Yo, what up y'all? I'm Shea Serrano, New York Times best-selling author. And I'm Brandon Jinx Jenkins, writer, journalist, podcaster. We have a new podcast. It's called No Skips. In it, we're discussing hip-hop's most beloved, most everlasting, most enduring albums, and all the things that make you want to listen to them from cover to cover. We've got new episodes of No Skips dropping on Thursdays. Check it out only on Spotify. This episode is brought to you by Volkswagen. Let's talk about the ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road. The Volkswagen Tiguan. Its sleek exterior makes the first impression you can't ignore. Step inside to find available leather seats and wood accents, the kind of interior that makes even grocery runs feel cinematic. Under the hood, the available 268-horsepower engine gives it a fun-to-drive edge. The refined Tiguan, you deserve more style. Visit VW.ca to learn more. SUVW, German-engineered for all. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Hear that? That's your next obsession. Every coffee a new world. Every sip a new taste. This is the new Nespresso. One touch, endless possibilities. Ice, flavored, long, short. Because some days call for that espresso kick, and sometimes a smooth, silky latte just wins. It's exceptional, but effortless. Like, actually effortless. Simply press, brew, and explore. Nespresso, what else? Keep exploring at Nespresso.com. We're also brought to you by TheRinger.com, as well as the Ringer Podcast Network. Coming up, welcome to The Rock. The Rock is next. On June 7th, Alcatraz is back in business. A battery of VX gas rockets is presently deployed on the population of the San Francisco Bay Area. Now, the only way to stop the unthinkable is to get the one man who broke out of The Rock. I have a unique knowledge of this prison facility. I was formerly a guest here. To lead a chemical weapons specialist. You're a chemical freak. Chemical super freak. To breathe back in. From Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, the producers of Top Gun and Crimson Tide, and Michael Bay, the director of Bad Boys. Welcome to The Rock. Sean Conner. There he is, the guy who wouldn't die in his toilet. Nicholas Cage. All right, I have to do it myself. I got three weeks of weapons training. Ed Harris. Fire. This summer, get ready. You have joined this to rock. That's just about the most awesome thing I've ever seen. The Rock, rated R. Chris Ryan is here at Mina Kimes this year. I broke the ice already with a Sean Connery impersonation. Chris, I don't know. What do you want to break it out 20 minutes in? Are you saving it? Is it like the shark reveal in Jaws? How are you planning it? I think I am going to save it for when you least expect it. Okay. Okay, Chris Ryan. The Rock, described on Wikipedia as a 1996 American action thriller film directed by Michael Bay, produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. That's really all you need to know. It's set in Alcatraz. Mina, is this one of the greatest premises in the history of movies for you? Just the fundamental premise of we have basically marine domestic terrorists on Alcatraz ready to do bad things to San Francisco. And the only person who can stop them is the one guy who escaped from Alcatraz who we never knew about. It's pretty incredible. First of all, Bill, brave of you to have me on right before my Nets sweep your Celtics. So I just want to nod to that really quickly. That's fair. Yeah, no. Your Nets. It is a really alienating every listener right before we begin. The premise is incredible. The staying power of the film. And this is one of my all-time favorite movies, which is why I'm on this podcast, if anyone's wondering, is the performances. But the premise is incredible. Just for the final two-thirds of this movie slash so hard. And yeah, I love everything about this film. Chris? The logical conclusion of Die Hard on a blank. So 88, Die Hard comes out. And then for almost 10 years, they basically try to perfect Die Hard, put Die Hard on HGH cycles, give Die Hard a little bit of the cream and the clear from Balco. Just tweak it a little bit here and there. And then The Rock finishes the chapter. It's like, this is as good as you can do when you try to put Die Hard on a blank. You know, Alcatraz, I feel like, was at the peak of its nostalgic powers in the 90s. Because I remember I had friends, two of my best friends from high school moved there after college. And I started to go visit them every year in the 94 range. And the one thing I want to do when I went there in 94 was like, we got to go to Alcatraz. It was like, what was the cooler place at that point? The Clint Eastwood movie had been out, so you kind of knew it from that. But also, you can go there. You can walk around. There's a tour. I remember So I Married an Axe Murderer, and they also had some Alcatraz stuff. And I was just so fascinated by that place. So it tapped into that. But Sean Connery is the big takeaway from this movie. We'll go into Nick Cage in a second. But it's one of his last great performances. It's kind of a one-of-one performance. I don't know who else could have been Sean Connery really at any point in life. And I know Mina would marry 1996 Sean Connery right now. All right, I'll just spill the beans. In our group text before this, I said, this is Sean Connery's, this is the most sex appeal he's ever had in a movie, which is wild, because he was James Bond. And I've seen pretty much every Sean Connery James Bond movie, and I like a lot of them. But he is, I hate the word badass, but he is so incredibly badass in this movie. Every line delivery, from his entrance to the end, every moment of his, especially if you're a preteen when I watched this, just blows your socks off. He's so good in this movie. He carries himself like, I'm better than everyone in this movie. I'm smarter than everyone in this movie. I kind of can't believe I'm here, but I'm just going to toy with everybody for two hours. This is one of the great victory laps in movie acting, is the run that he goes on from Untouchables on through this. And he does basically one last good movie, I guess, Finding Forrester, which is more of lived on because of its memeability than it has been because it's a decent film at all. You're the man now, dog. Exactly. Thank you, Sean Connery. It's like I'm hearing your ghost. But this whole run he goes on after he wins for Untouchables, it's just so fucking entertaining. And he's just like, he actually plays with his own mythology really well, but also still somehow maintains a leading man credibility. It's just fantastic. I can't imagine anybody else being a convincing, graying, great actor who also is an action star in this Michael Bay type of setup. So from 89 on, he plays Indiana Jones's dad