Armageddon

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the beck Dog Cast, the questions asked if movies
have women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends
and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy zef
invest start changing it with the beck Del cast. How
does the song start? I could see awake just to

(00:21):
hear you dreaming or something like that. Why is sleeping
fouing dreaming? I could spend my life in this sweet surrendoum,

(00:43):
I just scared my cat, I guess last in this moment,
wouldn't you sing about your daughter like that? If you
saw raw silent footage of Ben Affleck shoving a am
Cracker down your daughter's pants, wouldn't you write that song?

(01:04):
To listen with you? Is a moment including the Graham
Cracker thing. I don't want to close man, okay twisted?
Is this twisted father's singing a song about his daughter
or is this a man singing a song about a

(01:28):
woman he's in love with? Look, my mom and I
have really discussed this over the years and come to
the conclusion that it can be read either way if
you don't have the context of armageddon. I don't want
to close my eyes. I don't want to fall asleep
because I miss you, babe, and I don't want to
miss a thing. Can't be described to describe how you

(01:50):
feel about how much you love your child. You don't
want to miss a moment of their childhood you love
them so much. Also personal history between Steven Tyler and
liv Tyler. She didn't know that she was his daughter,
and I believe he didn't know either until she was
like eleven or twelve, So he missed a large portion
of her childhood. So it perhaps even makes sense that
he didn't want to miss a thing. He'd already missed

(02:11):
so many things eleven years worth. I know. Damn God.
The Live Tyler paternity story. It lives on with our
greatest roller coaster band, Aerosmith. Have you ever been the
Aerosmith roller coaster? I have not, but I've heard you
tell of it many times. I won't shut up about
it because it's so shocking to me that they haven't,

(02:34):
like changed the band. It's like, but but they can't.
Where is this at again? It's at Disney World. It's
at Disney World. It's called the rock and roller Coaster.
My parents and I like made eight Well, my mom
my dad thinks Aerosmith is corny and for losers because
he's a punk, right, But my mom opposite of a punk,

(02:56):
and so went the first time we went to Disney
World when I was like thirteen, it was a big
deal for her. She doesn't like going on roller coasters,
but she loves Aerosmith so much, and she's like, even
though the roller coaster goes upside down, I'm gonna go
on it because I love Steven Tyler and the thing
is about the rock and roller coaster. I would love
to know more about the history of it because it

(03:19):
is so themed around the band and the lore of
the band Aerosmith, that it would actually be kind of
challenging to re theme, like it's it's so specific. I
don't know how they pulled it off, but I'm sure
there's a very long YouTube video I could watch and
find out. It's an awesome roller coaster. It's like Steven

(03:41):
Tyler in in the video you watch in the line
and he's like, come on, guys, we're gonna be late
to the recording studio, and you're like, yeah, exactly. Well, anyways,
I don't think this song plays in the roller coaster
because it's kind of slow but it would be funny.
It should It could be one of those like lazy

(04:01):
River ride songs. The Arasmith lazy river is kind of
a cruel, diabolical idea. How many have you ever read
studies about how much human ship ends up in the
lazy river? No, and I don't want to know. Never
go in a lazy river. I would. I feel confident

(04:23):
that there's a lot of pists in there, but people
poop and definitely, I mean the piss goes without saying,
there is some physical I read about it once. I'm sorry,
I'm a I'm a scientist about as much as Bruce
Willis is and Armageddon, Like, I read about it once,
and there is some sort of physical effect that, like

(04:43):
a lazy river has on you that like loosens up
that butt hole. It makes it easy to just right
out right out. What's the name of this show? This
is This is the Bechtel Cast, And I'm Caitlin Toronte.

(05:04):
Who are you? Thank you for the reminder. I'm Jamie Loftus,
and this is our show, um where we take a
look at your favorite movies or you know, impactful one
could say deep impactful movies. And we are bringing a
disaster movie to you today. We're bringing Armageddon, directed by

(05:26):
Michael Bay because Caitlin and I were looking at genres
we haven't covered in many moons, and action and disaster
have been kind of, you know, few and far between recently,
So we chose the biggest goofiest one we get requests for,
and we're going to analyze it from an intersectional feminist lens,
and I'm sure it's going to do great. Um, what's

(05:47):
the metric we use as a jumping off point for discussion, Caitlin,
It's the Bechtel cast. No, if that's the name of
the show, let me try again. Yep, yep, it's the
Bechtel Test, which is media metric created by queer cartoonist
Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace Test. She included
it in her comic Likes to Watch Out For from

(06:10):
n originally just as a kind of one off joke,
which has since been used as the media metric that
we now know and love, which requires our version. There
are many versions, but ours requires that there be two
characters of a marginalized gender who have names, who speak

(06:34):
to each other, and whose conversation is about something other
than a man, and for our purposes, we like it
when it's a media conversation, maybe one of the size
of Texas even God. And you know, this movie has
a lot of words in it, but words spoken between women.
Don't be ridiculous. You're yeah right, Oh you silly billy.

(06:57):
What do you have space dementia? You'd have space dementia
to think that this movie would pass the back tole test.
But nevertheless, it made half a billion dollars and a
lot of people still really liked this movie. It's true
and I will say it is a Aerosmith got my
mom in the theaters, but she loved this movie. Wait, okay,
so let's so, Jamie, what is your relationship and your

(07:21):
mom's relationship where importantly relationship? Um, I don't have a
huge relationship with Armageddon. I have a huge relationship with
the Tyler family, more so Stephen. To be honest, because Aerosmith,
they're blessed in band. We're very proud of them, and well,

(07:42):
you know, but not the Boston Punks. And that's where
my dad comes in. But I you know, I grew
up around aeron Smith, posters and music. So my mom,
my mom loved this movie. I remember that we owned
it on VHS, and I remember being too young to
watch it and that was really long, and that I,

(08:03):
in spite of saying for a couple of years that
I wanted to be an astronaut, I think I said
it because it sounded good. Because I was stunningly disinterested
in space. Um, I didn't really want to watch any
space movies. I remember my mom being like, you can't
watch Armageddon. You could watch Apollo thirteen, and I was like,
I would I would really not want to do that.

(08:24):
Sounds sounds boring. Is actually a pretty solid movie. But anyway,
that's the Tom Hanks one. I also haven't seen Deep Impact.
I hadn't seen Contact until we watched it, and I
quite liked I'm more interested in space now, getting defensive.
I saw I saw different chunks of it growing up,
but I never really took the initiative to watch it

(08:46):
all the way through. Um so this is my first
time watching it all the way through. Oh and I
remember when The Army when the Ben Affleck commentary track
leaked a couple of years back, because that was a
treat more more kind of Boston Cannon present here. But um, yeah,
I've never seen it all the way through before. I
was preparing for this episode and wow, wow, wow, I

(09:11):
will say I think Michael Bay wanted me to laugh
and cry. I did laugh. I didn't cry. I didn't cry,
even when the movie said so. I didn't cry because
when someone was dying, I'm like, I don't know who
that is. You cut to them and away from them
so quickly that I didn't catch you mean the scene

(09:31):
and then I looked at it and I was like, oh,
I guess he's gone. You mean the scene where they're
like we lost Grouber and everyone's like, Grouper? Are we
supposed to care about Grouper? We haven't even met him yet?
And I thought it was kind of bizarre that they,
I mean, because Bruce Willis was always going to be
in this movie, even when it was being written, Like

(09:52):
why Bruce Willis there's already a Grouper associated with him,
Hans groupers Gruber. You're gonna put another grouper in a
Bruce Willis movie, bad idea. I still don't know who
Grouper is. I'll be honest. This movie was cutting back.
I mean, I think that that was like I learned
that that was a huge criticism of it at the time,

(10:12):
to where it was cut so quickly that it's like
it kind of gives you a headache and it's hard
to tell, yeah, because the pace. I mean, even Michael
Bay has admitted that the movie was edited very quickly
and that his visual effects supervisor had break up. He
gave no more information than that, which is kind of

(10:34):
a funny way about how Michael Bay talks. He'll say
something horrific and then just like start another sentence. But Yeah,
there were characters that I assumed had died in the
Like there's a point in the movie where you lose
a couple of characters, and I was like, oh, I
haven't seen quote unquote the woman in a while. I
guess that she died, but she didn't. She just disappeared

(10:54):
for thirty five minutes, but I guess she was there.
And fine, what's your history with this movie, Caitlin. I
had seen it before a couple of times. Uh. This
movie came out when I was twelve, so I was
among the many tween girls of the time where watching

(11:18):
this movie was like a rite of passage. Really, I mean,
it was like I didn't realize it was one of
those yeah yeah, interesting at least among my my friend group.
I believe you. I just didn't know. Oh yeah, you
watched it sleepovers. If you had like a boy girl hang,
if someone's like mom would let you have girls and

(11:40):
boys over, then you'd watch this because it's horny and
Ben Affleck puts an animal cracker on Live Tyler's boobs
and when people get all tense during that. Probably I
don't know. It was so many decades ago I barely
remembers are so twisted, um, but I do remember the
kids crying during the sacrificial Bruce Willis scene because she

(12:07):
does say daddy, she really does um. And the song
and the Aerosmith song played at every school dance from two,
I mean probably even after I graduated high school, which
was oh four, it was like the slow song. If
the Armageddon song came on, you better fucking fund yourself

(12:30):
a hetero dance partner and slow dance your night away.
I feel like it still gets like pretty decent wedding
play to this day. Sure, And it is my maybe
like number to go to karaoke song because this song
slaps as a karaoke song. It's hot. Tip for everybody,

(12:53):
can I shut up? The composer of this song, she's
kind of an icon um. She's an interest, or at
least an interesting character for She's also like a boomer
woman who occasionally tweets, and her tweets are not like offensive,
but they are inscrutable in a way that people seem
to find worthy of discussion. Anyways, her name is Diane Warren.

(13:15):
She I believe she eventually won, but she's like, she's
like a famous songwriter and composer, um who for a
very okay, so for a very very long time. She's
been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song,
including this one uh one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,

(13:35):
twelve thirteen times, never won, and then they gave her
an honorary award last year. I think because they were like,
oh my god, we gotta give Diane some we keep
snubbing her. She's written like a lot of iconic songs.
This one might be the most famous. But she also
know well she did if I could turn back time
by share because you loved me, Celine Dione. She's kind

(13:56):
of in charge of weddings, Um, how do I live
without you? Leanne Ryan Rhythm of the Night. I mean
she's bangers, she's got bops, she's got hit, But I
mean I don't want to miss a thing that's right
up there. So then we have to extend the Lord
because I didn't realize Steven Tyler didn't write that song.
Is Diane Warren? Is it a coincidence? Or is Diane

(14:17):
Warren writing how she thinks Steven Tyler fields when he
thinks about not being around for live Tyler's childhood? Hard
to say, hard, so hard to say. The point is
I did see this movie a couple of times as
a youth, but I never liked it because, you know why,

(14:39):
if there's going to be a disaster movie that I'm
going to watch a lot during this time frame of
the late nineties, it's going to be Titanic. I was
too busy watching Titanic every day to care about Armageddon.
So it's true, and this movie is clearly trying to,
you know, pull from the Titanic playbook a bit tearl

(15:01):
Harbor even more. Michael Bays saw Titanic and he's like, shit,
I have to do that, and then he did a
fucking terrible job. But he really did try to replicate
Titanic with Pearl Harbor, and he mentions. He mentions in
one of these interviews, he gives retrospectively, UM. I believe
it's interview where he apologizes for making the movie. Um.

