Latest / Meet Your Double Feature | Movie Reviews & Forgotten Films / The Star Wars Guy Made This? - Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993) vs. The Cutting Edge (1992)

Transcript

The Star Wars Guy Made This? - Babylon 5: The Gathering (1993) vs. The Cutting Edge (1992) · Meet Your Double Feature | Movie Reviews & Forgotten Films

• 0:10
  Tonight on Meet Your Double Feature, when an alien
• 0:13
  ambassador is attacked aboard a human space station, Commander
• 0:17
  Jeffrey Sinclair and his crew are tasked with finding the
• 0:20
  culprits. Mystery abounds in Babylon 5,
• 0:24
  The Gathering. Then, when an injury ends his
• 0:27
  hockey career, Doug Dorsey returns to the ice as the new
• 0:31
  partner. For a temperamental figure
• 0:33
  skater, love is in the air, in the cutting edge.
• 0:37
  It's the Season 1 finale of Meet Your Double Feature, and it
• 0:41
  starts right now. Hello and welcome to Meet Your
• 0:52
  Double Feature. My name is Thomas, joined as
• 0:54
  always by my brother Frank. Frank, how's it going?
• 0:56
  Excited to be here. Excited to be here.
• 0:59
  Frank's excited. I'm excited, and with good
• 1:01
  reason. Frank, tonight is our Season 1
• 1:03
  finale here on Meet Your Double feature.
• 1:05
  That's awesome, right? Woo.
• 1:07
  Yeah, that's very woo. Just a.
• 1:09
  Lone quiet woo in the back of the room.
• 1:13
  That's how exciting it is. That's how exciting it is.
• 1:16
  Yes, we have done 12 episodes, including this one covering our
• 1:19
  favorite forgotten 90s films that we've never actually seen
• 1:22
  and think might actually be good.
• 1:24
  And this is going to be the the climax of all of that.
• 1:27
  We are going to review 2 films on the show tonight.
• 1:29
  Frank and I each selected one for the other to review that
• 1:31
  neither of us had previously seen.
• 1:33
  We're going to find out who gave the better blind pick for
• 1:35
  tonight's episode and take a look at the overall season 1
• 1:39
  totals. So, Frank, we're going to have
• 1:40
  both an episode winner and the Season 1 winner by the end of
• 1:43
  this episode. Oh yeah, I'm not optimistic
• 1:48
  about. No, I'll be honest, I'm pretty
• 1:49
  sure you're not going to win. That's fair.
• 1:54
  That's fair. But hey, we'll see.
• 1:55
  We'll see. We'll.
• 1:56
  See, it could be a massive turn around.
• 1:58
  We don't actually know. Essentially, we've been keeping
• 1:59
  track of the relative scores out of 10 for each movie and putting
• 2:02
  that into the season 1 totals. And we were so neck and neck up
• 2:06
  until the one right before this. So I think coming into our
• 2:09
  finale, I'm six points ahead. So unless we have a total blow
• 2:12
  out tonight, I think you might be you might be stuck watching
• 2:15
  all those prophecy movies like we talked about previous.
• 2:18
  Oh man, that's. The reality that is really
• 2:23
  sinking in. We'll have more on that and what
• 2:26
  our programming slate is going to look like in the coming weeks
• 2:28
  at the end of the episode. But for now, we've got one more
• 2:31
  standard format episode of Meet Your Double feature to get
• 2:33
  through. And Frank, I think I'm kicking
• 2:35
  us off tonight with the film that you asked me to talk about,
• 2:38
  1993's television film slash TV show pilot Babylon 5 The
• 2:45
  Gathering. What, what, what?
• 2:48
  What was this? What are you?
• 2:49
  What are you doing? What is this?
• 2:51
  I mean, you just said it isn't that cool.
• 2:55
  Isn't that so cool? Though.
• 2:57
  Like, come on, it's it's a pilot, but it's a movie like.
• 3:03
  But it's a movie. But it's on the TV.
• 3:05
  But it's on the TV. Is that even allowed?
• 3:07
  Can they do that? It's not allowed.
• 3:11
  Well, we allowed it. I think there was a rules
• 3:12
  conversation at the end of our last episode about this, but we
• 3:15
  did in fact allow it. What was your reasoning?
• 3:17
  I know you gave one when we spoke two weeks ago, but just to
• 3:20
  refresh everybody, what what led you to select this one for our
• 3:23
  Season 1 finale? I had recently, I, I, we've, I'm
• 3:30
  sure it's come up several times already on the podcast, but you
• 3:32
  and I both love Star Trek Deep Space 9.
• 3:34
  And I had recently finished that series for the first time.
• 3:39
  And then I was on Reddit looking at other sci-fi shows and
• 3:43
  someone mentioned Babylon 5 as sort of a show that was in a
• 3:47
  similar vein to Deep Space 9. And so I was like, oh, that's,
• 3:51
  that's interesting. I'll, I'll kind of check this
• 3:53
  out. And then I saw that people were
• 3:55
  saying it had a similar premise to that show.
• 3:58
  So I was like, OK, this, this looks cool.
• 4:01
  And then I saw that they had, I think several movies actually.
• 4:04
  They had like the that initial pilot film.
• 4:07
  And then throughout the series, there was a couple more.
• 4:10
  And so I was thinking about watching it myself, to be
• 4:12
  honest. But then I was like, well, I
• 4:13
  mean, this came out in the 90s. This would be, I feel like a
• 4:16
  strong closer for the season. So that's why I sent it over to
• 4:20
  you. Absolutely.
• 4:21
  I mean, it does make sense. Deep Space 9's like my favorite
• 4:24
  show ever, recently biased included that I'm still watching
• 4:27
  it for the first time too. But it's so funny that that is
• 4:30
  the connection that you had going in.
• 4:32
  I want to say that when we talked about this at the end of
• 4:35
  episode 11, I don't know if I misheard you or if this is how
• 4:38
  you phrased it, But when I was watching the movie Babylon Five,
• 4:41
  I was under the impression that this show had been accused of
• 4:43
  ripping off Deep Space 9 like that it would come after and had
• 4:47
  been considered like some sort of like knock off version of it.
• 4:51
  And so I watched the whole movie under that context.
• 4:53
  And the whole time I was like, yeah, it's really similar, like
• 4:57
  really similar starting point for these two stories, only to
• 5:00
  discover afterwards that the opposite is true, and that it is
• 5:03
  widely accepted that Deep Space 9 lifted its premise from
• 5:07
  Babylon 5. No way.
• 5:09
  See, I didn't. I didn't.
• 5:10
  That was not the impression that I tried to give was that it was
• 5:14
  like an imitator in any way, and I certainly didn't know that the
• 5:17
  opposite was true. Well, this is interesting
• 5:19
  because obviously we're this is a movie show, not ATV show show.
• 5:23
  But I do need to contextualize this a little bit before getting
• 5:27
  into a Babylon 5. The gathering is, you know, in
• 5:29
  isolation. So just for context for anybody
• 5:32
  who cares, which I hope is the people listening, Babylon 5 was
• 5:37
  created by one guy. His name is like J Michael
• 5:40
  Stravinsky. I think off hand, he was
• 5:43
  pitching Babylon 5 as like a multi season TV show starting in
• 5:48
  like the late 80s, early 90s that he'd already sort of mapped
• 5:51
  out like the entire story. It wasn't really going to be an
• 5:54
  episodic program. It was more of like a continuous
• 5:56
  serial storyline that he wanted to tell over multiple seasons of
• 5:59
  television. And he was shopping it at
• 6:01
  various networks, including Paramount to own Star Trek.
• 6:04
  And they didn't pick it up. But then a couple of years
• 6:07
  later, right around the same time that this Babylon 5 movie
• 6:09
  was being produced, they were looking to make a new Star Trek
• 6:12
  spin off. And it is never been 100%
• 6:15
  confirmed what happened, but I think it is widely accepted that
• 6:18
  somebody somewhere in that creative process ended up
• 6:21
  lifting some ideas from this pitch they'd seen for Babylon 5
• 6:24
  and sort of integrated them into the premise for Deep Space 9.
• 6:27
  Because they're like they start and basically the exact same
• 6:30
  place. Wow.
• 6:31
  I think that happens unfortunately quite often where
• 6:35
  there's a pitch and then they're like, yeah, we don't like that
• 6:38
  at all. And then they go and make the
• 6:39
  exact same thing. Like, absolutely.
• 6:42
  I mean, we talked about the movie Cutthroat Island in our
• 6:44
  last episode, which was pitched as like a potential way to adapt
• 6:48
  Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean ride into a movie,
• 6:51
  which Disney turned down. And then a couple years later
• 6:53
  they just made Pirates of the Caribbean.
• 6:54
  So like versions of that story have happened in many contexts.
• 6:57
  But I do think that it led to some animosity of between fans
• 7:00
  of both series. Like some people seem to think
• 7:03
  that Deep Space 9 is just like an A-Z RIP off of Babylon 5 and
• 7:06
  that it's like a sort of disingenuous show.
• 7:08
  But like no one of the none of the creatives involved believe
• 7:11
  that. They both take place on a
• 7:15
  stationary space station that serves as like a trading outpost
• 7:20
  and wayport for various alien races in one big Galaxy.
• 7:24
  Most of the earlier Star Trek series were about like a ship
• 7:27
  exploring new planets, whereas this was like, let's set it on
• 7:30
  one location and have people come to us.
• 7:32
  And that is the starting point for both Babylon 5 and Deep
• 7:36
  Space 9, but it really goes in different directions past that
• 7:39
  point. It's mostly in this pilot movie
• 7:42
  that you had me watch and maybe the original pilot for Deep
• 7:45
  Space Night, where you might see like, yeah, these are really
• 7:47
  kind of starting in a similar place, which is just kind of
• 7:50
  bizarre for me to go back and watch now.
• 7:53
  Yeah, I mean, I like that premise a lot though, because
• 7:57
  I've seen it in other we we mentioned like the Mass Effect
• 8:00
  game series before. And I know like the Citadel in
• 8:03
  that universe also has like a very similar function.
• 8:07
  And I just like that. I feel like it's just such a
• 8:08
  fun. I love things that are like a
• 8:10
  bottle setting. And I feel like while not
• 8:14
  exactly that, those shows, Deep Space 9 of Babylon 5 seem to
• 8:19
  sort of encapsulate that idea. Absolutely.
• 8:22
  And I do think that for the rightful grief that maybe the
• 8:26
  Star Trek producers were given for lifting the ideas from this
• 8:29
  unused pitch for Babylon 5, you could also argue that even some
• 8:33
  of the inversions in the story of Babylon Five are a response
• 8:36
  to the then popular Star Trek series that have been running
• 8:39
  for 30 years before that point. Like that premise is interesting
• 8:42
  in part because it inverts the usual premise of a sci-fi TV
• 8:45
  series. So inspiration is one thing.
• 8:48
  And I do think that as both TV shows went on, they were their
• 8:52
  own thing, to the point where I believe I read that like in
• 8:55
  order to sort of quell any beef between the fan bases.
• 8:59
  Gene Roddenberry's wife We actually appears on an episode
• 9:02
  of Babylon 5 at some .0. Really.
• 9:05
  Oh, that's cool. Yeah, Gene.
• 9:06
  Roddenberry, the creator of like, the original 60s Star
• 9:08
  Trek. He'd already passed at this
• 9:10
  point, but his wife was still, like, very much part of that fan
• 9:13
  community. Of course, they all knew who she
• 9:14
  was. And so she makes a guest
• 9:15
  appearance on an episode of Babylon 5.
• 9:17
  And somebody who is a series regular on Babylon 5 has like a
• 9:22
  brief appearance on an episode of Deep Space 9.
• 9:24
  That same actor. Wow, that's OK.
• 9:26
  See, I like that. I, I, you know, I remember
• 9:28
  growing up. Yeah, exactly.
• 9:30
  Like, I just, I feel like that's such an interesting thing when
• 9:35
  there's like, rivalries between fan communities because like,
• 9:39
  I've always had this perception, like, especially when I was
• 9:42
  younger, that it's like you, you can either be a Star Wars fan or
• 9:45
  a Star Trek fan. You can't be both.
• 9:46
  It's like they're at odds with each other.
• 9:49
  And so, yeah, when I was younger, I was like, I like Star
• 9:51
  Wars. I guess I'm not allowed to watch
• 9:53
  Star Trek. Can't go.
• 9:54
  Anywhere near it, I'll be excommunicated.
• 9:56
  Yeah, which is so silly, but I mean, you know, I guess people
• 10:00
  get really passionate about this stuff.
• 10:02
  Well, especially. Because it always happens
• 10:03
  between like properties that are already extremely similar.
• 10:07
  Like I could understand if you're like a Star Wars fan and
• 10:09
  you don't like John Wayne Westerns, but to be like, hey,
• 10:11
  you like this thing, What about that?
• 10:13
  But slightly different. And it's like, never.
• 10:15
  I'll never go near it. You can't fool me, I will.
• 10:18
  Go watch John Wayne Westerns because that won't infringe on
• 10:21
  my Star Wars. I hate it, Yeah.
• 10:25
  Anyway, I wanted to get that all out in front because I know
• 10:27
  that, Frank, for you and I, the connections to Star Trek are
• 10:29
  interesting. Part of the reason that this
• 10:31
  confusion, by the way, between these two TV shows got so
• 10:33
  complicated is that the movie you just asked me to watch,
• 10:36
  Babylon 5 The Gathering, was a pilot that aired about a month
• 10:40
  after Deep Space 9 premiered on television.
• 10:43
  So they started almost the exact same time.
• 10:45
  But then the Babylon 5 Series proper, like Season 1 episode 1,
• 10:49
  didn't air for another year, so by that point Deep Space 9 was
• 10:52
  established enough that even the creator of Babylon 5 was where
• 10:55
  he'd be seen as having made a RIP off.
• 10:57
  So there's an understandable confusion if you were just
• 10:59
  trying to, like, follow television news at that time.
• 11:02
  Yeah. And I feel like, you know, it
• 11:04
  might have potentially helped both series because in an effort
• 11:09
  to differentiate themselves from each other, it might have pushed
• 11:12
  them in different creative directions.
• 11:15
  So, you know, who's to say? But I could see, you know, just
• 11:18
  trying to flip that into a positive.
• 11:20
  Listen, if we ever get into any sort of like side series or
• 11:24
  additional content from our channel, it might be something
• 11:27
  like a deep dive into series like this one.
• 11:29
  But I just wanted to front load the whole Star Trek comparison
• 11:33
  thing. Because after this point, I want
• 11:34
  to try to focus on what Babylon 5 is doing just as a movie.
• 11:37
  Because somebody listening to this might not have the same
• 11:40
  connections to Star Trek or anything else.
• 11:42
  Maybe they just want to know if it's a good sci-fi movie, you
• 11:44
  know? Yeah.
• 11:45
  So was it? What do you?
• 11:49
  Think, let's find out. So Babylon 5 is interesting.
• 11:52
  I had to recontextualize the whole thing because once I
• 11:54
  finished watching it, I found out it had come first.
• 11:57
  So I can't get, I can't knock points off for it being
• 11:59
  derivative because it made the whole thing up.