in the third Indiana Jones movie, which was really highly anticipated. Once it came out, like, oh, shit, Connery and Ford. And then it turned out to be a really great movie. I love that movie. He's in family business. He's in Hunt for Red October, which was huge. Russia House. Highlander 2. I don't remember that one. Rising Sun. It starts to die, right? Red Round 95 and Just Cause. First night. And then has this one last run of The Rock, Playing by Heart, Entrapment, and Finding Forrester, where you think, like, think how badly it's gone with the De Niro Pacino types with some of those. They would just have these sinkers that are straight to cable. He always seemed like he was elevated a little bit higher. It always felt meaningful until the end when he was in a movie. That's a really hard needle to thread. But to me, this is like late, late career Sean Connery Apex. We'll get to Apex Mountain later. But I don't know who is Sean Connery now, Mina. Does that person exist? Who cares to kind of gravitas? The mid-60s guy. How old is Liam Neeson at this point? He's pretty late. But he's carved out a different role, which is not the charismatic badass. By the one of the notes of this movie, I think from the Criterion Collection director said is that they had to tell Connery to be less charismatic. How charismatic was he that he had to dial it down to what we see in this movie? Because he's a 10 in this movie. It blows my mind. But so Liam Neeson is not super charismatic. He's this kind of gruff revenge-seeking every dad's fantasy is to be Liam Neeson character. I can't believe he's kind of doing it. He's punching the clock and making three movies a year still. They're good. I enjoy them, but no one is at this level. I feel like what other things could late career Sean Connery have been awesome at? I feel like he would have been an incredible NFL owner. Not that he had the cash, but it just would have been funny to have him do press conferences and things like that. He would have been an amazing tech guy. He should have had Nick Faldo's job on the British This is just where he goes. Wait, Chrissy, was this his destiny or did something snap in his head with The Rock? Did you think when you saw like Leaving Las Vegas or Red Rock West that he was going to be the biggest action star for the rest of the decade? I mean, this is the only equivalent is Downey going into Iron Man. But Downey had also had like that weird 10 years in the wilderness, you know, and had sort of started to kind of come back with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. But nobody really expected Downey to become like a blockbuster action star. But this was Nick Cage was kind of like, I don't know, he was basically like the actor's actor. He was he was like awards fodder. Everybody thought Nick Cage was going to be the great actor of his generation. And then he's turns into this matinee idol. Yeah, it's almost like Mark. He was like on the Mark Ruffalo path or like those kind of guys where he's just way more likely to pop up in a Charlie Kaufman movie or a Coen Brothers movie than a Michael Bay movie. Mina, I feel like you liked how this turned out. Yeah, there's I think you can see Nick Cage becoming an action star in The Rock. The moment when he fires a gun for the first time, killing one of the mutinous Marines, he fires it multiple times. It's in the mining cart scene. That's his first kill. And you kind of you watch his face and you can see it hardening and you can see him transform in the movie. Of course, he's a little bit shaken by it. But, you know, I also like when you look at all the great action movies of the 90s and before then, of course, but the true class, even Mission Impossible, which came out that same year, right? The original Mission Impossible, which is an inferior movie to The Rock. Mission Impossible, of course, peaked later. But a movie I loved at the time. Nevertheless, like or I don't know what other movies came out that year. Independence Day came out that year. All the 90s. 96 was a really good. Yeah, in general, it was a really good year of stuff. Twister Was a good one that year. But, you know, like the big ones, The Fugitive, Total Recall, True Lies, which is one of my first favorites. Like those are all badasses. And Nick Cage kind of introduced this new quirky action hero prototype that then I think you saw more of after him, including Downey. And it was novel at the time for him to do that. And we talked about this before, though, when we were talking about Con Air and I think a couple of other movies. I can't remember the one we really referenced it with. But this just became like a phenomenon where the action movies realized, like, you could just populate your action movie with really good actors and you'd still have the same return. You didn't need Jesse Ventura, Carl Weathers and Arnold Schwarzenegger in an action movie necessarily. You could do John Spencer, Philip Baker Hall and Nicholas Cage and people would still turn out. Are we sure that Nick Cage's performance worked? That all the times he dialed it up, that that was okay? Because there's like definitely an SNL character parody happening in this movie as well. But I actually really still like the Nick Cage performance. You have to remember that this wasn't, he was not a self-parody yet. So when you saw it, you were just like, wow, this guy is so dialed up. This is so funny. And the character actually, it works for him because he's obviously working these high stress situations where you might get a plastic baby full of VX gas or sarin gas or whatever. And he's really quirky. He's a Beatlemaniac. He doesn't curse. He's got this relationship with Carla that I'm sure we'll get into. It's like, he's a pretty like unique character in an action movie. But I think you make a really good point, which is because it was the first like full Cage, it hits differently. And then face off. I was like, this is so good. And then as natural Treasure, I was like, and then eventually I think it kind of, it lost its appeal to me over time. But this movie, him coming out, the line deliveries, the weird things. Sunny just grins at you. What in the name of Zeus's butthole is the loudest delivery of the word butthole or cut me some frickin slack. There's like four instances of this. But in any case, like it's interesting and funny in this movie. Later, it gets a little bit weird. Well, I think he put real genuine thought into the performance, which probably he stopped doing five years later. But like there's a tidbit in the research. I'll just say it now where he showed Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer this scene from Jaws where Richard Dreyfuss's performance. He showed them a bunch of the Dreyfuss scenes. And he's like, this is kind of what I