(15:25):
But then later he's like, I was misquoted. I didn't
mean it. I do think he was misquoted because I
read the full interview and it did. It was a
very clicky title. It's like he didn't apologize, he just
contextualized why the third act is really sloppy, which it is.
But he mentions James Cameron in that interview. He says,
I called James Cameron and asked, what do you do

(15:46):
when you're doing all the effects yourself? But the movie
did fine, So he's sort of also admitting that the
effects look kind of like baffling and and and shitty.
They're shitty. It's pretty shifty about it. He I know
there's no fire in space, but it is a movie,
and most people don't know that he's a bad man.
But that is iconic, that's funny and it's true. I

(16:08):
honestly I didn't read the highlight reel from the Armageddon
commentary soundtrack, which goes viral every so often because it
is like very ridiculous. Oh, I have some quotes that
I am prepared to share when the time comes. I yeah,
I mean, there was a great round up on the
Ringer about it. But I will say that I watched

(16:28):
the whole movie before going through that, and it did
not ping for me. Once that there was a fire
in space. I didn't think about it because I'm a
popcorn girl, which I don't know. I have no idea.
We're not scientists, famously, not in stem. We won't even
read a book like be serious. Um, alright, should we

(16:53):
get into it. Let's get into it. Let's take a
break first though, really ear upe for this. All right,
we'll be right back. Okay, and we're back Kitlin. What
the hell happens in the movie? I'll again, I actually

(17:14):
do think I need a few things. Um, I needed
a few blanks filled because I honestly, until the credit
scene where liv Tyler has the picture of the four
characters who died at her wedding, I was not who
made it. I knew Bruce Willis died, sure, but a

(17:35):
few of the guys have the same haircut. I thought
the guy that was banned from seeing his son died,
and I was like, well no, but then he he didn't.
He lived, and and continued to blow off the courthorder
that he couldn't see his son, and we were cheering,
and we were cheering. So I actually don't really know
who died. All right, Well I will tell you, okay.

(17:56):
So we begin with voiceover from I think Charlton Heston
is what I saw in the credits, if I'm remembering correctly. Well,
let's talk about a talk about a bad person, seriously,
an iconically bad person. Yeah, he is describing a huge

(18:17):
meteor or meteorite or asteroid. I don't know the difference,
and I didn't look it up, but one of those
things hit the Earth millions of years ago and caused
the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. And they're like, and
it will probably happen again, it's just a matter of when.
It's so dramatic and also completely unnecessary. And that's how

(18:40):
you know you just started watching a Michael Bay movie
right exposition there, And I bet it cost a million
dollars studio for a reason. Okay, So then we cut
to present day. Ak we are in space ever heard
of it? Suddenly a meteor shower strikes and blows up

(19:00):
a space shuttle, and then New York City gets pummeled
by these meteors or meteorites or asteroids. Did you did
you know? Simply don't know. There's like a dog in
the New York scene, and for some reason, whatever happened
with the dog, which I think the dog just like
bites a Godzilla toy. Yes, that costs what That's what

(19:24):
Michael Bay said in the commentary. He's well, he's not
gonna tell you why, He's just gonna tell you it costs.
He also said Ben Afflex, Oh, Ben Affleck's teeth cost
twenty dollars. This is a movie much like an Angel
gets gets its wings and after gets their teeth. When
Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay say, I hate looking at

(19:45):
your mouth. It looks disgusting from an up angle. According
to me, he keeps saying in the commentary and in
other interviews that like I had these little baby teeth,
and you know, Jerry Bruckheimer, we've talked about on the
show for years, for the better part of a decade
at this point, we talked about if you're in a

(20:06):
j Jerry Bruckheimer movie and you're going to get a
close up. Guess what, babe, you need a new set
of choppers. You're you're gonna get new teeth, and they're
gonna be big. They're about a foot tall. They're gonna
be all the same length. We're gonna be blindingly white.
And so Ben Affleck got his teeth for this one,
and they sent him to Tom Cruise's teeth guy. Oh sure.

(20:31):
Michael Bays says in the interview that he that Jerry
Bruckheimer had worked on a quote unquote plane movie, which
is how he described Top Gun, which is weird. He
said Bruckheimer had worked on a orse Jerry had worked
on a plane movie. When Michael Bay talks about Jerry Bruckheimer,
it does sound like Seinfeld episode descriptions because of how

(20:55):
he talks. He kind of talks like Jason Alexander does
and I weld, and he's always talking about a guy
named Jerry who's doing something, um weird. So I told Jerry, God,
he's got those baby teeth. Jerry, I don't know what
to do. You're like, that sounds like SEINFELDT. Yeah, anyways,
it's true. Okay, So the movie what happens we cut

(21:20):
two various like government and military officials such as the
head of NASA, this guy named Truman played by Billy
Bob Thornton I love when he's serious, as well as
General Kimsey played by Keith David. There's also a guy
with a huge telescope named Carl who is extremely verbally

(21:43):
abusive to his wife and his wife Dottie. Yeah, but
but it's Michael Bay movie, so his verbal abuse is
a joke. It's supposed to be funny. Yeah, And everyone's like,
what is what the hell is going on? And soon
they figure out that an asteroid the size of Texas

(22:05):
is on a collision course to Earth. No matter where
it hits, it will wipe out all of life as
we know it, and it will hit Earth in eighteen days.
Cut to Harry Stamper that's Bruce Willis. He is the
owner of an oil rig. He discovers that one of

(22:27):
his employees, a j that's been affleck and his teeth
and his teeth credited separately. Yeah, the whole package has
had sex with Harry's daughter Grace, that's Live Tyler. And
he pulls out a gun and starts shooting at a
j on an oil rig. Okay, just a second. It

(22:50):
is very silly and action movie and testosterone. Michael bay
choice to make Bruce this open fire on an oil
rig that he owns to protect his daughter, who he
would absolutely kill along with everyone he knows if he
shot the wrong area of the oil rig, which is

(23:13):
most areas you really shouldn't shoot a gun on an
oil rigue. What I find more interesting and like a
lot of what I thought was like interesting about watching
this movie was like the very I don't know, Like
Michael Bay does a lot of like hypernationalistic imagery and
ideas that he pushes in his movies, and I don't
think he wrote this. I mean there's like credited writers.

(23:36):
It's kind of like we don't really know who wrote
this boofy. That's part of the mystery, But I don't know.
Just like thinking about how it was very plausible to
have the hero of your movie be the owner of
an oil rig. I don't think that that would happen,
at least in a way that would be mass appealing today,

(23:58):
because I like Bruce Willis character is very much like
a working class hero, which is a part he plays
very well. But the fact that they choose and that
it's important to the plot that he is like not tycoon,
I guess, but like he's certainly doing fine. He owns
a fucking oil rig. Like I mean, I think he

(24:19):
might be a tycoon because he's the best driller in
the world. So Ben Affleck has some thoughts on that.
I can't wait to talk about it. But no, I
I wrote down like the irony of these oil drillers
saving the planet from an asteroid only to go back
to Earth and absolutely destroy our planet via oil drilling.

(24:42):
That's like that's what he has returned. I mean, I mean,
I guess he doesn't return, but you as I mean
as Bushemy just going back on the oil rig. Also,
Bushem's character diabolical for a lot of reasons because there's
a lot of heavy Like they're insinuating that he is
a child set offender correct over and over as a joke,
which is I was not particularly surprised that this director

(25:07):
had no issue with that. But in any case, on
top of the nudge nudge wink wink about that, he's
also they're like they're like Steve Bushemi's character is a genius,
which means he knows better than to do what he's doing, right,
which is diabolically plunge the Earth for its natural resources. Yeah,

(25:28):
so they saved the world, but they're going to come
back and kill it somewhere. Thanks guys, It'll just take
a little longer than an asteroid would. They killed Owen Wilson,
that was bald. He is one of the ones who die. Yes,
they got his ass. Yeah. Okay, so we meet harry A.
J and Grace. We cut back to I don't know,

(25:49):
they're at the Pentagon or something. All these officials are
trying to figure out what to do about this asteroid
and how to save humanity, and they're like, well, we
can't blow it up from the outside, but we can
blow it up from the inside. Fun idea if we

(26:10):
drill into the asteroid and plant the nuclear weapons inside.
Not as fun an idea. Yeah, and there. I guess
should we wait to share Ben Afflecks thoughts on this,
because he does point out in the DVD commentary something
that I don't know, like, it never occurred to you
when you're a kid, right, Like it wouldn't have occurred
to me. I guess maybe it would have occurred to

(26:32):
me now, But I Bennett already said it. I wonder
if I had that thought even as a youth. I
don't know what Ben says on this infamous, famous and
infamous DVD audio commentary, but it's the audio commentary for
the Criterion Collection. Addition, because he's in the Criterion Collection,

(26:55):
which so many people have pointed out, what a bizarre
choice that is, because is the Criterion Collection is usually
like art house films, forgotten classics, you know, stuff that's
usually a little more obscure, definitely not mainstream blockbusters like this.
What did Michael Bay do? Like I do not know.

(27:17):
Jerry Bruckheimer promised the president of Criterion Collection, New Teeth
if they put Army get In in in the collection, come
on right. So the commentary is I think I have
this right. It's Michael Bay, Jerry Bruckheimer, Bruce Willis, and
Ben Affleck. Ben Affleck's portions are him like roasting the film.

(27:39):
Apparently he's doing an extended parody of the film Sling Blade,
which stars Blay Bob Thornton. He's also making silly sound
effects during any elaborate stunt scenes, which my favorite example
is when he makes like a bunch of slurpy sounds
when someone's going down the oil rig and then Prucess
like two stunt men almost making this. So he's roasting it.

