The Avengers (The One Where Sean Connery Controlled the Weather)

This week on The Worst Movie Podcast, Ade and Aaron tackle The Avengers (1998) — the non-Marvel, deeply forgotten adaptation of the stylish 1960s British TV series. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, and Sean Connery, this $60-million misfire earned a brutal 5% on Rotten Tomatoes. What should have been a sleek, sexy spy thriller instead arrives chopped to pieces, with entire chunks of story seemingly removed and replaced by confusion, teddy bear costumes, and weather-controlling nonsense.

Transcript

Ade (00:00)
I mate it's the worst movie podcast. I'm Sir Arthur Willie bottom the third. Who are you?

Aaron (00:11)
Do you want me to the British accent?

Ade (00:14)
Yeah, mate.

Aaron (00:14)
I'm...

Ade (00:15)
How do you say yes in British? Cheerio, rite-o.

We're not editing any of this out.

Aaron (00:20)
⁓ I'm Aaron. This is a podcast where we watch the worst movies ever made in the hopes of finding a hidden gem. ⁓

Ade (00:28)
Enjoy.

Aaron (00:31)
I did not expect that.

Ade (00:33)
You never know what you might get on the worst movie podcast.

Aaron (00:36)
Apparently.

Ade (00:55)
So what are you watching these days? ⁓

Aaron (00:58)
I have just been mindlessly watching how it's made.

Ade (01:01)
Is that still on? Are they making new ones?

Aaron (01:03)
I don't know if they're still making them, but they're all on HBO. There's like a million seasons of them. Yeah.

Ade (01:06)
Yeah.

I used to love that show.

feel like I was one of the first shows that really sucked me into the, you'd watch the end of it and I'd be like, all right, I'm done now. But then it would like instantly kick into the next one. like, I don't know. I do kind of want to know how, you know, yeah, exactly. It's like the YouTube shorts thing, you know.

Aaron (01:25)
⁓ CDs are made Yeah

Yeah,

it was the early version of doom scrolling. I love that show.

Ade (01:40)
Right.

⁓ I just, again, to continue with awards season stuff, catching up on some actual good movies. I just watched the movie, If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You, starring Rose Byrne. Have you seen anything about this?

Aaron (01:56)
I've never even heard of it.

Ade (01:57)
She should win all the Oscars, I think. She was incredible in it. It is a very hard movie to watch. actually co-stars Conan O'Brien in a, But he, it's a very dark and sad movie. It's about a mother struggling with a child who is ill and things in her life are kind of unraveling and she's unraveling. But it's actually,

Aaron (02:07)
Really?

Ade (02:23)
Pretty funny at moments. mean, it's darkly funny, but so well done. the sound and so many great shots and all that. It's a great movie. It's one of those movies that I probably will never watch again though, because of just how intense it is. It's almost like a horror movie, but it's not a horror movie. Like, it's really good at creating that tension sense of foreboding and...

Aaron (02:39)
Yeah.

Ade (02:50)
That's amazing moving.

Aaron (02:52)
Interesting. I might be outing myself as not really a movie person, but I don't know that I could tell you anything Roseburn is in.

Ade (03:01)
she is, I think getting a lot more recognition lately. think, and this movie, hopefully she wins an Oscar, but, if you look up her IMDB, you'll be kind of amazed by how much you've actually seen her in. And she's been great from bouncing between comedy and drama. I think she's, she's a great comedian actress and just great.

and just like as an actor, actor too.

I she was, she was.

Aaron (03:29)
I'm maybe

outing myself further, but I'm looking at her IMDB right now. I'm back to 2013 and I don't think I recognize. Fridesmaids, okay.

Ade (03:32)
Yeah.

I mean, she was in bridesmaids. She is an,

an X-Men and she's, don't know. She's just been in a lot of stuff, but, I think somebody who's kind of been in the background for the most part up until.

Aaron (03:45)
Huh.

I've seen Troy.

Ade (03:52)
Yeah.

Aaron (03:52)
This is like a blind spot for me. I know the name, but huh.

Ade (03:58)
Yeah, I feel like I started to really appreciate her recently too in Platonic with Seth Rogen. I really liked that TV show. And then that kind of, think that, and that was just in the last couple of years that kind of piqued my curiosity of like, I know her and I've seen her and stuff, but I wouldn't have put her on any sort of list.

Aaron (04:23)
Yeah.

Ade (04:23)
of mine

until recently.

Aaron (04:25)
Huh.

Ade (04:28)
Should we talk about today's Still on the theme of 1960s TV adaptations, awful adaptations this month, we are covering The Avengers, the 1998 movie that has nothing to do with Marvel. This the other The Avengers, which is probably forgotten by most people in the world at this point.

Aaron (04:31)
Yeah, let's.

Ade (04:55)
starring Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, Sean Connery, 5 % on Rotten Tomatoes. It was directed by Jeremiah Cechik, how do you say his name? He directed Christmas Vacation, Benny and June, $60 million budget, $55 million to the box office. Certainly not a success by any measures. Did you know about this movie?

Aaron (05:07)
I have no idea.

Well, as I watched it, I was like, I saw this in theaters and completely erased it from my memory. So some of that box office was my dad, I'm sure. Yeah, I saw it. But no memory of like plot or anything else about it just kind of came and went.

Ade (05:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you remember how you felt about it when you saw it?

