Dragonheart: A New Beginning and Rollerball (2002) with Derek Schlender - Talking Pondo

 In this episode, return guest Derek Schlender ("Schlender 5 Productions") joins the podcast. He brings along the movie Dragonheart: A New Beginning. Marty and Clif give Derek the movie Rollerball (2002) to watch.

First up is Rollerball, the much-maligned remake of the 1975 sci-fi classic. Clif, Marty, and Derek dissect everything from the chaotic editing and baffling storytelling to the early-2000s soundtrack overload, while asking how a movie with this much money and talent behind it could go so spectacularly off the rails.

Then it's on to Dragonheart: A New Beginning, the direct-to-video follow-up to the fantasy favorite. The gang struggles to find anything resembling the magic of the original as they pick apart the effects, performances, questionable story choices and a dragon that doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Even Derek admits he may have pushed his luck with these picks. But, sometimes tearing apart a bad movie can be just as entertaining as celebrating a great one.

Along the way: fake Russian accents, Pink and Slipknot cameos, Scooby-Doo comparisons, poisoned skeletons, dragon anatomy and Derek apologizing over and over.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:22

You die in game.

SPEAKER_04 0:24

Great sacrifice.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Welcome to season four of Talking Pondo. Talking Pondo is a podcast where Cliff and Marty give each other a film to watch and talk about them in detail. Some episodes will include special guests.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

Joff takes up rollerblading, will not be seen this week, so we may bring you cheesy barbed wire sound effects already in progress.

SPEAKER_05 0:58

Boing! Boing.

SPEAKER_03 1:02

Folks, listeners, I'm gonna apologize up front for this episode. Um it'll probably be a pretty good one, but if you don't like to hear people bitch about movies, you probably just you might want to skip this one. I get well, you maybe, maybe it's just me, but we'll get there.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

And it's not a repeat. You know, you see that title and you go, Dragon. I'll let Cliff say the titles, but you'll see that title and be like, no, no, this is not, we are not covering the same two movies. Uh, but we do have uh a return guest who's coming back today to continue to uh explore these sagas with us. It's Derek Slender back again. Derek Slender.

SPEAKER_04 1:44

Welcome, buddy. Hey guys, thank you so much for having me. And I'm gonna start this by using the two most quoted words of my life. I'm sorry. This was 100% my idea. Uh, so direct your hate to me. It is completely your fault. Jeff and Marty, they were such uh such gentlemen in allowing me to just kind of uh determine and dictate these movies. And uh, oh boy, am I am I so sorry? And what you know, time is the only resource we can't get back, and I've wasted yours.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

That is true for the people who made these movies feel that way too.

SPEAKER_04 2:24

So uh I don't think the people who made these movies feel anything even remotely close to human emotion.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

What are these classics of cinema we watched over the cliff? I'm glad I own them.

SPEAKER_03 2:37

Okay, buddy. Uh we have um oh boy Dragonheart 2, A New Beginning, and the remake from 2002 of Rollerball. Thanks, dude. You mean you really won't go over the same week? It's just I guess if you're gonna get kicked in the nuts, you might as well spread your legs and just you know make a nice target. It won't hurt as bad the second time. It's the first kick that gets you. Oh, nope, you got them both the first time. That's that made it.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Well, we do have some listener mail to ease the pain briefly uh before we jump in. Uh let's see. Wow, I'm just so shell-shocked over, you know, this film.

SPEAKER_03 3:29

I'm gonna PTSD from fucking rollerball. Chris Klein. And if I see that guy in person ever, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I mean, I'm probably gonna freak the fuck out.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Poor Chris Klein. Poor Chris Klein. So the first piece of mail was from uh someone named Catherine Columbi, and apparently she's from Canada. And he responds on our Strange Brew episode. Imagine that, saying, I love my pizza too, eh? You guys are great, eh? Give us a big smile, eh? I'm not sure if she's just referring to the post of the Strange Brew post or if she actually listened. And uh then the other comment was from the Batman Blade episode, where Izzy T writes in again and says, I want to be mad at Marty about the juggalo comment, but I do like Tim Burton, and I'm also into clowns. But he redeemed himself by bringing up Hudson Hawk. And then my response was, Well, I've always had many juggalo friends. It's it's always been that way. As far back as Public Access, where there was the Juggalo show and they loved us. They said, The reason we're down here is because we watched your show, and now we're down here taking families. So juggalo's for life, right?

SPEAKER_03 4:44

Hey, I uh my state my state is uh honored to hold to um uh allow the juggalos to come in for the for the gathering every year. They have the gathering here in my state every year. It's a big, big deal. And yeah, apparently, from what I've read, it's kind of I read an article on it uh recently for some reason, and what people are saying is like it's one of the last festivals out there that is a corporate corporate America ties to death. Food's cheap, drinks are cheap. Apparently, there's plenty of good drugs. Uh, you know, if you go if you go for that type of pharaoh, and there's like dude, uh Sarah Sherman from fucking Saturday Night Live is going to be doing comedy at the gatherings. Oh, they are the strangest guest. That is the wildest. Like, I was just like, that is the wildest pairing.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

That's like Gilbert Gottfried one year, I think. Yeah, so it's yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:34

Downside, the smell.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Yeah. No, that's a lot of cons, so in junglows.

SPEAKER_04 5:41

If I may, I also have a piece of fan mail. Oh shit. Hit me with that says, I kill you scum, uh, which I believe was written by my father after I made him watch both these movies.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Oh no.

SPEAKER_04 5:56

That's also a Simpsons joke, and uh pretty much for Dylan. He's he's our crossover demographic. You made your dad watch these movies? Yeah, man. I mean, my dad is why I watch uh hackers. He called them like bad movies. He he's the whole reason that like I watch like I watch a good movie. Oh, dude. Okay, so I had never seen that movie until earlier this year. That's a whole nother story. I love yes, you're right. You're absolutely right. Uh the skateboard handoff of the day disc is my favorite scene in any movie ever. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that. That shook me to my core. But that's a conversation for another time. Let's talk about movies that have less artistic value than a skateboard handoff.

SPEAKER_03 6:46

We already have two really bad movies on the on the the show. We don't need a third one.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

So we usually let the guests decide what we're covering first. So what's what are we? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:58

Oh um. This is supposed to be that funny, but thank you. I know. I'm sorry. I think we got it. I think we gotta what I think we're gonna do is we're gonna do the inverse. So if people listen to them back to back, we had started with Dragon Quest, went to Rollerball. I think we'll start with Rollerball, end with Dragon Quest. Okay. Um, so Rollerball.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Starting with Rollerball, okay. The remake. Oh, the remake, yes, not the not the other one. But talk about director jail. What is Rollerball? 2000 crew, Cliff.

SPEAKER_03 7:34

Rollerball, 2002, PG13, one hour 38 minutes. Uh, the big thing in 2005, 2005, is a violent sport which can have some pretty serious consequences, like dying. Uh this is this is directed by fucking John McTiernan. Directed by John McTiernan. Writers are William Harr Harrison, Larry Ferguson, John Pogue, stars Chris Klein, John Renault, L.O. Cool J and Rebecca Romain. And let's see here. Storyline. In this fast-packed action, fast action-packed thriller, Jonathan, played by Chris Klein, Marcus, played by LL Cool Jay, and Aurora, Rebecca Romain, compete in a dangerous, fierce sport called rollerball. Although Jonathan and Marcus try to quit, cruel and vindictive promoter Alexei Petrovich, played by John Renault, encourages them to still participate. Petrovic sends his men to attack them while they're on a trip, but Jonathan survives. In the end, during a game of rollerball, Petrovich attempts a public execution of Jonathan, but the question is, will Jonathan get revenge?

SPEAKER_04 8:40

Wait, is that really the synopsis they give you? Yeah, that's what they gave me. That's the whole movie. Yeah. Well, yeah, now you don't have to watch it. They're thinking the the plot's too complex.

SPEAKER_03 8:53

It's I mean, for a for a rollerball movie, it's a pretty complex plot, honestly. Um to start. First off, first off, John McTiernan. John McTiernan, really? Really, sir?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Okay. So this guy brought us some good movies at one point. He did. But he also brought us last action hero. So, you know. He gave us fucking diehard.

