Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Deep Blue Sea

00:00:04
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind because it is a holiday week for us here. This is an episode that originally published seven thirty, twenty twenty one. It is our episode on the nineteen ninety nine shark film Deep Blue Sea. This one, I think is a lot of people's favorite from back in the day, so let's jump right into it.

00:00:28
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

00:00:38
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

00:00:42
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're going to be talking about the movie that delivers on the promise when your Titanic sinks. This is the movie you're going to meet. It is Deep Blue Sea, which I feel like we're getting into what you might call slightly dangerous waters here because it's definitely going to be one of the most mainstream films we've ever done.

00:01:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also as dangerously close as we've come to covering a movie from this century. It's from nineteen ninety nine. It's also the most expensive film we've ever watched, more than doubling the thirty million dollar budget of Free Jack. I should also add that it is without a doubt, the deepest and the bluest film that we've watched.

00:01:23
Speaker 3: Is this also the first movie we've done that had its own dedicated original pop song to go with it.

00:01:30
Speaker 1: I guess. So those two tracks from Za didn't quite Oh that's.

00:01:34
Speaker 3: Right, I forgot about those, okay, so never mind, I take it back.

00:01:37
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we'll also take back the sun Joe because Godzilla versus Hetera had its own track as well.

00:01:43
Speaker 3: That's right too, Okay, so I've just forgotten everything, you know what. I think maybe even Teens in the Universe had its own music, but this.

00:01:49
Speaker 1: Its own dedicated music video, which we'll get to. That may be a first.

00:01:54
Speaker 3: So this is a thing I love from like big budget nineties movies, which is the dedicated pop popular genre song for the movie. So it's not a movie that's a musical. It's just got like a song that'll maybe play on the end credits and is often done by a musician who's also an actor in the movie. So like some of the Will Smith movies in the nineties had a song Men in Black or Wild blid West, this movie has ll cool j in it in a tour de force performance, and it has the song for the original motion picture. It's called Deepest Bluest. My hat is like a shark's fin And if you've never seen this music video, you must go watch right this moment.

00:02:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's got it all. It's got water dancing and synchronized swimming, it's got ll cool j just looking ridiculously jacked. It's got sharks footage from the film into a shark yeah, oh yeah, and then yeah, full on morphing into a shark human hybrid.

00:02:52
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:02:53
Speaker 1: One thing I like about these songs and music videos, like you said it used to come out with all these blockbusters is they would of course come out as part of the hype train leading up to the release of the film, and they would, I think, to a large extent, inform how the movie was supposed to make you feel. You know, yeah, So like, yeah, I forget which Batman movie it was, but there were several different tracks. So one of them was a you two track. But then you also had that seal track about what I've been kissed by the Thorn of a Rose.

00:03:22
Speaker 3: Kiss from a Rose. Yeah, that's for Batman Forever, the one with Val Kilmorris, Batman, Tommy Lee, Jones's two face. Jim Carrey is the Riddler. Nicole Kidman as a Batman's girlfriend. Her character's name in the movie is doctor Chase Meridian, which, as Roger Ebert said, her name sounds like a bank. That's also the Batman movie that has the thing we've talked about several times on the show, the bank vault full of boiling acid.

00:03:51
Speaker 1: Chase Meridian might have worked in a Cronenberg film. I love a good Cronenberg name, but yeah, you gotta be Cronenberg to get away with some of those. Yeah, So that song will let you know that. And I never actually saw Batman Forever, but it informed me that this was going to be a romantic, heartfelt affair. Songs like that Aerosmith song for that movie about the arm Good.

00:04:15
Speaker 3: What was that I don't want to miss a thing, or.

00:04:17
Speaker 1: I don't want to that close my eye, I don't know, something like that.

00:04:20
Speaker 3: But it made you think, though that it was about the asteroid. It's like the asteroid hoping it doesn't miss Earth and like just do a narrow pass by.

00:04:29
Speaker 1: Well, I mean it told you that, Yeah, this is a disaster film, but it's about our feelings in the disaster film. It's about our loved ones and all, and likewise, deepest bluest I think, for the most part, accurately prepares you for the fact that this film is just going to come at you. This film is just coming at you like a shark with its intensity, and it might play around with you a little bit, it might play with its food, but it is going to devour you.

00:04:55
Speaker 3: It's a song full of superlatives, and the entire mood of it is superlatives, as as it says, other fish in the sea, but barracudas ain't equal to a half human predator created by a needle.

00:05:07
Speaker 1: That's that's that's the plot. I mean, that's that's accurate. Ll cool to write a script for sure.

00:05:12
Speaker 3: I mean the song is easy to make fun of because the premise is so ludicrous. But I also want to say I think it is legitimately like a well crafted rap song. It has a lot of really funny wordplay in it.

00:05:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I know, it's it's it's. It's a solid track, much like l ocole Jay's performance in this film, as we'll discuss, is really solid, intentionally funny in just the right places, and then intentionally cool and at all just the right places. It's an it's a nice alchemy they manage with his character.

00:05:40
Speaker 3: So, in addition to being the most expensive movie we've ever done, probably the most mainstream movie we've ever done. I guess it depends on if you count I don't know, like the Ewoks movie or something that kind of fits in in a strange place, like being part of a very mainstream franchise but being a weird sort of outgrowth of it, and being the one of the most recent movies we've ever done. And this is also our first shark movie, right, we haven't done another one.

00:06:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think so. I feel like sharks have maybe come up, just as in conversation like Death Moon, they're like, oh, it looks like a shark got him, that kind of thing.

00:06:15
Speaker 3: Oh okay, Yeah, And the shark movie genre is very interesting to me for a number of reasons. So I'm going to talk about a few facts. First of all, between the years nineteen seventy five and twenty twenty one, I checked, and there have been over eighteen point six billion shark movies produced in the United States alone during that time.

00:06:35
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's not even counting Italy.

00:06:37
Speaker 3: That's true, and I'm imagining like Carl Sagan, you know, in a deeply somber voice, saying like there are more shark movies on Earth than there are stars in the sky. And so you've got that figure. I mean, like, the shark movies are just prolific, copious. You know, the world overfloweth with shark films, and yet I can literally only think of one shark movie ever made that I would argue is good in an unqualified sense. I would say the closest runner up is probably the movie we're talking about today, which is, you know, you can level some criticisms at it, but I think this movie definitely works. You can get this one off the lot.

00:07:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:07:17
Speaker 3: So they're like a bazillion shark movies. Almost all of them are in some conventional sense at least pretty bad, and essentially all of them are in some sense derivative of this single original film. You can probably find a little exception here or there with something that has a very different approach, but almost all of them descend from Jaws, you know, directed by Steven Spielberg, released in nineteen seventy five. I don't really need to introduce Jaws I think everybody knows Jaws.

00:07:44
Speaker 1: And I mean you'd suffice to say Jaws is a shark movie. It is the granddaddy of all shark movies. It's also the granddaddy of all summer blockbusters. Yeah, it's one of the most influential films of all time.

00:07:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, and rightly so. I mean I watch Jaws almost every year. Rachel and I watch it on Fourth of July every year. It's a tradition. And I never get tired of it. Jaws is endlessly entertaining. It has that great seventies character driven quality, you know, especially with Robert Shaw as quint I mean, I just never get tired of it. But it's somehow, it's funny that it has spawned this many imitators, and that almost all of them mostly fail. And you've got a couple of different kinds of imitators. So you've got some like one we've alluded to several times but never devoted an episode to Lule Timo Squalo that you know, the Last Shark, or I think it's also called Great White, which are just direct scene by scene ripoffs of Jaws.

00:08:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that one. We've alluded to, that one before that one has Vic Morrow in it playing the Quint character, yeah, or their version of the Quint character.

00:08:45
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then there are others that are at a greater remove, you know, might be several levels of abstraction away from their progenitor. And yet still I think it's a fair bet that almost none of these shark movies would exist if it were not for Jaws.

00:09:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, it's really you really can't overstate its importance, especially if you're talking about shark movies, right, So, I.

00:09:10
Speaker 3: Think you can kind of imagine Jaws as this grand ancestral great king who produced a great many incompetent warring airs that battle for supremacy once they're you know, once the powder familias has passed on into the great Hall under the waves. And so the movie we're talking about today is one of these many warring heirs to the throne, one of these contenders, and like a lot of these shark movies, it is full of what are in fact conscious nods to Jaws. For example, I saw this pointed out by one film critic, and this was actually confirmed by one of the writers of the movie. How long is the shark in Jaws? What knows to tail? What's the length? Do you remember the line?

00:09:49
Speaker 1: I know, I don't know.