(28:05):
And there's one part where he says, I asked Michael
why it was easier to train oil drillers to become
astronauts than it was to train astronauts to become oil drillers,
and he told me to shut the funk up. So
that was the end of that talk. I love, and
he does a great Michael Bay impression. Maybe I actually

(28:26):
don't really know what Michael Bay sounds like. I would
never listen to him. It makes him sound like a
fucking creep, so I'm like, yeah, it's probably what he
sounds like. Yeah, what does he say? He says, I
was like, you mean it's a real plan at NASA
to train oil drillers and he was like, just shut
your mouth. It's great. Yes. So what happens in the

(28:46):
movie is that NASA recruits the world's best driller, Harry
Stamper Bruce Willis, who is gonna like train the team
of ast So originally he's going to train the team
Fasternots to be drillers and to use a drill of
Harry's patented design to drill into the asteroid plant. These

(29:08):
nukes take off and then detonate the bomb from Afar
and Harry's like, you, you guys can't do it. I
need to do it, and my team needs to be
up there with me, and they say okey dokey, They're like,
sounds great. Bruce. I'm not saying the oil drilling is easy.
I know it's not. I disagree with it politically, but

(29:29):
I know it's not an easy thing to do. But
I think Ben Affleck is correct to point out that
the reverse would be much easier, or to say, no,
Bruce Willis, go fuck yourself. We're going to have you know,
an even you can't bring all of your weird friends
to space. But Billy Bob Thornton is like, all right,
I guess you can bring all of your weird friends

(29:51):
to every last one, but not your daughter for reasons unclear,
even though we're like, oh, she's so smart, she's so capable,
but it's not even considered that you would be able
to go. No. What happens next is what I found
to be one of the most baffling scenes, because Bruce
Willis is like, I'm doing this and I'm doing it
with my friends. So then the government goes around and

(30:14):
starts rounding up the team, which is Michael Clark Duncan.
He plays a character named Bear Steve Bush Emmy is
Roundhouse or something. What's his name hound dog? I don't know, rockhound?
Um is that true? I think his name is Rockhound.
And then liv Tyler is like, we call him that

(30:35):
because he's a hound, because he's horny. I thought, oh,
that is what the Steve Bushey character. I know that
we've somewhat retired the bushemy test, however, the name of it,
the name of it. However, for this one episode, I
feel like the idea of the original term is pretty

(30:58):
spot on correct where we'll talk about that later, but
I was like, jeez, Louise, there was like that. I
think we've referenced it in every episode we've discussed Michael Bay.
But there's that oral history that came out in g
Q years ago now, and there's like, I forget who
it is, Um, yeah, it's Billy Bob Thornton who mentions

(31:20):
Steve BUSHEMI looking around the table read for this movie
and saying, what the funk are we doing here? Which
is fair. I just hope that they. I mean, I'm
guessing that they, you know, we're all able to to
get get a nice little house out of this and
hopefully they don't think about it too much. They tied
Steve Bushemy up, they taped my boy up. Well he

(31:44):
had space dement charge Jamie, but then like he didn't right,
like did he? I think he got over it pretty quickly.
I don't know, sneezed. It was gone unclear what was
going I have just like I don't know what is
going on in for the entire last hour of this movie.
My gosh. I also only that's cannon. Yeah. I went

(32:06):
on an Instagram stories tirade about this movie, but mostly
about how the third act of this movie. So they
start drilling on the asteroid, which is effectively the beginning
of the third act. But when they start drilling, there
are fifty minutes left of the movie, which means there's

(32:27):
a fifty minute third act, which is absolutely obscene. That's
so long for a third act. I can't fathom it,
and yet it happened. Um Okay, So they're rounding up
the team. It's all these guys. It's also Owen Wilson.
It's a j that's been Affleck's character in this like
getting the team together montage. And here's what's baffling. They

(32:51):
were all just on Harry's oil rig the day before.
Basically no time has passed since Harry was like rooted
for this project. Somehow these guys have dispersed all over
the country and the whole thing with this movie is
like there's not enough time. There's only eighteen days until
the asteroid's going to hit the earth, so like, how

(33:12):
did they have to? Also, Ben Affleck has started his
own oil drilling company in the interim in a single day. Yeah,
any questions, Yeah any? He's like, I love that. He's
like even though Ben Affleck even like with workers rights,
you could ruin Bruce will As his life if he

(33:35):
shot you in the leg at work, right, But he's like,
best move on and start my own oil company overnight. Uh,
no one will shoot me in the leg. That no
one can shoot you if you own the business, which
I which is not true. People can still shoot you
if you own the business. True. All the gun play

(33:57):
in this movie is so fucking goofy. I mean, like
the lines where I laughed out loud il Weld to
borrow a term. Someone says someone in like the NASA
brain Trust is like, how bad is it going to be?
And someone's like, basically the worst part of the Bible.
I was laughing when Bruce or no, it's it's maybe

(34:19):
Steve bushevy he says, man, why do you got a
gun in space? Laughing he's got space dementia? Of course
I'm laughing. And it's when when Steve Bushey has space dementia?
Is when he he has this machine gun which they've
brought to space for some reason, different from the like
the handgun that's behind this like lock and key, secret, oh,

(34:42):
top secret. Only use this handgun if you need to
shoot the oil drillers or something. Chekhov's full ass artillery
is Checkov's militia is in this. But they have these
like enormous guns that they bring to space for what
for the for the movie, for the big movie, for

(35:04):
the big scene. Oh my god, it's so goofy. I mean,
I can be mad. It's to be clear, we're going
to be joking around for a lot of this movie.
It's a horrible movie. I mean it's like the worst
and we're not even like pushing back against really many
opinions by saying that people hated it when it came out.
It's still suck shit. But but the Criterion collection loved it.

(35:27):
Someone help someone held Mr Criterion at you know, Space
Bazooka point and they're like put it in who knows?
And and this movie, and I think the most forced
way that we've covered in a while is about fathers
and sons when it very much does not have to be.

(35:48):
You can cut out Ben Affleck's character and just let
live Tyler got But but they would never do that,
and so they have to create a convoluted b boopy
boopy boop. And now it's still about fathers. Since unbelievable,
we'll talk about it. So the team assembles and they
start prepping for this job and this journey through space

(36:10):
fun montage. They get medical and psych evaluations, they start
training for how to be in space. Billy Bob explains
the plan for how they're going to go into space.
Stop at a Russian space station to refuel, then slingshot
around the moon, catch up with the asteroid from behind,

(36:34):
land on it, and then drill baby, drill to eight
hundred feet. This is the most like American sounding bizarro
nonsense in the entire world, and you're just like, yeah,
we're gonna shot around the moon. Honestly, I was like,
all right, I guess that's I'm sure they're going to

(36:54):
do it. Yeah, And they did. The Wikipedia, uh scholarly
Journal of course page for this movie is mostly about
how a bunch of scientists have debunked all of the
like quote unquote science in this movie. Sure well, And
it also sounded like per affleck that Michael Bay, because

(37:16):
his movies are so needlessly expensive, he had a number
of NASA consultants on set and just ignored them all
the time. So it's like not surprising at all that
nothing makes sense. But I also thought it was funny
where we're always like, you know, you have to build
consulting into your budget if you're going to do something
you don't know, but he did, and then he was

(37:36):
just like, shut up, don't need to shut the funk up.
His fire is happening in fire is happening in space,
You NASA fucking dorks, Like it was yeah, yes, um, okay,
So they're going to do this whole plan to shuttles
are going to go to the asteroid and once they

(37:57):
freedom and independence come on perfect writing no notes. Once
they land, they will have eight hours to plant the
nuclear bomb and leave before it's too late and the
asteroid hits the earth. Meanwhile, A J is like, hey, Grace,
marry me. In a scene where Bruce Willis is watching

(38:20):
them make out, watching from behind a oil rag. I
don't know what the set is that they're on. They're
sitting in an oil contraption. He's peeking from behind a
curtain like he's Cia Knightly and Pride and prejudice watching
them make out. And then he's like, all right, I
guess they're making out, and he walks away. And then
two seconds later ben Affleck is like, will you marry me?

(38:42):
And she just smiles and then he puts the ring on.
She doesn't even say yes. She does not say yes. Okay,
So that happens. Then we get more scenes of like
training and space simulations. Now it's only like twelve days
before the ask terroid makes impact. Tension is high. Harry

(39:04):
is like, hey, Billy, Bob Thornton, you gotta let these
guys spend time with their families. We gotta get morale up.
And this is when we get the scene where Ben
Affleck puts animal crackers on liv Tyler down her pants
on her boobs, and it's supposed to be sexy, and
a lot of people felt that way. I don't know

(39:25):
if people didn't think that, yes, and this is around
the time I would say that the character of Grace
that is established disappears goes away. They did. I was
interested in because I mean, and I do think this
is like looking back at Michael bay movies we've covered,
I think this is kind of like Serial Behavior for
his movie, where I feel like he almost tries to

(39:46):
trick you by setting up a woman at the beginning
of the movie who like there's stakes to her. It
seems like she might be able to do something. But
then sometime early in the second act they're like, well
but but that's not gonna happen. She's she's daughter and
she's wife, and that's sort of how the rest of
the movie goes. But I was surprised at how much
they established Grace at the beginning and for how little

(40:11):
they did with her, because she could speak Mandarin, like,
she was like well respected at her like at the job,
she had all of these like well, we'll talk about
that in the characters. Actually, I was just like so
frustrating that they're like but by the time you get
to animal Crackers, she's gone, She's left the building. Yeah,
she's girlfriend forever now. So the boys are enjoying their

(40:34):
night off. Meanwhile, a small asteroid or several of them
hit East Asia, which promptly in Shanghai, Shanghai, which prompts Dottie,
the woman married to the very verbally abuse of guy Carl.
It prompts her to leak the information about the huge

(40:56):
asteroid that's you know, that's global killer that's coming to
Earth to kill every one. She leaks this to the press,
so now everyone in the world knows about this impending doom.
And I will say Dottie outside of what is the
name of the woman astronaut Watts? Watts? Okay, So Dottie
and Watts are neck and neck for most active women

(41:16):
in the story. You think it's going to be Grace,
and the movie wants you to think it's Grace, but
it isn't. I would say Dottie has the most narrative
impact of any woman in the story, but the least
amount of screen time. Oddly so, she made she made
a meal of what she was given because if she
hadn't told And I'm like, also, I was trying to
put myself in her shoes. And then I was like,
this movie is so convoluted. I'm going to stop thinking

(41:39):
about this. I was like, what would I have done
in Dottie's position, because you don't want to cause mass panic,
which she kind of does, but she does. But then
also you don't want to the world to not have
the chance to make their peace and say they love
you know, So where I burdened with Dottie's burden, I
don't know what I would do. I hope I never
have to think of I hope I never have to

(42:01):
do that. Fingers crossed. Also, by this time, we've already
gotten like a lot of like chosen one narratives with Harry,
and it's like there's I mean, you do need to
think that he is like so the protagonist because he's
Bruce willis like, of course he's the protagonist. He has
he has the energy for it, right, But like there's

