Armageddon

00:00:00
Speaker 1: On the beck Dog Cast, the questions asked if movies have women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism? The patriarchy zef invest start changing it with the beck Del cast. How does the song start? I could see awake just to hear you dreaming or something like that. Why is sleeping fouing dreaming? I could spend my life in this sweet surrendoum, I just scared my cat, I guess last in this moment, wouldn't you sing about your daughter like that? If you saw raw silent footage of Ben Affleck shoving a am Cracker down your daughter's pants, wouldn't you write that song? To listen with you? Is a moment including the Graham Cracker thing. I don't want to close man, okay twisted? Is this twisted father's singing a song about his daughter or is this a man singing a song about a woman he's in love with? Look, my mom and I have really discussed this over the years and come to the conclusion that it can be read either way if you don't have the context of armageddon. I don't want to close my eyes. I don't want to fall asleep because I miss you, babe, and I don't want to miss a thing. Can't be described to describe how you feel about how much you love your child. You don't want to miss a moment of their childhood you love them so much. Also personal history between Steven Tyler and liv Tyler. She didn't know that she was his daughter, and I believe he didn't know either until she was like eleven or twelve, So he missed a large portion of her childhood. So it perhaps even makes sense that he didn't want to miss a thing. He'd already missed so many things eleven years worth. I know. Damn God. The Live Tyler paternity story. It lives on with our greatest roller coaster band, Aerosmith. Have you ever been the Aerosmith roller coaster? I have not, but I've heard you tell of it many times. I won't shut up about it because it's so shocking to me that they haven't, like changed the band. It's like, but but they can't. Where is this at again? It's at Disney World. It's at Disney World. It's called the rock and roller Coaster. My parents and I like made eight Well, my mom my dad thinks Aerosmith is corny and for losers because he's a punk, right, But my mom opposite of a punk, and so went the first time we went to Disney World when I was like thirteen, it was a big deal for her. She doesn't like going on roller coasters, but she loves Aerosmith so much, and she's like, even though the roller coaster goes upside down, I'm gonna go on it because I love Steven Tyler and the thing is about the rock and roller coaster. I would love to know more about the history of it because it is so themed around the band and the lore of the band Aerosmith, that it would actually be kind of challenging to re theme, like it's it's so specific. I don't know how they pulled it off, but I'm sure there's a very long YouTube video I could watch and find out. It's an awesome roller coaster. It's like Steven Tyler in in the video you watch in the line and he's like, come on, guys, we're gonna be late to the recording studio, and you're like, yeah, exactly. Well, anyways, I don't think this song plays in the roller coaster because it's kind of slow but it would be funny. It should It could be one of those like lazy River ride songs. The Arasmith lazy river is kind of a cruel, diabolical idea. How many have you ever read studies about how much human ship ends up in the lazy river? No, and I don't want to know. Never go in a lazy river. I would. I feel confident that there's a lot of pists in there, but people poop and definitely, I mean the piss goes without saying, there is some physical I read about it once. I'm sorry, I'm a I'm a scientist about as much as Bruce Willis is and Armageddon, Like, I read about it once, and there is some sort of physical effect that, like a lazy river has on you that like loosens up that butt hole. It makes it easy to just right out right out. What's the name of this show? This is This is the Bechtel Cast, And I'm Caitlin Toronte. Who are you? Thank you for the reminder. I'm Jamie Loftus, and this is our show, um where we take a look at your favorite movies or you know, impactful one could say deep impactful movies. And we are bringing a disaster movie to you today. We're bringing Armageddon, directed by Michael Bay because Caitlin and I were looking at genres we haven't covered in many moons, and action and disaster have been kind of, you know, few and far between recently, So we chose the biggest goofiest one we get requests for, and we're going to analyze it from an intersectional feminist lens, and I'm sure it's going to do great. Um, what's the metric we use as a jumping off point for discussion, Caitlin, It's the Bechtel cast. No, if that's the name of the show, let me try again. Yep, yep, it's the Bechtel Test, which is media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel, sometimes called the Bechdel Wallace Test. She included it in her comic Likes to Watch Out For from n originally just as a kind of one off joke, which has since been used as the media metric that we now know and love, which requires our version. There are many versions, but ours requires that there be two characters of a marginalized gender who have names, who speak to each other, and whose conversation is about something other than a man, and for our purposes, we like it when it's a media conversation, maybe one of the size of Texas even God. And you know, this movie has a lot of words in it, but words spoken between women. Don't be ridiculous. You're yeah right, Oh you silly billy. What do you have space dementia? You'd have space dementia to think that this movie would pass the back tole test. But nevertheless, it made half a billion dollars and a lot of people still really liked this movie. It's true and I will say it is a Aerosmith got my mom in the theaters, but she loved this movie. Wait, okay, so let's so, Jamie, what is your relationship and your mom's relationship where importantly relationship? Um, I don't have a huge relationship with Armageddon. I have a huge relationship with the Tyler family, more so Stephen. To be honest, because Aerosmith, they're blessed in band. We're very proud of them, and well, you know, but not the Boston Punks. And that's where my dad comes in. But I you know, I grew up around aeron Smith, posters and music. So my mom, my mom loved this movie. I remember that we owned it on VHS, and I remember being too young to watch it and that was really long, and that I, in spite of saying for a couple of years that I wanted to be an astronaut, I think I said it because it sounded good. Because I was stunningly disinterested in space. Um, I didn't really want to watch any space movies. I remember my mom being like, you can't watch Armageddon. You could watch Apollo thirteen, and I was like, I would I would really not want to do that. Sounds sounds boring. Is actually a pretty solid movie. But anyway, that's the Tom Hanks one. I also haven't seen Deep Impact. I hadn't seen Contact until we watched it, and I quite liked I'm more interested in space now, getting defensive. I saw I saw different chunks of it growing up, but I never really took the initiative to watch it all the way through. Um so this is my first time watching it all the way through. Oh and I remember when The Army when the Ben Affleck commentary track leaked a couple of years back, because that was a treat more more kind of Boston Cannon present here. But um, yeah, I've never seen it all the way through before. I was preparing for this episode and wow, wow, wow, I will say I think Michael Bay wanted me to laugh and cry. I did laugh. I didn't cry. I didn't cry, even when the movie said so. I didn't cry because when someone was dying, I'm like, I don't know who that is. You cut to them and away from them so quickly that I didn't catch you mean the scene and then I looked at it and I was like, oh, I guess he's gone. You mean the scene where they're like we lost Grouber and everyone's like, Grouper? Are we supposed to care about Grouper? We haven't even met him yet? And I thought it was kind of bizarre that they, I mean, because Bruce Willis was always going to be in this movie, even when it was being written, Like why Bruce Willis there's already a Grouper associated with him, Hans groupers Gruber. You're gonna put another grouper in a Bruce Willis movie, bad idea. I still don't know who Grouper is. I'll be honest. This movie was cutting back. I mean, I think that that was like I learned that that was a huge criticism of it at the time, to where it was cut so quickly that it's like it kind of gives you a headache and it's hard to tell, yeah, because the pace. I mean, even Michael Bay has admitted that the movie was edited very quickly and that his visual effects supervisor had break up. He gave no more information than that, which is kind of a funny way about how Michael Bay talks. He'll say something horrific and then just like start another sentence. But Yeah, there were characters that I assumed had died in the Like there's a point in the movie where you lose a couple of characters, and I was like, oh, I haven't seen quote unquote the woman in a while. I guess that she died, but she didn't. She just disappeared for thirty five minutes, but I guess she was there. And fine, what's your history with this movie, Caitlin. I had seen it before a couple of times. Uh. This movie came out when I was twelve, so I was among the many tween girls of the time where watching this movie was like a rite of passage. Really, I mean, it was like I didn't realize it was one of those yeah yeah, interesting at least among my my friend group. I believe you. I just didn't know. Oh yeah, you watched it sleepovers. If you had like a boy girl hang, if someone's like mom would let you have girls and boys over, then you'd watch this because it's horny and Ben Affleck puts an animal cracker on Live Tyler's boobs and when people get all tense during that. Probably I don't know. It was so many decades ago I barely remembers are so twisted, um, but I do remember the kids crying during the sacrificial Bruce Willis scene because she does say daddy, she really does um. And the song and the Aerosmith song played at every school dance from two, I mean probably even after I graduated high school, which was oh four, it was like the slow song. If the Armageddon song came on, you better fucking fund yourself a hetero dance partner and slow dance your night away. I feel like it still gets like pretty decent wedding play to this day. Sure, And it is my maybe like number to go to karaoke song because this song slaps as a karaoke song. It's hot. Tip for everybody, can I shut up? The composer of this song, she's kind of an icon um. She's an interest, or at least an interesting character for She's also like a boomer woman who occasionally tweets, and her tweets are not like offensive, but they are inscrutable in a way that people seem to find worthy of discussion. Anyways, her name is Diane Warren. She I believe she eventually won, but she's like, she's like a famous songwriter and composer, um who for a very okay, so for a very very long time. She's been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, including this one uh one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, twelve thirteen times, never won, and