• 12:01
  It's an interesting series or interesting film that obviously
• 12:08
  is the pilot to ATV show, if that makes sense.
• 12:10
  Like the whole thing, production value wise, scope wise, is
• 12:14
  trying to tell a complete story but has the same feel as like a
• 12:19
  two-part episode of ATV show. And at the end of the movie they
• 12:24
  give you like a narrative hook that's supposed to carry into
• 12:26
  the series proper. So that's a very interesting
• 12:30
  lens to look at this from because it's not trying to be a
• 12:33
  complete idea. It is supposed to essentially be
• 12:35
  a hype machine that gives you a little taste of what this like
• 12:38
  universe is about, but is ultimately just supposed to get
• 12:41
  you excited for what's going to come next.
• 12:43
  But does it still have like a satisfying beginning, middle,
• 12:46
  end story it? Does it tells a very Star Trek
• 12:50
  esque science fiction drama story which is the part where I
• 12:55
  think if you are a fan of other Star Trek series you would like
• 12:57
  this Babylon Five film. It's not sci-fi action.
• 13:02
  It is very limited in its like actual Violet conflict and
• 13:06
  action sequences. It is more that classic, like
• 13:08
  science fiction drama that's really heavy on dialogue and
• 13:11
  kind of like hammed up performances and political
• 13:14
  intrigue. Ultimately, this one is about
• 13:17
  like a murder mystery, although I guess it's more like an
• 13:19
  attempted murder mystery. And I guess in order to really
• 13:22
  tell the story, I have to explain the lore of Babylon 5,
• 13:25
  which I'll be honest, is hard to do.
• 13:28
  Oh yeah. I mean, you could give us a
• 13:30
  slightly abridged version just. Like, I'll try to explain the
• 13:34
  parts that are relevant for the story that they're telling here,
• 13:37
  but it's been a while since I tried to just step into a brand
• 13:40
  new sci-fi Canon, not already knowing how many of it works.
• 13:44
  And that is probably one of the most abrasive types of media to
• 13:48
  get into. Like, I already know what Star
• 13:50
  Wars is because I've been watching it since I was a child.
• 13:52
  I know the rough pop culture imprint of Star Trek enough that
• 13:56
  when I started watching it, I was like, yeah, Vulcans,
• 13:59
  phasers, whatever. But whatever they whatever.
• 14:03
  They're up to Spock. I don't know.
• 14:05
  But to step into a new space that is trying to both tell one
• 14:09
  story while also introduce you to the entire concept of what
• 14:14
  it's about, It's a tall order. And I do think that Babylon 5
• 14:17
  does a decent job by not going overboard.
• 14:21
  Essentially, as I mentioned, the premise of the story starts the
• 14:24
  same way that Star Trek series does.
• 14:26
  It's about the, like, military crew, mostly humans from Earth,
• 14:30
  operating a space station that is like at a static point in
• 14:33
  space, serving as like a trading outpost for various alien races.
• 14:37
  There's, I think in the film, 5 main alien groups and they're
• 14:43
  represented in this particular story by the ambassadors from
• 14:47
  each world that are meeting aboard Babylon 5 for some sort
• 14:51
  of ceremony or meeting at the beginning of the story.
• 14:54
  So they tried to do a good job of being like, you just need to
• 14:56
  meet one alien from each race, and that's all you really need
• 15:00
  to understand for this story. But they're there as
• 15:02
  representatives for the fact that, like, these are the races
• 15:04
  that we're going to be telling the whole story through.
• 15:07
  Yeah, I mean this, this might sound totally uninteresting to
• 15:11
  some people, but I'm absolutely hooked by this.
• 15:13
  I know it's. Dense novel.
• 15:16
  Ask science fiction storytelling.
• 15:17
  Like if you watch any sort of sci-fi thing that's more modern,
• 15:21
  I feel like we've gotten away from this kind of storytelling
• 15:23
  and it's much more leading with action, traditional kind of
• 15:27
  Hollywood pacing. This is like, no, this is
• 15:29
  entirely dialogue driven and just explaining things that
• 15:33
  happened instead of showing them, which is like, I think I'm
• 15:37
  a total turn off to some people. But if you're like kind of a
• 15:40
  hardcore sci-fi person, I'm sure you would like it because it's
• 15:44
  delivered pretty effectively. Sorry, just real quick, just to
• 15:47
  argue for the flip side of that because that that paints it
• 15:50
  pretty negatively. But I I feel like the strength
• 15:52
  that that creates in both Star Trek and it sounds like in in
• 15:56
  this as well is like you get like amazing like character
• 16:01
  actor performances and like really strong dialogue and
• 16:06
  intriguing drama. Like, that's what you're trading
• 16:11
  all of that like action and kind of like bombastic set pieces
• 16:15
  for. Yeah.
• 16:16
  And so if that's what you're interested in, and then I feel
• 16:19
  like these are the types of things that definitely scratch
• 16:22
  that itch, no. Absolutely.
• 16:23
  Like I know that you and I both find this stuff fascinating
• 16:25
  because again, it isn't like an awesome stage for like fun
• 16:30
  acting and like theater of the mind type stuff.
• 16:32
  Like, the budgets on these series are always small enough
• 16:35
  that you have to kind of like, tell things instead of showing
• 16:38
  them, which is the opposite of usual storytelling logic.
• 16:42
  But at the same time, everything you are seeing on screen is so
• 16:46
  alien and fascinating and unique that that's kind of the
• 16:49
  counterbalance. Like, if this was all regular
• 16:51
  human characters, you might be a little more disengaged from it.
• 16:54
  But the fact that some of the people involved are these, like,
• 16:56
  crazy alien designs and different cultures, and you have
• 17:00
  to learn about, it's very rewarding.
• 17:02
  But it's like you have to focus on it to get anything out of it.
• 17:07
  Yes, totally, You have to be. This is not the kind of like the
• 17:11
  second screen experience type viewing.
• 17:13
  Like if you're on your phone and trying to watch this, you're
• 17:16
  going to miss all of it. That's a great point.
• 17:18
  I think if we brought my wife in here, she would give her second
• 17:21
  screen review because she was reading webtoons while this was
• 17:24
  on. I don't think she'd be able to
• 17:26
  tell you anything that happened. But it's like if you do watch it
• 17:29
  and you are you're interested in this, I can already say the
• 17:32
  Babylon 5 is worth checking out if you haven't already.
• 17:35
  That's that's like my top down thing.
• 17:36
  It's just another sci-fi series and can't really get enough of
• 17:40
  those. Yeah, yeah.
• 17:42
  I mean, there's, like I said, I I found this looking for similar
• 17:45
  series and there's a lot, I mean, you and I have watched
• 17:47
  like the Battlestar Galactica reboot, which I was also a big
• 17:51
  fan of, Yeah. Absolutely.
• 17:53
  I think if you're a fan of any of that stuff, you would enjoy
• 17:54
  Babylon 5, and I bet a lot of people have already seen it.
• 17:57
  But for us, it was a blind spot, which made it fun to go back and
• 17:59
  revisit as like a completely new concept.
• 18:04
  But man, I'm trying not to remember all of these, like new
• 18:06
  character names and the names of the alien races and events and
• 18:10
  they're all I feel. Like you don't, we don't need
• 18:12
  all of that, but if it's, you know, if you feel it's relevant
• 18:15
  to I'm. Going to try to paint the
• 18:17
  picture of what the movie is telling you about so that it
• 18:20
  makes more sense. Because ultimately this is like
• 18:21
  a dense mystery at the heart of the story you're being told, and
• 18:25
  I don't want people to be totally lost by it.
• 18:27
  So I'll do my best. Essentially, there's five races
• 18:30
  you need to keep track of. There's the humans from Earth,
• 18:32
  basically just Starfleet from Star Trek.
• 18:34
  I said I'd stop talk about Star Trek, but I've completely
• 18:36
  failed. It's essentially the humans from
• 18:38
  Earth. There is a race called the
• 18:41
  Mumbari who to characterize them.
• 18:44
  The Mumbari were like the oldest and most technologically
• 18:49
  advanced and most powerful of the alien races that you're
• 18:52
  going to meet in the story. And the most important piece of
• 18:54
  lore for about them is that at one point in time in the past,
• 18:58
  they were at war with Earth. And we're seemingly poised to
• 19:01
  win and, like, take over the Earth because they had superior
• 19:05
  technology. But for some unknown reason,
• 19:08
  they, like, surrendered right before the war was about to end
• 19:11
  in their favor. And the movie doesn't exactly
• 19:13
  explain why that's part of that big hook they're trying to sell
• 19:16
  you on for this series. Like, what happened?
• 19:18
  What does it have to do with our main human character, which I'll
• 19:21
  get into? And like, what does that mean
• 19:23
  about like the political power structure in this world?
• 19:27
  That's a good hook. That's a that's a really good
• 19:29
  hook. It's a good.
• 19:30
  Hook because they deliver it sparingly throughout the main
• 19:34
  story that this Babylon 5 movie is telling you.
• 19:36
  Ultimately, it doesn't play a huge role in what you're seeing
• 19:39
  on screen right now. All you're really told is that
• 19:42
  there was a massive battle going on, kind of like the hell a lot
• 19:46
  of wars have like a famous battle that were like the most
• 19:48
  casualties suffered by both sides.
• 19:50
  So there was this famous battle on Earth toward the end of the
• 19:53
  war. Our main character, the
• 19:54
  commander of Babylon 5, was involved in it as a soldier.
• 19:59
  But he, to his recollection was like all my men were being
• 20:04
  killed around me. I was about to die as well.
• 20:06
  Something happened, I blacked out. 24 hours passed and then I
• 20:09
  was told the war was over and we won.
• 20:11
  So like. There's like Bilbo, it's like.
• 20:14
  Bilbo Baggins, Yeah, where he gets the rock on the head and
• 20:17
  misses the whole thing. So yeah, like that's like the
• 20:19
  larger story hook. It's like, well, what's going on
• 20:21
  with that? So that means that those two
• 20:23
  races, I'm sure have a lot to talk about in the rest of the
• 20:25
  story, but very little of that comes to play in this movie.
• 20:30
  Instead, we're focusing on the 5 alien races, all of their
• 20:34
  ambassadors, and the last one who is set to arrive is poisoned
• 20:39
  and nearly killed. And they spend the whole movie
• 20:41
  trying to figure out who tried to kill this person and whether
• 20:44
  or not they can save them. That's what the movie's about.
• 20:47
  Oh wait, they were, you said, poisoned and almost killed.
• 20:50
  Yes. So there's 5 alien races.
• 20:52
  There's the two I just talked about, the humans and the
• 20:54
  Mabari. There's also three others, one
• 20:57
  of which nobody has ever met any of their representatives in
• 21:00
  person. They don't know what this alien
• 21:02
  race looks like. They've just had communications
• 21:03
  with them. So it's a big deal that this
• 21:06
  meeting is happening on Babylon 5, the space station, because
• 21:08
  they're like, OK, great, we're going to have an ambassador from
• 21:11
  the Vorlon race and we'll finally meet one.
• 21:14
  But the Vorland ambassador steps foot on Babylon 5 and
• 21:17
  immediately almost dies. Just like that instant they get
• 21:20
  on board, they're they find them dying on the ground and they're
• 21:23
  like, OK, I guess the Vorland ambassador is dead.
• 21:27
  Maybe. Maybe that's just the way they
• 21:28
  are. They're like, oh, this is,
• 21:30
  that's just their culture. They just show up to new places
• 21:32
  and then die. They send.
• 21:34
  Ambassadors to important meetings to just keel over
• 21:36
  before the before it can begin. You don't know them.
• 21:40
  Like, yeah, let them be. We don't.
• 21:42
  Know leave them be. Yeah, it'd be rude to interrupt.
• 21:44
  Exactly. So.
• 21:46
  That's the core of this story. The Vorlans are like a
• 21:50
  mysterious race. The person that you're seeing is
• 21:52
  inside this giant, like, suit of armor.
• 21:56
  So like, you're not really seeing what they look like.
• 21:58
  And you have this ongoing thing where this Vorlan ambassador is
• 22:02
  in a coma. The other characters aboard
• 22:04
  Babylon Five are trying to like, keep the peace fall.
• 22:06
  So figuring out who tried to do this, who wants them dead.
• 22:09
  And it's just kind of like that classic sci-fi thing of like
• 22:11
  there's a bunch of little plots and threads and you're not sure
• 22:14
  how they all connect. And then it all ramps up as the
• 22:16
  story finally concludes. And I really, I can't think of
• 22:19
  much else to talk about other than to just kind of walk
• 22:21
  through the mystery as the movie presents it.
• 22:23
  Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll just ask upfront, like, 'cause I like
• 22:27
  murder mystery stuff, generally speaking.
• 22:30
  I think we maybe got into this a little bit when we were talking
• 22:32
  about Sleepy Hollow, but there difficult to land sometimes.
• 22:38
  I feel like this one hopefully has enough other things going on
• 22:42
  with this setting to like, I guess elevate that and make it
• 22:46
  interesting. But I guess I'll I'll let you
• 22:48
  tell us. Absolutely.
• 22:50
  I do think that the strongest thing I could say about this
• 22:53
  story in the movie is that it is a compelling enough mystery
• 22:56
  that's not super predictable, but also not like confusing and
• 23:00
  stupid. You know, like they didn't do
• 23:01
  anything overly complicated to like, throw you off the trail as
• 23:04
  the viewer. Instead, it's just like
• 23:06
  something's going on with like a shapeshifter.
• 23:09
  Maybe there's people being killed on board the space
• 23:11
  station. We don't know who the actual
• 23:13
  killer is. And as we get into, by the time
• 23:16
  like the second act begins, the prime suspect in the attempted
• 23:20
  murder is actually your main character, like the commander of
• 23:23
  the space station. So your space station crew,
• 23:29
  again, if you've watched Deep Space 9, this is going to sound
• 23:31
  like 1 to one with like the cast of that.
• 23:32
  But you have like your main commander guy, his name's Jeff.
• 23:35
  He's the guy in charge. There's also a woman who is like
• 23:38
  the head of their command center, like their operation
• 23:41
  center named Laurel. And then you have a security
• 23:44
  chief who's investigating the crime.
• 23:46
  And then there's a doctor. Those are like your 4 main
• 23:49
  people who work on Babylon 5. Yeah, it's one to one with the
• 23:53
  cast of Deep Space. Literally.
• 23:55
  Exactly the same. And then you also have the side
• 24:01
  characters in the story are the ambassadors for the other alien
• 24:04
  races. So there's one ambassador who's
• 24:06
  a woman from the moon, Bari, who again, or that alien race that
• 24:09
  could have destroyed Earth and chose not to.
• 24:11
  She has like a friendship with Captain Jeff.
• 24:14
  And so they have like a dynamic throughout that story where
• 24:16
  she's feeding him information. There's also the classic Star
• 24:20
  Trek theatrical British sounding alien guy, if that makes sense.
• 24:24
  He's one of the other ambassadors, yeah.
• 24:26
  Totally, totally. Just.