00:09:50
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, so well, Hooper sees that. He says, that's a twenty footer, and then Quinn says twenty five three tons of them. Yes, yeah, twenty five feet. How long is the shark and deep Blue Sea? They say in the movie, it's twenty six feet long. It's a literal one up, and screenwriter Duncan Kennedy acknowledged that this was deliberate. I'm not sure whose idea was. It might have been Renny Harlan, the director. But I was also reading a chapter from a book called Horror Zone, The Cultural Experience of Contemporary Horror Cinema, which is a book I've talked about on the show a little bit before. It's edited by a scholar named Ian Conrich, but this chapter was by a scholar named Stacy Abbot, and it's about the idea of the horror blockbuster, what happens when horror movies become like big event type films. And Stacy Abbott points out that in the original marketing materials for the movie, one of the taglines was quote bigger, smarter, faster, meaner. So I think it's possible that could refer to daft Punk. I'm not sure how the timing lines up there, but those are also comparative words bigger, smarter, faster, meaner than what I think the un spoken part is pretty well understood. It's saying bigger, smarter, faster, meaner than the shark in Jaws or otherwise Jaws derivative movies that you've seen before.

00:11:09
Speaker 1: It also seems like a setup for like, Okay, you're gonna You're gonna make a shark movie too, Bigger, smarter, faster, meaner. Pick two.

00:11:20
Speaker 3: What year was that daf punk song?

00:11:21
Speaker 1: By the way, Oh, man, I don't remember. It feels like it's just always been a part of the musical landscape, doesn't it.

00:11:27
Speaker 3: Oh I just looked it up. That was two thousand and one. Really Blue sy predates.

00:11:31
Speaker 1: It, well, it's released predates an evolution in my taste in music, So it feels to me like it's always been there.

00:11:40
Speaker 3: But another thing about Deep Blue Sea is that it displays one of the ways that a you know, a grandchild of Jaws the Great, can distinguish itself, and that is by fusing with another film concept and becoming a monstrous hybrid, and so I think it's pretty clear what's going on with the elevator pitch for Deep Blue Sea it is that it is actually supposed to be an if they made it of two different Steven Spielberg movies. On one hand, you've got Jaws, since nearly all shark movies descend from the King, and then on the other hand, you've got Jurassic Park, definitely more recent Spielberg feed in and the main source for a lot of the plot situation, plot developments throughout the movie. You know, it's about people visiting a facility to do a safety check up after there is a breakout and someone is injured, and then there's stuff about like the animals being smarter than people expected and so on and so forth. I mean, it just follows Jurassic Park almost to a t.

00:12:37
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. I'll say there's there's one scene in there that also feels very poseidon adventure. So I think there's also a fair amount of just disaster movie DNA thrown in here, Yeah, which is good. It it helps pad out the film because it's one of the problems with any kind of a monster movie, what do you do in the monster's not actively on screen actively attacking or stalking right, right.

00:12:58
Speaker 3: Have characters just like putting bandage on each other and saying, like, we'll make it through this. Yeah, it can't just be that, right, Yeah, you gotta have some other set pieces in mind other than just the monster. And so I agree that there are a few other things that get drawn on as well. I can see beside an adventure definitely, But I would also say that it's not just the plot mechanics. Jurassic Park, I think is also the inspiration for the sort of scattershot themes of this movie, which, like Jurassic Park, basically reflects anxieties over dangers about what could happen when arrogant scientists screw around with Mother Nature, which is actually not just Jurassic Park. That's more broadly a theme of a lot of sci fi horror in the nineties, particularly fears about the emerging field of genetic engineering, which was just starting to look like a plausible reality at the turn of the century, or as the turn of the century approached. Do you remember, like the Human Genome Project was launched in nineteen ninety and then completed in two thousand and three, So this was sort of the limbo period, the sort of what's going to happened with genetics period?

00:14:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can basically hear a nineties trailer narrator saying in the year nineteen ninety the human Genome project began.

00:14:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then so forth, and it ends up with something about genius sharks.

00:14:15
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.

00:14:16
Speaker 3: But then I wanted to further situate Deep Blue Sy in recent film history by adding a note from something else in that Stacy Abbot chapter in Horror Zone. So she points out that before nineteen ninety nine, it was not normal for studios to release horror films in the summer, like the summer release schedule is normally or at the time was normally a time for your mass market blockbusters in genres like action and adventure, and traditionally most horror movies were released in the autumn, especially around Halloween or around the Christmas season, which, in a way I'm still partial to. I like it when horror movies come out in October. Yeah, But there was a revolution in this principle in the summer of ninety nine, so Abbot writes. Quote. The summer of ninety nine, however, marked a distinctive change to this release pattern, with a number of horror films opening throughout the summer and making a noticeable impact upon the box office, reconceived through the high concept style, either in their reworking of the genre or through their marketing. Two of the summer's major releases drew directly from classic horror texts as source material, Stephen Summer's remake of the universal horror film The Mummy originally from nineteen thirty two, and Yen Debaut's The Haunting and adaptation of the novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson that had been previously made in nineteen sixty three by Robert Wise. While Rennie Harlan's Deep Blue Sea ninety nine, a film about genetically altered sharks, is not a remake or adaptation, it clearly not only drew upon the cultural memory of Jaws. And then she says, but it also nodded to Jaws through this thing already brought up the bigger, smarter, faster, meaner tagline, which seems to be looking back. But then she notes about the budgets of these films. So she says, quote the budget of these three horror films, The Mummy seventy six million, The Haunting eighty million and Deep Blue Sea seventy eight million demonstrate the escalation of the horror classic to blockbuster status and the expectation that higher investment will bring higher rewards, a promise that to varying degrees paid off. And so I think this is really interesting at this point in time.

00:16:22
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now I'm shocked to see these numbers here in front of me now because I didn't see Deep Blue Sea until this week. But I did watch The Mummy and The Haunting back in the day when the the year they came out, and you know, the Mummy say what you will, and for starters, it is also kind of a hybrid. It's kind of Indiana Jones meets the Mummy, say what you will about the Mummy. Though it makes an impact, I remember it The Haunting eighty million dollars, and I think the only thing I vaguely remember is Owen Wilson's character got his head bashed in by something, and that's it. I remember nothing.

00:16:56
Speaker 3: The Haunting I think suffers from bad cgi I recall, and it's it's weird that it is a very limp, banal adaptation of a book that is actually just on the page enormously enliveningly scary and interesting. If you never read Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hillhouse, it is a fantastic ghost story and it'll still raise hairs today. I think the End Debont movie is is a prime example of really squandering excellent source material. But anyway, with all that context, what we have here in Deep Blue Sea is a derivative sci fi horror mashup movie positioned in the market as a massive summer blockbuster, which was relatively successful, which was historically unusual at the time, but in keeping with broader trends in the year nineteen ninety nine, something was you might say, in the water in ninety nine.

00:17:51
Speaker 1: Well, what do you think that was culturally? I mean, was it the you know, the dawning of the millennium? Was it something else? Was it just the you know, the the fear of genetic advancements and science.

00:18:05
Speaker 3: It's a good question, Honestly, I don't know. I mean, it's clear that it did sustain in a way like horror I think, remained relatively mainstream big business in film through the two thousands, even though a lot of the you know, the big money making horror movies at the time, I would argue Drek, but it didn't go away, and so yeah, I don't know exactly what changed then, but I do think it's interesting. I mean, it could be that there were just a number of big hits that were more like the conventional summer movie but had elements of horror in them that preceded this. So Jurassic Park, I think, is a great example. I don't know if people remember this, because now nobody really thinks of Jurassic Park as a horror movie, but at the time people did sort of semi classify it as horror.

00:18:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I watched it, rewatched all those Jurassic Park movies over the last few years, and you know, the scares still hold up.

00:19:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. And so another thing is, despite the fact that, like I said earlier, there are almost no post Jaws shark movies that I would really personally argue are good in an unqualified sense, I think Deep Blue Sea comes close. It's consciously highly derivative. It is you could say, dumb, but like I said, you can definitely get this one off the lot, and you could tell that a lot of critics, even a lot of the snoodier film critics really liked this movie against their better instincts. You can read even some kind of artsy critics who are I don't know, just writing about it as if they sort of can't resist wanting to tell you to go see Deep Blue Sea. Yeah.

00:19:47
Speaker 1: I mean, part of it I think comes back. I mentioned earlier how the alchemy of cool Jay's character in this Preacher, about how they managed to make him just the right level of funny, just the right level of cool in a way that in a way that but it's the sort of attempt that often fails in other pictures, and there's a lot of that in this film. You can point to where you can you can realize they're doing things that are often done poorly, but they do so with the nests in this film.

00:20:15
Speaker 3: I agree. I don't think there's much about this movie that you could really classify as new or innovative, except in a recombinatorial sense. But it has a tremendously powerful autopilot function, and I think you're not going to be sad you watched it.

00:20:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, And on that note, I will will also point out that there are at least a couple of really well executed twists in this film. So if you haven't seen it, if you have any interest in seeing it, and you've managed to avoid the spoilerers so far, let us not be the ones that spoil it for you. Go out and see it and then finish this episode.

