June 9, 2025 • 43 mins
JJ and Alec's discussion centers around the cinematic phenomenon of "Independence Day," released on July 3, 1996, a film that serves as a quintessential representation of summer blockbusters. We delve into the intricate dynamics of its narrative structure, particularly emphasizing the film's compelling first act, which establishes a palpable tension and sets the stage for the ensuing alien invasion. However, we identify a significant detriment in the film's pacing, particularly within the second act, where the narrative's focus appears disjointed and meandering, detracting from the overall experience. The contrasting performances of the ensemble cast, including notable contributions from Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum, provide a rich tapestry of character interactions that elevate the film's comedic elements, yet the writing falters in moments that detract from the intended gravitas of the storyline. Ultimately, we grapple with the film's dichotomy; while it excels in moments of brilliance and nostalgia, it concurrently presents weaknesses that warrant critical examination, leading us to a nuanced evaluation of its merits and flaws.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The president gets this weirdvision and it's like, what the is
going on right now?
Like, I've seen this movie.
It's the Lord of the Ring.
Yeah, yeah.
It's like this.
We just got real lazy right here.
(00:21):
Welcome to the what's Alreadypodcast where we fashion ourselves
cinematic judge and jury.
My name is J.J.
crowder.
I'm here with my co host Alec Burgess.
Let's get it.
We appreciate you tuning in.
Go and hit that.
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Tell a friend about us.
Tell a family member about us.
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Or maybe some Air Force peopleabout us.
(00:43):
Preferably the drunk pilot.
Yeah, I like that guy.
He's pretty funny.
I'd probably.
He's more like ours.
You probably hang out easier.
Hang out.
The other one you can tell isa paranoid, like, TV programmer.
Oh, yeah, that'd be a good one.
I don't mind that one.
Other than him trying to savethe world.
He starts lecturing me aboutrecycling, I'm gonna be pissed.
(01:03):
Yeah.
If you haven't figured it out,we're in week two of June, our summer
kickoff movies.
And we're staying really just.
We're just continuing down theline of we're doing it the right
way for June.
So far, Independence Day isour next one.
It was released July 3, 1996.
(01:25):
It was written by Dean Devlinand Roland Emmerich.
It was directed by RolandEmmerich, Stars Will Smith, Bill
Pullman, Jeff Goldblue, MaryMcDonnell, Judd Hirsch, Robert Loggia,
Randy Quaid, Margaret Collin,James Rebhorn, and Harvey Fierstein,
not to be confused withHarvey, the other one.
(01:46):
There's also Adam Baldwin,Brent Spiner, Vivk Fox.
This is another one that waspretty loaded with people as we,
you know, went on.
I mean, even the president'sdaughter, May Whitman went on to
do quite a bit as far asacting and different roles.
So really, really big movie.
This was my pick, so I will.
(02:07):
So tell us about it.
J.J.
this is wild.
So I have a real soft spot forthis movie.
And I'll tell you where itcame one.
I saw it when it came out.
I was 15.
And at 15, this movie wasamazing, right?
Like Will Smith.
Action.
This was it.
Like when he was just like,this was probably the movie besides
(02:27):
Bad Boys, right?
So the original Bad Boyskicked him off as a movie star.
He had the Fresh Prince goingon at the time, so he was still killing
it there.
But this movie, like, took himto that notch of, like, ridiculous,
right?
And I remember when it cameout like he.
He was funny.
I love Bill Pullman.
I love Randy Quaid.
(02:49):
He's hilarious.
There's just a lot of peoplein this movie.
Jeff Goldblum, he had recentlyjust got off of Jurassic park, so
he was doing real well.
There was a lot going on whenthis movie came out.
But what really gave me a softspot is so I moved to Kentucky from.
Or I moved from Kentucky toUtah in 1997, right after this movie
(03:15):
came out.
And the school that I went tofrom Kentucky, I went to Davis High
School here in Utah.
And Davis High School isalways one of the things they were
known for, at least back then.
I don't know anymore because Ihaven't paid attention.
But was their marching band.
Well, I was a marching band nerd.
And it was tough because Icouldn't play football because I
injured my back.
(03:37):
And in Utah, like, youcouldn't do both.
So when I was in Kentucky, Iwas in band and I played football.
And they.
That was cool.
Everybody, like the footballplayers love the band.
Like in Kentucky, like, it wasa big deal.
I came out to Utah and Utah'sband, like Davis size band was really
good.
Like they were.
They won competitions.
They were usually top three inall the competitions against a couple
(03:58):
of other band.
Like, we were really good.
But I couldn't play football.
Even if I could had an injuredmy back, I wouldn't be able to play
football.
Because you had to do football.
Utah's really weird.
Like these was like yourextracurriculars actually had classroom
time as well.
So, like, I couldn't playfootball and do band.
It was really odd.
They just didn't let you do it.
So I chose band because of my back.
(04:19):
And so I say all that to saywe did a year after it came out,
our band program for thatyear, the marching band program at
Davis was Independence Day.
And I got super stoked.
So I was really pissed aboutmoving to Utah when I was 16 years
old.
But then I got, you know, Iwas like, I'm gonna be going to this
high school.
We get this, you know, here'sthe music.
(04:39):
We're playing this.
They sent me all the music Ineeded and stuff to practice.
And I was like, I loveIndependence Day, though.
And I'll say, Independence Dayhas a phenomenal score.
So if you ever want to, like,if you like listening to music, movie
scores, and this one's great.
But because I played it forsix months that year in 97, it always
(05:01):
stuck with me as a great movie.
And so, like, I.
We Watched it all the timewhen I was younger and in high school
and then growing up, and it'sone of those movies that, no matter
what, I really like it now.
I listened to another podcastthat helped me.
Want to do a podcast?
And they.
All over Independence Day, Iwas like, what?
(05:21):
How the dare you.
This is a classic.
Then I went back and watched it.
It's a little different now in2025 than when I was a kid, so we'll
talk about that.
But, yeah.
What were your firstimpressions out?
Because, again, you were.
You were little.
Yeah.
So, like, the first time I sawthis, it was, like, replaying on
(05:42):
TBS or something.
Yeah.
Right.
And I was probably 10 or 11,and so.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And it's a weird kind of enigma.
Right.
Because for the time that cameout, you.
You almost have to go look formovies that are like this.
Right.
And nothing ever seems to fitright into the vein of what they
did with this.
So it's very unique.
(06:03):
Even to this day, you'researching for almost that same kind
of feeling with the movie,same kind of plot twist, and it's.
It's.
Nothing ever really quite getsit right.
So it's.
It's kind of got this coolniche that it's stuck in.
And, like, I'll be honest,first, like, if you talk about movies
being broken up into, like,three acts.
Right.
(06:23):
The first act of this film is,bar none, amazing.
Oh.
I will sit there and tell youthat you are wrong about everything
if you disagree.
Third act is okay.
Right.
It's.
It's.
It's.
It's right up there.
It's kind of middle.
It's the fact that the firstact is so good, carries through the
third act.
Yeah.
The second act shouldn't be there.
(06:44):
It is.
It should not exist.
It is terrible.
And I think the problem is youhave this great first act.
Yeah.
That takes half the movie.
Yep.
And.
But it's such a good job.
And you should skip anythingto do with figuring out stuff about
the aliens.
And you should cut straight toJeff Goldblums and.
(07:07):
And Will Smith going up into.
Yeah, yeah, there's.
And.
Because the second act's,like, 30 minutes long.
Yeah.
Maybe.
Right.
It's probably closer to 20.
And it ruins the.
Really just about everythingthat there's no defending it.
Right.
It's just.
It's stupid.
But you can.
You can see the process thatthey're going to and saying, oh,
(07:28):
we need a reason for, youknow, figuring out this.
So we're gonna throw in Area51 stuff and we're gonna throw in
an alien, and we're gonna, youknow, kind of do this whole weird
thing that just doesn't belong.
Yeah.
Because you.
You don't.
It's unnecessary.
Right.
The.
The cards have already beendealt in the first act where, you
(07:49):
know, it's a struggle against.
You know, it's a struggle forhumanity, essentially, what you're
up against.
And then, so.
Because that second act is so.
So trash, like, you get to thethird act, and you're almost like,
now you're just nitpicking stuff.
And so you have this.
But.
And then they throw in alittle bit as well where they're
not doing themselves any favors.
Right.
Because you have this amazingspeech by Bill Paul.
(08:12):
So good.
But they ruin it with certainparts that they throw in there.
And so, like, overall, it's great.
Like.
Like the first, you know, 30,45 seconds of the speech, it's like
chills and goosebumps, andyou're like, yeah, let's go.
And then they.
They throw in a couple thingsthat, like, you're like, oh, I didn't
really need that.
Didn't need that.
Or that doesn't make much sense.
(08:33):
Or, you know, all this stuff,you're like, oh.
But if.
If they don't give you time tokind of think about that.
Because as they justcontinuously ramp it up.
Because this is one of thosemovies where you should just start
and ramp up to the end.
Like, we don't need anypullback to establish character and
like that there.
You shouldn't have anycharacter development in here.
You should have stagnantcharacters that just fill a role.
(08:56):
Yeah.
And because the entire movie,you know, it's two days, three days.
Yeah, three days, Fourth of July.
Like, there's no time forcharacter development.
So I don't need any kind of,oh, big sweeping change or, you know,
setting stuff up that doesn'tmake any sense later on.
Like, you're building almostemotional attachments or connections
(09:16):
to people that are on screenfor three minutes because they get
blasted out of the air by aliens.
Yeah.
It's like.
So it's.
It's.
It's interesting because it'sin its own nation.
It's first part of it.
So amazing.
I love the beginning of this.
In the end is really good.
It's got some problems, butit's really good.
And that just sucks.
(09:37):
And it's.
It's unfortunate because it's.
It's on the, like, that cuspof being just amazing.
Yep.
It just almost tries to do toomuch and just falls flat right there
in the middle.
Right about hour and 35minutes in.
Yep.
I love that you said itbecause, like, that's such a good
(09:59):
way to lay that out about,like, what's good and what's bad.
Because I.
Like, after I heard this otherpodcast just completely on.
