason, and Jade says to her
1:01:57
Speaker 1: friend Stacy, it's okay, and Stacy says, I'll be over
1:01:59
Speaker 1: there if you need me. No men are explicitly stated
1:02:03
Speaker 1: or mentioned in that too long to change to the
1:02:05
Speaker 1: conversation they're talking about whether or not Jade feels safe
1:02:08
Speaker 1: meeting her convict father. I am beyond willing to say
1:02:13
Speaker 1: this movie does not pass the Bechdel test. Yeah that
1:02:16
Speaker 1: was I mean, that was the only scene where I
1:02:19
Speaker 1: feel like it even comes into questions. No other women
1:02:22
Speaker 1: interacted to the point where and this is how badly
1:02:25
Speaker 1: this podcast and this test is jad to me from Like,
1:02:28
Speaker 1: why did he even bother to give Stacy a name
1:02:31
Speaker 1: if she was never going to come back? I think
1:02:33
Speaker 1: they went out of their way. It was to make
1:02:35
Speaker 1: the point that Sean Connery couldn't even recognize his own daughter, right, Oh, okay,
1:02:40
Speaker 1: that does track. She was like, no, I'm Stacy, right, Okay,
1:02:46
Speaker 1: so yeah, this movie doesn't hapend. Yeah, so she's merely
1:02:49
Speaker 1: there to underline how shitty if it died. It's purely
1:02:52
Speaker 1: be like, how is he going to? Oh, I'll think
1:02:54
Speaker 1: this other woman is his daughter? Was her name almost Daisy? Yeah?
1:02:58
Speaker 1: So movie does not pas special test And I like,
1:03:01
Speaker 1: was really I almost had a panic attack, and I
1:03:04
Speaker 1: was like, did that just pass? And I was like,
1:03:05
Speaker 1: wait a minute. There the context of their conversation is
1:03:08
Speaker 1: specifically about John Mason, so it doesn't pass. Said that.
1:03:12
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it. I was like, oh my god,
1:03:14
Speaker 1: because in my mind I was like, no, there's no way.
1:03:16
Speaker 1: And I was like, which is why I think sometimes
1:03:18
Speaker 1: when women are talking in a movie, they can mention
1:03:21
Speaker 1: a man in the movie still passes, and they can
1:03:24
Speaker 1: not explicitly mentioned a man in the movie does not.
1:03:26
Speaker 1: I think it's more about context than it is about
1:03:29
Speaker 1: whether or not a man's name happen to be mentioned.
1:03:32
Speaker 1: So we've had we've come up on this a lot.
1:03:34
Speaker 1: But because the subtext is this man making you feel
1:03:36
Speaker 1: insafe exactly, which if he's Sean Connery, probably not my dad,
1:03:41
Speaker 1: who my my mom? And after it led Zeppelin concert.
1:03:44
Speaker 1: God yeah, way, I mean, and I appreciate how realistic
1:03:48
Speaker 1: Jade was about like yeah, of course, like I don't
1:03:50
Speaker 1: I'm curious, but also like I don't trust you just
1:03:54
Speaker 1: again the seeds of a female character that it would
1:03:57
Speaker 1: be interesting to see a second time. We do not
1:04:00
Speaker 1: see bad movie. I hate it, so three and a half.
1:04:05
Speaker 1: That's well. Speaking of writing, let's write on our nipple scale,
1:04:09
Speaker 1: I'm going to give this movie zero nipples. I think
1:04:11
Speaker 1: it's a bad movie on top of it portraying women horribly.
1:04:15
Speaker 1: And Jamie brought up some great points about well, do
1:04:19
Speaker 1: we really want to see that much representation of like
1:04:22
Speaker 1: women in the military and women in government positions when
1:04:26
Speaker 1: it's a movie like this, where it's just perpetuating and
1:04:28
Speaker 1: glorifying thailands and stuff like that, where like, no, I don't.