Aaron (05:41)
I don't think I understood it when I saw it and I. A little better, but ⁓ yeah, I I remembered it as I watched it. I'm like, OK, I remember some of these scenes or I remember the Uma Thurman ⁓ leather cat suit thing she wears at the end. ⁓ This clearly was quite a.

Ade (05:44)
Did you understand it when you saw it this time? Yeah.

⁓ Did that awaken something in you?

Aaron (06:05)
⁓ transformative time for me.

Ade (06:07)
It was based on a British TV series from the 1960s. Uh, I didn't get a ton of background on this movie other than the most fascinating thing to me was apparently the studio watched the movie and panics after, uh, test screenings too. And they removed about 30 to 40 minutes from this movie. Uh, yeah, it,

Aaron (06:34)
Yeah, you can tell.

Ade (06:36)
This seems, yeah, edited to hell. don't ever want to watch those 30 to 40 minutes, but it makes me wonder how bad it was before that they were like, yep, this is better.

Aaron (06:45)
There's

apparently like a graphic novel out that contains the full uncut script. I haven't looked into that. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what I read. so the premise of this movie is,

I didn't write it down. ⁓ The premise. OK, we're going to wing it. ⁓ We're going to wing it. Uma Thurman. Is a doctor who was in charge of a her name is Dr. Emma Peel, which I read. Came about because they were looking for masculine appeal.

Ade (07:05)
You

That's fine. I don't think the screenwriters wrote it down either.

Yes.

Aaron (07:24)
⁓ On the TV show in the day, they wanted somebody that would appeal to men and they kept calling her different things. then they just started calling it appeal. ⁓ And then they just started calling her appeal. Anyway, she's a doctor who is in charge of something called the Prospero program, which would control the weather. And then early on, it gets sabotaged by someone who looks exactly like her.

Ade (07:35)
You

Aaron (07:52)
and they think it's her, she claims it's not her. Sean Connery, who was a former scientist at the Prospero program, is trying to basically sell weather to the world. He's destroyed their program and kind of built his own something, I don't know how it works. They didn't explain it, but.

He's trying to control the global weather and sell good weather to countries. And she teams up with Ray Fiennes, who plays Steed. I don't remember his first name. John Steed, and he is a secret agent for some unknown group in the British government.

Ade (08:23)
John Steed.

Aaron (08:32)
and they pair up to try to prove her innocence. She's allowed the opportunity to prove that it wasn't her who destroyed the Prospero program.

Ade (08:41)
Did you like this movie?

Aaron (08:42)
No, but I was intrigued by this movie. It piqued my interest. kind of got into the show that it was based on and started watching a few episodes here and there. I like the show a lot more than I like the movie.

Ade (08:57)
Was it a good show?

I haven't seen a minute of the show.

Aaron (09:03)
Yeah, I think it's a good show. kind of reminds me it's different than the movie. It reminds me a little bit of Perry Mason or Sherlock Holmes, where there's kind of like mystery of the week. They go solve it. And it wasn't until later seasons where they started adding the fantasy or sci fi elements to it, which is a big part of this.

there's invisible men in this and in this movie and controlling the weather is all pretty sci fi fantasy. So, yeah, early seasons were much more grounded, like detective spy stuff. They called that genre spy fi, which I've never heard before, but I kind of like that. But yeah, it was it was a good show. The movie piqued my interest in the show. I did not like the movie.

Ade (09:46)
Hmm, never heard that either. Yeah.

Yeah, it kind of, the movie came across like a kind of trying to be a sexier, quirkier James Bond sort of adaptation or riff on that, but just totally failed. I thought this was incomprehensible and just, was.

Aaron (10:06)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Ade (10:16)
So we've said this a few times on the podcast. Like I think you said pretty early on that you've been amazed every time you think we've watched the worst movie possible. You keep getting surprised about how much worse movies can get. And I feel like this is kind of in the same vein where I'm like, I am surprised at how bad this is in the ways that it is bad in that. I mean, how do you release a movie like this that is clearly

Aaron (10:30)
Yeah.

Ade (10:45)
cut. You've cut so much of the movie that it doesn't even really make sense from scene to scene where you're just watching this kind of like, what happened? I clearly missed something. did they get from point A to point B? Pretty early on, I was like, what kind of spy agency is this? Is this the

Aaron (10:48)
Yeah.

Ade (11:07)
the least effective, are these the worst spies ever on television? Because.

Aaron (11:12)
Yeah, they all just

go by their, they tell everyone their full name. They just walk like right up to the places that they're trying to infiltrate. They don't, they don't do any espionage or spying at all.

Ade (11:19)
But

But even then the setup. So like you said, in the synopsis, they, somebody's sabotage their government program. They see, they watch on camera that it's Uma Thurman. And then they're like, who do we put on the case? Uma Thurman. And I'm just like, I, it's, it's the most basic thing in the first minutes of the movie. And I'm just like, I don't understand what's happening here. Like, are they trying to entrap her?

Aaron (11:39)
Yeah.

Ade (11:52)
Like what human would be like, nah, she said it's not her. So let's, let's not only not just arrest her on the spot, but let's put her in charge of investigating the, I mean, yeah, it's, it's weird. then it, I didn't even get does basic things of why they thought Sean Connery's character might be the villain. And then they go to investigate him.

Aaron (12:05)
Yeah.

It doesn't make sense.

Ade (12:19)
And she just like walks into his house and has tea with him in his garden terrarium thing or what the greenhouse. then it was cool, but it didn't make sense what she was doing or how she was investigating. And it just kept going on like this. were several points where the, the two, the two heroes, just keep trying to investigate Sean Connery and going to different.

