The Bechdel Cast - Armageddon

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

On this episode, Caitlin and Jamie blow up the asteroid that is the movie Armageddon and save the world! Huge news... we will be live streaming both of our shows in Portland on February 2nd!!! So if you weren't able to get tickets to the show, or if you LIVE ANYWHERE, you can still see the shows! Tickets at linktr.ee/bechdelcast for The Goonies with special guest Sarah Marshall - February 2nd at 7pm PST and Hannah Montana: The Movie with special guest Robert Evans - February 2nd at 9pm PST For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effing vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. How does the song start? I could stay awake just to hear you dreaming.

Oh, dream. Or something like that. Why is my sleeping and far away and dreaming I could spend my life in this sweet surrender

I just scared my cat. I could stay lost in this moment forever Wouldn't you sing about your daughter like that? I could stay lost in this moment forever. Wouldn't you sing about your daughter like that? If you saw raw, silent footage of Ben Affleck shoving a graham cracker down your daughter's pants, wouldn't you write that song too? Because everything I've spent with you is a moment i treasure including the graham cracker thing i don't want to close my okay twisted is this twisted father singing a song about his daughter

or is this a man singing a song about a woman he's in love with look my mom and i have really discussed this over the years and come to the conclusion that it can be read either way if you don't have the context of armageddon sure i don't want to close my eyes i don't want to fall asleep because i miss you babe and i don't want to miss a. Can't be described to describe how you feel about how much you love your child. You don't want to miss a moment. Sure. Of their childhood. You love them so much.

Also, personal history between Steven Tyler and Liv Tyler. Yeah. She didn't know that she was his daughter. And I believe he didn't know either until she was like 11 or 12. So he missed a large portion of her childhood. So it perhaps even makes sense that he didn't want to miss a thing he'd already missed so many things 11 years worth i know damn god the live tyler paternity story it lives on with our greatest roller coaster band aerosmith have you ever been

on the aerosmith roller coaster i have not but i've heard you tell of it many times i won't shut up about it because it's so shocking to me that they haven't like changed the band it's like but but they can't where is this at again it's at disney world oh it's at disney world it's called the rock and roller coaster my parents and i like made a well my mom my dad thinks aerosmith is corny and for losers because he's a punk right but my mom opposite of a punk and so when the first time we went to disney world when i was like 13 it was a big deal for her she doesn't like going on roller coasters but she loves aerosmith so much and she's like even though the roller coaster goes upside down i'm gonna go on it because I love Steven Tyler.

And the thing is about the Rockin' Roller Coaster, I would love to know more about the history of it. Because it is so themed around the band and the lore of the band Aerosmith that it would actually be kind of challenging to retheme. Like it's so specific. I don't know how they pulled it off. Wow. But I'm sure there's a very long YouTube video I could watch and find out. It's an awesome roller coaster. Okay.

It's like Steven Tyler in the video you watch in the line. And he's like, come on, guys. We're going to be late to the recording studio. And you're like yeah exactly well anyways i don't think this song plays in the roller coaster because it's kind of slow but it would be funny it should it could be one of those like lazy river ride songs the aerosmith lazy river is kind of a cruel diabolical idea disagree how many have you ever read studies about how much human shit ends up in the lazy river no and i don't want to know never go in

a lazy river shit i would i feel confident that there's a lot of piss in there but people poop in those i mean the piss goes without saying. There is some physical, I read about it once. Ugh, I'm sorry. I'm a scientist about as much as Bruce Willis is in Armageddon. Like, I read about it once and there is some sort of physical effect

that like a lazy river has on you that like loosens up that butthole and makes it easy to just right out. Right horrible what's the name of this show this is this is the bechdel cast and i'm caitlin dorante right who are you and i'm i'm thank you for the reminder uh i'm Jamie Loftus. And this is our show where we take a look at your favorite movies or, you know, impactful, one could say deep impactful movies. Whoa.

And we are bringing a disaster movie to you today. We're bringing Armageddon 1998, directed by Michael Bay. Because Caitlin and I were looking at genres we haven't covered in Many Moons, and action and disaster have been kind of, you know, few and far between recently. So we chose the biggest, goofiest one we get requests for. And we're going to analyze it from an intersectional feminist lens, and I'm sure it's going to do great. What's the metric we use as a jumping off point for discussion, Caitlin? It's the Bechdel cast.

Nope, that's the name of the show. Let me try again. Yep, yep, yep. It's the Bechdel test, which is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test. She included it in her comic,

Dykes to Watch out for from 1985 originally just as a kind of one-off joke which has since been used as the media metric that we now know and love which requires our version there are many versions but ours requires that there be two characters of a marginalized gender who have names who speak to each other and whose conversation is about something other than a man and for our purposes we like it when it's a meaty conversation maybe one the size of texas even god and you know this movie has a lot of words in it. But words spoken between women. Don't be ridiculous. Yeah, right. Oh, you silly Billy. What do you have space dementia? You'd have to have space dementia to think that this movie would pass the Bechdel test. But

nevertheless, it made half a billion dollars and a lot of people still really like this movie. It's true. And I will say it is 100% Aerosmith got my mom in the theaters. But she loved this movie. Oh, wait. Okay. So let's. So, Jamie, what is your relationship and your mom's relationship?

More importantly, what's Jill's relationship? Yeah. I don't have a huge relationship with armageddon i have a huge relationship with the tyler family more so steven to be honest because uh aerosmith their boston band we're very proud of them and well you know but not the boston punks and that's where my dad comes in sure but i you know i grew up around Smith posters and music so my mom my mom loved this movie I remember that we owned it on VHS and I remember being too young to watch it and that it was really long and that I in spite of

saying for a couple years that I wanted to be an astronaut I think I said it because it sounded good because I was stunningly disinterested in space um sure I didn't really want to watch any space movies I remember my mom being like you can't watch Armageddon you could watch Apollo 13 and I was like I would I would really not want to do that sounds sounds boring Apollo 13 is actually a pretty solid movie but anyway I know that's the Tom Hanks one I also haven't seen Deep Impact I hadn't seen Contact until we watched it and I quite liked it yeah yeah I'm more interested in space now getting defensive I saw I saw different chunks of it growing up but I never really took the initiative to watch it all the way through

um so this was my first time watching it all the way through um so this was my first time watching it all the way through oh and i remember when the army when the ben affleck commentary track leaked a couple years back because that was a treat more more kind of boston canon uh present here sure but um yeah i'd never seen it all the way through before I was preparing for this episode and wow wow wow I will say I think Michael Bay wanted me to laugh and cry I did laugh I didn't cry I didn't cry even when the movie said so I didn't cry because when someone was dying I'm like I don't know who that is you cut to them and away from them so quickly that I didn't catch who passed away. You mean the scene-

And then I looked at it and I was like, oh, I guess he's gone. You mean the scene where they're like, we lost Gruber. And everyone's like, who the fuck is Gruber? Are we supposed to care about Gruber? We haven't even met him yet. And I thought it was kind of bizarre that they i mean because bruce willis was always going to be in this movie even when it was being written i'm like why bruce willis it there's already a gruber associated with him hans gruber you're gonna put another gruber in a bruce

willis movie bad idea i still don't know who gruber is i'll be honest this movie was cutting back i mean i think that that was like I learned that that was a huge criticism of it at the time too where it was cut so quickly that it's like it kind of gives you a headache and it's hard to tell the editing yeah because the pace I mean even Michael Bay has admitted that the movie was edited very quickly and that his visual effects supervisor had a nervous mental breakdown he gave no more information than that which is kind of a funny way about how michael bay talks he'll say something horrific and then just like start another sentence but yeah there were characters that i assumed had died in the like there's a point in the movie where you lose a

couple characters and i was like oh i haven't seen quote unquote the woman in a while i guess that she died but but she didn't she just disappeared for 35 minutes true but i guess she was there and fine yeah what's your history with this movie caitlin i had seen it before a couple times uh this movie came out when i was 12. So I was among the many tween girls of the time where watching this movie was like a rite of passage. Really? I mean, it was like... I didn't realize it was one of those. Yeah. Interesting.

At least among my friend group. I believe you. I just didn't know oh yeah you watched it sleepovers if you had like a boy girl hang if someone's like mom would let you like have girls and boys over then you'd watch this because it's horny and ben affleck puts an animal cracker on live tyler's boobs. Would people get all tense during that? Probably. I don't know. It was so many decades ago.

I barely remember. Kids are so twisted. But I do remember the kids crying during the sacrificial Bruce Willis scene. Yes. Because she does say daddy. She really does um and the song and the aerosmith song played at every school dance from 1998 to i mean probably even after i graduated high school which was 04 it was like the slow song if the armageddon song came on you better fucking find yourself a hetero dance partner

and slow dance your night away i feel like it still gets like pretty decent wedding play to this day sure and it is my maybe like number two go-to karaoke song because this song slaps as a karaoke song it's hot tip for everybody can i shout out the composer of this song she's kind of an icon um she's an interest or at least an interesting character she's also like a boomer woman who occasionally tweets and her tweets are not like offensive but they are inscrutable in a way that people seem to find worthy of discussion anyways her name is diane warren she i believe she eventually won but she's like she's like a famous songwriter and composer um who for a very okay so for a very very long time she's been like nominated for the academy award for best original song including this one uh one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen times whoa never won huh and then they gave her an honorary award last year i think because they

were like oh my god we gotta give diane something we keep snubbing her she's written like a lot of iconic songs well shots this one might be the most famous but she also no well she did if i could turn back time by share oh yeah because you loved me celine dion she's kind of in charge of weddings um how do i live without you leanne rhymes rhythm of the night i mean she's those are some bangers she's got bops she's got hits yeah but i mean i don't want to miss a thing that's right up there so then we have to extend the lore because i didn't realize stephen tyler didn't write that song is diane warren is it a coincidence or is diane warren writing how she thinks stephen tyler feels when

he thinks about not being around for live tyler's childhood hard to say hard to say hard to say point is i did see this movie a couple times as a youth but i never liked it because you know why if there's going to be a disaster movie that i'm going to watch a lot during this time frame of the late 90s, it's going to be Titanic. I was too busy watching Titanic every day to care about Armageddon. It's true. And this movie is clearly trying to, you know, pull from the Titanic playbook a bit. Pearl Harbor even more.