want to do in the bomb dismanly scene. I want to like channel Dreyfuss and Jaws. By the early 2000s, I don't feel like he's approaching movies, maybe in the same manner. He's he kind of Maybe drifted to what worked for him in 96, 97, 98. And that kind of just became Nick Cage in every movie. But I do feel like this was a performance. I think he I think he really put some TLC into it and was like, all right, this guy can't necessarily be an action hero. He's got to be this quirky. I got to feel like he's a little nerdy, but I also have to buy that he can go toe to toe with these Marines. So he pulls it off. Yeah. Think about how different he is from his character in Con Air. You know what I mean? Like Stanley Goodspeed is practically like from a Kenneth Lonergan movie compared to the dude in Con Air. Mina, what is Stanley? What is Godspeed? What nationality is that? Is that like a British, right? You think Godspeed? Is that a real name? Does anyone actually Goodspeed? It's Goodspeed because at the end, when Connery asks him if he knows the etymology, he says, of course I do. Well, Nick Cage got it going. Bay probably peaks here. I still like Bad Boys, maybe 1% more than I'm a one guy. Really? I just made a two symbol. We're just pretending like Armageddon isn't isn't on the table here. I guess it is. This is the dress rehearsal for Armageddon. He's like one. He tries out everything. He tries out in this movie. He perfects in Armageddon. I mean, I love the rock, but Armageddon is definitely like from if you're just talking Bay, that's that's the one.
I'll put that third. That's third for me. I do feel like in this movie, he perfected the camera looking up at the guy who things have just blown up and he's in slow motion, kind of looking around move, which he does like three different times in this movie. And especially with Cage after that big car chase in San Francisco, he just nails it. There's so many things that he just created from scratch. I'd never seen a movie. The Rock is the best for two reasons. The performances of the core three. Again, we haven't even talked about it. And then this is the only well, pain and gain, but compared to Armageddon, The Rock is intentionally funny at times. And you laugh and you're not laughing at Michael Bay. You're laughing with Michael Bay in this movie. Armageddon is not intentionally funny. It's very unfunny. Profoundly. Yeah, we and we covered that when we did the pod on it. Like that has some of the schmaltziest, weirdest moments. Yeah, but it also had like Owen Wilson in it and Steve Buscemi. You know what I mean? Like those guys like those guys are playing it. Yeah. $75 million budget made $334 million. Fourth highest grossing movie of 1996. Ebert, our guy, three and a half stars, said it was a first rate slam bang action thriller with a lot of style and no little humor. A movie respected enough that it, as Mina mentioned, became a Criterion Collection pick. It's got to be the way I'm not as familiar with the. I mean, Sean basically sleeps on them at night. He sleeps on the DVDs. So I don't know. Like, is this this is an unusual Criterion Collection pick, right? It's unusual. But like, I think also like he has a lot of film nerd like Quan because he just is such a great image maker. So even if you think his movies are basically like caveman patriotism, like they are like undeniably amazing to look at. And there was some good research about the studio being unhappy with this movie. And at one point, and the story is, there's three different versions of it. I don't know which one to believe, but basically Bay is going to see the Disney executives and Sean Connery is dressed to play golf. And he's like, where are you going? And he's like, I'm going to see these things. They're giving me a hard time about the film. He's like, let me come with you. And he goes with them, shows up in the meeting and basically diffuses the whole thing by being the coolest guy in the world. And at that point, they lay off Bay. It feels a little urban legendary, but it was in enough places that I feel like some version of it might happen. The point is, I think the studio was like, what the hell is going on with That's it. Come on, bubblegum. Let me tell you something, Skip. Coming up next. Next rewatch, we'll see Connery's first scene. It's great. 25 minutes into the movie. The setup for it. I know a guy who can do this. Boom. Long hair. Prison. Boom. I mean, it's just, it's one of the coolest entrances of all time. Chris, have you ever thought about wearing that wig at parties or anything? Pre-haircut wig. I wore it at Staples the other day. Nobody recognized me. I also like when he's saying about, this would be good, or they're trying to convince him to do it, and he says, why don't you still have a little lead left in your pencil? You know the rock. You broke out. Yes, successfully. Yeah. So if you do yourself a favor while you're helping us, it would be nice to get out of jail while you're still vertical. While you got a little lead left in your pencil. Okay, I just never heard that before. It's not just like, leave it before the site is being so unnecessarily cutting towards them. Like, it's never clear, like, what they're trying to get out of him because they're just like, so you got him out of prison to like, insult his sexual abilities or what's going on here? Well, I'll be using that at some point in the next 10 years, the lead in the pencil joke. Next one. Wow. Connery's getting a haircut at a balcony, orders everybody a whole bunch of food. The Secret Service guys are just like, hey, lobster, and just stop watching him for 10 minutes. And it leads to, he is able to flip John Spencer over a balcony with a small piece of rope. And then we're on to the car chase. But the balcony scene, that's everything I want in a rewatchable action scene. You can pick it apart. There's nine things wrong with it. It's super fun to watch. I like seeing him dangle. Connery just getting out of there and all of it. What am I missing? Anything? No, I think that the Secret Service guys being distracted and one's like, well, he's like an old man, sort of, again, it hints that perhaps Connery being underestimated at various points during the movie, sometimes unrealistically so. But that is part of the joy of having a 66-year-old badass be the action hero, is people are going to underestimate him at every turn. And that's the first, well, actually, the quarter is the first time in the interrogation scene when he uses the quarter to cut him, which is so fucking cool. But that, I think, hints at the whole movie people are going to underestimate him. I also love that room service is just like this crippling distraction in action movies. Like in Lethal Weapon 2. In Lethal Weapon 2 when it shows up, they're