then they gave her an honorary award last year. I think because they were like, oh my god, we gotta give Diane some we keep snubbing her. She's written like a lot of iconic songs. This one might be the most famous. But she also know well she did if I could turn back time by share because you loved me, Celine Dione. She's kind of in charge of weddings, Um, how do I live without you? Leanne Ryan Rhythm of the Night. I mean she's bangers, she's got bops, she's got hit, But I mean I don't want to miss a thing that's right up there. So then we have to extend the Lord because I didn't realize Steven Tyler didn't write that song. Is Diane Warren? Is it a coincidence? Or is Diane Warren writing how she thinks Steven Tyler fields when he thinks about not being around for live Tyler's childhood? Hard to say, hard, so hard to say. The point is I did see this movie a couple of times as a youth, but I never liked it because, you know why, if there's going to be a disaster movie that I'm going to watch a lot during this time frame of the late nineties, it's going to be Titanic. I was too busy watching Titanic every day to care about Armageddon. So it's true, and this movie is clearly trying to, you know, pull from the Titanic playbook a bit tearl Harbor even more. Michael Bays saw Titanic and he's like, shit, I have to do that, and then he did a fucking terrible job. But he really did try to replicate Titanic with Pearl Harbor, and he mentions. He mentions in one of these interviews, he gives retrospectively, UM. I believe it's interview where he apologizes for making the movie. Um. But then later he's like, I was misquoted. I didn't mean it. I do think he was misquoted because I read the full interview and it did. It was a very clicky title. It's like he didn't apologize, he just contextualized why the third act is really sloppy, which it is. But he mentions James Cameron in that interview. He says, I called James Cameron and asked, what do you do when you're doing all the effects yourself? But the movie did fine, So he's sort of also admitting that the effects look kind of like baffling and and and shitty. They're shitty. It's pretty shifty about it. He I know there's no fire in space, but it is a movie, and most people don't know that he's a bad man. But that is iconic, that's funny and it's true. I honestly I didn't read the highlight reel from the Armageddon commentary soundtrack, which goes viral every so often because it is like very ridiculous. Oh, I have some quotes that I am prepared to share when the time comes. I yeah, I mean, there was a great round up on the Ringer about it. But I will say that I watched the whole movie before going through that, and it did not ping for me. Once that there was a fire in space. I didn't think about it because I'm a popcorn girl, which I don't know. I have no idea. We're not scientists, famously, not in stem. We won't even read a book like be serious. Um, alright, should we get into it. Let's get into it. Let's take a break first though, really ear upe for this. All right, we'll be right back. Okay, and we're back Kitlin. What the hell happens in the movie? I'll again, I actually do think I need a few things. Um, I needed a few blanks filled because I honestly, until the credit scene where liv Tyler has the picture of the four characters who died at her wedding, I was not who made it. I knew Bruce Willis died, sure, but a few of the guys have the same haircut. I thought the guy that was banned from seeing his son died, and I was like, well no, but then he he didn't. He lived, and and continued to blow off the courthorder that he couldn't see his son, and we were cheering, and we were cheering. So I actually don't really know who died. All right, Well I will tell you, okay. So we begin with voiceover from I think Charlton Heston is what I saw in the credits, if I'm remembering correctly. Well, let's talk about a talk about a bad person, seriously, an iconically bad person. Yeah, he is describing a huge meteor or meteorite or asteroid. I don't know the difference, and I didn't look it up, but one of those things hit the Earth millions of years ago and caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. And they're like, and it will probably happen again, it's just a matter of when. It's so dramatic and also completely unnecessary. And that's how you know you just started watching a Michael Bay movie right exposition there, And I bet it cost a million dollars studio for a reason. Okay, So then we cut to present day. Ak we are in space ever heard of it? Suddenly a meteor shower strikes and blows up a space shuttle, and then New York City gets pummeled by these meteors or meteorites or asteroids. Did you did you know? Simply don't know. There's like a dog in the New York scene, and for some reason, whatever happened with the dog, which I think the dog just like bites a Godzilla toy. Yes, that costs what That's what Michael Bay said in the commentary. He's well, he's not gonna tell you why, He's just gonna tell you it costs. He also said Ben Afflex, Oh, Ben Affleck's teeth cost twenty dollars. This is a movie much like an Angel gets gets its wings and after gets their teeth. When Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay say, I hate looking at your mouth. It looks disgusting from an up angle. According to me, he keeps saying in the commentary and in other interviews that like I had these little baby teeth, and you know, Jerry Bruckheimer, we've talked about on the show for years, for the better part of a decade at this point, we talked about if you're in a j Jerry Bruckheimer movie and you're going to get a close up. Guess what, babe, you need a new set of choppers. You're you're gonna get new teeth, and they're gonna be big. They're about a foot tall. They're gonna be all the same length. We're gonna be blindingly white. And so Ben Affleck got his teeth for this one, and they sent him to Tom Cruise's teeth guy. Oh sure. Michael Bays says in the interview that he that Jerry Bruckheimer had worked on a quote unquote plane movie, which is how he described Top Gun, which is weird. He said Bruckheimer had worked on a orse Jerry had worked on a plane movie. When Michael Bay talks about Jerry Bruckheimer, it does sound like Seinfeld episode descriptions because of how he talks. He kind of talks like Jason Alexander does and I weld, and he's always talking about a guy named Jerry who's doing something, um weird. So I told Jerry, God, he's got those baby teeth. Jerry, I don't know what to do. You're like, that sounds like SEINFELDT. Yeah, anyways, it's true. Okay, So the movie what happens we cut two various like government and military officials such as the head of NASA, this guy named Truman played by Billy Bob Thornton I love when he's serious, as well as General Kimsey played by Keith David. There's also a guy with a huge telescope named Carl who is extremely verbally abusive to his wife and his wife Dottie. Yeah, but but it's Michael Bay movie, so his verbal abuse is a joke. It's supposed to be funny. Yeah, And everyone's like, what is what the hell is going on? And soon they figure out that an asteroid the size of Texas is on a collision course to Earth. No matter where it hits, it will wipe out all of life as we know it, and it will hit Earth in eighteen days. Cut to Harry Stamper that's Bruce Willis. He is the owner of an oil rig. He discovers that one of his employees, a j that's been affleck and his teeth and his teeth credited separately. Yeah, the whole package has had sex with Harry's daughter Grace, that's Live Tyler. And he pulls out a gun and starts shooting at a j on an oil rig. Okay, just a second. It is very silly and action movie and testosterone. Michael bay choice to make Bruce this open fire on an oil rig that he owns to protect his daughter, who he would absolutely kill along with everyone he knows if he shot the wrong area of the oil rig, which is most areas you really shouldn't shoot a gun on an oil rigue. What I find more interesting and like a lot of what I thought was like interesting about watching this movie was like the very I don't know, Like Michael Bay does a lot of like hypernationalistic imagery and ideas that he pushes in his movies, and I don't think he wrote this. I mean there's like credited writers. It's kind of like we don't really know who wrote this boofy. That's part of the mystery, But I don't know. Just like thinking about how it was very plausible to have the hero of your movie be the owner of an oil rig. I don't think that that would happen, at least in a way that would be mass appealing today, because I like Bruce Willis character is very much like a working class hero, which is a part he plays very well. But the fact that they choose and that it's important to the plot that he is like not tycoon, I guess, but like he's certainly doing fine. He owns a fucking oil rig. Like I mean, I think he might be a tycoon because he's the best driller in the world. So Ben Affleck has some thoughts on that. I can't wait to talk about it. But no, I I wrote down like the irony of these oil drillers saving the planet from an asteroid only to go back to Earth and absolutely destroy our planet via oil drilling. That's like that's what he has returned. I mean, I mean, I guess he doesn't return, but you as I mean as Bushemy just going back on the oil rig. Also, Bushem's character diabolical for a lot of reasons because there's a lot of heavy Like they're insinuating that he is a child set offender correct over and over as a joke, which is I was not particularly surprised that this director had no issue with that. But in any case, on top of the nudge nudge wink wink about that, he's also they're like they're like Steve Bushemi's character is a genius, which means he knows better than to do what he's doing, right, which is diabolically plunge the Earth for its natural resources. Yeah, so they saved the world, but they're going to come back and kill it somewhere. Thanks guys, It'll just take a little longer than an asteroid would. They killed Owen Wilson, that was bald. He is one of the ones who die. Yes, they got his ass. Yeah. Okay, so we meet harry A. J and Grace. We cut back to I don't know, they're at the Pentagon or something. All these officials are trying to figure out what to do about this asteroid and how to save humanity, and they're like, well, we can't blow it up from the outside, but we can blow it up from the inside. Fun idea if we drill into the asteroid and plant the nuclear weapons inside. Not as fun an idea. Yeah, and there. I guess should we wait to share Ben Afflecks thoughts on this, because he does point out in the DVD commentary something that I don't know, like, it never occurred to you when you're a kid, right, Like it wouldn't have occurred to me. I guess maybe it would have occurred to me now, But I Bennett already said it. I wonder if I had that thought even as a youth. I don't know what Ben says on this infamous, famous and infamous DVD audio commentary, but it's the audio commentary for the Criterion Collection. Addition, because he's in the Criterion Collection, which so many people have pointed out, what a bizarre choice that is, because is the Criterion Collection is usually like art house films, forgotten classics, you know, stuff that's usually a little more obscure, definitely