I was like, now I gotta gowatch it, because now I feel like
I'm an idiot, because I lovethat movie.
And to your point, you're not.
You're so on point.
Like, the beginning.
God, it's like the first 45minutes of this movie is some of
(10:19):
the greatest setup tension.
Seriously, the tension and thevisuals of, like, when they first.
When it's like they're.
Everybody's scrambling becausethese clouds are coming over, you
know?
And then all of a sudden, youhave that moment where you see the
fire with the plane, and thenit's just alien ship, and you're
like, oh.
(10:39):
And it's so big.
And like this goofy moment ofWill Smith going out to get the newspaper,
the mail, and he kicks thething, and then he.
He's looking at the neighborslike, what the.
And then he looks up and he'slike, oh, right.
Like that.
It's just such a perfect wayto, like, have some comedy.
And then yet that you're like,this is not good.
(11:01):
Like, and then you have theseweird people and you have all these
different scenes because it'sone of these movies that jumps around
a lot.
And normally I hate that, butit works really well with this movie.
You jump to the strip clubafter every.
And it's empty.
And yet the dude's stillmaking them dance.
And then the girl's gonna goup to the rooftop.
And then you jump to the AirForce base, and they're prepping
(11:23):
for their.
And getting debriefed.
And then you jump to the WhiteHouse, and they're doing their thing.
And you got Jeff Goldblum andhis dad, who's one of the funniest
freaking.
Those two on this movie arejust phenomenal.
And then you have the.
So.
But it just keeps bouncing.
But the bouncing works becauseyou're like.
It keeps you on your toes.
You're like, no, no, no, no,don't leave.
I want to see what they'regonna do here.
(11:43):
They're like, what the.
Stop it.
I want to see.
And so all I want to do is seemore of what's happening, but they're
moving me to different places.
And then it all culminates inthis unbelievable sequence of these
ships just wiping out major cities.
Huge iconic landmarks of our country.
And.
(12:03):
Which leads me to like, look,I love this movie.
I still love this movie.
But Roland Emmerich drives mecrazy because it's like the only
thing he wants to do isdestroy famous.
And I'm like, you gotta have alittle more substance, dude.
And.
And this movie is probably themost substantive movie that he has,
with the exception of the onethat followed it, being the Day After
(12:25):
Tomorrow, I think, a few yearslater, which is an okay movie, but
it's carried by its cast.
But the movie itself is really bad.
Just like, there's a lot ofreally shitty things, just like in
this one.
But in this movie, it works, right?
Like, because you're jumping,you see the White House, you see
New York, you see all theseplaces that just get obliterated,
(12:46):
and you're like, oh.
And then to.
To your point, they even havethis cool moment where they take
the ship that, you know, theairplane, the jets up and they're
attacking it.
Then that's tense.
Then you have this moment.
Moment that when I was a kid,I thought was great.
When he punches the alien as ahuman, I'm like, get the out of here.
(13:09):
He just crashed his ship.
And you're punching the mouthof his exoskeleton.
Knocked his ass out cold forbiomechanical suit hours.
Long enough to drag him acrossthe desert, load him in a truck,
and drive him miles away to a base.
Dude, you don't knock anythingout that long with a punch.
And so I was like.
And then it just gets weird, right?
(13:31):
And to your point, up until weget back to Bill Pullman's speech
as the President, everythingin there just doesn't have the same,
I need to know what's going on.
Feeling like I don't get.
I'm like, okay, can we move onto where more action is?
Like, this movie needed justto be a hundred percent action after
(13:54):
the destruction of the citiesand stuff.
Like, it just needs to be, go,go, go, go, go.
And we get all this, like,dissemination of information that
I just don't care about.
And you get this ridiculousscene where the aliens using the
doctor's voice to talk and thepresident gets this weird vision.
(14:15):
And it's like, what the isgoing on right now?
Like, I've seen this movie.
It's the Lord of the Rings.
Yeah, yeah, it's like this.
We just got real lazy right here.
Like, the writing gets superdisjointed and lazy with all this
exposition that just is unnecessary.
Like, I don't care why thealiens are there.
(14:38):
We just watch them destroyhalf of the planet.
I don't give a what theirreasoning is.
We need to destroy them and weneed to figure out how to destroy.
So why are we asking can wehave peace versus how do we kill
your asses?
Because.
And then you get this greatmoment where he's like.
Where Adam Baldwin's like, isthat glass proof?
(15:00):
No, it isn't.
You know, and they startunloading on this thing.
It's like, there you go.
Should have done that to begin with.
Because you don't know otherthan the fact that they're going
to destroy you, which youshould have known by now already.
They just, they 30 plus shipscame in and just waxed the world.
What do you think they'regonna do?
(15:21):
Leave off.
So, yeah, I'm with you.
It sucks.
The, the problem is that they.
You had the setup for it, right?
Yeah.
Like, because you have in thebackground with all this other stuff
that's going on right in thebackground, talks about moving to
new cities, right?
So these ships start out atLA, DC, NY, big cities, and then
(15:42):
they move to new ones.
So you have the opportunity tokeep this action going as it's almost
like, you know, the world islosing ground, right?
Moscow's gone, Dell is gone, right?
All these cities across theworld, Berlin or whatever, they go.
And so now you can almost havethis, almost retreat, fall back position
type of a thing going on whereit's losing ground, losing ground,
(16:03):
losing ground until you, youknow, get to Area 51, get to the
alien tech, let Jeff Goldblumwork his magic, and then from there
you can, you know, finish offthe act, but you have it almost be
this, you know, breakdown andyou, you have it.
It's already set up for that.
But instead we get stuff wherenow I'm just sitting there picking
(16:24):
it apart because in additionto punching aliens, I'm like, where
in the is Will Smith going?
Right?
The President of the UnitedStates doesn't know about Area 51,
but you're telling me MarineCorps Captain Steve Hiller knows
where to go with an alien?
Well, he saw it while he wasflying over, getting attacked by
(16:45):
an alien ship.
The.
Out of here.
Oh, so he knows where you're going.
Like now I'm sitting therepicking this apart because it's just
not well done.
When you had the opportunityand you have the setup and you could
throw in there, you know that the.
Was it the Black Knights thattheir squad name that, you know,
they're maybe they're the best Right.
(17:07):
So you have these differentsquads that could go up and you,
you know, just keep losing,losing, losing.
Can't figure it out until youhave this kind of, you know, ramp
up to the finish.
But instead we get all thesepieces where it's like, oh, yeah,
I saw their plan.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, the plan is killus all.
That made it pretty clear 35minutes ago.
(17:28):
Yeah.
And so then I'm just makingfun of it.
And so then by the time we getto this amazing Bill Pullman speech,
I'm also sitting there going like.
Like I said, first part'slike, oh.
But anything that doesn't fitinto that, I'm like.
And so it pulls me out of itbecause it didn't do a good job of
continuing what it should havebeen, which is straight action, kind
(17:50):
of lost cause, hopeless thinguntil, you know, we figure out, oh,
hey, we could communicate withMorse code.
Right?
They can track this.
We can use.
We don't have to use oursatellites necessarily.
We use this and technology.
And then from there, oh, hey,we're able to, you know, we have
a program where this isfigured out how to crack the code.
(18:12):
Maybe he can do something withthat instead of, you know, just.
I didn't need the alien partbecause it doesn't contribute anything.
Yeah, we figure out about thealiens that they wear these, you
know, exoskeleton suits, butinside you can shoot them.
Yeah, Well, I mean, it doesn'tserve any purpose because there's
no storming of the mothership.
Right.
Or there's no.
There's no actual hand to hand combat.
(18:33):
It's all aerial, which theygot shield.
So it doesn't matter if youcan shoot them behind the wall that
you can't shoot through.
Yeah, no, I'm with you.
So it's, It's.
It's a hard one because it'sso good.
It's set up for great greatness.
And there's parts of it thatI'm just like, oh, yeah, so good.
It's amazing.
(18:54):
Yeah.
And then this person was like,oh, you guys took the day off in
terms of writing, so someoneshould watch what the interns were
doing because they swapped outsome pages here.
Yeah, the script.
You guys had this amazingstory and then you went, how do we
get from the beginning to the end?
(19:16):
You gotta make this, you know,pull back.
We gotta have this interactionbetween, you know, first contact
type of a thing.
Yeah, we got it.
And the whole Area 51 thing.
Like, I wouldn't.
I'd have a less of a hard Timewith it.
If I didn't already know thatArea 51's been around forever and
people have known about it forever.
It's, it's, it's, it's notbecause like, well, it's not on the
(19:38):
map.
Oh, it's there.
Get the out of here.
It is on the map.
Like they haven't been hidingit ever.
It's what goes on at Area 51that people speculate.
It's not that they didn't knowabout this base.
They've known that base hasbeen there for a long ass time and
we've known about it.
So why are we acting like thegovernment's trying to hide it?
Like, stop it.
(20:01):
It'd be on the map.
They just wouldn't let you inbecause I don't know, it's a military
base.
It's just so.
Well, and then the dude rollsup and he's in the back of the truck
and you can clearly tell he's military.
I promise you too.
Within that military outfit ishis id.
His military id, which thenwould allow him to get on base, period.
(20:25):
I know I live a stone's throwfrom one and I know what it takes
to get on one.
So it's like, why?
And then he's got to show thealien, like all dramatic and I'm
like, get the.
That's my appearance.
Yeah, I'm like, dude, you've gotta.
I guarantee your military IDsin your back pocket and.
Or in one of those pockets.
It just.
Yeah, it's somewhere.
(20:46):
Yeah, and that's the part thatlike, I look, I know it's a movie
about aliens, so don't at mebecause I've got suspension of disbelief.
I love Alien movies and I'mvery good at my.
I'm not Matson.
I'm very good at suspension of disbelief.
What I'm not good at is whenyou waste my suspension of disbelief
and you make things just stupid.
(21:08):
And that's where I get like.
It's just, look, it's a funnyline, but I could have been at a
barbecue.
Like, it's funny.
I last.
I laughed at it yesterday whenI watched it.
But that whole sequence isreally bad because I'm sitting there
going, this the wrong withthese aliens.
Why?
What's the point of the.