SPEAKER_04 9:17

But yeah, right. But also, he apparently fucked up um am I allowed to swear on this podcast? Yes. Oh, yeah. He gave us Predator.

SPEAKER_03 9:25

Uh-huh. He gave us the hunt for Red October.

SPEAKER_04 9:28

Yes, he apparently fucked up uh 13th Warrior so bad that Michael Crichton had to come in and do like the cleanup on it. So if we're talking like if we're talking like time frame, um this kind of fits. I mean, kind of fits.

SPEAKER_03 9:43

There's a lot of stuff directly after 13th Warrior, he goes to do rollerball. So it's like, and and from what I read, he they had a great script. Like the writer I heard that too. They had written a really, really great script, and like the Hollywood and the Hollywood executives are like, this is fucking great. It it makes what they said was what I read was like some of the questions that were unanswered from the original rollerball are answered in this new script, right? Like it was a continuation of the world, that whole deal, and then we're wrapping up. And McTiernan gets a script, he's like, fuck that. Rewriting it, and just rewrites it, puts it in 2005, gives it this, you know, that that fucking skateboard sled shit in San Francisco louds. Fucking Jesus, dude. It's like and this is the era of extreme, yeah, where everything was fucking extreme. Mountain Dew, Doritos, fucking Taco Bell, everything was fucking extreme. Hey man, you almost got me killed.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

I wish the whole movie had been like that opening scene. I would have been laughing through the whole thing instead of being like, oh no, now we've entered the mind-crushingly boring part of the movie. I mean, I still laughed a little bit though.

SPEAKER_03 10:49

Yeah, I mean, if look, if you watch the here's what I'll say. If you go into this movie and you like bad movies, right? If you get off on bad movies and like bad scenes and things like that, you'll really dig this. You'll love it. This is ripe for rift tracks to take.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Yeah, where is the rift tracks? Is what I was thinking.

SPEAKER_03 11:03

Yeah, this this is completely ripe to be taken. You can't stop sounding. It's completely, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:09

Well, they killed themselves 30 minutes in, so there's still like another hour that like is just static rift track.

SPEAKER_03 11:16

They tried their best. I've I found the cure for insomnia, guys. You want to know what it is? It's Chris Klein and LL Cool J. Take take one of each, and then just you'll wake up in the morning, riff rational question. LOQLU. I don't remember anything.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Even the opening credits were bad. It was like, oh man, it's just it's telling you, you know. But you want to talk about John McTiernan. This movie was so bad, he went to federal prison for a year because of this movie.

SPEAKER_04 11:50

Well, not because of his directing ability. No, but it's still because he probably violated some kind of human rights.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

It ended up being directing to this film because they want the executors were have they were like, no, you have to reshoot. We gotta get this thing to a PG 13, you're making all these bad decisions. The original ending where Chris Kyant lives and takes rollerball to America is a stupid ending. We're cutting it. Apparently, the test screening got booed. Where is the where's this work print of the R rated version that's like a half hour longer if you really want the I'd love to see it? Yeah, I'd love to see it. He hired I think that's oh, go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 12:27

Oh no, I was gonna say, as uh um, so one of the most obvious editing choices is taking shadows over Rebecca Romain's boobs, which by the way, they did a poor job at it best. Uh we can see them. You can see them, yeah. But then some of the other things I read was like some of the violence, like every time people were getting hit, it was supposed to be like blood extreme. And instead, we're seeing like seltzer water. And that's like well supposed to be sweat, right? Yeah. I I have I have like uh kind of mixed feelings about that because the f the original rollerball, which we covered to great success, um part of the fun of that was the cinematography. Like as we discussed, they hired the uh Olympic um hockey team to film actual rollerball sequences, and it looks amazing. We have an idea what's going on. We don't need the blood. The blood at the end is the part where like, oh, that's the escalation. So starting with the R rating and trying to engineer backwards, I think is probably a mistake for them. But also one of the biggest problems I have with this is like they made what were very simple rules in the first rollerball absolutely bonkers in this one. Like, why is everything in a figure eight configuration? Like that doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_03 13:41

The court is weird, and like when you have to do the rabbit hole. Yeah, you gotta do the rabbit hole and go up to the top and then drop back down, and then the motorcycles come in and and and then a clown appears and does a juggling act.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Well, like I was saying, this movie was so bad that he went to federal prison for a year. Why? Well, he was he paid a private investigator to wiretap the executive or the producers of this movie to see what kind of shit they were talking about him in the movie. And then when the FBI asked him if he did it, he lied to them. So then he went to jail for a year. Why? Because he made this fucking rollerball movie. There's more to it than that, but it's like, wow, I knew this movie was bad, I didn't know it was that bad. And that didn't even happen until about 2013. So this had been going on for a while. This thing followed him around like a bad stank. But why doesn't this movie come up in those conversations of worst movie of all time? This should be sitting there right next to the Battlefield Earth in those conversations. Everybody forgot about this one, I think. You know, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:49

It's this one kind of yeah, yeah, it's gone, it's flown under the radar of bad movies for some fucking reason.

SPEAKER_04 14:55

I have a different answer. You would have to see it in order to put it in purgatory or director's jail, and I don't think anybody saw this uh except when I voisted it upon you guys in uh what I can only say is the biggest mea culpa of all time. Jesus Christ, man. Whoa, save it because we got another movie.

SPEAKER_01 15:14

I had seen it before, but I'm just kind of like, yeah, I didn't know. This is called misdirection. Yeah. But this time was just, I mean, we have seen some bad movies on this show, but this is a train wreck. Sloppy and disjointed. They're trying to immerse you into it, but nothing gels, right? No, this nothing. The story doesn't feel like it's going with this. The rollerball itself feels disjointed from everything else. The the costumes, unfortunately, a few years before cosplay becomes big, so even the costumes are lame.

SPEAKER_04 15:44

Oh, they're terrible.

SPEAKER_03 15:45

Terrible.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

They're absolutely terrible.

SPEAKER_03 15:47

So I'm putting together a rollerball team, best players from around the world, and Chris Klein. It's gonna be really good. Um, even the sex scene in this movie is awful. Yeah, like you would at least think, like, okay, well, uh being a lecturer's male, hey, gets I'll get some breasts, at least I'll get that hat out of the movie. And you, you know, of course, so what does John do? He to get the PG 13, he covers them in shadows, but then like it's you know, Klein pulls up to the warehouse or wherever she is, or she's fucking working out, and like, you know, she it's just weird, like fake aggression. It's it's strange.

SPEAKER_04 16:25

We don't even get a taste, we don't even get a taste of what Uncle Jesse was so obsessed about.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

Hey John, do you wanna who do you want to cast as a play-by-play announcer? Uh, let me think. Pendulette. Hmm, best I can best I can do is somebody who kind of looks like him.

SPEAKER_04 16:43

No, it was Paul, it was the guy who did he was because it was that that was Paul, I can't remember his name, but he was doing like the not WWE WWF. It he was doing like the other thing. And um, oh my god. Paul Walter Hauser? Is that if only it was Paul Walter Hauser? No, it's the guy, it's the guy. Um, I've seen him because I watched a couple of these documentaries because Maynard was very insistent I educate myself on wrestling. And apologies to Maynard. I watched those documentaries and all they did was make me terrified of wrestling. Uh God, what is this guy? What is this guy's name? I'm trying to find this guy, this guy who played the uh the announcer, because he is as jarring as the edits are. You're like, every time they cut to him, I'm like, okay, I don't think we need this. And then when they try and make him seem sympathetic at the end, I'm like, please stop like Paul. Paul Hayman, Paul Heyman is who you're thinking.

SPEAKER_03 17:39

That's it, Paul.

SPEAKER_04 17:40

Yes, because he ran a secondary wrestling organization.

SPEAKER_03 17:44

Yes, yes, WrestleMania X7.

SPEAKER_04 17:46

Oh, dude.

SPEAKER_03 17:47

And he won ECW too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:50

That was the one. Yep, that was the one.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

What are they doing? Maybe John McTiernan. When are they gonna stop this? Maybe John McTiernan just needs a better editor. Maybe that's why some of his movies are better, or I don't know. Or he's extremely hit or miss, or maybe he was off the rails at this point, considering the crazy shenanigans we hear about behind the scenes of this movie. Oh, so there was the legendary uh test screening of this film that got jeered. Right. And uh the ain't it, ain't it cool news guy, Harry Knowles from way back when? I think that was the guy's name.