not mainstream blockbusters like this. What did Michael Bay do? Like I do not know. Jerry Bruckheimer promised the president of Criterion Collection, New Teeth if they put Army get In in in the collection, come on right. So the commentary is I think I have this right. It's Michael Bay, Jerry Bruckheimer, Bruce Willis, and Ben Affleck. Ben Affleck's portions are him like roasting the film. Apparently he's doing an extended parody of the film Sling Blade, which stars Blay Bob Thornton. He's also making silly sound effects during any elaborate stunt scenes, which my favorite example is when he makes like a bunch of slurpy sounds when someone's going down the oil rig and then Prucess like two stunt men almost making this. So he's roasting it. And there's one part where he says, I asked Michael why it was easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts than it was to train astronauts to become oil drillers, and he told me to shut the funk up. So that was the end of that talk. I love, and he does a great Michael Bay impression. Maybe I actually don't really know what Michael Bay sounds like. I would never listen to him. It makes him sound like a fucking creep, so I'm like, yeah, it's probably what he sounds like. Yeah, what does he say? He says, I was like, you mean it's a real plan at NASA to train oil drillers and he was like, just shut your mouth. It's great. Yes. So what happens in the movie is that NASA recruits the world's best driller, Harry Stamper Bruce Willis, who is gonna like train the team of ast So originally he's going to train the team Fasternots to be drillers and to use a drill of Harry's patented design to drill into the asteroid plant. These nukes take off and then detonate the bomb from Afar and Harry's like, you, you guys can't do it. I need to do it, and my team needs to be up there with me, and they say okey dokey, They're like, sounds great. Bruce. I'm not saying the oil drilling is easy. I know it's not. I disagree with it politically, but I know it's not an easy thing to do. But I think Ben Affleck is correct to point out that the reverse would be much easier, or to say, no, Bruce Willis, go fuck yourself. We're going to have you know, an even you can't bring all of your weird friends to space. But Billy Bob Thornton is like, all right, I guess you can bring all of your weird friends to every last one, but not your daughter for reasons unclear, even though we're like, oh, she's so smart, she's so capable, but it's not even considered that you would be able to go. No. What happens next is what I found to be one of the most baffling scenes, because Bruce Willis is like, I'm doing this and I'm doing it with my friends. So then the government goes around and starts rounding up the team, which is Michael Clark Duncan. He plays a character named Bear Steve Bush Emmy is Roundhouse or something. What's his name hound dog? I don't know, rockhound? Um is that true? I think his name is Rockhound. And then liv Tyler is like, we call him that because he's a hound, because he's horny. I thought, oh, that is what the Steve Bushey character. I know that we've somewhat retired the bushemy test, however, the name of it, the name of it. However, for this one episode, I feel like the idea of the original term is pretty spot on correct where we'll talk about that later, but I was like, jeez, Louise, there was like that. I think we've referenced it in every episode we've discussed Michael Bay. But there's that oral history that came out in g Q years ago now, and there's like, I forget who it is, Um, yeah, it's Billy Bob Thornton who mentions Steve BUSHEMI looking around the table read for this movie and saying, what the funk are we doing here? Which is fair. I just hope that they. I mean, I'm guessing that they, you know, we're all able to to get get a nice little house out of this and hopefully they don't think about it too much. They tied Steve Bushemy up, they taped my boy up. Well he had space dement charge Jamie, but then like he didn't right, like did he? I think he got over it pretty quickly. I don't know, sneezed. It was gone unclear what was going I have just like I don't know what is going on in for the entire last hour of this movie. My gosh. I also only that's cannon. Yeah. I went on an Instagram stories tirade about this movie, but mostly about how the third act of this movie. So they start drilling on the asteroid, which is effectively the beginning of the third act. But when they start drilling, there are fifty minutes left of the movie, which means there's a fifty minute third act, which is absolutely obscene. That's so long for a third act. I can't fathom it, and yet it happened. Um Okay, So they're rounding up the team. It's all these guys. It's also Owen Wilson. It's a j that's been Affleck's character in this like getting the team together montage. And here's what's baffling. They were all just on Harry's oil rig the day before. Basically no time has passed since Harry was like rooted for this project. Somehow these guys have dispersed all over the country and the whole thing with this movie is like there's not enough time. There's only eighteen days until the asteroid's going to hit the earth, so like, how did they have to? Also, Ben Affleck has started his own oil drilling company in the interim in a single day. Yeah, any questions, Yeah any? He's like, I love that. He's like even though Ben Affleck even like with workers rights, you could ruin Bruce will As his life if he shot you in the leg at work, right, But he's like, best move on and start my own oil company overnight. Uh, no one will shoot me in the leg. That no one can shoot you if you own the business, which I which is not true. People can still shoot you if you own the business. True. All the gun play in this movie is so fucking goofy. I mean, like the lines where I laughed out loud il Weld to borrow a term. Someone says someone in like the NASA brain Trust is like, how bad is it going to be? And someone's like, basically the worst part of the Bible. I was laughing when Bruce or no, it's it's maybe Steve bushevy he says, man, why do you got a gun in space? Laughing he's got space dementia? Of course I'm laughing. And it's when when Steve Bushey has space dementia? Is when he he has this machine gun which they've brought to space for some reason, different from the like the handgun that's behind this like lock and key, secret, oh, top secret. Only use this handgun if you need to shoot the oil drillers or something. Chekhov's full ass artillery is Checkov's militia is in this. But they have these like enormous guns that they bring to space for what for the for the movie, for the big movie, for the big scene. Oh my god, it's so goofy. I mean, I can be mad. It's to be clear, we're going to be joking around for a lot of this movie. It's a horrible movie. I mean it's like the worst and we're not even like pushing back against really many opinions by saying that people hated it when it came out. It's still suck shit. But but the Criterion collection loved it. Someone help someone held Mr Criterion at you know, Space Bazooka point and they're like put it in who knows? And and this movie, and I think the most forced way that we've covered in a while is about fathers and sons when it very much does not have to be. You can cut out Ben Affleck's character and just let live Tyler got But but they would never do that, and so they have to create a convoluted b boopy boopy boop. And now it's still about fathers. Since unbelievable, we'll talk about it. So the team assembles and they start prepping for this job and this journey through space 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 eight hundred feet. This is the most like American sounding bizarro nonsense in the entire world, and you're just like, yeah, we're gonna shot around the moon. Honestly, I was like, all right, I guess that's I'm sure they're going to do it. Yeah, And they did. The Wikipedia, uh scholarly Journal of course page for this movie is mostly about how a bunch of scientists have debunked all of the like quote unquote science in this movie. Sure well, And it also sounded like per affleck that Michael Bay, because his movies are so needlessly expensive, he had a number of NASA consultants on set and just ignored them all the time. So it's like not surprising at all that nothing makes sense. But I also thought it was funny where we're always like, you know, you have to build consulting into your budget if you're going to do something you don't know, but he did, and then he was just like, shut up, don't need to shut the funk up. His fire is happening in fire is happening in space, You NASA fucking dorks, Like it was yeah, yes, um, okay, So they're going to do this whole plan to shuttles are going to go to the asteroid and once they freedom and independence come on perfect writing no notes. Once they land, they will have eight hours to plant the nuclear bomb and leave before it's too late and the asteroid hits the earth. Meanwhile, A J is like, hey, Grace, marry me. In a scene where Bruce Willis is watching them make out, watching from behind a oil rag. I don't know what the set is that they're on. They're sitting in an oil contraption. He's peeking from behind a curtain like he's Cia Knightly and Pride and prejudice watching them make out. And then he's like, all right, I guess they're making out, and he walks away. And then two seconds later ben Affleck is like, will you marry me? And she just smiles and then he puts the ring on. She doesn't even say yes. She does not say yes. Okay, So that happens. Then we get more scenes of like training and space simulations. Now it's only like twelve days before the ask terroid makes impact. Tension is high. Harry is like, hey, Billy, Bob Thornton, you gotta let these guys spend time with their families. We gotta get morale up. And this is when we get the scene where Ben Affleck puts animal crackers on liv Tyler down her pants on her boobs, and it's supposed to be sexy, and a lot of people felt that way. I don't know if people didn't think that, yes, and this is around the time I would say that the character of Grace that is established disappears goes away. They did. I was interested in because I mean, and I do think this is like looking back at Michael bay movies we've covered, I think this is kind of like Serial Behavior for his movie, where I feel like he almost tries to trick you by setting up a woman at the beginning of the movie who like there's stakes to her. It seems like she might be able to do something. But then sometime early in the second act they're like, well but but that's not gonna happen. She's she's daughter and she's wife, and that's sort of how the rest of the movie goes. But I was surprised at how much they established Grace at the beginning and for how little they did with her, because she could speak Mandarin, like, she was like well respected at her like at the job, she had all of these like well, we'll talk about that in the characters. Actually, I was just like so frustrating that they're like but by the time you get to animal Crackers, she's gone, She's left the building. Yeah, she's girlfriend forever now. So the boys are enjoying their night off. Meanwhile, a small asteroid or several of them hit East Asia, which promptly in Shanghai, Shanghai, which