1:04:32
Speaker 1: I would rather women be left out of those movies. Really,
1:04:35
Speaker 1: I would rather movies like this not be made at
1:04:36
Speaker 1: all because they're not good. And Michael Bays sucks and
1:04:39
Speaker 1: he should be not working in Hollywood. So I mean
1:04:44
Speaker 1: the fact that there are almost no women in the
1:04:46
Speaker 1: entire movie, that all the female characters that do exist
1:04:50
Speaker 1: are there just to basically support or provide the motivation
1:04:54
Speaker 1: of the male characters. They're just flat. We hardly see
1:04:57
Speaker 1: them on screen, they hardly have any lines, and it's
1:05:00
Speaker 1: it's not great representation. I would give it zero also
1:05:04
Speaker 1: because it's like if toxic masculinity was like a missile
1:05:08
Speaker 1: from the movie, like the Rock is like the VX,
1:05:10
Speaker 1: Like the Rock as a film is the green anal
1:05:13
Speaker 1: beads that destroy everything. It's the kind of ship even connected.
1:05:18
Speaker 1: It's like the kind of ship though that like you know,
1:05:20
Speaker 1: looking back, you're like, man like, this is what we
1:05:22
Speaker 1: were like inoculating and socializing like young men with and
1:05:26
Speaker 1: like was just like this idea of like, yeah, dude,
1:05:28
Speaker 1: the broils will get it. Go in there and just
1:05:30
Speaker 1: do their ship and get it done. Yo, chill the
1:05:33
Speaker 1: funk out, you're greg nant. Hang back, I'm gonna do
1:05:35
Speaker 1: my thing and I'll be back in the baby be
1:05:37
Speaker 1: chill like so yeah, and in that sense, and again
1:05:40
Speaker 1: when I was thinking about it, the only reason I
1:05:42
Speaker 1: have anything good to say about it is that it's
1:05:45
Speaker 1: purely like a sensation of the time that it came
1:05:48
Speaker 1: out in where I was twelve years old and my
1:05:52
Speaker 1: world was only as complex as like going to like
1:05:54
Speaker 1: a movie or like, you know, having a crush on someone,
1:05:58
Speaker 1: so in my low stakes world is shut that. But
1:06:01
Speaker 1: other than that, it's like it's like a one yeah,
1:06:04
Speaker 1: I'm I'm giving this uh Sara nipples as well. I
1:06:07
Speaker 1: do agree that it is an interesting time capsule to
1:06:10
Speaker 1: point to. If you see any extremely toxic adult man
1:06:14
Speaker 1: with a military industrial complex, now of like, how did
1:06:18
Speaker 1: he get this movie? Is a great way to be like,
1:06:22
Speaker 1: this is the sort of propaganda that was shoved at
1:06:25
Speaker 1: them at a very young age, and that is why
1:06:28
Speaker 1: people like this exist in the world, right Yeah, I
1:06:31
Speaker 1: I god. I think that earlier in this podcast, just
1:06:34
Speaker 1: going off of how ja did we've gotten via doing
1:06:37
Speaker 1: this podcast, and I think our listeners have to um
1:06:40
Speaker 1: is that it's no longer you don't get half a
1:06:43
Speaker 1: nip a single nip for simply having women in your
1:06:47
Speaker 1: movie because the context of how those women exists. So
1:06:50
Speaker 1: there's no woman that is introduced into this plot that
1:06:53
Speaker 1: isn't strictly with the intention of characterizing and giving more
1:06:57
Speaker 1: shades of gray to a man. So there's nothing, there's nothing.
1:07:02
Speaker 1: Every female character with any potential is completely sidelined. Half
1:07:06
Speaker 1: written by Lord knows what male writer did not want
1:07:10
Speaker 1: to be included in the credits of this movie. I
1:07:14
Speaker 1: mean not I don't know, and ultimately where you know,
1:07:18
Speaker 1: not to glorify toxic masculinity in any way, but like
1:07:22
Speaker 1: there are some bad Michael Bay movie that are sort
1:07:25
Speaker 1: of fun to watch, this one isn't even fun to
1:07:27
Speaker 1: watch for me where I have no cultural context for it.