SPEAKER_04 18:28

The Pantheon of Journalism door.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Right. He was one of those first online critics who had the power to sync or launch a movie, and he was just like, This movie is just fucking awful. So that was one of the first of that. I did read about that, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:43

Dude, it's okay. So this movie has Oleg Taktorov in it, who back in the day when I when the UFC was cool, and it was actually like, because of because I don't know if you guys remember this, but the UFC in the first six or seven years was basically just like, let's see what happens when you take a karate guy and a kickboxer guy and let him fight. Let's see what happens when you take a pitfighter and a jujitsu guy and let him fight. Because now everybody's just mixed martial arts, and now it's just you know, kind of boxing and jujitsu, right? But back in the day you had actually different disciplines kind of going at it, and that was correct. Muay Thai was big at the time. Muay Thai was big. And Oleg Taptarov happened to be a he happened to be a specialist from Russia. He was a fighter, and uh he was a real tough guy. I really enjoyed watching him fight back in the day. So he's in this movie, and guess what his character name is? Oleg. Yes, fucking Oleg. And that's the kind of originality that I'm looking for in a rollerball remake. So he wouldn't miss his lines.

SPEAKER_04 19:38

And Oleg says, Yes, I say uh me name Oleg.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

The author of the book, uh, the author of the rollerball book was quoted as saying something like, I have not seen the rollerball remake, and nor do I have any desire to watch the rollerball remake. Something along those lines.

SPEAKER_04 19:59

Yeah, and then he said, James Conn must be pretty old.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Look what they did to my boy. Look what they did to my boy, yeah. Rollerball on the cosplay.

SPEAKER_03 20:16

Shot by Haram.

SPEAKER_04 20:17

Shot by fucking pink and slipknot. Um, dude, that that the slip knot thing, right? They they well, pink is in it. Pink, pink knot slip pink. Enough about pink slip knot pink knot is butt stuff, guys. Oh no. So, anyways, uh, dude, the uh the pink in the background, I was like, what am I watching? And then Slipknot shows up and they loop it. I was like, what are you doing? And I was like, I was like, so I had to look it up, and it turns out it was just they kind of like CGI'd in that. And this reminds me a lot of like triple X, right? This movie feels very like Triple X, where they had like Rommstein right playing at the beginning, and it's like, who's the American Rommstein? Slipknot. We want the movie to be edgy, like triple fast and the furious, and it's just not.

SPEAKER_03 21:09

Fast in the pink. No, that's a different thing. Did one player pick up a teammate and use them to knock over two opposing players?

SPEAKER_04 21:17

Yes, yes, they pick up. And it's they pick up the the the it's like she's not even that big of a girl. Like you would think her legs would break because some of these guys they establish are giants. Massive, yeah. Like they kill, they kill uh fucking uh what's his name? Doofus. Baby Huey, yeah. Yeah, baby Huey, yeah. Um Lenny from of Mice's men. Yeah, that's basically yeah, yeah. Are you gonna roar for us? Roar! Oh, you're done a great job, buddy. Oh, stupid. You can tell I can't believe this movie is less, like it is so much shorter than the James Conn one, but it took more of my life.

SPEAKER_03 21:53

Oh, dude, uh it it dra it is fucking it's a trial to get through. Like you like you have to. Really force yourself to pay attention. You have to force yourself to watch because my mind is drifting. I'm grabbing my phone and having to put it down. And I'm checking my watch. Like, how fucking long has this thing been on? 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_04 22:12

20 minutes? Dude. And at least at one point, I was like, okay, what do Rebecca Maine's boobs actually look like? You know, it's like my phone's like, Derek, please, you already Googled this. Tits tits out, reps out, right? Like, oh, it was so weird.

SPEAKER_03 22:29

I was like, I was like, nobody would just get into who the fuck works out while they're topless.

SPEAKER_04 22:34

First of all, no, nobody works out when your skin touches your skin. Cause all it does is like abraze your skin. Like you need, uh I don't know, but that's just oh my god. I I I couldn't believe this movie. I really couldn't believe I was watching this movie. And then they're like, Jean Renault is like friggin' Russian oligarch. And I was like, no, he's not. He's the guy who made sure the American Godzilla didn't go completely tits up. Uh-huh. He's the guy that protected that little girl and tried to teach her how to be a hit woman. Oh, I know. The professional such a weird movie. I I but yeah, no, I was like, what it what what what is going on?

SPEAKER_03 23:12

Made by a very weird guy.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

He just wants to bring his part to America, that's all. And a couple of people get bloodied up along the way. It's good for the ratings, right? It doesn't even make sense. Yeah. Look at the ratings when somebody dies. Let's do that again. Holy shit. It's like there was a kernel of a good movie hiding in there somewhere, and they just couldn't get out of their own way to get to it. Yeah, they did it in the 70s. It was a great movie. You know, they could have modernized it and it could have been interesting. That's the absurdest part.

SPEAKER_03 23:41

AOL.com presents rollerball. I think the big problem is that they tried to make it the problem with the first problem is the original rollerball is set in the future. It is a kind of a dystopian thing, right? And this is like, let's just put it in two, yeah, let's just put it in 2005 and go to Russia. It's modern day, but we'll go to Russia, you know, and it just doesn't, it needs to be futuristic. It needs to be it's nice.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Yeah, it's very nice. It's very nice.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Borat.

SPEAKER_04 24:14

You die in game, great sacrifice. It was it was it was frustrating to watch though, because like I mean, like, there's a lot more of this that I think is clear versus the original rollerball, especially in terms of like, well, it turns out if people get brutalized, we get increased ratings, which means increased because that doesn't happen in the original. They're just like, we gotta kill Jonathan because he's the face of the sport. That'd be like if like the Patriots were doing an NFL run and a ref pulls out a gun and shoots Tom Brady. He's like, Your fault, audience. No, it's like it doesn't make a lot of sense, but at least in this one, it made some narrative sense. Just kind of flashback to the opening of Last Boy Scout. Sorry. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you're right. That does happen. Um, the uh oh my god, what a terrible, terrible time for you. Again, I'll use my two favorite words. I'm sorry. But it is frustrating because the the structure of everything is so much more clear in this one, except the fucking game. Like somehow they took a very simple you move in a circle game and made us like, well, now it's a figure eight. Now we can cut whatever we want. And it's like it feels like a lazy editing choice because like I said, one when we talked about it in the uh the original discussion about rollerball using the Olympic cameramen, actually having an established set of rules, knowing where to shoot, how to shoot, when to shoot, all those scenes are amazing, you know, and so when you see blood at the end, you're like, uh-oh, this is really going off the rails. This doesn't have anything even approaching that level of coherency. You're like, no, oh, we found your car. What was it doing in like the revolution district, essentially? It's like, well, uh, how'd you know it's the revolution district? Like, it's uh so much of it is just so flat. And it's an it's so much shorter than the original rollerball, but it feels so much so much longer. I can't get over it. I just can't get over the bad decision making. Let's talk about that fucking night vision scene.

SPEAKER_03 26:24

That green ass 10 minute, fucking 10 minutes of just and they've that from what I read is they've they tried to shoot it as night vision and they failed. They didn't have the camera gear to do it properly. So McTaron's like, just put a green tinge over everything, but process green, just process it green. That's so it's just it's just god awful. It looks terrible. He really sh I mean he shit the bet on this movie. He really, really shit the bet on this one. This is this is way worse than the 13th War. I I like the 13th War, actually. I have a lot of people. I do too, but it turns out a lot of what we like is from Crichton. Right, that makes sense. That makes sense. But he I mean, uh for the guy who did Predator and Die Hard and some of these really great action movies to to do this is just like, dude, uh somebody needs to put you like uh you need a producer who can keep you yeah contained.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

You need you need someone who can tell you no. And they shot it in 2000, and it you know, then there was a whole bunch of reshoots, and then it finally limped out in 02. Yeah, a lot of problems, and a whopping 3% on Rotten Tomatoes.