Aaron (12:29)
The greenhouse was kinda cool.

Ade (12:47)
parts of his organization or whatever. And then they almost get killed. And it's like, they, they're fortunately paired up against the worst villain ever in movies who just keeps like capturing them and then leaving the room right before he kills them to give them time to escape. And then they just, I don't know that it like cuts to them and their, their apartment. And it's like, how did they get back here? And then.

Aaron (13:08)
Yeah.

Yeah.

It happened to both of them. They both like get knocked unconscious or something in the villain's lair. And then it just cuts to them waking up safe in their apartment.

Ade (13:16)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, several. I can't I can't exaggerate how nonsensical this movie is. And it was like every single scene. If you ask me, hey, why are the characters doing what they're doing? I'd be like, I have no fucking idea. Like.

Aaron (13:28)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

you can tell they cut out 26 or 28 minutes of like exposition, surely because it didn't make any sense either. But like it's even more incomprehensible when you leave all that out. And it goes from like this really long dragging first act that's introducing the plot. And then you just jump right into the climax and you're like, well,

Ade (13:54)
Yeah.

Aaron (14:10)
Wait, what? ⁓ How did we get here? Also, there's a evil group of villains that all wear gigantic teddy bear costumes.

Ade (14:12)
Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, just the look on my face when it cut to the seat and they're all in this giant boardroom, people around the boardroom, they're all in these giant colorful teddy bear costume. What is happening?

Aaron (14:32)
huge costumes. It's supposed

to be like Spectre or something, but it's just stupid. It's just all these people in teddy bear costumes.

Ade (14:44)
And then Sean Connery takes his teddy bear head off. And basically the setup is he knows who everybody else is, but they don't know who each other are. So it's a way for them to be a cognitive. Yeah. There are so many easier ways than like, how did they all get there? So, you know, I show up, you know, got my Google calendar invite for the board meeting. I show up for the board meeting and some assistant is like, actually, can you enter through this entrance?

Aaron (14:54)
Anonymous.

Yeah.

Ade (15:12)
And, you're going to go to your dressing room and there's going to be a pink teddy bear costume. want you to wear that and then where, you know, walk into the board meeting with that. And then for the rest of the time that we interact, there's going to be, you're going to take trips out to the, British countryside, the castle and the greenhouse and like all these different, like villain layer points. And I want you to wear that teddy bear costume there as well.

Aaron (15:14)
Hahaha

Ade (15:38)
We'll load you into a truck to transport you. mean, it was just like, yeah, it is insane. And there are just so many weird things like this. yeah, I just, so my notes are basically a bunch of things that just were terrible. And I just want to start at the high level. So we've talked about the plot, the dialogue. I could not stand the dialogue. I mean, so ⁓

Aaron (15:42)
It's insane.

Yeah. Oof.

Ade (16:02)
Every single line spoken to Uma Thurman, I believe was filled with some sort of innuendo. So Uma Thurman and Ray Fiennes meet and five minutes, I'm just like, go get a room. You guys are just back and forth, giving each other sexy eyes and, and just everything is some sort of, innuendo about how they, how hot.

each other is or how they want to sleep with each other or whatever. it's like, you, HR would fire you immediately. You can't do this. Yeah, exactly.

Aaron (16:34)
Here you are going on about HR again.

Well, Sean Connery tells her one should never fear being wet.

Ade (16:42)
Yeah.

Is that, is that before or after he has the towel and is like wiping her down below camera?

Aaron (16:49)
He's like,

she's like, that's enough. ⁓ Yeah. And that apparently pissed off a lot of the fans of the TV show, because the TV show, there's none of that. There's a little flirting in the later seasons, but they were very specific in the show that there's no sexual tension between Steed and his female counterparts. And in the show, there are a lot of different female counterparts. Emma Peel is

Ade (16:53)
Yeah.

Aaron (17:15)
just one of them. think he has like four different counterparts. But yeah, there was none of that in the show and it's really heavy in the movie and it's just kind of it's gross. Sean Connery tries to like start kissing her while she's unconscious. ⁓ I did not like that.

Ade (17:25)
It was, it was way too much. It was.

Yeah.

No, and then the lines of dialogue that weren't innuendo were filled with puns. And I have to say, I am a huge fan of puns. I enjoy using puns in my personal life and hearing puns and I don't think I laughed even once. didn't think any of the puns were clever. maybe I just didn't understand some of the more clever puns, but,

Aaron (17:43)
Mm.

Ade (18:01)
It was a slog to get through this dialogue.

Aaron (18:05)
Yeah, it was there was no chemistry either between anybody in this movie. It seemed like that. I don't know. It was like lifeless.

Ade (18:14)
Yeah, it was really weird.

Aaron (18:17)
Yeah, there were lot. were cool things in it. Like, I liked the style of it a little bit at times. ⁓ I kind of like the old English gentleman spy. It had kind of a Kingsman type vibe to it a little bit. ⁓

Ade (18:25)
Maybe.

Yeah.

Kingsman

did that aspect of it way better. think Bond does the gadget thing way better. Uh, I I think the problem is there's so many aspects of this that it was trying to do that. It just, each of each of those dimensions, did it terribly on top of a terrible plot, terrible dialogue. If you, if you wrote down the, I guess the high level pitch of this movie on paper,

Aaron (18:38)
yeah.

Yeah.