Michael Bay saw Titanic and he's like, shit, I have to do that. And then he did a fucking terrible job. But he really did try to replicate Titanic with Pearl Harbor. And he mentions in one of these interviews he gives retrospectively, I believe it's the 2013 interview where he apologizes for making the movie. But then later he's like, I was misquoted. I didn't mean it.

I do think he was misquoted because i read the full interview and it did it was a very clicky title it was like he didn't apologize he just contextualized why the third act is really sloppy which it is yeah but he mentions james cameron in that interview he says i called james cameron and asked what do you do when you're doing all the effects yourself? But the movie did fine. So he's sort of also admitting that the effects look kind of like baffling and shitty. They're shitty. It's pretty shitty.

No doubt about it. I know there's no fire in space, but it is a movie. And most people don't know that. He's a bad man, but that is iconic. That's funny. And it's true. I honestly, I didn't read the highlight reel from the armageddon commentary soundtrack which goes viral every so often because it is

like very ridiculous oh i have some quotes that i am prepared to share when the time comes i yeah i mean there was a great roundup on the ringer about it but i i will say that i watched the whole movie before going through that and it did not ping for me once that there was a fire in space i didn't think about it because i'm a popcorn girl which i i don't know i don't know i have no idea we're not scientists no famously not in stem we won't even read a book. Like, be serious. All right. Should we get into it? Let's get into it.

Let's take a break first, though. Oh, okay. Really gear up for this. All right. We'll be right back. Okay. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. We'll see you next time. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you.

Oh, my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Hanken's thing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song?

Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Luge. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous.

Yee, my slok, I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my flock, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country

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Okay. Caitlin, what the hell happens in the movie Armageddon? I actually do think I need a few things. I needed a few blanks filled. Sure. Because I honestly, until the credit scene where liv tyler has the picture of the four characters who died at her wedding i was not a hundred percent who made it i knew bruce willis died sure sure but i a few of the guys have the same haircut uh-huh i thought

the guy that was banned from seeing his son died and i was like well nope but then he didn't he lived and and continued to blow off the court order that he couldn't see his son right and we were cheering and we were cheering so i actually don't really know who died all right well i will tell you okay so we begin with voiceover from i I think, Charlton Heston is what I saw in the credits, if I'm remembering correctly. Well, that's, talk about a bad person. Seriously. An iconically bad person.

Yeah. He is describing a huge meteor or meteorite or asteroid. I don't know the difference and I didn't look it up. But one of those things hit the earth millions of years ago and caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. And they're like, and it'll probably happen again. It's just a matter of when. It's so dramatic and also completely unnecessary. And that's how you know you just started watching a Michael Bay movie.

Right. Exposition that you don't need. And I bet it cost a million dollars to do for no reason. Okay, so then we cut to present day, aka 1998. We are in space. Ever heard of it? Woohoo! Suddenly, a meteor shower strikes and blows up a space shuttle.

And then New York City gets pummeled by these meteors or meteorites or asteroids. Again, simply don't know. There's like a dog in the New York scene. And for some reason, whatever happened with the dog, which I think the dog just like bites a Godzilla toy. Yes. That cost $20,000. What? That's what Michael Bay said in the commentary. dog which i think the dog just like bites a godzilla toy yes that cost twenty thousand dollars what that's what michael bay said in the commentary he's well he's not gonna tell you why he's just gonna tell you it cost twenty thousand dollars he also says ben affleck's oh okay ben affleck's teeth

yeah cost twenty thousand dollars yeah this is a movie much like an angel gets gets its wings an actor gets their teeth when jerry bruckheimer and michael bay say i hate looking at your mouth it looks disgusting from an up angle according to me he keeps saying in the commentary and in other interviews that i feel like i had these little baby teeth yes and you know jerry bruckheimer we've talked about it on the show for years for the better part of a decade at this point we talk about if you're in a jerry breckheimer movie and you're gonna get a close-up guess what babe you need a new set of chompers you're gonna get new teeth and they're gonna be big they're gonna be about a foot tall they're gonna be all the same

length yeah we're gonna be blindingly white and so ben affleck got his teeth for this one and they sent him to tom cruise's teeth guy oh sure yeah that tracks yeah michael bay says in the interview that he that jerry breckheimer had worked on a quote-unquote plane movie which is how he described top Gun which is weird he said Bruckheimer had worked on a horse Jerry had worked on a plane movie when Michael Bay talks about Jerry Bruckheimer it does sound like Seinfeld episode descriptions because of how he talks he kind of talks like Jason Alexander does in Seinfeld and he's always talking about a guy named Jerry who's doing something weird. So I told Jerry, God, he's got those baby teeth, Jerry.

I don't know what to do. You're like, that sounds like Seinfeld. Yeah. Anyways. It's true. Okay. So the movie, what happens? We cut to various like government and military officials such as the

head of nasa this guy named truman played by billy bob thornton i love when he's serious as well as general kimsey played by keith david there's also a guy with a huge telescope named carl who is extremely verbally abusive to his wife his wife dotty yeah and but but it's a michael bay movie so his verbal abuse is a joke it's supposed to be funny yeah yes and everyone's like what is what the hell is going on and soon they figure out that an asteroid the size of texas is on a collision course to earth no matter where it hits it will wipe out all of life as we know it and it will hit earth in 18 days cut to harry stamper that's bruceis. He is the owner of an oil rig. Cool. He discovers that one of his employees, AJ, that's Ben Affleck.

And his teeth. And his teeth. Credited separately. Yeah. The whole package has had sex with Harry's daughter, Grace. That's Liv Tyler. had sex with harry's daughter grace that's live tyler and he pulls out a gun and starts shooting at aj on an oil rig okay just a second yeah it is very silly and action movie e and testosterone michael bay choice to make bruce willis open fire on an oil rig that he owns to protect his daughter,

who he would absolutely kill, along with everyone he knows, if he shot the wrong area of the oil rig, which is most areas. You really shouldn't shoot a gun on an oil rig. True. What I find more interesting, and a lot of what I thought was like interesting about watching this movie was like the very I don't know like Michael Bay does a lot of like hyper nationalistic imagery and ideas that he pushes in his movies I don't think he wrote this I mean there's like 900 credited writers it's kind of like we don't really know who wrote this movie that's part of the mystery but i don't know just like thinking about how in 1998 it was very plausible to have the hero of your movie be the

owner of an oil rig i don't think that that would happen at least in a way that would be mass appealing today because i like bruce willis's character is very much like a working class hero which is a part he plays very well but the fact that they choose and that it's important to the plot that he is like not tycoon i guess but like he's certainly doing fine he owns a fucking oil rig like i mean i think he might be a tycoon because he's the best driller in the world so ben affleck has some thoughts on that i can't wait to talk about it oh my gosh yes but no i i wrote down like the irony of these oil drillers saving the planet from an asteroid only to go back to earth and absolutely destroy our planet via oil drilling that's like that's what he has returned i mean i mean i guess he doesn't return but you is i mean is buscemi just going

back on the oil rig also buscemi's character diabolical for a lot of reasons because there's a lot of heavy like they're insinuating that he is a child sex offender correct over and over as a joke which is i was not particularly surprised that this director had no issue with that but on any case on top of the nudge nudge wink wink about that he's also they're like they're like steve buscemi's character is a genius which means he knows better than to do what he's doing uh-huh right which is diabolically plunge the earth for its natural resources yeah so they saved the world but they're gonna come back and kill it kill it some more yeah thanks guys it'll just take a little longer than an asteroid would they killed owen wilson that was bold it's too early he is one of the ones who die. Yes. They got his ass. Yeah.

Okay. So we meet Harry, AJ and Grace. We cut back to, I don't know, they're at the Pentagon or something. All these officials are trying to figure out what to do about this asteroid and how to save humanity. humanity and they're like well we can't blow it up from the outside but we can blow it up from the inside fun idea if we drill into the asteroid and plant the nuclear weapons inside not as fun an idea yeah so and there i guess should we wait to share Ben Affleck's thoughts on this because he does point out in the DVD commentary something that I don't know like it never occurred to you when you were a kid right like it wouldn't have occurred to me I guess maybe it would have occurred to me now but I Ben had already said it I wonder if I had that thought even as a youth i don't know what ben says on this infamous famous and infamous

dvd audio commentary but it's the audio commentary for the criterion collection edition because this movie is in the criterion collection which so many people have pointed out what a bizarre choice that is because the criterion collection is usually like art house films, forgotten classics, you know, stuff that's usually a little more obscure, definitely not mainstream blockbusters like this.