• 24:28
  I think this actor actually playing the character's name is
• 24:31
  Jakar. And I think the actor who plays
• 24:33
  Jakar even had a recurring role in like, Star Trek Next
• 24:35
  Generation. So just plucked straight out of
• 24:38
  that kind of crop of actors who are like, super classically
• 24:41
  trained. And then they just put him in
• 24:43
  silly makeup and costumes and have him talk about space wars
• 24:46
  and it's awesome. It's so great because it, it is
• 24:48
  so theatrical. So I, I, I think that's
• 24:52
  something else that like, I guess if I was trying to sell
• 24:55
  someone who might be interested in these types of shows or
• 24:57
  movies, it would be that, that it's like, if you, if you love
• 25:01
  that kind of like big theatrical, like more classical,
• 25:06
  like you said, acting style, but with like great prosthetics and
• 25:11
  costuming and stuff like that. Like it's, it's, it's all very
• 25:14
  theatre and, and I think people would appreciate that if that's
• 25:17
  the type of thing they're into. Absolutely.
• 25:19
  And Jakar gives a great performance.
• 25:20
  As soon as the movie started, it was rolling the credits over the
• 25:23
  first scene. And it was saying like, so and
• 25:25
  so as this so and so as this character.
• 25:27
  And I saw like, yadda, yadda, actor as Jakar and just said out
• 25:30
  loud to my wife, I was like, I'm putting all my stocks in on
• 25:32
  Jakar. I don't know who that is, but
• 25:34
  that's a funny name. I'm going to be a big Jakar
• 25:36
  head, which was funny because he turned out to be an antagonist
• 25:39
  and was just kind of like a jerk.
• 25:41
  And I was like, ah. Jakar Jakar all these names are
• 25:44
  so funny like what did you say the the name of the 1 alien
• 25:49
  species was the? I think it's the Munbar.
• 25:52
  Ah, Christ, I got to look it up. There's there's somebody
• 25:56
  listening right now who has seen Babylon Five, who is like,
• 26:00
  you're mispronouncing this so badly.
• 26:02
  Well, that. That was going to be my point
• 26:03
  though, like you could literally just be making these up and I
• 26:06
  wouldn't know because they're just nonsense sci-fi names.
• 26:09
  So I don't expect, Oh yeah, give a Siri, I think.
• 26:13
  It's the the minbari or the Moonbari.
• 26:16
  I wrote it like 3 different ways in my notes.
• 26:19
  OK, well, just keep changing it. Mix it up, just keep changing
• 26:21
  it. The Klingons, if you will.
• 26:24
  Yeah. Anyway, Jakar's race is called
• 26:29
  the Narn. Like NARN?
• 26:32
  Narn. Narn.
• 26:33
  That's a bit of a weak name. You can always judge sci-fi or
• 26:36
  fantasy by how good it's proper nouns are.
• 26:38
  You know, just like names for people and places.
• 26:40
  And Narn. Pretty weak, yeah.
• 26:42
  Jakar's good though. Jakar's.
• 26:43
  Good. Jakar's a good name.
• 26:44
  And then the final alien race, who you only really see through
• 26:48
  the lens of their ambassador. I think they just call them like
• 26:52
  the Alpha Centauri people or something, the Centauri
• 26:56
  Republic. OK, that's cool.
• 26:59
  That's a good one. That's a good.
• 27:00
  One, I'd say that overall proper knowledge in Babylon 5 quite
• 27:04
  good. Nice.
• 27:05
  Yeah, Like that, that's honestly that that is like a hinge that
• 27:10
  good sci-fi like can kind of go up or down on like like you
• 27:14
  said, because if they have bad just silly sounding names like
• 27:17
  Wookies and Ewoks and. Jedi Misa think they could do
• 27:24
  better. Misa thinks so too, yeah.
• 27:31
  Anyway, good proper knowledge, but I know it if you've not seen
• 27:35
  it, and this is all going to sound like just word garbled
• 27:37
  nonsense, but essentially there's five main characters.
• 27:39
  There's the ambassadors and then the rest of the crew of the
• 27:42
  Babylon 5 space station in order to characterize the Centauri
• 27:46
  Republic ambassador. If you want like a shorthand,
• 27:49
  just think like the Penguin from Batman.
• 27:54
  Wait, but like. Imagine like the Penguin from
• 27:57
  Batman but like a sci-fi version who is kind of like a sad
• 28:01
  alcoholic. Who are you describing right
• 28:04
  now? Which character is this?
• 28:04
  This is the. Ambassador from the Centauri
• 28:06
  Republic. This is the guy that keeled
• 28:08
  over. No, that was the Vorlan
• 28:10
  ambassador. Obviously, that was the Vorlan
• 28:12
  ambassador. OK, I'm just picturing like a
• 28:15
  dead Penguin on the ground now, no?
• 28:16
  No, Penguin's fine. Penguin's fine.
• 28:19
  I don't remember the character's name but he is like more of a
• 28:23
  frequent visitor to Babylon 5. Like he has you're not going to
• 28:27
  believe this. He's like this CD deal making
• 28:30
  guy who hangs out in a bar all the time and has like a
• 28:33
  friendship slash rivalry with the security chief.
• 28:39
  Sounds like a different show but his character is funny because
• 28:45
  his race in the context of like the lore of RAW, this entire
• 28:49
  Republic used to be like a really powerful alien empire but
• 28:52
  due to some circumstances no longer is.
• 28:55
  And he expresses it as like we essentially have to grovel to
• 28:58
  like the people from earth now it's like resources and like
• 29:01
  business deals and stuff. So his whole character is like a
• 29:04
  once great race who's left with nothing now but like stories of
• 29:08
  their prime and is kind of just floundering in the present.
• 29:11
  OK. All right, so but, and this is
• 29:14
  the guy, I I still don't understand how he's like the
• 29:17
  Penguin in his appearance. Of his.
• 29:19
  Characterization 00 like he looks like the Penguin.
• 29:23
  Like, he has like some gnarled teeth and like, is kind of just
• 29:26
  this somewhat rotund guy. And he look, you know, if you
• 29:29
  saw the show, you would understand.
• 29:31
  He looks like if you sent the Penguin into outer space.
• 29:34
  OK. Got it.
• 29:35
  All right, I thought that. Would be more helpful because it
• 29:37
  would simplify it. I think I've complicated things
• 29:39
  even further. Yeah, No, it's fine.
• 29:42
  It's fine. I'm waiting.
• 29:43
  I'm with it. So those.
• 29:44
  Are your 5 alien races? Let's recap.
• 29:47
  We have the humans. We have the humans.
• 29:50
  Normal people. Mumbari, they're the strongest.
• 29:52
  Satari Republic used to be good, now they kind of stink.
• 29:55
  Jakar's people, The Narn, we don't really know much about
• 29:57
  them, we just know Jakar. And then the last one is the
• 30:00
  mysterious Vorlans, who we just met.
• 30:02
  We just saw their ambassador and now he's almost dead.
• 30:05
  OK, cool. Easy, easy.
• 30:06
  Peasy and then Jabba the Hutt shows up.
• 30:08
  No Jabba the Hutt. So right away we have this
• 30:13
  dynamic where it's like, well, who had the motive to try to
• 30:15
  kill the ambassador from the new planet?
• 30:17
  Obviously like it's a sci-fi drama like anyone you've seen
• 30:21
  previous. There's like a political angle,
• 30:23
  like who would stand to benefit from disrupting what is probably
• 30:26
  some sort of like, I think peace talks or strength building, like
• 30:29
  bond building, meeting between all these alien races.
• 30:32
  Somebody's trying to sabotage it.
• 30:33
  They tried to get this person killed who done it.
• 30:36
  You know, it's a classic mystery.
• 30:37
  And right off the bat, I mean, I say right off the bat, once the
• 30:40
  mystery gets going, one of the first things you learn is that
• 30:43
  one of the few people without an alibi is the main character of
• 30:46
  Commander Jeff. Jazzy.
• 30:48
  Jeff Jazzy Jeff, because you see that from his perspective, he's
• 30:52
  in an elevator and the elevator stops working while he's on his
• 30:55
  way to meet the ambassador, which delays him enough that he
• 30:57
  misses the attempted murder. But then later the security
• 30:59
  chief is like, there's no record of that malfunction.
• 31:02
  Are we sure this wasn't you? And then as it goes on, we have
• 31:05
  a character with like telepathic power show up who like straight
• 31:09
  up says that she saw him commit the crime.
• 31:12
  Like she saw this Commander Jeff try to kill the ambassador.
• 31:15
  So right away, your main character, who we just met and
• 31:18
  sorry, your prime suspect in a murderer.
• 31:21
  I don't like him. Yeah, that's kind of like one of
• 31:23
  my beefs with the framework of this TV movie is that it seems
• 31:28
  like a very understandable premise.
• 31:30
  Your main character is put in a situation where it seems like
• 31:34
  he's guilty, and there's no obvious logical way to prove
• 31:36
  that he is not guilty because it's a science fiction show and,
• 31:39
  you know, it's going to be some kind of more complicated scheme,
• 31:42
  and the viewer has to try to think about what that could be.
• 31:44
  And that's what makes it ultimately satisfying.
• 31:46
  But during like the whole second-half of the movie,
• 31:49
  Commander Jeff, it's the prime and only suspect in this
• 31:52
  attempted murder. And he's never like restrained
• 31:55
  in any way. He just like, walks around the
• 31:57
  ship like normal trying to solve the mystery.
• 31:59
  And the whole time I'm like, Jeff, you're the prime suspect.
• 32:02
  Like you can't just, you can't just he's.
• 32:05
  Like, we're going to get this guy, let's go find him.
• 32:08
  He's sharing. Evidence with the crew and like
• 32:10
  they're telling him like their new leads.
• 32:12
  And the whole time I was like, listen, if this was like Season
• 32:15
  4, episode 5 and Captain Picard was accused of murdering
• 32:19
  somebody, and as a viewer, I know obviously he didn't do
• 32:21
  that, then you could play with this like, of course, everybody
• 32:24
  trusts the captain. But we just met the captain and
• 32:27
  he's already been accused of a crime.
• 32:29
  And we're supposed to just take it at face value that like,
• 32:31
  well, of course he didn't do it well.
• 32:33
  Yeah. I also feel like exactly like
• 32:35
  you said, if this was like later into the series, that would also
• 32:39
  be framed in a way where it's like the captain would still be
• 32:43
  detained, but he would use his relationship with the other
• 32:45
  characters to prove his innocence because they support
• 32:48
  him. You know it still, it still
• 32:50
  wouldn't be him going around solving the case.
• 32:52
  So that is kind of a poor structural frames.
• 32:55
  No sense because they're trying to tell this angle in the story
• 32:58
  where Captain Jeff, all of his crew were like, obviously
• 33:01
  Captain, Commander, Lord Overseer Jeff didn't do this.
• 33:06
  But we don't know that necessarily as the viewer beyond
• 33:09
  them just telling us it probably wasn't him.
• 33:11
  And there's never a scene where like he has to voluntarily go
• 33:14
  into like the holding cells aboard the space station and
• 33:17
  then he has to like trust in his crew to prove his innocence.
• 33:20
  He's just wandering about freely.
• 33:21
  Just like, let me muddle with some evidence while I'm at it.
• 33:26
  So that's odd. It is odd.
• 33:29
  Because do they do anything to explain around that?
• 33:34
  Like to give any like justification as to why he is
• 33:37
  allowed to do that. Not really.
• 33:39
  Like, there's a scene, the reveal that the telepath thinks
• 33:42
  he committed the crime is like the lead into a commercial break
• 33:45
  because, again, it's aired on TV.
• 33:47
  And when we come back, there's like Commander Jeff is talking
• 33:50
  to essentially Star Freight Command who is saying like, you
• 33:52
  know, Jeff, I think we have to relieve you as the head of the
• 33:57
  investigation now that you're the prime suspect.
• 34:00
  I think, I guess, I guess you're no longer the lead detective
• 34:04
  when you probably killed that guy.
• 34:06
  And it's just like the crew. Is like, man, that's bogus.
• 34:09
  And the whole time I'm like, that's not bogus.
• 34:11
  That's a totally national response.
• 34:14
  Why isn't everybody on board with this?
• 34:16
  How is the angle not like, don't worry, Cathy, we know it wasn't
• 34:19
  you, but we got to follow procedures.
• 34:20
  People in Babylon 5 do not give a crap about procedures.
• 34:25
  Captain Jeff is like, there's nothing in the rules that says a
• 34:27
  dog can't play basketball. And they're like, wait, that
• 34:30
  doesn't, No, that doesn't. And he's just moved on and
• 34:32
  they're. Like actually Jeff, there's like
• 34:34
  a lot of new rule books now. There is a whole one about dogs
• 34:36
  and basketball and he's like dad that used to work used.
• 34:39
  To work back home. Not in space, not in.
• 34:42
  Space I This reminds me, so Babylon 5, the movie The
• 34:46
  gathering, the show has a fairly competent plot, but that really
• 34:52
  bugged me. The fact that Captain Jeff is
• 34:53
  the prime suspect and they just let him parade around freely
• 34:56
  solving the crime as he sees fit.
• 34:58
  And there's a much smaller beat that I found super strange where
• 35:02
  we get a scene between two of the people who work on Babylon
• 35:04
  5. It's our doctor, Doctor Ben and
• 35:07
  the like, head of OPS who's named Laurel.
• 35:10
  We have not had any time to learn about either of these
• 35:13
  characters because the movie's going and there's other stuff to
• 35:15
  talk about. So when our first, like,
• 35:17
  downbeat scene, Laurel is in her quarters, you know, she's not
• 35:21
  working. She's just hanging out drinking
• 35:22
  coffee. And she has this conversation
• 35:24
  with the doctor where she offers him coffee, and he's like, wow,
• 35:27
  how did you get this? I didn't know that we had access
• 35:30
  to coffee because unlike Star Trek, in Babylon 5, they
• 35:32
  actually have to grow their food.
• 35:34
  So it's like a whole thing of like, well, we're supposed to
• 35:36
  reserve space aboard the space station only to grow necessary,
• 35:39
  like, fruits and vegetables and produce.
• 35:42
  But we learned that Laurel paid somebody off or just convinced
• 35:46
  somebody to let her have a small little area where they grow
• 35:48
  coffee beans, even though that's against, like, fleet
• 35:50
  regulations, You know what I mean?
• 35:53
  Sure. So what's your complaint here?
• 35:55
  So the complaint is that's how the scene opens.
• 35:58
  This is our first time learning anything about this character.
• 36:00
  And she's like, don't worry. I kind of, like, schmoozed with
• 36:03
  the people running the hydroponics area, and I let them
• 36:05
  grow. I let them have some coffee
• 36:07
  beans and then had them grow them for me.
• 36:09
  And then, like, the very next thing she talks about in that
• 36:12
  scene is this back story dump where she's explaining how in
• 36:16
  her previous job working on Mars, she was like a terrible
• 36:19
  employee because she knew that the whole system was corrupt and
• 36:21
  she did a bad job. And that apparently Captain Jeff
• 36:26
  came along and, like, whisked her away to come work on Babylon
• 36:29
  5 and was like, you know, I really think you have something
• 36:32
  in you to be great, but you got to try harder and you got to do
• 36:35
  things by the book and try to change the system from the
• 36:37
  inside. And so she says out loud to the
• 36:39
  doctor, like, I haven't broken a rule in a long time now, Ben.