And then it gets worse when Ifind out about the exoskeleton and
I think about that for you toget some sort of military exoskeleton
(21:31):
that's supposed to protectyour fragile ass that's in the middle
of It.
Why can it get punched in theface and knock you out?
Like.
Or cut with the scalpel?
Yeah.
What kind of exoskeleton is that?
Like, that's weak sauce.
Like, man.
Anyway, I.
It just.
Like, there's so many thingsthat I'm like, suspension of disbelief
(21:52):
doesn't work because it's just stupid.
There's a point where I'mgoing, I have to suspend disbelief
because it's like sci fi andwe just don't know what's possible.
But when I look at it and go,that's just dumb.
Like, that's not sci fi.
That's not.
That's.
You're asking me to be stupid.
And I have a hard time doing that.
So as a kid, I didn't have ahard time doing that.
Yeah.
(22:12):
I thought it was funny, but asan adult, that's really bad.
Still funny, but it's bad.
Like.
And so one thing I will say,so I enjoy the humor in this.
The humor is really good.
And I think they do a greatjob with the relationship.
Yes.
Between different characters.
Right.
So Jeff Goldblum, Judd Hirsch.
Oh, amazing.
(22:33):
Right?
Pair those two up more oftenthat should.
Jeff Goldblum will slip.
Never thought it would happen.
Yeah.
But then even you've got.
Even though it's not reallymeant to be humor and comedy, it
plays that way.
You've got Will Smith and thegirl plays Jasmine.
I don't know her name.
Oh, yeah.
Vivkay Fox.
Yeah.
So you have.
You have that.
(22:54):
My favorite line this entiremovie is where he's getting ready
to go back to El Toro, andshe's like, but you're on leave.
Like, there's not a alienspaceship outside.
And I'm sitting there going,my wife would do that.
Oh, she would do that.
You're on vacation.
It got canceled the secondthose aliens showed up.
(23:15):
Well, I love too.
He's like, what's the problem?
What's the problem?
Or what's the problem?
That's my.
She opens the window and just.
It's so good.
Well, I love it too.
Like, that whole interaction.
Because when he gets.
Like, we come over and, youknow, I have to cancel all my girls
coming over, whatnot, like,because it's so stupid.
(23:36):
She's like, your big old Dumbo ears.
And he's like, your littlechicken legs.
Like, it's all with this alienspaceship over their heads.
Like, I love those moments.
They.
Yes, you're right.
The pairings that they have inthe interactions.
So great.
Gold.
Absolutely gold.
And it's.
It's great when you have likethose conflicting styles is why I
(23:56):
think it works so well.
Yeah.
Right.
Because you have.
Jeff Goldblum and Will Smithare phenomenal together.
And it's great because thereare two very conflicting styles.
Right.
But it plays so well.
And even the dialogue matchesup to where Will Smith's like, we
have got to work on ourcommunication back and forth.
Like, oops.
You know, the oops joke thatgoes back.
(24:18):
It's just beautiful because itplays into this differing style,
not being able to communicate almost.
And it's like, okay, like that.
That was clever.
Like, I enjoy that.
And so that is almost a littlebit of like where I think they should
have turned more into.
If they're gonna slow it downand skip the action is into this
(24:39):
comedic pairings that theyhave because they're.
They play so well and you haveso much content that you could pull
from that and you could almostjust flip maybe a little bit of the
action with the comedy so youcan stop the action going in the
background telling your story and.
But just cut everything withthe aliens out of it.
We've talked about this before.
If you have a big bad evil guyor big bad evil something, the less
(25:01):
we see, the better.
Yeah.
Especially in a movie thatcame out in the 90s where you have
CGI still kind of relativelynew up and coming.
And the less you show, thebetter it is.
Because now it's.
You got your mind going like,what are they?
What are they?
Type of a thing you can show.
You can even show the deadones that they recovered in the 50s
(25:22):
or whatever.
But keep guessing of like,hey, we don't actually know much
about them because now itbecomes a little bit more like, you
have Jeff Goldblum coming tosave the day.
Right.
Because what we got from thescientists who've decided these scenes
for 50 years is, yeah, we knowthey can be killed.
Yeah, that was like it.
Yeah.
Like, we know they're fragileand they breathe oxygen.
(25:45):
Yeah.
So nothing.
Nothing of importance.
Right.
Nothing that's going to helpus survive this.
And you've had 50 years, soit's like, I don't need that.
It's not useful.
So you can save that.
Cut that out.
Throw it away.
And now it's very simple.
Like, hey, we know nothingabout them.
Yeah, that's what we've got.
We can't figure it out.
(26:06):
And now you have Jeff Goldblumcome in and kind of try it a different
approach that haven't triedbefore or whatever and stumble upon
it.
And now you have that kind oftie way in because, I mean, it's
almost like you.
You set up for this alienreveal or this alien shindig, and
then you don't do anythingwith it.
It's now you just giving mealien blue balls.
(26:28):
Yeah, well, that's the thingis you don't gain anything from that
whole conversation and interaction.
Like, you just not anythingthat we didn't already know.
Right.
Like we know they're trying todestroy you.
Why do we have to have thiswhole conversation and this 15 minute
waste of my time that I don'tenjoy when I could have had.
Look, we don't know, exceptthat we can kill them and we got
(26:50):
to figure out how to get theirshields down and then take me to
more of like Vivica Foxcharacter saving the President's
wife.
Right.
Like, and because those.
I want to know more about thatbecause it directly relates to something
that I can.
I can connect with that.
That really.
I love that character becauseshe was funny in the beginning and
(27:11):
she made me laugh.
But you know that there's aserious relationship there.
She thinks he's dead.
He thinks she might be dead.
That whole dramatic thing.
And I love the conversationsshe has with the first lady.
Like, that shit's kind of funny.
I voted for the other guy.
Yeah, it's great.
And.
And like the kids greatly.
So you had what you needed andyou make it short.
(27:33):
It doesn't need to be a twohour, 20 minute movie.
You could just cut some shitand we'd still like it.
Right?
Like, it's.
Yeah, I'm just with you.
Like, I think they tried toohard to give everything that they
thought they needed, but theydidn't need it.
Like, they had enough withwhat they did in the beginning and
the action and the comedy andthe interactions.
Like, I don't need them.
(27:54):
The motivation from the aliens.
Like, I just need Bill Pullmanas President and doing a great speech
from a little microphonethat's like iconic.
I memorized it at one point.
I don't know it anymore.
But when we did the bandthing, something that's unheard of
is non music stuff.
But we had one of our.
While the music's playing thesame music that's going on when it
(28:17):
gets crescendos and it'sreally pretty.
One of our.
One of our drum majors went.
We had this big thing in themiddle of it after that, like, so
we had this section whereyou're playing the.
It was really cool, actually.
You can watch it on.
I have to send you the video?
Yeah.
So there's this part where themusic gets the part where, like,
all the aliens are attacking,the ships are attacking, right?
(28:38):
We had this thing in themiddle and in the middle and then
it, like, crush and go down.
And we had it.
And all of us would lay downand pose like we got.
We were part of thedestruction or whatnot.
And then we get up and it's this.
I'm getting goosebumpsthinking about it.
That's how cool this was.
Then we all get up.
Like, there's this trumpetsolo going on during.
For the speech.
And then all of us get up, weput our instruments back on, and
(28:58):
we start marching again.
And our drum major did thespeech with a microphone while we
were.
Dude, it was dope.
That is cool.
And I got goosebumps every time.
Like, it was such a cool show.
We never took first placebecause there's this band in America,
American Fork, thattechnically was better than us that
doing the band.
So they always took firstplace, but we always took second.
(29:19):
But I'll tell you right now,the fan favorite was us, because
people would.
It was a year ago, the moviehad come out, and it's just got you
worked up because, you know,we had all the great music and the
speech, and it was just great.
So the movie did some very correctly.
And.
And that's the part where Iget, as an adult re watching it.
Like, I get really frustratedat the parts that they didn't do
(29:41):
very correctly because it's sogood when it's good and it's.
But it's really bad when it's bad.
And so it's.
It's tough for me.
But I will say that this willalways be one of my favorite movies
because of my interaction withit, with the band stuff.
And I think it was peak.
Will Smith.
It was peak.
Vivica A.
(30:01):
Fox.
It was peak.
Jeff Goldblum, though, hestill does his thing just as good
as he ever did, you know, Imean, Bill Pullman, like, now.
Which is crazy because now hiskid's getting famous.
His kid was.
Is in the.
The Thunderbolts movie as thecentury and he kills it.
He does a great job.
And he looks just like his dad.
(30:22):
I was like, anyways, I mean,it's just, like, great.
Like, this is such a good castwith just poor writing it sometimes.
And then some great writing.
I mean, the opening scene ofthis movie is phenomenal too.
Like, the people up at thisweird station freaking out.
Like, I love the part where hecalls the guy, puts the Phone up
to it.
And he hits his head on thebunk bed.
(30:42):
Then he's tripping over golfballs because he's freaking the.
He's like, why the is this here?
Like, I'm gonna follow my ass.
And you get the.
The great.
When it's the end of the worldplaying in the back.
It's just such good writing.
And then it moves in a great clip.
We go to the president.
We go to the.
The newsroom.
I love that guy too, with the rats.
Graspy voice.
I gotta call my lawyer.
(31:07):
The poor bastards in the.
Oh, crap.
For 300 an hour.
You can put me through hishouse in the Hamptons.
Yeah.
Love that guy.
Oh, mom, you gotta go to getin the car and go.
He's laying under the desk.
So good.
Such a good.
(31:27):
Good.
Yeah.
The characters are amazing.
And it, like you said, itmoves at a very nice clip.
And then when they slow ituntil it doesn't.
Like, I mean, when they slowit down.
She's trash.
Yeah.
And so it's.
That's the unfortunate bit islike right in the middle between
two really good parts.
Yeah.
Is where you have just like.
(31:49):
And so for me, that makes theending worse because I've sat through
the.
The trash and so now I'malmost looking for stuff.
Right.
To be nitpicky about this.
But yeah, like, if you'retalking just an hour and a half long
and end it.
End it after they blow up stuff.
Dude.
Oh, so good.
I'm about it.
(32:09):
Because it's so good.
Right off the bat.
