The Pod of Five Rings Ep 24. Remo Williams

Every move he makes, another chance he takes - odds are he won't live to see tomorrow. So says the song, and the plot of 1985's 'Remo Williams'. Following Fred Willard as "Remo," we journey into the world of top secret spy organizations (run by Wilford 'Diabeetus' Brimley), ancient Korean killing arts (taught by a white guy) and corrupt American arms dealers, 'Remo Williams' was set to be America's 007. Does it succeed? No. Is it awesome? Oh yeah.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
We emotional content. I'm gonna showyou how great I all. If you
want here, you're gonna give usone mind everything we do. Keep Welcome

(00:23):
to the Pot of Five Rings,your Martial Arts podcast where we talk about
martial arts, martial arts, movies, and all things martial arts with your
Martial Arts hosts Josebula and Rob Roland. Rob What's shaken? Not a lot
Man? As we were talking beforewe started rolling, this film broke me
this morning, and I was tryingto watch it because, as one should,

(00:45):
you can't just sit back and watcha movie. You gotta work out,
get your pump on right, yourdeadlifts exactly. So I was trying
to do some deadlifts and uh,Fred Willard's or Fred words words, and
the movie wouldn't play for me.So I got a little frustrated, have
a bit of a breakdown this morning. But I sat there and watched it.
I had a great time, andnow I'm in a good mood.
All right, Yeah, it's ait's a I like this movie. I

(01:06):
like it a lot. I likea lot about this movie, and I
think we should we should just hitsomething right off the head so that we
don't have to spend the whole podcasttalking about it. There's an old white
dude playing an old Asian character inthis movie, and it's interesting. What
So the character Chween is played byJoel Gray is I don't know, kind

(01:29):
of a famous actor. I guesshe's been in some stuff. He's well
respected in the industry. Oh mygod. He uh he had to he
had to sit through four hours ofmakeup every day to look like an old
Oriental man. And he I wasreading about this. He refused the role
like six times before they told himwho the makeup artist was going to be,
and he said, if that mancan make me look like believably like

(01:53):
an Oriental man, then I'll dothe role and I'll play the part,
even though I don't think it's right. So he he kind of did it
under duress but ended up getting uh. Well, the makeup artist got nominated
for an Oscar for his performance inthis film. So it's kind of like,
why couldn't they have just gotten anAsian character, And even the director
lamented. He was like, yeah, I mean, ideally that's what we

(02:14):
would have got, but we gotJoel Gray, and you can't argue with
that. I remember seeing Joel Gray'sname in the credits and never seeing him
in the movie, like, youknow, looking for me. I never
saw him, and I was like, I guess maybe there's a cameo I
missed somewhere. I never thought thatthat was tuned, because that's how good
that makeup was. Yeah, it'ssuper good. And I don't know if
it's if you know who that is, you can see it. If you

(02:36):
didn't, you wouldn't know any right, it's you know, well done.
I guess for as far as thatcan go, certainly better than Mickey Rooney.
The character is a little bit stereotypical. It's a little bit uh,
you know, mister Miyagi kind ofa Western perception of Eastern culture. But

(02:57):
his character is based this whole filmis based off of a series of pulp
novels called The Destroyer Series, Sothe character is deep and I actually think
his portrayal of it is very interesting. I like the character. I like
the old Asian man who's a youknow, ancient martial arts master who knows
all the greatest secrets of the worldkind of a thing. And I don't
know, despite the fact that it'sall yellow face, I like it and

(03:23):
That's that's all I really have tosay about it. I mean, he
did a good job. Someone's gonnacut together this podcast and be, like
Joseph Bulla says, I like yellowface. I mean, I guess we
should. We should cut the subat the head, right, Like,
obviously an actor of any color paintinghis face to be another color, it's

(03:44):
probably not okay. Well, let'sI want to touch on, like why
that is right? Because if youif you you have an Asian character,
why don't she just cast an Asianactor? But then again, the whole
art of acting is trying to besomething that you're not. The greatest example
of this done well is Tropic Thunderby Far because the character that what's the

(04:08):
space it's Slipper wrote it Downey Juniorwas playing. That's like, the whole
point is that it's not okay,right, the whole point of that,
it's like it's a joke. That'sthe film length long of like why is
a white dude playing a black guy? Like there's plenty of black actors,
you know what I mean, andplenty of damn good ones. But he
pulls it off in a way,and it's weird that he does but it's

(04:30):
also really funny because that's it's ajoke. It's not meant to be taken
seriously. This it was nineteen eightyfive, so we can we can put
it in its context. Times weredifferent then, so yeah, they probably
were like, we should just findan Asian actor for this. I don't
know, is it right? Isit wrong? He does a good job

(04:51):
with it for what it is.He's an actor, he's being someone he's
not like, that's the point,it's pretend. But he stole the role
from somebody who was probably better qualified. That's where I get like, yeah,
there were you know, somebody elseshould have had that shot, somebody
else, Like he was already kindof established. I don't think him having

(05:13):
this role in this film made orbreak broke his career by any means.
Like I would have preferred to seesomebody who was already of that background play
that role, because not only isit the portrayal of the character, but
it's what that person brings to it. So somebody of like Korean descent probably
would have played this a little closerto an actual Korean than Joel Gray would

(05:35):
have, who had no martial artstraining going into this film. And received
none to this film. There's noreal martial arts in this film, aside
from Jean LeBell, who I don'tthink does anything. But yeah, I
mean, if looking back on itwith was it thirty years removed thirty five

(05:56):
years removed from the film's release,Like obviously we wag our finger at yellow
Face, you know, miscasting thatkind of role, And it sounds like
what you're telling me during that timeeven that there were people involved that were
like, I don't really want todo that. Yeah, you know,
but they did. Yeah, it'slike they did, it happened, It
happened. So I'm not for cancelingthis film because of that. I think

(06:16):
it's just a that's a relic ofa bygone era. Don't do it.
We're not going to do it again. Yeah, we shouldn't do it again.
But you're right, like in thecontext of when it came out,
it's like, yeah, that's takingthe role away from another Asian actor who
could have totally done it. Likeimagine not just Asian actor, Korean actor,
Like name a Korean actor in nineteeneighty five. They had to have
existed. Yeah, you know,South Korea has always had a giant cinema

(06:41):
art house piece. You know thatthey've always had a hot community. We
could have just grabbed one. Butif you want to go just broad Asian.
You know, Pat Mario had justdone the Karate Kid. Yeah,
and I think that this was actuallyheavily influenced by Karate Kid because of its
success. There's a lot that thisfilm borrows from there, as far as
the old Asian mentor teaching the westernerthe Asian ways, you know what I

(07:02):
mean. Yeah, but I thinkhe was good. He wasn't bad.
You know, I would have preferreda Korean actor playing the role. Well,
I would have. I would havepreferred a character that was more authentically
Korean because there there's it's like I'velived there, you know, I'm very
immersed in that culture, and Ilike I didn't recognize like the clothes he's

(07:23):
wearing, the way that he's acting. There's some things that are very kind
of cool about the character. AndI love the fact that in this film,
at no point is he put downfor being Asian. Yeah. In
fact, you know, the oneof my favorite lines in here is that
God's most perfect creation is the Korean, you know, And it's like that
it's a complete flip flop of howother films probably would have got that message

(07:45):
out, you know, And evenin the novels, if you look into
the history of the character of RimoWilliams, his relationship with you in becomes
very father son despite the fact thatthey're from different backgrounds, and there's actually
you just say you drive like adonkey. Yeah, But there's actually a

(08:05):
part in the novels this is thisis some obscure knowledge here. This just
lets you know how deep I diginto this. There's a part in the
novels where it turns out that wellwell Chewing discovers that Remo's father was actually
of like one eighth Korean, andthe line in there is just like,
well, that explains why you're capableof doing all these things clearly, yes,

(08:26):
obviously obviously because you're actually Korean,which is like, that's that's why
I was drawn to you, becauseI could see your Korean blood through your
skin. What I really like aboutChune Tune is my favorite character in the
whole film, which, again contextof knowing that little white guy the whole
time maybe a little problematic, buthe's so good in this film. He's
so sardonic. I don't know whathis involvement in this organization, like why

(08:50):
he helps these people out outside oflike because shinanj. Yeah, he's got
to teach him Shinanju. Yeah,I mean it. They made a sequel
to this film, now, itwould just be chuning the backstory, right.
Yeah, they'd cast a twenty twoyear old they cast shang Chi,
the guy playing Shang Chi. It'dbe a trilogy of him learning the Shianju