What did Michael Bay do? I do not know. Jerry Bruckheimer promised the president of criterion collection, new teeth. if they put armageddon in the collection like come on right so the commentary is i think i have this right it's michael bay jerry bruckheimer bruce willis and ben affleck ben affleck's portions are him like roasting the film apparently he's doing an extended parody of the film Sling Blade which stars Billy Bob Thornton he's also making silly sound effects during any elaborate stunt scenes

which my favorite example is when he makes like a bunch of slurpy sounds when someone's going down the oil rig and then Bruce Willis is like two stuntmen almost died making this scene. So he's roasting it. And there's one part where he says, I asked Michael why it was easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts than it was to train astronauts to become oil drillers. And he told me to shut the fuck up. So that was the end of that talk. I love. And he does a great michael bay impression maybe i actually don't really know what michael bay sounds like i would never listen to him he makes him sound like a fucking creep so i'm like yeah that's probably what he sounds like yeah oh what

does he say he says i was like you mean it's a real plan at NASA to train oil drillers? And he was like, just shut your mouth. It's great. Yes. So what happens in the movie is that NASA recruits the world's best driller, Harry Stamper, Bruce Willis, who is going to train the team of ast so originally he's going to train the team of astronauts to be drillers and to use a drill of harry's patented design to drill into the asteroid plant these nukes take off and then detonate the bomb from afar and harry's like you you guys can't do it i need to do it and my team needs to be up there with me and they say okie dokie they're like sounds great bruce i'm not saying that oil drilling is easy i know it's not i disagree with it politically but i know it's not

an easy thing to do but i think ben affleck is correct to point out that the reverse would be much easier or to say no bruce willis go fuck yourself we're gonna have you know an even split you can't bring all of your weird friends to space but billy bob thornton is like all right i guess you can bring all of your weird friends to stay every last one but not your daughter for reasons unclear even though we're like oh she's so smart she's so capable but it's not even considered that she would be able to go. No. What happens next is what I found to be one of the most baffling scenes because Bruce Willis is like, I'm doing this and I'm doing it with my friends. So then the government goes around and starts rounding up the team, which is Michael Clark

Duncan. He plays a character named Bear. Steve Buscemi is Roundhouse or something. What's his name? Hound Dog? I don't know. Rock Hound. Is that true? I think his name is Rock Hound. And then Liv Tyler is like,

we call him that because he's a hound, because he's horny. I thought, oh, that is what... The Steve Buscemi character... i know that we've somewhat retired the buscemi test however the name of it the name of it however for this one episode i feel like the idea of the original term is pretty spot on correct where We'll talk about that later. But I was like, geez Louise. There was like that,

I think we've referenced it in every episode we've discussed Michael Bay. There's that oral history that came out in GQ years ago now. And there's like, I forget who it is.

Yeah, it's Billy Bob Thornton who mentions Steve Buscemi looking around the table read for this movie and saying what the fuck are we doing here which is fair I just hope that they I mean I'm guessing that they you know we're all able to to get get a nice little house out of this and hopefully they don't think about it too much yeah they tied Steve Buscemi up they taped my boy up well he had space dementia jamie but then like he didn't right like did he i think he got over it pretty quickly i don't know he sneezed it was gone unclear what was going i was just like i don't know what is going on in for the entire last hour of this movie oh my gosh i also

but apparently that's canon yeah i went on an instagram stories tirade about this movie but mostly about how the third act of this movie so they start drilling on the asteroid which is effectively the beginning of the third act. But when they start drilling, there are 50 minutes left of the movie, which means there's a 50 minute third act, which is absolutely obscene. That's so long for a third act. I can't fathom it. And yet it happened. Okay. So they're rounding up the team. It all these guys it's also owen wilson it's aj that's ben affleck's character in this like getting the team together montage and here's what's baffling they were all just on harry's oil rig the day before basically no time has passed

since harry was like recruited for this project. It doesn't make sense. Somehow these guys have dispersed all over the country. And the whole thing with this movie is like, there's not enough time. There's only 18 days until the asteroids going to hit the earth. So like, how did they have to also Ben Affleck has started his own oil drilling company in the interim in a single day. Yeah.

Any questions? Yeah. Any questions? He day yeah any questions yeah any quite he's like i love that he's like even though ben affleck even in 1998 like with workers rights you could ruin bruce willis's life if he shot you in the leg at work right but he's like ah best move on and start my own oil company overnight uh no one will shoot me in the leg that's no one can shoot you if you own the business which i which is not true people can still shoot you if you own the business true all the the gun play in this movie is so fucking goofy i mean like the lines where i laughed out loud lol to borrow a term sure someone says someone in like the nasa brain trust is like how bad is it gonna be and someone's like basically the worst parts of the bible i was laughing when bruce or no it's it's

maybe steve buscemi who says man why do you got a gun in space? Laughing. He's got space dementia. Of course I'm laughing. And it's when Steve Buscemi has space dementia is when he has this like machine gun, which they've brought to space for some reason, different from the like the handgun. Yeah. That's behind this like lock and key secret oh top secret only use

this handgun if you need to shoot the oil drillers or something chekhov's full ass artillery is chekhov's militia is in this but they have these like enormous guns that they bring to space for what for for the for the movie for the big movie for the big scene yeah oh my god it's so goofy i i mean i can be mad it's to be clear we're gonna be joking around for a lot of this movie it's a horrible movie i mean it's like the worst and we're not even like pushing back against really many opinions by saying that people hated it when it came out it still sucks shit but you know the criterion collection loved it someone helped someone held mr criterion at you know space bazooka point and they're like put it in who knows and and this movie in i think the most forced way that we've covered in a while, is about fathers and sons.

When it very much does not have to be. You could cut out Ben Affleck's character and just let Liv Tyler go. Yeah. But they would never do that. And so they have to create a convoluted beep boop beep boop beep boop. And now it's still about fathers and sons. Oh my gosh. Unbelievable.

We'll talk all about it. So the team assembles and they start prepping for this job and this journey through space. Fun montage. They get medical and psych evaluations. They start training for how to be in space. Billy Bob explains the plan

for how they're going to go into space stop at a russian space station to refuel then slingshot around the moon catch up with the asteroid from behind land on it and then drill baby drill to 800 feet this is the most like american sounding bizarro nonsense in the entire world and you're just like yeah we're gonna slingshot around the moon honestly i was like all right i guess that's i'm sure they're gonna do it yeah and they do the wikipedia uh scholarly journal of course page for this movie is mostly about how a bunch of scientists have debunked all of the like quote-unquote science in this movie sure well and it also sounded like per affleck that michael bay because his movies are so needlessly expensive

he had a number of nasa consultants on set and just ignored them all the time so it's like not surprising at all that nothing makes sense but i also thought it was funny where we're always like you know you have to build consulting into your budget if you're gonna do something you don't know but he did and then he was just like ah shut up he's like don't need it shut the fuck up this's fires happening in fires happening in space you nasa fucking dorks like it was yikes yes um okay so they're gonna do this whole plan two shuttles are going to go to the asteroid and once they land freedom and independence come on perfect writing no notes once they land they will and independence. Come on. Perfect writing. No notes.

Once they land, they will have eight hours to plant the nuclear bomb and leave before it's too late and the asteroid hits the Earth. Meanwhile, AJ is like, hey, Grace, marry me. In a scene where Bruce Willis is watching them make out. He's watching. From behind an oil rag. I don't know what the set is that they're on. They're sitting in an oil contraption. He's peeking from behind a curtain like he's Keira Knightley in Pride and Prejudice. Watching them make out.

And then he's like, all right, I guess they're making out. And he walks away. And then two seconds later, Ben Affleckck is like will you marry me and she just smiles and then he puts the ring on she doesn't even say yes she does not say yes okay so that happens yes then we get more scenes of like training and space simulations now it's only like 12 days before the asteroid makes impact. Tension is high. Harry is like, hey, Billy Bob Thornton, you got to let these guys spend time with their families. We got to get morale up.

And this is when we get the scene where Ben Affleck puts animal crackers on Liv Tyler down her pants on her boobs. And it's supposed to be sexy. and a lot of people felt that way and people did think that yes and this is around the time I would say that the character of Grace that is established disappears goes away they did I was interested in because I mean and I do think this is like looking back at Michael Bay movies we've covered I think this is kind of like serial behavior for his movie where I feel like he almost tries to trick you by setting up a woman at the beginning of the movie who like there's stakes to her it seems like she might be able to do something but then sometime early in the second act they're like

well but no but that's not gonna happen she's she's daughter and she's wife and that's sort of how the rest of the movie goes right but i was surprised at how much they established grace at the beginning right for how little they did with her because she could speak mandarin like she was like well respected at her like at the job she had all of these like well we'll talk about that in the characters actually i was just like so frustrating that they're like but by the time you get to animal crackers she's gone she's left the building yeah she's girlfriend forever now so the the boys are enjoying their night off meanwhile a small asteroid or several of them hit east asia which prompts including shanghai shanghai which prompts dotty the woman married to the very verbally abusive guy carl it prompts her to leak the information about the huge asteroid that's you know this global killer that's coming

to earth to kill everyone she leaks this to the press so now everyone in the world knows about this impending doom and i will say dotty outside of what is the name of the woman astronaut watts watts okay so dotty and watts are neck and neck for most active women in the story you think it's going to be grace and the movie wants you to think it's grace but it isn't i would say dotty has the most narrative impact of any woman in the story but the least amount of screen time oddly yeah so she made him she made a meal of what she was given because if she hadn't told and i'm like also i was trying to put myself in her shoes and then i was like this movie is so convoluted i'm gonna stop thinking about this i was like what would i have done in dotty's position

because you don't want to cause mass panic which she kind of does yeah but she does but then also you don't want to the world to not have the chance to make their peace and say they love you know sure so were i burdened with dotty's burden i don't know what i would do i hope i never have to think of i hope i never have to do that fingers crossed also by this time we've already gotten like a lot of like chosen one narratives with Harry and it's like there's I mean you do need to think that he he is like so the protagonist because he's Bruce Willis like of course he's the protagonist he has he has the energy for it right but like there's all these like lines where he's like six billion people in the world why me but no one really is able to

answer that question i don't know what like we simply don't know ben affleck doesn't have the answer to that question and it sounds like it really haunts him yeah okay so harry and aj and the rest of the team plus several astronauts i think gruber might be one of the astronauts but even so when they're like we lost gruber i we're still like i think so but which of bruce willis's friends is that because br Willis has like two, either two or three. Yeah, I don't really know. Two or three guys that have kind of like marine haircuts that all kind of look like the same guy. And one of them is Gruber. I'm pretty sure. No, I think Gruber is one of the like NASA guys who is like not even really introduced.