prompts Dottie, the woman married to the very verbally abuse of guy Carl. It prompts her to leak the information about the huge asteroid that's you know, that's global killer that's coming to Earth to kill every one. She leaks this to the press, so now everyone in the world knows about this impending doom. And I will say Dottie outside of what is the name of the woman astronaut Watts? Watts? Okay, So Dottie and Watts are neck and neck for most active women in the story. You think it's going to be Grace, and the movie wants you to think it's Grace, but it isn't. I would say Dottie has the most narrative impact of any woman in the story, but the least amount of screen time. Oddly so, she made she made a meal of what she was given because if she hadn't told And I'm like, also, I was trying to put myself in her shoes. And then I was like, this movie is so convoluted. I'm going to stop thinking about this. I was like, what would I have done in Dottie's position, because you don't want to cause mass panic, which she kind of does, but she does. But then also you don't want to the world to not have the chance to make their peace and say they love you know, So where I burdened with Dottie's burden, I don't know what I would do. I hope I never have to think of I hope I never have to do that. Fingers crossed. Also, by this time, we've already gotten like a lot of like chosen one narratives with Harry, and it's like there's I mean, you do need to think that he is like so the protagonist because he's Bruce willis like, of course he's the protagonist. He has he has the energy for it, right, But like there's all these like lines where he's like six billion people in the world, why me? But no one really is able to answer that question. I don't know what like we simply don't know. Ben Affleck doesn't have the answer to that question, and it sounds like it really haunts him. Okay, so Harry and a J and the rest of the team plus several astronauts. I think Gruber might be one of the astronauts. But even so when they're like we lost Gruber, we're still I think so. But which of Bruce willis his friends? Is that? Because Bruce Willis has like two either two or three, don't really know, two or three guys that have kind of like marine haircuts 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. They're like framed as like the villains at many points, so like the losers don't know what they're doing. They all die in space even though they are trained astronauts. I don't know. Yeah, I mean there's there's definitely it's a complex text because I am like 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 a j on the other. They stop at the Russian space station to refuel, where they meet Lev played by Peter Stormare who I think is doing a Grew impression. Okay thoughts, Okay, I didn't think of that, I thought because I was like, clearly, you know, there's like some Cold War hangover vibes to yeah, the Peter Storm character, And I was like, but I assumed he was an American doing a Russian accent. He's actually Swedish doing a Russian accent. Anyways, no matter, either way, it's pretty weird. Um but Grew, Yeah, but Grew's but Grew's a hero. That's implying that Grew is playing I mean, I guess Grew is actually playing second fiddle too, the kind of a lot of characters. Yeah, he is. But you know, you would never hear, you know, minions the rise of Lev Andropov. You wouldn't hear that. True, it's not going to happen. True. Sorry, So grew even and that's the growth, the cold hard growth grew false this. Yes, I think that um Steve Carell was robbed. He really could have He really could have shown his stuff. But it could have been a long audition for Grew. True. Anyway, So Lev is on the space station and he's helping them refuel. But there's a leak and an explosion with lots of fire in space, and the whole Russian space station explodes. Then they sling shot around the Moon and approached the asteroid from behind, but one of the shuttles hits debris from the asteroid and loses control and crashes. We think maybe a J died back on Earth. Grace is sad because it was the shuttle that A J was on. But it turns out there are a few survivors A J. Lev and Bear. That's Michael Clarke, Duncan um Owen Wilson dead dead r I P. I guess that Michael basa bottle rocket And it was like, yeah, let's get this guy. That's fun. But also I kind of forgot that he was in the movie, so did I? Um? Meanwhile, oh, the other shuttle overshot their landing by twenty six miles and the Boston marathon just the Boston one, though other marathons different. Me and Ben Affleck agree it's and Arrowsmith of course. Um. Yeah, So they landed on part of the asteroid that's like an iron plate, which means it's going to be very hard to drill through. I don't know how NASA knew the like elemental compounds of the different parts of the asteroid, but they knew. Was this one of the contested science points of Like, now this is one of my questions. I mean, maybe it was, but I was like, did they send scouts to the asteroid to check it out? Like I don't like a basketball like a basketball playing teenager. I don't know. I mean, I honestly, I think I went so smooth brain on this viewing experience where I'm like, whatever Michael Bay is going to tell me about space will be wrong, but I'm going to proceed as if it is true. And what By the time they arrived and they're like exactly, I was like, yeah, I mean they're yeah, they're astronauts. I just if you think about like things that take like what if you spent twelve days on and how good were you at it? It's like, yeah, I have not been able to learn the you know, steps in like one song of anything goes in twelve days, you know, like high school theater productions don't come together that quickly. How are we saving the world? I've been learning Spanish for three years and I can still barely string a sentence together, Like these things take time. I guess you're no Owen Wilson, but except actually he flopped, he died. He flopped. That's how I described people who die in a rocket accident. They flopped, flopped ship trying harder. Um, so it's gonna be really hard to drill because they're drilling through iron, and it makes sense their machinery is breaking and their way behind schedule with how deep they're supposed to be at this point, and Harry and the astronaut guy in charge, Colonel Sharp played by William Fichtner, is how you say, it looks like um Killian Murphy a little bit. He yes, they have similar eyeballs, um big sad eyes. So he Colonel Sharp and Harry are screaming at each other. And if the stakes weren't high enough, some gravitational space stuff happens and messes with a communication between NASA and the guys in space, and they only have a few minutes left before they can detonate the nuclear ball remotely, and then they'll lose their chance, sucker freaking blue. So the President of the US gives an order to detonate the nuclear bomb while they still can, while they still are in contact and like have the communication, even though the whole has only been drilled to fifty seven ft when they needed to be eight hundred, and Billy Bob Thornton's like, oh no, this is a horrible plan. The clock on the bomb starts taking down. Lift Tyler tackles somebody. Yeah, yeah, she's like, that's my father up there, and you're like, yep, that is her role at this time in the plot. If she just has to loudly reminders other people of her relationship to the men in space, it's true. But yeah, Billy Bob Thornton, he's kind of unequivocally like he's like lawful good. I feel like, as the movie presents it, Yeah, or maybe a lawful neutral because he does go wrong. No love well, I guess lawful good because he does eventually make the right decision, but he needs to be talked into it. Yeah. I can't remember exactly how that plays out. He's yelling at Keith David though, and he's like, this is the fucking wrong thing to do and you know it. Yeah, and then Keith David's like, I don't know all the freaking president so much so, the clock on the bomb starts ticking down. They have five minutes to get the shuttle off the asteroid before the bomb detonates, and then back on Earth like people are stopping the countdown, they're overriding the overrides, until finally Colonel Sharp on the asteroid stops the countdown so that the drillers can get the job done. Meanwhile, A J. Bear and Lev are in a space vehicle called the Armadillo. They are driving to the drill site. They're like crashing around, it's chaos. The asteroid is very spiky. They're like, think a lot of spikes. Back the drill site, Steve Bushemy develops what I think it's Colonel Sharp calls space dementia, and then there's like and then there's an earthquake on the asteroid and their drill blows away into outer space, so it seems like the mission is a failure. Meanwhile, smaller bits of the asteroid are hitting Earth. Paris gets completely wiped out, chaos erupts on Earth. All hope is lost. But then a J shows up in the Armadillo, which has the other drill on it. They keep drilling. They get to eight hundred feet, but then there is a meteor shower on the asteroid, and any question and then and it crashes into everybody and it damages the bomb's remote detonator, which means that someone has to stay behind to detonate the bomb. They draw straws, which they just happened to have on the Space Shuttle, and a J draws the short one, which I only knew because everyone told me that. Not because there's any clear visual information that shows that he has the short one. No, because they don't. They can't keep a shot on anyone for more than like point two seconds sevens And and in the music, it's so loud and so fast, and I mean, it would be kind of fun to have seen this movie in theaters because you're just like, how would you know what was going on? But it has to be like consuming to not know what's happening. I do want 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 Siskell gave it a thumbs up, and he was like, I don't know, it's kind of fun. I think that's also a completely reasonable take on its short Okay, so someone has to stay behind to detonate the bomb, and A J has drawn the short straw. But Harry had promised Grace that he would bring back her fiance safely to earth. Did you mean my fiance, my fiance. That's how they set it back then? Yeah, exactly. Um. And so Harry volunteers his tribute to be the one to stay behind, and he saves a J. And he's like, take care of my little girl, by the way, I always thought of you as my son. And a J Is like, no, Daddy, I love you. Don't do this. Everyone has to scream daddy of Bruce Willis before he before his spirit could be released to Christian heaven, where he clearly wants it to go. Like it's so much I did love. Okay, one thing I liked about this. I don't know if this is a performance choice or it was written in the script. I have no idea, but a J not a character I love a character I think we should write out and replace with Grace. Right. However, I will say that he is the most you know. I feel like a lot of the male characters on this crew specifically are defined by their creepiness and emotional repression. A J not like that. He is not creepy, and he openly expresses his emotions almost all the time. He's a pretty straight shooter when it comes to his emotions, including telling a grown man that he loves him, which