Latest / Houselights: A Film Director Podcast / Enemy Mine (1985) - Wolfgang Petersen | Houselights #136
Transcript
- Welcome to the nerd Party. Hello everybody at home, and welcome to Houselights A specifically House of Peterson Voufgung Peterson. And with tonight we are talking about nineteen eighty five Enemy Mine, and this is rounding out are Peterson of the Eighties chapter And this was the entire reason why I wanted to do Peterson of the Eighties. And I'm so glad that we've made it here because I was raised on this movie and I have a lot of deep connections to it with my family, and so I am super excited to talk about it. But with me, as they always are, is Darren Moser and John Mills. Darren, how are you doing tonight? Good? I mean, this is a sci fi staple. I mean you can't really make a list of like top fifty or maybe even top thirty and not put Enemy Mine on it. Although to my shame, it was many a year before I actually got around to watching this. It took me way too long. As someone who's moniker is doctor sci Fi. It took me way too long to actually watch this, not this weekend, it has it has been a few years. But when I think about this movie, for some reason, the poster is what always pops into my head. The face off. Yeah, the two faces. It's not that unique because we've seen that kind of poster before, but for some reason, that's what I think of. And I just want to read what was on the poster to you guys, because I absolutely love it. Over how overdramatic it is. I'm gonna do my dramatic voice here. Enemies because they were taught to be allies, because they had to be others, because they dared to be enemy mine the wolf game person. Yeah, that sounds like a movie poster from the eighties. That's something like it, John John my Man, Yeah, when when did you see this? Oh? I saw it on VHS with my dad, you know, back in the eighties. But I so you know, this has been part of my my lex con, my my canon, my my my film history for my whole life pretty much. But of course, what I always think of first with this movie is everybody who's listening to this show knows that I dragged my friend Joey every so often, so I'll give him the w on this one though. This is this is my early Christmas gift to him because we got into quite a spirited argument. And this this arguments like twenty twenty five years old by this point where because of the makeup similarities, I had confused whether lucas a junior and Dan O'Hurley he Dan or Hurley He, for the record, is in the Last Starfighter and makeup very similar to Lewis. Yes, and I had, I had flopped it in my brain, and I insisted I must have been correct, and Joey insisted he must have been correct. And because of that, this is where I pulled the rug out from underneath his w He's been so petty that, for more than a couple of decades later, every time we have a disagreement where one of us insists that they must be right, he will make reference to that argument, because the one time I was wrong that he can remember is the one time he'll hold on to for the rest of our lives. So there you go, see, Joey, if you're listening, I give and I take in the same moment. So that's the thing. This is what nerds fight about, and this is what we remember for decades, and yes it Yeah, you can't watch that stink away of failure. You can't. Speaking of Wolfgung Peterson. Uh So, I was always impressed with the makeup, you know, like you brow up the makeup and how it is. It is kind similar to Last Starfighter. And actually I'm on the IMDb page right now and right underneath it the first movie that says more like this, and it says the Last Starfighter and I'm like, yeah, yeah, no, that works. But this one, this one, Yeah, I watched with the family, like I associated with my dad, even though I watched it with both with my dad and my mom. Mainly my dad though, but we we watched this as a family. I think there was there was only two parts that he fast forwarded real quick because long time listeners know that David Ruddell, my dad is like super good with the fast forward button. And I saw like fifteen minutes of Batman nineteen eighty nine when I was a kid, and um, but it was the it was the scene where he almost gets his leg torn off by that thing pit Yeah, yeah, yeah, kind of buddy. Yeah parts Oh no, it's it's phenomenal, it's great. But um and then when the Sandy Squid or whatever that thing is, yeah, whatever that thing is, um, like the the the knockoff sarlac pit. Yes, but in the other one was when he started going to town on some of the on some of the slavers, like you know, like when the guy found his ear and like had a neck like an arrow through the throat, just like certain bits like that when the guy falls into the course crew and it's like, oh, yeah, you that was not pleasant. Yeah, this was like this was PG. Third. I always forget that this is PG. Thirteen because most of what I remember is just like Quaid and Gossip Junior just hanging out, you know, um, because most of the movie is just them hanging out. And this is one thing right off the bat I want to talk about is this is an hour and forty eight minutes. But and as a kid, I always felt like it was kind of long, Like I always felt like, oh, this is dragging on. But watching this as an adult, I feel like it goes at a breakneck page. We're like, holy crap, we are going through they We're getting through the storyline really quick. And am I way off base here? What do you guys? What do you would ever put enemy mine and the term breakneck pace and the same sentence. I mean, you're right, it does move along I think just because gosh, I kept thinking, what would this movie be like if they made it nowadays, because there's no way they would move at that pace and they think it two enough hours at least, But I think it needs to move at that pace to get the you know, it's like a romantic comedy where they don't actually spend any time together and you're like, what's the payoff of this relationship. It's the same thing where they're becoming brothers, and you know, I mean years happen, a lot of time passes. You're learning language and culture, and you have to you have to take time. I mean, granted, you could have something like Battlefield Earth where they hand wave and they're like, here's a machine that will teach you everything you need to know and about one montage sequence, but no, it's it needs to take it's you're you're soaking the story in the hot tub for a long time to get it just right. But no, I I've always felt that it not drags, but it is definitely plodding, like it is moving at its own which again I'm not saying is bad. It's just bad, is what this movie is. What do you think, John, I think the issue is that it's um It suffers in a sense the same sort of editing difficulties that the Never Ending Story does. Where it I don't think that it ever establishes the rhythm that it's setting out to, and you sort of settle into a rhythm and then it speeds up and then it slows down, and then it speeds up and like and it can. It's sort of staccato in that. And that's why even passage of time is well, wait, was this? Was this? Years in