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Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
A Geek Culture Podcast - Two life-long Nerds explain, critique and poke fun at the major pillars of Geek Culture for your listening pleasure.
Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
Eastside Theatre Guild - Freejack
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Join us as we embark on a wild ride through the cult classic "Freejack," featuring dual rockstars Mick Jagger and David Johansen. We unravel the film's weak plot of time travel and body snatching, buoyed only slightly by Jagger's acting choices.
Alex Furlong is about to die and enter the year 2009. Where immortality is only a heartbeat away.
Speaker 2Where money can buy anything. Shouldn't you consider an alternative, buddy Sorry to deceive you Including life itself? Why me? Why don't they just grab somebody who's alive now?
Speaker 1Take a look at these people, Alex. They've lived half their lives with no ozone layer.
Speaker 2Tell me who's behind all this. I'm sorry I can't tell you that.
Speaker 1You were with Alex, don't you remember me?
Speaker 2He died, Jewel. Someone paid to bring him back. I watched you die.
Speaker 1Welcome to my mind. Don't resist, lose your mind and you can live forever. Freejack, you can live forever, oh boy oh boy indeed. Another one in our series. This is interesting.
Speaker 2That's right. This is another in the series of the podcast Dispatch Ages which you're listening to right now, which it has hosted by myself, jake, and my better than ever co-host, skip.
Speaker 1If this is better than ever, I don't want to go on anymore. There's really no hope for the future. Yes, am skip.
Speaker 2Jake is my lower half yeah, yeah, I'm the dingley bits as they would.
Speaker 1Might be giants would say I'm the ghibli nethers.
Speaker 2As they, as they are. You're definitely the brains of this one so this is the latest in our series of Rackstars in Movies.
Speaker 1From Eastside Theater Guild, specifically our sub show. Well, we actually have several. We've got Retro Rewind, we've got this, it's true. I mean we've got some out there, yeah.
Speaker 2Although the main episodes, the Dom episodes as they were, the tops.
Speaker 1Well, it's not necessarily top, and bottom. You're saying there's somebody in the middle, there's no judgment there, you know the sandwich episodes. Where it's. Isai Morales is in the middle.
Speaker 2Speaking of which, yeah, okay, all right, clear your minds. Imagine this A young man dies in a fire crash, but he did not die. No, he was body snatched into a future much different from his own, a future where time, space and death have been conquered and commoditized.
Speaker 1Where life is cheap. What Commodified right? Maybe commoditized, I don't care, keep going Did.
Speaker 2I make no commoditize, I don't care, keep going.
Speaker 1Did I make? No, commoditize, yeah, sure yeah, go for it.
Speaker 2Should I start that up again?
Speaker 1No, this is all in baby, here we go. Okay, yeah, great, here we go.
Speaker 2Commoditize when life is cheap and unending if you can afford it. He's adrift and on the run from those who have jacked him from the past to be used as fodder to live on. He must find his way in a new society, ideally aided by friends who just turn their backs on him, clamoring for the price on his head, trying to recapture the assistance and admiration, the woman he loved only yesterday, but for her it was yesteryear. He struggles but finds himself at the climax, on top of the world, against its richest man, in a race against time and a test of wills for his very soul. This, my friends, is the skeleton of Free Jack.
Speaker 1Hanging in my closet currently.
Speaker 2This also points to the fact that decent bones do a good body not make, are you?
Speaker 1sure we're not talking about the movie Tomorrow War. Is that not the one we were supposed to watch?
Speaker 2Uh, ooh, ooh, no, no, In fact. Which would you say is better Tomorrow, War or Free Jack?
Speaker 1Oh, free Jack, I think I'd say Free Jack, I'd say Free Jack. Yeah, at least it's got some cool performances and stuff in it. Tomorrow War is kind of a nothing movie.
Speaker 2It's truly you guys jumping into a CGI void to fight CGI monsters in a CGI future.
Speaker 1This one's actually got some interesting stunts and car chases and sets. None of it makes any sense, but I mean like they've got some stuff going on. They have some stuff. Indeed. Tomorrow Wars is a drag and drop in front of a green screen concept movie and it's like well, ok.
Speaker 2Yeah, and I think we're talking about this film mainly for two reasons Not that it stars one of the poor Chris's, but that it does star a rock star of the highest order, the lead singer of the Rolling Stones, mick.
Speaker 1Jagger that's right as the villain, just as in Runaway, which starred, of course, gene Simmons from Kiss, gene Tongue and Simmons, tongue and Simmons. Now I would like to point out and I know we haven't gotten too far into it, but I would like to point out, we're underselling it a little bit, because there are two rock stars in this movie.
Speaker 1Oh, that's right, mick Jagger and Davidid johansson true, true dexter poindexter from the new york dolls and of scrooged fame. My favorite christmas movie of all time waterfalls frankie angel when he saw his mother. One of the greatest performances in any especially Christmas movie, 100%.
Speaker 2That's what I thought of him was growing up as a kid, and then it was like, oh, he sings too. That's weird.
Speaker 1I remember him from it's Getting Hot, Hot, Hot.
Speaker 2No.
Speaker 1It was one of the biggest hits in the world.
Speaker 2From 1982. The song was used as the walk-on music for Rob Cross when he won the 2018 PDC World Darts Championship.
Speaker 1Oh man, that's how you know. You've made it, Mama, Papa, guess what it?
Speaker 2was the 1986 FIFA World Cup. It was the theme song for then, but it was done by Montserratian.
Speaker 1Oh, so they covered it. Yeah, it's a cover. Oh, so they covered it?
Speaker 2Yeah, it's a cover. Oh, that's really sad, no no, buster Poindexter covered Hot, hot, hot by.
Speaker 1Montserratian musician All right Arrow All right Wait, Montserratian musician.
Speaker 2Where are they from if you're Montserratian?
Speaker 1That's a good question.
Speaker 2The British Montserrat, the British Overseas Territ? Question uh, the british montserrat, the british overseas territory, what does that?
Speaker 1mean british overseas territories, that's in the caribbean, yeah, like like in america. That would be like saint croix or those protectorates that we have that aren't officially states montserrat is a mountainous caribbean island part of the lesser antilles chain. Interesting okay part of the lesser antilles chain letter, that which do not respond to the house.
Speaker 2Am I gonna get that hundred dollars?
Speaker 1or not die well, it's one or the other right, we would get to jayva johansson I'm just saying this one is unique because it has two rock stars in it, actual rock stars but I would say that mick jagger's the lead horse in this particular race here 100 yeah we did pick a sci-fi movie again, again with rock stars in the foci.
Speaker 2I'd also say another thing about this film is what I would call concepts of ideas. What could have been really cool if it was not derailed, deleted or defeated.
Speaker 1Okay, okay, oh so you gave some quantifiers Okay, qualifiers Okay, okay, oh. So you gave some quantifiers Okay, qualifiers yeah.
Speaker 2This could have been a film that made one think, flowing from a novel about a society that had conquered death but cheapened life in the process, bringing intellectual query and spiritual undertaking to task, instead of insert chase scene and gunfire here. Now. This was a feature born from Ron Shusett and Dan O'Bannon, who were working on we Can Remember it For you Wholesale Total Recall. At the time, this was the 1970s, but they didn't really see it as a viable option then, so instead they wrote this little film Not sure if you've heard of it, it's called Alien, it's okay. In the 80s, though, they returned and made Total Recall together, but in the intervening years, shusett had acquired the rights to Immortality Inc.
Speaker 2Now, immortality Inc was a novel. It's about Thomas Blaine, who dies in 1958 and wakes up in 2110. As a publicity stunt for a company, his consciousness had been taken from the time of his death then and transported into the future, into a new body. Now, at this time, death has become a commodity, science has figured out time travel and that the afterlife is real. There's ghostly phenomenon all around, and bodies have just become fodder for the wealthy. They live in guarded high rises and hunt the poor for sport. High rises and hunt the poor for sport. Life is so crushingly awful that things like suicide booths are commonplace in the street. In fact, in the novel the main character, he, gets into a line and it isn't until he gets up to the booth and he realizes people are just getting in to die that he realizes what it is and it gets out. This was something that's been parodied a few times, most notably in Futurama Futurama.
Speaker 2Now, while working on Total Recall, shusett was developing the script, he decided to take out Thomas Blaine and put in a new short protagonist, that of Alex Furlong, a race car driver, made it a shorter time shift of only 18 years and took out all that whole afterlife science stuff and put in more action. This was sold to Morgan Creek Production Company who at the time were working on their biggest feature to date, robin Hood, prince of Thieves. Oh boy, and Morgan Creek liked this and they wanted Bruce Willis to be the star, but he was too busy and passed. The film was searching for both a star and a director. Here. The New Zealand director Jeff Murphy at the time was making Young Guns 2 for Morgan Creek.
Speaker 1Ah, the second best of those movies.
Speaker 2I don't know. I'd say it's more fun than the first, but I have a soft spot for both Young Guns.
Speaker 1It's also not as good as the first one.
Speaker 2No, probably not, but it's not bad.
Speaker 1Well, they're both kind of bad.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah. At the time he was the biggest filmmaking export to Hollywood. As he was searching for bigger avenues to tell his stories. Supposedly he almost was picked to direct Predator around this time Now, while the executives were focused entirely on Robin Hood, murphy was given free reign on Young Guns 2, made a plunge of script rewrites and he made it a success. It made more money than I think, the first one. From the success of that he was offered Immortality Inc. He read the script but saw some problems. He said none of the thought-provoking material from the book was in the script. Now he didn't want to make a straight sci-fi action film, while the studio wanted something a little more Schwarzenegger-y type action vehicle that they could really bank on.
Speaker 1Which they wouldn't have gone for if it were for Predator being successful.
Speaker 2Yeah or Total Recall.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2You know, or all of these other things. That's right, conan, whatnot?
Speaker 1That was a weird period in time in which at least the genre of movies that would have normally been overlooked for these action stars because of the success of things like Predator Now those are the go-to genres for these action stars, which is bizarre.
Speaker 1But hey, we got some good stuff out of it, yeah it was a product at the time and you get some gems from that kind of thing to the extent where the success of predator killed other movies that were going to happen around the same time, which eventually led to sort of like a domino effect of getting to I come in peace, because there was another I'm hunting an alien cop buddy type movie. Predator came out. They thought it was too close and so they different studios sort of adapted the premise of using an alien in these days to compete with predator, killing off some of those ones that were at least parallel thought or competitors with predator.
Speaker 1Yeah, fan the flames for some, but extinguish the the fires 100 and unfortunately that's why one of the reasons that dolph hunger never quite got his big movie because there were movies that he was attached to that actually were just too close to predator. That got canceled and he never got his big break well, I think.