That's another interesting thing about Michael Bay movies is they well actually not exclusively but there are ones that have kind of this i don't know i feel like you can view it like there's there's different ways to view it where you know he's very like this movie in particular is very like pro working man and pro working class and like they're very much the heroes but then you can also view it as like kind of really anti-intellectual um where the nasa astronauts who logistically would know more than bruce willis who started being trained as an astronaut less than two weeks ago right they're like framed as like the villains yeah at many points they're like these losers don't know what they're doing they all die in space even though they are trained astronauts i don't know yeah i mean there's there's definitely uh it's a complex text because i i am like working class heroes like that's that's great you know i love that but also just because your hero is a working class person doesn't mean that all scientists are also evil.

It just feels like maybe oversimplified. Anyways, whatever. So everyone gets on the two space shuttles and they take off into space. Harry on one shuttle and AJ on the other. They stop at the Russian space station to refuel where they meet Lev, played by Peter Stormare, who I think is doing a Gru impression. Okay. Thoughts?

Okay. I didn't think of that. I thought, because I was like, clearly, you know, there's like some Cold War hangover vibes. Oh, yeah.

The Peter Stormare character. And I was like, but I assumed he was an American doing a Russian accent. He's actually Swedish. Yes. Doing a Russian accent. Anyways, no matter. Either way, it's pretty weird. Sounds like Gru.

Yeah, but Gru's a hero. That's implying that Gru is playing... I mean, I guess Gru is actually playing second fiddle, too. Kind of a lot of characters. Yeah, he is. But, you know, you would never hear, you know, Minions, The Rise of Lev Andropov. You wouldn't hear that.

True. That's not going to happen. That's not true. Sorry. So wouldn't hear that true that's not gonna happen true sorry so grew even sorry and that's the growth the cold hard growth uh gruer false this yes i think that um steve carell was robbed he really could have he really could have shown his stuff. It could have been a long audition for Gru. True. Anyway, so Lev is on the space station and he's helping them refuel. But there's a leak and an explosion with lots of fire in space. And the whole Russian space station explodes.

Then they slingshot around the moon and approach the asteroid from behind. But one of the shuttles hits debris from the asteroid and loses control and crashes. We think maybe AJ died back on Earth. Grace is sad because it was the shuttle that aj was on but it turns out there are a few survivors aj lev and uh bear that's michael clark duncan um owen wilson dead dead r.i.p i guess that michael bay saw bottle rocket and it was like yeah let's get this guy that That's fun. But also, I kind of forgot that he was in the movie. So did I. Meanwhile, uh-oh, the other shuttle overshot their landing by 26 miles. Yikes.

A full Boston Marathon. Just the Boston one, though. Other marathons, different. Look look me and ben affleck agree it's an aerosmith oh of course um yeah so they landed on part of the asteroid that's like an iron plate which means it's going to be very hard to drill through i don't know how NASA knew the like elemental compounds of the different parts of the asteroid, but they knew. Was this one of the contested science points of like how it turned out? No, this is one of my questions.

I mean, maybe it was, but I was like, did they send scouts to the asteroid to check it out? Like, I don't understand. Like a basketball, like a basketball playing teenager i don't know i mean i honestly i think i went so smooth brain on this viewing experience where i'm like whatever michael bay is going to tell me about space will be wrong but i'm going to proceed as if it is true sure and what by the time they arrived and they're like exactly i was like yeah i mean they're yeah they're astronauts i just if you think about like things that take like what if you spent 12 days on and how good were you at it it's like

yeah i've been i have not been able to learn the you know steps in like one song of anything goes in 12 days you know like high school theater productions don't come together that quickly how are we saving the world i've been learning spanish for three years and i can still barely string a sentence together like it these things take time well i guess you're no owen wilson but except actually he flopped he died he flopped that's how i describe people who die in a rocket accident they flopped you flopped should try harder um so it's going to be really hard to drill because they're drilling through iron sure and it makes sense their machinery is breaking and they're way behind schedule with

how deep they're supposed to be at this point sure and harry and the astronaut guy in charge, Colonel Sharp, played by William Fichtner. Is that how you say it? It kind of looks like Killian Murphy a little bit. He, yes, they have similar eyeballs. Yeah, big sad eyes. So he, Colonel Sharp and Harry are screaming at each other. And if the stakes weren't high enough, some gravitational space stuff happens and messes with the communication between NASA

and the guys in space. And they only have a few minutes left before they can detonate the nuclear bomb remotely. And then they'll lose their chance. Sucker freaking blew. So the president of the U.S. gives an order to detonate the nuclear bomb while they still can, while they still are in contact and have the communication,

even though the hole has only been drilled to 57 feet when they need it to be 800. And Billy Bob Thornton's like oh no this is a horrible plan the clock on the bomb starts ticking down live tyler tackles somebody yeah yeah she's like that's my father up there and you're like yep that is her role at this point in the plot she just has to loudly remind her other people of her relationship to the men in space. It's true. But yeah, Billy Bob Thornton, he's kind of unequivocally like,

he's like lawful good, I feel like, as the movie presents it. Yeah. Or maybe lawful neutral, because he does go, well, I guess lawful good, because he does eventually make the right decision. But he needs to be talked into it. Yeah. I can't remember exactly how that plays out he's yelling at keith david though and he's like this is the fucking wrong thing to do and you know it yeah and then keith david's like i don't know all the freaking

president so much so the clock on the bomb starts ticking down. They have five minutes to get the shuttle off the asteroid before the bomb detonates. And then back on Earth, like people are stopping the countdown. They're overriding the overrides until finally Colonel Sharp on the asteroid stops the countdown so that the drillers can get the job done. Woo. that the drillers can get the job done. Woo! Meanwhile, AJ, Bear, and Lev are in a space vehicle called the Armadillo. They are driving to the drill site. They're like crashing around. It's chaos.

The asteroid is very spiky. They're like hitting a lot of spikes. Back at the drill site, Steve Buscemi develops what I think it's Colonel Sharp calls space dementia. And then there's like, and then there's an earthquake on the asteroid and their drill blows away into outer space. So it seems like the mission is a failure. and their drill blows away into outer space. Yes. So it seems like the mission is a failure. Meanwhile, smaller bits of the asteroid are hitting Earth.

Paris gets completely wiped out. Yikes. Chaos erupts on Earth. All hope is lost. But then AJ shows up in the armadillo, which has the other drill on it. They keep drilling. They get to 800 feet. But then there is a meteor shower on the asteroid.

Any questions? And then it crashes into everybody and it damages the bomb's remote detonator, which means that someone has to stay behind to detonate the bomb. They draw straws, which they just happen to have on the space shuttle. Yeah. And AJ draws the short one, which I only knew because everyone told me that, not because there's any clear visual information that shows that he has the short one which I only knew because everyone told me that not because there's any clear visual information that shows that he has the short one no because they don't they they can't keep a shot on anyone for more than like 0.2 seconds seven frames and and and the music it's so loud and so fast and I mean it would be kind of fun to have seen this movie in theaters because you're just like

how would you know what's going on but it has to be like consuming to not know what's happening I do want to take a moment to point out the rare instance where I agree with Roger Ebert in his review of the movie he says quote the movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, the common sense, and the human desire to be entertained. Yeah, I mean, when he when he hit, he hit, you know, he wasn't always wrong. I thought it was funny that Siskel gave it a thumbs up and he was like, I don't know, it's kind of fun. I think that's also a completely reasonable take on this movie. Sure. Okay.

So someone has to stay behind to detonate the bomb and AJ has drawn the short straw. But Harry had promised Grace that he would bring back her fiance safely to Earth. Sorry, don't you mean my fiance? My my fiance that's how they said it back then yeah exactly um and so harry volunteers his tribute to be the one to stay behind and he saves aj and he's like take care of my little girl by way, I always thought of you as my son. And AJ is like, no, daddy, I love you. Don't do this. Everyone has to scream daddy at Bruce Willis before his spirit can be released to Christian heaven,

where he clearly wants it to go. Like, it's so much. I did like, okay, one thing I liked liked about this i don't know if this is a performance choice or it was written in the script i have no idea but aj not a character i love a character i think we should write out and replace with grace right however i will say that he is the most you know i feel like a lot of the male characters on this crew specifically are defined by their creepiness and emotional repression. AJ, not like that. He is not creepy.