(09:11):
and teaching it to the top assassinsin the world. Because he's the most
interesting character. Every other character inthis film is boring as cookie cutter moll.
Well, okay, so let's let'slet's move on from from the Asian
issue in this. Let's let's talkabout the American issue in this. Because

(09:33):
the intention behind this whole series wasto come up with an American version of
James Bond. And so they actuallypulled in a director and a writer from
the James Bond movies Look Up,Yeah, Guy Hamilton did Gold Thunder,
Gold Goldfinger and Live and Let Die. And then the screenwriter Chris Wood wrote

(09:54):
Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me, which are right, there are like
four iconic Bond films. Yeah,guy Hamilton said, once he received the
script and they had the casting donethat he did a lot of rewrites on
it to make it flow. Butknowing that as you watch this film unfold,
it feels very Bondish, the plot, sort of the bad guys,

(10:16):
the way that everything sort of unfolds, and then it just also happens to
have this master student relationship with thismythical martial art going on in it.
It just didn't work. It justdidn't. It never went anywhere from this.
They did a TV movie of thisas was supposed to be kind of
a sequel, and it just itkind of bombed and fizzled out. I

(10:37):
know. Fred Ward was signed toa three film deal on this and it's
still holding out, still hold out, I guess. I mean I would
I would watch a seventy eight yearold Fred Ward play Remo Williams again.
That's in right now? Yeah,you know, well it could. I
mean, you could be like,you know, Remo Williams the next generation

(10:58):
exactly. Just imagine they do likea new American James Bond like Netflix series,
right, and there's no ties anywhereto this film, and then all
of a sudden as our new youngthe new young little Joey Sabula gets recruited
to go into the underground Layer.Out comes the head of the organization.
They just call him Williams, buthe's got the same mop top haircut,

(11:22):
the same little turtle neck. Hecomes out doing the weird finger thing.
It's Fred Ward. Everyone who knowsknows playing. Yeah, everyone else is
like, oh cool. I feellike this whole series is still ripe to
be done correctly. I like Iwould encourage anybody in the industry right now

(11:43):
to start flipping through the Destroyer books, read up on it, modernize it,
and yeah, let's do that.Let's have the Fred Ward passing on
the knowledge of Shinanju to the nextgeneration. Little fact. I found this
one on IMDb. Another young unknownat the time was considered for the role
of Remo Williams, a guy bythe name Bruce Willis. Oh, now,

(12:05):
I wonder I try to imagine it. I don't know that a young
Bruce Willis pulls this off. Itturns into Hudson Hawk in my mind,
which is a great film, bythe way, I love that movie.
I don't know. I don't knowif it does any better or worse.
Like maybe fred Ward was the rightguy for this role, but I think
they were a little too ambitious.They had to get past step one and

(12:28):
they just never really did. Yeah, it just never. If you're trying
to make it be like Bond,you kind of have to take yourself more
seriously than this film did. Yeah, this film means a lot into a
martial arts film. It felt likea lot like Karate King. I mean
there's a good forty five minute sequencewhere we're just following the chiando training.
Yeah. Well, and like yousaid, nobody actually does martial arts in

(12:48):
this movie. There's you know alittle bit of handhand combat stuff, but
it's all very Hollywood stunt oriented though. It's all the mythos, it's all
the bizarre training sequences that he goesthrough to learn this thing from, you
know, hanging off of a ferriswheel. It doesn't seem very martial artsy,
but that's like that's part of histraining, you know, running running

(13:09):
across those posts in the dark andinside Chewin's apartment. Like, I don't
know what that is. I don'tknow what it's supposed to teach him.
I don't know how that makes himinto a better assassin, but somehow he
becomes an invincible fighter because of it. Yeah, but he still kind of
moves like a slightly pudgy like NewYork beat Cup, you know, like

(13:31):
he's not running. His punches arestill real slow, so he's like the
most dangerous man of the world,but also like he can't really run a
mile. Yeah, yeah, youknow, it's it's funny. As I
was rewatching it this morning, justenjoying it, my kids were actually watching
the beginning part of it with me, the very intro, actually the opening

(13:52):
sequence, and it dawned on me, like there is very much a like
Punisher vibe to this, Like hekind of has that the guy that plays
the Punisher in the net Flix seriesin him, like kind of have a
similar thing going on, And Ithought it would be interesting to take that
feel, you know what I mean, like take the Punisher the whole ethos

(14:13):
and apply it to this story andit's very different, you know, And
it's more I mean, you couldalmost treat this like a Punisher origin story
of sorts, except now it's allmartial artsy, and that would explain like
why he's such a dang good fighter. However, it doesn't work, I
realized because he doesn't use guns.They don't do all that bang bang stuff,
says his handler in this film.But it could it could be like

(14:35):
the Swing the Pendulum the other waywith the Punisher, and instead of being
a gun maniac, he's just likehand to hand shinanju master. I'd like
to see that grittiness, you knowwhat I mean that, like you said,
they got to take it more seriously. That would be the other direction
that I think they would go withthis. Yeah, you just make it
punish her with hands. I'm tryingto think which superhero that would be.
Is that it's kind of death strokea little bit. Yeah, Yeah,

(15:00):
he use his weapons, but mostlyhe's also a martial artist. Yeah.
I like the idea of it beingthe punisher because then it's like he learns
that his finger touch of death isthe most powerful thing in the world,
but you know, it's more convenient. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And
one of the critiques I've read ofthis film, you gotta go to Rotten
Tomatoes and read them, because it'sjust like everybody who critiques film on there

(15:22):
just misses the goddamn point. Butone guy's like this whole film could have
been two minutes long if you justused a gun. It's like if it
was just if he would just usehandguns. That's it. How much do
you know about crime scene investigation inthe eighties, I mean a little bit,
because I have to imagine there's enoughtechnology at this point to where they

(15:43):
can tell that a flipped over humvyor jeep did not explode on its own.
Because there's this whole point in themovie where Remo is told he has
to kill the big bad guy,but make it look like a perfect accident,
right, And that's the whole pointof his Drew finger point technique,
right Like, it doesn't doesn't leaveany kind of marks. The dude just

(16:03):
dies. Yeah, But spoiler warning, dear audience, he chooses not to
do that. Instead, he kindof throws the dude into a flipped over
jeep, walks away from it,starts a fire with his own fingertips,
which I guess. He throws iton a trail of gasoline that I never
saw get poured, and the jeepexplodes. That doesn't look like a perfect

(16:25):
accident to me. That looks likean assassination. So you have to suspend
your disbelief in this film, andyou have to imagine that the organization that
he works for there's already kind ofyeah, he's kind of got some influence
over the police department where it's likethis is mighty suspicious show. It's it's

(16:45):
perfectly covered up accident. I meanit's a perfect accident. Yeah, because
I'm like, yeah, there touchperfect accident. Right. Literally the vehicle
was flipped over. You could justthrow him all there and tell everyone the
official story is he died of aheart attack when his vehicle hit the ground.
Yeah, you know, at thecorner figure it out exactly, because

(17:07):
then you just face the corner andyou're like, what did this guy die
from? Heart attack? Right?Yeah? Yeah, it was definitely a
heart attack. Not I'm gonna throwhim into the jeep and then explode it,
because that's subtle. People just kindof miss the point like it's supposed
to be. Like I said,it was set out to be a James

(17:29):
Bond film and it didn't end upbeing that. What it ends up being
is just kind of a goofy nineteeneighty five martial arts flick, but like
you said, not a Hong Kongstyle martial arts flick, not Big Trouble
Little China, but more in thatvein where it's like there is this Asian
influence. There is this thing calledmartial arts, which you know, white

(17:49):
people in America don't know, andthis guy gets to know that and it's
like this cool, like you know, welcome into the club of like ninjas
are awesome, and that's that's whatthis is. It's it's your typical action
flick plot. Time to save theworld, and we mix in a little
bit of the unknown and a littlebit of the mystical. They needed something

(18:14):
to put it over, to putit over James Bond, right, because
James Bond is just a good spy. Yeah you know, yeah, he
trains with ninjas every once in awhile and sometimes we go to space,
but he himself is just a spy. He gets in Wacky Adventures. Remo
Williams will never have the Chiandra techniquetaken away from him, right, as
part of his training in this organization, you know, it's implied that everyone

(18:36):
kind of had to learn that shit. So like, if you're going to
be part of the organization, youhave to have spy skills or whatever.
And the Chianju training I mean,you're. The difference here is you're you're
basically an assassin. That's your job. You're you're a bad thing. You're
you're a necessary thing, but it'sa bad thing versus James Bond, which
is kind of heroic. He justkills a lot of people he's not supposed

(19:00):
to. Yeah, his his roleis, you know, for God and
country. You know, God savedthe Queen, save the Earth. I'm
a hero to to you know,Western civilization, what have you. This
this guy is like taking out politicalopponents, you know what I mean,
taking out political threats, trying tokeep the big batties at bay so that

(19:21):
the little batties can you know,be manipulated or what have you. It's
it's it's a darker I think world. I think it's a realer world.
Yeah, you know, there aren'trocket ships taking people to outer space regularly.
There's no hidden base in a volcano. I think they could evolve into
that. Well. The entire likecrux of the bad guy's plan is that
he's just selling malfunctioning missiles to theUS government. Right, that's his whole

(19:47):
place. It's not like it's he'snot sending in a dirty bomb. He's
not trying to wipe out the entireEastern Seaboards power grid. It's just missiles
that explode when they're not supposed to. Yeah, that's it. And it's
just because it cut cut him abuck, right, just because it saves
a money to not fix it.That's the simplicity of the bad guy's plan.
He's cheating the US government out ofmoney and killing soldiers along the way.