Studio Interference in Action Film Production
Speaker 2Also part of that, I think, is that he was that next generation of action superstar as the studios were winding down from the free reign they had in the early to mid 80s. By that point you have stuff like canon starting to go under. These big budgets are getting shifted to other things and they're giving less money, less effort, less directorial oversight. I think Jean-Claude Van Damme, steven Seagal, to an extent some of the Chuck Norris stuff, dolph Lundgren, brandon Lee they got what could have been given money and time, but the studio system had kind of contracted to a point where a lot of those are less time and effort. Money is given to some of those and they're going like straight to video or they just don't get the hype. They never got the presence of a stallone or a schwarzenegger.
Speaker 1It was a different landscape for the action stars at that point right because, like in between predator in this you get robocop which totally works on its own thing but also is a complete outlier to all that kind of stuff and successful. But then also, if you can just do that with Commando, you don't have to do the sci-fi stuff and all the big budget stuff. You can just make movies like Mixing in Action and Commando or Die Hard sequels, instead of doing the fun stuff that they did with Action Stars in this very brief period of time where they were all sci-fi and fantasy.
Speaker 2Yeah, they wanted a Schwarzenegger type film. Murphy, the director, worried that it would be too dumbed down, kind of like how we Will Remember, for Wholesale was slimmed down into Total Recall. He told the studio he didn't want an Arnie-esque adventure and wanted more of an everyman that the audience could identify with, which the studio responded positively with, because they had already given the offer for the role to Emilio Estevez. Now Murphy had already worked with them they had a good relationship on Young Guns 2, so he was cool with that. Murphy asked to rewrite the script along with Steven Pressfield, who was an uncredited Total Recall writer, and the studio agreed to those rewrites. Now Murphy wanted to bring some of the more thoughtful elements from the book back into this screenplay, along with some social satire, but the execs hated it, despite having already agreed to let Murphy change things.
Speaker 2Jim Robinson, who at this time was the chairman and CEO of Morgan Creek, then got involved here Now. Apparently part of the time was the chairman and CEO of Morgan Creek then got involved here Now. Apparently, part of the agreement between the studio and the director was that there are elements in the script that could not be changed, even though allowing for changes and rewrites was part of the deal with the director Murphy to come on in the first place. So he rewrote stuff, gave it to them. They're just like no, we can't change that and we're not going to change that. And he's like, no, we can't change that and we're not going to change that and he's like hey this is part of the deal to bring me on.
Speaker 2They're like so we don't care, film what you had Interesting. Now Murphy considered legal action to get out of the contract at this point. But his lawyer to like even if he won, he probably would have an injunction placed on him by the studio which would keep him out of work for like probably over a year and he probably would have a bad reputation not being easy to work with. That's if he won the case. If he had lost the case, he'd still have those things and he'd owe a ton of money to the studio. So he's like I guess I'll just go ahead and make the movie. What could go wrong?
Speaker 2Now Stuart Oaken was brought in as line producer and Joe Alves as set designer and Murphy butted heads with both. Unfortunately for Murphy, the studio sided with those two over Murphy on almost every decision For the film. There's a lot of car designs and Murphy wanted more of a Blade Runner or Mad Max-y look to them. But Alves ixnayed that and came up with his own designs that cost, like, I guess, half a million to make, and Murphy described them as laughable. But that's what we see in the film.
Speaker 1They are laughable. I'm literally watching it right now the first car chasing where he steals the champagne truck. I see where they think they're going, but without the rest of this world looking like this, it makes no sense whatsoever.
Speaker 2It totally doesn't fit within the rest of the rest of this world. Looking like this it makes no sense whatsoever, it totally doesn't fit within the rest of the scope of the film.
Speaker 1No, they're obviously just a bunch of fiberglass bodies put on top of go-karts.
Speaker 1Yeah, and they look like weird teardrop, pseudo-train things A lot of them are supposed to look like 30s and 40s era cars, which is fine, especially since the PT Cruiser isn't too far off, but at the same time they don't seem to fit here this setting at all. At least with RoboCop everything just kind of looked like a 1997 Ford Taurus and you bought it. You know, like you bought that they belonged in that world. Or even with Tim Burton in Batman 89, all those cars at least existed in that world, and so you don't bat an eye when they have vintage cars. But this. They're cars that are made to look futuristic by looking vintage but then also are contemporary, and it really throws everything off pretty badly. It sticks out like a sore thumb.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, and they're cars we'll talk about a little more later. So, along with some of the producing people he was working with and the set designer and some of the special effects people, he also didn't jive with the cinematographer and the casting director. Oh good, that was great, but that's what he had to work with, so he pushed on. They started casting. Linda Fiorentino was originally hired mostly because she was able to pull off both being younger and older with the right clothing and makeup design which was essential for the script.
Speaker 2Yeah, and she had good chemistry with Amelia Westepas. The studio wanted Anthony Hopkins, so he signed on.
Speaker 1That's all you need to know about that, because he will sign on to anything as long as the paycheck is right.
Speaker 2So the reason he did it was that the filming would give him something to do while he was in the United States for the Oscars, because the Signs of the Lambs is about to come out and they were banking on that being big and him being there for the awards.
Speaker 1And they were right.
Speaker 2So he's like I'll sign up because he only had to do two weeks of shooting oh, when they were right. So he's like I'll sign up because he only had to do two weeks of shooting. Oh, he didn't really care. Oh no, he said that in interviews and whatnot.
Speaker 1He still does roles like that.
Speaker 2I think this is more kind of like ah yeah, no, I haven't really done sci-fi, I'll do that whatever.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2He wasn't a big star back then.
Speaker 1Yet, yeah, insurance salesman and david roche ned ryerson needle nose ned ned the head no, that's not vincent chabelli no, no, no, I know, I know, it's just the thing made you think of that character oh, the insurance salesman.
Speaker 2But okay, sorry, I was thinking like, oh, that's a different, no, no no bald-headed guy but it is, yes, you're right talking about typecasting, jesus christ yeah, david roche was also brought on, apparently Sledgehammer, which was a complete failure in America.
Speaker 1Oh, you're talking about the television show Sledgehammer.
Speaker 2The television show Sledgehammer.
Speaker 1Love that show.
Speaker 2Of course I want us to do a retroactive rewind about that show. It was a failure in the US but it was a huge hit in New Zealand and Murphy was a big fan of his All right For the antagonist chaser role. They wanted someone like you know who could be menacing but kind of verbose, and it was kind of sexy and cool but a little off-putting. Willem Dafoe was originally considered. Oh hell, yes, he was brought in to talk to the studio execs but he was passed over when Mick Jagger became available.
Speaker 1Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2Jagger then was sent to meet Murphy and he said he'd always wanted to be in a science fiction film. So he signed on and they rewrote the character a bit, because originally the character was much more dour and straight-faced. They wanted to be a little more likable antagonist, someone who could play off of Mila Restovets in the film.
Speaker 1And I have to say, having watched it a couple of times recently now, so many other characters in this are so dour and play it straight so hard that this movie would probably be a really bottom barrel sci-fi schlog if it weren't for the even tiniest things that we get from Mick Jagger. Yeah.
Studio Interference in Film Production
Speaker 2And we'll get into a little bit of how the tone's all over the place, yeah, and a lot of it doesn't really fit together. We'll get to that. Yeah, that'll come up. So two weeks into filming, the director had been sending us a few dailies and they saw them and hated them.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2They blamed all of the issues on Linda Fiorentino and wanted her axed. Now it's not great to replace a main character. It's both really expensive and a pain Back to the future. So the studio flew in Rene Russo, the former model. But Murphy met with her and didn't really find her right for the role. But Morgan Creek had already made it up in their mind and it wasn't really for him to decide. They were just saying, hey, we have to show these people before they're in the film as part of the agreement. But they're already signed up, so she's going to be the role.
Speaker 1It's going to happen, yeah.
Speaker 2Apparently, when asked about the change, the CEO Robinson claimed that Linda Fiorentino quote didn't give him a hard-on.
Speaker 1Wow.
Speaker 2They also— but Rene Rosso did Okay. I guess Sometime around this time they also fired David Roche for unknown reasons.
Speaker 1Well, you know.
Speaker 2They then had to reshoot a bunch of scenes after production had wrapped up. The producers didn't want any of the in-camera effects that Murphy had come up with for doing some of the sci-fi stuff. Instead, they wanted the cutting edge computer CGI garbage that they didn't quite understand or have the ability to use at this point in time Because, again, this is 1991 they're making this.
Speaker 1The more things change, the more they stay the same right.
Speaker 2Yeah, this filming had taken 11 weeks and the budget had ballooned to $36 million, up another like four or five from what had originally been put at. After filming wrapped up, murphy took a few weeks off and then he came back with the editor to put together a cut of the film. They watched it and it was awful. Oh no shit, everything was off and all over the place. So they recut and rejiggered again and again After 10 weeks.
Speaker 2Per Directors Guild of America rules, they had to show the film, no matter the state, to the studio. The studio took the film, didn't even look at it, sent it straight to a screening audience, which ended up being a total flop. Three weeks worth of reshoots were called for, but when the director asked which scenes or for how long, or how do you know it's going to cost this amount of money, the studio couldn't say they're just going to do it anyway. So the studio brought Shusett back and had 15 rewritten or retooled scenes to shoot. Almost every one of those scenes was an action piece. And when the director saw this he's like no, I can't do this, I'm standing my ground, these are unfilmable. He took these problems to one of the producers and the producer surprisingly agreed with them.
Speaker 2But then the CEO, robinson, stepped in. Now, at the time he thought the music was the issue. Mark Isham was doing the music and Robinson called him up and said we need 20 minutes of additional rock music in here. It's going to be hip and cool and it's what's really going to make the film work. Isham then asked the director hey, what's this about? The director knew nothing about it and he also didn't think it would fit, but they had to go along with it anyway. So Isham put together the score the way Robinson wanted and added the 20 minutes of music.
Speaker 1But when?
Speaker 2Robinson heard it, he hated it and he canned him, oh good. Brought in some other people to do the music and bought some music from the Scorpions and some other bands Definitely what the film needed.
Speaker 1It's just Scorpions, by the way.
Speaker 2Now, at this point, Murphy, the director, again asked to be fired.
Speaker 1Yeah, well.
Speaker 2He was like just fire me.
Speaker 1Alan Smithy can do the rest of it.
Speaker 2So that he could not be sued for breach of contract. They would not do that. Murphy returned to shoot new scenes that were written by another new writer, dan Gilroy. Now Gilroy added more humor to the scenes. They took those scenes and made a new cut that ran 95 minutes long. Robinson again the CEO, hated it. He decided hell with this, I'll do it myself.
Speaker 1Oh God.
Speaker 2Even though the film was scheduled to be sent off to the negative cutters in just a few days and Robinson wasn't an editor.
Speaker 1Oh, my God.
Speaker 2That didn't matter. So he then brought in three different sets of editors, different teams, set them all up in different studios and would have them work on different parts of the film and he would travel from suite to suite and give his say. This beefed the runtime up now to 110 minutes. Admittedly he had watched the final edit after he had worked these things and just sent it off to the negative cutters to then be put together and sent to the theaters. Now, at this point Murphy had asked for possessory credit. This is kind of like whenever you see, like a Spike Lee joint or this is a Richard Linklater film, that's a special credit that they have to negotiate in their contracts and go through like a lot of legal wrangling to get that put in. Sure, murphy asked to have that removed. He also thought of completely divorcing himself from the film and going the Alan Smithy route.