like, oh, food! And it's just like, you guys are here to guard a witness, you know, or to like guard a prisoner. Like, maybe don't get blown away by surf and turf. I'm trying to think of any time where room service didn't turn into some sort of plot twist in an action movie. Nobody's just ever gotten room service and been like, cool, where do I sign? All right, see you later. I'll eat the sandwich. In the before times, you know, are you a, you can bring the food into my room guy, or do you just take it at the door? Oh, that's a great question. Depends how big the room is. I like to set up myself if I can. Okay. And my room is usually never clean when they come in, so I'm always embarrassed by that. So I'm more of a greet at the door unless things are clean. What about you? Personally, first of all, I'm a huge hotel bar guy. Sit at the bar, eat a cheeseburger. I love doing that. So I rarely get it in the room. And if I do, if it's breakfast, I hate when the guy brings breakfast in, and you're like still kind of like waking up and you're like, oh yeah, just those look delicious. Just leave them right there. You know, like I always feel awkward in that moment. It's like my most Larry David moment. Yeah. Nina, you're the tiebreaker. Well, I don't like having people come back to tell me for different reasons. But I also, something that didn't click in my head until this very moment is whenever you get the silver dome, which is an all the cases these days, I always have a little bit of trepidation because of action movies. Because the silver dome is usually concealing like a gun or something terrible ahead, you know? And if, yeah, it's all because of the movies. I get a lot of room service just because my daughter, when we go away for sports stuff, like kids love room service. It's just the most appealing thing to them. The fact that somebody's just going to bring them food out of nowhere. They just, I don't know when they grow out of it, maybe. But you wouldn't you get freaked out though if like the guy bringing the room service had like a South African accent from Lethal Weapon 2? Wouldn't you just be a little bit more on edge? All right, the balcony quickly. We'll do a pick of it now. Does the rope pull John Spencer? Does it rip Connery's arm off? What are all the ways that could have gone wrong in your opinion? I think the rope breaks would be mine. I just don't think it's holding the 180-pound John Spencer. Also, really long rope. I don't know how he pulled that rope out of like a shower curtain. It's like 20 feet long. This is the problem generally with picking nits with a Michael Bay movie. It's like criticizing a child's drawing as not being representational of the world. Like, that's not what a human nose looks like. Like, we could do the whole fucking movie. But you're right. Like, the rope, it would break, probably, with the chair. But just the whole thing, when he's getting his haircut and you realize he's doing it under the rope, the rope, rather, the haircut guy, it's just also meticulously planned. And everything Sean Connery does, because of the confidence you already have in him, you just assume is going to work. Yes. One defense of the car chase. I like any San Francisco movie where the trolley is now out of control and can't be stopped. That's just... Does that happen a lot? I'm just saying anytime, if anybody make it a future action movie, just if something's wrong with the trolley and we're going down like six straight blocks, I'm in. I'm in. There's nothing that can go wrong from an excitement standpoint with that. Next one. Connery opens the door when he slides. He somehow remembers the fire patterns of whatever that thing was. And then they think he might have escaped, and then he opens the door. Welcome to The Rock. Welcome to The Rock. So, Michael Bay has pointed this out. Is that supposed to be the boiler room of Alcatraz? And he's just like, here's the biggest problem with Alcatraz, with this movie, is that if... The boiler would not be working in Alcatraz after this long. Yeah, what would you need a boiler for? Heat and hot water, basically? I guess if there were like, you know, national park guys who needed to like shower and shave while they were there. Or if you maybe were running some of, like, the bathroom stuff off of the boiler. But it is weird that it's like, there's just like this dungeon of fire underneath of Alcatraz. And that Sean Connery could remember the exact sequencing 32 years later, or 34 years later, whatever. He still got that pattern right in his brain. The shower room shootout. I think it breaks the record for most slow motion bullet deaths in a two-minute span of people doing the convulsing. Is that what you do when you get shot? You have to, like, your arms have to go up almost like you're flying like a bird for a second and then you kick back? For people who can't see, Bill just did... You just looked like one of those inflatable men outside used car lots. He's doing Willem Dafoe from Platoon. Yeah. I do feel like that's become every, um, getting shot death is you have to throw your arms out and then do the fallback over just, like, falling backwards. I don't know, maybe it's more... So, where are you guys on this scene? Because this is, this is like, I think it's as good as it gets. Like, these two guys being like, I cannot give that order! You will give that order! It's just, like, it's so fucking... I'm in as well. And it's always like, something starts the gunfire that isn't, you know, it's like a rock that falls or something. Yeah. It's executed flawlessly. It's, um, so, Michael Biehn, I hope I'm saying his name right, plays the commander who plays the commander in, like, 20 movies. That's just, he is a commander. Um, when he first, you know, gives this whole preamble that everyone does to remind you that everyone's on Ed Harris's side, Hummel's side. Like, Hummel's on the right side of history here and he's moral, but Mute Me's not cool. Which is, like, something that pervades this entire movie. And this is the first real test of Hummel's morals or how crazy is he actually or where does he want and what is... which is a question that hangs over the entire movie and isn't really answered until the end. And They flashback to the introduction of like literally you have to re-hear it before Nicolas Cage does it. He remembers that he has the green flares. But the way it's shot, this is the part I think in the movie that's the most not you're in on it. It's like unintentionally funny. The music video style upshot of him with the flares. It's so funny. This is also like the eighth time in the movie that Nicolas Cage does the Christ pose for like really no reason. You're just kind of like, you guys have sort of stripped this upon me. Yeah. I had the Christ pose and Apex