So good.
I liked Randy Quaid too.
That shit.
Yes.
You did the wrong field.
Are you sure?
So good.
He's cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,but it works.
(32:30):
The only thing that bothers meabout his character is at the end
when he's, like, absolutelybelligerent drunk.
And then like a couple of cupsof coffee and he's ready to fly it
at 14.
I'm like, hold on.
Coming from someone that hashad a lot of moments where I'm ripped
out of my gourd.
A couple of coffees aren'tgoing to get me even driving a car,
let alone flying a fighter jet.
(32:52):
Well, then it also kind ofruins one of the greatest lines of
the movies, which is, I pickeda hell of a day to quit drinking.
Like, dude, you quit like twohours ago.
What do you mean?
Yeah, keep them coming.
Keep them coming.
Dude.
It's not gonna make it better.
I swear to God.
It's not.
Like, maybe tomorrow in 12hours, you could be flying some.
(33:12):
But you're not doing it now.
Like, it's crazy.
I mean, it makes for funny,but again, like, it's just so unrealistic.
Like, and then, like, the.
The other one that reallybothers me is, like, the him being
drunk and goofy, flipping thatswitch on the missile.
And that is what sets up,like, his need to fly into the ship.
Like, just have him run out of missiles.
(33:33):
Like, we all know it's gonnait up.
Like, I could see that comingfrom even when I was a kid.
I'm like, oh, that's not gonnawork later.
You know what I mean?
Like, just have him run outand then he makes that choice.
Like, don't force him to makethat choice because he's an idiot.
Right?
Force him to make that choicebecause it's to save the world and
his kids.
Right?
Like, that to me, resonatesmore than, oops, I was drunk or sobering
(33:57):
up and hit the button, and nowthe missile doesn't work.
So now I have to fly into thisship and sacrifice it just kind of
takes away from the nobilityof that decision.
And I know that's petty, butit does for me.
Like, as an adult, I'm like,that could have been avoided and
you could have made it a decision.
Because it's a hard decisionto make.
(34:17):
And then the impact is there.
It's not.
Well, I.
I up and pushed a buttonbecause I'd been drinking and just
make him be noble and havethat decision because he has to,
not because, whoops, I up.
I don't know.
Yeah, no, I get what you'resaying, because again, right, because
that second part of the movieis so bad.
But then you also have thisreally cool scene, right?
(34:39):
Where they're all like.
Where he's like, I still got one.
Right?
So they're like, oh, flank out.
Like you're covering them.
And.
Yeah, a little like, attack,wean or hear the road.
Yeah.
So you have this really coolsequence, but I think if you did
something like, you know,because this is their last missile,
right?
So it's like, hey, you gottaget close because we've already missed
(34:59):
a couple.
You know, this is.
This is X Wing flying down thetrench of the Death Star.
That's right.
You're aiming for a whomp rat.
You got to get close to makesure this thing works.
And so then just have him getmaybe too close, right?
Or whatever is.
Or he realizes, hey, I can'tmess this up, so I'm just gonna go
for it.
(35:19):
Right?
Type of a thing.
And.
Because then that adds to It.
And instead of having, like,you were talking about, like, oh,
whoopsies.
Right.
And not getting it checked outlate before you go.
Right.
Like.
Yeah.
Like.
Yeah.
There's.
There's so many things where it's.
You're.
You're trying to work it toohard and still have this noble kind
of sacrifice.
(35:39):
Yeah.
And you.
You don't need it.
Right.
You.
You can inform your way whereit's like, hey, we got to get close.
You know, I.
I gotta go up there.
Right.
Like, I gotta get out there.
I gotta make it work.
Because this is.
We're down to our last missile.
Yeah.
There's.
There's no other option here,type of.
Because that.
That's the desperate straitsthat they're in.
They're in dire straits.
And so.
But for me, anyway, it's.
(36:00):
It's because it follows afterthe middle part, I'm gonna say.
Now I'm gonna be nitpicky about.
Yeah.
I mean, it is what it is.
The movie does it to itself.
So I agree with you completely.
But there's so manyopportunities I think this movie
could have been.
And again, as a kid, it wasabsolutely amazing because I didn't
(36:21):
give a.
Now, from that perspective and.
And hearing that podcast.
And then, like you said, Icome at it from, like, a more critical
point of view because of whatwe do with these.
But, yeah, it's unfortunatebecause the writing was so good on
the front and back end of thedamn thing.
Yeah.
There's still, to me, not amovie that creates the level of tension
(36:43):
that the first 45 minutes ofthis movie does up until the first
launch of the Black Knights.
Right.
Like that.
To me, like, holy.
Because you don't know what'sgoing on.
These ships are huge.
Everybody's either excited orafraid, and they're starting to figure
out.
And then you get this, like,moment of.
It's a countdown.
When he figures it out,there's a countdown and he's like,
(37:03):
I gotta go to the White House.
You're like, hurry up.
Yeah.
And then.
Yeah.
So it just is so good.
So good.
So.
All right, should we rate it?
Let's do it.
All right, it's mine.
I'll go first.
I really want to score thisreally high because of the nostalgia
and the.
Love it as a kid.
(37:23):
But I'm going to be realistic.
I'm going to give it a threeand a half.
I think it had the potentialto be a five, and I want to give
it a four, but I'm going togive it a three and A half.
Because when it's bad, it'sreally bad.
Like really bad.
Like almost unwatchable bad.
But when it's really good.
Jesus Christ.
It is so compelling and it isso fun and it is so funny and it's
(37:44):
so tense and it has greatmusic and it has great dialogue,
but man, when it falls off, itfalls off into the toilet.
And so I can't forgive thatcompletely and put a four in front
of it.
So three and a half.
I'll watch it again.
I do love it.
It's got some great speeches,it's got some great dialogue.
It's fun.
So I will watch it pretty much anytime.
(38:06):
But I will on it when we getto the shitty parts.
Just know that no matter what.
So.
But I.
I do still enjoy it.
I still have fun watching it.
So I would watch it almost anytime.
And Will Smith just crushes it.
Like, he steals this movie.
For sure.
For sure, for sure.
Him and.
And man, him and.
Yeah.
What's his face?
Why can't it just lost it.
(38:27):
Jeff Goldblum.
Jeff Goldblum.
Him and Jeff Goldblum are thestars of this movie with like a really
great speech from Bill Pullman.
So there it is.
Alec, your turn, buddy.
All right, I'm gonna come alittle lower.
I'm gonna give it a three.
And I think this movie, likewe talked about, gets in its own
way and it's doing too much.
And there's so much going onwhen you should just stayed with
(38:49):
what was working, which istense, tense action flick.
Right.
This could have been somethinglike a quiet place.
Right.
With the kind of tension thatthey're building up in the first
little bit of this movie.
But because they're trying todo much, there's so much scattered.
Like by the time we get to thefirst lady dying, like, I.
I'm almost like, okay, takethat, let's go.
Like it.
It doesn't have that emotionalpull to it because you're.
(39:12):
You're having so manydifferent side stories going on and
so many different charactersand this or that.
And you almost forget for aWhile that there's 15 mile wide alien
spaceships flying around the world.
Like, you start to forget thatbecause of where the direction they
take the movie.
And that should be likeforefront coming at you the entire
(39:33):
time to keep that level going.
So when you get to this pointwhere it's just.
So much is going on, it loses itself.
Yeah.
And so I'm gonna give it a three.
I.
I will watch it, butfrequently I will be skipping about
40 minutes in the middle of it.
Yeah.
To watch the bits that I wantto watch.
Because when it's good, it's good.
(39:53):
Yeah.
And so.
But yeah, three for me.
I love it.
Love it.
Welcome to Earth.
I always think too, about the,like, yeah, there's just so many
one liners that are just so good.
And that's.
Yeah, that's one of the.
Welcome to Earth.
But the rest of it's.
It's so bad when it's bad, butwhen it's good, boy, it's great.
(40:17):
All right, well, there it is.
Week two, Independence Day ofKick Summer Kickoff movies.
I, you know, glad we watched it.
I do like it.
But then Alec, tell us wherethey can find us when they're not
watching or listening.
Happy to.
So, like JJ said, thank youfor tuning in.
This is week two.
We got a great lineup left forsummer kickoff movies in June.
(40:40):
No, no more my movies.
I got mine out of the way onthe first week and I'm living that
JJ life with the dry spell.
But it's, it's a, it's apretty good lineup coming, so be
sure to tune in for that.
Best place to find us, though.
If you want to get involvedwith podcast creation is check us
out on Patreon.
Thank you to Rich and CB forselecting the movies that we're doing
(41:03):
this month and for the moviesthat we've done for really the past
8, 9, 10, 11 years long.
I think we've been doing thisis June.
June.
So we started kind ofswitching it up with our movie votes,
I think.
And so we've been doing thisfor a long time.
It's a great system.
Guys, go join us on Patreon.
What's our verted reviews?
You can get involved withoutpain, I might add.
No pain.
(41:23):
To get involved with thevoting, you can choose topics that,
you know, we set out a coupletopics, pick which one you want.
That topic will send in some movies.
And it's a, it's a real caseof bragging rights for us if our
movies get picked.
JJ was over like 27 this year until.
Until this month and he cleansweeped with three of three being
chosen.
(41:44):
So it's a real thing with usand, you know, we kind of really
pulling for our movies to get picked.
Part of that reason.
A little behind the scenesaction for you guys.
Part of that reason is becausewe will intentionally pick movies
that the other two are gonna hate.
It's true.
So get involved there.
Doesn't cost you anything topick all your favorite movies.
(42:05):
I cut out again.
So this is gonna be great.
I'm gonna go back to theInternet's gonna be good.
I didn't stop.
I knew exactly what washappening because everything cut
out so you can get involved onthe podcast.
Doesn't cost you anything toget involved.
Vote choose movies that youwant to see us do.
We love talking about moviesthat have been out for decades at
(42:26):
this point.
We love going back to some oldclassics, right?
I mean, we just did two thisthis month already from the 90s.
So join us there.
It's never going to be a dull time.
There's plenty of behind thescenes content to keep you busy as
well.
And with that, I'll kick itback to the fearless leader, the
Titan of terror, the Wazir ofWap A.