(42:22):
all these like lines where he's like six billion people
in the world, why me? But no one really is
able to answer that question. I don't know what like
we simply don't know. Ben Affleck doesn't have the answer
to that question, and it sounds like it really haunts him. Okay,
so Harry and a J and the rest of the

(42:45):
team plus several astronauts. I think Gruber might be one
of the astronauts. But even so when they're like we
lost Gruber, we're still I think so. But which of
Bruce willis his friends? Is that? Because Bruce Willis has
like two either two or three, don't really know, two
or three guys that have kind of like marine haircuts

(43:07):
that all kind of look like the same guy, and
one of them is Gruber. I'm pretty sure. No. I
think Gruber is one of the like NASA guys who
is like not even really introduced. That's another interesting thing
about Michael bay movies is they well, actually not exclusively,
but there are ones that have kind of this I
don't know, I feel like you can view it like

(43:29):
there's there's different ways to view it where you know,
he's very like this movie in particular is very like
pro working man and pro working class, and like they're
very much the heroes. But then you can also view
it as like kind of really anti intellectual, um where
the NASA astronauts, who logistically would know more than Bruce

(43:51):
Willis who started being trained as an astronaut less than
two weeks ago. They're like framed as like the villains
at many points, so like the losers don't know what
they're doing. They all die in space even though they
are trained astronauts. I don't know. Yeah, I mean there's
there's definitely it's a complex text because I am like

(44:13):
working class heroes, like that's that's great, you know, I
love that. But also, just because your hero is a
working class person doesn't mean that all scientists are also evil.
It just feels like maybe oversimplified anyways. Whatever, So everyone
gets on the two space shuttles and they take off

(44:34):
into space, Harry on one shuttle and a j on
the other. They stop at the Russian space station to refuel,
where they meet Lev played by Peter Stormare who I
think is doing a Grew impression. Okay thoughts, Okay, I

(44:55):
didn't think of that, I thought because I was like, clearly,
you know, there's like some Cold War hangover vibes to yeah,
the Peter Storm character, And I was like, but I
assumed he was an American doing a Russian accent. He's
actually Swedish doing a Russian accent. Anyways, no matter, either way,

(45:18):
it's pretty weird. Um but Grew, Yeah, but Grew's but
Grew's a hero. That's implying that Grew is playing I mean,
I guess Grew is actually playing second fiddle too, the
kind of a lot of characters. Yeah, he is. But
you know, you would never hear, you know, minions the
rise of Lev Andropov. You wouldn't hear that. True, it's

(45:42):
not going to happen. True. Sorry, So grew even and
that's the growth, the cold hard growth grew false this. Yes,
I think that um Steve Carell was robbed. He really
could have He really could have shown his stuff. But
it could have been a long audition for Grew. True. Anyway,

(46:05):
So Lev is on the space station and he's helping
them refuel. But there's a leak and an explosion with
lots of fire in space, and the whole Russian space
station explodes. Then they sling shot around the Moon and
approached the asteroid from behind, but one of the shuttles

(46:28):
hits debris from the asteroid and loses control and crashes.
We think maybe a J died back on Earth. Grace
is sad because it was the shuttle that A J
was on. But it turns out there are a few
survivors A J. Lev and Bear. That's Michael Clarke, Duncan

(46:50):
um Owen Wilson dead dead r I P. I guess
that Michael basa bottle rocket And it was like, yeah,
let's get this guy. That's fun. But also I kind
of forgot that he was in the movie, so did I? Um? Meanwhile, oh,
the other shuttle overshot their landing by twenty six miles

(47:14):
and the Boston marathon just the Boston one, though other
marathons different. Me and Ben Affleck agree it's and Arrowsmith
of course. Um. Yeah, So they landed on part of
the asteroid that's like an iron plate, which means it's

(47:35):
going to be very hard to drill through. I don't
know how NASA knew the like elemental compounds of the
different parts of the asteroid, but they knew. Was this
one of the contested science points of Like, now this
is one of my questions. I mean, maybe it was,
but I was like, did they send scouts to the

(47:56):
asteroid to check it out? Like I don't like a
basketball like a basketball playing teenager. I don't know. I mean,
I honestly, I think I went so smooth brain on
this viewing experience where I'm like, whatever Michael Bay is
going to tell me about space will be wrong, but
I'm going to proceed as if it is true. And
what By the time they arrived and they're like exactly,

(48:18):
I was like, yeah, I mean they're yeah, they're astronauts.
I just if you think about like things that take
like what if you spent twelve days on and how
good were you at it? It's like, yeah, I have
not been able to learn the you know, steps in
like one song of anything goes in twelve days, you know,

(48:40):
like high school theater productions don't come together that quickly.
How are we saving the world? I've been learning Spanish
for three years and I can still barely string a
sentence together, Like these things take time. I guess you're
no Owen Wilson, but except actually he flopped, he died.
He flopped. That's how I described people who die in

(49:00):
a rocket accident. They flopped, flopped ship trying harder. Um,
so it's gonna be really hard to drill because they're
drilling through iron, and it makes sense their machinery is
breaking and their way behind schedule with how deep they're
supposed to be at this point, and Harry and the
astronaut guy in charge, Colonel Sharp played by William Fichtner,

(49:26):
is how you say, it looks like um Killian Murphy
a little bit. He yes, they have similar eyeballs, um
big sad eyes. So he Colonel Sharp and Harry are
screaming at each other. And if the stakes weren't high enough,
some gravitational space stuff happens and messes with a communication

(49:51):
between NASA and the guys in space, and they only
have a few minutes left before they can detonate the
nuclear ball remotely, and then they'll lose their chance, sucker
freaking blue. So the President of the US gives an
order to detonate the nuclear bomb while they still can,

(50:12):
while they still are in contact and like have the communication,
even though the whole has only been drilled to fifty
seven ft when they needed to be eight hundred, and
Billy Bob Thornton's like, oh no, this is a horrible plan.
The clock on the bomb starts taking down. Lift Tyler
tackles somebody. Yeah, yeah, she's like, that's my father up there,

(50:33):
and you're like, yep, that is her role at this
time in the plot. If she just has to loudly
reminders other people of her relationship to the men in space,
it's true. But yeah, Billy Bob Thornton, he's kind of
unequivocally like he's like lawful good. I feel like, as
the movie presents it, Yeah, or maybe a lawful neutral

(50:54):
because he does go wrong. No love well, I guess
lawful good because he does eventually make the right decision,
but he needs to be talked into it. Yeah. I
can't remember exactly how that plays out. He's yelling at
Keith David though, and he's like, this is the fucking
wrong thing to do and you know it. Yeah, and
then Keith David's like, I don't know all the freaking
president so much so, the clock on the bomb starts

(51:19):
ticking down. They have five minutes to get the shuttle
off the asteroid before the bomb detonates, and then back
on Earth like people are stopping the countdown, they're overriding
the overrides, until finally Colonel Sharp on the asteroid stops
the countdown so that the drillers can get the job done. Meanwhile,

(51:43):
A J. Bear and Lev are in a space vehicle
called the Armadillo. They are driving to the drill site.
They're like crashing around, it's chaos. The asteroid is very spiky.
They're like, think a lot of spikes. Back the drill site,

(52:03):
Steve Bushemy develops what I think it's Colonel Sharp calls
space dementia, and then there's like and then there's an
earthquake on the asteroid and their drill blows away into
outer space, so it seems like the mission is a failure. Meanwhile,

(52:27):
smaller bits of the asteroid are hitting Earth. Paris gets
completely wiped out, chaos erupts on Earth. All hope is lost.
But then a J shows up in the Armadillo, which
has the other drill on it. They keep drilling. They

(52:47):
get to eight hundred feet, but then there is a
meteor shower on the asteroid, and any question and then
and it crashes into everybody and it damages the bomb's
remote detonator, which means that someone has to stay behind

(53:07):
to detonate the bomb. They draw straws, which they just
happened to have on the Space Shuttle, and a J
draws the short one, which I only knew because everyone
told me that. Not because there's any clear visual information
that shows that he has the short one. No, because
they don't. They can't keep a shot on anyone for

(53:28):
more than like point two seconds sevens And and in
the music, it's so loud and so fast, and I mean,
it would be kind of fun to have seen this
movie in theaters because you're just like, how would you
know what was going on? But it has to be
like consuming to not know what's happening. I do want

(53:49):
to take a moment to point out the rare instance
where I agree with Roger Ebert in his review of
the movie. He says, quote, the movie is an assault
on the eyes, the ears, the brain, the common sense,
and the human desire to be entertained. Yeah. I mean

(54:11):
when he when he hit, he hit, you know, he
wasn't always wrong. I thought it was funny that Siskell
gave it a thumbs up, and he was like, I
don't know, it's kind of fun. I think that's also
a completely reasonable take on its short Okay, so someone
has to stay behind to detonate the bomb, and A
J has drawn the short straw. But Harry had promised

(54:34):
Grace that he would bring back her fiance safely to earth.
Did you mean my fiance, my fiance. That's how they
set it back then? Yeah, exactly. Um. And so Harry
volunteers his tribute to be the one to stay behind,
and he saves a J. And he's like, take care

(54:57):
of my little girl, by the way, I always thought
of you as my son. And a J Is like, no, Daddy,
I love you. Don't do this. Everyone has to scream
daddy of Bruce Willis before he before his spirit could
be released to Christian heaven, where he clearly wants it
to go. Like it's so much I did love. Okay,

(55:22):
one thing I liked about this. I don't know if
this is a performance choice or it was written in
the script. I have no idea, but a J not
a character I love a character I think we should
write out and replace with Grace. Right. However, I will
say that he is the most you know. I feel
like a lot of the male characters on this crew
specifically are defined by their creepiness and emotional repression. A

(55:45):
J not like that. He is not creepy, and he
openly expresses his emotions almost all the time. He's a
pretty straight shooter when it comes to his emotions, including
telling a grown man that he loves him, which is
like this weird verb boating thing for a lot of
adult men in movies and sometimes in the world as well.