Mountain, and this movie is not going to win for it, but we can still litigate it. It's always good to have the, uh, there was like a 10-year run of Christ poses. Bay loves a Christ pose. He loves guys falling to their knees and throwing the arms out. I still feel like this was Bay's favorite part of the movie. Like, I think he was the most excited to shoot the flares. I think he probably spent the most time planning the coverage for it. And 16s dropping below the Golden Gate bridge. Yeah. Tried the slow-mo left and right. All right. What's your favorite scene, Chris? Oh, I have a couple that you didn't mention. Um, I wanted to just do the, uh, the decontamination chamber, uh, the first, when we first meet Stanley Goodspeed in action. Oh, the shots, yeah. And that guy who's just like, you want me to stick this needle in my fucking heart? Are you crazy? God, inject your heart and then defuse the bomb! I can't see shit! You want me to stick this needle in my fucking heart? Are you fucking nuts? That's really awesome. And like, we're, it's that scene actually really sets the, like, this is a little bit of a grittier, like closer, you know, it's an R action movie. It's not like a soft action movie at all. And then the other one that I had, um, the other rewatchable scene that I thought I would mention would just be no movie has ever suffered from being in a situation room. And like the whole situation room call where Ed Harris calls, and the other general is like, Frank is out. Like, you know, and like John Spencer's in there, the White House Chief of Staff is there. And Philip Baker Hall is in there. Like just put a situation room in your movie and I will love it. I wanted more Philip Baker Hall type people in that room. I thought they were too short. Like two people short of just like, Oh, just my heart. I can't see shit. You're now. How big is this shit? You want me to stick this into my heart? Are you fucking nuts? That's really good. Is this normal? What do you want me to do about it? I just love it. You've been around a lot of courses. Is that normal? If you think, yeah, the feet thing. I've been having kind of a hard time concentrating. Can you do something about it? Like what? Kill him again. Listen, I'm just a biochemist. Chris, what do you have for most rewatchable? The shower assault, the seals versus the Neon shower. Yeah. I really like the, uh, the mine cart chase. What stage is the best? Alcatraz. Try to think of a situation where Alcatraz has been in a movie and it hasn't been fucking cool. Like you could just name the movie that's used it. It's worked every time. Um, I personally like San Francisco car chases. That's just the best for me. You guys don't agree. What about losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen. Just as so weird. Oh, just a fucking random. It always makes me laugh. I don't, I just can't believe somebody put that in a movie and like, and it's a way to be like, this will make this guy sound like a bad-ass and then Connery pulls it off. We were like, Oh yeah, it's another good point by Sean Connery. Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen. Carla was the prom queen. Really? Yeah. Did they even have prom queens in Scotland? Like, I don't even know where it comes from. It's so weird. How does he know about the prom queen? Because he's imprisoned in the sixties. Again, that's one where I thought that was the coolest thing I'd ever heard when I was 13. And now I'm like, this is not the coolest thing that's said in this movie, but at the time I thought it was incredibly badass. It's so nineties. Yeah. Trying to have these like cool action movie quotes. And it's just bizarre. What's age the best? The Simpson-Bruckheimer logo card. RIP to our guy, Don. This is it. This is his last one, but it's just seeing it. You're like, Oh, this will be good. I read a, I read a EW article right when Simpson died from 96. And there's like quotes from them making this movie. And I think Connery is like, you know, Don was visiting the set and I'm not surprised he did not do well. I'm not laughing, but Don Simpson had a, had a like really a legendary appetite for cocaine. So I'm just saying like if Connery is like this guy needs a break, Jesus. The, the Don Simpson was not really meant to make it to the 21st century. By all accounts, there's a lot of literature about this. There's what was the book that was written about that era? There's one book that has a lot of Don Simpson stuff and he was a wild card. I love, this is another what's age the best in action movies when guys don't exist. Oh yeah. They've been wiped away, like wiped clean. This person's been wiped off. There's no record of this person. Wait, what person is he? He doesn't exist. Doesn't exist. It's just a winner every time. Nick Cage hamming it up. We mentioned earlier, what do you say we cook the chit chat? Ehole! All that stuff. Really impressive list of that guys who graduated that guys. These aren't that guys. These are guys that were that guys and became David Morris, John C. McGinley, Philip Baker Hall, John Spencer, William Forsythe, Michael, Michael Biehn. Mina, first of all, when you didn't know how to say Michael Biehn's name, I just let you know you hurt Chris's feelings. No, I was, she nailed it the first time. No, Chris has been a charter member of the Bean Hive really since for how long? Bean Pod. You're driving the Bean Bay right now. Um, have I ever not played a military man? I don't want to diminish his career, but uh, like, yeah, no, he's in the military. He's a military guy in Terminator 2. I mean like, uh, Yeah. Bean's Bean's incredible. Yeah. We never saw him in like a Michelle Pfeiffer rom-com. No. Where he's just like an ad exec. Right. Just on the Wikipedia page of The Rock, there's just a photo of him signing DVDs of The Rock in like a, at like a 2002 fan convention. It's just, I want better for my guy, my heirloom Bean. Um, another what's age the best, just the Claire Forlani, just the what if of her career that the three years when it seemed like it was going to happen, it just made me nostalgic. It all ended with Mitchel Black where it just fell apart completely. But coming out of Mallrats, I was like, I'm buying stock in this one. So I guess my stock has aged the worst, but my, my hope that she was going to turn into something has aged the best because I'm, I was watching this thinking it still could happen. It's like, Oh, she's probably 45 now. What were you going to say, Chris? I was just going to say, so what's aged the best is your belief in Claire Forlani. Yeah. That I was so absolute, like it's going to happen, even though it hasn't happened. I'm like, I don't know. You watched the scene again. Just never happened before. Mitchel Black was tough. It hurt a lot of careers. Not from