is like this weird verb boating thing for a lot of adult men in movies and sometimes in the world as well. So I did like that, like he was openly crying when he was upset, and like it was easy for him to tell Grace that he loved her, like just stuff that. Like, I mean, again, the bar is eight hundred feet inside of an asteroid. But I did like that there was like a hero that was like and and Owen Wilson as well, like Owen, like the younger guys on this crew were more in touch with their emotions, and it wasn't, you know, universally positioned as like this really negative thing. I was surprised by that too, because it seems in direct contradiction to the toxic masculinity that Michael Bay layers so deeply into all of his movies. Yeah, I mean, I thought that there were a few elements of this movie that I'm like, well, I don't know who was creatively responsible for that, because that could have been a Ben Affleck performance choice, that could have been like one of the nine credited writers adding it in, but there was at least one or two male characters with like basic emotional intelligence, which I don't expect to Michael Bay movie. It's true, so I feel the need to point it out. At the same time, though, when Bruce Willis is like, I've always thought of you as my son, even though you were shooting at him with a gun on an oil rig two days ago. Yeah, and then you know, a J's like, Daddy, I love you. Don't do this. So even though the movie is more about a relationship between a father and daughter, it's still manages to end up being about fathers and sons. We'll get into that because I was truly, really fucking frustrated by that, and like, I feel like sometimes it's like the movie is about fathers and sons because they don't bother to introduce a woman, just the absence of an alternative. But in this they spend so much time introducing liv Tyler's character, and then you know, like the like it reminds me of Pacific Room the end where Marco Moury Marco Morey, Yeah, she's launched out of the climax to the movie, And it felt like they had, they didn't have to graze. At the beginning of Act two, they're like, you're not going to space. I don't know why. In my I mean, I didn't have a strong memory of this. I sort of like I was hoping because of how strong her introduction was, not like writing wise, but like, you learn a lot about her. You learn that she has a difficult relationship with her father. I'm like, oh my god, they might let her go to space. It doesn't happen. No, no, no, because she has a lady job, which is to talk to people. That was a question I had when she's in She's in Houston and they have a problem classic Houston famously get it together, right? But is she working? Is she there in the capacity of work or is she in there in the capacity of daughter wife. I don't know, because all that happens is Bruce Willis being like, yeah, I'll come on your NASA mission if my daughter Grace can go with me. But we don't know in what capacity because we don't actually know what her job is, right do we just know that whatever it is, she's good at it. She keeps saying it, and we we agree, I'm sure she is. But it's like, what do you mean by that? Oh? I mean, to be fair, that isn't necessarily a gender specific problem in this movie. I don't know what anyone's doing. I mean, we know that the oil drillers drill oil, but we don't know why they're allowed to be astronauts. And if you ask Michael Bay that question, he will tell you to shut the fuck up. I feel like, if it was legal, he would have actually shot Ben Affleck in the leg for running his mouth like that. I think so yeah, um, okay. So the final thing that happens is Harry does this like video satellite call to Grace. He faced times Grace, and he's like, he does, I love you, but sorry Spacetimes Grace, I never get a pun in. I feel good. That was incredible, Jamie, thanks, I loved it. Um. But yeah, he's like, Grace, I love you, by the way, I'm about to die by and then the she does daddy, no, daddy, no daddy. She and Ben Affleck get to go no daddy no, it's true. Be serious. Yeah, well, good for them, um, and then the shuttle takes off from the asteroid. Harry detonates the bomb just in the Nick of time, he saves humanity. The shuttle returns to Earth. You know, everyone on board are heroes. A J and Grace reunite and get married. The and get married during the credit sequence because it's been such a long movie. But with that, let's take a little break because I'm exhausted. Exhausted, Caitlin. We'll be right back. And we are back. Well, it's like we've touched on a lot of things, and I feel good about that. I think that we were We were right to do it. We were so good at our jobs. Yeah, I agree, I agree, But where do we begin? I would like to go back to Grace and some of this stuff we've, like you said, touched on already. But she is there because she is the daughter and the love interest of two men who are far more important to the events and outcome of the story. Yeah. So she's not allowed to go into space, which makes sense. She's not a driller, and it seems like that's not what she wanted to do, which is fine. Fair. Maybe she's environmentalist that maybe, But then Bruce Willis would hit golf balls at her because there's that boat full of protesters who were like stopped drilling for oil and Bruce Willis is like, I'm gonna throw golf balls at you, and that's supposed to be hilarious and awesome. But her not going to space, as we've talked about, means that there's no chance that she can participate in this mission of saving the world, and she's just relegated to the daughter and girlfriend. And it really just exists mostly in the story to be motivation for Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck. It's like, Oh, I have to succeed so that I can see her again, And she's a tool to drive a wedge between that because for some reason there needs to be conflict between these two guys, which just means that she is basically a plot tool and a way to further characterize the men and has given no real characterization of her own beyond that. Yeah. No, I mean I think that is the biggest betrayal of the movie, because I mean there's always like in some Michael Bay movies, and I am thinking of like how MICHAELA in Transformers is set up versus how what happens with your character? Where she is set up as a character you may or may not like the traits she has given, but she has skills, she has interests, she has motivation, and she has ability. The way she is shot do not quite square with that, but like there is information there that is interesting and it's like makes michaela compelling character. I feel like Grace kind of falls into that where and she isn't shot as exploitatively as later Michael Bay installments. Yeah, I kind of wonder what the cinematogra if that's like Michael Bay brain rot or a cinematography shot. I don't. I don't really know, but I will say that, you know, while her body is certainly lingered on, especially in the animal cracker scene, I feel like it's the worst offender of it, so of course, and the fact that that is a phrase in itself, but like for the I feel like, you know, as opposed to other Michael Bay female characters, she is treated less horrifically, I agree, And 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 million times of like if you touch my daughter, I'll kill you, and you know, possessive fathership that's very, very toxic and harmful, and you know, Grace reasonably saying like these are the kind of people I grew up around. Why would you be shocked that I would end up with someone like this? It's all, I know, a fair point. You also find out that there's some sort of resentment regarding like she hasn't been dead mom. Her mom left. We don't know why, but she left, and it seems like liv Tyler holds onto some resentment about why her mom left, which would make sense because we've only seen Bruce Willis be an asshole. So there's that. We know that she doesn't really want to work on the oil rig, but she does, and she's very good at it, and she's ready to leave, and her dad is desperately clinging to her. It doesn't want her to leave. Like, we get all this really kind of rich information, and I'm assuming, if I'm giving the movie the benefit of the doubt, the only reason she's staying is because her to be fiancee also lives and works there. Otherwise it's possible she may have already left. What is her job? Is she like a liaison between the clients who are buying the oil question mark, I don't know why the business people come onto the oil rig, and I don't know what Bruce Willis means when he threatens to send her back to quote unquote the office, because great questions all around, what is why does the oil rig have the office? It seems like the oil rig is the office, that's how when everything else implies, But he threatens to sent her back to the office. That does not make sense. But even in like the fucking maze of not making sense, there's a lot we learned about Grace right away, and it sets up at least a semi cogent reason for her and her father to go on some sort of journey together. And then that just doesn't how happen? The thing that made me 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, and she is like severely reduced in screen time. But even before Bruce Willis leaves for space, which he does in many at least two movies, you know what a legend um. But anyways, before he leaves, she forgives him for everything, to the point where I was like, then why even like I felt like from a like a writing standpoint, that undercuts such a large chunk of the movie, because if she forgives him before he leaves, and then she forgives him again before he dies, why why not just not forgive him before he leaves and then it would be more like narratively impactful, no matter what the gender dynamics are, It's just like, why would you have her forgive him twice? So the whole time that he's in space, she feels the exact same way, like she hasn't changed at all. She's just like, I love my dad, I'm not upset about whatever vague thing happened to my mom and it's all good like that, I was so frustrated, right, that eliminates an opportunity for tension in that relationship. And when you're writing a story, you want to like capitalize on opportunities for tension, not eliminate them. Number one. Number two, I thought what she was forgiving him for, or like what she was angry with him for, was his treatment of her as it relates to her relationship with ben Affleck, which is this whole other thing that we hinted at, but it's the like overprotective of a daughter's chastity and daddy being like, no, my daughter can't have stuch with anyone. And you have all these scenes where she's pushing back against her dad, being like, AJ is my choice, not yours. You can't tell me what to do anymore. I've been more mature than you since I was ten years old, Like, I'm an adult, Let me live my life. And then Prince Willis literally says kind of an iconic line. He says, sure, I may be an immateur father, but I'm also your employer. I was like, do you hear yourself talk like that? Is what? I guess that that is what Roger Ebert is talking about, where you're just like you're just like your brain cells are dying as you're hearing it, because I'm supposed to believe someone said that out loud and they're