(56:07):
So I did like that, like he was openly crying
when he was upset, and like it was easy for
him to tell Grace that he loved her, like just
stuff that. Like, I mean, again, the bar is eight
hundred feet inside of an asteroid. But I did like
that there was like a hero that was like and

(56:28):
and Owen Wilson as well, like Owen, like the younger
guys on this crew were more in touch with their emotions,
and it wasn't, you know, universally positioned as like this
really negative thing. I was surprised by that too, because
it seems in direct contradiction to the toxic masculinity that

(56:48):
Michael Bay layers so deeply into all of his movies. Yeah,
I mean, I thought that there were a few elements
of this movie that I'm like, well, I don't know
who was creatively responsible for that, because that could have
been a Ben Affleck performance choice, that could have been
like one of the nine credited writers adding it in,
but there was at least one or two male characters

(57:10):
with like basic emotional intelligence, which I don't expect to
Michael Bay movie. It's true, so I feel the need
to point it out. At the same time, though, when
Bruce Willis is like, I've always thought of you as
my son, even though you were shooting at him with
a gun on an oil rig two days ago. Yeah,

(57:32):
and then you know, a J's like, Daddy, I love you.
Don't do this. So even though the movie is more
about a relationship between a father and daughter, it's still
manages to end up being about fathers and sons. We'll
get into that because I was truly, really fucking frustrated
by that, and like, I feel like sometimes it's like

(57:53):
the movie is about fathers and sons because they don't
bother to introduce a woman, just the absence of an alternative.
But in this they spend so much time introducing liv
Tyler's character, and then you know, like the like it
reminds me of Pacific Room the end where Marco Moury

(58:15):
Marco Morey, Yeah, she's launched out of the climax to
the movie, And it felt like they had, they didn't
have to graze. At the beginning of Act two, they're like,
you're not going to space. I don't know why. In
my I mean, I didn't have a strong memory of this.
I sort of like I was hoping because of how
strong her introduction was, not like writing wise, but like,

(58:36):
you learn a lot about her. You learn that she
has a difficult relationship with her father. I'm like, oh
my god, they might let her go to space. It
doesn't happen. No, no, no, because she has a lady job,
which is to talk to people. That was a question
I had when she's in She's in Houston and they
have a problem classic Houston famously get it together, right?

(59:00):
But is she working? Is she there in the capacity
of work or is she in there in the capacity
of daughter wife. I don't know, because all that happens
is Bruce Willis being like, yeah, I'll come on your
NASA mission if my daughter Grace can go with me.
But we don't know in what capacity because we don't
actually know what her job is, right do we just

(59:22):
know that whatever it is, she's good at it. She
keeps saying it, and we we agree, I'm sure she is.
But it's like, what do you mean by that? Oh?
I mean, to be fair, that isn't necessarily a gender
specific problem in this movie. I don't know what anyone's doing.
I mean, we know that the oil drillers drill oil,

(59:44):
but we don't know why they're allowed to be astronauts.
And if you ask Michael Bay that question, he will
tell you to shut the fuck up. I feel like,
if it was legal, he would have actually shot Ben
Affleck in the leg for running his mouth like that.
I think so yeah, um, okay. So the final thing
that happens is Harry does this like video satellite call

(01:00:08):
to Grace. He faced times Grace, and he's like, he does,
I love you, but sorry Spacetimes Grace, I never get
a pun in. I feel good. That was incredible, Jamie, thanks,
I loved it. Um. But yeah, he's like, Grace, I
love you, by the way, I'm about to die by

(01:00:29):
and then the she does daddy, no, daddy, no daddy.
She and Ben Affleck get to go no daddy no,
it's true. Be serious. Yeah, well, good for them, um,
and then the shuttle takes off from the asteroid. Harry
detonates the bomb just in the Nick of time, he
saves humanity. The shuttle returns to Earth. You know, everyone

(01:00:52):
on board are heroes. A J and Grace reunite and
get married. The and get married during the credit sequence
because it's been such a long movie. But with that,
let's take a little break because I'm exhausted. Exhausted, Caitlin.

(01:01:13):
We'll be right back. And we are back. Well, it's
like we've touched on a lot of things, and I
feel good about that. I think that we were We
were right to do it. We were so good at
our jobs. Yeah, I agree, I agree, But where do

(01:01:35):
we begin? I would like to go back to Grace
and some of this stuff we've, like you said, touched
on already. But she is there because she is the
daughter and the love interest of two men who are
far more important to the events and outcome of the story. Yeah.

(01:01:58):
So she's not allowed to go into space, which makes sense.
She's not a driller, and it seems like that's not
what she wanted to do, which is fine. Fair. Maybe
she's environmentalist that maybe, But then Bruce Willis would hit
golf balls at her because there's that boat full of

(01:02:20):
protesters who were like stopped drilling for oil and Bruce
Willis is like, I'm gonna throw golf balls at you,
and that's supposed to be hilarious and awesome. But her
not going to space, as we've talked about, means that
there's no chance that she can participate in this mission
of saving the world, and she's just relegated to the

(01:02:41):
daughter and girlfriend. And it really just exists mostly in
the story to be motivation for Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck.
It's like, Oh, I have to succeed so that I
can see her again, And she's a tool to drive
a wedge between that because for some reason there needs

(01:03:01):
to be conflict between these two guys, which just means
that she is basically a plot tool and a way
to further characterize the men and has given no real
characterization of her own beyond that. Yeah. No, I mean
I think that is the biggest betrayal of the movie,

(01:03:22):
because I mean there's always like in some Michael Bay movies,
and I am thinking of like how MICHAELA in Transformers
is set up versus how what happens with your character?
Where she is set up as a character you may
or may not like the traits she has given, but
she has skills, she has interests, she has motivation, and

(01:03:44):
she has ability. The way she is shot do not
quite square with that, but like there is information there
that is interesting and it's like makes michaela compelling character.
I feel like Grace kind of falls into that where
and she isn't shot as exploitatively as later Michael Bay installments. Yeah,
I kind of wonder what the cinematogra if that's like

(01:04:06):
Michael Bay brain rot or a cinematography shot. I don't.
I don't really know, but I will say that, you know,
while her body is certainly lingered on, especially in the
animal cracker scene, I feel like it's the worst offender
of it, so of course, and the fact that that
is a phrase in itself, but like for the I
feel like, you know, as opposed to other Michael Bay
female characters, she is treated less horrifically, I agree, And

(01:04:31):
she's set up as a really like I just can't
get over. Like, there's three whole scenes in the first
half hour of this movie devoted to how complicated her
relationship is with her father and her upbringing. We get
all kinds of information, we get um the fact that
she's in this relationship that her father is like irrationally

(01:04:53):
hateful towards which is like a whole whatever that million
times of like if you touch my daughter, I'll kill you,
and you know, possessive fathership that's very, very toxic and harmful,
and you know, Grace reasonably saying like these are the
kind of people I grew up around. Why would you
be shocked that I would end up with someone like this?

(01:05:13):
It's all, I know, a fair point. You also find
out that there's some sort of resentment regarding like she
hasn't been dead mom. Her mom left. We don't know why,
but she left, and it seems like liv Tyler holds
onto some resentment about why her mom left, which would
make sense because we've only seen Bruce Willis be an asshole.

(01:05:36):
So there's that. We know that she doesn't really want
to work on the oil rig, but she does, and
she's very good at it, and she's ready to leave,
and her dad is desperately clinging to her. It doesn't
want her to leave. Like, we get all this really
kind of rich information, and I'm assuming, if I'm giving
the movie the benefit of the doubt, the only reason

(01:05:57):
she's staying is because her to be fiancee also lives
and works there. Otherwise it's possible she may have already left.
What is her job? Is she like a liaison between
the clients who are buying the oil question mark, I
don't know why the business people come onto the oil rig,

(01:06:18):
and I don't know what Bruce Willis means when he
threatens to send her back to quote unquote the office,
because great questions all around, what is why does the
oil rig have the office? It seems like the oil
rig is the office, that's how when everything else implies,
But he threatens to sent her back to the office.
That does not make sense. But even in like the

(01:06:41):
fucking maze of not making sense, there's a lot we
learned about Grace right away, and it sets up at
least a semi cogent reason for her and her father
to go on some sort of journey together. And then
that just doesn't how happen? The thing that made me

(01:07:02):
most frustrated from like I mean, from like a Bechtel
cast standpoint and also a writing standpoint, because I'm just like,
why would you do this? Like, first of all, it
becomes clear immediately that what Grace's narrative should be is
offloaded to Ben Affleck pretty early in the movie. The
second she agrees to marry him. The plot that belongs

(01:07:22):
to Grace is then, uh, that's the dowry that she
gives to her husband is her entire plot line, and
she is like severely reduced in screen time. But even
before Bruce Willis leaves for space, which he does in
many at least two movies, you know what a legend um.

(01:07:43):
But anyways, before he leaves, she forgives him for everything,
to the point where I was like, then why even
like I felt like from a like a writing standpoint,
that undercuts such a large chunk of the movie, because
if she forgives him before he leaves, and then she
forgives him again before he dies, why why not just

(01:08:07):
not forgive him before he leaves and then it would
be more like narratively impactful, no matter what the gender
dynamics are, It's just like, why would you have her
forgive him twice? So the whole time that he's in space,
she feels the exact same way, like she hasn't changed
at all. She's just like, I love my dad, I'm
not upset about whatever vague thing happened to my mom

(01:08:30):
and it's all good like that, I was so frustrated, right,
that eliminates an opportunity for tension in that relationship. And
when you're writing a story, you want to like capitalize
on opportunities for tension, not eliminate them. Number one. Number two,
I thought what she was forgiving him for, or like

(01:08:54):
what she was angry with him for, was his treatment
of her as it relates to her relationship with ben Affleck,
which is this whole other thing that we hinted at,
but it's the like overprotective of a daughter's chastity and
daddy being like, no, my daughter can't have stuch with anyone.