this. Um, it's a tough performance. It's a brief performance, but it's not the best. I also think it is funny. This is kind of a funny thing. It's that I love your point about like guys who don't exist. And yet Nick Cage's friend was able to find Jade Angelo in like 30 seconds and her address. So, um, he did his record wasn't wiped that clean, but that scene is not, not the greatest scene. Although it does set up Nick Cage being sympathetic to Mason, uh, when he, Goodspeed says, Oh, your dad's working with us. And that kind of establishes trust. So it's important. I have one more with age the best. This is the best thing I found. It's too good for half-ass internet research. Sean Connery insisted the producers built a cabin for him on Alcatraz because he didn't want to travel back and forth to the mainland every day. So he's like, I'm not doing this movie. You will give me, you'll give me a cabin and I'm going to live in it and it's going to be state of the art. And that's how we're going to do this. And they're like, cool, Sean Connery. We built you a cabin. And that's the thing that happened. I'm trying to think any other actor who would have even thought of that, much less convince the studio to I think two-thirds, so Craig watched it not to blow you up. Craig watched it the first time this week and I texted you guys and said, this movie still goes so hard. And I think Craig was only a third of the way through and he was a little dubious because the first third is not as good as the second two-thirds of the movie at all. I also think Carla, I have mixed feelings. Like, it's not a great character. There's no reason. Oh, I haven't had to pick a Nets. We should do that now. Yeah, why is she there at the end? The fiancee you could just get rid of completely. How about when she's in the Situation Room at the end, Basically with John Spencer. He's only like the six most important people in the American government outside of the president. And they're like, also, Carla. Security Carla. We're going underwater approach. She can't swim. I'm like, why are you telling her this? She shouldn't know any of this. Well, this feels like it goes back to the notes saying they, it feels like they were like, hey, we've got Vanessa Marcil and Claire Forlani attached. And let's just, can you squeeze them in just because they didn't want a movie of all dudes. So they're shoehorning it in and they're doing it badly. All right. We're gonna take a break, then we'll come back with the rest. Casting What-Ifs. Schwarzenegger was offered the part of John Patrick Mason. Oh. In a Reddit AMA, he stated he regrets not taking the role. Schwarzenegger did an AMA? Apparently. Did a Reddit AMA. I'm so glad he didn't take the role. He said the script wasn't fully baked. Thank God that didn't happen. Then Tony Scott was supposed to direct, but turned it down and did The Fan. This is a really good Tony Scott movie. I think it, I think it's better with Tony Scott, Tony Scott makes the version of this movie that we are asking for and that I think it's probably a little tighter, but it doesn't have that layer of like slightly over the top slightly. Very over the top, like, you know, the crucifix, the American flag burning it, blowing in the background of the guy when he's just like, we're about to take the lives of 81 hostages. You know, like all that stuff probably isn't it. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. He's gonna suck his mouth. Why are you telling her this? She shouldn't know any of this. Well, this feels like it goes back to the notes saying they, it feels like they were like, hey, we've got Vanessa Marcil and Claire Forlani attached and let's just, can you squeeze them in just because they didn't want a movie of all dudes. So they're shoehorning it in and they're doing it badly. All right, we're gonna take a break, then we'll come back with the rest. Casting What-Ifs. Schwarzenegger was offered the part of John Patrick Mason. In a Reddit AMA, he stated he regrets not taking the role. Schwarzenegger did an AMA? Apparently. Did a Reddit AMA. I'm so glad he didn't take the role. He said the script wasn't fully baked. Thank God that didn't happen. Then Tony Scott was supposed to direct, but turned it down and did The Fan. This is a really good Tony Scott movie. I think it, I think it's better with Tony Scott, right? Tony Scott makes the version of this movie that we are asking for and that I think it's probably a little tighter, but it doesn't have that layer of like slightly over the top slightly. Very over the top, like, you know, The crucifix, the American flag burning it, blowing in the background of the guy when he's just like, we're about to take the lives of 81 hostages, you know, like all that stuff probably isn't it. You might not get the air conditioner falling on the dude's head. And I think, do we, do we want to give that up? I don't. Best that guy, a.k.a. the Joey Pants award. I mean, there's, I would say the guy who's basically the last guy standing at the end with the strong pronounced chin. I don't even know what that guy's name is. I just, anytime I've seen him in anything else, I'm like, oh, that guy from Gregory's Color Letter. That's the one. Yeah. I mean, he's, yeah, he, he has a chance to run the that guy and the Deion Waiters and the Vincent Hanna award. So I think he wins. I just want to mention the nanny from Jerry Maguire is in this movie. That guy. The campus rapist from 90210. Which 90210 fan? Sophomore year in college. There was a campus rapist for three episodes. He's in this now as a good guy. And then Costner's brother in American Flyers. Yeah, yeah. It's one of those guys. I don't know what that guy's name is either. I want to shout out Stanley Anderson, who plays the president in both The Rock and Armageddon, which suggests a Michael Bay universe where this guy is the president during both, during both a hostage situation on Alcatraz and a world destroying comet or asteroid coming towards the earth. Yeah. So many of these guys are in so many of the same action movies from the nineties. Like Danny Nucci, who plays the marine, who then has that death race falling. He's upside down after the shootout. He's the last guy through the hole in the shower room. And then he is hanging upside down and Connery takes his gun. He's in, I feel like Black Hawk Down. He's in Crimson Tide. Right? Crimson Tide. Crimson Tide. I mean, yeah. It's amazing the kid from The Bronx Tale wasn't in this. I don't know, he must've been busy that week, but he was, he should have been in. The Vincent Hanna, give me all you got award for overacting. It's, I mean, we could mention eight people, but it's Tony Todd and it's Greg in the finals. And I think Tony Todd is ridiculous in this movie. He's a borderline what stage is the worst