like, yeah, oh, I'm a terrible father. Well guess what I'm your boss to, so take that. It's funny, um, but you know, horrible, horrible. And then there's another scene because this is this becomes the like conflict between them or they like the source of tension in this father daughter relationship where he has this arc where he needs to accept that his daughter is an adult with her own life. But before he gets there and accepts this, which he I feel like accepts this to a j and not even to her because he's like, you're my son. I've always thought of you was my son. And it's like, no, you need to be having a conversation with Grace about this anyway. It's really fs It's like it's total horseship, like the way that yeah, like her plot, and I mean, I do wonder it would be probably impossible to actually trace, but just to like know at what point, like I am can vince that there is a version of this script that Grace went to space and you know, I just I mean could be again. There there are many credited writers and then many others who weren't credited. There was something like nine nine writers total, including uh. Credited ones are Jonathan Hensley J. J. Abrams. There's also story by credits that include Robert roy Pool. There's adaptation credits. I don't even know what they're adapting, but um, Tony Gilroy, who I'm a huge fan of Mr. And Or I mean, yeah, no, Tony Tony Gilroy is amazing. It's um almost rude that he implicated in this um and then Shane Solerno and then uncredited writers include a guy named Paul, a woman named Ann Okay, and Biderman. We've got Scott Rosenberg and Robert Town, so a whole slew of people working on this project. And Robert town is very famous. Yeah, no, you can't blame any one person for what's happening here. I feel like, honestly, Michael Bay is kind of probably the most likely culprit for things that we don't like, but I don't know. It also sounds like he lets actors do a lot of improv in his movies too, so there's a lot of lines in this movie where they're like that was Bruce and you're like, well, I guess that that's Bruce Willis's fault. You know it's but I what they don't tell you about the Bruckheimer teeth is that, you know, they're kind of like, what's the test? They they've passed the sentient there, like sentient as humans, and so they can make Ben Afflecks Turing test. Yeah, the Brockheimer teeth have passed the Turing test, and so the Brockheimer teeth can just make Ben Afflecks say literally whatever whatever they want. Yeah, that will come out in his voice. And that's that's the teeth. They're like, you know, they're rooted into your mouth and then just kind of wired directly to your brain. Yeah, they cost they they're equipped with AI the turning teeth. Um. Wow, Jamie, you're on a roll. Um anyway, So Harry's arc as it relates to Grace is all about, oh, he has to accept that his daughter is an adult. There's a scene where and this happens after Harry has seen a J and Grace kiss, like right before a J proposes, and it makes Harry mad that his daughter is in love, and there is one of the wildest exchanges of dialogue in a movie that I have ever seen. I just want to go quickly through this, where Harry is very piste off. Steve Bushemy is like, look, Grace is an adult. She can make her own choices. She grew up to be a hottie. And then another guy chimes in and his yeah, she's so freaking hot. And then Owen Wilson is like, look, she's a kid coming into her own She's exploring her sexuality, she's getting curious about her body. Her hormones are pulling her in a thousand different directions, talking about her as if she's a teenager, when when it's stated just after that that they're the same age, and then and then Bear kind of put put the pen on everything by saying yeah, so, I mean, it's like it's always as if Bear has not listened to the entire conversation, because he puts the pin in the conversation by saying, yeah, I think we can all agree that we all feel like we are her father. And I'm like, but they would just say really disgusting things about her for a whole minute, Bear, were you listening he says, and I quote, we all feel like a bunch of daddy's. Yeah, they do say that. They do say that, and we and then have no saying that we can't do anything about it now. Um so yeah, it's like she's so hot, she's so hot what a certified hottie bear is like, and we are her daddy also, and like because we're hitting on her, were her. No, that's not the cause and effect he's describing. But it's like shocking that he could hear that whole conversation and be like, yes, we all have paternal feelings towards this young woman truly, And then Harry goes on a pretty classist tirade where he's like, I'm not gonna let my daughter marry some rough nick. She's better than that, She's better than all of us. We'll see. That didn't bother me as much because that felt like a because you know, because we know where the story goes, Like that was one of the more effective things for me, because his mind does change about that where I feel like there are these generational anxieties of like I don't want my kid to end up with someone who reminds me of myself because I hate myself and I want whatever, like the generation, like I want my kid to do better 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 like, I don't like that like him. I think that it should have been Harry learning to accept his daughter as an autonomous person who wanted to do her own thing, and like, there's so many ways you can take that. It's like, maybe like live Tyler wants to like work for NASA or work as something that he considers to be elitist, and he's like, why you're like abandoning your root, fuck you. And then they go on this space mission together and he's like, all right, I accept that you want to do something different than me, but it's still like we still love each other and whatever. Do it that way. There's a million different ways to do it, but because it goes that way, I don't know. I didn't, but I didn't mind that because he comes around on it and I feel like he was more just like projecting of like I don't want my daughter to marry someone like me because I suck, and it's like, well, yeah, you do, suck, you do. But Ben Affleck knows how to cry and say I love you, which you don't, so he is better than you. Yeah. Um any other thoughts on Grace, Um, No, it was just a big disappointment. I didn't like how she was reduced to steaks for men, literally a like physical steak and movie stakes for the two main guys when she was because it, don't know, it always just feels like a knife twist to even bother to set up the character if you're just going to do that. So I was disappointed, and I wish that Live Tayler' gotten to do more because I like her, and that's all I have to say. I want to talk about Dottie and Watts a quick but powerful conversation because she's I think the first woman we really meet in the movie. Dottie Yes, Yes. Dottie is played by Grace Zabriski, who I need to look her up, um, because when I was like talking about when I was like posting Instagram stories about armaged, everyone's like, I love Grace Zabritsky really, but um, I was like, I don't know who that is. Um. Anyway, So she is married to Carl, who, in a number of scenes is extremely verb really and emotionally abusive to Dottie, which, in true Michael Bay fashion, is played as a joke. I like hesitate to even quote this because it's so horrible. But there's a scene that happened. There's a scene where Carl is on the phone with Billy Bob and he's like, I discovered the asteroid, so I went to name it, and Billy Bob's like, okay, He's like, I want to name it after my wife, Dottie because she's a vicious, life sucking bitch from which there is no escape. And then he's like smiling, Michael Bay wants you to go ha ha ha ha ha, because that's how he feels about women. And we know this and there's proof. So yeah, I don't love that. However, I think that we cannot hold how Dottie's spiteful evil jackass of a husband talks about her against Dottie herself because I like Donnie. I think she is the most impactful woman in the plot, and I hate how the movie wants us to see her because I want to see her a different way. She comes out. She only speaks. I think that it does speak to the actor because she only speaks in really like hack gendered tropes. But the actor does sell it as if like there's like a deep resentment under it, because you could just walk out and say those lines like Carl, I made dinner ten hours ago, where are you? But she says it with like a fury, you know, And then she says, do I have a sign on me that says Carl's slave? Like she really is, Like in my head, Dottie is trapped in this marriage for whatever reason. She's going to have an asteroid named after her, and then she's going to divorce him, take all of his weird FBI money, and um kill him. M yes, I like that for her. I don't think the script is thinking that hard about it, but I do appreciate when that's like there is an underwritten woman in a movie, which Dottie very much is, and an actor manages to make it feel impactful in like a memorable way, because Michael Bay is like not going to give you fucking anything ever, because he's evil is evil. And then the final Dottie related scene, which happens off screen, but someone I don't know if it's Billy Bob receives a text message on his Nokia phone from UM that Dottie leaked the info about the asteroid to the press. It's not clear why she does this, why she leaks the info, because the movie doesn't care enough to check back in with her and show us her motivation for doing that. But I feel like what we're supposed to think in the movie is that she did it out of spite, which is maybe ridiculous, like to spite her husband. I don't know. And there's a there's another woman that I don't think we ever get a name for, and I honestly could not figure out which guy it was. It's the guy that shouldn't be near his son, but is Oh, his name is Chick fine. I felt like, I mean Chick's wife who we never get a name for. She doesn't have the same emotional impact or screen time or whatever that that Dottie does. But that's another woman who has sort of presented to us as like she's you know, oh, this guy's made mistakes in his past. Why won't she just forgive him? You know? And because he comes to the house apparently illegally, so she tells, you're not supposed to be here, you're not supposed to have contact, which probably means there's some sort of like restraining order situation going on as well. But she still like comes around and it's very like We cut back to her two more times. The first time is when she finds out he is the Space Cowboy hero and she's like, that's your daddy, and it's like and then she's like, let's get back together. And I'm like, well, hold on, what did he do that you broke up with him? Like, what did he do? Going to space with Bruce Willis 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 what's really hot? And then a few of the guys go like, Oh, yeah she is, which is wow, because you never learn anything about her. She disappears for large swaths of the movie. I thought that she had died. At one point, I was like, Oh, she must have been on the Independence because I haven't seen her in a half hour, so I guess r I P. But like, she didn't even die. They just forgot about her. I