• 36:43
  And I was like, we just talked about you and your illegal
• 36:46
  coffee beans. It's the only thing we know.
• 36:50
  She just like I, I haven't broken any rules and it just
• 36:52
  takes like a long sip of her coffee like she's holding.
• 36:56
  The coffee while she's saying I haven't broken the rule in a
• 36:58
  long time. And it's so weird because
• 37:01
  ultimately that's a, that scene is about them deciding whether
• 37:05
  or not to do some illegal stuff to like probe into the mind of
• 37:08
  this unconscious ambassador because they're still trying to
• 37:10
  solve the murder attempt. So they're like, well, if we
• 37:12
  could get inside his mind with his telepath, maybe we could
• 37:15
  find out what happened. And then they're like, well, but
• 37:17
  that's illegal. We're not supposed to be able to
• 37:18
  do that. And so she's sitting there like,
• 37:20
  I haven't broken a rule in a long time.
• 37:21
  Drinks illegal coffee bean crop. Like that's insane.
• 37:25
  It would be like if you opened a scene in a movie of a guy just
• 37:28
  like shooting half court basketball shots and making like
• 37:31
  four or five in a row. And that's the first thing you
• 37:33
  ever see him do. And then he turns to another
• 37:35
  character and he's like, I haven't played basketball in a
• 37:37
  long time. It's like, what are you talking
• 37:40
  about? Listen man, time moves
• 37:42
  differently in space. Like it's just like that.
• 37:45
  Was 4 to 5 seconds ago. I was over there.
• 37:47
  I was a different. Person.
• 37:49
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I I wasn't supposed.
• 37:51
  Maybe it was supposed to be a tongue in cheek line?
• 37:53
  Maybe. It was supposed to be tongue in
• 37:55
  cheek, but it didn't land and it made no sense and it was a very
• 37:58
  jarring like scripting issue in a movie that otherwise made
• 38:01
  total sense. Yeah, I mean, I, I hear your,
• 38:05
  your complaint will be filed with the board with the.
• 38:08
  Board and then she'll ignore it because she's a rule breaker.
• 38:14
  Are those two characters a couple?
• 38:15
  That was going to be my my question when you mentioned that
• 38:17
  they were spending time together and it was the first time we saw
• 38:20
  them. No, the only like romantic
• 38:22
  pairing you get is that Captain Jeff has a girlfriend who is a
• 38:27
  freighter ship captain that comes and goes from the station
• 38:30
  periodically and they never get to spend enough time together.
• 38:33
  You gotta be kidding me. Yep, Yep.
• 38:35
  That's more deep space 9 comparison.
• 38:37
  I think our favorite show ripped off this other show.
• 38:44
  Shut it down. Shut it.
• 38:45
  Down. We can't let this go out.
• 38:46
  Yeah. We can't let.
• 38:48
  People know we can't let people hear about this.
• 38:50
  I'm sorry, Paramount. My bad.
• 38:53
  My bad. My bad.
• 38:54
  I'm sure you haven't done anything wrong either.
• 38:56
  Paramount Pictures. We got to shut down Google.
• 39:02
  We got to shut down a lot of stuff, yeah.
• 39:03
  Paramount's like I haven't broken a rule in a long time.
• 39:07
  Just like smashing bags of money under their desk.
• 39:11
  Anyway to answer your question, no the doctor and the OPS
• 39:17
  commander lady are not a pair. We just have the captain has a
• 39:21
  girlfriend who's like a side character that doesn't work on
• 39:23
  Babylon Five. I will say also, you were
• 39:26
  talking about performances like this is a great canvas for
• 39:31
  classically trained actors to just like, flaunt these
• 39:34
  interesting characters. And I would say that overall,
• 39:37
  the performances on like your average Star Trek show in the
• 39:40
  90s ranged from like good to great to amazing.
• 39:43
  Whereas in this Babylon 5 movie, it's like acceptable to bad.
• 39:46
  Like some of the performances are really bad.
• 39:49
  Well, I, I in the small amount of research I did like when
• 39:53
  picking this film, I believe there is, I don't know how
• 39:56
  significant or how many people it is, but I think there's some
• 39:59
  of the main roles are recast when the series actually begins
• 40:02
  or, or just new characters are introduced.
• 40:05
  Interesting. So that could be the case.
• 40:07
  I will say that the the rule breaking coffee drinker Laurel
• 40:12
  is giving a horrendous performance.
• 40:14
  Like her line reads are so wooden that it's like an insult
• 40:19
  to trees. OK.
• 40:25
  Like it's so jarring because they'll have these people in
• 40:28
  here like Commander Jeff, he's doing fine.
• 40:30
  Like he's just doing like super normal, kind of like I'm in
• 40:34
  charge around here, main character guy energy.
• 40:36
  And then we'll just cut to her in the OPS room struggling to
• 40:38
  articulate these lines or deliver them in in even remotely
• 40:41
  convincing way. It's just distractingly bad from
• 40:45
  this one particular character on the main cast.
• 40:48
  That's well, yeah, that's brutal.
• 40:50
  I mean, does she have a lot of screen time?
• 40:51
  Is she important to the the story of this this, I almost
• 40:55
  said first episode, which I guess that's kind of what it is.
• 40:57
  But to this TV movie? Not really.
• 41:00
  I I'm sure she would have been if she stuck around for the
• 41:02
  series and maybe it gets better. Like I'm not going to judge the
• 41:05
  actor. I don't know what their
• 41:06
  capability is, but just this performance that was captured
• 41:09
  was terrible. And like, the security chief guy
• 41:12
  also kind of gave a mixed performance.
• 41:14
  You know, Jakar was really good. The main guy was good.
• 41:16
  I just was surprised that a couple of these performances
• 41:19
  were so weak. Because I feel like if that
• 41:21
  doesn't hold up, like the whole facade of the show can come
• 41:23
  down. Like if you put on an episode of
• 41:25
  Star Trek where nobody's a good actor, you don't have a show
• 41:27
  anymore. Yeah, I feel like one of the the
• 41:29
  big advantages, I guess if you want to call it, could be the
• 41:35
  directing, could be the writing. But like the a lot of those,
• 41:38
  like character actors that they bring onto Star Trek seem to
• 41:41
  really understand the material in a way that regardless of like
• 41:46
  the specifics of what they're talking about, like clearly
• 41:48
  they're talking about nonsense like alien creatures and worlds
• 41:52
  and stuff. But they make it sound so
• 41:55
  believable because they find the almost Shakespearean esque, like
• 42:00
  storytelling underneath, if that makes sense.
• 42:03
  You know, it's like. Shakespeare.
• 42:05
  Shakespearean is the perfect word for how they typically play
• 42:07
  it in in the better versions of this, yes.
• 42:10
  Because it's, it's, you know, again, great sci-fi at its core
• 42:13
  is reflective of our human experiences.
• 42:18
  And so I find I find that like that's one of the big advantages
• 42:21
  of this type of sci-fi is like, you know, you're changing the
• 42:25
  specifics around and, and put placing it in these sort of
• 42:28
  distant locales and stuff, but it's all still very human
• 42:33
  experiences that you can relate to.
• 42:35
  And I feel like the actors that really deliver the best
• 42:39
  material, despite being in silly prosthetics and stuff like that,
• 42:43
  are the ones that really get that.
• 42:45
  And I don't know if that comes with having a like, a
• 42:47
  relationship with like the writing or possibly the director
• 42:51
  guiding them that way, but I could easily see how that could
• 42:56
  slip off in the other direction. And people are like, well, the
• 42:59
  Jakars are, you know, whatever. They're they're taking the
• 43:04
  hobbits to Isengard. What it?
• 43:05
  What is the last? Exactly, Yeah.
• 43:08
  Yeah, Line, I do think that that is a point against Babylon 5.
• 43:13
  Again, a lot of people really like to show.
• 43:14
  I'm sure the larger story being told is interesting and then
• 43:17
  there's probably a lot of strength to it.
• 43:18
  But what you get in Babylon 5, The Gathering is a perfectly
• 43:22
  competent sci-fi mystery that resolves in an interesting way
• 43:27
  and does create a hook leading into the main series.
• 43:30
  But it doesn't really have what the best episodes of Star Trek
• 43:35
  have. They'll talk about Star Trek,
• 43:36
  what the best episodes of Star Trek have, which is like
• 43:39
  interesting thematic language underneath individual stories.
• 43:44
  Like Star Trek is often episodic and serial, like they're telling
• 43:48
  a larger story, but they'll do individual little stories within
• 43:50
  it that often speak to these like grandiose themes because
• 43:54
  that's what sci-fi is well suited for.
• 43:56
  And even like the pilot of Deep Space 9 tackle some really
• 43:59
  interesting concepts around like humans relationship to time.
• 44:03
  And there's this fun allegory where he's the human captain's
• 44:06
  like trying to explain to an alien why baseball's
• 44:08
  interesting, but the alien experiences time like all at
• 44:12
  once. They don't have a concept of
• 44:13
  linear time. And he has to explain.
• 44:15
  He's like, no, you don't understand.
• 44:16
  Like it's in that moment where you throw the ball and you're
• 44:20
  waiting for it to reach the batter and you can't say for
• 44:22
  certain if they're going to hit it or not.
• 44:24
  Like that's where the human experience lives and it's just
• 44:27
  compelling. It just asks a lot of big
• 44:29
  questions and often doesn't even answer them definitively.
• 44:32
  Babylon 5, not a lot of that, not a lot of like big questions,
• 44:37
  big picture. It it it's really concerned with
• 44:40
  its actual basic level plot above all else, I think.
• 44:44
  Yeah, which, you know, I do wonder how much of that, like,
• 44:49
  it would be interesting to see where the series goes from there
• 44:51
  because this, you know, being a pilot, I could kind of see them
• 44:55
  having to, you know, they have a short amount of time to pitch
• 44:58
  this as a thing people are going to want to watch.
• 45:00
  So I could see them feeling like if they went too niche or too
• 45:04
  far into that direction because like, you know, Deep Space 9,
• 45:08
  one of the big advantages of that show was that it was coming
• 45:11
  off the heels of Star Trek The Next Generation, which was a
• 45:14
  hugely popular show that was still on at the time.
• 45:17
  So like, even if Deep Space 9 like failed, that the network
• 45:21
  still had Next Generation airing.
• 45:23
  So they could sort of take more risks like right off the bat
• 45:29
  basically. And right off the bat,
• 45:33
  parentheses, baseball. I was also going to say that
• 45:38
  Star Trek benefits from having established lore.
• 45:41
  People tuning in to watch Steve. Space 9 would be like, yeah,
• 45:43
  Klingon Starfleet. You don't need to explain that
• 45:45
  to me. Whereas Babylon 5 is
• 45:46
  disadvantaged in that it has to tell the story well, telling you
• 45:49
  where the story is happening and who all the pieces are.
• 45:52
  I mean, even this review I had to spend like 30 minutes just
• 45:54
  explaining who's here. Yeah, yeah.
• 45:58
  Do you like that I tricked you into making our season finale
• 46:00
  episode all about Star Trek? Yeah, I.
• 46:02
  Noticed that. I noticed we were talking about
• 46:04
  Star Trek the whole time and I feel bad so people haven't seen
• 46:07
  it. But frankly, if you've listened
• 46:10
  to us talk about Babylon 5 for this song, go watch Star Trek.
• 46:14
  That's the recommendation at the end.
• 46:16
  Like it makes it hard to put this movie in a box by itself.
• 46:21
  Like as a film made to launch a new sci-fi series, I would say
• 46:25
  it's reasonably effective. Like it's good, interesting
• 46:28
  storytelling that would hook a viewer the same way that a Star
• 46:31
  Trek would. The shortcomings are that it
• 46:33
  lacks that kind of upper level dialogue and just general
• 46:39
  scripting that makes it feel really like grandiose and kind
• 46:42
  of bombastic in a way. I think what I've read is that
• 46:45
  Babylon 5 is a darker story than any of the Star Trek series and
• 46:48
  is a little bit more grounded and it's science fiction.
• 46:51
  Like it doesn't have that utopic optimistic undertone.
• 46:54
  It's very miserable to the point of almost being dystopian, and
• 46:58
  that's fine, but I would have liked to see this movie sell me
• 47:02
  on the mission statement for the whole series somatically, and
• 47:06
  instead it's really just like, we have so much plot.
• 47:09
  Please listen to all of our plots so that you'll know what
• 47:11
  we're talking about when the Penguin comes back.
• 47:15
  To bet, we got. To get to bet, we got.
• 47:17
  To get to bet, yeah, that's ultimately what it's about.
• 47:20
  And it's about family, you know? Vin Diesel's going to drive by
• 47:26
  and he's but you know, 'cause even that the way you described
• 47:30
  it just now, that sounds interesting to me, 'cause like,
• 47:33
  you know, Deep Space 9 already exists, so I can go watch that.
• 47:37
  I the idea of a darker version of that that goes in a different
• 47:42
  tonal direction. That's to me a stronger pitch.
• 47:45
  And it sounds like you said this movie doesn't get into that so
• 47:48
  much. No, 'cause the movie's not that
• 47:51
  dark. It's very by the numbers, It's
• 47:53
  trying to like give you a tour of everything, but it doesn't
• 47:58
  have enough time. And I, it arguably could have
• 48:00
  made time even in like a 90 minute story to give you more of
• 48:05
  a focused appeal for like, this is what makes our show
• 48:07
  different. This is where it's going.
• 48:08
  But like, here's why you're going to want to stick around.
• 48:11
  Because I feel like if I was just like watching TV in 1993
• 48:14
  and that came on, I'd be like, yeah, that was cool.
• 48:16
  But I don't think I'd be like, I have to make sure I'm ready in a
• 48:19
  year when the series. That's also tough.
• 48:22
  Yeah, That is, I wonder what the sort of behind the scenes
• 48:25
  production elements were that, like, necessitated it.
• 48:28
  Like, maybe they were still shopping it around for that
• 48:30
  whole time, But that's a long gap in between a pilot TV movie
• 48:35
  and then, like, like, how many people saw that and then also
• 48:39
  saw like, the first episode of the show a year later?
• 48:41
  You know, there probably wasn't a lot of overlap, not to
• 48:44
  mention. Does the first episode of the
• 48:45
  show just have to recap everything from that movie
• 48:48
  because it's so much later and a lot of that lore was like
• 48:51
  significant to what was going to be coming up next?
• 48:54
  That I don't know. The movie ends up falling in a
• 48:56
  weird place. It like it was made too early
• 48:59
  relative to when the series launched and was made in like a
• 49:02
  bubble, But it spent a lot of its time trying to tell you,
• 49:05
  like, there's more coming up after this.
• 49:07
  And I think those elements kind of conflicted and it left the
• 49:09
  movie feeling a little bit aimless, even though on paper it
• 49:12
  was pretty well done. Yeah.
• 49:14
  It also brings up the question of like, given the time period
• 49:16
  when that was released, if you missed the movie and we're
• 49:20
  watching the series and wanted to go back and watch the TV
• 49:23
  movie, like what resources would you even have?
• 49:25
  Like unless they like released you know like Avhs version that
• 49:30
  you could go rent from the video store I.