(20:07):
But you can't reveal that information becausewhy is the US government doing business
with him? That will be ablemish on us if we find that out.
So we send in Remo Williams,who doesn't exist. Nope, literally
he that's not his birthname. Againstspoilers, we kidnapped the cop, faked
his death or capitalized on his death, changed his name and told him you

(20:30):
got to kill this man. Andif you don't, well you're already dead
anyway, So who cares what happensto you? Which which so let's talk
about this for a little bit becausethere's some there's some stuff in here that's
a little bit weird. It's likehe's a cop obviously. I mean,
he's trying to do the right thing. He's got all the good cop traits.
You know, he's willing to puthimself out there to try to stop,

(20:51):
you know, a drug ring orwhatever things get out of hand.
He got in a little over hishead, his car ends up in the
river. He wakes up in thehospital with a new face. You know.
The guy names him off of thefreaking bedpan, which is hilarious.
But then he's walking, he's walkingwith his handler, and the guy's talking
about like you could live long enoughto draw a pension, And I'm thinking,

(21:15):
and how does that work? Likewhat happens? You know, you
put in your twenty years with theagency and they give you a gold watch
and a pension, and you movedown to Florida and then just like go
into all this trouble to erase youridentity. You don't exist, so you
can't go out and buy a house, you can't apply for a credit card,
you don't have a social Security number. Dude, yours is dope,

(21:36):
you're dead. I think there's alie, But I mean that's like the
whole thing is just like you know, like you said, you're already dead,
So do what we want you todo or we'll just really make you
dead. Is kind of the paymentthat he should receive, and they make
it clear the other Again, Ijust have to distress how ridiculous it is
that this organization is two other people, yeah, plus remote and I guess

(21:59):
you three other people. It's afour person well five because they answer to
the president and five presidents before him. But I don't even vote anymore.
I lose count anyway. They makeit pretty clear that if you don't,
we're not planning on you surviving anyway. You know, like you're never gonna

(22:21):
get there anyway. And we areokay with ourselves dying at the drop of
a hat. Like if we thinkwe're we are so top secret. If
we think we're about to get discovered, we have plans to swallow a cyanide
pill or blow our own brains outacross town so that nothing can be traced
back to here, which is somecrazy shit. And also I feel like

(22:45):
that's not the proper reaction. Ifyou could convince an entire precinct of police
officers and detectives that their friend isdead, you could probably just fake your
own death again and it just startover somewhere else. Yeah, I think
there was a going back to JamesBond there's like a fan theory that after

(23:06):
James Bond retires, he just goesto a farm somewhere and he takes like
his original name, whatever that was. You know, because we talked about
the James Bond is just a codename. It is the code name.
And they've always talked about doing afilm where all the past James Bond are
just retired at a community. Theycan't have normal lives obviously because James Bond,
they probably have like PTSD and syphilisexactly, but they're living peacefully and

(23:29):
m I six is taking care ofthem because like you did save the world
multiple times, you have to dothat for guys like Remo Williams. You
have to at least be able tofollow through on that. But you know
they're probably not going to live thatlong. M hm. You know.
That's the cool thing about organizations likethis or like Men in Black. I
think Men in Black she got itbetter. Yeah, yeah, Listen,
if you sign up with us,you're a letter. You are a letter

(23:51):
for the time that you serve us. After that, we don't really have
a plan for you. You're goingto die doing this job. If you're
cool with that, you're gonna havea great life doing this, but you're
probably gonna die on the job,you know. And really it's such a
cool thing to think about in termsof a fictional world. In real life
that sounds terrifying. I don't doubtthat its It probably does. But in

(24:15):
a fictional world that's super cool.Yeah, Like it's always it's like you
said, the story that we tellourselves in our head. It's like,
well, then, how many guysbefore before Remo did these two guys work
with? You know, how longhave they been doing this? And who
are these guys teachers? Right?And what is Chewing gonna do when he
gets discovered? You think he's goingto take a cyanide bill Asian Man's body

(24:37):
found and is he going to deprivethe world of another Korean? Like,
I don't think doing that. Ithink he finds a new student, you
know what I mean, Like he'sgot he's got knowledge to pass on.
I think Chiuon is also kind oflike pie Ma in that, Like,
this is who I work with rightnow. I'm not necessarily on their side.
That's just where I'm at right now. I'm immortal. Yeah, I've

(25:00):
worked with millions of people talking aboutthat the did he kill Robin Hood?
Is the implication that they killed RobinHood. I don't know. So there's
like a again, audience, ifyou haven't seen this movie, there's a
lot of things, like a lotof throwaway lines that make the plot very

(25:22):
convoluted, but not in a badway. It's just you have more questions.
At one point, she is listingoff how long he's been doing that,
His people like him have been doingthis on ju to write the world,
to make sure we stay on theright track, and he's just listing
off people they've killed, you know, Napoleon at one point gets dropped.
I think, did he say Charlomagne? He did say Arlotte Kings and then

(25:44):
Robin Hood. They dropped Robin Hood'sname, and I'm like, why would
you kill Robin Hood? Balance balance, yes, But I think what he's
trying to imply and what the writerswant to imply there is we're not always
the good guys, right Like,sometimes who you think think is good is
too good for this world, andwe have to try to keep things in
that gray area in between, becausethat's where they operate. If it's black

(26:07):
and white, they're bad and theydon't need to exist anymore, and so
they stay in that gray area.Yeah. Well, also it's kind of
like like you said, balance,a good person or a good historical figure
is good for who, Yeah,exactly good for? What? What are
they bad for that we don't knowabout? You know. Again, I'm
so fascinated about organizations like this,Like I do believe they exist. Like

(26:30):
I don't want to sound like aconspiracy nut, but I do believe they're
like super black Hand exactly. There'sthe black hand of the US government that
saves the world without us even knowing, because we can't know. Yeah,
but the problem is it's probably abunch of like computer hackers. It's like
some young dudes in a back roomsomewhere doing psyops on the Russians, you

(26:51):
know, for everyone operative who's likeon the floor, you know, trying
to just you know, steal nuclearcodes from the Russians. There's like two
hundred texts doing the actual work.Yeah. Well, I mean if you're
read like the old British spies,like some of the gadgets that they had
and the way that they operated,and it's like you got to understand,
like that stuff evolves. They wouldn'tbe telling us that they had cyanide pill

(27:12):
firing pens unless they moved beyond that, you know what I mean, Like
they've got better stuff now. Soit's it's fun to think about, but
it's also frightening. It's very scary. Speaking of frightening, there was a
whole lot of uh place placement onfear in this film Fear of Heights.