00:20:49
Speaker 3: That's a good point. Yes, So there are a couple of glorious twists. We will be discussing them. So, yeah, if you would like to see the movie, you haven't seen it, you don't want to know what they are? Pause right here, go watch right this moment. Always love issuing spoilers for movies that are decades old.

00:21:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean because it's weird, Like this is one. Like I say, I didn't watch the year it came out. I watched this week and there's plenty of stuff in it that was spoiled for me just through pop culture, just because the scenes, you know, hit well enough for audiences and people keep rediscovering and they become memes, et cetera.

00:21:23
Speaker 3: Okay, how about the elevator pitch for this movie. I've got two. Actually, first one is the only way to find a cure for neurodegenerative disease is to create a batch of ornery, hyper intelligent mutant sharks. Fortunately they are contained within a cage and we'll never escape. Second second I would say, is Ello cool Jay has written a song where he turns into a super mind freak shark, and we need a movie to go with it. I don't think that is the actual creative process that led to this film, but I want to believe it is.

00:21:55
Speaker 1: Well, let's let's go ahead and have just a little taste of that trailer. Then tell me, mister Frank, could have you ever known anyone with Alzheimer's?

00:22:06
Speaker 2: No?

00:22:06
Speaker 1: What if you could end all that suffering with a single pill.

00:22:10
Speaker 2: Give me to your Monday morning, forty eight hours. I'll give you a result, little skyrocket your stock price in the most advanced research facility in the world.

00:22:19
Speaker 1: Wow. Beneath its glassy surface, a world of gliding monsters. A team of specialists is working against the clock. Did somewhat order to fish or an experiment to benefit mankind?

00:22:33
Speaker 3: Sharks never show any loss of brain activity as they age with this close to the reactivation of human brain cells, but before.

00:22:42
Speaker 2: They can save millions of lives.

00:22:45
Speaker 1: Tell me, I.

00:22:45
Speaker 3: Didn't see that they recognized that Gus.

00:22:47
Speaker 1: It's impossible.

00:22:48
Speaker 2: Sharks did not swim back. If they can't, they'll have.

00:22:51
Speaker 1: To find a way to save their.

00:22:53
Speaker 3: Own Okay, I guess it's time to talk humans. All right.

00:23:13
Speaker 1: Well, let's start at the top here with the director. It is, of course, Renny Harlan born nineteen fifty nine, Finish born director. Thus the I don't know if you noticed this, Joe, but there's Finlandia vodka in the film, which is prominently featured. I believe that is a nod to the Finish nationality of the director.

00:23:33
Speaker 3: There are a number of nods. There's one part where Elle coolj plays a chef in the movie and he has like a chalkboard where he has written today's specials on the wall, and one of them says Finish pancakes. I don't know what finish pancakes are. How are they different than other pancakes?

00:23:48
Speaker 1: I have no idea, but maybe, I mean, every culture has pancakes savory or sweet, I guess. So. All right, So what else did Harlan do? Well? He gave us such films as A Nightmare on Elm Street for the dream Master. Is that one of the good ones? Uh?

00:24:01
Speaker 3: Yeah? That was I mean good entertaining definitely.

00:24:05
Speaker 1: Okay, die Hard Too.

00:24:07
Speaker 3: I actually watched I Heard Too within the past year, and it is odd. It's pretty entertaining, it's I mean, it's a fun watch, but it has uh. The thing that stuck out to me about it was that it has a lot of clangers in the in the the script, so it has a lot of these things that are supposed to be like a pithy retort or a one liner, but they just don't scan like they just twang like an off like an out of tune guitar string and uh. And I don't know, I feel like the script needed a pass for smoothing. But otherwise, Yeah, a very effective action movie.

00:24:43
Speaker 1: All right. Now I've seen the next one. I'm gonna mention Cliffhanger. That was the the Sylvester Stallone mountain climbing adventure film.

00:24:50
Speaker 3: That movie is a laugh riot.

00:24:53
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's in the tradition of the Eiger Sanction, but with more guns. I think one way to describe it. Yeah, I remember, Yeah, John Liftgal is in it, and he plays the battie right, Yeah, he's the villain. I remember enjoying it and Lift cow made he made for a tasty villain. In some pictures back in the day, that's for sure, totally. Harlan has done a lot of other work. He's one of the directors that put out He did a Hercules movie in which Hercules has a buzz cut back from that period in cinema where it seems like we had multiple buzz cut treatments of Greek mythology. Do you remember these?

00:25:30
Speaker 3: No, I don't know what you're talking about. Oh, there was this.

00:25:34
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't really define it by it by the years, but it seems like there was a period where you had a film like this, You had the what was it the remake of Clash of the Titans.

00:25:47
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, more recent years, I thought we were going back to like the eighties or something.

00:25:51
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, Because you got back to the eighties, I think you still had long haired. I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that if you're going to have a Hercules movie, no matter what you're calling that character, if he is is he Hercules or is he or is he Samson or is he I can't remember the Italian variants. If it's a muscleman movie, then what what is your muscleman's hair going to be? Like? What is the fashion of the day. So if short hair is what you know a hunky muscle dude has when the picture is being made, well, then your hercules is going to look like that. That's my theory.

00:26:25
Speaker 3: I think my Clash of the Titans will always be the curly locks of the guy who plays the dad and Veronica Mars, not that dad, not her dad, the movie star dad.

00:26:35
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Harry Hamlin. Oh that's right, Yeah, yeah, Yeah, that's that's my Clash of the Titans. I recently rewatched that one with my son. He's a big fan of it. He likes it.

00:26:45
Speaker 3: It's good.

00:26:46
Speaker 1: All right. Let's move on to the screenwriters. Not not a I don't have a lot to say about I think you have some tidbits here, but we had Duncan Kennedy, Donna Powers, and Wayne Powers. Duncan Kennedy also wrote a year two thousand episode of The Outer Limits titled The Grid, which I haven't seen yet, starring dB Sweeney, but I will put it on the list.

00:27:06
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, I found an LA Times article from July nineteen ninety nine, so it was covering the lead up to the film. I think it came out like a week before the film was released, and it has an interview with Duncan Kennedy, one of the screenwriters, about where the idea for the film came from. This was a specscript, So aspiring writers out there who are just you know, you're forging your own path. You're not trying to get into the system. You're just writing your own idea. Here's the inspiration for you. So the article reads as follows. As a kid growing up in Queensland, Australia, screenwriter Duncan Kennedy witnessed first hand the horrific effects of a shark attack when a victim washed up on a beach near his home. Quote, there was not really much left of him, Kennedy recalled in the years that followed, the memory of that attack might have contributed to a recurring nightmare Kennedy had about being in a passage way with sharks that could read his mind.

00:28:01
Speaker 1: Oh man, why don't these sharks read people's minds? I bet that almost do. Yeah. I bet he edited that out of an early draft.

00:28:08
Speaker 3: That would have been better. You should have gone full boar sharks can read your mind, and instead in this one, they're just they're just so smart. They come off as telepathic. They anticipate the humans' decisions before they make them. But I think that's just because the humans are being outwitted, you know, the sharks are better at the chess game.

00:28:26
Speaker 1: I love this though, because, ultimately, though, the dream imagery of sharks swimming after you in flooded passageways, like it only makes a kind of faint dream logic, and this film finds a science fictional way of making that dream logic plausible, and it works in so many ways. Like it's not just encountering the sharks out in the open, you know, just to quote Gil Scott heron where Jaws lives. No, you're encountering them in hallways for human habitation and human movement. They are on our turf. They have invaded or are part of our world. Now.

00:29:01
Speaker 3: I love the hallways in this movie. This movie is all about hallways and gimmy, gimmey.

00:29:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're very nice hallways, very well done. As someone who's watching a lot of Outer Limits episodes from the nineties, I recognize a nice sci fi hallway.

00:29:14
Speaker 3: But anyway, as so, this article goes on to say that Kennedy finally purged those dreams about the sharks in a hallway that could read his mind by writing a screenplay about them, which they say evolved into the new Warner Brothers thriller. So perhaps in an earlier draft of the screenplay, the Sharks could read your mind. I'm not sure. They're not clear about that. One thing that's funny is reading about market research about films that came out decades ago. So another thing this article in the La Times notes is that is that recent tracking data shows that interest in the film is very high among its core young male audience, though not as high as the interest was for the other upcoming film, the blair Witch Project, or maybe not upcoming. Maybe at this point blair Witch had already come out. I think it came out sometime in July ninety nine or something. Okay, but let's talk about.