between? Was this months in between? And the sort of give and take of everything is a little bit unclear. Now that's a positive because you're covering a large span of time and so you need to, you know, make those jumps. I don't think that the jumps. I don't know what the solution would have been, but I don't think that those jumps were as successfully established as they could have been. And I think that we've gone deep enough now to realize that that might be an issue that Peterson has overall in establishing the rhythm. We would probably disagree, I think, but I think the closest he gets to a good rhythm is dos Bolt. Even in the longer cut like I think that there is at least there is at least a flow to it. I know Tristan's making a face everyone because he remembers that this is a visual medium that you're listening to right now. But I would say that, um, this, just regardless of whatever else I might compare to, this doesn't ever really get them that that pacing right, And I think that that contributes to some of its unintentional clunkiness at points in the in the latter reel of the film, and some of the jumps that it makes there make it a little bit much. But you know, I mean, we'll get to this later. But I think that there are plenty of charms to this movie that make up for it. I think, you know, if you having recently watched dust Boot, if you were to say, like if I if you someone just watched dust Boot and you're like, oh yeah, this person also made you know, enemy Mine would be like, oh yeah, that that makes sense, like you know, slow, you know, taking their time, soaking in the scenes. I see that in both of those movies. But I was trying to think of like another movie where a lot of time passes, and it's been a while since i've watched this, but I was thinking of like Castaway, where a lot of time passes for him, but they have things like the little figure eight sun clock in the in the cave to show like what type of year it is, And I feel like enemy mine because it's this alien world, like there's nothing to ground onto except for like his beard, Like there's nothing to really anchor time's passing. It's just the beard. It's just that beard, which I mean they use effectively, but yeah, it's like it could be one year, it could be five years. I don't know. And maybe it also kind of suffers a bit from its single perspective. I mean, if you really think about it, you're you're strapped to Dennis Quaid the entire movie, and I'll say that kind of I think hurts it a little bit in the very last act because once he's taken away, like dies and it gets taken I feel a big disconnect with I'm gonna call him Junior, but I know that's not his name. Zammies with zombies where you know, again with pacing like that, you know the humans are trying to save him and get and get him, and you feel like, does he need to rush back to zombies, like is zommies Okay? Like obviously we know he's with the slavers and it's not a good situation. But I think maybe at least one or two cutbacks to zombies and what he was going through might have helped that third act just overall. Like I didn't really think about it until now, Like we are just with with Quade the entire the entire time, like we never spin off with Jerry. We never really do any of that, which isn't bad. It's just it's kind of unique for a film. Yeah, we've we've talked about that before on this podcast, about certain movies that are just done from the protagonists perspective, and we've we've talked about it recently. I'm blinking on what movie it was, but my go to for that has always Children of Men with Clive Owen, like he like that movie is a movie that did it right where you see everything from his perspective and it's done really well and you're and you're right, it's done. It's done. Stand by me that we last talked about it, I don't. Possibly, I don't. I'm not quite sure, but I kind of I forgot I forgot about that with this piece, but with this movie, because you're absolutely right. If this movie was made today, I think we would get more perspectives, like we would get them calling off the search for for Dutch, you know, we would get or we would be that what's it called or Jerry's people, Like we never see Jerry's people into and I get that's the point. It's the two lone survivors together, but right they're kind of in a vacuum. Apparently there was a deleted scene where we see way more of the epilogue okay, where we actually see Davitch take Zamis to the home world and actually meet Drac's parent. So Zamis gets to meeting ceremony, but meeting his parents, yeah, well we actually his parents singular uh and we actually get to see like so Zamis meets his grandparent and um, and it's I'm so I was so angry when I found that out, because I would I would have loved to have seen that because the third act is weird, because I like the third act, but it feels like a completely different movie. Yes, you know, tonally, it's such a huge shift where it becomes a you know, like I just get me back my son. You know, like it just turns into that movie at the end, which I think it needed to be for where the story that they took, but it just it just felt odd because everything was everything, like you said, was so drack and davage in them trying to forge a life together and survive, and then all of a sudden he's thrown back into his real into his own world, and then he chooses to go back to the one with his with his found family and foreign family, and then it became you know, like a Charles Bronson movie at the end. Well, I didn't spend enough time out of the world, Like when he goes back on the space station, we're barely there. So I mean I think that when they practically smash cut to him being in the medical facility and then walking with purpose, clean shaven and hair slick back. Yeah, like that's what you're talking about with breakneck speed, We're just should have been war of like why are you wanting to go back? Or like him trying to convince the higher ups, and there was none of that. It was like, oh, we don't get time for that. Like he just the first thing he does is steal a ship and get out of there, and so it it. I think because of that, the the ending where they're back on the planet and all the Drac and humans are coming together, it doesn't feel earned like because like the war has still been going on for two years. Drac had been killing humans. Human have been killing Drac. Like there's he's this one he has perspective, but I can The thing that adds I think a little bit to that that the pacing issues and stuff like that is what it winds up taking on the way I take it. And I didn't take it this way as a kid at all. And it's been many years since I watched this, But what I admire about the film is what it seems to be trying to say in one aspect is that it's not the explorers who are at fault, but rather the the interests of unethical people that manipulate and take advantage of the places they discover. So I think that there's a very because the the we find out that the argument between the two is you're showing up and you're taking resources. We were here first, and we belong