(27:33):
I noticed there's an entire extended sequencewhere Remo is trying to simultaneously get over
his fear and also is attacked whilehe's on top of the Statue of Liberty.
So there's there's another interesting production noteon that because at this time,
the Statue of Liberty was being renovated, and so there were scaffolding all the
way around it where the workers wereon And as the director was dreaming about

(28:00):
what we're going to do with this, he had seen that with his own
eyes and said, there's potential therefor some really good action stuff, thinking
not only of having an action sequenceon the Statue of Liberty, but also
just the technical aspect of there's placesto put cameras and like microphones and crew,
and we could do some pretty coolstunts up there. And so I
think it was worked in specifically forthat purpose. It's like, as long

(28:23):
as that scaffolding's already there, there'sgot to be a way for us to
utilize it. Yeah. Uh no, the entire sequence felt like playground fodder.
Yeah, you know, it's completelyunnecessary. Chune thinks that Remo's afraid
of heights, so he takes himto the top of the of the Statue
of Liberty and says basically climb down. Simultaneously, the bad guy sends some

(28:45):
seems like ordinary construction workers who tooka thirty dollars bribe to kill him.
Yeah, go throw this guy offthe cool for thirty bucks. I'll take
my hat now what it's part ofthe union. But we don't get this
like crazy parkre sequence from As aresult, we get like a slow climb

(29:07):
down where people kind of trip andfall an awkwardly lumber around the scaffolding.
It looks like it looks like itwould really look if people were fighting on
scaffolding. Yeah, you know,like, I don't know if you've ever
even sparred like sparred on a supersweaty floor where it's like you're more in
danger of tripping and falling than youare getting hurt, so you kind of

(29:29):
just slowly move around and lightly toucheach other. That's what it looked like
on scaffolding fight. Like the guyswere all just kind of like, uh,
you're scared, aren't you? Yeah? But so are you? Yeah,
I'm terrified. Because even though thespoilers for those who don't know,
or I guess, sorry to burstyour bubbler for those don't know, they
weren't actually that high up in theair, but they're pretty high up in
the air, anywhere above ten feet. That's a dangerous concept that you're falling

(29:52):
from. Well, and this sequenceactually interesting to watch because there's some bizarre
like continuity things where like what they'reat jumps around quite a bit where he's
like close to the bottom of thething, and then cut too he's on
the top of it. Again.It's it's sort of a they shot some
of it at the actual Statue ofLiberty, but then all like the close
ups in that they had to shooton a scale replica that they built.

(30:15):
But still kind of a cool thing, you know what I mean. And
again, it's an action movie innineteen eighty five, and if you don't
point it out, most people wouldn'teven notice. Yeah, I guess I
never even thought about the fact thatit's just like literally three union jacks that
are just like, yeah, i'lltake I'll take some lunch money to go
throw this guy off this Oh yeah, they're just they're literally wearing hard hats

(30:36):
and their jeans when they take thecash from what's his face, And the
implication is like this is just theirlunch break, you know, yeah,
routinely throw people off the and Iguess like it's an easy way to make
an extra ten bus because there's threeof them, so thirty bucks just divid
to ten. I guess puts areally bad light on construction workers. I

(30:57):
think, yeah, but you knowin New yorkers are kind of abrasive.
They'll throw a guy off a building, and little guys have like super thick
New York accents. Well, it'slike you said, uh, Chune is
a very interesting character in this film. Everybody else is like straight out of
a comic book. They're just acharacter actor. I mean, even fred

(31:18):
Ward was a bit of a characteractor who got cast into this role.
There's nothing, really, I don'tknow special about Remo. He's just a
guy. The only special character inthis whole thing is Chune. You know,
Wilford Brimley is exactly Wilford Brimley,like everybody else in this film is
exactly who that you know, whattheir job is basically identifies them. It

(31:38):
almost seems like they were just givingthe script that same day and we're like,
what's their character? Read the lines? You're Wilford Brimley, Just do
that the character you expect Wilford Brimley, the diabetist guy to play. That's
who he plays. Uh huh?You know, and does he ever stand
now? I don't think so theentire film. You know why, because

(32:02):
he's what is the What is Macto do with the fake arm? Yeah?
That was a cool sequence when Remoand Mac are trying to infiltrate what's
his face's layer and he's just cuttingthe electric fence. Andyone was like,
oh, Chun must have touched youthat, right, Na man, prosthetic

(32:24):
arm. I don't feel anything.I will say what I've learned thanks to
this and a couple of other filmsI think we've watched. If you see
a character who's wearing gloves just randomlyin a film, that's a fake arm,
yeah, or he's a douchebag becausethere's no reason to be wearing leather
gloves while you're just like hanging outunless you've got a prosthetic arm and you

(32:46):
don't want anyone to know it's prosthetic. And I felt bad that Mac died
kind of unceremoniously, even though hespurred the events of the finale. Yeah,
you know, it becomes a revengeplot for Remo after Mac died because
he and Mack were super closet interactionthey had. But again, it's a

(33:08):
it's like so just like like tossedtogether that way, you know what I
mean, Like the whole thing.It's like, Okay, we need some
bad guys. Okay, so givethem like a mean Brooklyn accent and they
work for cheap, you know whatI mean, Like we need a bad
military guy, like okay, they'reselling broken guns and bad in a black
suit. And yeah, I haven'tbeen like they're never gonna know, I'll

(33:30):
be a hero. Like they shouldhave gotten a guy who played Eddie the
Arcadian too, Yeah, play thatrole because it would have been much better.
Instead, they just got standard whiteguy you know who we haven't talked
about who I don't know what shewas doing in this film the major Oh
yeah, yeah, the love interestreally not really, I mean, I

(33:52):
guess the female part of this whatdoes she contribute to the plot? She's
there. Yeah. So we getRemo, who is our main character.
Obviously he's brought into this world.He's the audience analog. We have Wilford
Brimley, who's the head of thatteam. You know, he this computer.
His computer tells me, I gottatell you that computer too. It's

(34:15):
like the Apple to e and thenthey got the headlines scroll in past.
It's like, is that what theythought the future would be? Like?
Yeah, so Rema Williams's entire teamdepends on them having this supercomputer, which,
as Joe says, is just anapple too. To be fair,
that's Batman's whole stick too. Hejust puts everything in this magical bat computer

(34:37):
and then he just figures out everycrime in the in the universe. Yeah,
but what is his name, HaroldSmith, Wilford Brimley. He does
make he does make it very clearthis computer is connected every single computer computer
downstairs. It's like, yeah,that's that's called the intranet, buddy.
Yeah, Like they didn't think toohard on what future technology should have been

(34:59):
like, because the Internet was Ithink already around at this point. I
mean, it was like not somethingmost people had access to it that like,
it wasn't a publicly known thing,right government government computers were networked,
you know what I mean, Likeyou could you could blow up one building
and you wouldn't take down like allof the United States. Yeah, that

(35:20):
was that's because I don't know ifpeople know this, but that's actually why
the Internet was invented. Well,so that you know, computer data could
be moved to a different base ifthis one got exploded, they could all
the files would exist somewhere else.Let me see, just I'm looking up
the history of the Internet. Apparentlythis the idea of doing that was as
early as the nineteen sixties, butit didn't become popular until the nineteen nineties.

(35:44):
It's thirty years worth of development.So I feel like telling Remo that
this computer is connected to all fivedesktops downstairs. It's not like the most
impressive thing in the world. AndI say this with the lens of twenty
twenty one eyes, right, Likethe power of your computer is not going
to be of your tiny like eleveninch computer screen is not going to be

(36:06):
enough to tell you the temperature ofyour ass sitting in that chair, because
how could that possibly be. I'mjust I'm just curious. It's like what
computer power was like in nineteen eightyfive. I mean, just just flipping
through some like brief history, likethere wasn't a lot going on. Then.
They had super computing centers, thenumber of hosts on the Internet reached

(36:30):
two thousand. Wow, they hadfifty six kilobyte per second that they call
it the fifty six kilobyte per secondbackbone that finally connected some of the big
ones in the US, including NASA. That didn't come up until nineteen eighty

(36:51):
six, so they were ahead ofthe curve by a little bit. And
to give you an idea, Ithink your also just off air on like
an LTE network is probably only likethirty kilobytes per second. Yeah, oh
no, sorry, megabytes just justthousand times faster than the computer in Wilford

(37:15):
Brimley's office, just so you know. Well, but that's why Cure isn't
that good at their jobs. Apparentlylike they're running on the worst. Their
office is like a hole in thewall behind it would shop like, yeah,
I'm sorry if you report directly tothe President of the United States,
and you know what, what doyou need? You need Wilfrid Brimley needs

(37:37):
his desk and he needs his computer, and everybody else can just go live
with Chun in his upscale man belike a mahogany desk, Like, like,
they get some amenities in this inthe super top. They're not getting
a pension, give it all theway. Max should have just told Remo
like, hey, listen, likeyou're not getting anything. You're gonna die
on this job, but you doget free lattes. Yeah, and they

(38:00):
take care of us while we're doingit. Yeah. But they don't even
do that. No, they don't. They do literally nothing. Remo has
to show he's a roommate to likea nine hundred year old Asian man.
I think Mac and Harold both liveat the office, which is only like
eight feet wide. Like, honestly, being a member of Cure looks like
it kind of sucks, but wedigressed. What's her name, Major Rayner

(38:22):
Fleming? Mm hmm, like IanFleming, Like Ian Oh, I hadn't
even thought of that. What doesshe contribute to this film? A pretty
face, pretty face. And eventhen, I'm gonna be honest, young
fred Ward may have had a betterone. Well, And I mean there's

(38:43):
like an expectation if you're making aBond film that there's a Bond girl,
and I feel like it was ahalf hearted attempts to make a role for
a female in a world where theredidn't really need to be one. Yeah,
they are not kind to the womenin this film. The woman.
There's only one woman, but likethe way they talk about her or they
talked to her, like it's veryobviously like a male written script. Yeah.