JJ that's right.
(42:47):
I wouldn't say fearless.
I do have fear when I don'tget my movies picked because then
I gotta watch you movies andthat's a coin flip if I've ever seen
one.
So there it is.
But I do like them.
Yeah.
And as always, look, weappreciate you tuning in.
We've had a good time this week.
We'll catch you on the next one.
Hasta la vista, baby.
(43:07):
Cinematic.
The president gets this weirdvision and it's like, what the is
going on right now?
Like, I've seen this movie.
It's the Lord of the Ring.
Yeah, yeah.
It's like this.
We just got real lazy right here.
(00:21):
Welcome to the what's Alreadypodcast where we fashion ourselves
cinematic judge and jury.
My name is J.J.
crowder.
I'm here with my co host Alec Burgess.
Let's get it.
We appreciate you tuning in.
Go and hit that.
Follow subscribe like bellnotification buttons.
Tell a friend about us.
Tell a family member about us.
Tell crazy drunk pilot about us.
Or maybe some Air Force peopleabout us.
(00:43):
Preferably the drunk pilot.
Yeah, I like that guy.
He's pretty funny.
I'd probably.
He's more like ours.
You probably hang out easier.
Hang out.
The other one you can tell isa paranoid, like, TV programmer.
Oh, yeah, that'd be a good one.
I don't mind that one.
Other than him trying to savethe world.
He starts lecturing me aboutrecycling, I'm gonna be pissed.
(01:03):
Yeah.
If you haven't figured it out,we're in week two of June, our summer
kickoff movies.
And we're staying really just.
We're just continuing down theline of we're doing it the right
way for June.
So far, Independence Day isour next one.
It was released July 3, 1996.
(01:25):
It was written by Dean Devlinand Roland Emmerich.
It was directed by RolandEmmerich, Stars Will Smith, Bill
Pullman, Jeff Goldblue, MaryMcDonnell, Judd Hirsch, Robert Loggia,
Randy Quaid, Margaret Collin,James Rebhorn, and Harvey Fierstein,
not to be confused withHarvey, the other one.
(01:46):
There's also Adam Baldwin,Brent Spiner, Vivk Fox.
This is another one that waspretty loaded with people as we,
you know, went on.
I mean, even the president'sdaughter, May Whitman went on to
do quite a bit as far asacting and different roles.
So really, really big movie.
This was my pick, so I will.
(02:07):
So tell us about it.
J.J.
this is wild.
So I have a real soft spot forthis movie.
And I'll tell you where itcame one.
I saw it when it came out.
I was 15.
And at 15, this movie wasamazing, right?
Like Will Smith.
Action.
This was it.
Like when he was just like,this was probably the movie besides
(02:27):
Bad Boys, right?
So the original Bad Boyskicked him off as a movie star.
He had the Fresh Prince goingon at the time, so he was still killing
it there.
But this movie, like, took himto that notch of, like, ridiculous,
right?
And I remember when it cameout like he.
He was funny.
I love Bill Pullman.
I love Randy Quaid.
(02:49):
He's hilarious.
There's just a lot of peoplein this movie.
Jeff Goldblum, he had recentlyjust got off of Jurassic park, so
he was doing real well.
There was a lot going on whenthis movie came out.
But what really gave me a softspot is so I moved to Kentucky from.
Or I moved from Kentucky toUtah in 1997, right after this movie
(03:15):
came out.
And the school that I went tofrom Kentucky, I went to Davis High
School here in Utah.
And Davis High School isalways one of the things they were
known for, at least back then.
I don't know anymore because Ihaven't paid attention.
But was their marching band.
Well, I was a marching band nerd.
And it was tough because Icouldn't play football because I
injured my back.
(03:37):
And in Utah, like, youcouldn't do both.
So when I was in Kentucky, Iwas in band and I played football.
And they.
That was cool.
Everybody, like the footballplayers love the band.
Like in Kentucky, like, it wasa big deal.
I came out to Utah and Utah'sband, like Davis size band was really
good.
Like they were.
They won competitions.
They were usually top three inall the competitions against a couple
(03:58):
of other band.
Like, we were really good.
But I couldn't play football.
Even if I could had an injuredmy back, I wouldn't be able to play
football.
Because you had to do football.
Utah's really weird.
Like these was like yourextracurriculars actually had classroom
time as well.
So, like, I couldn't playfootball and do band.
It was really odd.
They just didn't let you do it.
So I chose band because of my back.
(04:19):
And so I say all that to saywe did a year after it came out,
our band program for thatyear, the marching band program at
Davis was Independence Day.
And I got super stoked.
So I was really pissed aboutmoving to Utah when I was 16 years
old.
But then I got, you know, Iwas like, I'm gonna be going to this
high school.
We get this, you know, here'sthe music.
(04:39):
We're playing this.
They sent me all the music Ineeded and stuff to practice.
And I was like, I loveIndependence Day, though.
And I'll say, Independence Dayhas a phenomenal score.
So if you ever want to, like,if you like listening to music, movie
scores, and this one's great.
But because I played it forsix months that year in 97, it always
(05:01):
stuck with me as a great movie.
And so, like, I.
We Watched it all the timewhen I was younger and in high school
and then growing up, and it'sone of those movies that, no matter
what, I really like it now.
I listened to another podcastthat helped me.
Want to do a podcast?
And they.
All over Independence Day, Iwas like, what?
(05:21):
How the dare you.
This is a classic.
Then I went back and watched it.
It's a little different now in2025 than when I was a kid, so we'll
talk about that.
But, yeah.
What were your firstimpressions out?
Because, again, you were.
You were little.
Yeah.
So, like, the first time I sawthis, it was, like, replaying on
(05:42):
TBS or something.
Yeah.
Right.
And I was probably 10 or 11,and so.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And it's a weird kind of enigma.
Right.
Because for the time that cameout, you.
You almost have to go look formovies that are like this.
Right.
And nothing ever seems to fitright into the vein of what they
did with this.
So it's very unique.
(06:03):
Even to this day, you'researching for almost that same kind
of feeling with the movie,same kind of plot twist, and it's.
It's.
Nothing ever really quite getsit right.
So it's.
It's kind of got this coolniche that it's stuck in.
And, like, I'll be honest,first, like, if you talk about movies
being broken up into, like,three acts.
Right.
(06:23):
The first act of this film is,bar none, amazing.
Oh.
I will sit there and tell youthat you are wrong about everything
if you disagree.
Third act is okay.
Right.
It's.
It's.
It's.
It's right up there.
It's kind of middle.
It's the fact that the firstact is so good, carries through the
third act.
Yeah.
The second act shouldn't be there.
(06:44):
It is.
It should not exist.
It is terrible.
And I think the problem is youhave this great first act.
Yeah.
That takes half the movie.
Yep.
And.
But it's such a good job.
And you should skip anythingto do with figuring out stuff about
the aliens.
And you should cut straight toJeff Goldblums and.
(07:07):
And Will Smith going up into.
Yeah, yeah, there's.
And.
Because the second act's,like, 30 minutes long.
Yeah.
Maybe.
Right.
It's probably closer to 20.
And it ruins the.
Really just about everythingthat there's no defending it.
Right.
It's just.
It's stupid.
But you can.
You can see the process thatthey're going to and saying, oh,
(07:28):
we need a reason for, youknow, figuring out this.
So we're gonna throw in Area51 stuff and we're gonna throw in
an alien, and we're gonna, youknow, kind of do this whole weird
thing that just doesn't belong.
Yeah.
Because you.
You don't.
It's unnecessary.
Right.
The.
The cards have already beendealt in the first act where, you
(07:49):
know, it's a struggle against.
You know, it's a struggle forhumanity, essentially, what you're
up against.
And then, so.
Because that second act is so.
So trash, like, you get to thethird act, and you're almost like,
now you're just nitpicking stuff.
And so you have this.
But.
And then they throw in alittle bit as well where they're
not doing themselves any favors.
Right.
Because you have this amazingspeech by Bill Paul.
(08:12):
So good.
But they ruin it with certainparts that they throw in there.
And so, like, overall, it's great.
Like.
Like the first, you know, 30,45 seconds of the speech, it's like
chills and goosebumps, andyou're like, yeah, let's go.
And then they.
They throw in a couple thingsthat, like, you're like, oh, I didn't
really need that.
Didn't need that.
Or that doesn't make much sense.
(08:33):
Or, you know, all this stuff,you're like, oh.
But if.
If they don't give you time tokind of think about that.
Because as they justcontinuously ramp it up.
Because this is one of thosemovies where you should just start
and ramp up to the end.
Like, we don't need anypullback to establish character and
like that there.
You shouldn't have anycharacter development in here.
You should have stagnantcharacters that just fill a role.
(08:56):
Yeah.
And because the entire movie,you know, it's two days, three days.
Yeah, three days, Fourth of July.
Like, there's no time forcharacter development.
So I don't need any kind of,oh, big sweeping change or, you know,
setting stuff up that doesn'tmake any sense later on.
Like, you're building almostemotional attachments or connections
(09:16):
to people that are on screenfor three minutes because they get
blasted out of the air by aliens.
Yeah.
It's like.
So it's.
It's.
It's interesting because it'sin its own nation.
It's first part of it.
So amazing.
I love the beginning of this.
In the end is really good.
It's got some problems, butit's really good.
And that just sucks.
(09:37):
And it's.
It's unfortunate because it's.
It's on the, like, that cuspof being just amazing.
Yep.
It just almost tries to do toomuch and just falls flat right there
in the middle.
Right about hour and 35minutes in.
Yep.
I love that you said itbecause, like, that's such a good
(09:59):
way to lay that out about,like, what's good and what's bad.
Because I.
Like, after I heard this otherpodcast just completely on.
I was like, now I gotta gowatch it, because now I feel like
I'm an idiot, because I lovethat movie.
And to your point, you're not.
You're so on point.
Like, the beginning.
God, it's like the first 45minutes of this movie is some of
(10:19):
the greatest setup tension.
Seriously, the tension and thevisuals of, like, when they first.
When it's like they're.
Everybody's scrambling becausethese clouds are coming over, you
know?
And then all of a sudden, youhave that moment where you see the
fire with the plane, and thenit's just alien ship, and you're
like, oh.