And he openly expresses his emotions almost all the time. He's a pretty straight shooter when it comes to his emotions, including telling a grown man that he loves him which is like this weird verboten thing for a lot of adult men in movies and sometimes in the world as well so right i did like that like he was openly crying when he was upset and like it was easy for him to tell grace that he loved her like just stuff that like i mean Like, I mean, again, the bar is 800 feet inside of an asteroid. But I did like that there was like a hero that was like, and Owen Wilson as well. Like the younger guys on this crew were more in touch with their emotions. And it wasn't, you know, universally positioned as like this really negative thing i was surprised by that too because it seems in direct contradiction to the toxic masculinity that michael bay layers so deeply into all of his movies yeah i mean i thought there were a few elements of this movie that i'm like well i don't

know who was creatively responsible for that because that could have been a ben affleck performance choice that could have been like one of the 900 credited writers adding it in but yeah there was at least one or two male characters with like basic emotional intelligence which i don't expect in michael bay movies true so i feel the need to point it out yeah at the same time though when uh bruce willis is like i've always thought of you as my son even though you were shooting at him with a gun on an oil rig like 12 days ago yeah yeah and then you know aj's like daddy i love you don't do this so even though the movie is more about a relationship between a father and daughter it still manages to end up

being about fathers and sons we'll get into that because i was truly really fucking frustrated by that and like i feel like sometimes it's like the movie is about fathers and sons because they don't bother to introduce a woman it's just the absence of an alternative right but in this they spend so much time introducing Liv Tyler's character and then you know like the uh like it reminds me of Pacific Rim the end where uh-huh is it Mako Mori Mako Mori yeah she's launched out of the climax to the movie and it felt like they had they did that to grace at the beginning of act two they're like you're not going to space yeah i don't know why in my i mean i didn't have a strong memory of this i sort of like was hoping because of how strong her introduction

was not like writing wise but like you learn a lot about her you learn that she has a difficult relationship with her father i'm like oh my god they might let her go to space it doesn't happen no no no because she has a lady job which is to talk to people that was a question i had when she's in she's in houston and they have a problem classic houston oh famously oh get it together right is she working? Is she there in the capacity of work or is she in there in the capacity of daughter wife? I don't know because all that happens is Bruce Willis being like, yeah, I'll come on your NASA mission if my daughter Grace can go with me. But we don't know in what capacity because we don't actually know what her job is. Right. We just know that her job is right we just know

that whatever it is she's good at it she keeps saying it right and we we agree i'm sure she is but it's like what do you mean by that oh i mean to be fair that isn't necessarily a gender specific problem in this movie i don't know what anyone's doing i mean we know that the oil drillers drill oil but we don't know why they're allowed to be astronauts and if you ask michael bay that question he will tell you to shut the fuck up i feel like if it was legal he would have actually shot ben affleck in the leg for running his mouth like that i think so yeah yeah um okay so the final thing that happens is harry does this like video satellite call to grace he facetimes grace and he's like he does i love you but sorry he facetimes grace i never get a pun in i I feel good. That was incredible, Jamie. Thanks. I loved it.

But yeah, he's like, Grace, I love you. By the way, I'm about to die. Bye. And then the... She goes, Daddy, no. Daddy. No, Daddy, no. She and Ben Affleck get to go, no, Daddy, no. It's true.

Be serious. Yeah. Well, good for them. And then the shuttle takes off from the asteroid harry detonates the bomb just in the nick of time he saves humanity the shuttle returns to earth you know everyone on board are heroes aj and grace reunite and get married the and get married during the credit sequence because it's been such a long movie.

But with that, let's take a little break because I'm exhausted. Exhausted, Caitlin. We'll be right back. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you.

You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture.

I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh, my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. What's your song?

Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Lugie. Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it.

It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture

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And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we are back. We're back, baby. Well, I feel like we've touched on a lot of things. And I feel good about that. I think that we were right to do it. We were so good at our jobs. Yeah, I agree. I agree.

But where do we begin? I would like to go back to Grace. Okay. And some of this stuff we've, like you said, touched on already, but she is there because she is the daughter and the love interest of two men who are far more important to the events and outcome of the story yeah so

she's not allowed to go into space which makes sense she's not a driller and it seems like that's not what she wanted to do which is fine fair maybe she's environmentalist that maybe but then uh bruce willis would uh hit golf balls at her because there's that boat full of protesters who were like stop drilling for oil and bruce willis is like i'm gonna throw golf balls at you and that's supposed to be hilarious and awesome we love um but her not going to space as've talked about, means that there's no chance that she can participate in this mission of saving the world. And she's just relegated to the daughter and girlfriend. And it really just exists mostly in the story to be motivation for Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck. It's like, oh, I have to succeed so that I can see her again and she's a tool to

drive a wedge between them because for some reason there needs to be conflict between these two guys which just means that she is basically a plot tool and a way to further characterize the men and is given no real characterization of her own beyond that yeah no i mean i think that is the biggest betrayal of the movie because i i mean there's always i feel like in some michael bay movies and i am thinking of like how michaela in transformers is set up versus how what happens with your character where she is set up as a character you may or may not like the traits she's given but she has skills she has interests she has motivation and she has ability the way she is shot do not quite square with that but like no there is

information there that is interesting and it's like makes Michaela a compelling character. I feel like Grace kind of falls into that where and she isn't shot as exploitatively as later Michael Bay installments. True. Yeah. I kind of wonder what the cinematography if that's like Michael Bay brain rot or a cinematography shot. I don't I don't really know. But I will say that, you know know while her body is certainly lingered on especially in the animal cracker scene i feel like is the worst offender of it of course and the

fact that that is a phrase in itself but like for the i feel like you know as opposed to other michael bay female characters she is treated less horrifically i agree and she's set up as a really like i just can't get over like there's three whole scenes in the first half hour of this movie devoted to how complicated her relationship is with her father and her upbringing we get all kinds of information we get um the fact that she's in this relationship that her father is like irrationally hateful towards which is like a whole whatever that's a whole discussion times of like if you touch my daughter i'll kill you and you know possessive father shit that's very very toxic yeah and harmful and you know grace

reasonably saying like these are the kind of people i grew up around why would you be shocked that i would end up with someone like this? It's all I know. A fair point. You also find out that there's some sort of resentment regarding like she hasn't been dead mommed. Her mom left. We don't know why, but she left. And it seems like Liv Tyler holds on to some resentment about why her mom left, which would make sense because we've seen bruce willis be an asshole right so there's that we know that she doesn't really want to work on the oil rig but she does and she's very good at it and she's ready to leave and her dad is desperately clinging to her doesn't want her to leave like we get all this really kind of rich information and and i'm

assuming if i'm giving the movie the benefit of the doubt, the only reason she's staying is because her soon to be fiance also lives and works there. Otherwise it's possible she may have already left. What is her job? Is she like a liaison between the clients who are buying the oil? Question mark. I don't know why the business people come onto the oil question mark i don't know why the business people come on to the oil rig and i don't know what bruce willis means when he threatens to send her back to

quote unquote the office because great questions all around what is why does the oil rig have the office it seems like the oil rig is the office that's how what everything else implies yeah but he threatens to send her back to the office that does not make sense but even in like the fucking maze of not making sense there's a lot we learn about grace right away and it sets up at least a semi-cogent reason for her and her father to go on some sort of journey together and then that just doesn't happen the thing that made me most frustrated from like i mean from like a bechtel cast standpoint and also a writing standpoint because i'm just like why would you do this like first of all it becomes clear immediately that what grace's narrative should

be is offloaded to ben affleck pretty early in the movie the second she agrees to marry him the plot that belongs to grace is then uh that's the dowry that she gives to her husband is her entire plot line yeah and she is like severely reduced in screen time. But even before Bruce Willis leaves for space, which he does in many, I mean, at least two movies, you know, what a legend. But anyways, before he leaves, she forgives him for everything to the point where I was like, then why even like I felt like from a like a writing standpoint that undercuts such a large chunk of the movie because if she forgives him before he leaves yeah and then she forgives him again before he dies why why not just not forgive him before he leaves and then it would be more like narratively impactful no matter what the gender dynamics are it's just like why would you have her forgive him twice so the whole time that he's in space she feels the exact same way

like she hasn't changed at all she's just like i love my dad i i'm not upset about whatever vague thing happened to my mom and it's all good like that that. I was so frustrated. Right. That eliminates an opportunity for tension in that relationship. Yeah. And when you're writing a story, you want to like, no, my daughter can't have sex with anyone and you have all these scenes where she's pushing back against her dad being like aj is my choice not yours you can't tell me what to do anymore i've been more mature than you since i was 10

years old like i'm an adult let me live my life and then bruce willis literally says kind of an iconic line he says sure i may be an immature father but i'm also your employer i was like do you hear yourself talk like that is what i guess that that is what roger ebert is talking about where you're just like you're just like your brain cells are dying as you're hearing it because i'm supposed to believe someone said that out loud and they're like yeah oh i'm a terrible father well guess what i'm your boss too so take that it's funny um but you know horrible horrible and then there's another scene because this is this becomes the like conflict between them or the like the source of tension in this father daughter relationship where he has

this arc where he needs to accept that his daughter is an adult with her own life. But before he gets there and accepts this, which he, I feel like accepts this to AJ and not even to her because he's like yeah you're my son I've always thought of you as my son and it's like no you need to be having a conversation with Grace about this anyway it's really frustrating it's like it's total horseshit like the way that yeah like her plot and I mean I do wonder it would be probably impossible to actually trace but just

to like know at what point like I I am convinced that there is a version of this script that Grace went to space in you know I just I mean could be again there are many credited writers and then many others who weren't credited there was something like nine yeah nine writers total including uh yeah credited ones are jonathan hensley jj abrams there's also story by credits that include robert roy pool there's adaptation credits i don't even know what they're adapting but um tony gilroy who I'm a huge fan of Mr. Andor I mean yeah no Tony Tony Gilroy is amazing it's um almost rude that he's implicated in this yeah um and then Shane Salerno and then uncredited writers include a guy named Paul a guy named Paul, a woman named Anne, okay, Anne Biderman. We've got Scott Rosenberg and Robert Towne. So a whole slew of people working on this project. And Robert Towne's very famous. Yeah.