• 49:32
  Guess you could go down to your Blockbuster Video and.
• 49:35
  But what did they have even released a physical like, or was
• 49:37
  it, did it just air on TV? You know, because it was a, it
• 49:40
  was a made for TV movie. So I don't know how often they
• 49:42
  they did that, you know, like made physical copies of made for
• 49:45
  TV movies like in the 90s. Grandpa, how did people watch
• 49:49
  the TV before? Because I have those questions
• 49:52
  all the time and we were around for like the last 10 years of
• 49:55
  that, but I can't recall it anymore.
• 49:57
  Like the idea that it's like, AH is my favorite show.
• 50:01
  I have to be in in front of this TV Wednesday at 7:00 every week
• 50:05
  for nine months or else I'm going to miss it.
• 50:09
  Yeah, yeah. I feel like TiVo was.
• 50:11
  We never had TiVo. We did not.
• 50:13
  Have a TiVo. That that was probably a big
• 50:15
  innovation at the time so that you could watch your shows at a
• 50:18
  later time, but then you still had to set it up to record the
• 50:21
  right shows. I think like I, I definitely
• 50:23
  remember being a kid and being like, if I don't get home from
• 50:26
  school in time, I'm going to miss my shows and then my night
• 50:30
  is ruined, which makes it. Sound like you're 85 years old,
• 50:33
  right? They're like, I got to get home
• 50:35
  or I'll miss my stories. Yes.
• 50:38
  Yes, except it was like Batman. Yeah.
• 50:41
  Exactly. I got to say, Batman Beyond.
• 50:43
  What are you talking about? Yeah.
• 50:44
  So Babylon 5, the Gathering, the movie, The show, the game is
• 50:50
  really weird. Like it.
• 50:51
  It feels out of place in its own franchise's history.
• 50:57
  And I do think it's pretty good. I would certainly not recommend
• 51:00
  against it for people who like this kind of storytelling.
• 51:03
  But it's such an anomaly that like, I can't easily, I'm going
• 51:07
  to have to rank this out of 10 later and that's going to drive
• 51:09
  me up a wall because I just don't know how.
• 51:11
  Well, good luck out there. Good luck, Yeah.
• 51:17
  I mean, I guess we'll catch up on that thought in a bit.
• 51:21
  For now, we're going to head to our intermission and then when
• 51:24
  we come back, Frank, you'll have an entirely different movie to
• 51:26
  talk about. Although spoiler, it somehow
• 51:29
  does connect all the way back to Star Wars, so we'll see how that
• 51:32
  works out. Oh, OK, I didn't know that, but
• 51:36
  I told. You what you'll tell.
• 51:37
  Us. Oh, yes, you did.
• 51:39
  I'm sorry, You're right. Yeah, I get.
• 51:41
  It. I get it.
• 51:42
  I'm with you, he. Gets it.
• 51:43
  He works here anyway, soon after intermission for the cutting
• 51:47
  edge. All right, coming back from the
• 51:57
  other side of the intermission, Frank, we just spent 50 odd
• 52:01
  minutes talking about a sci-fi story that's going to be very
• 52:03
  hard for anyone to understand. Let's turn things over now to
• 52:06
  something a lot more straightforward, 1992's romance
• 52:09
  sports movie The Cutting Edge. Yes, this will be far easier to
• 52:15
  follow. And that's a pretty good
• 52:17
  description of what it is. That's actually here in my notes
• 52:19
  that it's somewhere between a sports movie and a like Hallmark
• 52:26
  movie. Got it.
• 52:28
  That makes sense. I do know because I don't
• 52:31
  remember if I gave the full explanation when I first
• 52:33
  introduced the movie at the end of our last episode.
• 52:36
  But I was looking up Cutthroat Island, which you asked me to
• 52:39
  watch, and I was on tube because I knew it was streaming there.
• 52:42
  And I typed in CU and all these movies popped up.
• 52:44
  They were called The Cutting Edge.
• 52:45
  And I was like, well, what is that?
• 52:46
  Why is it? What are all these Cutting Edge
• 52:47
  movies? I think that this movie was
• 52:50
  successful enough in the early 90s to warrant.
• 52:54
  I don't think any of them are direct sequels, but it's like a
• 52:57
  name that's been held on to. So every now and again they'll
• 53:00
  make a similar movie and just call it The Cutting Edge.
• 53:03
  But I don't think any of them are connected.
• 53:05
  You're wrong. They are this.
• 53:08
  Is cinematic Universe. At least the second one I I I
• 53:13
  did see that similar to The Prophecy, this did spawn a
• 53:16
  series of films. No video games.
• 53:19
  I was on the lookout for cutting edge video games, but was there
• 53:23
  a. Babel on five game.
• 53:24
  That's a great. Question.
• 53:25
  That's true. We can look into that later.
• 53:27
  But yeah, there was like, I think two or three films that
• 53:31
  came after this one. And I did read a little bit of
• 53:34
  trivia that the two lead actors from this one sort of made a
• 53:38
  deal with each other that they wouldn't do a sequel unless the
• 53:42
  other person agreed to do it too.
• 53:44
  Interesting. And I believe there was it.
• 53:48
  Again, take this all with a grain of salt, this is just
• 53:51
  stuff I read online apparently pulled from interviews or
• 53:55
  whatever. But one of the leads more Kelly
• 53:59
  said that she was offered a role for the sequel, but the amount
• 54:04
  she was being offered was like insultingly low and so she
• 54:06
  turned it down. Makes sense and so then the
• 54:10
  sequel is like about the daughter of the two lead
• 54:15
  characters from this movie, but the two lead actors from this
• 54:18
  movie do not return and then I don't know where the series goes
• 54:21
  from there in terms of the other sequels and how connected they
• 54:24
  are to this one. At least the first one is
• 54:27
  supposed to be a continuation, so we.
• 54:29
  Might we might get into cutting edge Tokyo Drift territory where
• 54:32
  it's like similar but totally different cast well.
• 54:36
  Also, Speaking of Tokyo Drift, this like the only other thing I
• 54:42
  read about that first sequel is this film takes place in 1992
• 54:47
  because it's like very specifically because they're
• 54:49
  they're competing at like the 1992 Olympics.
• 54:52
  And when they made the sequel, it's about the the daughter of
• 54:55
  the two lead characters. But they had to change the year
• 55:00
  of the Olympics that they supposedly competed in in this
• 55:03
  first movie to like the 1984 Olympics so that they could cast
• 55:07
  an older actress as the daughter.
• 55:09
  Like so. They like retconned that in the
• 55:13
  sequel. Oh yeah, they they retconned
• 55:16
  which Olympics it was. That's funny.
• 55:18
  Yeah, exactly. I I thought that was silly too.
• 55:22
  So because you know, again, from what I read, I don't know if
• 55:26
  this one performed that well initially upon release but has
• 55:29
  formed sort of a cult following. People do like this movie.
• 55:34
  Certain circles have found it later and appreciated it.
• 55:37
  OK. OK, that's good to know.
• 55:39
  I assume something must have happened.
• 55:40
  There must have been a reason why the name had value enough
• 55:43
  that it's been. I think there was a cutting edge
• 55:45
  movie as recently as like the Twenty 10s.
• 55:48
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
• 55:49
  So they definitely, they definitely kept it going, which
• 55:52
  is kind of, I don't know. Again, it's similar to prophecy.
• 55:55
  It's like, how did such a relatively unknown movie have
• 55:59
  such a lasting legacy? I guess I I did see a bit of
• 56:05
  trivia as well that I thought was funny that like there's ATV
• 56:09
  show airing now. I think it's just called Ghost.
• 56:13
  Maybe you've heard of it, maybe people listening and heard of
• 56:15
  it. Is it?
• 56:16
  Called ghosts, plural. Isn't that a show?
• 56:19
  It might be. Ghosts.
• 56:20
  Sorry. Yeah, I think, I think it's,
• 56:21
  it's possibly Ghosts. And I guess one of the
• 56:24
  characters on that show like frequently references this
• 56:28
  movie. Oh.
• 56:30
  Interesting. Yeah, So it so it has that kind
• 56:34
  of like, I don't know, like sort of modern pop culture imprint.
• 56:38
  And but I feel like the joke there is that he's sort of
• 56:41
  referencing A lesser known movie as like his favorite movie.
• 56:46
  I also have a small personal connection to that show because
• 56:48
  I, one of the lead actors on that show, went to the same
• 56:52
  college as me and we actually acted in a short film together.
• 56:58
  So it's. One of my hosts you were in a
• 57:01
  short film for school with one of the lead actors from ghosts.
• 57:05
  Yeah, correct. How has this never come up in
• 57:08
  casual conversation? You just hold on to this.
• 57:11
  I don't know. I don't know.
• 57:12
  It's it wasn't, it was, it was a project outside of it was
• 57:18
  someone I met like in my film program.
• 57:21
  And then he was shooting a short film like outside of school.
• 57:24
  And I may have mentioned this to you because this is, this is
• 57:28
  just a personal gripe I have, but I have like I have an IMDb
• 57:32
  page that has like my production credits on there, you know, and
• 57:35
  it's mostly like camera and lighting stuff because that's
• 57:38
  what I've done primarily on set. But if you find my IMDb page,
• 57:43
  the first thing listed is actor. It says like actor and then like
• 57:51
  camera and electrical and I, I like, have tried to edit that
• 57:55
  because I'm like, I'm not an actor.
• 57:58
  I, I quote UN quote acted in a couple of like short films when
• 58:01
  I was in college. Just, you know, the similar
• 58:03
  thing. Just it's just very student film
• 58:07
  level stuff. And I've tried to get them
• 58:09
  removed from my IMDb, but IMDb support is very much against
• 58:15
  that. They're just like, no, that
• 58:17
  they're like, we believe these are real credits.
• 58:19
  We're not taking this off. You're done.
• 58:20
  Is done. You're an actor.
• 58:22
  Now put the camera down. Get in front of it.
• 58:25
  Yeah, exactly. But yeah, one of those credits,
• 58:28
  one of those like 2 acting credits that are listed first on
• 58:31
  my IMDb page, One of them is a short film that I did with and
• 58:35
  one of the other actors in that is one of the lead actors on the
• 58:37
  TV show Ghosts. That's pretty funny that someone
• 58:40
  could look up. They could look up ghosts, look
• 58:42
  at that person's IMDb, click through to something they did
• 58:45
  much earlier and see your name in there and be like, wow, who's
• 58:47
  this actor? Who's this actor does a lot of
• 58:51
  camera stuff. Looks like he's.
• 58:53
  Producer photography. Wow, Really, really gave it up.
• 58:58
  Yeah, yeah. Gave up that.
• 58:59
  So yeah, that was funny that you recommended this movie and then
• 59:03
  in a very roundabout way I had a sort of connection to it because
• 59:06
  they reference it on that show. Everything about Cutting Edge is
• 59:09
  funny to me for reasons outside of what the movie is.
• 59:11
  The reason I picked it, in addition to why there's so many
• 59:15
  of them, was that this first one is the first script writing
• 59:18
  credit on a feature film for Tony Gilroy, who much more
• 59:22
  recently made the hit Star Wars spin off Andor.
• 59:26
  Which is this like super dense political drama about like how?
• 59:32
  Like how fascist empires come down.
• 59:35
  And it's such a far throw from sports ice skating movie that I
• 59:40
  was like, how? What?
• 59:43
  Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, this was his very first
• 59:46
  writing credit for a feature film.
• 59:48
  And I mean, yeah, I guess and or ties into kind of the previous,
• 59:52
  you know, sci-fi series that we were talking about because that
• 59:54
  is an excellent, like sci-fi, like even if you don't like Star
• 59:59
  Wars, that's just a really great show, especially the second
• 1:00:02
  season. I think I've recommended that to
• 1:00:04
  you. Yeah.
• 1:00:05
  I'm in the middle of it. Oh good.
• 1:00:07
  Yeah, OK. Great.
• 1:00:08
  Pretty good. Pretty good.
• 1:00:10
  Pretty good. Pretty timely.
• 1:00:11
  Timely sci-fi pretty. Good.
• 1:00:13
  As we all know, Andor is set aboard a space station that is a
• 1:00:17
  waypoint for various alien races.
• 1:00:21
  Weird. Weird how that keeps happening
• 1:00:23
  deep. Space Andor.
• 1:00:27
  But I I did want to point out that he was also the writer of
• 1:00:31
  the Bourne Identity trilogy, which I'm also a big fan of.
• 1:00:35
  Tony Gilroy wrote those. Yeah, Yeah, he wrote the the
• 1:00:39
  first three. Those are the.
• 1:00:41
  Good ones. Those are the good ones.
• 1:00:43
  I think he wrote the 4th one as well.
• 1:00:45
  I don't. There might be 5 movies in that
• 1:00:46
  franchise now. I don't even know there's.
• 1:00:47
  Five, and I think they're even working on another one.
• 1:00:49
  They lost me when they killed off Julia Stiles.
• 1:00:52
  Spoilers. People are going to be so mad.
• 1:00:56
  They're like, man, I was part way through Bourne Supremacy.
• 1:00:59
  I was part way through. Jason Austin to.
• 1:01:01
  Listen to this. Yeah.
• 1:01:02
  Jason Bourne 5 Anyway, so what's what's cutting edge about?
• 1:01:08
  Who cares? No.
• 1:01:10
  Seriously, both movies this week.
• 1:01:12
  It's like, hey, you know what? I want to talk about anything
• 1:01:14
  except what happens in the movie.
• 1:01:17
  No, I will say this, I feel like this was a good one to end this
• 1:01:22
  first season on, given the theme of our first season, you know,
• 1:01:27
  of forgotten 90s movies because, like, this is literally a note I
• 1:01:30
  have written down that this just feels like a movie, you know?
• 1:01:35
  Yeah. Like, I'm like, oh, OK, yes.
• 1:01:38
  This is really just a standard, like, especially 90s filmmaking
• 1:01:45
  going on here. And I cannot say that about
• 1:01:47
  every movie we've watched. Like, some have veered off that
• 1:01:51
  course in a good way and, you know, in terms of, like,
• 1:01:54
  creative decisions. Some have gone the opposite
• 1:01:55
  direction and like, needed to be more like a movie than they
• 1:01:59
  actually felt like. This one is like, straight down
• 1:02:04
  the middle. And I can see why it has a cult
• 1:02:07
  following too, because it's like, unique in its blandness
• 1:02:14
  almost. That makes sense, you know.
• 1:02:17
  Sometimes you want a safe movie. That totally makes sense to me.
• 1:02:20
  Sometimes you want something like inoffensive but also not
• 1:02:23
  challenging totally. Totally like if you want, you
• 1:02:27
  know, like I said, it's it's like a combination.
• 1:02:29
  It has that sports movie element, but also the kind of
• 1:02:32
  ROM com element too. So like, if you're in the mood
• 1:02:34
  for either or both of those things, then this is going to be
• 1:02:38
  you will not be disappointed by this.
• 1:02:41
  And a lot of that is because, like the two leads are great.
• 1:02:46
  They have great chemistry, which is really important for this
• 1:02:50
  type of film. You know, I specifically want to
• 1:02:53
  talk about the lead actress, Moira Kelly.