SPEAKER_04 27:29

Wow, that's 3% higher than it deserves. There's a 5% margin of error, so it could be negative two. The my favorite and least favorite part in equal measure is where LL Cool J jumps the bridge and then they shoot him. Yes, and then all of a sudden I'm like, okay, and then the bike just goes sideways. And I was like, first of all, I don't care how powerful you are as an entertainment sport, you just shot an American citizen on foreign soil. This whole thing's coming, and this is just after 9-11. The hammer of God is coming down on you people, and they're like, What happened to L O Cool J? That like somebody actually asks, what happened to like what's his name? Um I don't remember his name, but it's like, what happened to him? You guys were always so close. He's like, uh he's just kind of like Marcus. Like, what happened to Marcus? He's like, uh, and he just goes like Marcus is okay. Marcus is not okay. When you're talking about the whole point is getting eyes on the sport, you can't just ignore the fact that like the captain of the team disappeared.

SPEAKER_05 28:34

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:35

It's so ridiculous. I had such a bad time with this movie. I really had a bad time with it.

SPEAKER_03 28:42

I mean, Klein Klein at the be at the end, he sacrifices himself like like Jesus. He's Jesus Klein. You know, I mean it's it's and then they you know you get the Jonathan chant, and it's so and that's the that's the new ending.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Yeah, the original ending where he uh wins the game and goes to America and he's a part owner in the sport now, and he's like, I'm gonna keep playing rollerball. Yay! That was the original ending, not this revolution thing they tacked on. Wild. Where you're getting laid, Jonathan. The end.

SPEAKER_04 29:15

We can finally have sex in a bed.

SPEAKER_05 29:18

He doesn't want that. You have to I don't think she wants that.

SPEAKER_04 29:21

That's not what she's into. In her defense, she liked doing it in the sauna. Right. I was like, it's like, uh, buddy, don't don't nitpick this too much.

SPEAKER_03 29:30

Yeah, you know, take your wins where you can get them, pal.

SPEAKER_05 29:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:33

Um, this is McTiernan's second remake of a Norman Jewison film. You guys know the first one? Thomas Crown Affair.

SPEAKER_04 29:41

Thomas Crown Affair. I didn't know.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

Which another remake is coming out as we speak, right? Yes, with Michael D. Jordan, I believe. Yep. The timing. Yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_04 29:51

So after it's gonna be called the uh Thomas Crown Royal Affair.

SPEAKER_01 29:57

So after that uh opening sequence, that uh I mean, you remember that movie The Program where they pulled that out of theaters and cut the part out where the kids were laying in the street and the cars are driving over them because somebody got run over. Well, nobody cared enough about rollerball to remove that from the theaters before it's insane.

SPEAKER_03 30:17

Much like much like Derek pointed out, nobody saw it. Exactly. So that's you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:20

And so right after that, he gets picked up by LL Cool J right off the street. Uh Chris Klein. And then the big blurt of what the whole movie's about, right? Doesn't he just like here's what the whole storyline is, man, and blah blah blah. Now you're gonna go play that game. I'm not gonna play that game. And then it's like that's that's your only real story.

SPEAKER_03 30:41

Yep, and then it's just like action and and exp yeah, action and exposition from that point on.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Don't you think topless weightlifting? And topless weightlifting. But they couldn't get Keanu, so they tried to make Chris Klein Keanu, and it just didn't work. Right down to the case. Yeah, Keanu read the script and he said it was bogus.

SPEAKER_03 30:58

Bogus, man. Well, see, that's the thing. Which script? Because I mean, again, yeah, that is true. If you the R-rated script I heard was really if you read the first R-rated script, it was supposed to be really great. Maybe you sign on for that, and then suddenly McTiernan is like, Oh, here's my rewrite, and you're like, fuck, I'm contractually obligated to this shit. Um, I I read an interview with L.O. Cool J, and he said a year after the movie came out that he that the movie was absolute fucking garbage, and that he he was he's basically like, I had to go out and promote it. You know, that's the job. The job is to go that fucking movie. Yeah, he did it on a podcast, right? Or something like that. Yeah, so I did it, but but yeah, the movie's absolute fucking garbage. It was just a terrible, terrible movie.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

Yeah, we've uh watched somewhere in the neighborhood of 230 movies for the podcast, and I genuinely think this is the absolute worst one that we've ever covered.

SPEAKER_04 31:46

Well, hold on, we have one more to talk about. Yeah, I was gonna say that hanging out.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

Considering the second movie today, for me, I still think rollerball is the worst thing I've had to sit through for the show. For me, it's the second.

SPEAKER_04 31:58

What it's second. Well, I'm just honored that I was able to bring both both of them to.

SPEAKER_03 32:03

You I mean, from from for my taste, out of the 230 some odd movies we watched, yeah. Uh I mean, fuck, I'd rather watch the before trilogy. Well, those are good.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

No, and some people are not. Those in Neil Blue, but in no people's opinion, is rollerball good.

SPEAKER_03 32:21

Dragonheart 2 and Rollerball? Oh, I'd rather watch running time. I'd rather watch the stuff. That's not the question, though. That's not the question, though.

SPEAKER_04 32:30

The question is, your options are either watching rollerball or dragonheart. Those that is the question.

SPEAKER_03 32:37

I don't think running time is better. I would just prefer to watch it over these two. Um I think that probably if I had to preference between these two movies on the podcast right now, I would probably watch Rollerball again, but either one I would be miserable watching.

SPEAKER_04 32:52

Well, I've watched them both twice, so I have uh I can tell you what it's like.

SPEAKER_03 32:58

He's got calluses on his eyes. Um you got any other notes, Marty? No. No, you guys want to score this turd burger?

SPEAKER_01 33:08

I think it's pretty obvious, but I'd give it I'd give it half star. Because it's it's just it's just so bad.

SPEAKER_04 33:16

Derek. I mean, it doesn't even earn the R enroller, so I don't know what that means. Um I would give this if this was like a Leonard Malton film guide, I would give it the half star simply because technically they put something on film. Um, especially when you compare it though to the original, all that nuance is just gone. Yeah, it is it is it is hard to watch. Yeah, um I had no fun doing it. Um my father and I watched it together, and we were just sitting there, and he's like, Well, he's like, I'm not on the podcast. He's like, You can leave. Did he did he punch you? Because I mean, somebody should be like, I mean, he tried, he's very short. I mean, like I'd have to get him a step stool to reach my face, but it's fine. No, it was um I I when I saw Slipknot show up and then they relooped the footage. I was like, oh my god, they really tried to be triple X. I'm not even sure when Triple X came out. This may have come out before Triple X. I don't think it did, but I don't know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 34:17

It's definitely during that era of extreme. Uh I hated it. I hated it. I did two. I did two. I'm gonna go half a star, but I'm only going half star for the boobs. I think that that's the only redeemable thing in the film. Uh I mean Chris Klein? Yeah. He's the boob. Yeah. I'm being I'm being I'm being silly and and and kind of crass, but uh half star. It's just not a good movie. It's not something you want to watch. Again, though, I'll say this to you, viewer. If you really enjoy digging into bad movies, and that's your thing, if you haven't digging into this one, you'll like it. Yeah, you'll you'll enjoy it. It's bad, but but it's not so bad that it overcomes itself and becomes good.

SPEAKER_04 34:58

Correct. It's not like Miami Connection or Samurai Cop or any of those classics. Uh I will say this, listener, dear listener, every time you're confused as to what the rules are of the game, you take a shot, you don't even have to worry about the block because you'll be passed out drunk early. It's terrible. I can't believe I own this. Like, this is one of those things that's like, oh my god, I have a physical copy of this, and I've watched it twice. Like, this is bad. Is it Blu-ray? Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 35:30

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 35:31

Okay. It does not look or sound great either.

SPEAKER_03 35:34

They put this, they actually took the time to special feature Blu-ray?

SPEAKER_04 35:37

No special feature is the trailer. It's a nightmare.

SPEAKER_05 35:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:42

Which brings us to Dragonheart 2.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

So we're just I'd rather not. So we're just forgetting about accents then? Uh so what is Dragonheart A New Beginning?