Very famous, right. Now you can't blame any one person for what's happening here. I feel like, honestly, Michael Bay is kind of probably the most likely culprit for things that we don't like. But I don't know. It also sounds like he lets actors do a lot of improv in his movies too. So there's a lot of lines in his movies where they're like,

that was Bruce. And you're like, well, I guess that's Bruce Willis' fault. But what they don't tell you about the Bruckheimer teeth is that they're kind of like, what's the test they they've passed the sentient they're like sentient as humans and so they can make ben

affleck the turing test yeah the the bruckheimer teeth have passed the turing test and so the bruckheimer teeth can just make ben affleck say literally whatever whatever they want yeah that'll come out in his voice. That's the teeth. They're like, you know, they're rooted into your mouth and then just kind of wired directly to your brain. Wow.

Yeah. They cost $20,000. I mean, they are equipped with AI, the Turing teeth. Um, wow. Jamie,

you're on a roll. Um, anyway, so Harry's arc as it it relates to Grace, is all about, oh, he has to accept that his daughter is an adult. There's a scene where, and this happens after Harry has seen AJ and Grace kiss, like right before AJ proposes. And it makes Harry mad that his daughter is in love and there is one of the wildest exchanges of dialogue in a movie that i have ever seen i just want to go quickly through this where go nuts harry's very pissed off steve buscemi is like

look grace is an adult she can make her own choices she grew up to be a hottie and then another guy chimes in and is like yeah she's so freaking hot and then owen wilson is like look she's a kid coming into her own she's exploring her sexuality she's getting curious about her body her hormones are pulling her in a thousand different directions talking about her as if she's a teenager when when it's stated just after that that they're the same age and then and then bear kind of put put the pin on everything by saying yeah i mean it's like it's almost as if bear has not listened to the entire conversation because he puts a pin in the conversation by saying yeah i think we can all agree that we all feel like we are her father and i'm like but they were just saying really disgusting things about her for a whole minute bear were you listening he says and i quote we all feel like a bunch of daddies yeah they do say that they do say that and we and then

have no say in that we can't do anything about it now um so yeah it's like she's so hot she's so hot what a certified hottie bear is like and we are her daddy also and yeah you're like because we're hitting on her we are her nope that's not the cause and effect he's describing but it's like right shocking that he could hear that whole conversation and be like yes we all have paternal feelings towards this young woman truly like and then harry goes on a pretty classist tirade where he's like I'm not gonna let my daughter marry some roughneck she's better than that she's better than all of us well see that didn't bother me as much because that felt like a because you know because we know where the story goes like that was one of the more effective things for me because his mind does change about that where i feel like sure there

are these like generational anxieties of like i don't want my kid to end up with someone who reminds me of myself because i hate myself and i want whatever like the generation like i want my kid to do better than i did so that didn't super bother me as like i don't think that he was an inherently classist character because he was advocating for the men he'd worked with forever who were of the same class as him the whole movie but I just I felt like that was something that he came around on so that felt like one of the only elements of Harry's character that grew not that grew anyways not that I love I don't like that like him I think that it should have been Harry learning to accept his daughter as an autonomous person who wanted to do her own thing and like there's so many ways you could take that it's like maybe like Liv Tyler wants to

like work for NASA or work as something that he considers to be elitist. And he's like, why? You're like abandoning your roots. Fuck you. And then they go on this space mission together. And he's like, all right, I accept that you want to do something different than me. But it's still like we still love each other. And whatever.

Do it that way. There's a million different ways to do it. But because it goes that way i don't know i didn't but i didn't mind that because he comes around on it and i feel like he was more just like projecting of like i don't want my daughter to marry someone like me because i suck and it's like well yeah you do suck you do but ben affleck knows how to cry and say, I love you, which you don't. So he is better than you. Yeah. Any other thoughts on Grace?

No, it was just a big disappointment. I didn't like how she was reduced to stakes for men, literally a like physical stake and movie stakes for the two main guys when she was because it i don't know it always just feels like a knife twist to even bother to set up a character if you're just going to do that yeah so i was disappointed and i wish that luke tyler had gotten to do more because i like her and that's all i have to say i want to talk about dotty and watts yeah a quick but powerful conversation because she's i think the first woman we really meet in the movie dotty yes yes dotty is played by grace zabriskie who i need to look her up um because when i was like talking about when i was like posting instagram stories about armageddon everyone's like i love grace zabriskie

oh really but um i was like i don't know who that is um anyway so she is married to Carl, who in a number of scenes is extremely verbally and emotionally abusive to Dottie, which in true Michael Bay fashion is played as a joke. quote this because it's so horrible but there's this scene it happened there's a scene where carl is on the phone with billy bob and he's like i discovered the asteroid so i want to name it and billy bob's like okay he's like i want to name it after my wife dotty because she's a vicious life-sucking bitch from which there is no escape and then he's like smiling michael bay wants you to go ha ha ha ha ha because that's how he feels about women and we know this and there's proof so yeah i don't love that uh however i think that we cannot hold how Dottie's spiteful evil jackass of a husband talks about her against Dottie herself because I like Dottie. I think she is the most impactful woman in the plot. And I hate how the movie wants us to see her because I want to see her a different way she comes out she only speaks i think that it does speak to

the actor because she only speaks in really like hack gendered tropes but the actor does sell it as if like there's like a deep resentment under it because you could just walk out and say those lines like carl i made dinner 10 hours ago where are? But she says it with like a fury. Yeah. You know, and then she says, do I have a sign on me that says Carl's slave? Like she really is like in my head, Dottie is trapped in this marriage for whatever reason. She's going to have an asteroid named after her. And then she's going to divorce him, take all of his weird FBI money and kill him. Yes, I like that for her. I don't think the script is thinking that hard about it but I do appreciate when it's like there's an underwritten woman in a movie which

Dottie very much is and an actor manages to make it feel impactful in like a memorable way because Michael Bay is like not going to give you fucking anything ever because he's evil he is evil and then the final dotty related scene which happens off screen but someone i don't know if it's billy bob receives a text message on his nokia phone from 1998 that dotty leaked the info about the asteroid to the press. It's not clear why she does this, why she leaks the info, because the movie doesn't care enough to check back in with her

and show us her motivation for doing that. But I feel like what we're supposed to think in the movie is that she did it out of spite. Which is so ridiculous. Like to spite her husband i don't know and there's there's another woman that i don't think we ever get a name for and i honestly could not figure out which guy it was it's the guy that shouldn't be near his son but is oh his name is chick fine i felt like i mean chick's wife who we never get a name for, she doesn't have the same emotional impact or screen time or whatever that Dottie does.

But that's another woman who is sort of presented to us as like, she's, you know, oh, this guy's made mistakes in his past. Why won't she just forgive him? You know, and because he comes to the house, apparently illegally. But she tells him, you're not supposed to be here. You're not supposed to have contact, which probably means there's some sort of like restraining order situation going on as well. But she still like comes around and is very like we cut back to her two more times. The first time is when she finds out he is the space cowboy hero. And she's like, that's your daddy. And it's like, and then she's like, let's get back together.

And I'm like, well, hold on. What did he do that you broke up with him? Like, what did he do? Going to space with Bruce Willis will not solve your relationship. And I've always said that. That doesn't redeem your broken marriage. Yeah, that was frustrating. And then there's Watts, the one lady astronaut played by Jessica Steen.

We really know nothing about her aside from her being an astronaut um the way the men talk about her is one of the few like focal points she gets before they like land on the asteroid and start drilling but there's a scene when they're still on earth and she's like explaining gravity to the oil drillers they're not paying attention and owen wilson is like is it just me or is watts really hot and then a few of the guys go like oh yeah she is which is wild because you never learn anything about her she disappears for large swaths of the movie i thought that she had died at one point i was like oh she must have been on the independence because i haven't seen her in a half hour so i guess rip but like she didn't even die they just forgot about her they just forgot about her until one scene toward the end where they have drilled the hole they have planted the nuclear bomb

they are trying to take back off in the shuttle but the engine won't fire up and she's trying to fix it she's running around she cannot fix it then lev he's like i'll do it he shoves her out of the way yep hits something with a wrench or whatever a character was introduced after her i'm like yeah stop that somehow fixes the problem so basically the one chance the movie had to let a woman do something the movie didn't let her do it it makes her seem incompetent and bad at her job has her be violently shoved out of the way by a man yeah and it's a man who fixes the problem by bashing a an expensive piece of equipment with a metal pipe and saves the day. We don't know. We don't know why this is happening in this fashion, but it is. And it feels bad to look at. Like, yeah, I was, I was quite frustrated. I feel like every time

there is an opportunity to further develop a woman introduced into the story the story instead introduces three more men and you're yes and that happens almost without fail because i think with grace we get to know great like i mean i guess we do meet aj before we meet grace but like grace introduces like a big character she's so large on the poster for Armageddon that you think that she's doing much more than she actually does. But then everything that is interesting about her is weirdly transferred in a way that doesn't quite translate onto AJ. And then with what's her name? Watts. Watts.