Speaker 1There you go. For those of you who don't know, alan Smithy, it's the alias that, because I don't think we've ever actually addressed what that is, I think we have but go ahead.
Speaker 2Did we actually talk?
Speaker 1about that. It's the alias that directors use when they don't want their names actually put on the film.
Speaker 2Yeah, when they're completely divorced from the film they don't want to be known for it at all. It then is now directed by Alan Smithy or there are other pseudonyms, so they aren't a part of the film. But to do that it is a legal hassle and he thought it wasn't worth going through those hoops. But the cinematographer who he had had problems working with in the first place, amir Mokri, did go that route and he is an uncredited part of the production. So it was really supposed to come out in the fall but was delayed until January 17th 1992. It premiered number four in the box office and had a precipitous drop ever after that. It was a complete flop.
Speaker 2No doubt had a precipitous drop ever after that. It was a complete flop. No doubt the director was then slighted by both the cast and the crew, even though it's debatable how much they knew about the inner workings of production and how much he had to deal with. He was given smaller gigs after that but never really given another chance in Hollywood. He later returned to New Zealand to do some small things, but when a big production came over, some people saw the value in his work. That's why Peter Jackson hired him, the second unit director for all of the Lord of the Rings trilogy which he did work on.
Speaker 1Oh, nice Good for him.
Speaker 2Yeah, it was good. Unfortunately, again, he never really had his say. To really do much after that, and he did pass away in 2018. To really do much after that, and he did pass away in 2018. But that's some of the you know. A lot of people just blame him for the issues, for it kind of being a bit of a mess. So a lot of people don't see a lot of the issues that he tried to make a different film, but this is what he got shoved into. This is how it came out. As you can see, that's not the best way to make a film, but maybe we should cover a bit of the film. Yeah, so you kind of see what these issues are. Mm-hmm. So we start with smoky saxophone credits and computer beep-boop-boop-bop-noised credits pop up.
Speaker 1All of those saxophone things will come back later too, by the way.
Speaker 2Oh, the saxophone is not going away.
Speaker 1Oh no, it comes back. Both diegetic and non-diegetic, it's in there.
Speaker 2Yeah, so there's a crosscut of the Jack crew mobilizing to the spot and present day, emilio Estevez, or Alex, as he will be referred to now, alex Furlong.
Speaker 1Not Eddie Furlong, but Alex Furlong.
Speaker 2Not Eddie Furlong. Also, we've talked about Free Jack. Yeah was like what does free jack mean? I always thought, okay, so they're jacking him from the past to put him into a new body and then he escapes.
Speaker 1So he's a free jack you're thinking of the cyberpunk, johnny newman jacking into the? What have yous?
Speaker 2I mean I guess that's kind of where they were taking it from right, just even the general impression.
Speaker 1Yeah, you and I both. When they opened this up you haven't, especially if you haven't seen it. It's kind of the vibe you get.
Speaker 2Yeah, but when I was looking it up, free Jack also comes from the revolutionary war times. A free Jack to the freedom, one from the union Jack during the American. It can also refer to a dissident and every person who works for the common good or is a symbol of revolution, defiance and liberty.
Speaker 1Well, that actually makes way more sense now that you think about it.
Speaker 2In some parts of the South and Caribbean freejack was a term for an ex-slave or a person of mixed race heritage. So if you combine all three of those it kind of makes a bit more sense.
Speaker 1It does actually make some semblance of sense Without that context you're like what? Especially when they start talking about bonejackers and things like that. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2What so? We meet Alex here. He seems kind of like a big kid, and he and his girlfriend, renee Russo.
Speaker 1He isn't nervous about the race at all, he's an F1 driver, it's a weird way to put that he wasn't nervous about the race at all. Also, he's an F1 driver. Okay, yeah, so let's start out. He was an F1 driver. He is a race car driver, first and foremost. It's true.
Speaker 2It's true, and he has an upcoming race and he's not nervous at all, even though his girlfriend is. He does this funny joke which I thought was really a part of the time really sets it in a place and he talks about oh, what's your big electronic typewriter thing? Because he doesn't really know what a computer is.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2Because this is 1991 and it's newfangled. What he also asks for Renee, which I should give the character's name of Julie Redland, to quote nibble his ear for luck.
Speaker 1Kind of creepy, but every couple has their thing. In the first half of this, this movie, she's essentially playing the same character she plays in major league. Well, I mean like they're together. But you know she's sort of the novice intellectual who doesn't really get the race car driving thing and everything, but she supports her at this point, husband, well, just boyfriend, or girlfriend? They weren't married that's right, their boyfriend.
Speaker 2Yeah, he's a good partner. Yeah, seemingly smarter and better educated and maybe has a real job.
Speaker 1Exactly yeah.
Speaker 2Driving isn't a quote, real job. But let's be honest.
Speaker 1Compared to what she ends up doing.
Speaker 2We're also introduced to David Johansson as Brad his agent, essentially trying to help him score some deals with investors and advertisers. We're cross-cutting again with the time space jacking crew headed up I mean, it's not headed up by Mick Jagger, victor of Ascendac.
Speaker 1The Sendac.
Speaker 2Yeah, which you're just going to get the Sendac a lot in this film.
Speaker 1You do, and I always feel like, if you rearrange those letters, maybe that means something. It just feels like there's more to that, because where do you come up with that? Out of whole cloth.
Speaker 2Yeah, it also doesn't come off the tongue very well, no, and you hear a lot of people not necessarily struggling with it, but it just doesn't fit.
Speaker 1No, and they never use his first name.
Speaker 2No, no, it's just a Sendak after that. Yeah.
Speaker 1It is an awkward name, yeah.
Speaker 2But you get some shots of the gear they're using. Looks kind of interesting, but also ridiculously dated.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Because it's early 90s.
Speaker 1I'm sorry, but a Mylar surgical outfit would be the most. Can you imagine trying to work in a Mylar suit? There's a reason that they use those for emergency blankets for people who are freezing. You'd be a baked potato, I mean. You're just like boiling from the inside the entire time, especially since they use lasers and Bone jacking's so cold, you know. Oh, it's cold as ice, my friend.
Speaker 2It's Ryan Bosworth over here. It sure is. Now they're Jacker-techy. You look like you're supposed to be like Solid Snake. Am I talking about?
Speaker 1Isai Morales yes. Isai Morales, yes.
Speaker 2Isai Morales' character who is named Ripper Awesome. I was like oh man, this guy, this guy's cool. There are a few characters sprinkled throughout this film where it's like oh man, can this guy have a backstory movie, right, because I feel like there's something going on. Yeah, he's got glasses, but part of it's blacked out.
Speaker 1But also when he doesn't wear the glasses, doesn't wear an eye patch.
Speaker 2Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1I don't know, I don't get it.
Speaker 2He's got scars and he's got this weird bad cop, good cop, buddy thing with the Sendak and he's the tech guy.
Speaker 1But yeah, maybe he has something else going on, kind of yeah, yes, 100%. And watching it again, I'd rather he just be the villain and cut out vasendak. Well, he's got more to him cutting out other things, beefing them both up okay, I mean sure you can do that too, but I'm just saying like, this is what you have. Vasendak is a nothing character with no backstory and nothing you care about.
Speaker 2This guy at least seems interesting and he's got the eye patch now in the, in the novel, apparently there is a definite undercurrent of the rich versus the poor right social unrest. You know I mean the rich versus the poor Right Social unrest, you know I mean they literally hunt the poor people for sport.
Speaker 1Yeah, which they would never dare to do this in this super pro-capitalist, no, no.
Speaker 2Plus, I mean that's like 1958 to 2110 versus 1990 to 2009. There isn't that big of a gap.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's true, which is a problem really for a lot of things in this film.
Speaker 2yeah, it should have a buck rogers flash, gordon vibe but it doesn't yeah, the reason they do this is because they want him to still interact with people that he knew from before. Yeah, yeah and you can't set it too far in the future to keep that alive. I think that's a dumb conceit and you don't need that yeah there's plenty of things that are similar, where you could have. Oh, my great grandmother talked of you. Now he's falling for the great granddaughter of Rene Russo, which is weird.
Speaker 1But yeah, you could make that work. But I mean, even Alien does a better job of that in its franchise, where they're like, oh yeah, we know you had a daughter, but she's 60 now. At least they kind of deal with that in a way that's like, oh okay, yeah, they remember each other, they remember how things were before this upheaval in society or whatever which we will get to. I'm sure the bum at one point makes a reference to the 10-year depression, the one that's Burrell from the Wire.
Speaker 2Yeah, known as Eagle man here, which we'll get to Eagle man.
Speaker 1Eat river rats riverette.
Speaker 2They're trying to lock on to the point of death of alex, kind of this countdown, stay on, target locking system, which I think is kind of cool conceptually. So in the past there's this weird tire collision where he hits the back tire of another car. He hits this and for some reason it then catapults him up into the side of a bridge.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, blows up, runs straight into a bridge, pulls up Jane Mansfield in midair to a bridge?
Speaker 2Yeah, I don't know how that would work.
Speaker 1Watching this movie. There are several Starsky and Hutch car ramp accidents that happen, that being one of them and the main one. Really, I don't really understand how it worked that way or how, without interference, that would have possibly happened.
Speaker 2But no, the physics on that seemed quite wonky.
Speaker 1At best.
Speaker 2Otherwise, I feel like that is happening all the time. Oh, for the rest of the movie, that's just standard, but I mean like in real life, if you can just hit somebody's tires like that and you're going to go flying up in the sky in an F1 car.
Speaker 1Can you imagine how crazy that would be if the physics like really panned out and you just like stepped on the back of somebody's shoe, smash into a building and die? Wow, okay, yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 2So at the moment of impact he is jacked from the past into the future. He's lying on this table inside this mobile science station. They revive him and then they're going to use a 40 megawatt. What do you even call this An electrical ray gun? It's like a satellite dish on a mechanical arm.
Speaker 1Yeah, what it looks like is when you're at the dentist, they bring down those lights and those arms and reflectors and stuff on them. That's what it looks like, but this one has got a laser emitter on it.
Speaker 2It shoots electricity out so that it can fry your prefrontal lobe.
Speaker 1It doesn't seem all that exact a science that they're doing here.
Speaker 2No, it's just a random electrical bolt. So Alex wakes up, turns it on the docks. They get fried.
Speaker 1Because they're wearing Mylar, of course they get fucking fried. You could have turned the heat up to 60 and they would have all boiled to death.
Speaker 2What they should have done. They should have had him in a big microwave oven, yes, and just even turning the dial.
Speaker 1Yes, that should should have. That's exactly what should have happened. After two and a half minutes, you have to poke some holes in the alex vent uh, the problem is you didn't wrap him in a paper towel, was the real issue.