• 1:02:59
  I believe I'm pronouncing that right, Gloron.
• 1:03:01
  Empire, Kelly. Right, exactly.
• 1:03:06
  Speaking of names, the two lead characters, they're they're
• 1:03:08
  played by Mora Kelly and DB Sweeney, but they're the I like
• 1:03:13
  their character names. They're it's Kate Mosley and
• 1:03:15
  Doug Dorsey. Doug.
• 1:03:18
  Dorsey. Yes, yes.
• 1:03:20
  And he's, you know, he's a hockey player.
• 1:03:22
  And that sounds like a hockey player named Doug Dorsey.
• 1:03:25
  It kind of sounds like his name is just like Doug Dumb Guy,
• 1:03:28
  which I think is probably what they're going for.
• 1:03:30
  Dude totally, and he looks like it too.
• 1:03:32
  Like if you like he looks like this guy he but in a good way.
• 1:03:36
  Again, he has in a. Good way he looks like a stupid
• 1:03:40
  man. Yes, yes, he's, you know, he's
• 1:03:43
  like a handsome guy, but he has like a really like thick neck
• 1:03:48
  and he just has that like sports guy look too.
• 1:03:53
  And he's, you know, he's kind of the fish out of water in this
• 1:03:55
  story because the basic premise is he is a hockey player, she is
• 1:04:02
  an ice skater. He was.
• 1:04:03
  A skater boy. Wow, that was actually the same
• 1:04:10
  time. You get it, You get it.
• 1:04:15
  So, yeah, so he is, he gets hurt.
• 1:04:20
  He's he was playing. He's like a college hockey
• 1:04:22
  player who was set to have like a big career.
• 1:04:25
  He gets hurt playing in the Olympics and then he can't play
• 1:04:28
  hockey anymore. She like is competing at the
• 1:04:33
  they, they meet each other for the first time at the first
• 1:04:35
  Olympics. They're competing at where
• 1:04:36
  they're competing in these different sports.
• 1:04:39
  You know, she fails in her Olympic journey at that one
• 1:04:43
  because she is at odds with her figure skating partner.
• 1:04:47
  And so her coaches and her dad are trying to find a partner for
• 1:04:53
  her to skate at the next Olympics with.
• 1:04:55
  And they find this guy, Doug Dorsey, who was this very
• 1:04:59
  promising hockey player who can't play hockey anymore.
• 1:05:01
  And they're like, but he's great on the ice.
• 1:05:03
  And so they're like, that's The Odd Couple pairing of these two.
• 1:05:06
  It's a good. Hook sounds like a.
• 1:05:08
  It is sounds like a really short book with big fonts.
• 1:05:12
  You know, just like something you can for if you're really
• 1:05:14
  fast and pictures and colors. Yes, yeah, And and her dad.
• 1:05:23
  I want to mention him, too. He's played by Terry O'quinn,
• 1:05:26
  who is John Locke from Lost. So we have a Lost OK alum in
• 1:05:31
  here. Frank likes Lost.
• 1:05:33
  I don't think that's come up before.
• 1:05:34
  Frank really likes Lost. He always tries to get me to
• 1:05:36
  watch Lost. I won't do it.
• 1:05:38
  You should lost is good that was really.
• 1:05:44
  Funny. You really should watch it, but
• 1:05:48
  it's just it's just funny as as a lost super fan, you know his
• 1:05:52
  his daughter's name in this again is Kate Mosley and Kate is
• 1:05:55
  another main character on lost. So he's always been around and
• 1:05:57
  saying Kate's all. Connected, it's all.
• 1:06:00
  More interesting things. Yeah, Lost is really good.
• 1:06:04
  We should talk about that now, actually.
• 1:06:05
  That's a good point, but no, this is like, yes, this is this
• 1:06:09
  is a perfectly fine movie. I was getting to the point
• 1:06:13
  earlier. I wanted to talk about more
• 1:06:14
  Kelly because like, like the film starts and I think I
• 1:06:20
  mentioned this when I was talking about, you know, no
• 1:06:22
  escape when I was talking about the actor and that that I was
• 1:06:25
  just like so heavily associating him with another role.
• 1:06:28
  But right when she starts talking, her voice is so
• 1:06:31
  distinctive. And it's because I think, as you
• 1:06:34
  mentioned already, she's Nala from Lion King.
• 1:06:38
  Oh yeah, yeah. Animated and I mean, she has,
• 1:06:41
  she just has an amazing voice. It's almost like even when
• 1:06:45
  you're watching her on screen, it almost looks like that's not
• 1:06:48
  the voice that should be coming out of her body, if that makes
• 1:06:51
  sense, No. Absolutely.
• 1:06:51
  It's just like a really like strong voice.
• 1:06:54
  Yeah, totally, totally. But it's great, you know, and
• 1:06:57
  she, she gives a great performance and and so does DB
• 1:07:00
  Sweeney as Doug. Doug, dumb guy.
• 1:07:03
  OK, so there, that's a classic set up.
• 1:07:06
  How how far into the movie do we reach the point where it's like,
• 1:07:09
  you have to help me be an ice skater?
• 1:07:10
  Do we have to spend like a whole act of him like not wanting to
• 1:07:12
  do it? It's.
• 1:07:14
  Very much like that's the first act is, you know, he's very
• 1:07:17
  upset that he can't play hockey anymore and he is back home
• 1:07:23
  working, like in a warehouse, you know, and very upset about
• 1:07:27
  his life and still obsessed with hockey.
• 1:07:29
  And, like, then her coach finds him and he's like, this is the
• 1:07:35
  last offer you're going to get, You know, if you want to skate
• 1:07:37
  anymore, like, you should come try this.
• 1:07:39
  And obviously, at first, he's very, like, hesitant.
• 1:07:42
  It is. It's very much like, plenty of
• 1:07:45
  things have done this. But the example that was coming
• 1:07:47
  to mind for me was High School Musical and like, Oh, yeah,
• 1:07:50
  yeah. Yeah, it was.
• 1:07:51
  It was very much AI don't dance type moment.
• 1:07:55
  But then you know, again, when we're like in the middle of the
• 1:07:58
  movie, he's back home. He's and he's talking to like
• 1:08:02
  his family and friends. And at at first he kind of lied
• 1:08:06
  to them about what he went off to do while he's out of town.
• 1:08:08
  They're like, oh, you know, you're back doing, you know,
• 1:08:10
  playing hockey or whatever. And he's like, no, I'm a figure
• 1:08:14
  skater. Oh.
• 1:08:15
  My goodness, strike the pose. You're.
• 1:08:18
  Right, right. And they're like, they're like
• 1:08:21
  for no reason. It's like, you know, it's a
• 1:08:23
  small town energy. So they're like you're what
• 1:08:25
  you're a figure skater man. And he's like, I like it, you
• 1:08:30
  know, so. It's, yeah, classic.
• 1:08:34
  You know, that's not what a real man does.
• 1:08:36
  Kind of storytelling, which is again, very 90s.
• 1:08:39
  Yes, yes. And I do feel like they added a
• 1:08:42
  lot of scenes they like went out of their way like throughout the
• 1:08:46
  whole movie to make it kind of clear what a ladies man this
• 1:08:51
  character is. And I feel like they did
• 1:08:54
  specifically do that because it's the 90s and he's in a very
• 1:08:59
  like as a figure skater, he's in this sort of like non
• 1:09:02
  traditionally masculine role. So like they were.
• 1:09:06
  Trying to So they're trying to assure the audience that this
• 1:09:08
  guy's not gay. Is that like the?
• 1:09:10
  Basically, yes, yes, there is so much like the first scene you've
• 1:09:15
  seen him in, see him in, he's hooking up with somebody else
• 1:09:18
  like, you know, at the Olympics and he's like running out of the
• 1:09:21
  room because he's late for the game or whatever.
• 1:09:23
  And then there's just several scenes where he's interacting
• 1:09:26
  with all these different women picturing.
• 1:09:27
  Of just like hurrying to get his stuff on.
• 1:09:29
  He's like, sorry, women that I slept with because I'm straight.
• 1:09:32
  I got to go. Like it's just like.
• 1:09:34
  Literally that's it. That's the scene.
• 1:09:36
  He he literally there's the dialogue is he doesn't remember
• 1:09:39
  her name. He keeps saying he's like, oh, I
• 1:09:41
  got to go Stacy. And then she's like Stacy, who's
• 1:09:43
  Stacy? And he's like, oh, sorry, Kate.
• 1:09:45
  Like, you know, he just keeps getting the name wrong.
• 1:09:47
  I sleep. With women, because I am a
• 1:09:49
  heterosexual man. Yeah, yeah, it's just like
• 1:09:53
  tattooed on his forehead. Like dumb guy, super straight,
• 1:09:57
  like straight. Yeah, that's his business card.
• 1:10:01
  That's kind of funny. I feel like that'd be more
• 1:10:03
  necessary if the movie was not because it's a romance between
• 1:10:06
  the two leads, right? He ends up with this woman
• 1:10:08
  anyway. You'd think that would be
• 1:10:10
  enough. Right.
• 1:10:11
  Exactly. Yeah, it was.
• 1:10:13
  It's like, it's unnecessary, but it felt pointed enough that to
• 1:10:17
  me that's why they were doing it.
• 1:10:20
  You know, Like, I don't know if that was Tony, Tony Gilroy in
• 1:10:23
  his script or if, like, when they were making the film, the
• 1:10:26
  studios were like, no, we got to let audiences know a dumb guy
• 1:10:30
  loves women. Yeah.
• 1:10:32
  Because otherwise the women in the audience will think he can't
• 1:10:34
  fall in love with this woman. And so that then they'll get
• 1:10:38
  bored and they'll leave. They'll leave the movie.
• 1:10:40
  They'll. Walk out in protest.
• 1:10:42
  Walk. Out.
• 1:10:43
  And then Tony Gilroy is like, what if there was a Droid and he
• 1:10:46
  was like, sad, but like a cute little Droid?
• 1:10:52
  But as I was saying, though, those the two leads have a great
• 1:10:54
  chemistry. They they have very much the
• 1:10:57
  like, you know, they're at odds with each other.
• 1:11:01
  They're they're such opposites. They're arguing all the time,
• 1:11:04
  but they're falling in love over the course of the movie.
• 1:11:07
  You know, it's it's very by the numbers in that way.
• 1:11:10
  And as I was saying, like that really hinges on the chemistry
• 1:11:16
  between them and these two really have that.
• 1:11:19
  They both give really good performances in that way and
• 1:11:22
  like understand their characters and that makes it fun.
• 1:11:25
  It's like not a slog to get through.
• 1:11:27
  There's lots of fun. Like, there's at least three
• 1:11:32
  like training montages set to like, pop music you know you've
• 1:11:36
  got. To have that, that's like,
• 1:11:37
  that's part of that puzzle every time, yes.
• 1:11:40
  Exactly like this is this is almost like something AI could
• 1:11:45
  spit out. It's so funny like in terms of
• 1:11:50
  like, but just to reiterate that that's not a point against it
• 1:11:53
  because it does that well, it's like the good version of of
• 1:11:57
  that. The cinematography is great.
• 1:11:59
  Oh, see there you. Go.
• 1:12:00
  I wouldn't have assumed that. Yeah, I feel.
• 1:12:02
  Like it's worth pointing out because so many of the scenes
• 1:12:04
  are like, you get a lot of like stunt double work.
• 1:12:10
  These two leads did both have to learn to skate for this film.
• 1:12:15
  But obviously for some of the more complex skating sequences,
• 1:12:19
  it's stunt work, you know? And so the the lighting is
• 1:12:23
  really good in a way that it's it's shot very wide and in a way
• 1:12:28
  that's going to obscure the faces of of the stunt actors,
• 1:12:31
  but like still looks very visually appealing and has a
• 1:12:36
  distinct sort of style to it. You know, it's it's not it's not
• 1:12:40
  that like washed out over saturated Hallmark look.
• 1:12:43
  It, it has the feel of one of those types of movies, but with,
• 1:12:47
  you know, very contrasty lighting.
• 1:12:50
  So it so it it sets the tone visually that way in a way that
• 1:12:53
  I like. So, so yeah, I believe the GPS
• 1:12:56
  name on this was Elliot Davis, so shout out to them.
• 1:13:00
  For that, see, Frank really appreciates good cinematography
• 1:13:03
  because he, as an actor, really benefits actor.
• 1:13:09
  When I auditioned for the Cutting Edge, they said you're
• 1:13:11
  nine years old, you can't be here.
• 1:13:16
  I thought that was rude. I thought.
• 1:13:17
  I thought that was. Rude.
• 1:13:18
  They didn't give me a chance. We and Moira could have had good
• 1:13:22
  chemistry too. We don't know.
• 1:13:23
  Yeah, Speaking of Moira and acting though, so she, as I
• 1:13:28
  said, both the leads had to learn like neither of them had
• 1:13:31
  any previous skating experience prior to filming this, but they
• 1:13:34
  both learned to skate for because they had to be on the
• 1:13:36
  ice for almost all their scenes in this movie.
• 1:13:38
  There's a lot of them skating. But I was thinking while I was
• 1:13:41
  watching it, you know, because she's the lead in this and she's
• 1:13:44
  definitely had a successful careers.
• 1:13:46
  Not to diminish that in any way, but I couldn't help but thinking
• 1:13:49
  while watching this, like why she didn't have a bigger career
• 1:13:53
  even, you know, because I went and looked at some of her
• 1:13:56
  credits afterwards and it and it wasn't she didn't star in as
• 1:13:58
  much as I would have assumed she had.
• 1:14:02
  And an interesting tidbit I saw that may have contributed to
• 1:14:06
  that. Not to speculate too much, but
• 1:14:08
  she she was cast in a League of Our own, you know, with Geena
• 1:14:14
  Davis, Tom Hanks. She was going to be one of the
• 1:14:17
  leads in that movie, but she had to drop out because she got hurt
• 1:14:23
  filming one of the skating scenes in this movie.
• 1:14:26
  She was. Yeah, on the ice and like,
• 1:14:28
  dislocated her shoulder or something like that, or her leg,
• 1:14:32
  I can't remember. She she sustained an injury
• 1:14:35
  while they were filming that sort of had to force them to
• 1:14:38
  move their whole production schedule around.
• 1:14:40
  So they had to like, film everything else.
• 1:14:43
  And then like all of her skating scenes and most of her scenes of
• 1:14:46
  the movie towards the end after she had recovered, but that
• 1:14:50
  injury sort of forced her to drop out of that other movie.
• 1:14:52
  And that was a much bigger film than this one was.
• 1:14:56
  So that might have led to more roles for her possibly.
• 1:14:59
  That's. Got to be, there's got to be a
• 1:15:01
  term for that because that's such a common story for actors
• 1:15:04
  like yourself. Is the like, is the like, I
• 1:15:09
  couldn't be in this, in hindsight, much bigger deal
• 1:15:13
  movie because I had to be doing this other movie that either
• 1:15:16
  like nobody saw or wasn't any good.
• 1:15:18
  Like it's such a funny irony when you look backwards to be
• 1:15:21
  like, yeah, I could have been in the Matrix Reloaded, but I was
• 1:15:23
  too busy making cutting edge for.