SPEAKER_03 35:52

I think we're also forgetting about production value.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:55

Dragonheart, a new beginning. Video Video, straight to video, 1999, rate of PG, one hour, 24 minutes, mercifully short. Directed by Doug Leffler. Uh writers are Patrick Reed Johnson, Charles Edward Pogue, and Sherry Goodhart's stars Christopher Masterson, Harry Van Gorkum, and Rona Figaroa. Uh your storyline. When Goff, I mean Jeff, Jaw, an orphan stable boy, that's a good one. Chris Masterson discovers Drake, the voice of Bot Robbie Benson, the world's last living dragon, he realizes that his dreams of becoming a knight in shining armor can now come true. Together they soon face challenges that turn them into heroes. But caught up in the excitement of their new lives, Joff and Drake fail to see the hidden dangers that surround them.

SPEAKER_01 36:43

You know I try not to interrupt Cliff when he's doing these things, but then he says things like Joff, and I can't help myself.

SPEAKER_03 36:50

Well, you damn you damn you! Old man screaming at the sky. Um Jesus fucking Christ, this was bad. Yeah, it was. Dragon, dragon, two hearts talking about one dragon, two dragons, two hearts, two hearts. Two hearts living in just one dragon. Um that's it. Yeah, that's the one. Well done. Oh, Jeff the Stable Boy. Fucking my that's my first my first note is just groan. Just just groan. And it's a sequel because this is how we're gonna start this thing.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

Old Dennis Quaid played by somebody else, shows up and finds an an egg. There's another talking.

SPEAKER_03 37:35

The Dennis Quaid, by the way, the the fake Dennis Quaid is played by the bad guy. It's him just in makeup. Well, that makes sense. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 37:41

It's uh made for TV or made for video, not made for TV. You almost think made for coloring book, like a pilot for a TV show that never happened, but no, it was just a direct-to-video because back then that's how they they don't make them like this anymore. This was just a programmer hitting the beats, kids' movie direct-to-video. Uh I bet by the time we get to Dragon Heart 3, 4, and 5, which were made in the last 10 years, I suspect those probably have more of that modern dragon movie than this one's of that a relic of the made-for-video movies that are just they don't do them like this anymore because it's it's just it's antiquated. But this is just a simple little a kid's movie. I think this is meant for like ages eight to ten. And if you're older than that, you're probably gonna be like us going, what the fuck am I looking at? But if you're eight years old in 1999, you might have been mildly amused by this for 90 minutes. I mean, I've seen worse. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 38:39

I don't think any child could watch this and walk away with joy.

SPEAKER_03 38:45

I want to be like Joff.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

You look like you look like Joff the stable boy, and you look like a bucket of shit, and you look like knock them in the middle. Did that reboot ever come out? I mean, because I realized halfway. Yes, it did that this was the older brother on knock them in the middle.

SPEAKER_03 39:00

Dragons are unfair.

SPEAKER_04 39:05

Mom, something's wrong with my copy of Mulan.

SPEAKER_05 39:21

Right?

SPEAKER_04 39:22

Oh shit, that got me. It's so bad. It is so bad.

SPEAKER_03 39:27

It's awful. I was, oh my god. I it this is the same director who wrote Steel Dawn with Patrick Swayze, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

So that'll give you an idea of the level of the stuff. The director is kind of interesting because he was the first uh unit or the first assistant director or uh second unit photography. I forget which, but he worked on Army of Darkness. So I was like, well, that makes sense because kind of the look and the sword play reminded me of some of like at one point the guy's even got the two swords going, and I'm like, oh, he's just remembered. Oh, in the village. Yeah, when he worked on okay, that makes sense too. I was like, well, that's kind of weird.

SPEAKER_04 40:00

Actually, that does look like that a little bit. Yeah, like it well, also it's a um, isn't this Rafaela De Laurentis? It's a De Laurentis production.

SPEAKER_03 40:07

It's a direct yeah, definitely a De Laurentis production, too. Yeah, she did that first one too, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:11

So the first one, I bet you feel like a real piece of shit for not liking the first one now.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

Oh, I'm a heretic. I like this more than the first one. No way, what? Explain why, please. Explain yourself. Well, I also appreciated that it wasn't very cynical like a lot of movies are nowadays, or gross or message-filled. It was just kind of this innocuous kids' movie. So I just kind of looked at it like that and was like, you know, I'm never want to watch it again, but it didn't really cause me a lot of pain. It was just kind of, you know, like the Christmas dragon or something.

SPEAKER_03 40:47

It was it was I I I had the completely different viewing experience. I fucking I groaned and bitched loudly throughout this entire movie. Even my wife was like, What the fuck are you yelling at? I'm like, this fucking movie I'm watching. This is god-awful.

SPEAKER_01 41:00

It had the doddering old king trope again, you know, where oh, but he is stupid because he's being drugged.

SPEAKER_03 41:05

How many times have we seen drugged? How many times have we seen it? It's it's just it's a ton of tropes, right? But right off the bat, the dragon egg, right? So Draco found some time to get a little on the side while he was venturing with Dennis Quaid, or he was asexual, dragons are asexual, they just lay eggs. Like, there's no explanation for where this fuck because in the first dragon heart, we find that Draco is the last of his kind. There are no more of him. This is a retcon. And he completes the constellation, by the way. Yes. So where does the egg come from? The chicken.

SPEAKER_05 41:44

Which came first?

SPEAKER_01 41:45

The egg or the dragon, the Draco or the Egg. And then three, four, five are prequel to the first movie, so we don't go. Well, that would make more sense, actually. We go back in time.

SPEAKER_04 41:55

So there's apparently some kind of like Asian Dragon War that we're missing, so that might be one of the movies. Interesting. Interesting.

SPEAKER_03 42:02

Dragon Heart 1.5. Hopefully, the CGI is hopefully the CGI is better in those last three, because the CGI in this is fucking terrible. Made for video, they're not putting a lot of effort. So bad.

SPEAKER_01 42:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:15

It is so bad. The the Blu-ray transfer, though, really shows how little they cared about composite shots. Because suddenly you're like, all right, this looks it doesn't look great, but then all of a sudden it cuts to like you can't even see what's happening. And then a CGI dragon lands in the background. I'm like, oh, you're composing it awesome.

SPEAKER_01 42:34

I got to watch the full-frame DVD presentation. You got to see the newly released widescreen finally on Blu-ray, which adds so much more to the movie. Yeah, I have the D.

SPEAKER_04 42:44

Yeah, I bought the I bought the I bought the uh the the five disc Blu-ray after you guys really took me to task on the first Dragon Art. Which I still say is a pretty good movie. I like it. Uh they lean heavily on the Randy Edelman soundtrack in the second one, though. Oh my god, it's like every time something happens, you're like in soundtrack by uh songs by Randy Edelman.

SPEAKER_01 43:08

Remember the other movie? Yeah, yeah. I think I do. And we just watched uh oh, we just watched Excalibur, and that there's a whole part in that you must speak the truth when you're at the table. Well, in this movie, you must speak the truth when you're in the kingdom. They're just they're just stealing from everything. Yeah. Wear your cloaks.

SPEAKER_03 43:29

Well, and it's it's it's so and I get it, it's again, it's I know it's a kids' movie, but it's so it's so clumsily handled. Like, you know, the bad guys like now the brown people now the people who did this will wear brown tunics, and the people who do this will wear green tunics, and then we'll start to discriminate against you because you are now red and green and blue people, and it's just we didn't have a good plan. Yeah. And look, it I know the the movie's only an hour and twenty four, right? But you could have made a Hour and 30 and spent five minutes showing the dragon and joff becoming friends, right? Because it just suddenly they're just like, oh, I guess we're a teammate. We're teams now and let's work together. And I'll teach you how to I'll teach you how to fart fire and spit ice. Dragon farts. That'll be fun. Dragon farts. Yeah. Dragonfart and New Beginning. Dragonfart. Dragonfart 2.

SPEAKER_04 44:23

Dragonfart also. There are so many problems I have with this movie. I don't even know where to start. Like to the point where I almost think it's genius now. Like it's like it's like, what is popular? Dragonheart? No. Mulan? There's a dragon in that. Like it's it's so uh like even the introduction is like, and this is my son. I'm like, oh guys, we live in a day and age of Mulan. You can't get away with this. So bad. It's so bad. And and and you know, it's funny because as I'm watching it with my father, right? Again, I sac he sacrificed a lot to uh be my progenitor, but um, we're sitting there watching it and they're playing this song in the background, and I'm like, this sounds like they're trying to do the song from um Pocahontas, like Colors of the Wind. And uh I was like, I was like, what is happening? Oh, sorry, yeah, yeah. But because you know it's east versus west, it would be covers of the wind.