for me. I don't, I just wonder if there's a better guy in that part. Is this just a better movie? No, I think he does a good job in so much as like, he's, he's the like the true reveal of the kind of guy that Ed Harris has to hire to do this job to mean his point. Like it's like, he's not going to have his pick of people. And these two dudes who are just like at first sort of adhering to military discipline, but then like midway through sport letters, like lying on the bed. And he's like, we're locked and ready to rock, sir. I just want to let you know what time it is. And like Tony Todd's just like, where's the money? I kind of enjoy that those guys turned into shitlords. Is it relaxed or I feel like the word cock is in his. Yeah, I feel like they set the stage for Tony Todd is a psycho and wants to kill people really early in this film. Candyman come out before or after the rock before. Okay. So, you know, keep the Candyman really a lot of Candyman baggage. Yeah. The Judd Nelson award for the person who seems like they're in a different movie. You want to take this one, Chris? So I think you can make an argument that there are three movies there. There's the movie that like John Spencer, Michael Biehn, Ed Harris, David Morse, all those guys are in a military government thriller. Then there is the movie that Sean Connery's in. And then there's the movie Nicholas Cage is in. And that like, so it depends on which one you want to look at it. But if we are going by the Judd Nelson thing, I think you could probably have to say that Ed Harris is in a completely different movie as everybody else because he's taking it so, so seriously. Yeah, he's, he's approaching this like it's an Oliver Stone sequel to Platoon type of thing. He's not, there's no like Alan Rickman, John Lithgow, like little gleam in his eye. Like I'm gonna have fun with this part. He's like, this is a very serious issue about patriotism and what the men who are left behind and he's just, there's not a glimmer of parody, anything from him. He plays this completely straight and I'm, I'm not positive that was the right choice, but he's definitely memorable in it. I know, I know Nola loves him in this movie. Yeah, I feel like, wow, I'm the only person. I kept saying like the core three and you guys were kind of looking away when I would say, you know, saying that like you see him. No, I like Ed Harris in this movie. He's just in a different one. He's just in a, I think he just takes it so, I mean, he's forced to, but it's not even like Gene Hackman in Crimson Tide, where it's like, he gets a couple of funny lines or has like a couple of personality quirks. It's like quirky at all. He's just like. But that's the, like the whole, there, if he was like an obvious villain who wanted to do the villain thing, this would be a totally different movie. Yeah. Like so much of the movie is about the bluff and Sean Connery correctly reads the bluff because he was like, everybody, I saw it in his eyes. Yeah, he's like, I saw it in his eyes. He's a soldier. He's not a madman. I'm down with the core three, but I feel like it's more Westbrook Beal and Bertanz kind of level. I feel like Chris Bosh, I want to take that back. Edit it out And the theory is if it had been James Bond, they would have gotten the military service piece correctly, and then that could have been a super weak link. So they actually do that one. Apex Mountain, Nicolas Cage, I mean, you could argue, yes. He's coming off the Oscar. He's got a 330 million, fourth biggest movie in 1996 that he's the lead. I don't know if he has more juice in his career than he does right here. Definitely does. Yeah, okay. Connery, no. Late career Sean Connery, still no. Because it's a crusade? I think it's a crusade. Nuclear rockets in a movie? They're not nuclear. They're nerve gas. Are nerve gas rockets? Nerve gas rockets. Yes. He's only for nerve gas. Nerve gas in general. I think everybody's really afraid of, yeah, to the point, I'm sure you guys have read that this movie was then, like, became a source of misinformation. It was ripped off by a source for the British intelligence ahead of the invasion of Iraq, right? Which blows my mind. But I was very, in the same way that I was afraid of room service, this movie definitely made me afraid of nerve gas. I'm still afraid of nerve gas. I'm afraid too. Ed Harris, no. Ed Harris, no. Alcatraz movies. That was the big one. I mean, do you think it's better than Escape from Alcatraz? Yes. I think it's better. Escape from Alcatraz is slow, but was a weirdly important movie because they filmed the whole movie during when they were having a tourist and all that stuff. And ironically, it was in San Francisco with my dad, and they were filming Escape from Alcatraz when we did the Alcatraz tour in 1980. So, yeah. How about that story? Naked guitar playing, absolutely Apex Mountain. How about mutiny, movie mutinies? Well, I mean, I think Chris and Chris... Yeah, this and Mutiny on the Bounty. Yeah. This might be the Mount Rushmore. Vanessa Marcil parlayed this into 90210, but at kind of a different stage than 90210. Started dating Brian Austin Green. I still feel like The Rock's probably the peak for her. She was the lead female in an action movie. I'm giving it to her. How about Christ poses, Platoon? I'm going Last Temptation of Christ, probably. And then Platoon. Needles in the heart, Pulp Fiction. Yeah, Pulp Fiction still takes that. Any other apexes? I think this is the best action movie of 96, which, again, as we discussed in the beginning, was a big, big year for Independence Day, Twister, Mission Impossible. All made more money than The Rock. I think Eraser came out that year too. I think The Rock is better than those movies, personally. I agree. Michael Bay movies, we would say Armageddon, right? That was the biggest movie of 1998. You think creatively this was the apex, Mina? 100%. You don't think so? This is so much better. I love big dumb movies, if that's not clear. And I don't think any Michael Bay movies are good other than this one. Bad Boys 2 is okay. The original Transformers is okay, but this is the only movie that rises to excellent. This is a controversial take for me, because I really do. I mean, I even like, I like even some of the more recent stuff. So yeah, I like a lot of Michael Bay movies. I don't like the Transformers movies. I think those become a real anvil on his whole career. Like, it's really weighting it down. Mina, is this the longest you've talked on a Zoom without somebody bringing up Aaron Rodgers? Because this is over an hour. Like, in the last three months, last two months. Should we just talk about Aaron Rodgers? Where do you think Aaron Rodgers is going? I was thinking about Aaron Rodgers, because you know, I mentioned the Mission Impossible