With Watts, you see like she's I mean, I feel like she's kind, she's not quite like a shrew stereotype, but she's very like strict. She's very like no bullshit in the way that I think professional women are often broadly characterized. And it's like women who are good at their job can also be fun to be around. Not that you'd know it from watching a movie, but whatever. But she's, you know, whatever. She's like a type a like doesn't have patience for these guys that makes logical sense they suck but instead of like teach them about gravity she's the only scientist there's a bunch of like random i mean you've got

like someone who is rumored to hang out with underage women and a creep and a bunch of other guys that don't know anything about space like i i too would be frustrated yeah but instead of exploring that even remotely instead of even bothering to build a relationship between her and anybody we build out lev instead because reasons like lev is a far more memorable character than she is and it doesn't need to be that way i don't think it's like a fault of performance that it's like that's what the script does yeah so i don't know i feel like i i'm curious i guess if that is something that is like it feels like a blend of this wave of representation of women and just a blend of like how Michael Bay is as a creator.

It's like, there's definitely overlap, but I do think that in the late nineties, you could really easily get away with like early third wave girl power feminism of like in the corporate sense of like having women say all the right things but ultimately do nothing which i think that like grace says a lot of the right things in the first 30 minutes of this movie she says like you're not in charge of my life i want to be liberated from you like fuck you all this stuff but then the right choice is to be

daughter to daddy and i mean and like watts says a lot of the same things where she pushes back on these ridiculous men she's surrounded by, but you know, ultimately it doesn't mean anything in the story. Absolutely. Um, real quick. Yeah.

We've touched on some of these already, but there is as Michael Bay does, which is to treat things like racism, sexism, ableism, etc. as a punchline. Many examples, I won't even go through specific ones, but there's a handful of racist stereotypes being employed. Which he did not learn from after this movie, which we talked about in our Transformers episode. He keeps doing it. There's ableist language. There is, like we mentioned,

what is intended to be a joke of the Steve Buscemi character being a statutory rapist. There is what I felt were some like gay panic jokes when the butt shots, right? They were like being medically examined and there was all these like, we're going to stick this probe in you. And they're like, what?

Fucking ridiculous. Like you're just like, grow up don't forget the woman in the cab at the beginning of the movie who is like why aren't we moving i want to go shopping because yeah women be shopping well and then on on top of that i mean like yeah michael bay is so i mean i feel like this kind of ties into the undercurrent of nationalism. And, like, by that I mean, like, white American nationalism. That is, like, tied into this movie. Because in all Michael Bay movies, because he loves a disaster movie.

And I don't hate a disaster movie. But the tropes that he invokes inside of them are, like, really frustrating. Because he, like, I feel like there's, like, the v the veneer veneers ben affleck's team okay there's the veneer of like being like an international global multicultural movie because you do see a lot of people of a lot of different races in this movie and a lot of michael bay movies however non-white characters in general with some exceptions but in this movie i would mainly just say the general and bear are exceptions yeah those are really the only non-white characters of narrative impact in the movie but like you see scenes that are supposed to be taking place in shanghai you see scenes that are supposed to be taking place in Shanghai. You see scenes that are supposed to be taking place like all over the world.

But Michael Bay, without fail, will show you. And he Michael Bay does show you a very diverse New York, but only because he's about to hit it with a fucking asteroid. And like he will show you, you know, people people of color but he will not develop like just i just feel like his movies treat anyone who isn't white as extremely disposable and so it's like you can't like you can hand nothing to him because he's about to fucking blow people up like it's without fail he will do that he does it in the transformers movies he does it in the rock he does in this movie he does it all the fucking time like it's what he does i also feel like when he cuts to other cities across the globe and i'm thinking particularly of the shots of

shanghai they look like they're a fucking epcot they look it looks like it looks like not real it looks yeah the production design of those scenes you would never know that shanghai is a modern city right because the way that it's designed it looks i don't know it's like yeah it's like Michael Bay being like it's still feudal times in China right it's not a modern country with a modern economy of course not which is pretty hilarious given how dependent the global movie economy is on the Chinese movie economy now that would absolutely not happen now not that it should have happened then but it's like it would be logistically impossible to happen now um it's just should have happened then, but it's like it would be logistically impossible to happen now. It's just like, I mean, it's disrespectful.

I feel like it's so USA-centric. And because it's like half the time when you hear, or half the time when you see, sorry, when you see other countries, so not always non-white people, but often whatever it's like i think you're supposed to believe you go to africa you go to south america you go to asia you go all over the world listening to people being inspired by the american president and then the last shot is always like a white family or live tyler like standing up against an American flag and like nodding their head like it's very very clear what's being done it's like a low simmering propaganda and that's

why you know like it's part of why the movies get made at the like at least at this point in the late 90s like that was a great way to make a really expensive movie like that was how you made a shitload of money is just adding in this you know a lot of nationalistic stuff and like a lot of it is in the imagery and like who fucking knows if that's in the script a lot of it is kind of the bruce willis cowboy image where it feels kind of very american dreamy that like it's just a regular guy a regular american guy saved the world and then even at the end when they blow up the asteroid they do that whole sequence again of people all over the world of all races creeds and genders celebrating the heroicism of bruce willis cut to the american flag cut to a kid holding a spaceship in front of a mural of jfk

and it's like yeah we fucking get it like it's no surprise that this director goes on to work closely with the american military to make his shitty robot movies also they're constantly like as the movie goes on they are just more and more invoking a Christian God. And you're like, oh, fucking K, man. Sorry. I just Pernicious nationalism in movies is a very interesting topic to me. Everyone should read the book Red Carpet. OK.

Yeah. Yeah. We talked about this on I want to say theval episode, which is on the Matreon. And I think we might have discussed this to some extent on the Independence Day episode two. The phenomenon of Hollywood disaster movies where a disaster happens that would affect the entire planet, but will be a story only told from the American perspective, where we see Americans are the ones to do the thing to solve the problem. The implication being, only Americans are smart enough and equipped enough to handle something like this to the point where in this movie they do have contact with someone from another country lev on the russian space station but the russian space station has this huge

malfunction things go horribly wrong people almost die right and it's like hey if you needed a reminder that russia lost the space race and you remember here's a swedish guy doing a weird accent to remind you of that impersonating grew i mean it literally i mean it is it is propaganda like it absolutely is propaganda and it's not subtle and that's why i think michael bay for a period of time and not anymore which i don't think is a coincidence given the shift in global politics like why he was such a successful international american filmmaker when he was because it was intense american propaganda at a time where that worked it shouldn't have but it did and that's i i need to find the name of the author because it really is. It was like one of the best books I read last year. And I know we don't read books, but I actually do read books.

I was going to say, Jamie, have you betrayed me? Here's the thing. I do actually read books all the fucking time. And sometimes I'm like, why am I joking around so much? Because then people are like, oh, you have one brain cell. I'm like, I actually don't. But okay. It's a book called Red Carpet, Hollywood, China,

and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy. Came out last year by Eric Schwartzel. I think I brought it up. I think I maybe brought it up in our Top Gun episode, which is I think over on our Patreon. Yes. But it's a really interesting book about how kind of the cultural capital

has over a period of years shifted from Hollywood over to China and how, you know, how global politics kind of influenced that. But I feel like these late 90s movies are kind of where Hollywood influence is at. I don't know if it's like a complete peak, but certainly like a high of like pushing aggressive white American values was a way to become really, really successful in a way that already feels very, very dated. For sure. And that's why we talked about it in the Top Gun episode, because in Top Gun, it's so pro-America and there is a very clear like they name quote-unquote the enemy in a way that no longer happens in American movies because including in Top Gun Maverick where they're like right there's an enemy we're not going to tell you

where it is or who it is but there's an enemy because America is no longer the most powerful country in the world you can't just randomly name an enemy and not experience a consequence. And anyways, it's a really fascinating book. It's very depressing. But in that book, oh, that's what I was going to say. In that book, there was a high up official. I don't remember what their name or position was, but there was a high up official in the Chinese communist government and normally I say communist as a compliment in this case I would not but there

was a higher up in in the government that said like a lot of current blockbuster Chinese movies so like Michael Bay movies of the late 90s there's a lot of heavy nationalist themes whether the movie is good or not, you know, it depends on the artist, but the nationalism is inherent to it. But a lot of current Chinese filmmakers were influenced heavily by this era in American movies because of how heavily the Michael Bays of the world

and everyone points out Titanic as like the best American propaganda ever produced. Are they wrong? Cause it is the best. They're not wrong. Cause we like it. Like it's,

and everyone likes it. And that's like, I mean, that's the most effective propaganda. It's like to build in the pernicious values that you're trying to push on people in a really appealing, sexy, fun,

narratively fun way like makes it a really effective way to deliver a message but but i mean it's just i think it is kind of funny with movies like armageddon because michael bay i think is trying to do that but he's just like not good at it because he's so like he's bad at it he's like not a good movie maker he's he's not a good windows movie maker and i don't i think he wants to be able to do what james cameron did but he just like can't so he he ha ha whatever yeah um i will say maybe the one redeeming thing about this movie that i don't think actually ends up being very redeeming because of the different context and implications but i do appreciate that this is a movie that like champions the working class it champions yeah you know blue collar work it's these but then it's also like you said it's kind of like

well these fancy astronaut boys can't do the job so you need a statutory rapist right and oil drillers who are actively fucking up the planet we need them to come in and save the day and they're like actively implying that these, like I think that it's like you have working class heroes and they are like not well-written, but like entertainingly written characters. They're distinguishable from one another, which a lot of movies cannot do, right?