• 1:15:26
  Yeah, I was going to be in Matrix Reloaded, but I was just,
• 1:15:30
  I got hurt. I got hurt in the ice.
• 1:15:31
  I wasn't skating. I just, I just fell.
• 1:15:33
  I. Was like, I was just at the, I
• 1:15:39
  was just at the rink after the audition with my mom.
• 1:15:41
  And then because I was 9 and I fell down and they were like
• 1:15:44
  I'll never be in Matrix Reloaded now.
• 1:15:46
  I got a Boo Boo. I can't do that.
• 1:15:48
  Boo Boo movies. In 10 years I won't be
• 1:15:50
  recovering now. Won't be ready, Dang.
• 1:15:56
  It that's funny, all right, cutting edge sounds fun.
• 1:15:59
  And I'll be honest, I was hoping for that because when I pitched
• 1:16:01
  it, I knew it had like a funny trivia angle behind it with with
• 1:16:04
  the and or guy writing it. But I had the sense of like,
• 1:16:06
  this is either going to be charming, straightforward 90s
• 1:16:09
  movie, or like a super cheap, ugly mess.
• 1:16:14
  And it sounds like it was the former.
• 1:16:15
  Oh yeah, yeah, I could. I could see this like definitely
• 1:16:20
  going in the other direction. So I was pleasantly surprised,
• 1:16:23
  honestly, throughout, you know, it's, it was almost like in a
• 1:16:26
  way, you know, you're kind of waiting for that other shoe to
• 1:16:29
  drop where it does sort of fall off, but it doesn't, I mean,
• 1:16:32
  it's consistent all the way through.
• 1:16:34
  It has, you know, a satisfying conclusion.
• 1:16:38
  You know, they they don't really have that big romantic get
• 1:16:42
  together kiss till like the very end of the film.
• 1:16:46
  There's more there's more fun trivia too, that I wanted to
• 1:16:48
  point out. Like there's a lot of like the
• 1:16:51
  real competitive, like Olympic skaters in the movie.
• 1:16:55
  Like there's because of course it's a 90s movie.
• 1:16:59
  They're like rival team near the end of the movie is the Russian
• 1:17:02
  team. Oh no, got to compete the
• 1:17:05
  Rooskies. Are back against.
• 1:17:07
  The Rooskies are always back in the 90s.
• 1:17:10
  Like not. Like now we have no problems
• 1:17:14
  with them, No. Yeah.
• 1:17:15
  This was a 90s problem exclusively the Roosky.
• 1:17:17
  Government is a OK. Yep, we all had Boo boos in the
• 1:17:22
  90s. All had Boo boos in the 90s.
• 1:17:26
  That's so funny. Were they like, were they
• 1:17:28
  playing it like Ivan Drago from Rocky?
• 1:17:29
  Were like these Figure skaters like super like rigid?
• 1:17:32
  Instead of being good at it, well, they were very lightly
• 1:17:35
  featured. I mean, it was more like like
• 1:17:38
  the idea of this team because you'd never really, they didn't
• 1:17:41
  have any lines. I think you only saw like one
• 1:17:44
  sort of like actual on ice performance from them.
• 1:17:48
  But it was funny because I found out afterwards that the two
• 1:17:52
  skaters playing the Ruskies, the Ruskie team, they were actually
• 1:17:56
  a pair of Canadian Olympic skaters that did compete in the
• 1:18:00
  1992 Olympics. Canadian brewskies, yeah.
• 1:18:04
  Yeah, they took ninth place in the 1992 Olympics.
• 1:18:07
  The real 1. The real one, see, now they
• 1:18:10
  could have really fixed this whole thing if at the end of
• 1:18:13
  Cutting Edge one, Doc Brown shows up and he's like, we have
• 1:18:16
  to go back. It's about your kids.
• 1:18:18
  We got to go to the 1984 Olympics.
• 1:18:22
  It just, yeah, that's a whole scene they add on afterwards.
• 1:18:25
  It's like, it's like George Lucas with Star Wars.
• 1:18:27
  They they when he's constantly changing and adding visual
• 1:18:29
  affections, it's like. A WAMP on the background cuz
• 1:18:33
  they're on the ice. That would be awesome.
• 1:18:38
  Yeah, it's. All kidding George on this.
• 1:18:40
  It's George on the coming hold. Mr. George, we've got a great
• 1:18:45
  opportunity here. Tony Gilroy wrote this.
• 1:18:47
  You know him? Yeah, Yes.
• 1:18:49
  You know, Tony, Big T, Big T, dumb, dumb guy.
• 1:18:54
  But I did want to point out too, though, because the whole thing
• 1:18:58
  is, you know, Mora Kelly's character, her dad, John Locke
• 1:19:02
  from Lost, he's sort of the one pushing her to like, win gold at
• 1:19:09
  the Olympics because that's like what their whole relationship is
• 1:19:12
  based around because, like, her mom has passed away and like,
• 1:19:16
  they don't have an emotional relationship.
• 1:19:18
  So this is like sort of in place of that.
• 1:19:22
  And it's very much like, this is your dream dad.
• 1:19:24
  I didn't even want to skate. She's like I dislocated my
• 1:19:28
  shoulder and like that's not the line why she's like I dislocated
• 1:19:31
  my shoulder. It hurts.
• 1:19:33
  It's going to be in the matrix this.
• 1:19:36
  Is going to be in Matrix Reloaded.
• 1:19:39
  Why aren't you auditioning for the first matrix now?
• 1:19:42
  The second one reloaded. That's the one people like.
• 1:19:45
  That's the. One people like I'm one of the
• 1:19:47
  people in Zion I. Want to go to that dirty rave
• 1:19:53
  and escape? Dirty rave got me, but anyway I.
• 1:20:05
  Just want to point out that I I had to rewind the film at the
• 1:20:09
  very end because I wanted, I wanted to double check this
• 1:20:11
  because it's obviously it's very, it's heavily implied, but
• 1:20:15
  spoilers for anyone who cares about the movie.
• 1:20:17
  That's very basic. But you know, they like they
• 1:20:23
  sort of they, they confess their love for each other before they
• 1:20:25
  go out to skate their, you know, final performance.
• 1:20:29
  And the the big thing is their coach.
• 1:20:33
  You know, he, he has this like, yeah, it's like literally like a
• 1:20:37
  band move. He's like, he's like, our only
• 1:20:40
  way to beat the Rooskies is to do this like crazy move where
• 1:20:44
  you, like, throw her around the ring and then toss her up in the
• 1:20:47
  air. And she's like, that's illegal.
• 1:20:49
  We can't do that. And he's like, we're gonna do
• 1:20:50
  it. We're gonna.
• 1:20:52
  Do it. I don't ever break the rules.
• 1:20:53
  Drinks a legal coffee. And so like, you know, when
• 1:20:59
  they're like at odds at each other and like the, you know,
• 1:21:02
  third act, they're like, we're not going to do it.
• 1:21:04
  We can't pull that move off. We haven't landed it once in
• 1:21:07
  practice. But you know, then they confess
• 1:21:09
  their love for each other and they go out on the ice and they
• 1:21:10
  do. The crazy move is this.
• 1:21:13
  OK is this movie like the inspiration for that Will
• 1:21:17
  Ferrell comedy Blades of Glory? I know the one dude I.
• 1:21:20
  Was thinking about that yeah, it feels very that feels very much
• 1:21:23
  like a comedy version of this because there's.
• 1:21:25
  A plot because that movie is like a 2000 comedy where it's
• 1:21:28
  like Will Ferrell and another male figure skater trying to,
• 1:21:31
  like, compete in a competition. And there's a bit in there about
• 1:21:34
  the same thing where they're like, we're going to try this
• 1:21:36
  banned move and they show what happened when someone tried it
• 1:21:38
  before. It ends with the person, like,
• 1:21:39
  dying on the ice. Like, yeah.
• 1:21:41
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what that was probably
• 1:21:44
  This is probably the direct inspiration for that which
• 1:21:48
  itself is not. A movie with a lot of imprint
• 1:21:50
  beyond that sound bite of him saying like nobody knows what it
• 1:21:54
  means. It gets the people going.
• 1:21:56
  Yeah, it's provocative. Yeah.
• 1:21:57
  Yeah. But no, I'm not.
• 1:21:59
  I feel like people, more people know that movie than this one.
• 1:22:02
  No. I.
• 1:22:02
  Know, but it's like it's funny that probably when that was
• 1:22:05
  made, it's like they were riffing on ice skating movies.
• 1:22:08
  But how many of them could there even have been?
• 1:22:09
  This is probably the biggest ice skating movie before that one.
• 1:22:13
  Yeah, yeah, I, yeah. Again, I don't know what the
• 1:22:15
  cultural impact of this movie was at the time because it's
• 1:22:18
  sort of, you know, online it's discussed as sort of a cult
• 1:22:21
  classic. So I don't know, maybe it was
• 1:22:24
  kind of like ripped on at the time for having this like hockey
• 1:22:28
  male figure skater guy. And like, that's why.
• 1:22:31
  They used it for like comedy and something like Blades of Glory.
• 1:22:34
  I don't know, but you know, does.
• 1:22:38
  It certainly doesn't deserve any hate.
• 1:22:40
  This is a very competent movie. Seems like a wholesome fun,
• 1:22:44
  yeah? Totally.
• 1:22:45
  But the point, the point I was trying to get to, which is just
• 1:22:48
  just a gripe that I have, is they do the big trick, right?
• 1:22:53
  They land it, the crowd starts cheering, and then the two of
• 1:22:57
  them kiss on the ice. And then we're straight into
• 1:23:00
  credits. And if you read the plot
• 1:23:04
  synopsis of the film online, it says that they land the trick
• 1:23:10
  Florida State and win the gold medal.
• 1:23:13
  And then I went back and I rewatched the final scene and
• 1:23:14
  I'm like, it doesn't show them win the gold medal.
• 1:23:16
  You can say that all you want, but there's we didn't see the
• 1:23:20
  scores. It does not say if they actually
• 1:23:24
  won the gold medal or not. I think it's more so implied
• 1:23:26
  that they they got the bigger prize of falling in love with
• 1:23:30
  each other. And you can assume they won the
• 1:23:31
  gold medal, but the film does not explicitly show you that
• 1:23:34
  that is not in the text. If an earlier draft, was that
• 1:23:37
  like the move was going to get them disqualified or something
• 1:23:40
  like I don't think. It was supposed to be that
• 1:23:42
  complicated. I think you're just supposed to
• 1:23:44
  assume they won. I'm just being picky.
• 1:23:48
  This is just a personal like technically if we're talking.
• 1:23:52
  Star Wars we could put in the scene from the end of the
• 1:23:55
  original Star Wars where they put the medals on the Wookie and
• 1:23:57
  he goes and that's. That's Kate Moore, right?
• 1:24:01
  Yeah. So how about we put the end of
• 1:24:03
  the movie, we'll recut this, we'll do the well we need
• 1:24:06
  George. We need to bring George in.
• 1:24:07
  We need George. In to do his own Snyder Cut of
• 1:24:09
  the Cutting Edge where he's going to show the end of the
• 1:24:12
  movie and then show that scene from the end of the original
• 1:24:14
  Star Wars and then show the Doc Brown scene that'll be touched
• 1:24:17
  up with AI. So we'll just be him talking to
• 1:24:20
  DB Sweeney and he's like my RT. We got to do something about
• 1:24:24
  your kids and then that's the real end of the movie.
• 1:24:26
  What? Was that voice that was Doc
• 1:24:28
  Brown? Well, it's.
• 1:24:29
  Supposed to be AI Doc Brown trying to.
• 1:24:32
  I don't have a Doc Brown impression.
• 1:24:33
  I know I'm the man of 1000 impressions and you're an actor,
• 1:24:35
  but. You have an AI?
• 1:24:37
  Yeah, exactly. We're both actors now.
• 1:24:39
  You're a voice actor, but you have an AI Doc Brown impression,
• 1:24:41
  but not a regular Doc Brown I. Don't know.
• 1:24:43
  We're going to cut that whole bit.
• 1:24:44
  No one will know. Interesting.
• 1:24:48
  Interesting. OK, that went a lot shorter than
• 1:24:50
  our A Conversation about Babylon 5, but it sounds like maybe
• 1:24:53
  that's it. Yeah, I mean, unless you have
• 1:24:55
  any other follow up that you were dying to know about cutting
• 1:24:59
  edge would. My wife like it, should I have
• 1:25:01
  her watch it? I think so.
• 1:25:04
  OK. I mean, it's inoffensive.
• 1:25:08
  It's fun and straightforward. It's just like, that's just a
• 1:25:13
  nice movie. It's just, like I said,
• 1:25:15
  quotation marks movie. That was my first note.
• 1:25:18
  That's what it feels like. It's a real.
• 1:25:20
  Movie that starts and ends and then gets out of your way.
• 1:25:22
  Yeah, that works. Cuz I'll be honest, she wanted
• 1:25:25
  to watch the movie when we found it.
• 1:25:26
  But then I was like no, I have to save this for content.
• 1:25:31
  For the show For the show, bringing George Lucas in and.
• 1:25:35
  Mr. George to finish the show. All right.
• 1:25:39
  Well, I'll be honest, it is here in Chicago at the time of
• 1:25:42
  recording. We're in the middle of like a
• 1:25:44
  big day long snowstorm. So I might have to watch the
• 1:25:47
  cutting edge. Like I'm not going to have
• 1:25:49
  anything else to do. This is.
• 1:25:50
  A good cold movie. There's a lot of snow and ice
• 1:25:54
  throughout the entirety of this movie and and part of it is set
• 1:25:57
  in Chicago. They one of there's like a good
• 1:26:00
  chunk in the middle where they one of the like qualifiers they
• 1:26:04
  have to go to before getting into the 92 Olympics is in
• 1:26:08
  Chicago, so. You know what's funny we're
• 1:26:11
  about I don't know what this will be in the final edit.
• 1:26:13
  We're like an hour 45. It's actually recording the
• 1:26:15
  podcast today. I totally forgot to mention that
• 1:26:17
  this is going out on Christmas Day.
• 1:26:20
  Oh, so happy. Holidays.
• 1:26:22
  If you watch the planet, you made it to the end of the whole
• 1:26:25
  episode on the first day it came out.
• 1:26:27
  Happy holidays. Yeah, in case you forgot, it's
• 1:26:30
  Christmas. In case.
• 1:26:31
  You forgot and you were too busy listening to your favorite
• 1:26:33
  podcast. Make sure to go open your stuff
• 1:26:35
  I guess. Or don't.
• 1:26:37
  Just keep listening. Or don't.
• 1:26:38
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:39
  Anyway, is that the end? Are we onto scoring?
• 1:26:43
  Is. That the end.
• 1:26:51
  OK, yeah, let's let's move into scoring.
• 1:26:53
  So I guess I'll go first. Babylon 5, The Gathering, very
• 1:26:57
  hard movie to put into a box as just one piece of art because
• 1:27:03
  it's clearly just there to set up ATV show that aired a year
• 1:27:07
  later and probably went through a bunch of changes.
• 1:27:09
  And it's inextricably tied to another show that while that
• 1:27:13
  show ripped off Babylon 5, they're still so similar and so
• 1:27:16
  connected that I can't help but compare them.