Ade (19:05)
I'd be like, sign me up. I'm all in. I, my, I'm a huge fan of James Bond. have a low floor for terrible Bond movies. I'll still, I'll still enjoy myself. even if it's cheesy and has some bad dialogue and stuff like that. But this was like, I don't know. Yeah. If you told me sexy, stylish, you know, cool Bond movie, like I'm, I'm all in, but this was not.

Aaron (19:08)
Yeah.

Ade (19:30)
This is not a good implementation of that idea.

Aaron (19:33)
Yeah, and I love Ray Fiennes and Uma Thurman and Sean Connery. Yeah, this was not that.

Ade (19:37)
Yeah, they're incredible. This was, yeah.

Aaron (19:43)
So Eddie is art plays a henchman in this and I think his only line in the movie, I could be wrong, but I think his only line in the movie is, fuck, right, as he falls to his death.

Ade (19:46)
Yeah.

Yeah.

You're not wrong. That is the only line he delivers in the movie. Yeah. Yeah. He was. I, I don't know. I only have a few things that I actually jotted down because everything was terrible in the movie. So I really just jotted down the bus, ⁓ is so that they have the two heads of the spy agency, father and mother who.

Aaron (19:58)
What a waste.

Ade (20:19)
father is a woman and mother is a man. And it's not like they're actually, I mean, I think father and mother are just their code names. Mother is in a wheelchair and father seems like she's blind. Is she actually blind?

Aaron (20:30)
Yeah.

is blind.

In the show she was, but in the show she was in like one episode. Yeah, so she was not. I don't think that that father was a big character in the show. Mother was in some later seasons of the show, I think. But I'm pretty sure that Emma Peel and Mother were only in like half an episode together, so this is drawing from the source material, but it's I mean, it's something completely fucking different. Yeah.

Ade (20:42)
Okay.

Okay.

trying to mash it all together. But

it was, I mean, it's just, I think basic movie making stuff where like she in one scene, she wears the sunglasses throughout the movie and in one scene she has a cane. But then like in another scene she's playing croquet. And then in like the next scene she has a cane and then another scene she disarms

Aaron (21:23)
You

Ade (21:31)
mother, like, you know, fighting with it. And it's like, like, what, what is, are you trying to tell us that she's not actually blind or are you trying to tell us that she has superpowers where she can sense space and time? I don't know. Like what, what? Yeah.

Aaron (21:47)
I kept forgetting she was blind. was

like, was so crazy.

Ade (21:53)
Like that just feels like a very basic

note that you should give the filmmaker. Like, Hey, maybe not confuse the audience about what, what like the basic physics. Yeah.

Aaron (22:05)
Can they see or not?

Yeah,

I don't know. There were lot of people from Harry Potter in this movie, too. I don't know. We're both. Yeah.

Ade (22:14)
Yeah, yeah, mother and father were, yeah, they were both from Harry Potter.

The technology was...

Aaron (22:21)
and Ray

Fiennes.

Ade (22:22)
Yeah, that's true. the technology was trying to be cool, but it was terrible. The Wasp drones. What did you think of those? Yeah.

Aaron (22:29)
that all killed themselves.

so there's this, there's this, like wasp, robot wasp swarm that chases them. And there's a car chase scene and I'm, I'm pretty sure that 99 % of the swarm killed itself. They just ran into bridges or ran into each other or just, it was like,

Ade (22:44)
Yeah.

I mean,

hundreds of millions of dollars of technology used when that, when Eddie is and other henchmen could have just, I like stopped the car and fired guns into. So.

Aaron (22:51)
You

There were a lot of

ways to just easily kill both of the main characters and they didn't take that route.

Ade (23:10)
Yeah, they spent, yeah, they spent hundreds of millions of dollars on this technology. And he has it has this like a little control box that he's from the bushes, controlling the swarm of how many wasps it's like 20 wasps, but, ⁓ across this car chase, you know, miles and miles of car chase, but there's no screen on it to show the video. So I'm like, how does he know where the wasps? Yeah, exactly.

Aaron (23:24)
Yeah.

where they are.

Yeah, I don't know. It was stupid. He also had this like joystick thing where it was like all it was like 20 joysticks all grouped together and they all moved together, but he didn't ever touch that. He only touched like one joystick that moved all of them. And I'm like, why do you have that?

Ade (23:43)
Yeah.

Yeah, maybe.

Yeah, maybe he

could control them individually when he needed to, but it certainly the UI didn't make sense for how do you have this swarm of wasps and each of them sometimes shooting at the cars and then sometimes trying to ram into the car. was there. There are so many technology things that seemed absolutely unnecessary towards the end. Peel and Steed. Those are names, right? Yeah.

have this river to cross and they get in these hamster ball things to cross the river.

Aaron (24:23)
Yeah, I was

like, this is so conspicuous.

Ade (24:28)
Yeah. I mean, again, what's the setup here? They, they're sitting on the banks of the river, blowing into these giant balls and get into them. And I'm also sure like there has to be zero current for it, for this to work.

Aaron (24:34)
You

Yeah, a fucking kayak or a canoe would be way stealthier and less obvious and easier, faster.

Ade (24:45)
Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, they're just going to tip over and then like go along with the current. I don't know.

Aaron (24:56)
Yeah,

and they're like walking so cool as they're walking across. I'd be like on my hands and knees crawling, rolling. I couldn't stand up. You're walking on water.

Ade (24:59)
You

Yeah. Throwing up in the hamster ball.

Get all seasick.

Aaron (25:10)
Yeah, it's stupid. Connery had a great mustache in this though. It a little Fu Manchu kind of thing.