Speaker 1Never put him in tin foil, you gotta flip him over halfway through. There is actually a great batman arc where he does this, where he gets put in arkham and then he escapes by having, like, he peels his cape apart and on the underside is a mylar lining that he then wraps himself in to get through the like the laser grid or whatever, out of the air duct or whatever, but at the same time it nearly kills him because it cooks him like a potato double baked you know what, if you double up like that, you're going to increase your chances of getting pregnant, though it's fine by me baby.
Speaker 1Never double bag it.
Speaker 2So Alex escapes both the science crew and Vesendek who's trying to catch him, because Vesendek's hired to get him from point A to point B for the client.
Speaker 1Oh, by the way, all these science guys look like AIM in Marvel yeah.
Speaker 2So Alex escapes into this dystopian cliche, which is just crashed cars and burning trash cans everywhere you know. As people are want to live in the year of 2009 do, do, do, do, take it back.
Speaker 1Frank stallone is doing acapella over one of the burning barrels as we speak kill him.
Speaker 2alex gets to do a kind of an escape from New York taxi and he's able to pay for his bride with an antique watch from 15 years ago.
Speaker 1What Whoa? That's how you know we're in the future.
Speaker 2But then they find out that he's a freejack. He gets away from all the other bonejackers, as they're called, and he goes to his old house. Now he doesn't care that at this point, since he was in an accident, I've woken up that now it's all caged off and he goes up. There's a guy with a gun that seems to know him guarding it, but doesn't ask any questions. Let me just get back to my place. So he goes into his house, knocks on the door and a nice black family is living there. And this is where we learned he's a freejack. We still don't know what that is yet, but he's been labeled that and told to go away and we realize something bad is going on.
Speaker 1It's almost like Flight of the Navigator when he tries to go back to his old house.
Speaker 2Sure, I don't remember that much about Flight of the Navigator, to be honest.
Speaker 1I haven't seen it in 20 years plus, but yeah, it's another trope. I used to live here and we live here now.
Speaker 2Get off our property, yeah next we see the we get to this building and we see the quote spiritual switchboard, which is in the facade of a chapel and there's a hooded figure, kind of a ghost of christmas future oh, like from scrooge, from scrooge, yeah yeah, and he's you know.
Speaker 2Uh, given sif-esque demands of, like you know, find him, bring him to me. Time is running short. Blah, blah, blah. Now we find out this is the Maxcorp who own the spiritual switchboard building which, because it's jacking, they decided a jack like kids will play with is how they will design everything. A giant jack is on top of this building, which was envisioned to be twice as tall as the Empire State Building, having 180 floors.
Speaker 1Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2And then, inside this giant jack, there's a smaller jack that we will meet later in the film. That is how you interact with the spiritual switchboard. Again, this spiritual switchboard is an idea.
Speaker 1Sure, that doesn't belong in this movie at all.
Speaker 2No, not at all. There's an idea of spirituality.
Speaker 1But not really.
Speaker 2No, again the concept of an idea, but I feel like someone wrote a script that had all that in.
Speaker 1Sure.
Speaker 2And then they cut all of that out. Right, but there's still things that linger, like the name spiritual switchboard or like the nun that alex will encounter very soon, that feel like they were meant to say something about. What does it mean to be human? What is a soul, if you're taking a soul from one body to other? Right things like that.
Speaker 1But all of that's done away with yeah, weirdly enough, those elements still are a huge part of the narrative and yet don't mean anything in the narrative, with the suicide booth thing that is shown like in the background on buildings, like being projected on a big LED screens. Ok, so that's like a leftover from the original narrative. Ok, sure, not addressed, but still there.
Speaker 2But this stuff is addressed and confronted and means nothing yeah, it's lip service paid, but given no bite, there's nothing there isn't even any connective tissue to a part of the actual narrative.
Speaker 1That makes it make sense that it's even in there. Yeah, yeah, the spiritual switchboard thing. Then the nun, an actor who has been in tons of stuff. She was the oracle in battlestar galactica, by the way, she was also in Star Trek Picard as well. I don't want to spoil too much, but a villain.
Speaker 2This is Amanda Plummer.
Speaker 1Yeah, well-renowned actor yeah.
Speaker 2You might know her from Pulp Fiction, where she's Honey Bunny oh of course she's Honey, Fuck yes of course.
Speaker 1Yes, that's so stupid. I went to the other ones first.
Speaker 2Yes, she's honey bunny. That's how your brain works.
Speaker 1You every last motherfucking one of you. Yes.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, she's a very loud actress when she wants to be.
Speaker 1And symbolizing a character that should mean something in this story but doesn't.
Speaker 2Yeah, we meet her because Alex breaks into a church to sleep and he finds the mean, nun again played by amanda plumber, with a shotgun. Now again, I think in the previous idea of the script this would have meant something they would have had more to talk about, but she has our info dump so it sets us up in the film. Obviously you're referencing some concepts from the book and the script, but never really saw celluloid.
Speaker 1We find out about mind transplants even if you don't want to make the entire plot around this spiritual idea, you could have that character, at least be like some sort of vestigial belief from before about spirituality or a comment about the common man and how they view this whole bone jacking thing.
Speaker 2But they don't even do that no, there are other people there, you see, in the church, that have guns and it seems to be like some sort of resistance right of some spiritual significance, but none of it's delved into no, none of it, which makes me wonder why the fuck is it still in the movie? Well, because I think you had so many people writing and rewriting things and editing so many different ways and you have multiple people cutting the film together.
Speaker 1You get stuff like this it's like David Ayer's Suicide Squad Too many cooks and the meat was rotten to the good with so I don't know yeah.
Speaker 2So we find out from her that Judy his girlfriend or Julie his girlfriend.
Speaker 1Julie, yeah.
Speaker 2Is unlisted. But Brad, his agent, is in Sector 7, park Slope, and she gives him a glock. You know, as any stranger you find on the street, uh, who's been bone jacked? Any nun you find none, none will give you a gun mother, superior jumped the gun, as the beatles would say we also find that the sendak at this time has been brought to heel by jonathan banks um breaking bad. You might know from Breaking Bad as Mike.
Speaker 1Who did just absurd this level sci-fi, b-movie shit, essentially until Breaking Bad and then became kind of an awesome household name.
Speaker 2Now he seems to be the one in charge at MaxCorp currently and is angry that the Zendik has lost Alex.
Speaker 1Because they're worth money.
Speaker 2Yes, he's been paid a bunch of money. This is a very expensive thing. Only the super wealthy can jack people from the past and then put themselves in. We don't know who that is at this point, but somebody involved with MaxCorp is trying to get Alex's body. Had hired the Sendak to get it from the point, because you have to go where he died to jack him from that exact spatial element yeah, so the body's still alive, but yeah, you can't just flick your fingers and pick it anywhere.
Speaker 1You have to go where the point, the exact spatial point where the body is taken from the past which they have done in other things which I'm sure we will talk about later but also, at the same time, makes it super awkward when you're I don't know, like. Let's say, there's a f1 race and a driver dies and then you open up the car and there's no body in there. That's a little weird right?
Free Jack and Future Dystopia
Speaker 2uh, we'll get to that in just a second okay yeah, jonathan banks yes, yeah, jonathan banks essentially fires vas but Vesendek kind of like. Hmm, I'm still going to go on my own and I'm going to find Alex and get my job back. I guess is kind of the vibe. I guess Kind of like I have a job to do, I'm going to do my job till it's done.
Speaker 1I don't even get that kind of commitment from it. It seems more like, well, I was owed purse and not. You've personally wronged me, so I'm gonna go do just as much work to do enough work to get my job back and prove that I'm good at this. Though I guarantee you, if there were no money or anything involved, he would just walk away and never talk about it ever again yeah, probably again, we don't really get a sense of what's driving a lot of characters.
Speaker 2Motivation, yeah, secondary we lost that on the country floor? Sure did so. Alex is then walking down the street in dystopia ville. We get disheveled mixed match clothes future cars, which are awful yeah, and it's spent way too much money on right next to horse-drawn cart carriages, which is very, very odd. Yeah, he walks by a 3D nude movies place, but there seems to be prostitutes out front. Why Should you do one or the other?
Speaker 1I think it's kind of one of those one-stop shops you know.
Speaker 2Oh okay, but if you can look at porn or you can buy a prostitute, why would you? Levels of income see, okay, okay, uh.
Speaker 1This is also where we get some random tit shot here we'll also get another random tit shot in the club later yeah, I wish paul verhoeven had directed this to be perfect yeah it'd be a way way more interesting movie a hundred percent.
Speaker 2Then he he randomly gets uh taken up and uses a human shield during a gang war that comes to nothing. Then he finds the address he was looking for.
Speaker 1Rene Russo's address correct.
Speaker 2No, no, this is where he finds his old manager.
Speaker 1Brad. Oh yeah, dexter Poindexter era stuff. Yes, yeah, he meets him Brad's like. Oh hey, wow it.
Speaker 2Yeah, dexter, poindexter, era stuff, yes, yeah, he meets him. Brad's like oh hey, wow, it's exciting. Then he starts talking about wow, you must be a freejack, and this is so wild. And he talks about how he had a big problem with insurance back in the 90s because they wouldn't pay, because they couldn't find the body.
Speaker 1There you go.
Speaker 2So they couldn't prove that he was dead and find the body. There you go, so they couldn't prove that he was dead and so the insurance wouldn't pay. And he said he's heard of free jacks but never seen one in the flesh. And then he tests that he is him because he's like, points out an ashtray and it's an old Porsche hubcap that Alex just knows because he's a car guy and he's like oh yeah, it's definitely you, alex.
Speaker 2Then Alex asks some like relevant and interesting questions why not grab someone from then? Why not just pick somebody up off the street? Right, it'd be a lot cheaper and easier. And then his buddy says that half their lives they've lived with no ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, benzene, et cetera drugs that weren't around in the 20th century, like that was all that long ago, right. But essentially saying, like, all the people here are kind of poisoned and who wants to get one of these bodies? Because it's not going to last very long?
Speaker 1you know microplastics and whatnot yeah, if you did this right would be an interesting plot point, because it's not that much different, it's not that long ago. Uh, we still have the same problems, and so you could make that like a thing about how, like, oh well, that's just, they're rich and they're snotty in their particular view.
Speaker 2Yeah, but they don't. If you set it hundreds of years in the future, this makes more sense.
Speaker 1Oh, you mean, isn't that Terminal Velocity? Isn't that the name of that movie? Where they that plane. All those people were supposed to die in a plane crash. Then they take them into the future to fight a, to repopulate the earth.
Speaker 2What is that?
Speaker 1I think that's the name of it, because it has nothing to do with the name of it, has nothing to do with the plot.
Speaker 2No Term of Velocity. Is that Charlie Sheen movie Millennium.