SPEAKER_01 45:37

So this is the asylum's version of Mulan, is what you're saying.

SPEAKER_04 45:41

I I and also we have the asylum version of Timothy Dalton, so yeah. I mean, I don't I was like, oh cool, they killed that guy.

SPEAKER_01 45:50

Oh, wait a minute, he's just faking. He just wanted that dragon art.

SPEAKER_03 45:56

We haven't even gotten to the the fucking the kung fu expert who shows up at the old for a kid movie. The girl the kung fu's terrible, it's really, really bad choreography, and it's it's just it's no kung fu in the first one. What was what's that?

SPEAKER_04 46:16

He pops up an umbrella and starts fighting with an umbrella, and yeah, uh it's uh also I I'm I may point out zero magwai in his cart. Yeah, that's a bummer.

SPEAKER_01 46:28

That's a bummer.

SPEAKER_04 46:33

Dude, when they make the dragon look in the face and she's got a crossbow thing, I was like, what are we doing?

SPEAKER_01 46:39

It's like we could have been over the movie, could have been over early, but she didn't make that shot, you know.

SPEAKER_04 46:44

Yeah, where was Kevin Sorbo and Lucy Lou?

SPEAKER_03 46:46

Like well, and uh you got Roland just walking around with open sores on his mouth. Like the dude's just got a huge, like, I don't know if it's cold sore or if it's like you know, some sort of makeup, but he's got this big sore on his own. Looking at here, I guess. Yikes. There's a quote, there's a line in this movie that says, You deserve special attention, my boy. Yikes. Almost says yikes.

SPEAKER_04 47:15

Okay, yikes. He does say that. Yes, he does. He does, and then he's like, and I'll train you personally in the way of the sword. Run, Joff, run. And they are you kidding? Joff is an old maid at 16 at that point, unwed. Right in that time period. His best friend's a dragon who may or may not be real.

SPEAKER_01 47:38

It's like peach.

SPEAKER_04 47:40

The practical effects are the worst. When they're talking to the the the hay heap, that I was I was like, how much longer is this gonna go on? And the answer was too long.

unknown 47:51

Too long.

SPEAKER_01 47:53

At least it they knew what it was, you know. It's it has a beginning, middle, and end. It's coherent. The other movie is like, oh my dear lord, what happened? And this is just a dumb kids movie. They do share a similar thing. I you know, you mean it's a movie for dumb kids? Well, you know, almost all of us can be a little dumb at some point when you're like five or six. Well, I mean, it's I mean, that is true.

SPEAKER_03 48:18

It's very true that kids will buy stuff that adults want, right? And and because their their minds will will fill in the gaps and stuff, but I don't find this movie super coherent. We gotta find somebody who has nostalgia for this. It doesn't make a lot of sense in this movie.

SPEAKER_04 48:32

Uh nostalgia for the first one, which is well discussed. This one, I was like, I just saw it like two weeks ago. Like, oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 48:41

So this is uh they get a comet like every 20 years here or something? Is this this comets just flying around constantly?

SPEAKER_04 48:49

A lot of comets in the universe. What are they talking about? Like it could invite evil into a dragon. Like, what what are you talking about? I it doesn't even make sense.

SPEAKER_01 49:01

A guy was a dragon who was condemned to the body of a human or something, right? That's oh yeah, that's what it was. So he was gonna get his heart back and come back, and then the bad dragons would be back, or something. Yeah, something like that. And they were all gonna be a good one. This is the worst double dragons I've ever seen.

SPEAKER_03 49:18

Dude, that fucking dragon fight at the end was so bad. That dragon fight at the end was so it was just like Looney Tunes level of buffoonery.

SPEAKER_04 49:28

Well, their eyes don't look in the same direction. Virtua Fighter. Virtua Fighter. It's as slow as Virtua Fighter, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_03 49:37

Video game dragons and bad kung fu, man. And they made three more of these afterwards. They were like, let's make three more of these. And fucking Robin.

SPEAKER_01 49:46

Robbie Binson? It was like 2015. Robbie Binson 2015 until they made the prequel, so it took a bit. That's why I bet they're they probably don't have this vibe to them. I bet they're more of like a prestige television director video, because that's how stuff is now. It's weird how the Dragon Heart uh franchise, it's it really follows tech change a lot because the first one was as we talked about before, all the Matrix and all that stuff kicked in. And then this one is the last of the old school director video before we're not making movies like this anymore. So I'm almost curious to see what three, four, and five, if they're like a how to train your dragon or game of thrones rip off or something. Or if they're gritty, you know.

SPEAKER_03 50:31

Apparently, Patrick Stewart is the voice of the dragon in one of them. So okay, we're leveling up. I think he screams Camel Yard. Um Earl Grey. Hot. Open your ice lung and blow.

SPEAKER_04 50:48

Oh my goodness. I know. Like, how many lungs do these motherfuckers have?

unknown 50:53

My ice.

SPEAKER_04 50:54

It's like he every chromatic dragon in Dungeons and Dragons. Like, at least make him one chromatic dragon, you know? Like, yeah. Oh, he's upset that you guys are friends and you're no longer friends. You've shared 20 seconds of screen time. Like, please stop. Like, please stop. Oh, and then like capture the old man, and they put a mask on the monk and they just drag him away. And it's like you have to assume the monk is like, I will not betray him. Like, because otherwise there's no fucking way. Oh my god, I hate this movie.

SPEAKER_01 51:26

What rulebook are we using today? Uh, we're we're playing by Dragonheart A New Beginning Edition 2.0 or the Chromatic Laws. Oh shit.

SPEAKER_03 51:34

Oh, okay. So that's the one with all this all the goofy powers and all the buttons. I'm playing as the monk. That's the one where they nerfed the rules. Oh, and by the way, Dragonfarty. We get it, movie. We get it. The bad guy's a great swordsman. We get it. Okay, we we get it. No, not that great. I watched him. I mean, I but compared to everybody else, right? Like, I mean, it's just they make they make the bad guy out to be you know, I he I and again, I I get it. It's it's a kid's movie, but he's so he's so surface, he has no there's no levels to him, you know, his reasoning is garbage, you know, it's just he's just a very uh shallow bad guy, right? You know, right, yeah, so one note, and just there's nothing else to him other than I'm a shithead. Why? Why? What's going on? So tell us a little bit about it.

SPEAKER_01 52:29

Because I'm a dragon! I can't tell you that before. Now you watched it twice. Is there any hint of him being something other than human before it's revealed?

SPEAKER_04 52:38

No, yeah, I didn't think so. Absolutely not, absolutely not. As a matter of fact, um, the the only the only hint that he might be, to quote Rob Zombie, more human than Hu Man is when um uh General So um PF Chang himself says it's you. And he's like, yes. It's like what the hell are we talking about? It was so funny because they're watching it's like it's you, and I was like, wait a minute. Didn't they say there was a dragon who fled to, and they say their own words, the Orient, right? Uh and uh he started a dragon rebellion. So Draco being the last dragon is interesting if he's the last dragon in European mythology. This idea of like East meets west dragon mythology, uh meeting maybe somewhere in like the Silk Road or something like that, you know, like there's a good idea there. This movie just doesn't know how to do it because I truly believe the idea of like Eastern Dragons fighting western dragons, that's a good idea for a movie. I would actually really like watching that. It'd be a kaiju movie, it'd be like a Godzilla movie kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 53:53

We just call it Eastern Dragons.

SPEAKER_04 53:55

Perfect.

SPEAKER_03 53:58

Um Silk Road Dragons. Silk Road Dragons. The the um the uh um the movie is so bad, it but it feels like you said it's like a kid's movie, and it feels almost like it feels like it's like you know, Joff and Drake coming up next, right after iCarly on Disney. You know, it just feels action pack. Just just compl yeah just completely neutered and you know, like a lot of that that 90s and that early 2000s Disney fair that that was out there, which was just this mundane, kind of boring programmer, yeah. You know, just programmer, yeah. It's just it's not good. And he farted fire, Marty. He farted fire, plus two.