(39:07):
At the same time, like sheis a major in the US Army.
She is talked down to by menwho outrank her, but like it's
also very clear she is very highup in the military. The people that
don't outrank her are very respectful toher. So that was cool. But
once she meets Remo for real,because they have the interaction on the on

(39:30):
a street, which I'm not surewhy, she gets framed for betraying the
country for talking to a guy noone knows who he is. Yeah,
Like they try to set her upat one point and like, well,
who do you work for? Becauseyou're standing next to this guy for half
a second on the street. Idon't even know who that is. Do
you know who that is? No, well, okay, i'll talk to
you later. But then she meetsRemo for real and she starts giving him

(39:51):
stupid eyes and she kind of justbecomes a crying damsel. No, but
I think that again goes into whatthey had planned for this whole thing.
Yeah, and you know, whenyou're looking at nineteen eighty five Bond films,
I mean they were all pretty misogynistic. You know. That was Like,
again, it's a different time.Let's say you put things in their
historical context. We wouldn't do itthat way now, But I don't know,

(40:15):
I feel like it's still that stillexists. Yeah, but again,
like, you don't go into thisthinking you're going to see a woke film.
I mean, that's not the pointof this at all. You're going
into this to see a bad nineteeneighty five's action flick, and it has
everything in it that you need.It has a weak plot, poor acting,
character actors, mostly some stunts thatwould have made I don't even know

(40:37):
if the stunts in this film wouldbe considered impressive back then, but they
were fun to watch, you knowwhat I mean, the whole thing on
the ferris wheel, to fight onthe scaffolding, like, it's all fun
to watch. I've always said agood film gives you a sense of depth,
and there's a lot of ways youcan do that. You can do
it through visuals or that you feellike you're in a three D film even

(40:58):
though you're watching a two D youknow, medium, and some of them
create a sense of depth by havingyou move around a lot. So it's
the difference between watching Avatar and watchingIndiana Jones. Avatar makes you feel like
you're in the universe, like I'mphysically watching this scene unfold around me.
Indiana Jones starts off in the UnitedStates, but then he's in the Amazon

(41:21):
Jungle. The next thing you know, he's in the Saharan desert, you
know, and then they're in Tibetfor a while, and then they're in
you know, some other location,and it's like you feel like you're traveling.
So the whole thing of the airplanemoving across the map gives you a
sense that there's distance between these placesand that time has to pass. They
don't just cut to Tibet. Hehas to get on a plane and fly
to Tibet. Then you get toTibet, and it's not a long flight,

(41:44):
you know. But they do makespace for the fact that the world
is huge and it takes time andyou can't just instantly travel to places.
This film does give you a senseof adventure because you are moving around to
all these very interesting locations, andI mean, yes, most of them
are right there in New York,right. But again there's a difference between

(42:05):
the training sequence in Tune's apartment,him running on the beach and diving through
the sand piles, which for somereason, I think that's just awesome.
I don't know, I don't knowwhat that skill is. He's like the
mole man, I don't know what. Like he can dig through sand,
like loose sand, real quickly,you know. And then again over at
the Statue of Liberty, it's likeyou could believe that they could get to

(42:27):
these places relatively quickly. But it'slike it's the fun they're having, it's
the story that's being told in allthese different locations. And then of course,
I mean there's a lot of likeced areas in this that's where the
film opens up. It's where thefilm kind of ends, and it's just
there's a lot of ground covered inthis film, even though it's all very
very local, if that makes sense. It just gives you a sense of
depth. You don't feel like you'rewatching a two D medium when you're watching

(42:52):
this film, because you feel likeyou're traveling a little bit. I mean,
just just giving Remo the job ofbeing a super top secret spy automatically
makes you interested in wherever he goesbecause you're like, well, why are
they sending him here? Right?And you can make any area in the
world seem exotic and interesting if youtreat it with enough reverence and create enough

(43:13):
mystery on your own, right.Like, obviously, for you and I
making a film, if we wantedto go somewhere somewhere interesting, we probably
wouldn't go to I don't know,Salt Lake City, right, Like,
that wouldn't be super intriguing to usbecause we kind of know what every town
USA looks like. M But whatif we say, Okay, we're going
to go to Salt Lake, butwe're going to go to the secret underground
part of salt Lake, the underbellyof it, where you know, people

(43:37):
play drag racing to the death.Yeah, all of a sudden, that's
interesting. Well, and even evento people who live in Salt Lake where
like that doesn't exist here, doesn't. Yeah, you know doesn't. That's
the beauty of this kind of world. It's like, that's not what New
York is. Like, how doyou know do you know about organizations?
You're normal person? Yeah, ohyou don't know about that. That's cute.

(43:59):
Okay, that's like this whole thing. It's this idea of learning a
you know, ancient martial art islike being welcome into a very elite club.
Nobody knows about cure, but youin the audience, you know about
cure. You know, you knowwho Remo Williams is. You know what
drives him. You're part of thesecret club, and you feel special because
that you feel like an assassin,you know what I mean. That's like

(44:21):
part of the fun of this movie. But also just now let's talk a
little bit about the martial arts,because I did mention that he dives through
sand piles. I did mention that, you know, there's this whole thing
where he's like got across this littleobstacle course in the dark, you know,
and you mentioned there's a lot oflike heights issues in here. It
doesn't look like your typical martial artsmovie. It doesn't look like Mortal Kombat,

(44:45):
you know, stylized fighting. It'sjust kind of looks like dirty fighting
a lot. I feel like whatthey're going for again, is this elitist
little club, you know. Ithink of the story Worry of the samurai
master who can, like, youknow, slice the flies in half with
his sword. You know, it'slike the three bandits walk into the bar

(45:07):
and the samurai sitting there and they'relike, hey, we're going to kill
you and make a name for ourselves. And he draws the sword and he
makes two cuts and two flies fallin half, and they just leave.
And it's like, well why.It's like, because he's so good with
that sword that he can cut fliesin half, he's going to f you
up. And so it's not youknow, like he has the right tactic
or the right training, or hisconditioning is better than anyone's. Remo Williams

(45:28):
is a dude who can dive throughsand piles and cross obstacle courses in the
dark. Imagine what he's really capableof, yah, you know, And
it's it's kind of like they takethe scale of what's believable and they shifted
as far to one end as humanlypossible, like maybe this guy could learn
some skills, like like maybe hecan dodge bullets, you know. And
then but then they keep building offof that until at the end of the

(45:49):
film, June is running across water. Yeah, Jun literally turns into Jesus
runs across water. And I thoughtthey were going to pull a gag where
it's like it's shallow water, ofcourse. No, it's like he ran
across the lake, is what they'resaying. Yeah, he must be very
fast, very fast, which whichis funny to me because that is a
very like in my experience as aas a martial artist in Korean martial arts,

(46:14):
it's very much something that a Koreanmaster would say. They're just kind
of this understatement of it, like, no, shit, you got to
be faster. But I will saythis, Chune obviously didn't have martial arts
training, but still kind of lookedlike he knew what he was doing when
it came to like showing the movementsand showing like the power of running very

(46:36):
fast, right, kind of lookedlike he knew what he's doing, even
though the running itself looked like kindof a stroll. Yeah, but when
it came to dodging bullets, holyshit, does they need a second take
of Remo dodging bullets? Well,it's you know, shot reverse shot,
right. So, so when whenRemo is supposed to be killing Chun in
the very beginning, when he firstmeets his future master, you see the

(46:58):
shot, the gun goes off,then they cut, then you've already heard,
You've already heard the bang. Thenyou see Chune go like shift to
the side, and then the plateexplodes behind him. It's like, these
are the slowest goddamn bullets I haveever seen. Of course you could dodge
them. If this is the wayguns fire in your universe, everybody can

(47:20):
dodge bullets. It's it literally takestwo seconds for the bullet to clear across
the room and make a mug explode. On the one hand, when I
saw Chun do it, I waslike, Okay, there's some like matrix
bullet time stuff happening here. Cool. Cool, cool, And then we
get to see Remo do it later, and he just doesn't look as fluid
when he's doing it. No,you know, it's like the we cut

(47:42):
to the guy firing and then wecut back to Remo, who's already moving,
but he's kind of like falling overhimself to move out of the way.
I like it because it's like likehe knows the skill, but he's
not as good, you know.But he's also just like rolling over himself
to get out of the way ofthe bullet. And I'm like, it's
gonna travel in a straight line,Bud, just move out of the way.