Speaker 1Millennium. Yes, that's the one, it's the same premise, except they, yeah, they take people who, like, die in plane crashes, where they would never find the bodies anyway, and they take them into the future to repopulate the Earth in a dystopian future.
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 1Yeah, this is that, but sans any real commentary.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's almost like they took that one little concept and made a whole movie off of it. Well, this is just a throwaway line that doesn't make much sense.
Speaker 1Yeah, just like with Future War, except at least Future War had a goal, a premise of what to do with these people.
Speaker 2Yeah, future War. They were going there because they were already scheduled to die, right. So if they messed up the future, then it wouldn't matter, because they weren't there.
Speaker 1Same thing with Millennium. They, if they messed up the future, then it wouldn't matter, because they weren't there. Same thing with Millennium. They brought those people into the future because they already were dead to history. Yeah, yeah, this one. They're just taking them out individually, which is not as compelling or interesting. And then also, if you're going to do that, then make a commentary about the capitalist nature of the exploitative, horrible things that they're doing. That lead you to that, but they don't really.
Speaker 2They just kind of yeah no, or it's like like hey, they only freejack people for specific reasons.
Speaker 1There must be something special about your body, which there is, yeah, that we find out in the plot later, but they don't talk about any of that I feel like this movie honestly feels like it's one of those walking dead side stories of the movie millennium oh also, these rich people can do this too. Millennium is the main plot, the main world we live in, and this is one of those side quests where we talk about the last vestiges of the wealthy desperately trying to cling on to life or whatever.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's like in Johnny Mnemonic, where you have part of the society who's trying to fix this techno virus. Why the rich?
Speaker 1people, they don't care and they're just living for their own pleasure, right, which is why I think this is a weirdly cyberpunk movie that fights being cyberpunk to its own detriment, because, like what you were saying with the Jack thing's like, well, that just screams to me jacking into the johnny mnemonic style, jacking into the yeah, into cyberspace or whatever.
Speaker 2You're jacking into a new body right to upload your consciousness.
Speaker 1But that's not quite what they're doing either not at all they took some of the terminology that they definitely didn't understand and then see if they had brought him in the future.
Speaker 2And the first thing you see is that when he gets brought in the future, they put like a Matrix-style plug in the back of his skull, sure, and they got to get him to the jack port to like put in the other guy's consciousness. Yeah, that makes more sense.
Speaker 1A free jack. It's derivative and contrived, but you know what it. It's derivative and contrived, but you know what it's a thing.
Speaker 2But it wouldn't be at this point. This is pre-Johnny Monarch, this is pre-Matrix.
Speaker 1That is true. It is right before cyberpunk became a real thing in the mainstream media. I mean, it's obviously post-Blade Runner, but it's. Yeah, it would have filled that space, but unfortunately, just like with Runaway, it just fills a space, just not, you know, it doesn't fill the space that it should.
Speaker 2It just fills a space, which is why, like like walking acid spitting spiders ah, it's just a thing, who cares?
Speaker 1or that stereo system you fucked. It fills a space. I don't know if it fills the space do you want hot dog water? Would you like pasta out of a coffee pot? Your kid sucks.
Speaker 2We jump to Julie, who works for the McCandless Corporation, MaxCorp, which is the biggest corporation on Earth, I guess, which explains why they have the biggest tower in the city world.
Studio Interference in Cyberpunk Filmmaking
Speaker 1whatever, I think it's funny that the most work they seem to really do because they do try to do some cityscape shots, some skyline shots, but then the one that the only one that really stuck out to me was when, when they're about to go in the car chase and they come out and the awning for the company, it says mccandless in barely legible letters, but then has a jack from the game jacks, which is what the point we were just making. It was like will be different if it was a fucking jack, an audio jack or a data jack. No, it's jacks, it's just the game jacks who whose idea was that.
Speaker 2That's so not even it's not even the mortal kombat character really.
Speaker 1You know what it is. It's very much abram star trek, where he's just like my ex-wife took everything but my bones. That's why I'm called bones, is it? Or is it like every other doctor ever in history? We think you call you because you're a sawbones. Do you not get the what you're even referencing like? Do you not get your entire premise?
Speaker 2it's one of those things where, like I don't know if they do and they have to try to find some convoluted way to like write these things in yeah, they have to write around studio notes and poorly conceived ideas here. I'm sorry we have a poorly educated group that we're trying to make a movie for. They don't really understand the cyberpunk. I mean we don't even get floppy disks, let alone jacking.
Speaker 1What is internet?
Speaker 2What we do know is jacks, where you throw the ball up and try to pick up shiny little pointy pieces of metal off the ground before the ball falls again.
Speaker 1I guarantee the worst part is, as dumb as that sounds, I guarantee you that's how some of those fucking pitch meetings went, where they were like well, he jacks into this and they're like what does that mean? And then somebody had to be like, oh, you know that game your grandson plays or you played back. You played it back 1908, when you that sled Rosebud. You remember that game you played. Guarantee you, that's how some of these went, because they don't seem to know the difference.
Speaker 1Yeah, Completely missing vital elements which might make this film make more sense, and they're semantic, which would have been so easy to just explain them, but nobody did, apparently.
Speaker 2Nope, julie is in this board meeting. Apparently she has risen up to be high ranking in this company. We find out that they're haggling over mineral rights for some territory with the Japanese and that they had lost the trade war. Whatever that is.
Speaker 1Also extremely dated yeah. Everybody was terrified about the Japanese, because we did such a good job of neoliberalizing them after World War II that they started taking over everything we did.
Speaker 2Maybe they're trying to set up times for the giant robots and the robot jocks to fight over these people's mineral rights?
Speaker 1Well, at least that was the USSR, this is the Japanese. I mean we're talking about the same era when Back to the Future was like oh, the Japanese make all the best stuff, or Nakatomi Tower or Weyland-Nutani or Tyrell sort of like, implied to being taken over by the Japanese.
Speaker 2Or the Sushi Bot stand.
Speaker 1Or the yellow Sushi Bot man in Runaway. Oh God, Thanks for that.
Speaker 2Thanks, runaway. We also meet McCandless, who played by Anthony Hopkins. This is Julie's boss, who seems to be quite fond of her, and he seems to be fully alive. No problems, he's doing great, he's in wherever he's far away. He can't be there right now.
Speaker 1No, he's in virtual reality land.
Speaker 2Yeah, but we don't know where he's at Pizza land he's just oh, pizza land. You were done with this red book when you got it. Huh.
Speaker 1I know. Well, thinking about it in context, I'm like, wow, they got Anthony Hopkins for this. But nowadays I'd be like, yeah, they got Anthony Hopkins for this.
Speaker 2Yeah, at the time it was something, and at the time it was also weird, because they just told him hey, just stand and act in front of this green screen. Right, we're going to put stuff behind you which, in 1991, was not something they did.
Speaker 1Oh no, not at all, In fact, that's extremely rare.
Speaker 2Essentially, that's all he does. So, yeah, and he's definitely alive, super alive. No need to worry about that. No, so Alex and his buddy go to this diner where he's given this hat Now. Originally it was supposed to be the actual like Billy the Kid hat from Young Guns.
Speaker 1Oh, my God.
Speaker 2But apparently that wasn't available anymore because when Lou Diamond Phillips left after that, he took the hat.
Speaker 1Good for him.
Speaker 2So they give him a similar hat.
Speaker 1No, no, no, no. What they do is they gave him a regular fedora that he turns around backwards.
Speaker 2Well, to make it look like that. But they also give him a gun and he does the smirk and he's twirling it around the same way he did in Young and Stubing, like he's twirling it around the same way he did in Young Nights 2, being like, hey, hey, you remember that movie? Wow, that was popular right.
Speaker 1He might as well just turn to the camera and wink. At this point he almost does. He kind of almost does in a couple of places. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2We soon realize that his former friend has ratted on him because the peace officers come.
Speaker 2Dexter, point Dexter we're referring to David Johans to yes, yes, Dexter is ratted on him because the Preject has quite the reward. So he's trying to get out of the slums he's living in, live like the fat cat. He is quickly gunned down. No money for him. He does not pass go, he does not collect $200. As the peace cops are shooting electro shotguns some of them are shooting future guns with the future design. Some of them are just shooting literal shotguns that just shoot electric bolts out of them.
Speaker 1Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2Yeah, really good Top notch there. So they do more running. He steals a bike and he bikes it all the way to Julie's apartment where he gets a voice authorized in which is weird and she doesn't believe him. There's no way he can be Alex. Alex is long dead, Don't know who you are. She sets off an alarm so he runs away. Vesendik shows up and she finds out that is Alex and that Vesendik knew that he was going to come there and pre-programmed the computer to let him in. But there's also the possibility that maybe somebody else who wants his body and has control of her apartment maybe plugged that in.
Speaker 1Yeah, let's not give that away too early, because just on the surface, it voice ID'd him and let him in. Well, his voice is still the same. In fact, it's identical to the last time he was in there, and so when Vincente does all that, it just seems unnecessary, because she asks him when she confronts him in the apartment. How did you get voice ID'd? Well, because he's still the same guy with the same voice, so you would think he could just have gotten in anyway.
Speaker 1Well, he would have been long dead I know, but if the idea is that the computer recognizes your voice, then you're presuming that they know what his voice sounds like that's true yeah, it doesn't make any sense they would have had to find.
Speaker 2I don't film footage of him and like utilize, I don't know how that works.
Speaker 1Yeah, but it's like one of the most important, pivotal plot points when it comes to this arc. She doesn't believe him. He runs off, gets chased, goes into the slums.
Speaker 2Yeah, so Vicenda comes upon him for long runs.
Speaker 1He steals a champagne truck to run against these weird Mad Max death race cop vehicles, very Death Race, but they're all 100% single-person go-karts, yeah, with fiberglass bodies over them.
Speaker 2Except for the big military truck thing they have. Oh yeah, which?
Speaker 1I'm pretty sure is a real vehicle it is.
Speaker 2It is a real vehicle. I don't know what they're called, but they're like big tank things. Yeah, they're kind of tanks yeah, but this one's painted pink, which is a choice.
Speaker 1Yeah, like the top half, I think, is supposed to be red, it's a very light shade of red. Oh yeah. Well, I mean lighting and all that kind of shit is a problem in this movie as well. The whole thing, yeah.
Speaker 2This is also one of the parts where we get some of the fun being played, because, as for long as driving away, the Senate gets on the video phone, which is just like a laptop inside the truck.
Speaker 1It's straight up a laptop and it's funny because it's the exact same kind of laptop that cops use. Yeah, it's weird because it doesn't seem out of place but it's supposed to Well it doesn't seem out of place like now, as an audience watching it, you're like, oh okay, yeah, the guy was making deliveries, he's got a laptop.
Speaker 2He's a champagne delivery guy. Of course he needs his laptop, you know. Tell him where to go.
Speaker 1Of course he has a netbook, of course.