SPEAKER_01 54:39

Oh, that was terrible for farting.

SPEAKER_04 54:41

But it wasn't just a small fart, it destroyed an entire village. And all I kept thinking about was like, you remember in Game of Thrones where they're like, uh, these are the bones of what your dragon ate, and they're like, oh my god, those are human bones. I'm like, I think George R.R. Martin store a little bit from uh no uh because because that was it, his books came out in the 90s. This came out like in the 90s. I don't even know. Yeah, it was terrible, absolutely terrible. And it had a terrible soundtrack. Like I said, like they kept doing like this fucking colors of the wind thing that just kept playing.

SPEAKER_03 55:17

It was off, it was shot. I believe it was shot in uh we talked about Dragonheart, and I think it was kind of shot in the same locations or whatever. Um on because it it's it's definitely shot in in Eastern Europe or in Europe. It's not an American film from what I read. Um, so I'm I'm kind of fascinated by that. I wonder if they decided to go back to the same place. I haven't read up on that, but um anyway.

SPEAKER_01 55:46

Had a big budget too for uh like 11 million or something. Yeah, alter. They spent 11 million dollars on this? Wait, the second one? Yeah, that's what that's what I think I read. Yeah. How much the first one was what? I guess you had money to throw it.

SPEAKER_04 56:01

Well, the first one was expensive for the time.

SPEAKER_03 56:03

Yeah, the first Dragonheart was was rather relatively expensive, I think. We talked about that. We talked about the fact that they spent like I think you said $300,000 a minute. Yeah, yeah, it was like $24 million just for the dragon stuff, right? Um, it's funny because yeah, the budget was $57 million for the first one.

SPEAKER_01 56:22

Didn't you say that damn Dragonheart VHS was the first widescreen? Yes, and then the irony of this one being a full frame movie. Oh, that's hilarious.

SPEAKER_04 56:33

So, yes, I was at sunscreen videos or suncoast videos, and they were like, here's what Dragon Heart looks like in 4x3. I'm like, okay, and they're like, here's what it looks like in 16x9. I'm like, oh my god, I can see his wings. And from that point forward, I started doing now. This one on my illustrious Blu-ray collection, I don't think I could give a crap. Like, I was watching it and I was like, just tell me when it's over. I hated this so bad. And the fact that it not only wears the dragon heart like name, but then also constantly pushes the Randy Edelman's to the stars, which I said last time we talked about is one of my favorite scores. I love that score. I love Randy Edelmans to the stars. I I play it all the time. I friggin' love it. And the fact that that, like, oh, there's a dragon on screen. Play it. I was like, it's only important because it's his death song, you pieces of shit.

SPEAKER_05 57:30

It's not a dragon.

SPEAKER_04 57:33

I I was so my dad and I are sitting there watching this, right? And he's like, This is like a two-hour movie. It's in like an hour and 20 minutes, and we were so like flabbergasted. We're like, we couldn't believe that we had been watching it for so short a time because it asks so much of you.

SPEAKER_03 57:52

Yeah, it it it's one of those movies where time dilates and stretches, like it's much like uh much like approaching a gravity well. That's exactly what it is. Yeah, you you time slows fucking down, and you're stuck in this movie that seems like it's never going to fucking end. That is really bad. It continues to go on and on.

SPEAKER_01 58:09

I thought it had a decent brisk pace. I guess I'm alone in that one. It flew by for me. Marty, you are alone on that movie.

SPEAKER_04 58:18

And I must ask, did you actually watch it or was it a second screen?

SPEAKER_01 58:23

No, I watched it on I watched half of it on Projector, and then I watched the second half um in the morning before I went to work one day, which is very unusual for movies for the pod. But it it felt like this is watch this at eight in the morning. It's just perfectly benign for a breakfast type movie.

SPEAKER_04 58:42

It's funny you mentioned that because back in the day, when I wanted to watch like Ultraman, I had to wake up at like five in the morning to watch it on like some random cable access. So if you're saying like, oh I woke up early and watched this, that actually kind of fits with how I absorbed like a lot of Ultraman stuff like content. Because you know, I didn't have like discs, you know, they didn't really have it. You know, I just woke up at five and I would sneak into the room and I would watch Ultraman.

SPEAKER_01 59:11

Maybe not being all the way awake was good for me too, because I was just like, eh. And the next thing I knew it was over, it's time to leave for work, and I was laughing about all that silly thing, you know.

SPEAKER_04 59:21

That's weird because I think this is the first time where you know you had to go to something less depressing than Dragon Ball. I hated this.

SPEAKER_03 59:34

I hated this so much. I did too. It was it was it was garbage from the first frame all the way to the end.

SPEAKER_04 59:39

It looks bad. It looks bad, it sounds bad. It's like I said, like they keep trading on this Mulan thing, which is like, oh, oh my god. I don't even know. I uh I don't even know. I didn't and then that last dragon fight is so stupid. One one snot rocket kills an entire dragon whose entire body is built of fire? That doesn't make sense. Pretty powerful snot rocket.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:03

Yeah, I guess. If you were on uh what is that show, Cliff? The uh about the D D game show where they all Oh faster purple faster purple worm kill kill. So you would be killed by the snot rocket of of death as like a 300 first level character, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:22

Well, it would depend though, like ice doesn't ice uh ice attacks apply to your constitution?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:28

So if I were playing like a dwarf, I probably would not see now he's trying to figure out how to how to complete the mission and also apply at the same time.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:37

Hang on, as a t as a 25-year DM, yes and no, right? So it depends on the type of ice. Is it like a cone of cold is it a cone of cold? Is it a is it an ice boulder? Right, because if it's if it's like a if it's like a slug, then you're gonna take you're gonna take impact damage, you're gonna take budgeting damage, and then it's probably gonna explode, and you'll take you know, like 1d6, 1d8 of shrapnel damage on.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:00

Because if you're talking about like cone of cold, that's an area of effect, which means it's probably a deck save. Exactly. Hold on a second. I gotta show you something. Um, you're gonna have to edit out my absence. It's not that far. I'll be right back. I gotta show you this, and then I'll explain the joke.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:13

Now, are we going by new beginning rules? Or I hope you do new beginning rules or Dennis Quaid rules here.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:21

I pref I I do prefer the Dennis Quaid version of rules. I think they're uh a little more stringent. Um the Joff set of rules seem to be for kids and for, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:33

You can't play as Joff. That's a non-player character. Casuals, I guess what they would say. It's for casual. I want to play as Joff.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:42

Oh, open your heart to me, Dre. I hold the crossbow and you hold the keyboard.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:50

Now you're preparing your defense for when you take this movie on reels and make them watch. What? It was good. You guys are just cynical.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:00

I would have to I would have to betray, I would have to betray so much of myself to be able to defend this.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:06

But then at the end of it, you go, haha, I really hate this movie. I was doing this on purpose.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:12

I may I may leave all this in because he did just say it was gonna take just a second, and now he's literally tearing his whole house.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:18

We get to see it happen. You you all we we get to watch it.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:21

This is this is interesting, viewer. Oh, he's now he's coming back. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:24

All right. God, I can't I thought I disabled the camera following me. So it turns out the internals versus the AI do not work in the same capacity, which is very frustrating. That's the problem with the rollerball remake. All right, so take a look at this shirt, right? Can you see it? Yeah, uh-huh. It says poison, poison the skeletons. Can't do that. You cannot poison skeletons. No, no, but we were playing Baldur's Gate 3. I was in my cups a little bit. I fucking I was oh yeah, Baldur's Gate 3 is great. So good. Now I was playing like a circle the spore druid, right? High constitution, and I was poisoning everything. And suddenly like skeletons walk up and I try to poison them, and my brother goes, What are you doing? And I was like, Oh god, you're right. But and then and then we started playing like uh far, far west and like other games, and it turns out you can poison skeletons in other games, and so he made that shirt for me that says poison the skeletons because you can't do it, you're not supposed to, you're not supposed to be able to poison skeletons, but no, there's stuff for yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:31

You could do like a like a stinking cloud or something will work because it's it does it gives effects, but you know, there's effects to being in the cloud, but it's not, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's not um it's not poisonous.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:41