(10:39):
And it's so big.
And like this goofy moment ofWill Smith going out to get the newspaper,
the mail, and he kicks thething, and then he.
He's looking at the neighborslike, what the.
And then he looks up and he'slike, oh, right.
Like that.
It's just such a perfect wayto, like, have some comedy.
And then yet that you're like,this is not good.
(11:01):
Like, and then you have theseweird people and you have all these
different scenes because it'sone of these movies that jumps around
a lot.
And normally I hate that, butit works really well with this movie.
You jump to the strip clubafter every.
And it's empty.
And yet the dude's stillmaking them dance.
And then the girl's gonna goup to the rooftop.
And then you jump to the AirForce base, and they're prepping
(11:23):
for their.
And getting debriefed.
And then you jump to the WhiteHouse, and they're doing their thing.
And you got Jeff Goldblum andhis dad, who's one of the funniest
freaking.
Those two on this movie arejust phenomenal.
And then you have the.
So.
But it just keeps bouncing.
But the bouncing works becauseyou're like.
It keeps you on your toes.
You're like, no, no, no, no,don't leave.
I want to see what they'regonna do here.
(11:43):
They're like, what the.
Stop it.
I want to see.
And so all I want to do is seemore of what's happening, but they're
moving me to different places.
And then it all culminates inthis unbelievable sequence of these
ships just wiping out major cities.
Huge iconic landmarks of our country.
And.
(12:03):
Which leads me to like, look,I love this movie.
I still love this movie.
But Roland Emmerich drives mecrazy because it's like the only
thing he wants to do isdestroy famous.
And I'm like, you gotta have alittle more substance, dude.
And.
And this movie is probably themost substantive movie that he has,
with the exception of the onethat followed it, being the Day After
(12:25):
Tomorrow, I think, a few yearslater, which is an okay movie, but
it's carried by its cast.
But the movie itself is really bad.
Just like, there's a lot ofreally shitty things, just like in
this one.
But in this movie, it works, right?
Like, because you're jumping,you see the White House, you see
New York, you see all theseplaces that just get obliterated,
(12:46):
and you're like, oh.
And then to.
To your point, they even havethis cool moment where they take
the ship that, you know, theairplane, the jets up and they're
attacking it.
Then that's tense.
Then you have this moment.
Moment that when I was a kid,I thought was great.
When he punches the alien as ahuman, I'm like, get the out of here.
(13:09):
He just crashed his ship.
And you're punching the mouthof his exoskeleton.
Knocked his ass out cold forbiomechanical suit hours.
Long enough to drag him acrossthe desert, load him in a truck,
and drive him miles away to a base.
Dude, you don't knock anythingout that long with a punch.
And so I was like.
And then it just gets weird, right?
(13:31):
And to your point, up until weget back to Bill Pullman's speech
as the President, everythingin there just doesn't have the same,
I need to know what's going on.
Feeling like I don't get.
I'm like, okay, can we move onto where more action is?
Like, this movie needed justto be a hundred percent action after
(13:54):
the destruction of the citiesand stuff.
Like, it just needs to be, go,go, go, go, go.
And we get all this, like,dissemination of information that
I just don't care about.
And you get this ridiculousscene where the aliens using the
doctor's voice to talk and thepresident gets this weird vision.
(14:15):
And it's like, what the isgoing on right now?
Like, I've seen this movie.
It's the Lord of the Rings.
Yeah, yeah, it's like this.
We just got real lazy right here.
Like, the writing gets superdisjointed and lazy with all this
exposition that just is unnecessary.
Like, I don't care why thealiens are there.
(14:38):
We just watch them destroyhalf of the planet.
I don't give a what theirreasoning is.
We need to destroy them and weneed to figure out how to destroy.
So why are we asking can wehave peace versus how do we kill
your asses?
Because.
And then you get this greatmoment where he's like.
Where Adam Baldwin's like, isthat glass proof?
(15:00):
No, it isn't.
You know, and they startunloading on this thing.
It's like, there you go.
Should have done that to begin with.
Because you don't know otherthan the fact that they're going
to destroy you, which youshould have known by now already.
They just, they 30 plus shipscame in and just waxed the world.
What do you think they'regonna do?
(15:21):
Leave off.
So, yeah, I'm with you.
It sucks.
The, the problem is that they.
You had the setup for it, right?
Yeah.
Like, because you have in thebackground with all this other stuff
that's going on right in thebackground, talks about moving to
new cities, right?
So these ships start out atLA, DC, NY, big cities, and then
(15:42):
they move to new ones.
So you have the opportunity tokeep this action going as it's almost
like, you know, the world islosing ground, right?
Moscow's gone, Dell is gone, right?
All these cities across theworld, Berlin or whatever, they go.
And so now you can almost havethis, almost retreat, fall back position
type of a thing going on whereit's losing ground, losing ground,
(16:03):
losing ground until you, youknow, get to Area 51, get to the
alien tech, let Jeff Goldblumwork his magic, and then from there
you can, you know, finish offthe act, but you have it almost be
this, you know, breakdown andyou, you have it.
It's already set up for that.
But instead we get stuff wherenow I'm just sitting there picking
(16:24):
it apart because in additionto punching aliens, I'm like, where
in the is Will Smith going?
Right?
The President of the UnitedStates doesn't know about Area 51,
but you're telling me MarineCorps Captain Steve Hiller knows
where to go with an alien?
Well, he saw it while he wasflying over, getting attacked by
(16:45):
an alien ship.
The.
Out of here.
Oh, so he knows where you're going.
Like now I'm sitting therepicking this apart because it's just
not well done.
When you had the opportunityand you have the setup and you could
throw in there, you know that the.
Was it the Black Knights thattheir squad name that, you know,
they're maybe they're the best Right.
(17:07):
So you have these differentsquads that could go up and you,
you know, just keep losing,losing, losing.
Can't figure it out until youhave this kind of, you know, ramp
up to the finish.
But instead we get all thesepieces where it's like, oh, yeah,
I saw their plan.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, the plan is killus all.
That made it pretty clear 35minutes ago.
(17:28):
Yeah.
And so then I'm just makingfun of it.
And so then by the time we getto this amazing Bill Pullman speech,
I'm also sitting there going like.
Like I said, first part'slike, oh.
But anything that doesn't fitinto that, I'm like.
And so it pulls me out of itbecause it didn't do a good job of
continuing what it should havebeen, which is straight action, kind
(17:50):
of lost cause, hopeless thinguntil, you know, we figure out, oh,
hey, we could communicate withMorse code.
Right?
They can track this.
We can use.
We don't have to use oursatellites necessarily.
We use this and technology.
And then from there, oh, hey,we're able to, you know, we have
a program where this isfigured out how to crack the code.
(18:12):
Maybe he can do something withthat instead of, you know, just.
I didn't need the alien partbecause it doesn't contribute anything.
Yeah, we figure out about thealiens that they wear these, you
know, exoskeleton suits, butinside you can shoot them.
Yeah, Well, I mean, it doesn'tserve any purpose because there's
no storming of the mothership.
Right.
Or there's no.
There's no actual hand to hand combat.
(18:33):
It's all aerial, which theygot shield.
So it doesn't matter if youcan shoot them behind the wall that
you can't shoot through.
Yeah, no, I'm with you.
So it's, It's.
It's a hard one because it'sso good.
It's set up for great greatness.
And there's parts of it thatI'm just like, oh, yeah, so good.
It's amazing.
(18:54):
Yeah.
And then this person was like,oh, you guys took the day off in
terms of writing, so someoneshould watch what the interns were
doing because they swapped outsome pages here.
Yeah, the script.
You guys had this amazingstory and then you went, how do we
get from the beginning to the end?
(19:16):
You gotta make this, you know,pull back.
We gotta have this interactionbetween, you know, first contact
type of a thing.
Yeah, we got it.
And the whole Area 51 thing.
Like, I wouldn't.
I'd have a less of a hard Timewith it.
If I didn't already know thatArea 51's been around forever and
people have known about it forever.
It's, it's, it's, it's notbecause like, well, it's not on the
(19:38):
map.
Oh, it's there.
Get the out of here.
It is on the map.
Like they haven't been hidingit ever.
It's what goes on at Area 51that people speculate.
It's not that they didn't knowabout this base.
They've known that base hasbeen there for a long ass time and
we've known about it.
So why are we acting like thegovernment's trying to hide it?
Like, stop it.
(20:01):
It'd be on the map.
They just wouldn't let you inbecause I don't know, it's a military
base.
It's just so.
Well, and then the dude rollsup and he's in the back of the truck
and you can clearly tell he's military.
I promise you too.
Within that military outfit ishis id.
His military id, which thenwould allow him to get on base, period.
(20:25):
I know I live a stone's throwfrom one and I know what it takes
to get on one.
So it's like, why?
And then he's got to show thealien, like all dramatic and I'm
like, get the.
That's my appearance.
Yeah, I'm like, dude, you've gotta.
I guarantee your military IDsin your back pocket and.
Or in one of those pockets.
It just.
Yeah, it's somewhere.
(20:46):
Yeah, and that's the part thatlike, I look, I know it's a movie
about aliens, so don't at mebecause I've got suspension of disbelief.
I love Alien movies and I'mvery good at my.
I'm not Matson.
I'm very good at suspension of disbelief.
What I'm not good at is whenyou waste my suspension of disbelief
and you make things just stupid.
(21:08):
And that's where I get like.
It's just, look, it's a funnyline, but I could have been at a
barbecue.
Like, it's funny.
I last.
I laughed at it yesterday whenI watched it.
But that whole sequence isreally bad because I'm sitting there
going, this the wrong withthese aliens.
Why?
What's the point of the.
And then it gets worse when Ifind out about the exoskeleton and
I think about that for you toget some sort of military exoskeleton
(21:31):
that's supposed to protectyour fragile ass that's in the middle
of It.
Why can it get punched in theface and knock you out?
Like.
Or cut with the scalpel?
Yeah.
What kind of exoskeleton is that?
Like, that's weak sauce.
Like, man.
Anyway, I.
It just.
Like, there's so many thingsthat I'm like, suspension of disbelief
(21:52):
doesn't work because it's just stupid.