Speaker 2But instead of you know, he's like on there, he's like, hey, where you going, and Frohan closes it but then he pops back up. No, no, I don't understand how that works. Just because you have access to his video phone doesn't mean you can do that. But pop that up, it's whatever they need it so that they can have this witty repertoire back and forth.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's fine. It's the only time he injects any life into this movie.
Speaker 2Yes, really, Only one of the syndic is talking especially to Alex. It's is talking especially to alex. It's the only time you kind of get this could be fun almost like a not quite buddy cop, but that kind of vibe it's a cat and mouse, vibe.
Speaker 1Yeah, we're getting here, yeah but this is where it was like is he australian? Because it sounds really. It sounds odd for a I don't know. He just sounds. I I feel like he's putting on some sort of affectation, and maybe I'm wrong and he just sounds like that. I don't know, but it just doesn't sound quite like what you would think Mick Jagger would sound like speaking.
Speaker 2Yeah, I don't know. I thought he sounded pretty Mick-y, but you know.
Speaker 1Yeah, that part obviously doesn't matter, but this is where you get the only sort of witty repartee in the entire movie.
Speaker 2Yeah, now Furlong keeps taking his soldiers out and he's kind of like, oh good job, you know you're doing all right for yourself.
Speaker 1Well, I've still got you.
Speaker 2Yeah, he's approaching the end of a bridge and you know he's like, hey, don't do it.
Speaker 1You've got to stop. It's a jackknifed semi-truck that has got wedged under a bridge. So what happens is there's a semi-truck that jackknives which is why I mentioned the Mansfield bar thing earlier on with the bridge because it's the same thing where the champagne truck now has to go under the semi truck, which is, for those of you who don't know, that's how the model actress Jane Mansfield died. She was in a convertible and sped and then went under the semi truck and decapitated her. Now they have safeguards for that in real life now. But that's what happened happened. He's got the champagne truck, which it's like decorated to be a vendor, so it's got like this wooden thing on the back that's supposed to look vintage or whatever, and it keeps getting shaved off as he's. This is where they try and showcase him as a race car driver, I think, because they don't do a very good job of it, but that's what they're kind of trying to do.
Speaker 1And then he keeps getting run into the sides of the tunnel they go through or whatever, and parts of it get shaved off and by the end you just have a truck, but it's still got the main top on the back. The sides are just gone. He's about to go under the semi-truck, shaves the top of the semi-truck off, but he's about to run into the roadblock. And that's when Vicente is like don't do it, don't do it, I'll be out of $7 million or whatever the fuck it is. No, he goes, I'll be out of a job.
Speaker 2Which he already is.
Speaker 1Which he already obviously is. Yes. And then that's when Emilio Estevez bails and jumps straight off, not just out of the truck, he's driving across the truck, across two lanes of traffic and then off of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Dystopian Commentary on Corporate Oligarchy
Speaker 2He pulls a Vin Diesel diesel. You can do that. He was a little too fast. Look too furious he's dead.
Speaker 1There's no logical world in which he lives through any of this no, he's got that, bin in him he definitely doesn't omelia vestibus does it's got a lot of concentrated in a small package then no, he took some human gnaws, it's fine no, it's not still alive.
Speaker 2I don't know they'll be alive yeah, if a syndic's like oh, I hope he doesn't drink any of that, otherwise I'm out I'm out of money. But when he says drink any of that, he means drown I thought he meant if he actually ingest any of it, because it's so polluted that it's gonna like poison his body to the point where it's like, oh, he's just like everybody else around here. Oh yeah, A ruined body, you know.
Speaker 1You're probably right. Also, you can't jump off. You can't just jump off the Brooklyn Bridge and live. That's not how things work. That's how suicides happen. That's why they don't do that.
Speaker 2I've seen it, it just happened. It doesn't. Don't tell me it didn't happen.
Speaker 1There's no way that he did what he did and lived.
Speaker 2Well, a lot of this is impossible. He's been dead before, so so he washes up and he meets a homeless, frankie Faison, as Eagle man, who's eating a riverette asking if he wants some. Frankie goes on this weird diatribe about eagles and self-respect.
Speaker 1Well, first of all, frankie say relax, no, what he does is he washes up on by shore we mean a concrete barricade under a bridge and he's like what are you eating? And he just looks at him and goes river rat Want some? And he hands it to him and he's like no, no, god, no. And then he kind of like stops and he thinks about it for a second. He's like how do you even eat river rat? And he just like, to his credit, he kind of like stops eating and he looks at him and he goes well, first you take the head and the tail off and then he explains how he's an idiot for not knowing how poor people have to survive, which I think is a poignant moment in the movie.
Speaker 2If you were going to make commentary of some sort, yeah, and this analogy about Eagle and trying to find its home, and you know how it's self-suspect and whatnot. You know it could be saying something, but it's contextually for the film.
Speaker 1It doesn't make any goddamn sense no, what he says in the movie. Yeah, I know it makes no sense whatsoever, but I I get what they're trying to go for there. He says you ever heard that story about that eagle? You know, worked all his life, had the, you know it's got the nest. And he climbs all the way up to the top and he sees his eagle chicks and is like, oh man, I finally got it, I've got it great. And then two X's come over his eyes like a cartoon and he falls down where it dies and Emilio Estevez is like what? And then he goes no, that never happens, that's not what the eagle does, Because then he starts going into this is what america used to be at least before the 10-year depression.
Speaker 2Yeah, all of the sudden america completely collapsed into authoritarian corporate oligarchism, which actually, sadly, is the most realistic part of this movie one might question whether it was alex furlong dying that sparked, you know, like franz ferdinand, oh, interesting collapse of society, because essentially it's only been 15 years, yeah, and everything has completely collapsed since he left, so, like he died, it all went to shit yeah, that would be interesting if, like taking him, this guy who doesn't mean anything, who's just a dumbass race car driver, was like the lynchpin to all of world society collapsing into authoritarianism and corporate oligarchy.
Speaker 1That's a movie. That's not the movie we have no but it's a movie it could be a movie the part that really bothers me about this scene, and not just the fact that they're just kind of wasting all these things that could make interesting movies, but also, well, I haven't seen a bottle of wine since the 10-year depression and I'm like he just jumped out of a champagne truck. Yeah, like, right above there they had champagne. There is wine available.
Speaker 1It's all over the street I think the worse society gets, the more alcohol is going to become prevalent well, I, I mean, I think they're trying to imply that only the rich could get it, but I, it still doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Unraveling Relationships in Future Dystopia
Speaker 1You've seen wine. You can get wine, I guarantee you.
Speaker 2Another element Eagle man brings up is after Alex runs away. He's like yeah, you do it. You know my mom is watching you, you know cheering for you. So he has become this symbol that people are paying attention to, following his journey, almost Running Man-esque.
Speaker 1But he hasn't had time to do that.
Speaker 2No, there is no time for that.
Speaker 1Nobody even knows he's there. No, it's been like five hours.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, people may see his face but they don't know anything about his journey running from the wealthy trying to kidnap him.
Speaker 1Well, and he does go on TV and kind of talks about it while he's tripping balls. But that's later.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's after this. I guess I see what they might be trying to do with this, but they haven't laid any of that out, so it doesn't fit, it doesn't make sense it's three different movies.
Speaker 1fighting with itself about what it's trying to say, but not hard, casually presenting these things, but not in a way that advances a narrative.
Speaker 2Yeah, again, maybe there's a narrative or some connected material or some ideas, but those are on the cutting room floor or deleted from the script 100%. Now we're introduced to a new character, julie's bodyguard Boone, played by Grand L Bush.
Speaker 1Who's been in a ton of stuff, by the way, yeah.
Speaker 2The first thing that pops in my head is-.
Speaker 1Die.
Speaker 2Hard, die Hard, where he's the FBI agent.
Speaker 1Robert Dobby's partner, or whatever, yeah.
Speaker 2Robert Dobby's partner and Dobby's talking about killing gooks in Saigon. He's like you know I was in grade school. Dickhead that's what I always picture, but like our techie dude this dude might be cool.
Speaker 1I want more of this, yeah, but we don't get much. We'll get a little bit here in a bit, but he reminds me of the character in total. Recall, the one that hooks schwarzenegger up with melina, the. The one's got like the, he's got like a scar or whatever, but he's the one that leads him to the yeah, the strip club or whatever. Yeah, he's the go-between. He feels like that character to me because he's that go-between between Rene Rousseau and this underground or whatever. He's that archetype of I'm the right-hand man, of the right resistance person and I'm going to tie you two together, or whatever. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2Yeah, I could see that, but he's with her furlongs back in another slum and there's a guy playing sax.
Speaker 1There you go. Very reminiscent of thunderdome-esque sax playing.
Speaker 2Oh boy, and julie just happens to find him, but they're just driving through the slum. She convinces him that she isn't after their bounty. She then takes him to a club because she knows a guy who might be able to like get him out and get him off the street and find some safe place for them.
Speaker 2It's always the club now this was supposed to be much bigger in the script and, like some of the stuff they filmed, this is going to be this club that was on the edge of society where it's kind of really showing the haves and have nots and there's going to be stuff like public sex and bets and future S&M. There can be public beheadings. They even brought the guys behind Bassett Case 3 to the special effects for these public beheading scenes because you can't get jacked in the future if you are without your head. So as a show of resistance they would go to these places and auction themselves off to be beheaded so they couldn't be jacked in the future. I mean like a FU to the upper elites who might want them.
Speaker 1There's chicks with three tits.
Speaker 2If only.
Speaker 1In both Star Trek 5 and Total Recall. But if you were doing this correctly, this is where you lean into the cyberpunk thing, where you have, like transhumanists doing cyber mods, do a transmit thing, you know, or even an altered carbon type stuff, but they're not doing that at all.
Speaker 2It's not nearly sci-tech enough for any of that, not at all. Hey, here's some people who don't fit the norms of late 80s, early 90s, you know.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2Might wear some S&M gear, maybe have a shaved head for a woman stuff like that. Oh God, you know their tops off what.
Speaker 1That's crazy talk. And she has two breasts.
Speaker 2I don't even mess with that. Now Furlong has a drink here at the bar that knocks him on his ass. Apparently it's Future Hall or something, Apparently. Then a random reporter finds him and interviews him. Now, the reporter was Mick Jagger's real-life partner at the time.
Speaker 1By the way, looks 15 years older in this than she does in Batman 89. She looks terrible in this Compared to how she looks in that. This can't be that much later than 89. And it's like what? Is it 90?, 91? Yeah, Did she actually jump off that building? What happened to her?
Speaker 2Maybe just living that rock star life with.
Speaker 1Mitt, keith Richards, hanging around you, just age by default.
Speaker 2Well, apparently she didn't age her too much, because she could still marry Rupert Murdoch in 2016.
Speaker 1Oh, my God.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's great, that's gross. She's interviewing him and Emilio, he does an Arnold accent here as a specific reference to who they originally wanted to pitch this role for and this whole idea of the Arnienie action film, which is why he did this like arnold schwarzenegger accent kind of like again but at the same time, more commentary you could be making that you aren't, yep 100.