(01:09:16):
And you have all these scenes where she's pushing back
against her dad, being like, AJ is my choice, not yours.
You can't tell me what to do anymore. I've been
more mature than you since I was ten years old, Like,
I'm an adult, Let me live my life. And then
Prince Willis literally says kind of an iconic line. He says, sure,

(01:09:37):
I may be an immateur father, but I'm also your employer.
I was like, do you hear yourself talk like that?
Is what? I guess that that is what Roger Ebert
is talking about, where you're just like you're just like
your brain cells are dying as you're hearing it, because
I'm supposed to believe someone said that out loud and
they're like, yeah, oh, I'm a terrible father. Well guess

(01:09:58):
what I'm your boss to, so take that. It's funny, um,
but you know, horrible, horrible. And then there's another scene
because this is this becomes the like conflict between them
or they like the source of tension in this father
daughter relationship where he has this arc where he needs

(01:10:19):
to accept that his daughter is an adult with her
own life. But before he gets there and accepts this,
which he I feel like accepts this to a j
and not even to her because he's like, you're my son.
I've always thought of you was my son. And it's like, no,

(01:10:41):
you need to be having a conversation with Grace about
this anyway. It's really fs It's like it's total horseship,
like the way that yeah, like her plot, and I mean,
I do wonder it would be probably impossible to actually trace,
but just to like know at what point, like I
am can vince that there is a version of this

(01:11:01):
script that Grace went to space and you know, I
just I mean could be again. There there are many
credited writers and then many others who weren't credited. There
was something like nine nine writers total, including uh. Credited
ones are Jonathan Hensley J. J. Abrams. There's also story

(01:11:24):
by credits that include Robert roy Pool. There's adaptation credits.
I don't even know what they're adapting, but um, Tony Gilroy,
who I'm a huge fan of Mr. And Or I mean, yeah, no,
Tony Tony Gilroy is amazing. It's um almost rude that
he implicated in this um and then Shane Solerno and

(01:11:47):
then uncredited writers include a guy named Paul, a woman
named Ann Okay, and Biderman. We've got Scott Rosenberg and
Robert Town, so a whole slew of people working on
this project. And Robert town is very famous. Yeah, no,

(01:12:08):
you can't blame any one person for what's happening here.
I feel like, honestly, Michael Bay is kind of probably
the most likely culprit for things that we don't like,
but I don't know. It also sounds like he lets
actors do a lot of improv in his movies too,
so there's a lot of lines in this movie where
they're like that was Bruce and you're like, well, I
guess that that's Bruce Willis's fault. You know it's but

(01:12:29):
I what they don't tell you about the Bruckheimer teeth
is that, you know, they're kind of like, what's the test?
They they've passed the sentient there, like sentient as humans,
and so they can make Ben Afflecks Turing test. Yeah,
the Brockheimer teeth have passed the Turing test, and so
the Brockheimer teeth can just make Ben Afflecks say literally

(01:12:50):
whatever whatever they want. Yeah, that will come out in
his voice. And that's that's the teeth. They're like, you know,
they're rooted into your mouth and then just kind of
wired directly to your brain. Yeah, they cost they they're
equipped with AI the turning teeth. Um. Wow, Jamie, you're

(01:13:11):
on a roll. Um anyway, So Harry's arc as it
relates to Grace is all about, oh, he has to
accept that his daughter is an adult. There's a scene
where and this happens after Harry has seen a J
and Grace kiss, like right before a J proposes, and

(01:13:33):
it makes Harry mad that his daughter is in love,
and there is one of the wildest exchanges of dialogue
in a movie that I have ever seen. I just
want to go quickly through this, where Harry is very
piste off. Steve Bushemy is like, look, Grace is an adult.
She can make her own choices. She grew up to

(01:13:56):
be a hottie. And then another guy chimes in and
his yeah, she's so freaking hot. And then Owen Wilson
is like, look, she's a kid coming into her own
She's exploring her sexuality, she's getting curious about her body.
Her hormones are pulling her in a thousand different directions,
talking about her as if she's a teenager, when when

(01:14:19):
it's stated just after that that they're the same age,
and then and then Bear kind of put put the
pen on everything by saying yeah, so, I mean, it's
like it's always as if Bear has not listened to
the entire conversation, because he puts the pin in the
conversation by saying, yeah, I think we can all agree

(01:14:40):
that we all feel like we are her father. And
I'm like, but they would just say really disgusting things
about her for a whole minute, Bear, were you listening
he says, and I quote, we all feel like a
bunch of daddy's. Yeah, they do say that. They do
say that, and we and then have no saying that

(01:15:02):
we can't do anything about it now. Um so yeah,
it's like she's so hot, she's so hot what a
certified hottie bear is like, and we are her daddy also,
and like because we're hitting on her, were her. No,
that's not the cause and effect he's describing. But it's
like shocking that he could hear that whole conversation and

(01:15:23):
be like, yes, we all have paternal feelings towards this
young woman truly, And then Harry goes on a pretty
classist tirade where he's like, I'm not gonna let my
daughter marry some rough nick. She's better than that, She's
better than all of us. We'll see. That didn't bother
me as much because that felt like a because you know,

(01:15:46):
because we know where the story goes, Like that was
one of the more effective things for me, because his
mind does change about that where I feel like there
are these generational anxieties of like I don't want my
kid to end up with someone who reminds me of
myself because I hate myself and I want whatever, like
the generation, like I want my kid to do better

(01:16:08):
than I did. So that didn't super bother me as like,
I don't think that he was an inherently classist character,
because he was advocating for the men he'd worked with
forever who were of the same class as him the
whole movie. But I just I felt like that was
something that he came around on. So that felt like
one of the only elements of Harry's character that grew,

(01:16:29):
not that grew anyways, not that I like, I don't
like that like him. I think that it should have
been Harry learning to accept his daughter as an autonomous
person who wanted to do her own thing, and like,
there's so many ways you can take that. It's like,
maybe like live Tyler wants to like work for NASA

(01:16:54):
or work as something that he considers to be elitist,
and he's like, why you're like abandoning your root, fuck you.
And then they go on this space mission together and
he's like, all right, I accept that you want to
do something different than me, but it's still like we
still love each other and whatever. Do it that way.
There's a million different ways to do it, but because

(01:17:14):
it goes that way, I don't know. I didn't, but
I didn't mind that because he comes around on it
and I feel like he was more just like projecting
of like I don't want my daughter to marry someone
like me because I suck, and it's like, well, yeah,
you do, suck, you do. But Ben Affleck knows how
to cry and say I love you, which you don't,
so he is better than you. Yeah. Um any other

(01:17:40):
thoughts on Grace, Um, No, it was just a big disappointment.
I didn't like how she was reduced to steaks for men,
literally a like physical steak and movie stakes for the
two main guys when she was because it, don't know,
it always just feels like a knife twist to even

(01:18:03):
bother to set up the character if you're just going
to do that. So I was disappointed, and I wish
that Live Tayler' gotten to do more because I like her,
and that's all I have to say. I want to
talk about Dottie and Watts a quick but powerful conversation
because she's I think the first woman we really meet

(01:18:26):
in the movie. Dottie Yes, Yes. Dottie is played by
Grace Zabriski, who I need to look her up, um,
because when I was like talking about when I was
like posting Instagram stories about armaged, everyone's like, I love
Grace Zabritsky really, but um, I was like, I don't

(01:18:48):
know who that is. Um. Anyway, So she is married
to Carl, who, in a number of scenes is extremely
verb really and emotionally abusive to Dottie, which, in true
Michael Bay fashion, is played as a joke. I like

(01:19:08):
hesitate to even quote this because it's so horrible. But
there's a scene that happened. There's a scene where Carl
is on the phone with Billy Bob and he's like,
I discovered the asteroid, so I went to name it,
and Billy Bob's like, okay, He's like, I want to
name it after my wife, Dottie because she's a vicious,

(01:19:31):
life sucking bitch from which there is no escape. And
then he's like smiling, Michael Bay wants you to go
ha ha ha ha ha, because that's how he feels
about women. And we know this and there's proof. So yeah,
I don't love that. However, I think that we cannot

(01:19:51):
hold how Dottie's spiteful evil jackass of a husband talks
about her against Dottie herself because I like Donnie. I
think she is the most impactful woman in the plot,
and I hate how the movie wants us to see
her because I want to see her a different way.
She comes out. She only speaks. I think that it

(01:20:14):
does speak to the actor because she only speaks in
really like hack gendered tropes. But the actor does sell
it as if like there's like a deep resentment under it,
because you could just walk out and say those lines
like Carl, I made dinner ten hours ago, where are you?
But she says it with like a fury, you know,

(01:20:35):
And then she says, do I have a sign on
me that says Carl's slave? Like she really is, Like
in my head, Dottie is trapped in this marriage for
whatever reason. She's going to have an asteroid named after her,
and then she's going to divorce him, take all of
his weird FBI money, and um kill him. M yes,
I like that for her. I don't think the script

(01:20:57):
is thinking that hard about it, but I do appreciate
when that's like there is an underwritten woman in a movie,
which Dottie very much is, and an actor manages to
make it feel impactful in like a memorable way, because
Michael Bay is like not going to give you fucking
anything ever, because he's evil is evil. And then the

(01:21:18):
final Dottie related scene, which happens off screen, but someone
I don't know if it's Billy Bob receives a text
message on his Nokia phone from UM that Dottie leaked
the info about the asteroid to the press. It's not
clear why she does this, why she leaks the info,

(01:21:40):
because the movie doesn't care enough to check back in
with her and show us her motivation for doing that.
But I feel like what we're supposed to think in
the movie is that she did it out of spite,
which is maybe ridiculous, like to spite her husband. I
don't know. And there's a there's another woman that I
don't think we ever get a name for, and I
honestly could not figure out which guy it was. It's

(01:22:04):
the guy that shouldn't be near his son, but is Oh,
his name is Chick fine. I felt like, I mean
Chick's wife who we never get a name for. She
doesn't have the same emotional impact or screen time or
whatever that that Dottie does. But that's another woman who
has sort of presented to us as like she's you know, oh,

(01:22:25):
this guy's made mistakes in his past. Why won't she
just forgive him? You know? And because he comes to
the house apparently illegally, so she tells, you're not supposed
to be here, you're not supposed to have contact, which
probably means there's some sort of like restraining order situation
going on as well. But she still like comes around

(01:22:45):
and it's very like We cut back to her two
more times. The first time is when she finds out
he is the Space Cowboy hero and she's like, that's
your daddy, and it's like and then she's like, let's
get back together. And I'm like, well, hold on, what
did he do that you broke up with him? Like,
what did he do? Going to space with Bruce Willis

(01:23:08):
will not solve your relationship. And I've always said that
that doesn't redeem your broken marriage. Yeah, that was frustrating.
And then there's Watts, the one lady astronaut played by
Jessica Steen. We really know nothing about her aside from

(01:23:30):
her being an astronaut. Um. The way the men talk
about her is one of the few like focal points
she gets before they like land on the asteroid and
start drilling. But there's a scene when they're still on
Earth and she's like explaining gravity to the oil drillers.
They're not paying attention, and Owen Wilson is like, is

(01:23:52):
it just me? Or is what's really hot? And then
a few of the guys go like, Oh, yeah she is,
which is wow, because you never learn anything about her.
She disappears for large swaths of the movie. I thought
that she had died. At one point, I was like, Oh,
she must have been on the Independence because I haven't

(01:24:13):
seen her in a half hour, so I guess r
I P. But like, she didn't even die. They just
forgot about her. I just forgot about her until one
scene towards the end where they have drilled the whole,
they have planted the nuclear bomb. They are trying to
take back off in the shuttle but the engine won't
fire up and she's trying to fix it. She's running around,

(01:24:35):
she cannot fix it. Then Lev he's like, I'll do it.
He shoves her out of the way, hits something with
a wrench or whatever. He was introduced after her. I'm like, yeah, stop,
that somehow fixes the problem. So basically, the one chance
the movie had to let a woman do something, the

(01:24:58):
movie didn't let her do it. It makes her seem
incompetent and bad at her job, has her be violently
shoved out of the way by a man, and it's
a man who fixes the problem by bashing an expensive
piece of equipment with a metal pipe and saves the day.
We don't know, we don't know why is happening in