00:30:02
Speaker 1: This cast, all right. So we have Thomas Jane playing the character Carter Blake. Thomas Jane was born nineteen sixty nine, and he is our Sharkspurt in the film. He's our lead hunk, and he's very much in leading man mode for this one. You know, he's in a wetsuit a lot, just just looking real handsome. But he's been in a number of interesting films over the years, ranging from Albert Piem's Nemesis Cyborg movie in nineteen ninety two to Terrence mallix The Thin Red Line in nineteen ninety eight. He was in the film adaptation of Stephen King's The Mist in two thousand and seven, and he had a really fun recurring role on The Expanse. So, for my money, he's one of these actors that, you know, for a while he was very much in the leading man mode, and he's gotten older, he's kind of aged into more interesting roles, so you'll see him playing supporting roles where you know, he still gets to be regularly handsome and all, but he gets to be a little weirder, you know, when we get to see the weirder Thomas Jane come out.

00:31:08
Speaker 3: Do I remember, right in the Expanse he sometimes wears a Tom Waits hat.

00:31:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's always wearing a wearing a hat, and he's supposed to be a belter in that, so he's I don't know if it really comes off in the show too much, but he's Yeah, he's supposed to be really tall and thin because he has grown up, you know, out in the Asteroid Belt, Low gravity.

00:31:29
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:31:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he's a fun character with kind of a noir twist to him, and I believe he had a He had a fun role in the recent Predator movie. He played one of the mercenaries in that, but he had a he had like tourette syndrome or something. They had some sort of like a twist to his character that, huh made his performance a little more noteworthy.

00:31:48
Speaker 3: I watched that movie on an airplane.

00:31:50
Speaker 1: Oh I did too. It's a great airplane movie.

00:31:52
Speaker 3: I don't recall him being in it, though maybe I missed him. Yeah that was probably me. Okay, so he's our leading for the movie. But also you could say, you know, you could discuss the rest of the movie and not even mention him and you'd be fine.

00:32:07
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean he does all the things that his character's supposed to do, and Andy does well. He does it well, but not in a way where is he's not the most memorable part of the film. Then we also have Saffarn Burrows, who plays doctor Susan McAllister born nineteen seventy two. I have really not seen her in much, so I can't say a lot about her, but she was the star of Mozart in the Jungle, and she was also in Wolfgang Peterson's Troy.

00:32:31
Speaker 3: Yes, we're she seems like an actor who's done a lot, but not a lot that I've seen. Yeah, a lot of movies I've heard of but never watched.

00:32:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like maybe she's just gravitated towards like more serious and mainstream stuff that I haven't necessarily seen.

00:32:45
Speaker 3: I think she was in one of those Marvel shows. She was in like Agents of Shield or something. Okay, all right, I also never saw that.

00:32:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't see that one either. But let's say, but we do have some other people of note here, I mean, most importantly, we have Samuel L. Jackson playing Russell Franklin. Samuel Jackson born nineteen forty eight, a legend and also has a pretty legendary scene in this film. Yeah, which I guess we'll get to in a bit. But Jackson's always an interesting character to check out his somography, because you know, he started out doing like all these little bit roles and then he eventually evolves to become one of the biggest names in Hollywood, and he's always a compelling screen presence, you know, whether he's you know, Mace Windu instead of the Star Wars movies or Jules Winfield and pulp fiction. But of course he was in Jurassic Park, which which was, you know, one of the influences for this film. And I would say, for the most part, his performance is very much Jurassic Park mode. He's very much doing that level of character with a little more charisma.

00:33:46
Speaker 3: Oh, I can see what you're saying. I mean, I would say in both films, I think the character that he's supposed to be playing is kind of the steady hand. Yeah, he's the guy who's there who when everybody else is panicking, he knows what he's doing.

00:33:59
Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess that's something about a lot of his most notable performances is he often plays a character who's very steady, and you know, you see the extremes of that with someone like Mace Windu, who's a very you know, very logical character, very cold and calculating to a certain extent, and even a character like Jules Winfield. You know, ultimately he has this kind of wisdom to it, and he's like he's always acting like he's got it figured out, even if things, you know, fly off the hand all at times. Yeah, fun fact. I don't think I quite realized this, but he has a cameo in The Exorcist three playing dream blind man and his voice is dubbed in it. I haven't looked up to see exactly what the story is on that, but if you rewatch The Exorcist three, which we recently talked about in Passing, then you'll find Samuel Jackson in there as well. All right, we also have Jacqueline Mackenzie playing Janice Higgins born nineteen sixty seven, Australian actor. I think one of the main things in her filmography that stands out is she was in nineteen ninety two's Romp Stomper opposite a young Russell Crowe. In this she's what blonde scientist lady is that.

00:35:05
Speaker 3: She's the marine biologist. Oh okay, she gets eaten by the shark.

00:35:09
Speaker 1: I get a little confused at time what everyone's role was in this operation?

00:35:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, what does Michael Rappaport do again?

00:35:16
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, Michael Rappaport Yeah, born nineteen seventy plays the character Tom Scoggins, and he's at least partially part of our comic relief for the film, not our primary comic relief. It's interesting you. When I saw his name in here, I expected him to be more of the the dirt bag comedic character, you know, and he's he's only partially that.

00:35:40
Speaker 3: You expect him to be the first guy to get chomped, and it's not the case.

00:35:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, it takes a little He gets chomped, believe me, but it takes longer than you'd expect. Yeah, he's a stand up turned actor, which has become pretty standard, a pretty standard career tr actrajectory. But but Rappaport did it only I think three years into his stand up career, and he's really been in a stablished actor for many decades at this point. So you'll find him in just about everything. And yeah, he's pretty good in this, But again, I expect him to be more of a comedic dirt bag, to be more, you know, just pure shark bait, and he's not.

00:36:13
Speaker 3: I think he is actually supposed to be a scientist of some kind. But as you pointed out with Jaqueline Mackenzie's character, there are a number of characters in here who are vaguely some kind of scientist, but it's not clear what they do, or maybe it is clear and I just didn't notice.

00:36:25
Speaker 1: Now it is clear that our main scientist is the character Jim Whitlock, played by the fabulous Stellin Scarsguard. Oh yeah, Scarsguard was born nineteen fifty one, legendary Swedish actor and father to just an impressive cast of Scars Guards. These days, it's like they are a bunch of them, and they're all pretty good, if not great actors themselves. I think the first time I saw Stellin Scarsguard was in the nineteen ninety seven spy thriller Ronan starring Robert de Niro, which has a fun supporting cast, you know, a lot of like spy act and hijinks. But then I subsequently saw his work in the nineteen ninety seven Norwegian thriller Insomnia, in which he plays a deeply troubled homicide detective, and he's really good in that.

00:37:11
Speaker 3: That one got remade by Christopher Nolans during Al Pacino and Hillary Swank, I think.

00:37:17
Speaker 1: And Robin Williams. Yeah, Robin Williams plays the killer in it, and al Pacino plays the detective role, which I don't think I ever saw it, because I just I was really impressed by Scarsguard's performance. I just couldn't imagine later day Pacino being able to capture that kind of a performance because part of like Scarsguard's performance in that is, if I remember it correctly, it's just very, very sweaty, and it's really getting across the idea that you know, this character has not slept and is miserable and is deeply troubled. And yeah, it's a memorable performance for sure.

00:37:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think Pacino goes quite that far with it. He just kind of seems more spaced out, though I do recall Insomnia being a good movie.

00:38:02
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, get Christopher Dolan now stellin Scarsguard, of course has worked with a lot of great actors and directors over the years, too many to even mention here, but I'd say that that we are very excited. I know a lot of you are excited because one of his next big roles is he is Baron Harkonen and the upcoming adaptation of Frank Herbert Stone. So I'm super excited for that because there's always this kind of like rumbling threat in his or he has in him to create this kind of rumbling threat in his voice, and an intensity in his eyes, and I'm excited to see what he is able to bring about with Harconin that has not been brought to life in previous film adaptations.

00:38:44
Speaker 3: Preternaturally Ominous, Yeah, brings full ominosity.

00:38:50
Speaker 1: He's an actor who's capable of bringing a certain weirdness and fearsomeness to his characters. But Jim Whitlock in Deep Lucy is not one of those characters. He's introduced like he's kind of a weirdo, like his characters peeing into the wind. But when we meet him, he's basically just a big, big scientist teddy bear and is not that weird. He's not really mad in a mad scientist way. He seems pretty likable. And it's like most of the human characters in this they seem fine. I don't really want to see any of them meeting by a shark.

00:39:23
Speaker 3: Yeah. We'll talk more about this when we get into the plot a little bit. But yeah, this movie does I think have some serious human villain deficiency.

00:39:31
Speaker 1: All right. We also, of course, like we mentioned earlier, we have Allo cooolj in this born nineteen sixty eight. He plays the character Preacher, who is not a preacher. He is a chef. But is it alluded to that he was a preacher? Is that why he's called preacher?

00:39:45
Speaker 3: Oh, I've forgotten that part. He may have been may have been he does talk about God.