just forgot about her until one scene towards the end where they have drilled the whole, they have planted the nuclear bomb. They are trying to take back off in the shuttle but the engine won't fire up and she's trying to fix it. She's running around, she cannot fix it. Then Lev he's like, I'll do it. He shoves her out of the way, hits something with a wrench or whatever. He was introduced after her. I'm like, yeah, stop, that somehow fixes the problem. So basically, the one chance the movie had to let a woman do something, the movie didn't let her do it. It makes her seem incompetent and bad at her job, has her be violently shoved out of the way by a man, and it's a man who fixes the problem by bashing an expensive piece of equipment with a metal pipe and saves the day. We don't know, we don't know why is happening in this fashion, but it is and it feels bad to look at, Like, yeah, I was, I was quite frustrated. I feel like every time there is an opportunity to further develop a woman introduced into the story, the story instead introduces three more men and you're and that happens almost without fail because I think with Grace we get to know great like I mean, I guess we do meet a j before we meet Grace, but like Grace is introduces like a big character. She's so large on the poster for Armageddon that you think that she's doing much more than she actually does. But then everything that is interesting about her is weirdly transferred in a way that doesn't quite translate onto a J and then with what's her name? What's what with what you see? Like she's I mean, I feel like she's kind of she's not quite like a shrewd stereotype, but she's very like strict, She's very like no bullshit um in the way that I think professional women are often broadly characterized. And it's like the women who are good at their job can also be fun to be around. Not that you know it from watching a movie, but whatever. Um, but she's you know whatever, she's like a type A like doesn't have patience for these guys that makes logical sense they suck, but instead is to teach them about gravity. She's the only scientist. There's a bunch of like random. I mean, you've got like someone who is rumored to hang out with underage women and a creep and a bunch of other guys that don't know anything about space like I, I too would be frustrated. But instead of exploring that even remotely, instead of even bothering to build a relationship between her and anybody, we build out love instead, because reasons like love is a far more memorable character than she is, and it doesn't need to be that way. I don't think it's like a fault of performance that it's like that's what the script does. So I don't know, I feel like I'm curious, I guess if that is something that is Like it feels like a blend of this wave of representation of women and just a blind of like how Michael Bay is as a creator. It feel like there's definitely overlap. But I do think that in the late nineties you could really easily get away with like early third wave girl power feminism of like in the corporate sense of like having women say all the right things but ultimately do nothing, which I think that like Grace says a lot of the right things in the first thirty minutes of this movie. She says, like you're not in charge of my life. I want to be liberated from you, like fuck you all this stuff, but then the right choice is to be daughter to daddy, and I mean, and like Watts says a lot of the same things where she pushes back on these ridiculous men she's surrounded by, but you know, ultimately it doesn't mean anything in the story. Absolutely, um, real quick. Yeah, we've touched on some of these already, but there is as Michael Bay does, which is too treat things like racism, sexism, able is, m etcetera as a punchline. Um many examples. I won't even go through specific ones, but there's a handful of racist stereotypes being employed there which she did not learn from after this movie, which we talked about in our Transformers episode keeps doing it. There's ablest language there is, Like we mentioned the like what is intended to be a joke of the Steve Boushemi character being a statutory rapist. There is what I felt were some like gay panic jokes when with the butt shots, right, they were like being medically examined, and there was all these like we're gonna stick this probe in you and they're like just fucking ridiculous, Like you're just like grow up. Don't forget the woman in the cab at the beginning of the movie, who is like, why aren't we moving? I want to go shopping because yeah, women be shopping well. And then on top of that, I mean like yeah, Michael bay Is so I mean I feel like this kind of ties into the undercurrent of nationalism, and like by that, I mean like white em Arian nationalism that is like tied into this movie because in all Michael Bay movies, because he loves a disaster movie, and I don't hate a disaster movie, but the tropes that he invokes inside of them are like really frustrating because he like, I feel like there's like the vineer Veneers, there's the veneer of like being like an international, global, multicultural movie. Because you do see a lot of people of a lot of different races in this movie, and a lot of Michael Bay movies, however, non white characters in general, with some exceptions, but in this movie, I would mainly just say the General and Bear are exceptions. Those are really the only non white characters of narrative impact in the movie. But like you see scenes that are supposed to be taking place in Shanghai, you see scenes that are supposed to be taking place all over the world, but Michael Bay, without fail will show you and he Michael Bay does show you a very diverse New York, but only because he's about to hit it with a fucking asteroid, and like he will show you, you know, people of color, but he will not develop Like just I just feel like his movies treat anyone who isn't white as extremely disposable, and so it's like you can't 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 fucking Epcot, Like it looks like it looks like not real. It looks Yeah, the production design of those scenes, you would never know that Shanghai is a modern city because the way that it's designed, it looks I don't know, it's like, yeah, it's like Michael Baby being like it's still feudal times in China, right, It's not a modern country with a modern economy, of course not, which is pretty hilarious given how dependent the global movie economy is on the Chinese movie economy. Now, that would absolutely not happen now, not that it should have happened then, but it's like it would be logistically impossible to happen now. Um, It's just like I mean, it's disrespectful. I feel like it's it's so USA centric and because it's like half the time when you hear or half the time when you see sorry, when you see other countries, so not always non white people, but like often whatever. It's like I think you're supposed to believe. You go to Africa, you go to South Erica, you go to Asia, you go all over the world listening to people being inspired by the American president, and then the last shot is always like a white family or live Tyler like standing up against an American flag and like nodding their head, like it's very very clear what's being done. It's like a low simmering propaganda. And that's why, you know, like it's part of why the movies getting made at the like at least at this point in the late nineties, like that was a great way to make a really expensive movie, Like that was how you made a shipload of money. Is just adding 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 racist creeds and genders, celebrating the heroicism of Bruce Willis, cut to the American flag, cut to a kid holding a spaceship in front of a mural of JFK. And it's like, yeah, we fucking get it, Like it's no surprise that this director goes on to work closely with the American military to make his shitty robot movies. Also, they're constantly like as the movie goes on, they are just more and more invoking a Christian God, and you're like, oh, fucking king man, Sorry, I just pernicious nationalism and movies is a very interesting topic to me. Everyone should read the book Red Carpet. Um. Okay, yeah, we talked about this on I want to say the Arrival episode which is on the Matreon, and I think we might have discussed this to some extent on the Dependence Day episode two. The phenomenon of Hollywood disaster movies, where a disaster happens 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, and it's like, hey, if you needed a reminder that Russia lost the space race, and remember, here's a Swedish guy doing a weird accent in person. I think grew. I'm and it literally, I mean it is. It is propaganda, like it absolutely is propaganda, and it's not subtle. And that's why I think Michael bay for a period of time and not anymore, which I don't think it's a coincidence given the shift in global politics, Like why he was such a successful international American filmmaker when he was because it was intense American propaganda at a time where that worked. It shouldn't have but it did. And that's why I need to find the name of the author, because it really is. It was like one of the best books they read last year. And I know we don't read books, but I actually Donna say, Jamie, have you betrayed me? Here's the thing. I do actually read books all the fun time. And sometimes I'm like, why am I joking around so much? Because then people are like, oh, you have one brain cell? Like actually, don't, okay. Um. It's a book called Red Carpet Hollywood, China and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy came out last year by Eric Schwartzel. I think I brought it up. I think it maybe brought it up in our Top Gun episode, which is I think over in our Matreon. But it's a really interesting book about how kind of the cultural capital has over a period of years shifted from Hollywood over to China and how, you know, how global politics kind of influenced that. But I feel like these late nineties movies are kind of where Hollywood influence is at. I don't know if it's like a complete peak, but certainly like a high of like pushing aggressive white American values was a way to become really really successful in a way that already feels very very dated. And that's why we talked about it in the Top Gun episode, because in Top Gun it's so pro America and there is a very clear like they name quote unquote the enemy in a way no longer happens in American movies because poting in Top Gun Maverick, where they're like, there's an enemy. We're not going to tell where it is or who it is, but there's an enemy. Because America is no longer the most powerful country in the world, you can't just randomly name an enemy and not experience a consequence. And anyways, it's a really fascinating book. It's very depressing. But in that book, oh, that's what I was going to say. In that book, there was a high up official. I don't remember what their name or position was, but there was a high up official in the Chinese Communist government. And normally I say communists as a compliment, in this case, I would not um, but there was a higher up in the government that said like a lot of current blockbuster Chinese movies, so like Michael Bay movies of the late nineties, there's a