(48:02):
Like I get that you're fast enoughand you could probably do this just
for fun, but like it doesn'tlook cool to just kind of spin in
a circle and go ha yeah.Yeah. Well, and then, to
fred Word's credit, he did allhis own stunts in this movie and probably
had no training. Yeah, Imean, but he aside from that once,
really, aside from the one sceneof dodging bullets, which like I

(48:22):
can't believe that's the part that hemessed up, he looked good. Yeah,
I mean once. Once, onceyou suspended your disbelief and you get
into this world, you can believethat. Okay. If this dude used
to be a beat cop who waslike stuff and charisos down his throat,
now, yeah, I could seethat he's capable of doing some like fancy
stuff. Well, it's like thethere was a there was like a park

(48:44):
horse scaffolding scene in was a Casinoroyal or quantum Yeah, Casino Royale,
right, and they're doing flips andJames Bond is like leaping through windows and
stuff like that, and that's awesome, but like, realistically, if you
had to like traverse a scaffolding whilefighting some people, you'd probably look more
like fred Ward did, right,Like you kind of lumber around, kind

(49:06):
of scoot down some things, maybegrab onto a pole and fireman slide down
it. You wouldn't really be doingbackflips. And it's like it doesn't make
for good cinematography, but it doeslook exciting seeing like an actual like kind
of pudgy man do that, becauselike, well that's what it would look
like, and he's surviving and againthere's no way to fake that. Yeah,
like maybe there were some wires thatthey were hiding to protect him,

(49:29):
but like they had to put himup at least ten feet in the air.
They had to build the scaffolding,he had to be able to jump
to it. Yeah, that's whatit looked like and so like people say
a Sceno Royale is the most realisticJames Bond, I would maintain a lot
of Rema Williams is the most realisticJames Bond. Well, again, coming
from that creative team, it sortof makes sense. But yeah, there's

(49:50):
things about James Bond that are likea let me give you an example of
what I'm trying to put into words. You can help me phrase this.
But there's a scene in one ofthe Bond films where he walks into M's
office and M is looking at butterfliesand James Bond is actually talking to him
about butterflies, and then you know, the study of butterflies is what lepidoptera.
And he's like, oh, Ididn't know you were an expert lepidopteria.

(50:13):
And he's just like, oh,yeah, of course, of course
I am. And it's just like, so this guy I'm supposed to believe
has mastered seduction, has mastered spyingtechniques that include disarming nuclear missiles, He's
mastered hand to hand combat, He'smastered I mean, all this bizarre stuff,
and just somewhere along the lines hadtime to pick up the study of

(50:34):
butterflies as a hobby and it's like, yeah, that's what you're supposed to
believe. There isn't anything this manis not an expert of. This is
the Superman. Yeah, and sonow you've got this Remo Williams character,
and it's just like, I mean, he learned. How long does he
get to study with Chin before theyput him in. It's like a week
six months, right, Yeah,it's not much. But I like the

(50:55):
fact that he comes out looking alittle rough around the edges, like I
would imagine ten years from now.He moves better than you know what I
mean, Like he's like super sneaky, like a cat crawling along the scaffolding
and able to do all of thelike James Bond flip through the window type
stuff and he just yeah, wedon't get to see that yet. Yeah,
and for what it's worth, Ithink it was a cool adventure.

(51:16):
Yeah, you know, like again, I know, we had Casino Royal,
which showed like the gestation of JamesBond, but like he was already
a super spy. They make itclear he was already very good at his
job before they hired him to tobe Double O seven. Yeah, remote
what we see Remo Williams, getkidnapped, get his name changed, and
become a secret agent man, youknow, like so for it being his

(51:37):
first night out, Hey, he'ssaved America already. Bad kid, Yeah,
I say, kid, How oldis Fred Ward when this movie comes
out? He looks like he's thirtyeight? Yeah, I know right.
He does not look young, eventhey talk to him as though he is.
Yeah, let's see, he's bornin nineteen forty two, So eighty

(51:57):
five mins forty two. He's fortythree. How much does it take you
that long to do the math?Yeah, he's a young forty three.
Yeah, he's a young forty three. Huh. So there's hope for you
yet, Joe. I mean,you know, I turned forty three in
September. I'm saying I could getmy role as Remo Williams. I'm just

(52:20):
saying, listen, if some horribleaccident, God forbid, happens to you
in the next two or three years, I'll just go up to your wife
and be like, he's not He'sfine, don't worry about it. He's
a super spy. He's like,he'll be back hopefully. I don't know
he dead though, Don't worry aboutthe funeral. That's just the idea,
but the idea that you can learnan entire secret system of martial arts in

(52:40):
six months, Like I mean,yeah, and he's living with the guy.
Yeah, he's probably training, youknow, hours upon hours each day.
But there's also just a reality oflike the human body needs to like
rest and recover and grow, andlike cells take time to divide. I
don't. We'll just think about whatyou and I talked about. After Connor

(53:02):
McGregor broke his leg in the lastfight, right, like that is one
of the most well trained athletes onthe planet, that's a fact, but
he hadn't done it in the lastfour or five years. Really, Yeah,
you know, so he jumps intobasically a one month camp and what
happened at the end of that onemonth His body is trashed. Yep.

(53:22):
You know. So it's like maybesomeone could realistically get very good at martial
arts in a month. If youjust like super intensely hit the bricks every
single day, you could get goodat it. But you still would have
to take like a month off foryour body to just acclimate to those add
to those you know, distress Ihave to There was an article I read
long time ago, and I can'ttell you who wrote it. I need

(53:45):
to dig for it. I thinkI could probably find it. But they
were talking about the old Russian systemof developing weightlifters in particular, and just
the way they did most of theirOlympic athletes. And so it's like,
so they knew who somebody's mother was, they knew who somebody's father was,
and they knew, you know,okay, their dad was a world class
weightlifter, the mom was a worldclass gymnast. And so they're like kind

(54:07):
of watching these kids and they knowthat at the age of two, the
you know, motor neuron parts ofthe brain are still in developments. We
need to get them into like somekind of gymnastics class, because teaching the
two year old how to lift weightsis not going to bear fruit. It's
a waste of time. They don'thave the skill for it, they don't
have the capacity to build muscle.They'll get that later. So right now

(54:27):
is the time to make sure thatthey know how to move properly. And
so all the kids from the ageof like two to six, that's what
they did was just like basic gymnasticsstyle training, and they did a lot
of it, and the kids lovedit because it's just playtime for the kids.
They weren't in there like whipping themwith chains. It's like they're just
teaching them how to crawl, howto jump, how to climb, you
know, surrounding them with people whoit's like, yeah, everybody in this

(54:50):
place can do pull ups. Soof course these kids don't think they're special
if they can do a pull up, you know what I mean, it's
just expected. That's just what youdo. And then as they start to
age, you know, they startteaching them a little bit of other sports,
just to see is there some otherskill set that this kid has from
this genetic mix. But it's youknow, this kid's going to be a
weightlifter. We know that by thetime they're eight years old, they've already

(55:10):
got a broomstick in their hands andthey're teaching them how to snatch, how
to clean injer By the time they'rein high school, these kids have already
been training pretty hard for three orfour years and probably already are throwing some
weight around, but not a wholelot. But now it's like time to
get serious, because we want youat the age of like nineteen twenty to
be in your prime to go tothe next Olympics. And so you're doing

(55:30):
these four year, five year trainingcamps getting ready for that competition. During
that time, they don't want youworrying about girlfriends, they don't want you
worrying about food, they don't wantyou stressed out about having to get good
grades. So they just took careof that stuff for people. Hey,
Rob, you're going to be afuture weightlifter. You need a girl for
the night? You let us know. Here you go. You know what