here, and we find out that the two species aren't that far apart. The problem is that you have a holes who are you know, swooping in behind them and creating the tense situation. If you had a situation where the two just met each other and like, hey, what's up, brou Hey, how are you doing? Right, they're all going to get along, But then you have these profiteers and corporations and stuff like that that come in and they despoil what's going on, and you know, I think that what could have been interesting wouldn't have worked. Really like this is more of like if you're writing a novel sort of thing. It's finding out that both sides had unethical interests and they were the one and it was like, wait a minute, we don't have a problem with each other. Those guys have a problem with each other because they're manipulating our good faith efforts to go out and explore. It's sort of you know, it's like it's like saying what do you think? It's I know, this might be a little reductive, but like it's kind of like an avatar where they say, like what do you think funds your scientific experiments? Right? You know, and it's we have that kind of situation where like if you you know, like you you have Dennis Quaid with his voiceover at the beginning, which I think was the only time we needed some voiceover. I didn't like that it was all throughout the film. I don't like, you really didn't need his voiceover throughout the film. But I liked it at the intro because he was talking about exploring and expanding, like we've united as a people, you know, on Earth, but then we find somebody else and it just goes to crap. But then I would have loved the idea, like I would have loved that's kind of subplot of of exploration, like exploration because you know, we're Star Trek fans, but like exploration being at the heart of people. But in order to do that, in order to pay for exploration, in order to make that happen, you need resources. And in that moment when they're yelling at each other and like they're they're starting to like Davage literally tries to strangle Drack or I'm sorry, Jerry, and like he says, he's he says, he's like, we're not exactly home, buddies. We've we've settled twice as many planets of you that you have. He's like, exactly you guys are a plague, Like I would have loved to have seen a little bit more of that with the voiceover. I agree with you. The way I always expect this film to resolve itself is even in the gearshift moment, is to have more of a breath of him talking to Zammies, so that you get the sense that everything up to that point is him telling a fireside story. This is how, this is why I'm your uncle. That's just how I think it should have paid off, and you know, and all of that, and it's like it's it's you know, it's armchair quarterbacking in the extreme to sit there and do that with a movie that's this many years old and everything. But you know, the amazing thing to me is that I don't know whether and you know, Trista, you can probably speak to this um as as much as anybody else, because I think you and I have a sort of like similar bond to this, and I think Darren you you could probably speak to this too. I'm not like trying to say like, only only get it. I get the tent of shells. Oh yes, outside that those are pretty awesome shells. But um, although I don't know how knocking on it with your knuckles means that they could withstand meteors. But it's cool, It's cool, um like, But but the thing is is nostalgia. Is nostalgia blinding us to this? Is this this sort of thing where it's like, if we came at this cold, this was the first time we ever watched it, we'd be harsher on it. No, because well, I think I think we're all being pretty realistic right now. Like I you know, I started talking about pacing issues, you know, and I started talking about you know, like the third act and everything like that. So like, I'm very critical of this and but at the same time, I very much enjoy this movie. Like I still place on that paragon of sci fi absolutely, so, like, even though there are things wrong with it, and if this was made today, this is definitely a movie that would be made differently. And now I know that that's true. That's pretty a moronic statement, but like I know that that's true for a lot of movies. But there are certain things that don't need to be remade. There are certain things that don't need a modern sensibility. And again that's not a level of quality, it's just with this particular film. I think there's a lot of things that you could do differently and do things better. But you know what's so interesting about this to me is, obviously, in the eighties we still have everybody looking at this or the lens of like a Cold War allegory sort of thing. But what is is so much better than so many other science fiction works that exist in this time period. It's not rooted to that in such a way that watching it today make it doesn't feel like it's outdated where it's like, oh, they're obviously the Soviets and he's the American, Like it's it's about the big universal Japan in America. You could say any conflict really well, I think, um, there was one reviewer like in the eighties that thought it was a poor allegory for Israel and Palestine. So it just goes to show you that, like I mean, you can bring any reach into it. Yeah. Yeah. Thing that we haven't really talked about yet that I really want to, that I really want to talk about, and that I think is the shining star of this movie is Louis Gossett Jr. In his performance. Ye holy crap, I know this is an obvious statement because of all the makeup. But he absolutely disappears in this role from his I mean obviously his voice, but his mannerisms, his speech patterns, everything that he does, everything that he brings to the table. Like when you're watching this and like my dad had to tell me who it was. He's like, that's Louis Gossa Junior. I was like, no, that's not that guy from Iron Eagle. They're like, yes, yes it is, that's totally him. I was thinking, no, not that Master Jaffa from Stargate SG one. It's like, yeah, that one. Yeah, I take my word for it. I trust it, Darren, I trust you. No, the you're You're absolutely right, Like Lewis Gossa Junior. You know you mentioned Iron Eagle. Other people think officer and a gentleman um and there there are so many other roles. This is one of those things where I think that if if the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Siances was a bit more open to different performances for consideration. This is this is your Oscar winning No, but I mean like, this is an Oscar nominee type of thing. This is an award nominee type of performance, not just because of the makeup, but because of like what you're saying, Tristan. He gets his voice different, he gets his body movements different. And it's so easy to forget how talented an actor Lewis Gossa Junior was in this time period, and you forget it because you remember him from those signature roles and from the persona, and you forget he was just a damn it. It's almost ridiculous. It's almost like a Harrison Ford in a sense where it's like he's he's