00:39:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm a little vague on that. But any rate, this ellocool j of course, hip hop legend, star of H two O, which is how Halloween movie, a star of mind Hunters, but not the good one on Netflix, the bad one that I think Renny Harlan directed, as well as the universally acclaimed nineteen ninety two Robin Williams movie Toys.

00:40:12
Speaker 3: I believe you.

00:40:13
Speaker 1: Just yeah, But in this he's preacher, the chef and and we'll talk more about his character as we go on, but this is a memorable performance. It's it's pretty early in his filmography, but it's really solid.

00:40:25
Speaker 3: Oh, he's a ray of sunshine in this film. Every scene he's in is just delightful.

00:40:31
Speaker 1: Can I mention real quick though, that he shares some scenes with a parrot?

00:40:35
Speaker 3: Yes?

00:40:35
Speaker 1: And the parrot is voiced by Frank Welker, Oh, the vocal talent legend who you'll find his name on just about any animated film and many unanimated films. Anytime there's any you need some sort of like monster voice or something or growls. Even Frank Welker is liable to show up and do it. And yeah, he's the voice of the parrot.

00:40:56
Speaker 3: Which Decepticons did he do? Who?

00:40:59
Speaker 1: I don't recall off, but he's in the mix, like he's he's one of those guys. It's just he's been around for a long time. Born nineteen forty six. So yeah, he's been around for a whole host of like just multiple franchises in the animated genre.

00:41:12
Speaker 3: Now, before we get off the cast, I wanted to mention one more actor quickly. She has a small part in the movie, but Ada Turturo is in this She Ada Turturo famous for playing Tony's sister Janis on The Sopranos. She plays a part in this movie, I think, operating a communications tower and doesn't have many scenes interacting with the other characters. I think until she gets blown up by a helicopter crash, and I feel like this is a positively criminal under use of a fantastic cast member. So if I had been the Meddling studio executive on this film, I would demand, you know, if you're worried about runtime. You can basically demote any other character's screen time except Ello cool Jay, and I guess except for Samuel L. Jackson's character. I'd say you could make You could just like remove Thomas Jane from the movie No Offense, Tom. I mean, you're great, but you take that character out and promote Aida Turturo, escalate her screen time, make her character a kind of vicious and manipulative schemer who like convinces one of the sharks to go gnaw on somebody who she thinks, I don't know, insulted her kid or something.

00:42:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think. Weirdly enough, doesn't she actually have human interactions in the music video? Like, isn't there a scene at the very end of the music video where she's seated around a table with other crew members as if they're on the you know, the ship or the bass from this film.

00:42:33
Speaker 3: I believe you, but I don't remember this part.

00:42:35
Speaker 1: Huh. Also worth pointing out that she is the cousin of.

00:42:39
Speaker 3: John Tuturo, So yeah, yeah.

00:42:41
Speaker 1: I have to admit I'm not super familiar with her filmography, just looking at the list of films she's been in. Yeah, I don't think I've seen most of these.

00:42:50
Speaker 3: Oh, have you actually not seen the Sopranos.

00:42:52
Speaker 1: No, it's too late.

00:42:54
Speaker 3: Oh oh, I think it's never too late to go back to the Sopranos. And she's just I don't know how i'd class. She's somewhere between a villain and hero in it, as I guess a lot of the characters are just wonderful.

00:43:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I believe everyone who says The Sopranos is really good. But it's just I don't think at this point in my life I can watch a gangster a movie or TV show unless it has like vampires in it or something like it. Okay, I need something else to drag me in, all right. And you know, before we move on to the plot, I do generally mention the music here, and the music in this film is by Trevor Rabin born nineteen fifty four, South African born composer who has worked a lot in the summer blockbuster genre with scores for films such as Armageddon and National Treasure. And I don't have a lot to say about this score other than it's very traditional in terms of what you expect from a blockbuster film from this period. It's effective, it does everything it needs to do, heightening tension and all and reminding you that everything you know, helping you propel you through the film, like rushing through a flooded sea lab. But other than that, I did not find it that memorable. You know, it's not like that John Williams level of which is an insanely high barred to put. I should not even really fairly compare other composers to John Williams. But you know, it's not the kind of a film score where I heard it and then I'm like, oh, I need to look this up. Let's see if this is unvinyl.

00:44:22
Speaker 3: I think what they should have done is just looped deepest bluest under the film. You know, it could work in any scene.

00:44:28
Speaker 1: Really, Yeah, I mean, and I think, yeah, I would have gone for it, Like, well, what if they had what if they had gone for like a hip hop instrumental style score. I don't know. It would have been too early for that, I don't think. I don't. Certainly a film this big wouldn't have taken a risk on that.

00:44:44
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't recall much about the music, but I think it's fine.

00:44:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fine. There's nothing wrong with it at all, it totally works.

00:44:58
Speaker 3: Okay, so maybe we should talk about some of the specifics of the plot. One of the things that I thought was funny was the more I thought about it, the more the plot of Deep Blue Sea resembles the plot of Jurassic Parks, almost kind of beat by beat, because what happens at the beginning of Jurassic Park there is an accident on the island involving one of the animals, where someone is injured or killed, and this draws scrutiny from the parent company and they're underwriters, and then this spurs and an investigation. Basically, somebody has to go to the island to look at it and see if everything's on the up and up, and that's how our characters get there. Deep Blue Sea starts almost exactly the same way.

00:45:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's one of these openings to a film that it first seems like it's dumb, like it's just reinforcing the standards of the genre, you know, But then you realize that, oh no, yeah, there's a twist to it. They're winking at us, they're having fun with our expectations, because, yeah, the opening, it seems like it's just going to be straight up shark exploitation. You have young people, people some on all I think in swimwear, you know, being sexy and on a yacht. On a yacht, you know, being sexy, being you know, rich, and being essentially being shark bait. You imagine that the sharks are going to show up and eat them. It is. The sharks appear and it looks like they're about to chomp our victims here. But then something happens.

00:46:22
Speaker 3: Right, well, one of the things I thought was funny. So people, young rich people partying on a yacht. I think it's a double holed yacht. Actually is it?

00:46:29
Speaker 1: Okay?

00:46:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was just thinking back to our Pacific Navigation episodes. But there's one part where they like knock over a bottle of wine on the yacht and it like spills this red wine into the water, so it looks like blood going into the water like these other shark movies. And then a shark starts attacking their boat and it's like, oh God, is the shark going to kill them? But at the last minute, no, there is an intervention by the brave shark wrangler Carter Blake played by Thomas Jane. So these people are Saved from Shark Doom by Thomas Jane the last minute. But of course, you know this is going to make the parent company skittish, because of course, this shark is not just any shark. It is a shark that has escaped captivity from a research facility in the deep sea. And one thing you pointed out in the scene that I had forgotten about was that it has a Teddy Bear in it.

00:47:19
Speaker 1: Yeah. During the initial shark attack, Teddy Bear gets knocked off the yacht and we get a scene of it like sinking in the water. The innocence literally sinking into the depths.

00:47:28
Speaker 3: Right. The sinking teddy Bear, I think is very akin to the filthy discarded doll trope we've talked about. It's the loss of innocence in the face of the cruel reality of shark. But so this sets up the situation of the film. We get a kind of corporate big wig meeting I think the parent company here is some big pharma company and doctor Susan McAllister is there. This is Saffron Burrows, and she is a brilliant scientist who is working on a cure for Alzheimer's disease. Along with her colleague Jim Whitlay played by Still in Scarsguard, and they are studying proteins in the brains of sharks as a possible treatment for humans. And of course we learned that what happened in this opening scene where a boat was attacked by shark is that one of their sharks got out of captivity. It escaped from its pen and it went to go have some fun with a yacht before it was captured by Carter Blake. So here the Farmer company decides, well, we got to have somebody check out this facility and make sure everything's everything's secure, So they send their dependable executive, Russell Franklin, who is played by Samuel L. Jackson. So I think he's sort of going to play the role of all the scientists and the lawyer in Jurassic Park, the person who shows up to do a safety review and see what's up. And then from here, I don't know how much more about the plot we really have to describe in detail, because you can imagine exactly what happens. It just all hell breaks loose. It's shark of Palooza. For the rest of the runtime, people go running around through a like a deep Sea research facility as different levels of it are flooded by sharks that, as we learn, are not just any sharks. Now, they're smart sharks. They are hyper intelligent sharks. Because doctor Stellin Scar's Guard and doctor Saffron Burrows have been very naughty and they have done something they're not supposed to. They made the sharks super smart, and they made their brains like ten times bigger than they're supposed to be in order to get all of the protein they needed to do their research.

00:49:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, the basic the quote unquote science of the whole picture is that sharks are incredibly resistant to various seals and illnesses. So this is where we're going to go to get this special compound. But the brain's not big enough. Got to make those brains biggers so we can get enough protein or you know whatever shark juice from each shark, and so that requires making them have super brains.

00:49:50
Speaker 3: They say a number of things about sharks that are not true, Like you say that sharks don't get cancer, which is not true.