movies getting better later. I feel like they had an Aaron Rodgers-like career resurgence with, you know, Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation. And those movies, Fallout. The original Mission Impossible is just a B for me. I mean, it has the iconic cruise to the floor moment, but the film does not hold up. It's got the great twist in the beginning. You don't like that one? It's fine. I think they just did better as the franchise. I mean, the last one was the best one. The last one was a banger. All of them bangers. But I just was thinking about 96, and it's okay. The Rock is better. I have some nits to pick. So Connery hasn't driven a car for 35 years, just hops into a Hummer and is just flying, zooming that thing around San Francisco. If I don't drive a car for 35 years, I hope I'm half as good when I'm running for my life 35 years later. Also, he just knows the streets of San Francisco like that. He knows the car, too. Big apex for Hummers, by the way. Apex Hummer scene. And Hummers, that was another thing I really vividly remember being afraid of NerveGas and thinking Hummers were the coolest ones. What a Hummer. It looks so dumb. Like, why in society did we all love Hummers so much? I think when The Rock got the Hummer in high school, it felt like that killed the Hummer momentum. It was like a Hummer backlash from that. But could we get, like, a Hummer renaissance the way, like, if we have, like, the F-150 that's electric. Like, if there's an electric Hummer, do you think people will start getting, like, enormous cars? Yeah. Yeah. So it is coming back. First of all, that Aaron Rodgers thing, I feel like you can't resist digging at LeBron. And somehow it went all the way with the Hummer. It just goes in a circle. He got the Hummer and it set up this Hummer backlash. It was bizarre. He's a thick Jeep, but the Tesla weirdo truck kind of got me thinking about Hummers. Oh, yeah. You know, that weird electric truck that Musk came out with that everyone made fun of. Another pick in it. Did the hostages ever eat or go to the bathroom? Thank you. Thank you. They're there for, what, three days? I assume that the soldiers brought rations for them and that they just didn't show it. But, like, that's, like, the first thing that happens in Die Hard is everybody's like, we have to go to the bathroom. And they have to account for that. Did they use, like, the creepy Alcatraz toilet? There's just 10 through a cell. And it's like, hey, can you guys turn the other way? I have to pee. I don't know. They just don't even address it. It's one of those things where maybe they had a scene and they were just like, cut this. It doesn't make sense. But, yeah. What happened? We mentioned none of the Secret Service agents monitoring Connery's balcony haircut. We mentioned the boilers working on The Rock, which even Michael Bay admitted was ridiculous. I still don't believe Connery would remember everything about The Rock's basement 30 plus years later. Like, I can't remember things now that happened 30 years ago that are pivotal moments in my life. And then this one. So Cage, you know, for dramatic effect, they gave him the one green egg. I get that it's a device, right? We need a little bit extra for our fight scene here. But if you really watch this movie carefully, which, obviously, it's 25 years old and all of us have seen it too many times. There's no reason for him to take the egg. There's really no reason at all. It's completely terrifying and dangerous to have a fight scene with an egg in your chest pocket. He lands on the egg at one point. It stays perfect. And then to just shove something in somebody's mouth, like, all they have to do is close their mouth and just, all of it is just beyond nitpick. But somehow they pulled it off and I enjoyed it. So this actually goes right into what my major nitpick is. And it has to do with the green egg scene, absolutely. Is the Nicolas Cage's atropine resistance. Because, like, throughout the movie, and the first thing when they decontaminate that room and then, like, later on the chopper when they offer him the atropine shot. And he's just like, no way! So I was like, what's up with atropine? Like, is it, like, really dangerous in and of itself? So I looked up, like, the side effects to atropine. Here they are. Okay. Visual sensitivity to light, blurred vision, dry eye, dry mouth, constipation, decreased sweating reactions, intense abdominal pain, and a delay when you start to urinate. Those are the side effects of taking atropine. We already know. No, this is just, like, what happens when you take the shot. But we know what happens when you get hit with VX gas and you break your own spine and your skin melts off. So why is he like, I don't want to take the atropine? I would take, like, five atropine shots before I even went. I would just be like, I'm immune to VX gas. In the first scene, he doesn't want to, he wants to pull off the detonation. But yeah, you're right. At the end, it's bananas. Could this be, oh, you have any other nitpicks? I have Let's close on that. Could you actually, how would he have gotten out of it? What would he have done? Wait, we had so many quotes, though. Oh, we didn't do, let's end on the quotes. Give us a couple of quotes. Oh wait, I got the whole, so like I said, my favorite, I feel like the real Rockheads love the lines in the morgue scene about the, you know, the feed and the, that's the most awful thing I've ever seen. I like it when, I like all of Cage's more subtle line readings, like when he says, FBI, freeze, sucker. Or when he introduces himself as a Stanley Goodspeed. I'm, I'm work with the federal bureau. I love that part. The rocket man quote is probably the stupidest, but it still makes me laugh, so I would put that in there too. I like it when Sean Connery says, I'm too old for this. That makes me laugh. Yeah, that felt like almost a acknowledgement of other action movies, right? He's just like going full Danny Glover. How about inject that in your soup before your heart melts? All right, The Rock. So not available on any streaming thing. You just have, you can rent it for four bucks. I don't know why. I'm surprised it's not on Disney Plus because it's Touchstone, right? Yeah, that's weird. They must, Connery must have done some deal where after five years he got 100% of the profits or some sort of Sean Connery thing, and he gets to keep the cabin on The Rock. Well, there you go. Mina Kimes, Chris Ryan, a pleasure as always. We'll be back next week on The Rewatchables, now we are two weeks away from another massive movie. We did Goodfellas last week, and another one of the eight or nine biggest movies we've ever done is coming in two weeks, so I don't want to spoil it yet, but that's coming as well. Mina and Chris, thank you.