known for these big, certain roles, but then every so often you see like a regarding Henry or even of what lies beneath, and you're like, oh, damn, he can act, that's right, And this is that type of role for Lewis Gossa Junior. He rises the occasion. If you give him this beautiful platter of an acting role, he will accomplish it. Yes, yeah, yeah, this is I This is probably my favorite Lewis Gusta's unior performance, even though I love you know, Officer and Gentleman. I love Iron Eagle, you know, I love his work so much, but there's just so much no pun intended of humanity that he brings to this role and he really sells He really sells it. He absolutely sells everything about it. And it's not so cut and dry of Davitsch's the asshole and you know, and Jerry's just the you know, the other guy who's just like makes him not an asshole. Yeah, it's as if, you know, just because he's the alien. It's not like I'm good, you're bad, and I'm going to teach you how to be good. Like. They're both complex characters, right, They're both complex. They both come to realize, you know, what each other can give to the situation and to each other. And no matter how old I am when I watched this, I always try to will the movie to not kill off Jerry. Every single time. I'm like, no, let them raise, let them raise them as together and um oh, John, you'll like this. The guy, the kid who played Zummies is named Bumper Robinson, and he became a pretty a pretty successful voiceover actor, and he played Cyborg and a couple of DCAU movies. But what you will really like is that he played Dwight Conrad, Hermes Conrad's son in Futurama. Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh. Oh that's Ah. How did I go this along without knowing that? That's fantastic? Ah? I love that. Watch Future Ama now just to watch those uh those episodes. Man, when I found that out, I just I lost my mind and all. And also, this is the the feature film debut of Carolyn McCormick, also known as Minuet from Star Trek the Next Generation. And he's probably maybe one line in the movie. Yeah, who could forget? Well? I mean that part kind of gave me Starship Trooper vibes, where they're like, they're the squad, the buddies, you know, but we barely see them throughout the story, obviously because it's on the planet. But I you know, we keep you know, we refer to being on the planet and everything, and you know, there were production issues. They there was an original director that got fired and Peterson came in reshot all of the footage. I mean, this is a real solo of Star Wars start over with macazines, I think, yes, yeah, they start They spent seventeen million dollars on the first round, which to people in the eighties was a lot of money. That's like catering now, but like that's a substantial budget to a spent back then. Um, and it was in a different country. I can't remember exactly where they filmed it. But then Peterson was like, no, we're going to my backyard. Oh yeah, yeah, which would have been really cool to see. Yeah, but then they strept it. Let's go first cut. Oh yeah yeah. I mean, we'll all agree that this movie looks like it was shot on a sound stage right there. You know that is shot on a sound stage. What's what's super interesting to me is that, Um, I think that Peterson, with these three movies that we've watched, is a director who is and this is overstating it, but I'll go ahead and say it this way. Anyway, he's at the mercy of his director of photography. And I think that with dust Boat he was blessed with a genius behind the camera who got those shots. And I think that he did not have people in these last two movies that we watched that approached that level of g That is not anything to take from anybody's skill or anything. But it's the same way that even though Return of the Jedi is my favorite of the original trilogy of Star Wars, I always was able to like, you're able to tell when they're on a set. And that's because Alan Hume that that's just you know, if you look at another movie that he shot, which was It Was For Your Eyes Only, same sort of thing, we're like, oh wow, these are really cool. Oh and we're on a set, you know, and it's like, it's just it's just the way that it is. But that's when it gets every inch out of that set. But it never doesn't look like a set. But I I but that's the thing. Is what is both charming and frustrating about the look of the movie. And I think it's even fitting that Maurice jar does the score is it looks and feels at certain points as if it was made in the sixties, even though it was made in the eighties. Yeah, you know, and it's like I was actually innoking seventies. I know, we're splitting hairs here, but while I was watching it, I was just like, this feels like it's ten years older than it should be. Yeah. Yeah, like in early seventies movie where you're like, oh, hey, Charlton Heston's at the end of the world again. Cool cool, cool, exactly, And this is not when you when you think enemy mind you don't think, oh, man, this was photographed so well, like good Lord, like those vistas like no, and even in even the model work, like when he crashed lands, I mean you're like, oh, that is that is well and this is eighty five, so eighty seven, two years later we have Princess Bride, And while a lot of that is shot in actual forest, there are I'm thinking of like the parts were they're in the um the fire swamp like, which obviously was a set, but it doesn't feel like a set like this does. Yeah, and even well, even to speak a notch better, I'm not saying it's it's you know, magical to speak say it's okay, well to speak to the model work even it's one of those things where, um, I think that one of the one of the ways that you can approach the way the effects look in some eighties sci fi stuff is ilm made it look easy, and very frequently there were movies like Enemy Mine that made that made it very clear that it was not easy. And you know, I think that's a distinction. It's like it's like Michael Jordan dunking right to me. You know, it's just like when you watch it, it looks like he's just walking on air, and you, like you see Michael Jordan, You're just like, oh, yeah, I should go out and play some bake some basketball, you know, like that that could be. It's just like it's like when you watch the Olympics and you see so many great people doing so many great things right in a row. Like I saw one person say they need to have they need to pluck somebody from the audience, Joe average, Joe average to go do it first and then show what the Olympic athletes are doing so that you get a proper perspective and ilem you know, screws up the bell curve basically. Yeah. Yeah, like the Space Station. I mean everything inside of it feels like Dark Star. It feels like like you said, Tristan, it feels like the seventies. It feels like a you know, we had a beach ball and a kitchen strainer and this stuff and we put it together like it it feels I don't want to go as far as say it feels cheap, but it does not. It looks like every other sci fi like Blake seven and maybe like some some like Doctor feels like that. But but I think I