(55:52):
I mean, this is what you'regoing to You don't have to worry about
providing food, You don't got billsto pay school, what four you're a
weightlift you know what I mean.It's like you need social interaction. You're
going to hang out with these guys, and all of those guys would be
like, you're the greatest thing ever. Because they wanted to make sure that
these people did not have extra stressso that they could adapt to the training

(56:12):
better. And what's interesting is youtake the people who went through that old
system, and by the time theywere like sixty eight seventy years old,
do you know what, they werestill throwing up heavy weights and they were
still great athletes because their whole livescentered around that. But that's how far
they went into the whole recovery thing. Now you can say, yeah,
they were probably doping them up likecrazy, but at the same time that

(56:34):
had a little bit of extra stressfrom having to be a teenager and having
to socialize could have ruined their wholeplans, you know what I mean.
So six months of hard training takesits damn toll, and people realize,
like, yeah, you have tobe willing to push yourself. You have
to be willing to work hard.You have to have the capacity and the
actual physical capability of doing it.But you also have to rest and recover

(56:55):
and like let your body come back. You shouldn't be walking around beat to
hell all the time. And wetalk about this, you know, Bobby
and I and are training with theapp and everything else, like you have
you can only do the work yourecover from, you know. So do
you do you have access to asolomon? Do you have access to a
hot tub? And should you feelguilty about taking time to go get a
massage? Like you should not becauseyou have to feel good. You have

(57:20):
to relax and let the tension outso that your muscles can actually grow and
adapt to the stuff you're doing.And I just feel like six months of
training, I mean, you canget some pretty good basics if you're going
really hard at it, but it'sgoing to take longer than that to be
competent, especially at like the highlevel stuff that this is supposed to be.
But again, there's this whole mythosthere's this whole you don't know because
you're not from that culture. Thisis this is the secret room, the

(57:44):
secret group where we come and wedo things differently. So when he has
his cup of tea at night,that's all the recovery he needs, and
he can just keep pushing and keeppushing. There's no limit and it almost
becomes a superhuman thing because what Iwas getting out with James Bond is there's
this whole superhuman thing. You know. Remo Williams is supposed to be not
human, superhuman. Yeah, hewas chosen for a reason. Yeah,

(58:06):
we never find out what that is, but he was chosen for a reason.
He must have been a really damnimpressive cop to be down doing beat
work on the docks in the middleof the night. Yeah, I mean,
somebody was checking. I mean,I guess obviously the computer, right,
the computer was just scanning every dayfor possible candidates for the Remo Williams
program. But yeah, you it'slike you said, right, you look

(58:30):
at the genetic capability of whoever,and we in the case of the United
States, who were like this fortythree year old beat cop who just got
his ass destroyed by like two orthree GAG members. That's the chosen one
right there, he's gonna pick.But it could also be the Rocky Balboa
thing, right, Like, hekept getting hit and he got right back
up. That's why he's gonna win. That's why he can survive this training,

(58:51):
because he kept getting back up.You know. Yeah, I think
even like take the character of Batman, like he is supposed to be the
peak human everything. He's not superhuman, He's just a guy, but he's
got peak human conditioning, Like whatdoes that even mean? You know what
I mean, Like you look itup on Wikipedia. What are bat Man's

(59:12):
powers? Like? How strong ishe has peak human strength? Whatever the
limit of human strength is, that'swhat he's at speed, it's whatever the
limit of human speeds is. Wedon't even know what that is. But
you and I both know you can'tbe the strongest and the fastest world's strongest
man like Eddie Hall is not theworld's fastest man Husain Bolt. You can't
have both. So like, whereis that line drawn? And in the

(59:34):
comic books they just don't draw it. He can have both. So like
seeing Fred Ward play in a superspy who learned an ancient martial art over
like six months and then is goinginto his first mission. I like the
fact that he doesn't look super wellrefined. He didn't come out of this
training looking like Neo and the Matrix. Yeah, you know, he didn't
just download kung fu into his brain. Basically came out looking the way he

(59:58):
used to look, if maybe alittle trimmer. I just looked up what
Batman's lifts are just to let youknow what the DC universe considers peak human
physical conditioning. Let's see, soit says here Batman can routinely lift between
eight hundred and one thousand pounds.He's also lifted over his head about five

(01:00:22):
hundred pounds with a single arm,apparently six six hundred pound clean and jerk
five hundred pounds snatch. There isa got it used to be at my
gym as one of my assistant coachesbrought in one of the comic books and
Batman had sprained his back trying todeadlift six hundred pounds, and Alfred was

(01:00:43):
like, what's going on? Andhe was like, well, the car
that pinned that lady that I couldn'tsave weighed six hundred pounds, and so
I need to get better at this. And that was right at the time
that Bobby and I were both chasingthe heavy deadlift and I had just pulled
six fifteen yeah, and it wasjust like, oh, I'm stronger than
Batman. Cool, So okay,So now the goal for you is five

(01:01:05):
hundred single arm overhead press and thena between eight hundred and one thousand pound
bench What we're looking at which like, sorry, you can't be Bruce,
Wayne and Batman and have the timeto train like that. You just can't.
Well, like, also, you'vetalked about it with me about like
the requirements that I would have tohave as a martial artist, Like why

(01:01:29):
would you Batman or Joe need athousand pound bench press for what? Yeah,
Like I guess if you're lifting acar up off of a woman,
then yeah, a thousand pound deadliftprobably doesn't hurt, but like maybe you
could just get that for five hundredfor reps, you know. Yeah,

(01:01:51):
Like so all I had to say, like going back to Rema Williams,
like he doesn't need to get peakhuman conditioning and strength because that's not the
job, right, you know,it's ideal, it'd be cool. In
our head, we want the guyto look like that. We wanted to
have performance like that, but it'slike none. If he's supposed to be
a spy, he's like he's likethe blue collar guy, you know what

(01:02:12):
I mean. Like I feel likeI could hang out with Remo Williams.
I can't hang out with Bruce Leyor Bruce Lee, Bruce Wayne, you
know what I mean? Wayne,Yeah, he's not a real thing,
you know what I mean. He'snot a person who's like accessible in any
way. But like Remo, you'dprobably be like down at a hot dog
stand and you'd just be sitting therehaving a hot dog, like, hey
man, what's going on? Youknow what I mean? Also, just

(01:02:32):
like again, as the world's biggestspy, right, like he's supposed to
be anyone, any town, anywhere. Who do you think is going to
stand out more. Remo Williams justwalking around with his dumb little mop top
or Matt Frasier, right, youknow, like right, which one are
you gonna look at me? Likethat's probably a spy? Is it the

(01:02:53):
unassuming guy eating a hot dog?Or is it dud with biceps until tomorrow?
I don't know you're telling me whichone draws more attention. I am
no expert. I found the Batmanthat I'm gonna send it to you.
It's pretty funny. Maybe we canuse that as our as part of our

(01:03:14):
post when we post this episode.Are we are we settling on Remo Williams
being like the peak Man? Youknow? I think if we were to
create, like I don't know ourown universe of this and in Remo as
a character, and you know,Bruce Wayne is a character, like maybe
they all exist in the same universe, I would say that Remo Williams would

(01:03:35):
be the most believable superhero that wecould have, like the most attainable,
Like I could send you to Chuneand he could get you at least somewhat
as good as Remo Williams is.You might never get the opportunity to save
the world the way that he does. But I think you would be not
far off, you know what Imean. Like, it's it's a believable

(01:03:57):
level of skill that he has giventhe universe in which this film exists.
Given that, and also given theamount of time he had to prepare for
it. Yeah, you know,like like you said, in a couple
months, a couple of years,imagine the level he's at. But from
out of time he had Okay,okay, I could see that guy being
that good. And also we haveto remember he was already a cop.