00:49:57
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, so do not come to this them for your shark facts. It's even more confusing because there are these lines. These shark facts are often delivered uh, you know, with an air of authenticity to them, and sometimes they actually bring in actual they're the drag halfway dragging real facts into it. Like at one point Thomas Jane's character says, oh, you know, they they don't actually want to eat us. They you know, they they don't like the taste of humans. But then he turns it into a jab at Samuel L. Jackson's characters like background or something, but he's halfway there, like, you know, the reality that sharks are not out there in the ocean hunting for human beings. Uh. They have not evolved to thrive and depend on on apes in the water. They have they have evolved to depend on things like like seals and uh, and other game things that are going to actually be you know, that are actually going to sustain them. And so in some cases when you have a shark attack, what you're having happen is a shark taking a bite out of something to see if it's something they would want to eat. And when that is a human, they often will say no, thank you, but they've already bitten into a human right.

00:51:07
Speaker 3: And of course, as we'll talk about a bit more later, I think obviously anybody who's listening to the show at this point I believe knows this. But sharks are not your enemy. You know, the convention of sharks being the monster that relentlessly pursues humans at any cost and just wants to wants to kill us, all that is a movie fantasy that's just not real.

00:51:27
Speaker 1: And it's one that they're able to sort of circumvent in this film by having the super intelligent sharks that ultimately aren't that interested in eating humans. They ultimately just want to escape this facility. But then we also have some elements of the film where it's like, oh, we're able to trick them because they are so bloodthirsty, So I don't know, they only kind of halfway achieve the same.

00:51:49
Speaker 3: Well, you also get the sense that the sharks in this movie don't just want to escape, They also have a g They like hate the humans. Yes, they're like mad at them for experimenting on them them.

00:52:00
Speaker 1: And this is where we reach one of the one of the flaws in the film. Like nothing that fatally wounds the film or anything. But I was about thirty minutes into watching it when I realized, oh man, all these humans are mostly likable at this point, unless they're going to drop some bombs on me later. Like these we don't seem to have any human villains. We don't have bad guys, human bad guys that we are rooting against and that we're hoping get consumed by sharks.

00:52:27
Speaker 3: That's right. I totally agree with you on this point. I think it's a major oversight of the film because usually in a movie about a killer animal, you need a human villain to inhabit the spirit of moral evil, you know, to be the focal point of not just struggle for survival, but of antagonistic drama. You know, drama typically is a conflict between people, between humans with intelligences. And since giant killer animals in creature movies are not really morally bad, they're just hungry, they can't really fill that role very well. I would say. The closest thing to a villain in this movie, I guess, are the main scientists like Stellin Scarsgard and Saffron Burrows, who are I mean, in a way, they're presented as arrogant and having done wrong and they must be punished because they, to use a phrase from Edwood, they tampered in God's domain. But they are not really villains. They're just people who did something bad and need to be punished for it. In this movie, I think the creators perhaps thought that they didn't need human villains since the creatures are not only killer sharks, but hyper intelligent killer sharks, maybe leading to the idea that they are smart enough to be morally evil. It's kind of a stretch, it doesn't really work, and I think they should have committed to having at least one of the human characters being like a complete jerk.

00:53:53
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's kind of like the Frankenstein scenario, right with Frankenstein's monster. Even if you have him doing despicable things like he he did not ask to be here. He was created, you know, and he bemoans this fact, you know, he says that, and I did not ask to be created and and therefore how much blame can you really place on the monster's shoulders? And the same goes for a lot of these sharks, I mean, for these sharks in this film. Another thing that comes to mind is that the not only are the scientists themselves not portrayed as particularly like morally corrupt or anything, but the ultimate aim of the project is totally for the good of humanity. You know, it's about it's about curing Alzheimer's disease, which you know everybody in the film is on board with. And if you're watching it, you're like, oh, yeah, I mean that makes sense. Yeah, if you got to make some giant sharks to cure Alzheimer's, then let's let's do it. Like what if they had had a point in the film where they revealed or even from the ads that they made it clear that the shark research was about, say, creating immortality, you know, for the for the you know, the the privileged and few at the very top of the socioeconomic ladder, you know, something of that nature. They're twists they could have taken with it where you'd be like, oh many were they're trying to do that, and they're making super intelligent sharks to do it. That's that's a double whammie of things we shouldn't be doing. People.

00:55:12
Speaker 3: Instead, what you get is that these are researchers who unethically cut corners in pursuit of a noble goal, right, which is a very different feeling for characters in a movie. And you know, one thing I will point out, I wonder what you think about this. I think Stellin Scarsguard's character in this movie is interesting because I think he's a little bit different in the finished product than his character would be on the page. I think he has written to play harder into the role of the arrogant scientist who thinks he's better than God and must be punished, but Stellin just doesn't really lean into that in his performance. And you know, there was another I was reading a review of the movie by a film critic named John Kenneth Muir in a retrospective from many years later, and he pointed out something about this movie that as soon as I read it, I was like, Oh, God, is so true. You can tell as soon as you meet him that Stellan is doomed because he smokes cigarettes, which is a death sentence in any mainstream movie from the nineties. Isn't that true?

00:56:14
Speaker 1: Huh? Yeah, I guess so. I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to think on this one. But certainly, yeah, we do have a notable scene where he's smoking early in the picture.

00:56:25
Speaker 3: But actually, there was something I wanted to come back to about the idea of human villains and intelligence and sharks as a movie monster. There's another unintended consequence. I think of having the villains in the movie be hyper intelligent mutant sharks. Part of the appeal of a shark as a movie monster. Again, this is the fantasy movie. Shark, not sharks in real life. Is a horror rooted in its apparently unthinking, unfeeling, mechanical efficiency. You know, as Quinn says in Jaws, it's you know, his eyes like a doll's like it's not even alive. It's just a machine that kills. So is it's not a human agent that kills out of animating feelings like hate or malice or even sadism. It doesn't have feelings about us. We are simply meat. And in this way, I think the traditional shark movie with a regular shark actually resonates a little bit more with some of the themes of cosmic horror. Horror that is rooted in a semantic threat. It's not just the fear that you will be harmed or the fear that you will be destroyed, but the fear that by seeing yourself from the vantage point of a truly inhuman intelligence, you will see yourself as an object without meaning or significance, just a puny, soft, heterogeneous object of about ninety nine degrees fahrenheit. And there are examples I can think of from movies that I find particularly amazingly scary that are on this frequency. One is a moment I love. I think I've mentioned it on the show before, but from the nineteen seventy eight version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which is a fantastic sci fi horror movie, but it is the part where a couple of the human characters have been trapped by some of the alien replicants who have been turned, and one of the humans says to the leader of the aliens, I hate you, and the leader of the aliens says to them, we don't hate you. Profoundly chilling, right, because it's actually so much scarier that the aliens are not doing this out of sadism and malice. We're just molecules to them, like they don't hate us.

00:58:37
Speaker 1: There's a there's a great twist and an old thriller novel by Jeffrey Household titled The Dance of the Dwarfs. It takes place, I think in South America, and there's a lot of the plot concerns, these these deaths that have occurred that have been attributed to what's supposed to be a tribe of pygmies that live, you know, deep in the jungle and so are Our character makes several attempts to communicate with them and and puts out like beads is an offering, you know, trying to to make contact, and comes close. But then you reach the point where it is revealed that they're not pigmies. They are a type of giant river otter, a predatory giant river otter with I think some sort of a venom uh apparatus. And he realizes that that you, no, there is nothing to communicate with here. These are things. These are creatures. These are animals that are hunting me, and there's nothing remotely human about them. They're they're you know, they're they're giant otters. And it's and just saying it like that, it might sound kind of weird. Uh. If it does sound weird, research giant river otters and maybe that'll turn you around, because they can be quite quite fearsome if you if you look at them in the right light. But but but in the in the book, it's very effective. It creates that same sort of level where you realize, yeah, you're not dealing with human agency, You're dealing with something more primal.

00:59:58
Speaker 3: Yeah. That that absolutely sounds very chill and on the same frequency as what I'm talking about. There was another movie I thought of that that had a scene that works in a similar way, and it's the movie Under the Skin. Have you seen this one.

01:00:11
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with it, but I've never actually watched.

01:00:13
Speaker 3: It also very much has that that cosmic horror fire, and one of the most chilling scenes in it is not even with the alien doing anything to a human. It is a scene of an alien just watching, completely dispassionately observing as some humans are are caught in a like a riptide and are drowning in the ocean, and the alien is not hateful and not sad, it's just watching. But anyway to bring everything back to deep Blue Sea. By making the sharks in this movie super intelligent mutants that are capable of executing plans and capable of directed sadism and grudges, I think the movie actually loses some of the potential for unsettling, semi cosmic horror that's naturally there in Animals that don't have human you know that we don't think of as having human like minds like sharks, and it becomes something closer to a movie with a villain that has human motives, which is counterintuitively more familiar, more comfortable, and more suitable for light entertainment. It's easier to to sort of have fun and do light entertainment with a plot in which the antagonist hates the heroes instead of just unfeelingly wants to disassemble them.