think it even demonstrates and you know, Peterson himself said he wasn't even really a fan of um, you know, like science fiction particularly. You know, he even shows the exact quote and it's on the wiki pages. I'm not a fan of Star Wars science fiction. It was like the opening of his sentiment about why he was predacious about coming to an enemy mind and working on it. And I think that what it is, as well as im is when you have somebody like a Cameron or Spielberg or Lucas, somebody like that who has a very distinct ability to inhabit that design space. They might not be able to build the models or do the Ralph mcquarie paintings themselves, but they can give direction in such a way that it will produce what is necessary. Peterson's not to do. Peterson is a director who shows up on set and says, yeah, we can make that work. Do you like it? That works? Okay, light it right, that sort of thing, and he can run the show and he can make it work on set and manage the production on set and get the shots. But he's not the guy that's going to sit there and pour over thirty different models of job of the hut and say yeah, I don't know, and have a six hour meeting, or he's like, ok, bank slowly, but not on anything else. Yeah, well, even that, I think that probably, I mean, he has an advantage on that because he saw the footage at the first director shot and he said, that's just not working. So it's easier to say, make this better in this way than it is make a brand new from scratch thing that no one's ever seen, and it's got to be accurate precisely. And speaking of his makeup, um, I loved how like the side the backsides of his head breathed kind of like pushed out from air. And apparently the voice that like, the voice is all him, Like every single noise that comes out of him is from him. Like there's no adr modulation, no modulation. Everything that he does is him. Apparently what he like when he was a kid, he had probably a borderline speech impediment where he talked with a lot of spit just kind of in the back of kind of rolling it around in the back, kind of rolling around a little bit like that. And so yeah, it was a problem that he fixed. But then he went to Peterson and said he's like, I can do this, and he's like, that's perfect, let's do that. And my uncle told me this story. Apparently he saw an interview with Louis Gosta Junior and he talked about how um they were on set and he didn't want anything that was at craft services, and so he went to McDonald's in full makeup. Oh my gosh, just to just to be funny, right, and he said, he's like, I want, I want to eat something like like Lewis, you're you're in makeup. He's like, I don't care. He just goes yeah, and he's standing in line for a big and everything. Oh my god. Hopefully it was love in a suit shot, not the naked in the swimming shot, because that'd mean maybe a little a little much. Apparently he loves this movie. Louis Gousta Junior loves this movie. He goes to conventions just for this movie and like he'll do the voice for people. I love hearing that. Like when when a person doesn't begrudge talking about something that like a small faction of people really love from their childhood's like it's it warms my cockles. Even going back again to Princess bride finding out that Manny Patinkin's like, oh yeah, no, I love doing the Ego Montoya thing for people. It's like, oh every day you could easily be like I never want to hear that again. I mean, yeah, well we talked about that in the last episode. So okay, So I want to talk about Dennis Quaid's performance. There's someone else in this movie? No, okay, like did did his Quaid make this his own? You know, like, could you like, did you see anybody else in this movie? Yes? Yeah, yeah, right, but I would I would lay that at the at Peterson's feet. I mean, I do subscribe to the the You know what Roger Ebert said in general, which was this the director's job to get the performance he wants. Yeah, what I see in a lot of us. If it's a positive, the actor did a fantastic job. If it's a bad performance, the director screwed up right, something like that. But it's it's always how it is. But but but you're not wrong. I think that there's there's raw potential, and what is lacking in a lot of moments where it doesn't particularly work is a director who says that, but let's just go fifteen percent less. You're not that happy to shoot the other ship. You're just a little bit less happy to Yeah, the openings before he lands on the planet, I think are the loosest acting wise, Like it's like it's it feels like the first day of shooting. It feels like you haven't really become the character yet, and you're just like, yeah, let's go get those drags. Like nobody's that excited about the toll of war. You know, there's um. If this was ten years later Dennis Quick, I like, this is like Dragonheart, if this parent Trap, If this was Dinnis Quaid of the nineties, I think we would have gotten a more grounded performance from him just from just from age experience, because he is very young in this, Like this is this is early Quaid, And I'm a big Dinnis Quaid fan, Like I really do like his word and I do like him in this movie. But at the same time, it feels like when you want to go up to it's like when that that director and rocketeer, he said, just like act but don't act like you're acting. Yes, well, i'd say Davage and like Tuck Pendleton from Interspace are kind of the same person, like the same energy level. Like I could see Davage being like slapping himself the Davage you know, no zero defects. It's like what are you saying, man, Like, what are you talking about? But they have the same energy. Yeah, yeah, and it's It's What is interesting about it, though, is that the when he's approaching Jerry and trying to kill him, that's even a different energy than you get when he's interacting with Gossip. And I think that to your point, Darren, I don't know what the shooting schedule was, but it if they did shoot it in such an order that he wasn't shooting his scenes with Louis Gossett Junior, first, that was a mistake because I think that Louis Gossett Junior, every time he's in the scene with him, actors can they'll respond to their input. And I think that when he's with Gossip, the performance is better. And I think that it's Gosset who lays down that sort of subliminal challenge that actors can give each other sometimes, where Quaid suddenly realizes he has that natural acting instinct to say, oh okay, I gotta match him, I gotta make it I gotta make this work, because there's just that inborn sort of thing where it's like, Okay, I know what I've got to go get. You know. It's it's like when they talk about, you know, football teams. You know, it's like, oh, rising to the occasion, or you're playing your opponent, like they're as good as their opponents sort of thing. And so I think that a movie like this, especially, I would love to find out the shooting schedule on something like this, because it would have behooved them to have the two of them work together as early in the process as possible so that they could bounce off of each other. Although