I did that, I tried to do like a poison spell on skeletons in Baldur's Gate 3, and they were like, they have no constitution, they have no organs. I'm like, oh yeah, right. What's that sound? It's the game laughing at you. Oh, it felt like it. Dylan and Casey, my both my brothers were cracking up, and I was like, I won't do it again unless.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:02

So, anyways, uh, so yeah, so that's my DD rant. Uh in Dragon Heart 3, there's a scene where they poison skeletons, as we'll discover. Now, wouldn't that that would just be kind of bizarre if that ends up happening? What the hell are we gonna pair with Dragon Heart 3? There's no more rollerball movies. Dragonheart 4. Ooh, you're gonna do and five all three and just kill it all at once? That would be unprecedented.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:24

Well, we'll have to give some thoughts. All right. So the question is Talking Dragons, talking dragons, talking dragons. Imagine talking dragons.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:37

Well, that's what we'll do, is we'll just pair it, we'll pair each movie with another dragon movie and we can contrast and compare.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:43

Uh there are what three um Yeah, there's three more. Yeah. Yes, but uh there are there are the three what are they? The um how to train? How to train, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:55

Yeah, you could do how to train. We could do D Wars. Um there's a lot of different dragon stuff out there that we could do. But uh coming back to this, um what do you what do you give it?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:09

I give it my lowest rating ever. Seven thumbs up. So uh that's a Homer Simpson joke, I believe. Um, I give this the lowest rating I can give anything. Like, I have seen a lot of bad suits. I saw Jaws 2. You know, like Jaws 2 is a better sequel than Dragonheart 2, and that is for sure. I mean setting the bar. I but at least at least one is recognizable, you know. Like, I hate this movie. I hate this movie so much.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:38

I didn't, I hated it. I I I literally groaned and bitched this entire movie.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:43

Oh, I my I set it up on the deck. My father and I, we set up the deck TV, we had our cigars, we had our beers, we were ready to watch a bad movie. I don't even think we finished our first beer. We just sat there in abject horror.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:58

Oh it's so bad.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:59

It is so So bad. I hated it. I hated it. I hated the Mulan references. I hated the um the friggin' the end song that plays over the credits.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:09

Where it's that woman sings that song too, apparently, the uh oh one from the movie. The only woman in the movie.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:16

If I may be somewhat racist, as I recall, it was a takeout menu. Moogai Pan Gen. But yeah, no, I hated it. I absolutely hated that movie. And I hate that I hate that it's associated with the movie that I was so effusive in my defense last time. You know what I mean? Like, oh uh look look what they did to my boy.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:42

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:43

Massacred my boy.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:45

Half star for me. Um I I I'd give it a quarter or a zero if I could, but half star.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:52

Terrible.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:53

Do the zero.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:54

Just do the zero. It earned it. It it earned it. It looks cheap. It plays cheap.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:59

There's no satisfaction. There's nothing. There's nothing to grab onto in that movie to enjoy the for enjoyment at all. It's not no. Even like I said, I I thought, oh well, the maybe the kung fu stuff in the old man will at least be kind of comedic or funny or or well done. No. Yeah. Ease ease wet. No. No.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:17

No.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:17

Not not happening.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:18

So what about you, Marty? I give it a two. It's fine. I'm not revisiting it again, but if for movies from 99 that are direct-to-vide aimed at like seven-year-olds, it's alright. Oh, there's there's so many better direct-to-developers.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:35

I'm sure there is, and those probably get two and a half or three, but you know, it's I do have a follow-up question on your two-star video. Now, does it earn one star because how much I hate it, and one star for how much Cliff hated it, and that tickles you, and that gives it the two stars? Does it earn one star per person per eight? I was so I couldn't believe what I was watching, if I'm being honest the whole time. Like they don't even they set up a lot of stuff. Remember when he's trying to fight like that night kid? Remember that?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:07

That goes nowhere.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:08

Yeah, that goes absolutely nowhere. The night training doesn't go up.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:11

He's got a little training thing that he hits.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:13

It's all yeah, he's got a Kung Fu dummy set up to train with, you know. Dude, and he just spins it and he knocks people over. He's just smacking people with it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:21

Oh John McTiernan should remake Dragonheart.

unknown 1:08:24

Jeez.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:25

You know, I heard they are they are remaking or the rebooting Dragonheart. So there will be a sixth movie. It's gonna go to the theaters. They're trying to go all the way back to like you're making that up right now. So no, that that is true, isn't that crazy? So we'll see if that actually comes to fruition.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:41

Is that true? Yeah, I think you're I think you're doing this just to just to see if I die live on stream.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:47

It's not a shtick, but yeah. I mean, part five in 2020, so it's not hasn't been that long. Dragonheart's not like it's never profitable.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:57

Oh my god, Dragonheart a megaphorce story. 2025.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:02

And then Helena Bottom Carter was in Dragonheart Vengeance. Oh, one of the prequel sequels. Yeah. I am curious about those because I'm sure they're not like a new beginning because they were made in the last 10 years and they just don't make movies like a new beginning anymore. Yeah, for good reason. Exactly. We we have left that in the dust. I mean, that's the one. The giant's eyes don't even point in the same fucking direction. It's such an artifact of a forgotten.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:31

Like Daphne on like Daphne on Scooby-Doo, for fuck's sake. Yeah, it looks like a Scooby-Doo episode.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:38

Well, no, Scooby-Doo at least has like you know, some logic to it. This was dude, they set up a whole failed village attack so they can try and steal a dragon heart. That was terrible. Absolutely terrible. Absolutely terrible. Again, I'm so sorry I did this to you guys. You should be well, dragonfarts are good for the environment. So, ladies and gentlemen, this is Derek Schlender. This will be the last time I'm invited on Talking Pong.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:08

Oh, we got more of it. And for good reason.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:10

I mean, it's well deserved.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:12

I'm sure he'll be back on. We just won't let him bring any more of these terrible movies. At least not two in a row. My god, Dragon Heart 2 and Rollerball. To be fair, it was a rough week. Look, the ride.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:25

Oh my god, I know. And then remember how they break through the wall, they unscrew it a little bit. Like, that's not how impact works. Like, that's not how it works. You don't like the whole thing would go. You wouldn't just be able to break through because you undid a screw. I hate that movie. Oh my god, I hate both these movies. I hate both these movies. I hate both these movies. I watched them both twice. I'm dead. Oh my god, it killed me. It killed me a little bit. Like and subscribe. You got anything else, guys?

SPEAKER_03 1:10:56

You want to get out of here? We could get out of. Yeah, you got anything you want to plug, Derek? Sorry.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:03

Oh no, I'm still doing a very mediocre YouTube channel. Slender Phi Productions. If you liked any of the content that I have suggested today, I apologize.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:14

Watch his uh drunk trailer show. It's really good.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:17

Yeah, you know what? I've been trying to get that back up and running, but it's just like it's turning into one of those things where it's like I love doing it with Maynard. We have a really good, like kind of like quipped back and forth, but our work schedules are a little different. So uh he and I just hung out the other day. We're talking about trying to bring it back, but it might come back in slightly modified form. We might have other people guest starring on it. And um, if you like my trenchant insight, you can always listen to the episode of weapons that you guys so successfully quoted. So I appreciate the shout out.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:52

That's not triangulation, that's only two lines. Yeah, it's two lines, it's a line. Two points is a line. Let's get out of here on a quote. What do you got, Mark? Let me guess. This isn't your friend Sergei, is it?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:11

Derek, you got anyone?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:12

Uh yes. Ugh. My hat is like a shark's fin. Deepest blue as. My hat is like a shark's fin. Deepest blue as. My hat is like a shark's fin. LO Cool Jay. Not from any of the movies we watched.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:28

Uh let's see. My quote is uh, you got your armadillo on?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:33

That's funny. We all did variations. All right, see you guys. All right, guys, thank you so much for having me. I apologize. Yeah, I'll try great having a lot of. I will try harder next time. I will try harder next time.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:46

Oh, we actually I think I, you know, we're kidding around and stuff, but I think it's kind of fun sometimes to bring on two really bad movies and just have at them. You know, it's not not the end of the world, so but we appreciate it. Please don't bring them, please don't do it again. But you know, it's once every now and then it's fine.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:00

There's three more dragon hearts, so I I can't promise that math. We'll see. All right, all right, guys. Thank you so much. Very appreciated.