(01:25:21):
this fashion, but it is and it feels bad to
look at, Like, yeah, I was, I was quite frustrated.
I feel like every time there is an opportunity to
further develop a woman introduced into the story, the story
instead introduces three more men and you're and that happens

(01:25:42):
almost without fail because I think with Grace we get
to know great like I mean, I guess we do
meet a j before we meet Grace, but like Grace
is introduces like a big character. She's so large on
the poster for Armageddon that you think that she's doing
much more than she actually does. But then everything that
is interesting about her is weirdly transferred in a way
that doesn't quite translate onto a J and then with

(01:26:07):
what's her name? What's what with what you see? Like
she's I mean, I feel like she's kind of she's
not quite like a shrewd stereotype, but she's very like strict,
She's very like no bullshit um in the way that
I think professional women are often broadly characterized. And it's
like the women who are good at their job can

(01:26:28):
also be fun to be around. Not that you know
it from watching a movie, but whatever. Um, but she's
you know whatever, she's like a type A like doesn't
have patience for these guys that makes logical sense they suck,
but instead is to teach them about gravity. She's the
only scientist. There's a bunch of like random. I mean,
you've got like someone who is rumored to hang out

(01:26:52):
with underage women and a creep and a bunch of
other guys that don't know anything about space like I,
I too would be frustrated. But instead of exploring that
even remotely, instead of even bothering to build a relationship
between her and anybody, we build out love instead, because
reasons like love is a far more memorable character than

(01:27:15):
she is, and it doesn't need to be that way.
I don't think it's like a fault of performance that
it's like that's what the script does. So I don't know,
I feel like I'm curious, I guess if that is
something that is Like it feels like a blend of
this wave of representation of women and just a blind

(01:27:39):
of like how Michael Bay is as a creator. It
feel like there's definitely overlap. But I do think that
in the late nineties you could really easily get away
with like early third wave girl power feminism of like
in the corporate sense of like having women say all
the right things but ultimately do nothing, which I think

(01:27:59):
that like Grace says a lot of the right things
in the first thirty minutes of this movie. She says,
like you're not in charge of my life. I want
to be liberated from you, like fuck you all this stuff,
but then the right choice is to be daughter to daddy,
and I mean, and like Watts says a lot of
the same things where she pushes back on these ridiculous
men she's surrounded by, but you know, ultimately it doesn't

(01:28:23):
mean anything in the story. Absolutely, um, real quick. Yeah,
we've touched on some of these already, but there is
as Michael Bay does, which is too treat things like racism, sexism,
able is, m etcetera as a punchline. Um many examples.

(01:28:48):
I won't even go through specific ones, but there's a
handful of racist stereotypes being employed there which she did
not learn from after this movie, which we talked about
in our Transformers episode keeps doing it. There's ablest language
there is, Like we mentioned the like what is intended

(01:29:11):
to be a joke of the Steve Boushemi character being
a statutory rapist. There is what I felt were some
like gay panic jokes when with the butt shots, right,
they were like being medically examined, and there was all
these like we're gonna stick this probe in you and
they're like just fucking ridiculous, Like you're just like grow up.

(01:29:36):
Don't forget the woman in the cab at the beginning
of the movie, who is like, why aren't we moving?
I want to go shopping because yeah, women be shopping well.
And then on top of that, I mean like yeah,
Michael bay Is so I mean I feel like this
kind of ties into the undercurrent of nationalism, and like

(01:29:58):
by that, I mean like white em Arian nationalism that
is like tied into this movie because in all Michael
Bay movies, because he loves a disaster movie, and I
don't hate a disaster movie, but the tropes that he
invokes inside of them are like really frustrating because he like,
I feel like there's like the vineer Veneers, there's the

(01:30:20):
veneer of like being like an international, global, multicultural movie.
Because you do see a lot of people of a
lot of different races in this movie, and a lot
of Michael Bay movies, however, non white characters in general,
with some exceptions, but in this movie, I would mainly
just say the General and Bear are exceptions. Those are

(01:30:44):
really the only non white characters of narrative impact in
the movie. But like you see scenes that are supposed
to be taking place in Shanghai, you see scenes that
are supposed to be taking place all over the world,
but Michael Bay, without fail will show you and he

(01:31:04):
Michael Bay does show you a very diverse New York,
but only because he's about to hit it with a
fucking asteroid, and like he will show you, you know,
people of color, but he will not develop Like just
I just feel like his movies treat anyone who isn't
white as extremely disposable, and so it's like you can't

(01:31:25):
like you can hand nothing to him because he's about
to fucking blow people up, like it's without fail. He
will do that. He does it in the Transformers movies,
he does it in The Rock, he does in this movie.
He does it all the fucking time, like it's what
he does. I also feel like when he cuts to
other cities across the globe, and I'm thinking particularly of

(01:31:48):
the shots of Shanghai, they look like they're fucking Epcot,
Like it looks like it looks like not real. It
looks Yeah, the production design of those scenes, you would
never know that Shanghai is a modern city because the
way that it's designed, it looks I don't know, it's like, yeah,

(01:32:13):
it's like Michael Baby being like it's still feudal times
in China, right, It's not a modern country with a
modern economy, of course not, which is pretty hilarious given
how dependent the global movie economy is on the Chinese
movie economy. Now, that would absolutely not happen now, not
that it should have happened then, but it's like it

(01:32:33):
would be logistically impossible to happen now. Um, It's just
like I mean, it's disrespectful. I feel like it's it's
so USA centric and because it's like half the time
when you hear or half the time when you see sorry,
when you see other countries, so not always non white people,

(01:32:53):
but like often whatever. It's like I think you're supposed
to believe. You go to Africa, you go to South Erica,
you go to Asia, you go all over the world
listening to people being inspired by the American president, and
then the last shot is always like a white family
or live Tyler like standing up against an American flag

(01:33:15):
and like nodding their head, like it's very very clear
what's being done. It's like a low simmering propaganda. And
that's why, you know, like it's part of why the
movies getting made at the like at least at this
point in the late nineties, like that was a great
way to make a really expensive movie, Like that was
how you made a shipload of money. Is just adding

(01:33:37):
in this, you know a lot of nationalistic stuff and
like a lot of it is in the imagery and
like who fucking knows if that's in the script. A
lot of it is kind of the Bruce Willis cowboy
image where it feels kind of very American dreamy that like,
it's just a regular guy, a regular American guy saved

(01:33:58):
the world. And then even at the end when they
blow up the asteroid, they do that whole sequence again
of people all over the world, of all racist creeds
and genders, celebrating the heroicism of Bruce Willis, cut to
the American flag, cut to a kid holding a spaceship
in front of a mural of JFK. And it's like, yeah,

(01:34:18):
we fucking get it, Like it's no surprise that this
director goes on to work closely with the American military
to make his shitty robot movies. Also, they're constantly like
as the movie goes on, they are just more and
more invoking a Christian God, and you're like, oh, fucking
king man, Sorry, I just pernicious nationalism and movies is

(01:34:43):
a very interesting topic to me. Everyone should read the
book Red Carpet. Um. Okay, yeah, we talked about this
on I want to say the Arrival episode which is
on the Matreon, and I think we might have discussed
this to some extent on the Dependence Day episode two.
The phenomenon of Hollywood disaster movies, where a disaster happens

(01:35:10):
that would affect the entire planet, but will be a
story only told from the American perspective, where we see
Americans are the ones to do the thing to solve
the problem, the implication being only Americans are smart enough
and equipped enough to handle something like this, to the

(01:35:32):
point where in this movie they do have contact with
someone from another country, Lev on the Russian space station,
but the Russian space station has this huge malfunction. Things
go horribly wrong, people almost die, and it's like, hey,
if you needed a reminder that Russia lost the space race,

(01:35:53):
and remember, here's a Swedish guy doing a weird accent
in person. I think grew. I'm and it literally, I
mean it is. It is propaganda, like it absolutely is propaganda,
and it's not subtle. And that's why I think Michael
bay for a period of time and not anymore, which
I don't think it's a coincidence given the shift in

(01:36:14):
global politics, Like why he was such a successful international
American filmmaker when he was because it was intense American
propaganda at a time where that worked. It shouldn't have
but it did. And that's why I need to find
the name of the author, because it really is. It

(01:36:34):
was like one of the best books they read last year.
And I know we don't read books, but I actually
Donna say, Jamie, have you betrayed me? Here's the thing.
I do actually read books all the fun time. And
sometimes I'm like, why am I joking around so much?
Because then people are like, oh, you have one brain cell?
Like actually, don't, okay. Um. It's a book called Red
Carpet Hollywood, China and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy

(01:36:58):
came out last year by Eric Schwartzel. I think I
brought it up. I think it maybe brought it up
in our Top Gun episode, which is I think over
in our Matreon. But it's a really interesting book about
how kind of the cultural capital has over a period
of years shifted from Hollywood over to China and how,

(01:37:21):
you know, how global politics kind of influenced that. But
I feel like these late nineties movies are kind of
where Hollywood influence is at. I don't know if it's
like a complete peak, but certainly like a high of
like pushing aggressive white American values was a way to

(01:37:42):
become really really successful in a way that already feels
very very dated. And that's why we talked about it
in the Top Gun episode, because in Top Gun it's
so pro America and there is a very clear like
they name quote unquote the enemy in a way no
longer happens in American movies because poting in Top Gun Maverick,

(01:38:04):
where they're like, there's an enemy. We're not going to
tell where it is or who it is, but there's
an enemy. Because America is no longer the most powerful
country in the world, you can't just randomly name an
enemy and not experience a consequence. And anyways, it's a
really fascinating book. It's very depressing. But in that book, oh,

(01:38:24):
that's what I was going to say. In that book,
there was a high up official. I don't remember what
their name or position was, but there was a high
up official in the Chinese Communist government. And normally I
say communists as a compliment, in this case, I would
not um, but there was a higher up in the
government that said like a lot of current blockbuster Chinese movies,

(01:38:49):
so like Michael Bay movies of the late nineties, there's
a lot of heavy nationalist themes. Whether the movie is
good or not, you know, it depends on the artists,
but there the nationalism is inherent to it. But um,
a lot of current Chinese filmmakers were influenced heavily by
this era in American movies because of how heavily the

(01:39:10):
Michael Bays of the world. And everyone points out Titanic
as like the best American propaganda ever produced because it
is the best. They're not wrong because we like it
like it's and everyone likes it, and that's like, I mean,
that's the most effective propagandists like to build in the
pernicious values that you're trying to push on people in

(01:39:32):
a really appealing, sexy, fun, narratively fun way, like makes
it a really effective way to deliver a message. But
but I mean, it's just I think it is kind
of funny with movies like Armageddon because Michael Bay, I
think is trying to do that, but he's just like
not good at it because he's so he's bad at it.
He's like not a good movie maker. He's not a