01:01:37
Speaker 1: At least I would argue, no, No, I think it's that's a fair critique.

01:01:41
Speaker 3: It's like few the monster actually despises us and wants to do us harm.

01:01:46
Speaker 1: Now that truth be told, the monsters do do some harm in this film. Yeah, I think that the first scene where it happens, and it's a good good half hour into the film. It really takes a while setting things up. But then when stuff starts going wrong, it really starts going wrong. Like basically, Whitlock's character is just moving past the shark that they have in this kind of like semi submerged working area, and it just kind of casually turns its head and bites his arm completely off, just completely rips his arm Off.

01:02:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, and a note on special effects this movie has. It's not all. CGI has animatronic sharks, which I love. I love the animatronic shart. They basically built little shark robots for this movie, and they're great. There are some scenes where it transitions to CGI and I hate the CGI, which is made especially annoying because of the presence of these really great physical animatronics and the fact that most of the CGI shots are unnecessary.

01:02:45
Speaker 1: Pretty good for the day, though, I would say, yeah, yeah.

01:02:47
Speaker 3: It's ninety nine, so you know, this was an era of big, big budget movies having CGI that does not hold up at all.

01:03:04
Speaker 1: What should we go ahead and talk about Samuel L. Jackson's big scene.

01:03:09
Speaker 3: Right, the scene this is probably the scene that the movie is most remembered for, not probably definitely. This is the thing, the thing everybody remembers about it. So one thing that's strange about this movie is it's sort of in the first third or so, it feels like it might have three main characters. One of them is Saffron Burrows, the Scientist, one of them is Thomas Jane, the shark Wrangler, and the other is Samuel L. Jackson, the steady handed corporate executive, but who's not just like a suit. They set Samuel L. Jackson's character up so that he has a backstory where he's like a heroic survivor of I think a mountain avalanche where he was trapped under ice with a bunch of people.

01:03:52
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he has some scenes where he's like, oh, you think you think sharks are bad, let me tell you about snow right, Yes, but yeah, now coming back to the beside an adventure, Like, he does feel kind of like the Gene Hackman character in that film, you know, in a disaster film. He is the character who can step forward and lead. He is the one who can unite people and bring them together.

01:04:12
Speaker 3: Until he is right in the middle of giving a speech about ice. I believe he's like, yeah, you think sharks are bad, let me tell you about ice. Ice has a mind, you know, it hunts you. And then he's in the middle of giving this this rousing speech to like get everybody motivated to go, say, you know, beat these things, and then a shark just like hops up out of the water and bites him and just like pulls him.

01:04:35
Speaker 1: In, pulls him in, and then another shark joins them and just rips him apart, and they make it abundantly clear, Yes, this character is totally dead and is not coming back.

01:04:44
Speaker 3: I've seen a lot of people compare this scene to the death of Tom Skerritt in Alien, Dallas in Alien. Yeah, who at the time Alien came out. I think a lot of audiences, you know, we see it, having seen it many times and knowing about the reputation of it after the fact, we sometimes can look at Ripley as the main character from the beginning. It's not set up that way, Like, it is very much an ensemble of characters who are given almost equal screen time. And if there's anybody who audiences would have been expected to assume was the main character who would be the last survivor in the film at the end, it was Tom Scarett.

01:05:22
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of a it's kind of like a heightened twist on the like the death of the would be savior. Yeah, you know, I probably a popular version of this would be in Hitchcock's Psycho, you know, where you have a character that's showing up that is surely going to save the day, like they are the presence of law and order, that is entering into this nightmare world, but then they're taken out as well.

01:05:44
Speaker 3: So yeah, you think Samuel L. Jackson is probably going to become like the emergent hero of the movie. Nope, just gets chomped. He's gone and it is.

01:05:52
Speaker 1: That's a great sequence though, Like it's I wish I could see it like for real without having it you know, had been you know world for me, but even watching it knowing what was coming, it feels you really feel the bottom fallout at that point because it's like, oh my goodness, they're really screwed, Like this was there, this was their guy, you know, Yeah, this guy had a plan and now he's just completely dead. So I feel like it's a highly effective scene that really turns audience's expectation on his head.

01:06:23
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, as we said earlier, I think there's there's not really much to say about plot. Most of the rest of the movie is just set piece after set piece of characters sort of scrambling around different places in this base trying to get away from sharks. There is a lot of stuff in the middle of the movie with ll cool Jay on his own. Yeah, and they're good scenes. There are scenes where he's funny, and he doesn't have anybody to act opposite. It's just him alone, well with a parrot, him with a parrot alone in like you know, hanging out in the kitchen or walking around to the hallways dealing with a shark. Eventually, Elle COOLJ does manage to kill a shark by blowing up with an oven, which is a really good scene. But I wonder about what you think about this. I get a sense that some of this stuff with Llo cool J was reshoots and fill in. I would bet that once they had a finished movie, they were like, hey, everybody loves Ello cool J. We got to get more scenes with him early on. But maybe they didn't. They couldn't reshoot with all of the actors there, so they just added more stuff with him on his own.

01:07:30
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know. On one hand, it's easy to look at it and think, well, okay, this is early in Llo cool Jay's career as an actor. That you know, perhaps they didn't know that he was this capable, and you know, they came back and added more stuff. But then I also read that the Renny Harlan like really campaigned for Ello cool J to be cast in it. Like I think maybe he knew that he had these capabilities, because ultimately he is He's very charismatic. He's able to pull off the serious stuff, the wise cracking stuff, and the more comedic stuff, all in a way that doesn't compromise the character. Like he never feels like a comic relief character, even though he provides comic relief. He you know, he feels more like like a hero in the film, and those winking moments where he's he's clearly they're clearly doing stuff with his character to you know, to to again play with audience expectations and to maybe you know, get a laugh there. He's able to pull it off in a way that feels authentic, that doesn't feel like it's cheapened anything.

01:08:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, one choice that I thought was really funny was the decision to make his character not just not just a chef as a profession, not just like somebody who cooks for a living but has a genuine passion for the culinary arts, like he considered. There's a part where I think he's like recording a video of like leaving his his legacy is testament to his children or something, and he's describing his omblant technique.

01:08:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's one of those things where when you when you say it out loud, it sounds kind of hokey, but somehow it works in the film. Some somehow that it works.

01:08:59
Speaker 3: It's a very funny touch and it works. Yeah, I will want a sequel where like Preacher opens up a Michelin Star restaurant and it gets attacked by sharks.

01:09:09
Speaker 1: I mean, it is kind of alarming that they made at least a couple of direct to video sequels to this film, and I don't think they brought back any of the main cast, did they, or really put any kind of money into them. It seems like you would have gone for it with a Deep Blue Sea two.

01:09:24
Speaker 3: I've never seen any of the sequels. In my mind, I've always classed them in the same category as the Starship Troopers sequels, which I also have not seen and kind of don't feel like I should.

01:09:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I guess it's probably one of those things where on a business level, they're like, no, this film was this level of a hit. If we spend this low amount on the sequel, it'll automatically make this much money. This is how much you're going to spend on it. And they did.

01:09:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, so a thing that's worth talking about with the ending of this movie. Apparently the ending is a product of a process that I hate in theory, but I'm glad it happened here because I think it produced a much better outcome. So the ending of this movie is allegedly a product of focus groups. In the original ending of this movie, again, this is what has been alleged. I couldn't confirm this, but you can find people writing about this. In the original ending, Saffron Burrows not only survives the movie, she's the one who kills the shark in the end. I guess she redeems herself. I guess she realizes that it's bad that she cut all these corners in her research and she shouldn't have made the super intelligent sharks and regrets it, and she blows the shark up in the end. And this one was more ambiguous. But I think it's also the case that in the original ending, ellll cool Jay may have been killed instead of Saffron Burrows. And I think one can see why audiences would have had extremely negative reactions to this, because you cannot kill Elle cool j.

01:10:52
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, he's a very likable character in this film. You don't want to see him get eaten by a shark. And I will say that when I was watching, I thought he was going to get eaten by the shark, because he is attacked by a shark. Yeah, laid in the picture in a way that looks severe enough that I'm like, oh, he's gone, But then he's just got a slight limp later.

01:11:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks like they filmed a death scene for him but then went back on it.

01:11:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, which I'm fine with. It was totally the right choice. But you know, you look at that first film where basically a shark Nudge is stolen Scars Garden, his arm falls off. Yeah, you know, it's like he's just like boiled chicken to this monster. But oh cool Jay, I mean he is. He's made it tough for stuff. He's really ripped.