maybe part of it is just, you know, the fractured and messy nature of the production. To begin with, they weren't entirely clear, and then things had to settle, settle back down before they could have shot the opening part and kept it and kept that tone and then just bring back the other crewmate actors at the end and change the middle. I don't know, I don't know what they they cut around. Then you're kind of something like Solo, where the first act was the same and it kind of set the tone, but not in the best way because the whole thing wasn't that tone. And I think it's also a tricky first act because its job is to convince you that these people are at war, and that's like, if you don't make that leap by the time they crash and are fighting each other, it's a much more difficult story to digest. And I, you know, I will say that Quaid isn't the best at that. Like I again, we've kind of talked about this exuberance of shooting down others, like it doesn't it feels like a video game to him. It doesn't feel like the Wars of War. It definitely didn't feel like war as Hell at the beginning. No, it did not. Yeah, it's now speaking of at the beginning. One one point of trivia that's one of my favorite things about the behind the scenes trivia is that Dennis Quaid asks his whatever that guy is not his copilot but like his navigator or something is his goose. Um. He he says, he's like, how many caves we got left? Back? And oh yeah, oh man, they both die. Um, he says, how many caves we got left? And they and the guy checks his his his hut and he it says sixty five colon E and he says another sixty five, but we have a heat problem, implying the E means error. How what that was was an led clock turned upside down. It was set to three hours and fifty nine minutes and it said sixty five E. And they they wrote it into the script that way, saying like, oh, we can say this. I think we can display it that way. Hey, it works, it works. I love it. I'm not making fun of it. I think it works. Yeah, there's I know, we keep going back and forth to praising the movie and then criticizing the movie and praising and criticizing, and I feel like that's what Enemy Mine is it can be, is that, like, there's there's such a great story here, and it's based off of a novella of the same name, and I think it's the author's name is Long Year, very Long Year. And I feel like the scenes that aren't on the planet we've talked about feel kind of weird, and when he leaves and comes back, it makes it feels weird. And you know, Darren, you talked about how they really needed to sell War. I feel like, I know the other people in the space station had I feel like they had bigger ranks, like they had been promoted in the interim, but it literally felt like a week had passed, like it felt like no time to pass at all for them in three years, and actuality had passed. And part of me felt like, if you wanted to make this from his perspective, you could have start And I know we practically start with him crash landing, but I would I would have loved to start from a planet side perspective, looking up and we see two ships battling and then they crash. We don't see anything from the outside world. It is just this planet is more, less is more kind of thing. Yeah, and really put that money in, that emphasis into the into the cinematography and the production design of the planet. And another thing I thought of, And again, you know, like you're saying, not that we're ragging on this movie. We definitely enjoyed this movie, but I feel like they needed a goal to be working towards, like they kind of did for a moment of building the Hut and and surviving the meteors. But I think of like the DS nine episode where Odo and Quark are like have to get to the top of the mountain with the transmitter, or like I needed some sort of goal that they're working towards that will fail, you know, but because at the end, their goal was to wait for rescue and that's a very passive goal. So and that feeds everything because then it's like, well, what are we going to do. Well, let's learn each other's language and let's learn each other's religion, and which again is good, but I don't know. I wanted something more And it could have been, you know, digging a tunnel to something or like something physical that they were both attempting to do that again will not succeed, and you have that crushing moment. But yeah, it was just a lot of like I had the dream of the spaceship again and it's like we're just day fifty five waiting for rescue, Like, yeah, it's not engaging. I feel like that kind of came in in an It was like its own mini three act structure, because you have act one, which is them getting to know each other, Act two, which is them where when they are actually friends and like living that they're trying to survive and they trust each other, and then you have act three, which is ms and the rescue. But within act two you kind of have three struggles I should let me rephrase, not with an act two. I should say, on the planet you have kind of those three survival struggles where you have building once you get past the crash, you have building the hut, him going out and searching for something for searching for those ships, and then finding the slavers and then ditching it and coming back, and then the birth of ZMS and the death of Jerry and him raising Zmas like like, those are kind of the three struggles of the planet. But I get what you're saying about how survival isn't enough unless there's a threat, like something to an end. Right, there could have been some apex predator that was hunting them like me. I again, I know there was the sand Monster and stuff like that, but like, yeah, I felt more like a plant than like an actual sentient creature that was going after them. What do you think, John, I mean, we're just tossing ideas around. I mean what again, Like you said, Triston, we're going back and forth on you know, praise and criticism, and it's it's the it's the big beautiful heart of this movie that makes me overlook the fact that that monster is not at all threatening. Uh, it's it's lit wrong. It's a big Muppet monster, and Okay, I'll go along with it. And I know what it's trying to convey, but it it's it's the monster side of it is something that I think is tough because that's where it feels a lot like a stage production, where you it is asking you. In those moments, you have to make the conscious decision to say, Okay, I'm gonna play along. I will be a willing participant and sacrifice this. And that's why I asked earlier about the nostalgia question, because I do you know, I struggle at moments like this with if I saw this for the first time now, would I be harsher with it than if I had the history with it. And I don't care what the answer is because I'm happy with how I feel about the movie, but it's it's definitely something to be like, you know, how would I feel about this if I saw this for the first time now. One thing that I want to throw out there before we start to round third is one thing that we really love to talk about on the show is alternate casting and people