(01:39:56):
good Windows movie maker. And I don't I think he
wants to be able to do what James Cameron did,
but he just like can't, so he ha ha whatever. Yeah, Um,
I will say maybe the one redeeming thing about this
movie that I don't think actually ends up being very

(01:40:17):
redeeming because of the different context and implications. But I
do appreciate that this is a movie that like champions
the working class, a champions, you know, blue collar work.
It's these. But then it's also, like you said, it's
kind of like, well, these fancy astronaut boys can't do

(01:40:39):
the job, so you need a statutory rapist, right, and
oil drillers who are actively fucking up the planet. We
need them to come in and save the day, and
they're like actively implying that these Like I think that
it's like you have working class heroes and they are
like not well written, but like entertainingly written characters. They're

(01:41:04):
distinguishable from one another, which a lot of movies cannot
do right. And you have a creep and a statutory
rapist in a group of like eight guys. Amazing great,
But I do think that all of those men are
characterized as kind of buffoons, and so it's like it's
a like, yea, we have everyone except for Bruce Willis

(01:41:24):
is like, well, the working class. They're incompetent, but like
they really pulled it together. This one time in space
due to the one guy who is smart, which is
wild because it's like Steve Bushey's character is eventually revealed
to be like extremely like a product. He has like
two doctorates by the time he's twenty two or like

(01:41:46):
whatever that Bizarrow writing thing was, and you know, I
feel like they're heavily like I don't even know what
they were doing with that character, but I didn't like it.
I didn't like it. I hope he made an idea
all one forty million dollars of the ut for saying
those things out loud. But yeah, to your point, it's

(01:42:06):
this movie that's like championing these working class people who
are characterized largely in stereotypes of working class people because
they are characterized as being sex offenders and deadbeat dads
and like people with gambling addictions and like all this stuff.

(01:42:30):
So it's like, you're not championing working class people if
you're just applying all these negative stereotypes to them. No,
So that doesn't work. Yeah, No, It's like it's the
classic like Michael Bay trying to have it all sorts
of ways at once, which I think, yeah, again, like
gives you like the sheen of well, I represented this

(01:42:52):
class not well. And that's how I would say that, Like,
that's how he treats people across the gender and race
spectrum as well, of like, yeah, I did represent people
from across the gender and race spectrum in most of
my movies, not well. But were they not there? And
you're like, yeah, that's actually not that's not helpful. It's
not helpful at all. Yeah, And I guess that that's

(01:43:15):
what I have to say about it. I do think
it's funny that Michael Bay was at least advertised as
apologizing for it Armageddon. He didn't actually apologize for it,
but he said, yeah, I was made pretty quickly, and
my visual effects supervisor had a mental breakdown. Can I
share a few of the quotes from and can we

(01:43:35):
swap our favorite quotes from the commentary track? Yes, okay,
I mean first iconically, Michael Bay, I know there's no
fire in space, but it is a movie, and most
people don't know that that is a good one and
he's not wrong. Most people probably don't know that. Here's
another phone one. I was very unimpressed when I went

(01:43:56):
to NASA, and it shows Michael Bay said that, yes
you did. He was not. He was like, wait, there's
no fires in space. Boom, we gotta put him there.
Here's one from Ben Affleck talking about I've seen I
don't know which one. I think it was a big

(01:44:17):
action set piece, he says, quote it cuts together pretty seamlessly.
I must say, for something that I thought would look
like total hoke Um, he says, after remembering how chintzy
it seemed on set. Um, A lot of boomer were
two kind of paraphrase David Sims Palavars from blank Check,

(01:44:43):
who wrote an Atlantic piece on the Armageddon commentary. So
shout out to that, David. Let's see, Okay, two other
Michael Bay things I'll say, He says, making films as
like a war. I think we've referenced that quote before.
He sa as, I'm the kind of director who doesn't
like effects. He says over a sequence of terrible effects. Um.

(01:45:07):
And then finally, I wanted to just provide the full
Ben Affleck teeth anecdote because as a Veneers scout and
and you know, enthusiast of many years, I truly it
is my dream that someday Jerry Bruckheimer will walk up
to me and say it's your time kid, we're getting
your new teeth. So I say this with love. Michael
Bay describing how he realized Beneffle teeth wouldn't do. I

(01:45:31):
always like low shots that kind of come right under
your chin and make you a little bit heroic. And
he kind of had these baby teeth. So I told
Jerry Bruckheimer, God, he's got these baby teeth. Jerry, I
don't know what to do. Jerry, he used a very
famous start in a plane movie that he replaced teeth with,
so he said, we did it to him, why not

(01:45:53):
do it to Ben? So my dentist had been sitting
in a dentist chair for a week, eight hours a day.
Oh my gosh. And what they're talking about is top
gun in Tom Cruise. But for some reason Michael Bay
doesn't feel comfortable thing that. But like I've seen it
before and after Tom Cruise teeth picks. Tom Cruise is
a poster boy for dentists that want to give you

(01:46:14):
expensive teeth. Ben Affleck I kind of wonder as of
Veneer's enthusiasts, like how long did they hold up? Do
you have to get them like tuned up like a car?
I don't know, but they still you know, it's been
twenty five years since this movie came out, and they're
fucking chilling there. You know, the same firm. They've lasted
a few marriages. I'll say, uh true, So you know,

(01:46:37):
this is movie definitely sucks. And also I just the
last production note is that um that I thought was funny,
and it's like, I guess a pretty well circulated saying was.
I just always think it's funny when like movies with
the exact same themes come out at the exact same time.
Because this movie came out very very close to the

(01:47:00):
movie Deep Impact, which was I believe directed by a
woman and was also successful but made less money than
Armageddon and sharing from scholarly journal Wikipedia, these movies came
out two months apart. They're both about blowing up an
asteroid that's about to hit Earth. It's not a coincidence

(01:47:23):
that they come out around the same time, it says.
According to Bruce jel Reuben, writer of Deep Impact, a
production president at Disney took notes on everything the writer
said during a lunch about his script and initiated Armageddon
as a counter film at Disney, and then nine writes.
That's why nine writers worked on the script because the
story had basically been written by another person and they

(01:47:45):
just had to kind of shape the same story into
a Bruce Willis, Jerry Bruckheimer, Michael Bay vehicle of that story.
And then they just better at the box office than
Deep Impact. So they just straight up stole the idea
from another it or yeah, took it to a different
studio and was like this is our movie now, yeah,
and they took and like to add insult to injury,

(01:48:08):
Deep Impact was directed by a woman, and very few
movies in were directed by women. And just like Michael Bay,
just like is fucking evil and lawless, which we knew
I've not seen and I will say I have not.
I mean I guess I hadn't seen Armagedon either, but
like I kind of forgot the Deep Impact existed. I

(01:48:28):
knew Armageddon existed. And that's bad. It reminds me of
this is the last thing I'll say in the episode,
because we gotta go, We gotta go. It reminds me,
I mean those stories. Movies are like littered with stories
like that. But there was this amazing animator named Richard
Williams who was the animation director on who frame Roger Rabbit.
He did all of these famous like animations in the

(01:48:50):
back half of the twentieth century, and his magnum opus
was this story called The Thief and the Cobbler, which
there's a lot of resemble and says in story and
in setting to Aladdin. He worked on this movie decades
and decades, and then Disney got wind of it in

(01:49:11):
the last couple of years and they're like, oh, let's
kill that, and then they made Aladdin and no one
has ever seen the Thief in the Cobbler and everyone
is seeing Aladdin. Business is evil, kind of like how
Disney was like, oh, Kimba the White Lion exists, Well,
we're just going to steal that and make the Lion King.

(01:49:32):
I've heard a lot of different versions of that story,
but yeah, like it. It does feel like it's like
the same spirit of just like, let's steal that, say
it was on our idea in a way that we
don't need to pay anyone or credit anyone, and then
make billions of dollars forever, and and we love that. Awesome.
So does this pass the backtel test, Caitlin, Now women

(01:49:58):
aren't in the same room to get there. That's illegal.
Yeah no, that would be nasty, and I'm glad they
didn't do it. Yeah. No, like, not even fucking close that.
I don't. I truly don't. Think. We got two women
in the same room and it's a half hour movie.
It's obscenely long. Are we going to cover that movie
women Talking? What? Because? Yeah, I mean, I think that

(01:50:22):
would be a fun Matreon thing. I would love to
cover Women Talking and The Women Okay as a theme,
because those are both movies that I think are it
sounds like you know whatever released eighty years apart, but
similar premises. As far as I understand, I haven't done
a ton of research on women talking anyway. That was

(01:50:42):
just a sidebar. What about our nipples scale, in which
we evaluate the movie on a scale of zero to
five nipples based on how it fares from an intersectional
feminist lens. I will give this movie zero nipples. Yeah,
I cannot, in good conscience give it more than nothing.

(01:51:04):
I won't give it negative. But because we have done
that before, Yeah, I think maybe even for Michael Bay movies, Yeah,
I mean, this is I would say this is not
the worst Michael Bay movie I've seen by a long shot.
Um it's one of the better Michael Bay movies I've seen,
and it's so bad and it sucks and it's sucking sex.
But um I I think in terms of visual language,

(01:51:28):
the movie does not aggressively objectify the women who are
in the story. It just simply elects to ignore them
and turn them into wives and daughters. I don't like
this movie, but there were parts of it that I
was like, well, I had to watch this movie and
it wasn't the worst thing that ever happened to me.

(01:51:49):
And that's brave. I mean, it does end on a
high note, and by that I mean it ends could
still anyway, so you're when it thills across the board. Hey,
thanks for listening. Listeners, Thank you for listening. This is

(01:52:13):
This is the main feat episode. But if you enjoy
the episodes with just the two of us, we do
this all the time over in the Patreon ak Matreon
that's patreon dot com, slash becktel Cast five dollars a month,
we'll get you two additional episodes from the two of
us a month. We usually do fun themes, just like
the women talking theme we just discussed. I can't wait.

(01:52:35):
And you can also go to t public dot com
slash the Bechtel Cast for all of your merchandizing needs
such as new designs designed by a one Jamie Loftus
like shrek Ian feminist icon, Paddington and the flobber Mombo
by Danny Elfman, among all the classics such as feminist icon,

(01:52:58):
queer icon, at scabs, dry scabs, you name it, we
got it. We've absolutely got it. And with that, we
hope you enjoyed this. We we wanted to kind of
straight into a genre we hadn't been in for a while.
And with what we'll be back with another episode on

(01:53:19):
Titanic in a couple of weeks. So you're going to
tell them that, oh my gosh, should we not? I'll
cut it. Um. Well, thank you for listening. We we
love you, and we'll be back next week with your
normally scheduled programming. Yeah. Bye bye

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