There's a point where I'mgoing, I have to suspend disbelief
because it's like sci fi andwe just don't know what's possible.
But when I look at it and go,that's just dumb.
Like, that's not sci fi.
That's not.
That's.
You're asking me to be stupid.
And I have a hard time doing that.
So as a kid, I didn't have ahard time doing that.
Yeah.
(22:12):
I thought it was funny, but asan adult, that's really bad.
Still funny, but it's bad.
Like.
And so one thing I will say,so I enjoy the humor in this.
The humor is really good.
And I think they do a greatjob with the relationship.
Yes.
Between different characters.
Right.
So Jeff Goldblum, Judd Hirsch.
Oh, amazing.
(22:33):
Right?
Pair those two up more oftenthat should.
Jeff Goldblum will slip.
Never thought it would happen.
Yeah.
But then even you've got.
Even though it's not reallymeant to be humor and comedy, it
plays that way.
You've got Will Smith and thegirl plays Jasmine.
I don't know her name.
Oh, yeah.
Vivkay Fox.
Yeah.
So you have.
You have that.
(22:54):
My favorite line this entiremovie is where he's getting ready
to go back to El Toro, andshe's like, but you're on leave.
Like, there's not a alienspaceship outside.
And I'm sitting there going,my wife would do that.
Oh, she would do that.
You're on vacation.
It got canceled the secondthose aliens showed up.
(23:15):
Well, I love too.
He's like, what's the problem?
What's the problem?
Or what's the problem?
That's my.
She opens the window and just.
It's so good.
Well, I love it too.
Like, that whole interaction.
Because when he gets.
Like, we come over and, youknow, I have to cancel all my girls
coming over, whatnot, like,because it's so stupid.
(23:36):
She's like, your big old Dumbo ears.
And he's like, your littlechicken legs.
Like, it's all with this alienspaceship over their heads.
Like, I love those moments.
They.
Yes, you're right.
The pairings that they have inthe interactions.
So great.
Gold.
Absolutely gold.
And it's.
It's great when you have likethose conflicting styles is why I
(23:56):
think it works so well.
Yeah.
Right.
Because you have.
Jeff Goldblum and Will Smithare phenomenal together.
And it's great because thereare two very conflicting styles.
Right.
But it plays so well.
And even the dialogue matchesup to where Will Smith's like, we
have got to work on ourcommunication back and forth.
Like, oops.
You know, the oops joke thatgoes back.
(24:18):
It's just beautiful because itplays into this differing style,
not being able to communicate almost.
And it's like, okay, like that.
That was clever.
Like, I enjoy that.
And so that is almost a littlebit of like where I think they should
have turned more into.
If they're gonna slow it downand skip the action is into this
(24:39):
comedic pairings that theyhave because they're.
They play so well and you haveso much content that you could pull
from that and you could almostjust flip maybe a little bit of the
action with the comedy so youcan stop the action going in the
background telling your story and.
But just cut everything withthe aliens out of it.
We've talked about this before.
If you have a big bad evil guyor big bad evil something, the less
(25:01):
we see, the better.
Yeah.
Especially in a movie thatcame out in the 90s where you have
CGI still kind of relativelynew up and coming.
And the less you show, thebetter it is.
Because now it's.
You got your mind going like,what are they?
What are they?
Type of a thing you can show.
You can even show the deadones that they recovered in the 50s
(25:22):
or whatever.
But keep guessing of like,hey, we don't actually know much
about them because now itbecomes a little bit more like, you
have Jeff Goldblum coming tosave the day.
Right.
Because what we got from thescientists who've decided these scenes
for 50 years is, yeah, we knowthey can be killed.
Yeah, that was like it.
Yeah.
Like, we know they're fragileand they breathe oxygen.
(25:45):
Yeah.
So nothing.
Nothing of importance.
Right.
Nothing that's going to helpus survive this.
And you've had 50 years, soit's like, I don't need that.
It's not useful.
So you can save that.
Cut that out.
Throw it away.
And now it's very simple.
Like, hey, we know nothingabout them.
Yeah, that's what we've got.
We can't figure it out.
(26:06):
And now you have Jeff Goldblumcome in and kind of try it a different
approach that haven't triedbefore or whatever and stumble upon
it.
And now you have that kind oftie way in because, I mean, it's
almost like you.
You set up for this alienreveal or this alien shindig, and
then you don't do anythingwith it.
It's now you just giving mealien blue balls.
(26:28):
Yeah, well, that's the thingis you don't gain anything from that
whole conversation and interaction.
Like, you just not anythingthat we didn't already know.
Right.
Like we know they're trying todestroy you.
Why do we have to have thiswhole conversation and this 15 minute
waste of my time that I don'tenjoy when I could have had.
Look, we don't know, exceptthat we can kill them and we got
(26:50):
to figure out how to get theirshields down and then take me to
more of like Vivica Foxcharacter saving the President's
wife.
Right.
Like, and because those.
I want to know more about thatbecause it directly relates to something
that I can.
I can connect with that.
That really.
I love that character becauseshe was funny in the beginning and
(27:11):
she made me laugh.
But you know that there's aserious relationship there.
She thinks he's dead.
He thinks she might be dead.
That whole dramatic thing.
And I love the conversationsshe has with the first lady.
Like, that shit's kind of funny.
I voted for the other guy.
Yeah, it's great.
And.
And like the kids greatly.
So you had what you needed andyou make it short.
(27:33):
It doesn't need to be a twohour, 20 minute movie.
You could just cut some shitand we'd still like it.
Right?
Like, it's.
Yeah, I'm just with you.
Like, I think they tried toohard to give everything that they
thought they needed, but theydidn't need it.
Like, they had enough withwhat they did in the beginning and
the action and the comedy andthe interactions.
Like, I don't need them.
(27:54):
The motivation from the aliens.
Like, I just need Bill Pullmanas President and doing a great speech
from a little microphonethat's like iconic.
I memorized it at one point.
I don't know it anymore.
But when we did the bandthing, something that's unheard of
is non music stuff.
But we had one of our.
While the music's playing thesame music that's going on when it
(28:17):
gets crescendos and it'sreally pretty.
One of our.
One of our drum majors went.
We had this big thing in themiddle of it after that, like, so
we had this section whereyou're playing the.
It was really cool, actually.
You can watch it on.
I have to send you the video?
Yeah.
So there's this part where themusic gets the part where, like,
all the aliens are attacking,the ships are attacking, right?
(28:38):
We had this thing in themiddle and in the middle and then
it, like, crush and go down.
And we had it.
And all of us would lay downand pose like we got.
We were part of thedestruction or whatnot.
And then we get up and it's this.
I'm getting goosebumpsthinking about it.
That's how cool this was.
Then we all get up.
Like, there's this trumpetsolo going on during.
For the speech.
And then all of us get up, weput our instruments back on, and
(28:58):
we start marching again.
And our drum major did thespeech with a microphone while we
were.
Dude, it was dope.
That is cool.
And I got goosebumps every time.
Like, it was such a cool show.
We never took first placebecause there's this band in America,
American Fork, thattechnically was better than us that
doing the band.
So they always took firstplace, but we always took second.
(29:19):
But I'll tell you right now,the fan favorite was us, because
people would.
It was a year ago, the moviehad come out, and it's just got you
worked up because, you know,we had all the great music and the
speech, and it was just great.
So the movie did some very correctly.
And.
And that's the part where Iget, as an adult re watching it.
Like, I get really frustratedat the parts that they didn't do
(29:41):
very correctly because it's sogood when it's good and it's.
But it's really bad when it's bad.
And so it's.
It's tough for me.
But I will say that this willalways be one of my favorite movies
because of my interaction withit, with the band stuff.
And I think it was peak.
Will Smith.
It was peak.
Vivica A.
(30:01):
Fox.
It was peak.
Jeff Goldblum, though, hestill does his thing just as good
as he ever did, you know, Imean, Bill Pullman, like, now.
Which is crazy because now hiskid's getting famous.
His kid was.
Is in the.
The Thunderbolts movie as thecentury and he kills it.
He does a great job.
And he looks just like his dad.
(30:22):
I was like, anyways, I mean,it's just, like, great.
Like, this is such a good castwith just poor writing it sometimes.
And then some great writing.
I mean, the opening scene ofthis movie is phenomenal too.
Like, the people up at thisweird station freaking out.
Like, I love the part where hecalls the guy, puts the Phone up
to it.
And he hits his head on thebunk bed.
(30:42):
Then he's tripping over golfballs because he's freaking the.
He's like, why the is this here?
Like, I'm gonna follow my ass.
And you get the.
The great.
When it's the end of the worldplaying in the back.
It's just such good writing.
And then it moves in a great clip.
We go to the president.
We go to the.
The newsroom.
I love that guy too, with the rats.
Graspy voice.
I gotta call my lawyer.
(31:07):
The poor bastards in the.
Oh, crap.
For 300 an hour.
You can put me through hishouse in the Hamptons.
Yeah.
Love that guy.
Oh, mom, you gotta go to getin the car and go.
He's laying under the desk.
So good.
Such a good.
(31:27):
Good.
Yeah.
The characters are amazing.
And it, like you said, itmoves at a very nice clip.
And then when they slow ituntil it doesn't.
Like, I mean, when they slowit down.
She's trash.
Yeah.
And so it's.
That's the unfortunate bit islike right in the middle between
two really good parts.
Yeah.
Is where you have just like.
(31:49):
And so for me, that makes theending worse because I've sat through
the.
The trash and so now I'malmost looking for stuff.
Right.
To be nitpicky about this.
But yeah, like, if you'retalking just an hour and a half long
and end it.
End it after they blow up stuff.
Dude.
Oh, so good.
I'm about it.
(32:09):
Because it's so good.
Right off the bat.
So good.
I liked Randy Quaid too.
That shit.
Yes.
You did the wrong field.
Are you sure?
So good.
He's cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,but it works.
(32:30):
The only thing that bothers meabout his character is at the end
when he's, like, absolutelybelligerent drunk.
And then like a couple of cupsof coffee and he's ready to fly it
at 14.
I'm like, hold on.
Coming from someone that hashad a lot of moments where I'm ripped
out of my gourd.