who were offered the role or who turned it down, or people were who were considered not like our own fan casting, like oh, you know, like Tom Hanks would have been great, as you know, like nothing like that. But apparently Grace Jones was offered the role of Jerry and she turned it down to do of you to a kill? Number one, you would have been nuts not to turn it down for a James Bond movie. Nobody knew of view to a kill? What was going to be as bad as it was. Of course, everybody wants to be in the James Bond movie at that point. And number two, I could see it work. It would have been a very different and a much more belligerent Jerry. And I think that what makes Lewis Gossett Junior's performance work so well is you believe in him as a person as it were, as opposed to a caricature. And I think that, being familiar with Grace Jones's other work, Jerry becomes a caricature at that point. I think it could have worked from a campy, kitchy Oh I like watching this because that performance is so bad. It's good sort of way. But Lewis Gosset Junior actually is the on to turn in a performance with this role. I don't. I can't picture Dennis Quaid and Grace Jones together in like a buddy movie. I just can't do it. And I like Grace Jones and some and some things, but also I think casting a woman would have been the absolute wrong decision with um with the Birth of Zamas. I think that's what really sells the alien noess of it, and how they're hermaphroditical, and how they don't use masculine or feminine pronouns. You know, it's it's really like it's a it's a male actor giving a male type performance, even though they're neither male or female. Our brains are seeing luc Agusta Jr. And thinking, Okay, that's a man, even though he's an alien, non gendered person, and then gives birth, which adds to that alienness of it. If Grace Jones or any kind of woman would was cast in the role, some magic would be lost, some movie magic would be lost in the alienness of it. I could see that in my opinion, And I really like how they handled the non gendered aspect of it, like they never said he or him, like at no point did Deva screw up with them as rack or it or you know, well no, like well yeah, like well he didn't say like, oh, your dad did this. He said no, you're a parent, like he kept saying your parent, and even sometimes in the voiceover he said it like it was that was its wish, you know, or something like that, And it was in a very non judgmental, non um demeaning way, I should say. And I think it worked like that. I think it was easier to do as well because of the war setting, meaning as far as I could also see him calling it and it because it's the enemy and he's not going to humanize it with pronouns or kindness. It's it's the drack. It's the enemy. It's the bad guy. And I'm not saying that that can't work for both aspects of naming and convention, but I feel like it it does both. It works as a non gendered species and as a enemy in a space battle. Absolutely, yes, that's exactly what I was trying to conveect. All right. So one thing that we do like to talk about is the music at the end. Oh my gosh, this music was all over the place. The orchestral stuff was really good and really emotive and really drew you in and bombastic, and then all of a sudden, but like for the most of the movie, you would get this horrible, horrible synth where you just imagine how you feel about synth. You know, I feel about it, but this was particularly bad. Like I just kept picturing a dude in his hotel room with this little keyboard just going pink pink, pink, bee being and it just completely took me out of it of how terrible the synth was. But then would follow it up by some really grand orchestral stuff. What did you guys think about the music or is it even worth talking about? I agree with you. I I think that this is um I you know, your hatred of synth is like legendary. Jarr himself said that, you know, like he you know, electronic scores are a lot more difficult than people think they are. And I think he named you specifically, said Tristan Riddell, I deserve more respect for this. And they said, how do you know who Tristan ridel is. He hasn't been born yet. He said, you listen to me, trust me, there's gonna be somebody coming along like this. It was prophetic, but he was. It was accurate, It was very accurate. But yeah, it's there is a I think that this is a composer where it's very obvious when he is comfortable in one spot with what he's doing and less comfortable in another. And that's the tale of this score. But the stuff that works, I think is terrific. The stuff that doesn't work is forgettable. I think you just sum up summed up the movie right then with those two phrases. Yeah, I think I also thinks the word bombastic wrong. I just want to take that back. I mean, when the meters are falling, it's pretty pretty big. But yeah, it it's a little uneven on the overall music. I do also get visions of you know, Roan Akinson mister Bean in the Olympics doing the chairs a fire, dun dun dun, dun, dun, dun, dun dun dun. Perfect. But yeah, I think it's just it's forgettable. It's not like, oh man, that score for men to be mine. I want to get it on LP and play it every day. No, that never, but that's on my cassette players. It's burned down. I played it so many times, but no, I mean, but obviously you need you need music in a lot of this movie because a lot of time it's just them sitting around or walking around, Like imagine no music during all those scenes where it's dead silent like that would be even more awkward. So they kind of just split the difference and have something in the background there. All right, So I want to go first with ratings here, So I'm going to say that, Like John, you asked a very good question earlier about you know, are we being are we looking at this through nostalgia glasses? Would we have been harsh on this? Like if we just watched this today, you know, what would we think? What would we say? Even though knowing it was from the from the eighties, you know, which gives it a lot of leeway to me, you know, like I've been very honest with you guys and the audience about my feelings towards the movie, about what I like, what I didn't like, you know, walking away from this movie, you know, watching in preparation for this podcast, I was like, how am I gonna How am I going to rank this? Like? Am I going to give it a five? For nostalgia, you know, like, no, I can't do that. Like this this movie is not a perfect movie, and there's a lot of elements that aren't well done, that don't stand the test of time. But then you have to ask yourself does it need to stand the test of time? But to me, you know, like recognizing nostalgia, recognizing what works and what doesn't. I think there's a lot more that works than not, but that doesn't discount what doesn't, if that makes sense. And so to me, I'm giving this a loving three point five. How about you? Oh, actually, you know what, I'm gonna go straight to John because you're agreeing with me. What do you think I strike you should? I agree with the three point five. I think that this is an