01:11:35
Speaker 3: But so apparently test audiences hated Saffron Burrows character with some reason. I think they reasoned that she caused all of this, like she made the killer sharks, and they did not like her surviving and playing a heroic role in the finale, So the ending was changed so that instead she sacrifices herself to defeat the sharks and she gets chomped into pieces, and ellll cool Jas survives getting bitten by the shark and in the end he helps save the day. So I think they kind of flipped the script on that. And then I wonder if they may have shot additional scenes for Ello cool Jay or additional moments for him to go earlier in the movie. And I read that they also edited out some stuff with Saffron Burrows earlier in the movie that makes her character more sympathetic, so they kind of leaned into making her less likable.

01:12:27
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I mean, so obviously it sounds like they used a focus group. But I'm reminded of the films of William Castle, you know, like they could have gone in that direction, but like, all right, now it's time for audiences to vote to get to kill the shark and who will be eaten?

01:12:42
Speaker 3: That would have been written that would have gotten people to go see the movie twice.

01:12:45
Speaker 1: I'll also say that the final shark death in this film is of course totally Jaws. It's very reminiscent of that final scene where where the main character is shooting at the shark with the rifle, trying to hit the uh the the Cannis story in its mouth, we have a similar but more elaborate science fiction he set up going on in the final moments of this film.

01:13:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are three mind freak sharks in this movie. One gets blown up by ll cool J in the oven, one gets electrocuted by Saffron Burrows. Is that right? And then the third one gets blown up and when it's trying to escape.

01:13:22
Speaker 1: Yes, and so we're left with just l O cool J and our and our sharks.

01:13:27
Speaker 3: Burt character, Oh, Thomas Jane. Yeah, yeah, Thomas j They're gonna they're gonna best buds for life.

01:13:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, well they have. They have kind of fun back and forth there floating on the debris waiting to be picked up. And uh, and I was waiting for it. I was expecting there to be some some dark shaker at the end, but it's no, They're good to go. Yeah, everybody's gonna be fine. Like I thought the rescue boat was gonna get eaten by the shark, by one of the sharks that wasn't caught, like there was a fourth shark which they allude to. But no, everything's good. So I mean makes sense. This is this is a big budget summer blockbuster. You want to send it folks home happy.

01:14:01
Speaker 3: You know, the snooty film critic in me somehow rebels like part of me, part of me is like, oh, this is this is such a derivative film, and part of me is like, I hate the idea that they shaped the ending with focus groups. But I'm not gonna lie. I love Deep Blue c It's great.

01:14:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty fun. And I and to your point, this this was a very essential updating of our expectations regarding shark movies. They did something new with the Shark movie which most shark movies did not do, and it was perhaps the last like good innovation, the last good pivot in in shark exploitation cinema, because it seemed like, you know, you see everything that's come out in the wake of Shark Nato has. I mean, I guess it's work. People like it, I assume, and people view it, it seems, but I do not for my purposes. It has not been a good direction for the shark film. You know.

01:14:57
Speaker 3: Well, as I've said, you know, I don't think there are any shark movies other than Jaws I've seen that I would say are just unequivocally good. But at the same time, I've watched probably ten billion shark movies. I mean, yeah, sometimes you just got to put one on.

01:15:09
Speaker 1: I think the other thing worth noting is that this film goes a little fantastic obviously with the idea of super intelligent sharks, and it is very mainstream, and it's going for that mainstream audience. And I feel like maybe there is something to be said for the success of films like Sharknado, because they take something like the Sharks, something that is like an innate and primal level we find fearsome. And then, of course it's worth saying that this fearsomeness has also been reinforced over and over again by media, much of which is not even fictional media but documentary style media and Shark week style marketing. This has all been reinforced, and therefore something that is silly with sharks, and it takes some of the punch out of the shark for us and makes us maybe a little less afraid.

01:15:56
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and maybe that gets us to the place we should end, which is a little bit of a stuff to blow your mind. PSA, we know a lot of our listeners already know this, but hey, sharks are amazing animals. They're really important parts of ocean ecosystems, and they're not your enemy.

01:16:09
Speaker 1: That's right. Let's dive through some important realities to keep in mind about sharks. Enjoy your shark's politation cinema, but know all of this. So, first of all, sharks are important, are important predator species that play key roles in their ecosystems. And while they can be fierce specimens, that doesn't mean they're not vulnerable to overfishing. They have relatively slow growth, late sexual maturity, and a small number of young per brood. The harvesting of shark fins for shark fin soup is internationally a major concern, and according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, among the approximately four hundred and seventy species of sharks, two point four percent are critically endangered, three point two percent are endangered, ten point three percent are vulnerable, and fourteen point four percent are near threatened. And the great white shark, of course, you know, is the jaws species. This is among the threatened species. And on top of all this, as far as shark danger goes, it is it is certainly true that certain species of shark can be extremely dangerous in exactly the right circumstances. Like nobody's denying that, but statistically you're far more likely to be killed by, say, an insect or a dog as opposed to a shark. According to the ISAF twenty twenty Shark Attack Report, there were one hundred and twenty nine a lled shark human interactions worldwide in twenty twenty. Only fifty seven of these were found to be unprovoked attacks. The rest entailed thirty nine provoked attacks, six boat attacks. So this is where the shark bites a vehicle of some sort but not a human. One scavenging incident. This is where like a body is found but the wounds inflicted by a shark appeared to be post mortem, so you know the individual likely died in some other way, and then the shark found the body in the water. One case that is labeled as public aquaria, which I believe means that it's something that's happened at an aquarium where a shark was being kept on an aquarium environment. Three doubtful cases, six cases where no assessment could be made, and sixteen not confirmed. Now it's of course important to note that we're talking about twenty twenty, so things, you know, we're a little different this year in terms of, you know, how many people were traveling, you know, to what degree law enforcement, local and otherwise was able to weigh in on some of these cases. But they drive home that these numbers are more or less on par There are always fluctuations. So in twenty twenty, there were thirteen related fatalities, ten of which were not ten of which were confirmed to be unprovoked, and that's above the global average of four. But long term trends show a decreasing number of annual fatalities caused by sharks, so bear all of that in mind. On top of that, I would also add that, following recent trends, surfers and those participating in board sports accounted for most incidents, so sixty one percent of the total cases that we just touched on, and your risk of being bitten by a shark it just remains extremely low. So just always keep that in mind when you get in the water. And I know, when you're in the water, it's easy to think about sharks. I enjoy snorkeling, but I do think about sharks every time I am snorkeling. So I know, believe me, I feel you on all of this, but you just have to remind yourself, like what the numbers say, and if nothing else you're in the waters, you know, just think about like just the sheer number of people who get into those waters and how most all of them are not interacting with sharks at all. So I find all of that, all of that is comforting. And also I should also point out there are some wonderful resources online that give you advice about how you know how to avoid sharks in the water. And these are some awesome important tips to keep in mind. So so, yeah, don't let shark exploitation cinema and you know some of the you know, maybe you know edgier and more exploitive examples of shark documentary steer you wrong, right.

01:20:17
Speaker 3: I mean, as I said earlier, sharks are not your enemy, but in fact I would also say sharks are not your friend. I would say sharks are to be left alone. Just don't mess with them. You know that you can admire them from afar, You can watch great documentary footage. You can appreciate sharks as amazing animals, but they mostly don't want anything to do with us, and I'd say respect their wishes.

01:20:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say buy and large. We are a greater risk to them, you know, than they are to us. All Right, So there you have it, Deep Blue Sea. I know, I for one would love to hear from anyone who saw this when it was in theaters or saw it, you know, on home video without any spoilers. I'd love to hear your thoughts on some of the twists that take place in this film, because it definitely has a couple of really good ones. Oh and you know, this is probably a good place, is any for me to mention that, Hey, I wrote a short story about sharks as As you may remember, our former co host, Christian Seger, masterminded a weird art fiction and non fiction publication called Corridor last year. The kickstarter was successful and copies are said to be making their way to their owners. So if you if you didn't get in on that kickstarter, you can pre order yourself a copy by going to any of the Corridor magazine social media platforms and following the link there. They're on Twitter as Corridor Pubs, and they're on Instagram as Corridor Publications, And I think that's also their handle on Facebook as well. So, yeah, I've got a sci fi shark story. If that's your kind of thing, you like that, you can read it in that magazine so Humble.

01:21:42
Speaker 3: Of course it's their kind of thing. Check it out.

01:21:45
Speaker 1: And let's see if you're maybe you're lesson interested in that and you're more about this weird House Cinema stuff. Hey, go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's the that's the the used to be the website. Now we'll just shoot you to the iHeart page for our show. But there is a button there you can click on for store, and if you go there, you can buy yourself a Weird House Cinema T shirt. You can get a Weird House Cinema what a sticker, a coat bag, you can get just about anything except wal Art, and you can't get wal Art because our file wasn't big enough. But really, I mean it's big enough for all the other products you could possibly want.

01:22:16
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.

01:22:37
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.