Ade (25:11)
Yeah.

He was.

Yeah, he was shooting up scenery, but what'd you, what'd you think of his performance?

Aaron (25:23)
I feel like he's got the same performance in it and just about everything he's in. He's Sean Connery. He doesn't do accents. He doesn't have a huge amount of range. I love him. I love Connery movies, but he's kind of always Connery.

Ade (25:37)
Yeah

At least they leaned into it. He had his big scene in front of the UN or whatever, like in a traditional Scott, like in a kilten. Yeah, exactly. This is such a minor thing, but it really bugged me. There's a scene where he ransoms the world essentially for, ⁓ anyway, and then the next scene and there are all these world leaders sitting around the table and he's delivering this big speech and the next scene it cuts to.

Aaron (25:49)
kilton everything he was all decked out

Ade (26:12)
mother and mother's assistant, coming over and, and like, basically there's some dialogue about how we have to tell the prime minister what's happening. And it's like, isn't the prime minister in that giant room where you give this big speech. It's just basic things don't make sense in this movie.

Aaron (26:23)
Wasn't he there?

Yeah.

Yeah, and what was going on with Mother and the Assistant?

Ade (26:36)
That seemed, I called that out. Yeah. I called that out too. At some point, the assistant is feeding mother a cookie and I was like, exactly.

Aaron (26:38)
So mother

Yeah, like very sensually.

Yeah.

Ade (26:51)
There's a 40 year age difference too. mean, not that that matters, but it seemed very, ⁓ very me too.

Aaron (26:59)
It's this young, attractive assistant that's hand feeding him macaroons. ⁓ By the way, were those macaroons? don't think I know what a macaroon is, because those just look like cookies to me.

Ade (27:05)
Yeah.

Yeah. I, ⁓ maybe they call them something. Maybe macaroons is a more broad term in, ⁓ the UK.

Aaron (27:18)
Is there a macaroon and then

a macaroon?

Ade (27:22)
I think you're thinking of Macron, the French president.

Aaron (27:25)
Yeah, that's definitely what I'm thinking of. You're right. Amanda, when we were watching it, she said, why is the acting like this?

Ade (27:29)
Yeah, yeah, he was eating.

Like how over the top it was.

Aaron (27:33)
You

Yeah, and it was so stilted. Every line of dialogue was like a robot delivered it.

Ade (27:43)
because it was, I mean, I swear half the dialogue was innuendo or puns and they were probably just groaning inside of how terrible it was. There's no way you can deliver that for weeks on end if it's just like, I didn't even write any of the dialogue down. None of it was worth it. Like I would love to give some examples, but yeah, it was just terrible dialogue. I don't, world-class actors, but I mean.

Aaron (28:07)
Yeah.

Ade (28:10)
I don't think they could do anything with that.

What other stuff do you have about this movie that you liked or didn't like?

Aaron (28:15)
There was a scene where Uma Thurman was, I think, captured at at Connery's house and she kept running through the house and it was like this maze where she kept coming around to the same room. was also one of those. don't remember what they call them, but the the stairwells where you.

Ade (28:32)
the Escher ⁓ painting, is that it?

Aaron (28:34)
Yeah,

I think that might be it where she she's like running around the stairs and you'd think she'd be going up or down, but she ends up right back where she started and like several rooms where she kept doing that. She kept running around and then she end up in the same room. I that was kind of a neat trick. There was also a big like a garden maze scene.

Ade (28:43)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Real quick. I did like the Escher visual, which it is Escher and I thought it was really cool, but after a few minutes of it, I was like, how is that actually working in real life? Because it only makes sense. Like when you're looking at it. Yeah. But she's, she's running really hard and like trying to understand if she's running a loops and it's like, you would know if you start running upstairs and then.

Aaron (29:04)
I

It's a visual trick.

Yeah.

that

they're not connected.

Ade (29:20)
Yeah, exactly. I don't know. So it kind of took me out of it a little bit.

Aaron (29:23)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's a small flaw in the thing. Also, her she comes into this room and she's like, I'm pretty sure she's been in this room. there's like a fireplace and a mirror and a like a bust of somebody. And her plan is to just smash the bust in the middle of the floor. I'm like, you could have just moved like the fire poker. You have to break anything.

Ade (29:39)
Yeah.

Yeah. Or just put the bus in the middle

of the floor.

Aaron (29:48)
Yeah, it seemed unnecessary, but all right. Yeah.

Ade (29:50)
I mean, she was mad.

Also what that's kind of ingenious as a villain to just have that area of your mansion. Like what, what do you do with that? The 364 days of the year that you don't have a spy trapped in your mansion.

Aaron (30:12)
Now, what's the purpose?

Ade (30:13)
Somebody has to claim that dust it. You're paying the heating bill. I guess he can control the weather. So maybe you just, you know, micro, micro weather climates and.

Aaron (30:17)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Also, in this movie, they mention cloning once because there are two peels. There's the innocent peel that's with Seed and then there's Henchman peel that is working for Connery. She's the one who destroyed the Prospero program. They never mention that again. And also, I don't think anybody told Mother that there are two peels because he sees the evil Henchman

Ade (30:32)
Yeah.

Aaron (30:52)
at the end and is completely surprised that there's another...

Ade (30:55)
And why even have a clone? guess I, I.

Aaron (30:58)
It didn't serve any purpose,

Ade (31:01)
Yeah, this movie was exhausting.

Aaron (31:03)
Yeah.