Speaker 2so julia then reaches out to mccandless, her boss, played by anthony hopkins, for advice. He agrees to try and like look into who the client is, says you know, stay safe, you know, we'll get back to you in time. Then Alex and Julie they have a love scene, while Emilio is shirtless. Now he is still attracted to her and hits on her, which she rebuffs at first. This would have made more sense in the original script idea and casting with Linda Parentino One, because she watched him die and she can't get over that. There's also supposed to be like such a huge age gap, but since it's just, it's just like 10, 15 years, she looks just the same.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2It's not like. It doesn't make much sense that it's not working.
Speaker 1It feels more like when Murphy goes back into his old house and has the flashbacks of his wife.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1It feels more like that than it does. Lovers spanned out through time or whatever.
Speaker 2Yeah, they have a scene and then she's going to like help him get away. We get a quick scene with Michelet, which is Jonathan Banks' character, interrogates the nun that had found Alex. Doesn't really come to much of anything.
Speaker 1Such a waste.
Speaker 2Such a waste. Then Julie is taking Alex back into the slum area and is going to let him go and she says that she has a life that she can't just walk away from. Us was 18 years ago, but two days for you. Now she lays a scenario out about coming to him before the big race and asked him to drop everything. Would he do it? He says no, that he wouldn't do it. And so he realizes, oh, I can't just ask her to drop everything, would he do it? He says no, that he wouldn't do it, and so he realizes, oh, I can't just ask her to drop everything in her life and run away with me.
Speaker 2I kind of really like this aspect where she's the older one, she has career, she's like our time came and passed. You go, do your own thing. Now I have my own life to live. Sure, that's really kind of a mature way of looking at this. This isn't just he comes to the future and wins her back and they run. You know, happily ever after. Right, I did love you. That's no longer me, I have my own thing going on.
Speaker 1Which is really interesting too, because if you had done it in any sort of competent way, commentary is that if everything's gone to shit because he left, this attraction, this draw back to her, is invariably going to fail, and the fact that he left in the first place is why they can't be together. I mean, yeah, that's way more interesting, but then none of that matters either.
Speaker 2It doesn't end up mattering because it's thrown away real quick after this For a reason which we'll get to, but at least the idea I like. I'm not the damsel that you wanted. We're different people. I know it doesn't mean anything to you, but as adults we can recognize that this isn't our time anymore. Okay, that's something. So boone goes with him to drop him off to the resistance. There's again another big gunfight. This is where we get boone awesomeness. He automatically pulls out like a katana and starts cutting people's. Oh yeah, cut people up. I want to know more about this. Yeah, he helps him run away like, gets grenades blows up and whatnot. Now Furlong is running away, but then Vesendik is there and he's going to run but decides not to, and he needs to figure out who's behind this. Apparently, people are following him again like the running man. Furlong is caught by Vesendik in a smoky factory and Pasendek reveals it's McCann who is behind it all and because apparently he had saved his life, he's going to give him a five-minute head start to run away again.
Speaker 1Apparently I read this that Jagger wanted to make this kind of fun.
Speaker 2and he was going to count with my eyes closed one higgledy-piggledy, two higgledy-piggledy, but they changed it to one. Mississippi, two Mississippi, to be more Americanized.
Speaker 1Americanized? Yeah, and the people would get it. Am I wrong in thinking this is the identical set from RoboCop Total Recall Cyborg.
Speaker 2You know, an unused smoky factory somewhere? I mean, this one would be.
Speaker 1Atlanta, probably specifically in Dallas. It was shot in Atlanta, so it'd be somewhere there so it's not the same one, but it looks exactly the same as those ones from all of those movies yeah, yeah better movies doing very similar premises actually yeah, there's definitely some venn diagram crossover there robocop and total recall very much have a crossover with this movie mind swapping and whatnot.
Speaker 2There's lots going on there oh, big time yeah alex runs away and he finds that julie has stolen the tank truck thing and picks alex up. Now they call michelette again, the guy who's in charge of the max corp or whatever. They're going to meet in his office. Wait for mccandless. So they go to this huge blade runner s corporate hotel bank looking place and cop security. Let them up. Then they show this footage of his crash again and again, I guess to squeeze every dime out of this f1 car explosion they had. Michelette reveals that canlis ha ha is dead and that it's michelette's plan to just let the time work out, because he only has so much time after his dead body His conscience was uploaded into the spiritual switchboard to take over a new body and he just lets it run out. Well then Michelet gets the company. Mccandless is gone, no harm, no foul. So he doesn't give a shit about furlong. He goes to let them go.
Speaker 1It's way too late in the movie to do this.
Speaker 2Yes, in the movie to do this. Yes, we also find that he's been the one organizing this resistance. I guess Funding them to keep things from working out smoothly. But he does fire Julie and he lets him go. She does get off maybe one of the top cinematic slaps onto his face before she leaves Great, great, physical slap.
Speaker 1It is a good slap yeah.
Speaker 2Good slap and so they go to leave, but Mishler orders their deaths when they are supposed to get off the end elevator, but Vesendek shows up and goes to kill all those cops instead. Now they decide to go up instead of down after that and they plan to go to the 100th floor for the fire escape. But the elevator stops and it goes up and up like to 200 penthouse suite, which is the spiritual switchboard, aka the big jack on top of the building oh boy so they get up there tubes everywhere that look just like the tubes at the end fight battle on cloud city and empire strikes back you're not wrong
Speaker 2the lights flashing on this metal sphincter doors and everything. And then we get a little VR fun as McCandless explains his plan while leading Furlong and Julie to stall for time until Vesendik can get up there, and then they can do the switcheroo so that McCandless, aka Anthony Hopkins, can take over his body. We find out that he wants to do this for a couple reasons. One, because he's young, healthy, whatever, but mainly because he wants Julie. And if he takes the old lover's body, then he's young, healthy, whatever, but mainly because he wants Julie. And if he takes the old lover's body, then she's just going to fall in love with him and he can rule out the rest of his days with her at his side by manimal lust.
Speaker 2Oh manimals.
Speaker 1Yep.
Highlander 2 Plot Analysis
Speaker 2So they put Furlong's hands on a smaller jack, because you can't have enough jack symbolism here and they're going to have this mind off.
Speaker 1Highlander 2, the quickening.
Speaker 2Yeah, they got to quicken real quick with this big crystal in the center, because you need crystals.
Speaker 1A dark crystal for sure. Dark crystal, dilithium, whatever it is.
Speaker 2There's just Skeksis underneath pulling the strings here, and then furlong says you don't need a new body, you need a new soul. But whatever we get this silly cgi mind transfer war.
Speaker 1Replay of the whole movie but just the movie, not his like just the movie, not in like flash gordon, where they go, you know, into zarkov's but when he's a kid. And then World War II, and then all that stuff. No, just the movie.
Speaker 2Just the movie? Yeah, Just the past day and a half apparently.
Speaker 1Just the past day and a half or so that we've seen.
Speaker 2Yes, they're having, like this battle of wills, you know, and Alex looks like he's losing and he starts screaming and Hopkins is straight faced, I guess acting intensely, if you want to call it that.
Speaker 1Is Anthony Hopkins doing the least work humanly possible?
Speaker 2Yeah, just stand there and stare at him. Can do, that's what he does. But Julie is able to steal a gun and blow up the crystal right when Michelet shows up. So Michelet is like oh great, the crystal transfer's done, didn't happen. I have the company, but Furlong's like no, I'm McCandless. The company but Furlong's like no, I'm McCandless. And we're like, oh shit, there wasn't enough time. And it's like, yeah, we've had transfers take shorter, we've had transfers take longer. Who knows, I don't know.
Speaker 1They have a wormy science guy that runs over and says, well, it's totally possible, it's happened before.
Speaker 2Now, why don't you have a Cyberalysis character? Be the techie here. At least bring him back. I don't know, maybe yeah where did he go, yeah? Just out of the film for no reason. So they're like okay, he's got a personal ID number, check it. And so he thinks about it real hard. Vesendik, you know, has the code in his hand and it's really dramatic and he goes six.
Speaker 1Yeah, yes, this part was awkward.
Speaker 2Oh, very much so, because you think one, think one. Ha, it's funny that this personal code would just be one number six, because vicentex is like correct.
Speaker 1Yeah, okay, that's great, but then they start doing more numbers and it continues yeah, but in a weird way too, it's already awkward that they make it seem like oh, that's it six, yep, you're right. And then there's this weird awkward silence. And then amelia west was like eight uh, yeah, uh, yep, that too. Yep, it's almost like they did reshoots, yeah. And then there's this weird awkward silence, and then Emilio Estevez is like eight yeah, yeah, yep, that too.
Speaker 2Yep, it's almost like they did reshoots. Yeah, the reshoots were written at six and it's like oh yeah, no, that's kind of funny.
Speaker 1But that's not enough numbers.
Speaker 2So it's quirky. Oh yeah, your payoff is this almost lighthearted thing thing, but it just doesn't really work when they keep doing more numbers.
Speaker 1Because they keep doing more numbers. And then it gets even more awkward because he seems like he believes them, and then sometimes it seems like he doesn't believe him and then he just walks away. And then Estevez starts screaming out more numbers.
Speaker 2Yeah, and he's kind of screaming at Michelet and Michelet's going like crazy. He's like no, no, this can't be happening. It was supposed to be my company and he pulls out his gun, but he's right about the numbers.
Speaker 1So it's like why does he keep walking away like he's wrong? Because we're still in the number proving phase, we haven't even got to the like oh, I don't care about the numbers. He gets four numbers in and then walks off. And then Emilio Estevez is like and 875357. Also that.
Speaker 2You mean Vesendik walks off? Yeah, vesendik walks off.
Speaker 1Yeah, Vesendik walks off.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, I think he's just walking around because I guess he was tired of standing there.
Speaker 1Yes.
Speaker 2It'd been all of 10 seconds so.
Speaker 1Yeah right, it just feels like he gives up on the scene and they're still shooting and they're like, well, you gotta follow him.
Speaker 2Maybe he's like, ah, this scene doesn't really make much sense or work, so I'm done with it. I'm going to improvise, just walk around.
Speaker 1Yeah, and then they keep going with the numbers, which you would feel like in the scene because he's already walked off, that they're not important. But then they are and then aren't automatically after.
Speaker 2Right, yeah. So Michelet is going crazy because he's like there's no way McCandless has taken over. I want the company. So he pulls out his gun to try to shoot McCandless, who he believes in Furlong's body, and then the Sendix people light him up. The Sendix is like, hey, welcome back to us, mr McCandless. Yeah, Thank you, you did a good job.
Speaker 1Bring my car around.
Speaker 2Yeah, bring the car around, so they get dressed up in different fineries and he takes Julie and they go to drive away. But then the Sendix shows up and blocks them, gets out and he walks to the and he's like Julie, you're going to have to teach him much better. And he's like well, what do you mean? He's like, well, mccandless can't drive, he could never drive. I knew it was you this whole time. That's when the whole audience is like, oh what, julie as well, it's like it's furlongs. I was funning this.