1:07:30
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's just a mediocre movie that is saying
1:07:33
Speaker 1: bad things. So didn't enjoy the movie zero nipples. I'd
1:07:39
Speaker 1: be curious for people to, like, if you're ever on
1:07:42
Speaker 1: a date and you're dating somebody have The Rock on
1:07:44
Speaker 1: DVD and it's a man as the owner to challenge
1:07:47
Speaker 1: them what they think of the film now, because I
1:07:49
Speaker 1: feel like you'll find people who can either understand how
1:07:52
Speaker 1: bad the movie is or some people who are still
1:07:54
Speaker 1: actually holding on today. I think like it would be
1:07:56
Speaker 1: very tellent because I'm sure I have a few friends
1:07:58
Speaker 1: who would be like, dude, the Rocks fucking sick, like
1:08:00
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, And I think like it's
1:08:02
Speaker 1: very I think you can use that film almost as
1:08:04
Speaker 1: a litmus test to see if you can if someone can,
1:08:07
Speaker 1: we need to add it to we have a litmus
1:08:09
Speaker 1: test list of films of like red flag films. Someone
1:08:14
Speaker 1: tells you this is one of your favorite films and
1:08:15
Speaker 1: means it earnestly and if they can't at the very
1:08:19
Speaker 1: least be like, I understand it's bad. It's a nostalgia
1:08:22
Speaker 1: or whatever, and you can at least acknowledge that. But
1:08:24
Speaker 1: I know people who would probably fucking knuckle down and
1:08:26
Speaker 1: be like, dude, it's actually like the perfect action films.
1:08:29
Speaker 1: Well you think about it. It actually she's great and
1:08:32
Speaker 1: that's good. Yeah, Okay, he saved a gregnant woman, so
1:08:37
Speaker 1: it's all right. Whatever. I don't know what this gregnant
1:08:40
Speaker 1: thing is and we don't have time. Should be the
1:08:45
Speaker 1: video because the video is hilarious. That's my plug. Okay, okay,
1:08:48
Speaker 1: what what is it called there? It's this video. We'll
1:08:50
Speaker 1: put it in the footnotes. Okay. So across the board,
1:08:53
Speaker 1: zero nipple ratings, so so bad. Michael Bay Boo Miles.
1:08:59
Speaker 1: Where can be people find you? Um? Um, you can
1:09:06
Speaker 1: find me on closed the Daily sie Geist, which the
1:09:09
Speaker 1: two of you have been grace enough to come on
1:09:11
Speaker 1: many times. Yeah, just check out that podcast. I'm on
1:09:14
Speaker 1: their line on Twitter and Instagram at miles of gray
1:09:16
Speaker 1: and the video is called am I Pregnant? So it's
1:09:19
Speaker 1: so good pregnant. All the hot ones are hot spellings.
1:09:24
Speaker 1: Yeah great. Um. You can follow the Bectel Cast on
1:09:27
Speaker 1: all the social media platforms. You can rate and review
1:09:30
Speaker 1: us on iTunes, you can pay more. Maybe John five
1:09:35
Speaker 1: dollars a month gets you discount on merch which you
1:09:38
Speaker 1: should also buy, and it gives you two bonus episodes
1:09:41
Speaker 1: of the Becto Cast. Juno speaking of gregnant goodness, Signtum, Miles,
1:09:52
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here. It's been We're
1:09:55
Speaker 1: a sixteen and we're impregnated by a high schooler named Greg.
1:10:00
Speaker 1: This is my dad, my baby daddy, greggnant. I'm gregnan handed.
1:10:07
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that we got so sidetracked and pregnant. I'm
1:10:11
Speaker 1: glad you saw it.