Ade (31:04)
I

think it's the shortest movie we've covered and it was way too, way too much. It was an hour and 27 minutes, I think. And I.

Aaron (31:17)
Yeah, that means this was a two

hour piece of shit before they cut that out.

Ade (31:22)
Yeah, I could,

I could have used another 40 minute of it.

Aaron (31:28)
Yeah, so this was a movie that they did not allow reviewers to view before it released, which is kind of a sign that they know it's dog shit and.

Ade (31:37)
I mean,

it's a huge sign, especially for a big budget kind of tent pole IP movie.

Aaron (31:43)
Yeah, Father, the blind villain and the evil Peel die in a very low speed hot air balloon accident.

Ade (31:49)
Mm-hmm.

Hahaha.

Yeah. Yeah. That was kind of a funny scene where, Uma Thurman, the good version of her, guess she falls from the hot air balloon really far and onto a statue and she's fine, but she's knocked out. The balloon blows up and then Feinnes runs over to her, revives her.

Aaron (31:58)
which I loved.

Yeah.

Yeah

Yeah.

Ade (32:23)
And then as like, where's, you know, where's father and what, I don't know. And then she, she's like, I think they're dead. And it's like, how did you know you were knocked out? And then they sit there for felt like ages. think it was just a few minutes, know, sexy eyes and innuendo. And then they finally kiss and it's like, there's still this whole thing about the wet, the world is being destroyed by the weather.

Aaron (32:31)
Mm-hmm. You were falling.

You

Ade (32:52)
This isn't the end guys. You can't just like have your makeout scene now just because you killed one of the henchmen. You have to actually go stop the main villain. Yeah. ⁓

Aaron (32:58)
Yeah.

plot.

Yeah,

he runs up to her after that and he's like, are you okay? And I'm thinking, well, I just fell a hundred feet onto my tailbone. So I guess.

Ade (33:13)
Yeah.

She's nimble enough to get in that hamster ball and cross the river. I assume that was the times they said something about an Island in London. I meant to look this up. I don't know London geography well, but are there islands in London?

Aaron (33:18)
Yeah. ⁓

Yeah.

I know. I've been to London once, but I never went to an island. I think that's unknowable.

Ade (33:34)
I guess we'll never know. No, no.

Yeah, no way to look that up.

Aaron (33:41)
Why did Connery let them into his lair at the end?

Ade (33:46)
Why did he let them in every time they were in his like, he let them in the first time in the castle. He lets them in when they're in the maze. Like there's this, by the way, another piece of technology that was just, they have this fake. Peacock that has a camera in it that looks like a live. It's just, it's like your fucking property. Just put a camera up. Like you don't have to hide the fact that you're, you have a security camera. Yeah. He lets them in there. He, he.

Aaron (33:48)
Ever.

I forgot.

Yeah

I have to pretend.

Ade (34:15)
does the sword fight with Ray finds and like defeats him and then disappears. And yeah, he lets him in at the end. It's like, no, just kill them.

Aaron (34:28)
Yeah, I don't get it.

Ade (34:30)
He lets them into the office where they have the board meeting with the teddy bears. I don't know why he's killing off all the teddy bear board members. It's just, I don't know.

Aaron (34:34)
Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know. It didn't make sense. There's clearly a lot of this movie that we didn't get to see and I don't know if it would have made it make sense, but.

Ade (34:52)
Probably not. not. I, I don't have a lot of faith in studio executives, I have to believe that they're not going to sabotage this movie by making it worse after. I mean, the test screenings came back really bad. yeah. I thought the fight between Sean Connery and Ray finds at the end, you know, the second.

Aaron (34:54)
Yeah.

Yeah, people hated it in the test screening

Ade (35:16)
confrontation was really funny because it's like, okay, Connery's twice your age. He should be able to defeat him. Well, ⁓ I, yeah. shout out. I watched this with John and, and, ⁓ shout out him. noticed that, Sean Connery's cane at one point, he swings it and it's like, it's, it's clearly a rubber. It's like bouncing. It's bending as they're fighting.

Aaron (35:25)
Yeah, he's got old man strength

Rubber.

Yeah.

Ade (35:43)
and I don't know, just the whole, like, what, what is the system that they've set up? Like clearly just a set piece for this, but he shuts it. He shuts down the computer or whom I shot on the computer. And then there's this countdown to how it's going to explode. It's like, whoa, who's designing a system? Yeah. It was designing any sort of system where once you shut it down, it's just going to destroy this billions of dollar facility that.

Aaron (35:50)
Mm-hmm.

And it was like three seconds.

Ade (36:10)
It's like, no, reboot, turn it back on.

Aaron (36:12)
Yeah,

yeah, there was clear this final set piece was like this big.

I don't even know what it was. Like it seemed like a Star Wars set piece or something where it's

Ade (36:21)
I was gonna say

it's reminiscent of Empire Strikes Back, the Luke invader.

Aaron (36:25)
Yeah, it's like it's almost like you're inside

of a like a nuclear cooling tower or something and there's water at the bottom and there's these little balls that like have a tiny office in them. And yeah, it was like it clearly was designed to look cool, but I don't know what that place did. I think that was supposed to be the mechanism that controls the weather, but I we really don't know what mechanism he's using to control the weather.

Ade (36:38)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Which movie had better CG? This movie or Wild Wild West?

Aaron (36:59)
my god.

Ade (37:00)
same same year basically I mean this was 1998 and one of us was 99.