• 1:27:18
  So by itself, Babylon 5, the Gathering and much like you were
• 1:27:22
  saying about cutting Edge, it's just like a straightforward good
• 1:27:25
  time sci-fi drama. Like, if you like those kinds of
• 1:27:28
  stories, I don't think you're going to have a lot of qualms
• 1:27:30
  with this one. But it didn't blow me away.
• 1:27:33
  The acting, I think, could have been a lot stronger.
• 1:27:36
  I didn't get to it in the main part of the review, but the show
• 1:27:39
  also looked pretty cheap. Like, this pilot didn't look
• 1:27:41
  great. It had good makeup for the like,
• 1:27:45
  you know, aliens and stuff. Like the costuming was pretty
• 1:27:48
  bad. It didn't look especially nice.
• 1:27:50
  So it's like a kind of a combination of ups and downs.
• 1:27:54
  So I guess I'll give it. This felt elusive when the
• 1:27:57
  season started, but I think once again this is a 7 out of 10.
• 1:28:00
  Oh wow. That's that's higher than.
• 1:28:01
  I thought you would go with this one because there's.
• 1:28:04
  Got a lot wrong with it. Trajectory was lower, yeah.
• 1:28:07
  There's not. There's not a lot I could say.
• 1:28:10
  Again, if the question is, do you prefer Deep Space 9 or this
• 1:28:13
  one? I don't care what Deep Space 9
• 1:28:15
  ripped off. I like it a lot more.
• 1:28:16
  I think it latched on to something even from the first
• 1:28:18
  episode of that series that was more compelling.
• 1:28:21
  But Babylon 5, The Gathering, perfectly good sci-fi movie, and
• 1:28:24
  it's a type of science fiction that no longer exists.
• 1:28:28
  You know, like the kind of dialogue heavy Shakespearean
• 1:28:32
  bottle premise sci-fi drama. I would love to see more of that
• 1:28:35
  in general. So I'm happy that more of it
• 1:28:36
  exists. So yeah, 7 out of 10.
• 1:28:39
  Cool. That's good.
• 1:28:40
  All right. I'm glad you kind of liked it.
• 1:28:43
  Cutting Edge 1515 out of 10. No, that's the end.
• 1:28:46
  We got to cut away. We can't talk.
• 1:28:52
  Sorry. Sorry.
• 1:28:53
  No idea. TuneIn next season.
• 1:28:55
  Yeah, I, I mean, I think I I got to go with a 5 out of 10 for
• 1:29:03
  cutting edge. I feel like it really just
• 1:29:06
  skated right up the middle. Skated.
• 1:29:08
  Right up the middle. OK.
• 1:29:10
  I was expecting higher for for cutting edge.
• 1:29:12
  So I think we both surprised each other this time.
• 1:29:14
  Yeah. Well, see, that's tough.
• 1:29:16
  I mean, you do say that and and like maybe it, I don't know.
• 1:29:20
  I don't know it. Yeah, scoring, it's so hard.
• 1:29:24
  It's so hard at the end of the season.
• 1:29:25
  And I still don't know how to really encapsulate like, this
• 1:29:29
  metric into my review of something.
• 1:29:34
  This is maybe 1. I did watch it just a couple
• 1:29:36
  days ago. This might be 1 where when I get
• 1:29:38
  farther away from it, I'll be like, yeah, cutting edge was one
• 1:29:39
  of the better ones, but it just felt inoffensively bad.
• 1:29:46
  It wasn't breaking new ground in any way, but it's not something
• 1:29:52
  I would turn off. You know, if this came on TV in
• 1:29:55
  the 90s, I would like you'd be. Like, hey, I'm nine years old.
• 1:29:58
  I can't reach the remote anyway. Yeah, I.
• 1:30:00
  Just fell in the ice. I'm recovering so I need
• 1:30:02
  something to watch. Got my leg.
• 1:30:04
  Got my leg all tied up in a big brace.
• 1:30:06
  Got an ice back on my butt. I'm just trying to watch TV.
• 1:30:10
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. If this came to me, I wouldn't
• 1:30:13
  turn away, but I wouldn't go seek it out.
• 1:30:15
  You know what I mean? If I reach.
• 1:30:16
  Over to look for the remote. I'm going to fall off the bed
• 1:30:18
  and get another Boo Boo. Yeah, it's dangerous out there,
• 1:30:21
  man. It's winter ice there.
• 1:30:23
  Ice. On the floor in here.
• 1:30:26
  Yeah. I mean, that's what I said a
• 1:30:27
  long time ago about The Jackal, that I gave that movie A5 out of
• 1:30:31
  10 for the same reason. I was like, if it's on, it's not
• 1:30:34
  ever bad enough to turn off, but if it's not on, it's not ever
• 1:30:38
  interesting enough to start watching.
• 1:30:40
  Exactly, yes. I wouldn't go seeking this out
• 1:30:43
  per SE. I wouldn't mind watching it
• 1:30:46
  again. But it's it's very, it just felt
• 1:30:50
  really right up the middle. Absolutely.
• 1:30:53
  And that's commendable. A5 is not bad, all right?
• 1:30:55
  This is not like, of course, getting a paperback in school
• 1:30:58
  where anything less than like a 70% is like you're the worst,
• 1:31:01
  you fail. Fives are good, no?
• 1:31:04
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 1:31:04
  I mean, we've said it before, probably bears repeating at the
• 1:31:07
  end of the season, but movies are impossibly difficult to
• 1:31:11
  make. So if you can make anything
• 1:31:13
  that's above a 0 out of 10, then that's amazing.
• 1:31:17
  So this is it's very admirable to be a 5 out of 10.
• 1:31:22
  Absolutely. So congratulations to the makers
• 1:31:25
  of Cutting edge, the maker solo of Babylon 5, the gathering,
• 1:31:29
  such a one man project that one. OK, well, let's take a look then
• 1:31:35
  at the overall scores for this episode and then for season 1.
• 1:31:39
  So, Frank, I will say you've won the episode.
• 1:31:43
  Yeah. All right, let's end it there.
• 1:31:44
  That seems like a good. Cut it right there.
• 1:31:46
  That's a good point thing to. End on Mr. Lucas, please cut the
• 1:31:48
  feet. So yours movie got a 7 out of 10
• 1:31:52
  from me and mine got a 5 out of 10 from you.
• 1:31:53
  So you're the winner of our last episode of season 1.
• 1:31:56
  So congratulations. Yay.
• 1:31:58
  Thank you. Thank you another.
• 1:31:59
  Solitary woo from the back of the room woo.
• 1:32:02
  Woo. I will say normally the person
• 1:32:05
  who wins the episode gets to make the first pick going into
• 1:32:08
  the next episode, but because this is the end of season 1,
• 1:32:10
  there is actually no prize for winning.
• 1:32:13
  However, Well, let's take a look now at cumulatively who had the
• 1:32:19
  better blind movie recommendations throughout all
• 1:32:21
  of season 1. And I will say it stayed pretty
• 1:32:24
  close most of the time. I fell behind by like 6 or 7
• 1:32:27
  total points really early on because I picked grifters and
• 1:32:30
  grifters was terrible, but and then I got really far ahead and
• 1:32:33
  then you pulled it back again. It was only in these last two
• 1:32:35
  episodes that we split up again. So at the end of 12 Picks, the
• 1:32:39
  movies that you recommended to me, Frank scored a cumulative 64
• 1:32:42
  points, which is a pretty high average.
• 1:32:45
  It's not bad. It's like a. 5 out of 10
• 1:32:47
  average. Essentially it's.
• 1:32:48
  Like a cutting edge average, Like a cutting.
• 1:32:50
  Edge average Take it or leave it.
• 1:32:52
  The movies that I recommended to you, you scored a cumulative 68
• 1:32:57
  points, so I I guess I win the season. 68 to 64 was the 8:00
• 1:33:03
  to. 64, pretty close. Pretty close.
• 1:33:06
  Not bad. Not bad for a first go around,
• 1:33:09
  not bad. I think there easily could have
• 1:33:11
  been a scenario where it was like 105 to 10, you know, like
• 1:33:14
  it's not always easy to judge a movie by its cover.
• 1:33:17
  It's arguably a bad idea, but we did that 12 times.
• 1:33:22
  That's that's the tag line for our show.
• 1:33:24
  It's arguably a bad idea. We did that 12 times in a row.
• 1:33:28
  It's been so much fun and I only say I win season one with some
• 1:33:33
  hesitancy because we did decide a couple of weeks back after
• 1:33:38
  reviewing the Prophecy that whoever didn't win season 1 has
• 1:33:43
  to watch all 5 Prophecy movies. Did we say that?
• 1:33:47
  We did. Say that, is there a record of
• 1:33:50
  that? Edit.
• 1:33:51
  Unless there's a George Lucas cut out there that removed it.
• 1:33:54
  Yeah. So I will say, Frank, you
• 1:33:56
  watched the first one because I gave you that one that's back in
• 1:33:58
  Episode 8 or Halloween themed 1. And the prophecy was fascinating
• 1:34:02
  and really, really strange. But there's four more.
• 1:34:05
  And so I'm not going to put like a due date on this assignment,
• 1:34:09
  but I'm going to need you to watch four more prophecy movies
• 1:34:12
  and come back and talk about them.
• 1:34:14
  Yeah, that might have to be its own episode.
• 1:34:17
  Just 4 prophecy movies in a row. Yeah, it'll be the definitive
• 1:34:22
  breakdown of the franchise, though, because I can't imagine
• 1:34:24
  anybody else has taken the time to talk about all five.
• 1:34:28
  Yeah. Yeah, it wouldn't see.
• 1:34:30
  Oh man, it would have been better to make somebody watch on
• 1:34:33
  the cutting edge movies. At least there's one less of
• 1:34:35
  those that's. True, whoever wins watches
• 1:34:38
  cutting it. Now we'll just have to hold on
• 1:34:39
  to it. I think maybe next time we
• 1:34:41
  should have a prize for winning and not a punishment for losing.
• 1:34:46
  Since Spirit of the show. Yeah, arguably a bad idea.
• 1:34:53
  All right? Yeah, I will.
• 1:34:55
  Oh, gosh. Yeah, I will watch all the
• 1:34:58
  prophecy movies and report back. I'll do my diligence.
• 1:35:02
  Do your. Homework.
• 1:35:02
  Happy holidays here. Some homework.
• 1:35:09
  That's funny. All right, well, congratulations
• 1:35:11
  on a fantastic season 1. I can't believe it was as close
• 1:35:14
  as it was for the people listening.
• 1:35:17
  We are at the end of our first season, but we're not going
• 1:35:20
  anywhere. You're still going to have a new
• 1:35:21
  episode from us in two weeks on Thursday.
• 1:35:24
  We're just doing what I would call, I guess, like offseason
• 1:35:27
  content. Does that make sense?
• 1:35:29
  Makes sense to me so. In two weeks time, at our usual
• 1:35:32
  Same Bat Time, Same Bat channel, we're going to have our Season 1
• 1:35:35
  recap episode. So we're going to revisit all 24
• 1:35:39
  films from the Forgotten 90s season of Meet Your Double
• 1:35:41
  Feature and take a look at which ones maybe we feel differently
• 1:35:45
  about now that it's been longer since we saw them.
• 1:35:48
  I think we'll probably put them on like a rough leader board of
• 1:35:51
  like, the best movies of the season and the worst.
• 1:35:53
  And then at the end of that, Frank, we're going to figure out
• 1:35:56
  live on the air what on earth the pitch is for Season 2.
• 1:36:01
  Yeah, that'll. Be interesting that'll.
• 1:36:04
  Because I think it's going to figure out.
• 1:36:05
  What feels right? What?
• 1:36:06
  Feels right because Forgotten 90s was a very funny premise.
• 1:36:09
  You and I were both born in the 90s.
• 1:36:11
  A lot of our, like, first movie exposure was stuff released in
• 1:36:14
  that decade that we would watch on home video or something.
• 1:36:18
  I was surprised to see you at Matrix Reloaded is, given your
• 1:36:20
  age at the time, but that's fine, yeah.
• 1:36:22
  It's true, though. It's true.
• 1:36:23
  It's true. He's in the.
• 1:36:24
  Background, he's in that dirty rave.
• 1:36:28
  And so we're going to, we're going to try to pick something
• 1:36:31
  new. I think that eventually, of
• 1:36:32
  course, we're going to do like an 80s decade theme and maybe
• 1:36:36
  like a 2000s decade theme, but I want to do something a little
• 1:36:38
  more different in between. So TuneIn, in two weeks we're
• 1:36:41
  going to revisit all 24 films. We'll give you the definitive
• 1:36:43
  list of what is essentially the top underrated films of the 90s,
• 1:36:47
  and then we'll figure out what on earth we're doing for Season
• 1:36:49
  2. Yeah, it should be fun.
• 1:36:51
  I will be probably excited probably.
• 1:36:54
  Excited, Frank. Believe it or not, Frank's gonna
• 1:36:56
  be there. I don't know if I don't think we
• 1:36:58
  can confirm that. No way.
• 1:36:59
  The actor. That's it.
• 1:37:05
  That's the ending. That was funny.
• 1:37:09
  All right. All right, thank you so much
• 1:37:25
  again, everyone for listening to Season 1 of Meet Your Double
• 1:37:27
  Feature. Whether this was your first
• 1:37:29
  episode or you've caught all 12, we very much appreciate your
• 1:37:32
  time. If you liked tonight's episode,
• 1:37:34
  please like it, favorite it, share it, follow the channel,
• 1:37:37
  all the things that people have been screaming at you to do on
• 1:37:39
  the Internet for 20 years. And we will be back in two weeks
• 1:37:43
  time with our next episode. In the interim, you can always
• 1:37:46
  check out every episode of our show by going to our website
• 1:37:49
  meetyourdoublefeature.com. Spelled in full just like the
• 1:37:52
  name of the show. And then Frank, where can they
• 1:37:54
  find us on social media? What are our platforms?
• 1:37:57
  Good question. Just the.
• 1:37:59
  Names and the platforms. This is a fun improv game we do
• 1:38:05
  where I just ask Frank things about the show and he's caught
• 1:38:07
  off guard. Yeah, I'm not paying attention.
• 1:38:11
  Yeah, we're on Instagram at Meet your double feature, Blue Scott.
• 1:38:16
  Yeah, Thank you. You can Blue Sky.
• 1:38:21
  We're on Blue Sky at mydf pod, so it's abbreviated username on
• 1:38:26
  there. You can always just search
• 1:38:26
  hashtag, meet your double feature.
• 1:38:28
  You'll find it. So again, website
• 1:38:30
  meetyourdoublefeature.com. Follow us on Instagram, follow
• 1:38:32
  us on Blue Sky. Check out our show on any of
• 1:38:34
  your major podcast platforms and that'll do it for Season 1.
• 1:38:38
  So we will see you in two weeks. Bye, bye I.
• 1:38:42
  Knew it. I knew he was going to do the
• 1:38:43
  bike. Coming up next, it's.
• 1:38:54
  The. Season 1 recap.
• 1:38:56
  Stay tuned for more, and thanks for listening to Meet Your
• 1:38:59
  Double Feature.