Speaker 1I'm still old Alex, but I'm gonna take his money and pretend to be McCandless. Well, nobody bought it that. He was actually McCandless. He was obviously a bluff. Oh yeah, he totally transferred into my brain and obviously, okay. Here's the dumb part about that. He obviously did get some of the brain juice from Anthony Hopkins because he was able to pull those numbers out and they were correct, right? No, the numbers aren't correct. Oh, I thought they were.
Speaker 2He asked him about the numbers and he's like, no, you didn't get any of them, right.
Speaker 1Well then, why did everyone say they were right?
Speaker 2Only Vesendik knew the numbers, and Vesendik, I guess, wanted. That's why he walked away. I think he wanted his commission Right, of course, because if he delivered the body and got the mine transferred, then he gets paid right to. He was like oh, I'm a funny rapscallion. I like to see things go awry for my own amusement. So I want this free jack weirdo to have all the money in the world and win, because I've grown to respect him not really, though because, I mean, it explains why he walked away in the middle of that conversation then.
Speaker 1But michelette is the one that believes that he does have the numbers and that's why he's like, fuck you, I deserve this company and that's why they shoot him. But after that, what does he give a shit? Wouldn't he benefit more from being in on the idea that McAnlis is now actually Emilio Estevez and then could still possibly get paid Once they leave? What is his motivation, based on anything we've been given so far in this movie?
Speaker 2He lets them be him, because we assume he gets paid.
Speaker 1He doesn't seem to. That's why he seems to go after them, because now he knows he's not going to.
Speaker 2Oh, I think he just wants to rub it in and be the fun foil at the very last breath of the film.
Speaker 1I guess. But this is also us projecting a lot onto this character that doesn't have that much. I don't think what you're saying is there. I think it's a better way for us to rationalize how this character works. I don't think that's in there, based on everything he's done thus far in this movie.
Speaker 2I'm having to read stuff in, so you're kind of like have to assume.
Speaker 1I think you and I are both giving them too much credit. I don't think there's that much there.
Speaker 2There isn't much, but it is kind of like the fun pseudo twist ending. I guess it's supposed to be a twist. I guess because we were led to believe something for three minutes before that. But he does get away and before he leaves, to prove that he's him.
Speaker 2He's like a nibble my ear for luck, just like he did last time he was driving a car back in 1990s and that worked out so well for everyone and then they drive away into the sunset to let the poor still be poor and use all their money for the grand old adventures of running the biggest company in the world.
Speaker 1But then it's got a weird voiceover. He talks about hearing everybody in the world because he's got the prize.
Speaker 2That's the ending they're doing there, oh then he's the one who builds the dome to keep the ozone out.
Speaker 1Already more interesting.
Speaker 2Yeah, he's the one that misguidedly makes that dome that ends up being Neskis' corporate hellhole. Let's be honest Highlander 2 is more interesting than this.
Speaker 1Wow, okay, it is definitely more interesting. Is it better? Ooh, I don't know.
Speaker 2I mean, it has swords.
Speaker 1They both have swords, though.
Speaker 2And Michael Ironside.
Speaker 1Okay, I'll give you the Michael Ironside factor, but this one does have Jonathan Banks and Mick Jagger, one of the only rock stars from that era not to be in Highlander the series.
Speaker 2God, oh man. Think of Anthony Hopkins. Almost like a retired Highlander. He'd be a watcher Out of the game, but still has all the skills.
Speaker 1I mean it would be interesting. Yeah, it's either that or he's a watcher.
Speaker 2Oh, Mick Jagger's a Highlander. I want to see that.
Speaker 1That's what I'm saying. I mean, that's their entire wheelhouse is guys like Mick Jagger. The range, the scope is Bull from Nightcourt to the lead singer of well, the who, but then also Fine Young Cannibals.
Speaker 2Hijack, Ooh hijack.
Speaker 1Hijack. Oh no, Now we're reopening this case.
Speaker 2Oh no.
Speaker 1That's dangerous ground. We're on deadly ground now.
Speaker 2Speaking of which, after Prejack Jeff Murphy couldn't really get a whole lot of work he did do Under Siege 2, dark Territory.
Speaker 1Oh no.
Speaker 2That was his next big feature and the one that made the most money. After that he was the second unit director on Dante's Peak.
Speaker 1Oh.
Speaker 2I mean coming back to Highlander Fortress 2, re-entry.
Speaker 1Oh, Fortress 2.
Speaker 2Yeah Two. The second best, one of the Fortress movies. The second best Christopher Lambert.
Speaker 1Fortress movie.
Speaker 2Ooh, beth Toussaint, I forgot about you. Ishara Yar, yes, please.
Speaker 1Oh Isharayar. Oh okay, that's fine, I get it.
Rock Star Sci-Fi Vehicles Discussion
Speaker 2Yeah, Okay. In the grand scheme of our rock stars in science fiction vehicles in the 80s 90s, I think this one and Mick Jagger's performance is better than our previous entry.
Speaker 1Runaway.
Speaker 2Of Runaway. This is better. Yes, I've run away this is better.
Speaker 1Yes, I think mick jagger is better.
Speaker 2I don't think either of those two have anything to work with no, but at least I feel like what mick jagger's bringing to this is what he wanted to yeah and at least has some charisma, that's showing up. Oh yeah, I mean, gene simmons is a fucking board with a nail in it I mean he has a presence, but I don't know if it's an enjoyable screen presence.
Speaker 1Yeah, but I mean, he's doing the same thing that Jonathan Banks does in Breaking Bad, but Jonathan Banks is an expert at it. Yeah, deadpan Walter, what are you talking about? He manages to make that look good. Gene Simmons is just awful, and I think Mick Jagger is awful in this, but at least he yeah, you're right, I think he's at least doing something.
Speaker 2Yeah, I also think again. This is a film that had the concept of ideas for a cool, interesting science fiction film, to say something, but it eschewed all of those.
Speaker 1It's got like 15 different ideas of cool science fiction films, saying something and doesn't do any of them. No it doesn't go down one specific path, definitely doesn't create any sort of cohesive narrative or, especially, commentary. I mean, there's really nothing going on here. It really just feels like a pastiche of it just feels like if movies from this era were like building blocks, like Duplos they're just robbing from other ones and stacking them on top of each other with no plan. There's no structure you're building. You're just building something to build it.
Speaker 1And it doesn't mean anything that's like the tenet of science fiction and fantasy. Right Is to make a commentary, isn't that the whole point? Yeah, this doesn't do that.
Speaker 2Which the source material has in spades and I think the director wanted to do, but from the production problems, all the writers, editors, reshoots, casting things all over the place. He just wasn't able to put that on screen.
Speaker 1Couldn't land it yeah.
Speaker 2And it's too bad, but it makes for a unique feature. Kind of lost the time time I don't think many people are talking about free jack these days not enough, and I would say overall. You know, I hadn't watched it in decades and I watched it again I was like oh, that was fine, I didn't hate it yeah, it's more confident than you would think yeah, I think I re-watched it again before this to kind of take some notes and stuff, and it was much worse the second time oh well when you're examining things, I'm like no, this just does not work right on any level really outside of general vibes.
Speaker 1It doesn't work at all.
Speaker 2Very much no for just a passing oddity in the sci-fi landscape, especially with a rock star. I mean, mick jagger isn't in too many movies.
Speaker 1No, not very many.
Speaker 2There is that.
Speaker 1Which is why we wanted to do this little mini, because you could say that about almost all of the people that do these. Some of them did a bunch of movies, but most of them, I feel like they were competing with each other to do this and never before or again tried. It was just like a very specific era where rock stars tried to do a very specific thing, kind of competing with each other and or at least inspired by each other. Because, like, if David Bowie isn't in all the movies he was in back then, I don't think anybody does any of these movies. I mean, mick Jagger might have shown up in a movie, but I don't think it was going to be a sci-fi, trope film. All of the ones we're tackling in this series. You know what I mean yeah, yeah, that's quite possible.
Speaker 2Maybe when we get to the end of this whole series, whenever that does come to conclusion, you know a little retrospective on the role of rock stars in these sci-fi vehicles throughout the 70s, 80s, 90s it'll be interesting to see. Maybe bowie was the door opener, but I, I don't know, I'd have to. We'll have to see how that plays out.
Speaker 1I'm sure he wasn't the first, but I think he was the main. He was the guy known for it.
Speaker 2And we'll have to see where that journey takes us. But you, gentle listener, you'll have to wait and see how far down the rabbit hole we go. Oh it goes, it goes pretty deep it goes, baby, but we thank you for taking this journey with us, jacking in and jacking off freely.
Speaker 1That's right.
Speaker 2Untethered.
Speaker 1No notes. No notes on that commentary.
Speaker 2Thank you for listening. We hope you've enjoyed. If you wouldn't mind, like sharing, subscribing, we'd super appreciate it. Please pass around those who need to get jacked in themselves. Can't let them be too free.
Speaker 1React in themselves. Can't let them be too free To the web or otherwise.
Speaker 2If you wouldn't mind giving us five AscendX on the podcast app of your choice.
Speaker 1Don't get enough of those.
Speaker 2Ideally Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. And again, thank you. Thank you for just stopping by hanging out with us checking out an old movie and it's almost getting close to 35 years old, almost.
Speaker 1Less than half of Mick Jagger's career.
Speaker 2Which will never end.
Speaker 1No, it'll never end.
Speaker 2You know this weird sci-fi rock star oddity and we hope you come back for the next one, whenever that might be. But until that time, skip. Before they get jacked into the future, what should they do while they're still with the living?
Speaker 1While you guys still have your bones and have yet to be jacked of said bones, please make sure that you have pager tabs. Make sure you've cleaned up after yourselves to some sort of reasonable degree. Make sure you're safe, whether it's been really bad. Make sure that you support your local comic shops and retailers and from Dispatch Ajax from our temporary studios.
Speaker 2We would like to say Godspeed, fair Wizards, One higgledy-piggity, two higgledy-piggity.
Speaker 1One Mississippi.
Speaker 2But you're kind of doing a little Barry, there.
Speaker 1I don't know what Jagger's doing in this movie. I don't get it.
Speaker 2Yeah, and you can't see, like doing the big duck lips, that doesn't work baby, I'm doing the chicken dance, but it's really hard to see. It is hard to see. I don't like it when I'm seeing it right now.
Speaker 1In an audio format especially Well. He's got that blackout on one of his glass lenses, though he doesn't need it.
Speaker 2Yeah, I'm close to vent horizon myself as we speak. Yeah.
Speaker 1Then go back to Eastside.
Speaker 2If he could pair up with Boone, have them do a little buddy cop movie.
Speaker 1A Rosencrantz and Guildenstern type adventure Like I'm down.
Speaker 2They just walk through the Freeshack movie.
Speaker 1At least there's something.
Speaker 2That would be something.
Speaker 1Please go away.