endearing success in spite of itself. I think that the underlying material makes me think of it in a very positive way. I think that Lewis Gosta Junior's performance gloss is over so many things that if this was the first time I was ever watching it, I firmly believe I would end with a three or three point five because I would say, man, it seems like they just could. I think that the movie that I see watching this is the one they were going for instead of the one that was fully expressed on screen. And I think that the movie is a bigger success story. And this is where, you know, I took a couple of shots at Peterson and his style and everything, but you have to give an insane amount of credit to a director who comes into a movie that's seventeen million dollars in the hole and he says, I got you. I'm going to make it work. And it works well enough that even though the movie is a complete bomb when it's released back in the eighties, it is a touchstone for nerds to lovingly refer to it throughout their whole lives and every in a sense, and this is you know, I don't want people running down the street crying out gage keeper as they tear their burlap garments or anything like that, but this, if there is a if there is the type of movie that symbolizes to me the type of movie. And again, unfortunately, I have to think of Less Starfighter, where it was code for whether somebody knew the deep magic when you were first meeting them, where you're like, oh, yeah, I like nerdy things too written yeah, but I'm like, you know, Hey, you know Star Wars and Star Trek. Yeah, we all like Star Wars and Star Trek is Like, you know, you ever see Enemy Mind? Yeah? I love Enemy Mind. You were like we all right, we understand each other on a very fundamental level, more than the people who were like I had a Luke Skywalker action figure. It's like, that's great. You you achieved level one. We were at level ten. Like, shut up, that's mainstream now exactly the line, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, who doesn't love bacon? Good for you? Yeah, I'm talking about I'm talking about the deep cuts, like you know where you can get a good cup of coffee Starbucks. Yeah, it goes screw yourself. Well that's that's cute. I'll talk to you later. Yeah yeah, all right, darn what about you? No, I think yeah, I love what all you have said. I mean we've been I think very fair about this movie. Like and the fact that I think the fact that it's it's not that it's a genre, it's a episode type, like we all know in science fiction shows, many shows have an enemy mine episode. I'm so glad you brought that up, because Enterprise, Star Trek Enterprise straight up did Enemy Mine it's not even like, oh, this is the Enemy Mine inspired episode. I was like, no, this is the Enemy Mine rip off episode, right, and TNG had I would say darmak Is has has flavors of that, like not a direct rip off, but many sci fi shows have, you know, like they got the time travel episode, and they got the weird Young episode, and they got the this episode Enemy Mine is a staple of of just the two enemies are in a hole, you know, having to work things out and learn. I mean again, TNG did another one with Jordi and the Romulan when they were starving to figure out when he had to la forge his own tools, as we say over on the City off at three. But I think, yeah, I think that in itself is a is a banner to hang on this film, that it becomes its own episode type. Although as we were talking about the ending earlier, I almost wish we had, like you said, a little more closure. I would have loved to incorporate the narration. Not just as um As Davish telling telling the story. I think he should be telling the story to the grandson, the next generation, and and then you have um was zathis Zam Zammis I know his name. But then you have Zamis who's now like young adult age, and um Davish as the ambassadors between the two people. So years have passed, they're the ambassadors that they're two races, and he's telling the story to the next generation. Again you have another time jump, but I think that could have been a cool way to now. Granted they were speeding through that finale coda at like breakneck speed heading towards the credits, but um, all that to say, yeah, I give this a solid three. I can't give it a four. Yeah, that's you don't don't give out half stars. You don't give out I don't do half stars. And I'm not the day that I break that convention. We'll all have a talk about it, but today is not that day. But no, I I, like I said, I feel like I took way too long in watching this movie, maybe because of the whole everybody knows the general story and it's been seen in science fiction. But I'm glad I did when I finally got around to it. I remember when I first saw it and I was like, oh dang, this is good. Like again, for the portrayal, for the acting, for you can see why it is a staple of science fiction, best budget, best effects, best acting overall. No, but it's enemy mine and like John said, you are quoting the deep magic, and you know it is kind of a litmus test in that regard. Speaking of which there, Um, there was a moment when I was, Um, my wife and I were with another couple and um we were at their house and they had kids and we have kids, and um we were folding some they were folding some laundry real quick, and they brought out some pj's, Like they were folding the pj's and like I picked one up and I went jommies. And like, because my wife and I took this like when Louis Gosta Junior like says zommies. Like he says, like he goes zommies, like when he's making the the too. So yeah, and like that was the That was our inside joke, was that, like whenever we talked about pj's, we would say, you know, we would say jummies in that term. And I said that in front of this couple and they're like, what are you talking about. I was like, Oh, it's just an inside joke. Like you know when Jerry, you know, like, you know, it's talking about zombie son in my mind, and they had they gave me a blank stare. I was just like, I don't I don't think we can be friends. Yeah, well we could be friends. Not going to be We're not going to be at that level. We're not We're not going to be close friends. Yeah, I'm not gonna not gonna bring you over to show you by man Cave and all the awesomes inside of it. All right, Darren, what are we doing next week? What house are we entering legally? Next week? Yes, with full permission, we are going to cover the House of Brad Bird. And it's also very exciting because not just the decade, not just a wing, but we're going to cover his entire directed work, which is only six films at the time of this recording. And we're going to be starting off with The Iron Giant. We're gonna have animation, we're gonna have live action, we're gonna have there's a Mission Impossible episode in there. Guys like, this is gonna be quite a variety. So I guess we could truly say that we're about to enter the Bird House disqualified and as Tristan and I and just the two of us continue on this podcast, but no, shut up. You know it was fun. Join the Revolution, Join the Nerd Party.