And you have a creep and a statutory rapist in a group of like eight guys. Amazing, great. But I do think that all of those men are characterized as kind of buffoons and i so yeah it's a like yay we everyone except for bruce willis is like well the working class they're incompetent but like they really pulled it together this one time in space due to the one guy who is smart, which is wild because it's like Steve Buscemi's character is eventually revealed to be like extremely like a prodigy.

He has like two doctorates by the time he was 22 or like whatever that bizarro writing thing was. And you know, I feel like they're heavily like, I don't even know what they were doing with that character, but I didn't like it i didn't like it i hope he made idea all 140 million dollars of the budget for saying those things out loud because it didn't work but yeah to your point it's this movie that's like championing

these working class people who are characterized largely in stereotypes of working class people. Yeah. Because they are characterized as being sex offenders and deadbeat dads and like people with gambling addictions and like all this stuff. So it's like you're not championing working class people if you're just applying all these negative stereotypes to them. No. So that doesn't work.

Yeah. No, it's like it's the classic like Michael Bay trying to have it all sorts of ways at once, which I think, yeah, again, like gives you like the sheen of, well, I represented this class not well and that's how I would say that like that's how he treats people across the gender and race spectrum as well of like yeah I did represent people from across the gender and race spectrum in most of my movies not well but were they not there and you're like yeah that's actually not that's not helpful it's not helpful at all yeah and i guess that that's what i have to say about it i i do think it's funny that michael bay was at least advertised as apologizing for armageddon he didn't actually apologize for it but he said yeah i was made pretty quickly and my visual effects supervisor had a mental breakdown can i share a few of the quotes from and can we swap our

favorite quotes from the commentary track yes okay i mean first iconically michael bay i know there's no fire in space but it is a movie and most people don't know that that is a good one and he's not wrong most people probably don't know that here's another fun one i was very unimpressed when i went to nasa and it shows michael bay said that yes he did he was not he was like wait there's no fires in space boo we got to put him there here's one from ben affleck uh-huh talking about a scene i don't know which one i think it was a big action set piece he says quote it cuts together pretty seamlessly i must say for something that i thought would look like total hokum he says okay boomer after remembering how chintzy it seemed on set. A lot of boomer words. To kind of paraphrase David Sims, Palovars from Blank Check,

who wrote an Atlantic piece on the Armageddon commentary. So shout out to that. Yay, David. Let's see. Okay, two other Michael Bay things I'll i'll say he says making films is like a war i think we've referenced that quote before he says i'm the kind of director who doesn't like effects he says over a sequence of terrible effects um and then finally i wanted to just provide the full ben affleck teeth anecdote because as a veneers scout and and you know enthusiast of

many years i truly it is my dream that someday jerry breckheimer will walk up to me and say it's your time kid we're getting you new teeth so i say this with love this is michael bay describing how he realized ben affleck's teeth wouldn't do i always like low shots that kind of come right under your chin and make you a little bit heroic. And he kind of had these baby teeth. So I told Jerry Bruckheimer, God, he's got these baby teeth, Jerry. I don't know what to do. Jerry used a very famous star in a plane movie that he replaced teeth with. So he said, we did it to him. Why do it to ben so my dentist had been sitting in a dentist chair for a week eight hours a day oh my gosh and what they're talking about is top gun and tom cruise

but for some reason michael bay doesn't feel comfortable saying that but like i've seen the before and after tom cruise teeth pics tom cruise is a poster boy for dentists that want to give you expensive teeth ben affleck i kind of wonder as a veneers enthusiast like how long do they hold up do you have to get them like tuned up like a car i don't know but they still you know it's been 25 years since this movie came out and they're fucking chilling they're they you know they seem firm they've lasted a few marriages i'll say um true so you know this movie definitely sucks and also i just the last production note is that um that i thought was funny and is like i guess a pretty well circulated thing was i just always think it's funny when like movies with the exact same themes come out at the exact same time because

this movie came out very very close to the movie deep impact right which was i believe yeah directed by a woman and was also successful but made less money than armageddon. And sharing from scholarly journal Wikipedia, these movies came out two months apart. They're both about blowing up an asteroid that's about to hit Earth. It's not a coincidence that they come out around the same time. It says, according to Bruce Joel Rubin,

writer of Deep Impact, a production president at Disney took notes on everything the writer said during a lunch about his script and initiated Armageddon as a counter film at Disney. And then nine, right, that's why nine writers worked on the script, because the story had basically been written by another person. And they just had to kind of shape the same story into a Bruce Willis, Jerry Bruckheimer, Michael Bay vehicle

of that story. And then they just better at the box office than Deep Impact so they just straight up stole the idea from another writer yeah took it to a different studio and was like this is our movie now yeah and they took and like to add insult to injury Deep Impact was directed by a woman and very few movies in 1998 were directed by women and just like michael bay just like is fucking evil and lawless which we knew i've not seen and i will say i have not i mean i guess i hadn't seen armageddon either but like i kind of forgot that deep impact existed i knew armageddon existed and that's bad it reminds me of this is the last thing i'll say in the episode because we gotta go we gotta go it reminds me i mean those stories movies are like littered with stories like that

but there was this amazing animator named richard williams who was the animation director on who framed roger rabbit he did all of these famous like animations in like the back half of the 20th century and his magnum opus was this story called the thief and the cobbler which bears a lot of resemblances in story and in setting to aladdin right he worked on this movie i remember this decades and decades and then disney got wind of it in the last couple of years and they're like oh let's kill that. And then they made Aladdin. And no one has ever seen the thief and the cobbler. And everyone has seen Aladdin.

Business is evil. Kind of like how Disney was like, oh, Kimba the White Lion exists. Well, we're just going to steal that and make the Lion King. I've heard a lot of different versions of that story. But yeah, it does feel like it's the same spirit of just like, let's steal that. Say it was 100% our idea in a way that we don't need to pay anyone or credit anyone. And then make billions of dollars forever. And we love that.

Awesome. So does this pass the Bechdel test, Caitlin? No. No. that awesome so just this past the Bechdel test Caitlin no no women aren't in the same room together that's illegal yeah no that would be nasty and I'm glad they didn't do it yeah no like not even fucking close that I truly don't think we got two women in the same room in a two and a half hour movie it's obscenely long are we going to cover that movie women talking what because yeah i mean i i think that would be a fun matrion thing i would love to cover women talking and the women okay as a theme because those are both movies that i think are it sounds like like, you know, whatever, released 80 years apart,

but similar premises. As far as I understand, I haven't done a ton of research on women talking. Anyway, that was just a sidebar. What about our nipple scale in which we evaluate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based on how it fares from an intersectional feminist lens i will give this movie zero nipples yeah i cannot in good conscience give it more than nothing um i won't give it negative but because we have done that before yeah i think maybe even for michael bay movies yeah i mean this is i will say this is not the worst Michael Bay movie I've seen by a long shot um it's one of the better Michael Bay movies I've seen and it's so bad and it sucks and it fucking sucks but um I I think in terms of visual language the movie does not aggressively objectify the women who are in the story it just simply elects to ignore them and turn them into

wives and daughters whoops i don't like this movie but there were parts of it that i was like well i had to watch this movie and it wasn't the worst thing that ever happened to me and that's brave i mean it does end on a high note. And by that, I mean. It ends. I could stay awake just to hear you breathe it. Anyway. So you're going to put those across the board. Hey, thanks for listening, listeners. Yeah.

Thank you for listening. This is a main feed episode. But if you enjoy episodes with just the two of of us we do this all the time over on the patreon aka matreon that's patreon.com slash bechtel cast five dollars a month we'll get you two additional episodes from the two of us a month we usually do fun themes just like the uh women talking theme we just discussed. Can't wait. And you can also go to tpublic.com slash the Bechtel cast for all of your merchandising needs, such as new designs designed by a one Jamie Loftus, like Shrekian,

feminist icon Paddington, and the flubber mambo by Danny Elfman. Among all the classics, such as feminist icon Paddington and the flubber mambo by Danny Elfman. Among all the classics such as feminist icon, queer icon, wet scabs, dry scabs, you name it. We got it.

We've absolutely got it. And with that, we hope you enjoyed this. We, we wanted to kind of stray into a genre we hadn't been in for a while. And with the director. What? We'll be back with another episode on Titanic in a couple weeks.

So. You're going to tell them that? Oh my gosh. Should we not? I don't know. I'll cut it. Fine. Well, thank you for listening.

We love you. And we'll be back next week with your normally scheduled programming. Yeah. Bye. Bye. Hey, everybody. This is Matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang.

We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Katherine Hahn is joining us on Las Culturistas. That's right, the queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful. Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. Don't miss Katherine Hahn on Las Culturistas. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit.

Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.