lot of heavy nationalist themes. Whether the movie is good or not, you know, it depends on the artists, but there the nationalism is inherent to it. But um, a lot of current Chinese filmmakers were influenced heavily by this era in American movies because of how heavily the Michael Bays of the world. And everyone points out Titanic as like the best American propaganda ever produced because it is the best. They're not wrong because we like it like it's and everyone likes it, and that's like, I mean, that's the most effective propagandists like to build in the pernicious values that you're trying to push on people in a really appealing, sexy, fun, narratively fun way, like makes it a really effective way to deliver a message. But but I mean, it's just I think it is kind of funny with movies like Armageddon because Michael Bay, I think is trying to do that, but he's just like not good at it because he's so he's bad at it. He's like not a good movie maker. He's not a good Windows movie maker. And I don't I think he wants to be able to do what James Cameron did, but he just like can't, so he ha ha whatever. Yeah, Um, I will say maybe the one redeeming thing about this movie that I don't think actually ends up being very redeeming because of the different context and implications. But I do appreciate that this is a movie that like champions the working class, a champions, you know, blue collar work. It's these. But then it's also, like you said, it's kind of like, well, these fancy astronaut boys can't do 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 so it's like it's a like, yea, we have 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 Bushey's character is eventually revealed to be like extremely like a product. He has like two doctorates by the time he's twenty two or like whatever that Bizarrow writing thing was, and you know, I feel like they're heavily like I don't even know what they were doing with that character, but I didn't like it. I didn't like it. I hope he made an idea all one forty million dollars of the ut for saying those things out loud. But yeah, to your point, it's this movie that's like championing these working class people who are characterized largely in stereotypes of working class people because they are characterized as being sex offenders and deadbeat dads and like people with gambling addictions and like all this stuff. 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 do think it's funny that Michael Bay was at least advertised as apologizing for it Armageddon. He didn't actually apologize for it, but he said, yeah, I was made pretty quickly, and my visual effects supervisor had a mental breakdown. Can I share a few of the quotes from and can we swap our favorite quotes from the commentary track? Yes, okay, I mean first iconically, Michael Bay, I know there's no fire in space, but it is a movie, and most people don't know that that is a good one and he's not wrong. Most people probably don't know that. Here's another phone one. I was very unimpressed when I went to NASA, and it shows Michael Bay said that, yes you did. He was not. He was like, wait, there's no fires in space. Boom, we gotta put him there. Here's one from Ben Affleck talking about I've seen I don't know which one. I think it was a big action set piece, he says, quote it cuts together pretty seamlessly. I must say, for something that I thought would look like total hoke Um, he says, after remembering how chintzy it seemed on set. Um, A lot of boomer were two kind of paraphrase David Sims Palavars from blank Check, who wrote an Atlantic piece on the Armageddon commentary. So shout out to that, David. Let's see, Okay, two other Michael Bay things I'll say, He says, making films as like a war. I think we've referenced that quote before. He sa as, I'm the kind of director who doesn't like effects. He says over a sequence of terrible effects. Um. And then finally, I wanted to just provide the full Ben Affleck teeth anecdote because as a Veneers scout and and you know, enthusiast of many years, I truly it is my dream that someday Jerry Bruckheimer will walk up to me and say it's your time kid, we're getting your new teeth. So I say this with love. Michael Bay describing how he realized Beneffle teeth wouldn't do. I always like low shots that kind of come right under your chin and make you a little bit heroic. And he kind of had these baby teeth. So I told Jerry Bruckheimer, God, he's got these baby teeth. Jerry, I don't know what to do. Jerry, he used a very famous start in a plane movie that he replaced teeth with, so he said, we did it to him, why not do it to Ben? So my dentist had been sitting in a dentist chair for a week, eight hours a day. Oh my gosh. And what they're talking about is top gun in Tom Cruise. But for some reason Michael Bay doesn't feel comfortable thing that. But like I've seen it before and after Tom Cruise teeth picks. Tom Cruise is a poster boy for dentists that want to give you expensive teeth. Ben Affleck I kind of wonder as of Veneer's enthusiasts, like how long did they hold up? Do you have to get them like tuned up like a car? I don't know, but they still you know, it's been twenty five years since this movie came out, and they're fucking chilling there. You know, the same firm. They've lasted a few marriages. I'll say, uh true, So you know, this is movie definitely sucks. And also I just the last production note is that um that I thought was funny, and it's like, I guess a pretty well circulated saying was. I just always think it's funny when like movies with the exact same themes come out at the exact same time. Because this movie came out very very close to the movie Deep Impact, which was I believe directed by a woman and was also successful but made less money than Armageddon and sharing from scholarly journal Wikipedia, these movies came out two months apart. They're both about blowing up an asteroid that's about to hit Earth. It's not a coincidence that they come out around the same time, it says. According to Bruce jel Reuben, writer of Deep Impact, a production president at Disney took notes on everything the writer said during a lunch about his script and initiated Armageddon as a counter film at Disney, and then nine writes. That's why nine writers worked on the script because the story had basically been written by another person and they just had to kind of shape the same story into a Bruce Willis, Jerry Bruckheimer, Michael Bay vehicle of that story. And then they just better at the box office than Deep Impact. So they just straight up stole the idea from another it or yeah, took it to a different studio and was like this is our movie now, yeah, and they took and like to add insult to injury, Deep Impact was directed by a woman, and very few movies in were directed by women. And just like Michael Bay, just like is fucking evil and lawless, which we knew I've not seen and I will say I have not. I mean I guess I hadn't seen Armagedon either, but like I kind of forgot the Deep Impact existed. I knew Armageddon existed. And that's bad. It reminds me of this is the last thing I'll say in the episode, because we gotta go, We gotta go. It reminds me, I mean those stories. Movies are like littered with stories like that. But there was this amazing animator named Richard Williams who was the animation director on who frame Roger Rabbit. He did all of these famous like animations in the back half of the twentieth century, and his magnum opus was this story called The Thief and the Cobbler, which there's a lot of resemble and says in story and in setting to Aladdin. He worked on this movie decades and decades, and then Disney got wind of it in the last couple of years and they're like, oh, let's kill that, and then they made Aladdin and no one has ever seen the Thief in the Cobbler and everyone is seeing Aladdin. Business is evil, kind of like how Disney was like, oh, Kimba the White Lion exists, Well, we're just going to steal that and make the Lion King. I've heard a lot of different versions of that story, but yeah, like it. It does feel like it's like the same spirit of just like, let's steal that, say it was on our idea in a way that we don't need to pay anyone or credit anyone, and then make billions of dollars forever, and and we love that. Awesome. So does this pass the backtel test, Caitlin, Now women aren't in the same room to get there. That's illegal. Yeah no, that would be nasty, and I'm glad they didn't do it. Yeah. No, like, not even fucking close that. I don't. I truly don't. Think. We got two women in the same room and it's a half hour movie. It's obscenely long. Are we going to cover that movie women Talking? What? Because? Yeah, I mean, I think that would be a fun Matreon thing. I would love to cover Women Talking and The Women Okay as a theme, because those are both movies that I think are it sounds like you know whatever released eighty years apart, but similar premises. As far as I understand, I haven't done a ton of research on women talking anyway. That was just a sidebar. What about our nipples scale, in which we evaluate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples based on how it fares from an intersectional feminist lens. I will give this movie zero nipples. Yeah, I cannot, in good conscience give it more than nothing. I won't give it negative. But because we have done that before, Yeah, I think maybe even for Michael Bay movies, Yeah, I mean, this is I would say this is not the worst Michael Bay movie I've seen by a long shot. Um it's one of the better Michael Bay movies I've seen, and it's so bad and it sucks and it's sucking sex. But um I I think in terms of visual language, the movie does not aggressively objectify the women who are in the story. It just simply elects to ignore them and turn them into wives and daughters. I don't like this movie, but there were parts of it that I was like, well, I had to watch this movie and it wasn't the worst thing that ever happened to me. And that's brave. I mean, it does end on a high note, and by that I mean it ends could still anyway, so you're when it thills across the board. Hey, thanks for listening. Listeners, Thank you for listening. This is This is the main feat episode. But if you enjoy the episodes with just the two of us, we do this all the time over in the Patreon ak Matreon that's patreon dot com, slash becktel Cast five dollars a month, we'll get you two additional episodes from the two of us a month. We usually do fun themes, just like the women talking theme we just discussed. I can't wait. And you can also go to t public dot com slash the Bechtel Cast for all of your merchandizing needs such as new designs designed by a one Jamie Loftus like shrek Ian feminist icon, Paddington and the flobber Mombo by Danny Elfman, among all the classics such as feminist icon, queer icon, at scabs, dry scabs, you name it, we got it. We've absolutely got it. And with that, we hope you enjoyed this. We we wanted to kind of straight into a genre we hadn't been in for a while. And with what we'll be back with another episode on Titanic in a couple of weeks. So you're going to tell them that, oh my gosh, should we not? I'll cut it. Um. Well, thank you for listening. We we love you, and we'll be back next week with your normally scheduled programming. Yeah. Bye bye