(01:04:17):
Yeah, he already had police training. He already understood something probably about hand
to hand combat, not a lot, because we know cops don't spend a
lot of time doing that, buthe knew he knew something because we saw
him fight in the very beginning ofthe movie. Yeah, he seemed at
least familiar with fighting. Yeah,you know, if not an expert,
he was at least, you know, understands the idea of fighting. He
also seemed very okay with just straightup assassinating people. Yeah, when he

(01:04:41):
found out that was his job,he was just like cool, Okay,
I don't like it, but ifthat's what I have to do, that's
what I'm gonna do. Yeah,I don't know. Man, I'm looking
at the Rotten Tomatoes scores again onthis thing, and I personally love this
movie. And doo of the badmovies we've watched on this podcast, some

(01:05:02):
of them are pretty bad, right, some of them are just like,
like Red Belt, we sat downlike that's a chore. Yeah, I
think I don't want to do thatagain. Jim Cotta was ridiculous, and
I probably won't be watching that movieagain. But it was enjoyable, you
know, but Remo Williams, likegenuinely enjoyable in a good way. Well,
and again, it doesn't like takeitself super seriously, which does make

(01:05:26):
it more fun to watch. It'smore of a like a Guardians of the
Galaxy kind of like fun to watchbecause it is a little over the top.
But it's like it's okay with thathappening, you know, it's okay
with this, you know, oldwhite dude playing an old Asian dude who's
like the master of this old martialart that nobody's ever heard of, and
we don't even know what his capabilitiesare, you know what I mean?
Yes, Like that's all okay inthis and this dude can learn this art

(01:05:49):
and can you know, be thatgood or what have you? Like it?
It's all okay, Yeah, makesme wonder if James Gunn may have
gotten some inspiration from this film,because this does how like a cult following,
right, yeah, it does.I have heard the term you have
mentioned Rema Williams a good thirty timeson this podcast. Every week. It
seems like, can we talk aboutthat? Can talk about that? I

(01:06:10):
never say no, but we alwaystalk into something else. But I've also
heard I've heard of this film myentire life. M you know everyone,
it's it's kind of like the LittleShop of Horrors and Rocky Horror Picture,
got it exactly that kind of cultfollowing. Yeah, I mean people who
like martial arts. Who don't,I want to say, you even have

(01:06:30):
to be like old, but haveheard of this film like this film.
And again it's because it's it's likeall the fun stuff of martial arts,
all the fun parts of Karate Kidwithout all that drama. Yeah you know,
I mean there's a save the worldplot. Yeah, yeah, that
needs to exist for there to bea film, there needs to be a
story, but like it's the funstuff of like learning how to do bizarre
things with your body and not havinglimitations and you know, being able to

(01:06:53):
overcome all of that stuff, andlike you said, the fun parts of
being an assassin. We're not goingto dwell on the fact that you have
to murder somebody, or that hewas willing to just go into this building
and shoot this old dude, whichI actually I like the fact that he
even tells him. He's like,look, I don't want to hurt you.
I just want to get out inhere, you know. And then
Tune is actually like it's too latefor that. Yeah, it's like,
oh shit, Like he doesn't wantto do the job. That's why he's

(01:07:15):
the right guy for the job.You know. Oh that's deep, isn't
it. This film is philosophical.Now, One thing I will say this
film, I think talking about likethe mystique of the martial arts, right,
the idea that there's more than justpunching and kicking. I think that's
why people get so obsessed with becominga black belt. Yeah, you know,
because it's you're opening up, you'repulling the veil behind. I will

(01:07:40):
tell you this. We had awhole list of superpowers that you received at
each level of black belt. Inmy old taekwondo school, it was like
at fourth degree black belt, youcould leap out of shadows. Like think
about that as a superpower. Likeit takes you to a fourth degree to
be able to learn how to dothat, you know. Fifth degree was
like I don't know, you couldteleport. Sixth degree you could like levitate.
Like it's like it starts getting intolike bizarre stories that we would make

(01:08:02):
up about our masters, and it'slike that stuff could easily become legend,
right, you know, like ifmy daughter heard me talking about how my
old taekwondo instructors, you know,could leap out of shadows because he was
a fourth degree black belt, andthen she tells two friends. Next thing,
you know, there's a legend ofned Ashton, the ninja who could
leap out of shadows and assassinate people. And then that becomes just part of

(01:08:24):
the zeitgeist. That because because youdecided to be a smart ass and tell
a joke to your kid. Yeah, now it's just people are like fourth
to three black belt leap out ofshadows, and like even I'm kind of
guilty of it, Like I thinkeveryone is kind of guilty. When you
see like a third degree black belt, you're like, I understand what this
person should look like, they shouldhave this kind of skill, but how
or they should have this kind oflife, right, Like, we also

(01:08:45):
think of the same kind of thing, like, once you get your black
belt, you shouldn't be working atWendy's anymore. You should be an assassin
exactly. You need to be anassassin. Like obviously all black belts are
highly trained assassins. They live outin the mountains, They meditate three days
a week, you know, fortwenty four hours straight. It's like,
no, like black belt is justany dude, random person that you see
walking down the street, you know, whose phone isn't working and he's yelling

(01:09:09):
at it. Like that's a blackYou don't get a new life because you've
got a new piece of cloth.Yeah, have a new piece of cloth,
you know, and you're maybe hopefullyslightly better at beating someone up then
if you hadn't spent the time doingthat. But there's a lot of people
that think, well, like,once you get your black belt, you're
able to just punch him in inthe head and he dies. Right,
you have to register your hands asdeadly weapons register with who put that?

(01:09:33):
So many times I'm like with whomand to what end? So when I
got my first degree black belt tothe Kuki Won in South Korea, they
actually sent like a little wallet cardwith a passport photo on it. That's
just like you're, you know,a card carrying member of the kuki Won
now. And I used to keepthat in my wallet, and that's what
I would tell people I had toregister as a deadly weapon. This is

(01:09:56):
my car and it's got all Koreanletters on it, so they can't read
it. What was this the linefrom a Once upon a Time in Mexico
or what's pont a Time in Hollywoodwhere Bruce Lee is fighting with Brad Pitt
and he's like, I could killyou, but I would go to jail
because my hands are registered as leavethe weapons, and Brad Pitt's like,
anybody kills anybody, they go tojail. That's called murder. But if

(01:10:21):
you do the shitan zoo fingerpoke technique, you can't register your hands and leave
the weapon because you're not supposed toexist and neither is that technique? Is
that technique? Yeah? But that'smy favorite version of the death touch that
I think I've ever seen. Mmhmm, Well, I just I like
the fact that there's an entire organizationthat exists solely on its existence. Yeah,

(01:10:42):
because there is a way to killa man that leaves literally no trace.
We have to use that as aweapon to make the world a better
place. That's almost exactly what Iwould do if I had that power.
I'll be honest with you, That'sexactly what I would do. We have
to be very very We need asupercomputer to tell us who we can teach
that skill too this film. Sayingthat out loud, it kind of sounds

(01:11:03):
like, uh wanted Angelina Joe Leefilm from a couple of years ago,
which that's the curve bullets one,right, Yeah, that's the bullet like
all it takes all you have todo to be superheroes be able to shoot
around corners. Yeah, I thinkthe Sinan Jew technique is a little bit

(01:11:23):
more practical. I'm be honest withyou. Yeah. Yeah, Oh well,
I'm out of ideas on this film. Let's move on. I think
we've been we've been dragging it out, but I'll just sum this up and
say, you know, this isHe's a very blue collar likable American James
Bond who knows ancient martial arts secretsthat he's not going to share, And
you just have to be cool withthat. And if you are, then
you can be friends with Remo Williams. I do again want to reiterate that

(01:11:46):
I think that this is a seriesthat is ripe for being done well,
being redone. So if anybody outthere is looking for ideas, have at
it, because I'll I'll watch it. If we just got Matched of the
Universe on Netflix, we can totallyget a new Remo Williams, and I
think it would be very exciting,especially if you lean into the comedy of
it. But you know, let'sbe honest, since we're talking about Master's

(01:12:08):
Universe, there's almost every nineteen eightiescartoon could be done better. Yeah,
I mean Transformers kind of like.But it's still not as much fun as
the cartoon was. G I.Joe was way off. It's still a
fun film to watch. It hadnothing to do with the cartoons, you
know what I mean, it wasso far gone. So let's let's look
at redoing he Man because I loveDolph Lungren, but that film is not

(01:12:30):
good. You know what, Imean like, let's redo he Man,
Let's redo Remo Williams. I thinkthey tried to do it with Karate Kid.
Sorry, just leave Cobra Kay isas good as we're going to get
out of that. You can't youcan't beat that right now? Yeah,
just kidding with something like Karate Kid, you continue the story, Yeah,
because those actors are still down todo it something like he Man Remo Williams.

(01:12:51):
I would even say like, yeah, but we're still We're just still
waiting for somebody to get that right. Yeah. Now, speaking of which,
I think we need to talk aboutConan in the Barbarian because I have
based my life off that film,so I take umbrage with you bringing it
up in such a tone. Weshould definitely be on the list. Well,
I think then we have our nextweek's choice lined up perfect Conan the

(01:13:15):
Barbarian. It was a perfect segue. You see you fill in that