Aaron (37:06)
I think that...

This movie. I don't know. I was going to say this movie didn't use as much like big scale CG, but I don't think that's true. Like like in Wild Wild West, the whole final set piece is on the the giant walking spider thing, which is all CG all the time. And it looks like shit and like terrible green screen. I think the this one didn't have like they were on an actual set. They did use CG for like

Ade (37:27)
Yeah.

Aaron (37:34)
establishing shots and the UCG for like the wasps and shit. But I think that Wild Wild West was worse, but they were both not good.

Ade (37:45)
Yeah, even the final shot in this where, by the way, the final shot, did they get married? I don't know. They were in.

Aaron (37:51)
That's what I

said. I'm like, she's in a white dress. Are they married now?

Ade (37:53)
And it was in

this, ⁓ gazebo thing on top of this, but it's this big wide shot of London in the background. And I'm like, why does it look like that? It looked painted. ⁓ I mean, that was definitely CG. I felt like, John also pointed out how there were so few extras in this movie. They're, they're driving and they're like, no other cars on the road. was like, they use all their budget on, I don't know, Connery's salary or something.

Aaron (38:02)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Probably.

Ade (38:22)
Yeah, I think the whole thing was shot on a soundstage.

Aaron (38:26)
Yeah, yeah, I think that that might be pretty much true. It seemed low budget for what it was. I don't know if all that money was going into bad CG work or paying actors salaries or what, but it was rough.

Ade (38:36)
You

Aaron (38:45)
when Connery dies at the end from basically his own machine kills him with lightning, the lightning like lifts him up and just throws him into the sky infinitely. just disappears into the sky from a lightning strike. And I'm like, what function of lightning is this? I think I need to go back to school.

Ade (38:59)
Yeah.

How does lightning work?

Yeah. My last note is apparently the invisible guy was played by the original actor in the TV show.

Aaron (39:19)
Yeah, what was his name? McNe? Patrick McNeese. He played Steed in the original show. He has a vocal cameo as an invisible man.

Ade (39:29)
But the invisible man was really, it threw me off because this was about an hour into the movie, hour and change is towards the end. And I'm like, people can be invisible in this universe. Like nobody else is magical.

Aaron (39:35)
Yeah.

Yo,

why aren't they doing the invisible thing during this final battle?

Ade (39:46)
Yeah. Why didn't they have an invisible person go in and sabotage the like everything else is very. Yeah. Everything else is pretty grounded and yeah. Quasi believable in that it's like cloning. They've, you know, they saw cloning, they've solved drone, whatever. Uh, and so it's, it's at least, you know, tangible. And then it's like, wait,

Aaron (39:50)
You've already got one working for you

Yeah.

Ade (40:12)
I don't know, do other people have superpowers?

Aaron (40:15)
Yeah, Amanda said, why can't we see his clothes? You can see like his pipe and everything else. I thought that the CG. Well, if you look really hard. Yeah, there was a visual effect where the invisible man walks in front of like a projection on a projection screen. I thought that was the best CG in the movie.

Ade (40:18)
He's naked.

You could see his pipe.

Yeah.

Aaron (40:42)
I thought it looked really good. It seemed better than like modern movie. I don't know if they spent the budget on that shot, but it was I thought it was a good effect. Did you did you notice it or?

Ade (40:53)
Yeah. I,

I didn't even register as a, mean, I, I think I was so by, by this point, I was not really looking for bright spots in the movie anymore. I was just, I was counting down the seconds till the end.

Aaron (41:03)
lol

Yeah, you're a full on hater. Hater mode.

Yeah.

Ade (41:14)
Anything else that you liked?

Aaron (41:15)
Not from the movie.

Ade (41:17)
Just

in life, anything he likes.

Aaron (41:21)
I mean, I liked a lot of things from the show. I went and watched several episodes of the show.

Ade (41:24)
Yeah.

Are you gonna finish it?

Aaron (41:29)
Well, so. Part of it is that apparently it was common practice in the 60s for TV shows to write over tapes of existing episodes, so a lot of the first couple of seasons are completely lost to time. think they have three surviving episodes from the first season. ⁓ Yeah, so I don't think I'll watch those, but I'll watch what I can. I liked them.

Ade (41:49)
said.

Aaron (41:56)
The first sidekick he had in the show was Honor Blackman who was Pussy Galore and Goldfinger. And then...

Diana Rigg played Emma Peel in the show who was Olena Tyrell in Game of Thrones. Great actress. She was also a Bond girl. She was in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. She was Bond's wife that died at the end. But yeah, the show, I'm way more interested in the show than I am in the movie. The movie fucking sucks.

Ade (42:10)
Hmm, okay.

Nice.

Speaking of Bond crossovers, did you know that the guy who played the villain in this also played James Bond?

Aaron (42:33)
Who's that?

Ade (42:35)
Sheen Connor Conroy. I'm not sure how you pronounce it.

Aaron (42:39)
Must have only been

in one, maybe I didn't see that one. Yeah. I don't think people liked those early ones.

Ade (42:42)
The lesser ones, ⁓ yeah.

Speaking of which, I couldn't find anything online about this, but did you see anything in terms of, was that a huge deal about the first Bond playing in this Bond-like movie? I mean, I don't know, it seemed like people would have made a big deal out of it.

Aaron (43:06)
I didn't see anything either. I could find very little about the background of this getting made or like the production or... ⁓

Ade (43:14)
They

taped over those tapes real quick.