A couple of coffees aren'tgoing to get me even driving a car,
let alone flying a fighter jet.
(32:52):
Well, then it also kind ofruins one of the greatest lines of
the movies, which is, I pickeda hell of a day to quit drinking.
Like, dude, you quit like twohours ago.
What do you mean?
Yeah, keep them coming.
Keep them coming.
Dude.
It's not gonna make it better.
I swear to God.
It's not.
Like, maybe tomorrow in 12hours, you could be flying some.
(33:12):
But you're not doing it now.
Like, it's crazy.
I mean, it makes for funny,but again, like, it's just so unrealistic.
Like, and then, like, the.
The other one that reallybothers me is, like, the him being
drunk and goofy, flipping thatswitch on the missile.
And that is what sets up,like, his need to fly into the ship.
Like, just have him run out of missiles.
(33:33):
Like, we all know it's gonnait up.
Like, I could see that comingfrom even when I was a kid.
I'm like, oh, that's not gonnawork later.
You know what I mean?
Like, just have him run outand then he makes that choice.
Like, don't force him to makethat choice because he's an idiot.
Right?
Force him to make that choicebecause it's to save the world and
his kids.
Right?
Like, that to me, resonatesmore than, oops, I was drunk or sobering
(33:57):
up and hit the button, and nowthe missile doesn't work.
So now I have to fly into thisship and sacrifice it just kind of
takes away from the nobilityof that decision.
And I know that's petty, butit does for me.
Like, as an adult, I'm like,that could have been avoided and
you could have made it a decision.
Because it's a hard decisionto make.
(34:17):
And then the impact is there.
It's not.
Well, I.
I up and pushed a buttonbecause I'd been drinking and just
make him be noble and havethat decision because he has to,
not because, whoops, I up.
I don't know.
Yeah, no, I get what you'resaying, because again, right, because
that second part of the movieis so bad.
But then you also have thisreally cool scene, right?
(34:39):
Where they're all like.
Where he's like, I still got one.
Right?
So they're like, oh, flank out.
Like you're covering them.
And.
Yeah, a little like, attack,wean or hear the road.
Yeah.
So you have this really coolsequence, but I think if you did
something like, you know,because this is their last missile,
right?
So it's like, hey, you gottaget close because we've already missed
(34:59):
a couple.
You know, this is.
This is X Wing flying down thetrench of the Death Star.
That's right.
You're aiming for a whomp rat.
You got to get close to makesure this thing works.
And so then just have him getmaybe too close, right?
Or whatever is.
Or he realizes, hey, I can'tmess this up, so I'm just gonna go
for it.
(35:19):
Right?
Type of a thing.
And.
Because then that adds to It.
And instead of having, like,you were talking about, like, oh,
whoopsies.
Right.
And not getting it checked outlate before you go.
Right.
Like.
Yeah.
Like.
Yeah.
There's.
There's so many things where it's.
You're.
You're trying to work it toohard and still have this noble kind
of sacrifice.
(35:39):
Yeah.
And you.
You don't need it.
Right.
You.
You can inform your way whereit's like, hey, we got to get close.
You know, I.
I gotta go up there.
Right.
Like, I gotta get out there.
I gotta make it work.
Because this is.
We're down to our last missile.
Yeah.
There's.
There's no other option here,type of.
Because that.
That's the desperate straitsthat they're in.
They're in dire straits.
And so.
But for me, anyway, it's.
(36:00):
It's because it follows afterthe middle part, I'm gonna say.
Now I'm gonna be nitpicky about.
Yeah.
I mean, it is what it is.
The movie does it to itself.
So I agree with you completely.
But there's so manyopportunities I think this movie
could have been.
And again, as a kid, it wasabsolutely amazing because I didn't
(36:21):
give a.
Now, from that perspective and.
And hearing that podcast.
And then, like you said, Icome at it from, like, a more critical
point of view because of whatwe do with these.
But, yeah, it's unfortunatebecause the writing was so good on
the front and back end of thedamn thing.
Yeah.
There's still, to me, not amovie that creates the level of tension
(36:43):
that the first 45 minutes ofthis movie does up until the first
launch of the Black Knights.
Right.
Like that.
To me, like, holy.
Because you don't know what'sgoing on.
These ships are huge.
Everybody's either excited orafraid, and they're starting to figure
out.
And then you get this, like,moment of.
It's a countdown.
When he figures it out,there's a countdown and he's like,
(37:03):
I gotta go to the White House.
You're like, hurry up.
Yeah.
And then.
Yeah.
So it just is so good.
So good.
So.
All right, should we rate it?
Let's do it.
All right, it's mine.
I'll go first.
I really want to score thisreally high because of the nostalgia
and the.
Love it as a kid.
(37:23):
But I'm going to be realistic.
I'm going to give it a threeand a half.
I think it had the potentialto be a five, and I want to give
it a four, but I'm going togive it a three and A half.
Because when it's bad, it'sreally bad.
Like really bad.
Like almost unwatchable bad.
But when it's really good.
Jesus Christ.
It is so compelling and it isso fun and it is so funny and it's
(37:44):
so tense and it has greatmusic and it has great dialogue,
but man, when it falls off, itfalls off into the toilet.
And so I can't forgive thatcompletely and put a four in front
of it.
So three and a half.
I'll watch it again.
I do love it.
It's got some great speeches,it's got some great dialogue.
It's fun.
So I will watch it pretty much anytime.
(38:06):
But I will on it when we getto the shitty parts.
Just know that no matter what.
So.
But I.
I do still enjoy it.
I still have fun watching it.
So I would watch it almost anytime.
And Will Smith just crushes it.
Like, he steals this movie.
For sure.
For sure, for sure.
Him and.
And man, him and.
Yeah.
What's his face?
Why can't it just lost it.
(38:27):
Jeff Goldblum.
Jeff Goldblum.
Him and Jeff Goldblum are thestars of this movie with like a really
great speech from Bill Pullman.
So there it is.
Alec, your turn, buddy.
All right, I'm gonna come alittle lower.
I'm gonna give it a three.
And I think this movie, likewe talked about, gets in its own
way and it's doing too much.
And there's so much going onwhen you should just stayed with
(38:49):
what was working, which istense, tense action flick.
Right.
This could have been somethinglike a quiet place.
Right.
With the kind of tension thatthey're building up in the first
little bit of this movie.
But because they're trying todo much, there's so much scattered.
Like by the time we get to thefirst lady dying, like, I.
I'm almost like, okay, takethat, let's go.
Like it.
It doesn't have that emotionalpull to it because you're.
(39:12):
You're having so manydifferent side stories going on and
so many different charactersand this or that.
And you almost forget for aWhile that there's 15 mile wide alien
spaceships flying around the world.
Like, you start to forget thatbecause of where the direction they
take the movie.
And that should be likeforefront coming at you the entire
(39:33):
time to keep that level going.
So when you get to this pointwhere it's just.
So much is going on, it loses itself.
Yeah.
And so I'm gonna give it a three.
I.
I will watch it, butfrequently I will be skipping about
40 minutes in the middle of it.
Yeah.
To watch the bits that I wantto watch.
Because when it's good, it's good.
(39:53):
Yeah.
And so.
But yeah, three for me.
I love it.
Love it.
Welcome to Earth.
I always think too, about the,like, yeah, there's just so many
one liners that are just so good.
And that's.
Yeah, that's one of the.
Welcome to Earth.
But the rest of it's.
It's so bad when it's bad, butwhen it's good, boy, it's great.
(40:17):
All right, well, there it is.
Week two, Independence Day ofKick Summer Kickoff movies.
I, you know, glad we watched it.
I do like it.
But then Alec, tell us wherethey can find us when they're not
watching or listening.
Happy to.
So, like JJ said, thank youfor tuning in.
This is week two.
We got a great lineup left forsummer kickoff movies in June.
(40:40):
No, no more my movies.
I got mine out of the way onthe first week and I'm living that
JJ life with the dry spell.
But it's, it's a, it's apretty good lineup coming, so be
sure to tune in for that.
Best place to find us, though.
If you want to get involvedwith podcast creation is check us
out on Patreon.
Thank you to Rich and CB forselecting the movies that we're doing
(41:03):
this month and for the moviesthat we've done for really the past
8, 9, 10, 11 years long.
I think we've been doing thisis June.
June.
So we started kind ofswitching it up with our movie votes,
I think.
And so we've been doing thisfor a long time.
It's a great system.
Guys, go join us on Patreon.
What's our verted reviews?
You can get involved withoutpain, I might add.
No pain.
(41:23):
To get involved with thevoting, you can choose topics that,
you know, we set out a coupletopics, pick which one you want.
That topic will send in some movies.
And it's a, it's a real caseof bragging rights for us if our
movies get picked.
JJ was over like 27 this year until.
Until this month and he cleansweeped with three of three being
chosen.
(41:44):
So it's a real thing with usand, you know, we kind of really
pulling for our movies to get picked.
Part of that reason.
A little behind the scenesaction for you guys.
Part of that reason is becausewe will intentionally pick movies
that the other two are gonna hate.
It's true.
So get involved there.
Doesn't cost you anything topick all your favorite movies.
(42:05):
I cut out again.
So this is gonna be great.
I'm gonna go back to theInternet's gonna be good.
I didn't stop.
I knew exactly what washappening because everything cut
out so you can get involved onthe podcast.
Doesn't cost you anything toget involved.
Vote choose movies that youwant to see us do.
We love talking about moviesthat have been out for decades at
(42:26):
this point.
We love going back to some oldclassics, right?
I mean, we just did two thisthis month already from the 90s.
So join us there.
It's never going to be a dull time.
There's plenty of behind thescenes content to keep you busy as
well.
And with that, I'll kick itback to the fearless leader, the
Titan of terror, the Wazir ofWap A.
JJ that's right.
(42:47):
I wouldn't say fearless.
I do have fear when I don'tget my movies picked because then
I gotta watch you movies andthat's a coin flip if I've ever seen
one.
So there it is.
But I do like them.
Yeah.
And as always, look, weappreciate you tuning in.
We've had a good time this week.
We'll catch you on the next one.
Hasta la vista, baby.
(43:07):
Cinematic.
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