Aaron (43:18)
I think the studio swept this under the rug as fast as they could. They apparently it was scheduled to release in like July or something, a big summer blockbuster. And then once they got a look at the final cut, they're like, maybe this should go to like August or September where where movies go to die. Yeah.

Ade (43:33)
you

Is that, is that

still the case? feel like January, February is kind of the dumping ground these days, but maybe.

Aaron (43:43)
Yeah, probably has changed

since those days. But yeah, I don't, I don't know. Like I think that this is just a super forgettable. I mean, I saw it and I, I saw it when it came out and I forgot I even saw it. I forgot it existed.

Ade (43:53)
you

Yeah,

yeah, I don't think I said this at the top, but I'm pretty sure I saw this as well. I don't remember when I saw it, whether it was theater or rental, but I think I saw it soon after it came out, so. But I couldn't tell you anything about it.

Aaron (44:12)
Yeah.

This this movie and the show itself were both obviously heavily inspired from James Bond, the man from Uncle Mission Impossible, even like Batman. This is the worst of all of those. It's like it's the worst. I don't know. It's like they all had a kid and it was it was a it was awful.

Ade (44:32)
Yes Yeah

Yeah.

And I should say Dr. No came out in 1962, if I'm, and I think the TV show aired in 61, like it premiered in 61. So it actually proceeded the Bond movies. Obviously the novels were out, but you know, it's not, it's not really ripping off, maybe riffing off of it, you know, but yeah.

Aaron (44:47)
Something like that.

Yeah.

Well, the show, the show had, I wrote this down, I have a note. The show parodied a bunch of those shows. They had an episode called The Girl From Auntie instead of Uncle. They had an episode called Mission Highly Improbable and one called The Winged Avenger. So obviously they were like aware that they were kind of...

you from these better sources.

Ade (45:30)
What's your out pick? Is it the TV show?

Aaron (45:33)
I watched the TV show. You might like I don't know if you like those old TV shows. They're slow. But I like the TV shows. I think there's obvious picks for like Kingsman or Mission Impossible or Austin Powers. I think there's a lot of good movies in the genre. I picked charade. It's maybe not one to one, but it's a sixty three. Nineteen sixty three.

Ade (45:54)
that familiar.

Aaron (45:56)
Has Carrie Grant, Katherine Hepburn, George Kennedy, really good cast. It's kind of got the same like 60s chic, spy espionage style, really good dialogue. A lot of.

a lot of charisma and wit and chemistry between Hepburn and Grant and it's a really good movie.

Ade (46:19)
Yeah.

Uh, yeah, I'll have to check that out. I didn't do my homework again. I keep forgetting to put in my notes that I need to think of alt pics. So, uh, I mean, like you said, there are just so many obvious, like good ones. I can't really think of any off the of my head, like not well-known, cool, stylish spy movies.

I fail. Give me enough.

Aaron (46:46)
Fair enough. don't know if this will go into the final cut, the TV show, like obviously this is supposed to be really stylish and the TV show and maybe.

I think it was this movie. This movie, the clothing was designed by Pierre Cardin. Cardin, the designer. But in the TV show, there was like a really strong like fetish influence at times in the costuming. like there's a little bit of it in the movie.

Ade (47:09)
I didn't know that.

Aaron (47:24)
where she's got like the black leather get up or whatever. But in the in the TV show, Diana Rigg wears this like outfit that was designed by like a famous fetish clothing. It's like got a spiked choker and I don't know. was was as it was stylish.

Ade (47:28)
yeah.

Nice. That's pretty cool. By the way,

speaking of clothes, you don't say anything about my get up for the podcast.

Aaron (47:51)
Oh God, is that a suit jacket? A sport jacket? Why? Why are you doing this?

Ade (47:53)
Yeah, I'm wearing a dress shirt and a jacket.

Because it's such a stylish movie and Ray Fiennes looked really, you know, so I actually tried to find a tie. couldn't find it quickly enough to get on. Obviously I don't have a bowler hat. yeah, I couldn't find my skin tight leather onesie.

Aaron (48:10)
**JASON Yeah, I went with the new Z today for the... yeah.

Yeah, my choker is in storage.

Ade (48:21)
Either so. Yeah, I'm

glad I brought it up so people aren't just like, why is he wearing a dress shirt and jacket for the podcast?

Aaron (48:33)
Yeah,

I couldn't even see the lapel until you pointed it out, but I see it now. It's good luck.

Ade (48:39)
Yeah. Well,

well worth it.

Aaron (48:43)
You're a

proper gentleman now. ⁓

Ade (48:48)
I am, yes.

Aaron (48:49)
Apparently ⁓ in one scene in this movie, it pissed off a lot of British fans because he has a steed has a strange function of his car where it pours tea out of the dash and it's pouring tea that's already got milk in it. that made a lot of British people mad.

Ade (49:01)
Yeah.

I, it seemed like it made fun of British people a lot. I don't know if that was like a winking thing, but they stopped for tea. I I'm also drinking tea. So another homage. I am, I'm, you know, almost British today.

Aaron (49:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, you're on brand.

Almost.

Ade (49:25)
Almost. Well, I think that's about all I have. If you have any questions or comments for us, send us an email at theworstmoviepodcasts.gmail.com. Please subscribe on Apple or Spotify and YouTube, wherever else you see us. Click all the buttons.

Aaron (49:30)
same.

and YouTube.

Yes. I'm Aaron. Thanks for listening to the Worst Movie Podcast.

Ade (49:50)
I'm out of here.