In this thrilling episode, our hosts dive deep into a captivating mix of crime, suspense, and action. They start by analyzing the gripping psychological drama and haunting atmosphere of The Alienist, they delve into the intense cat-and-mouse battle between geniuses Light Yagami and L Lawliet in Death Note, they survey the oddly barren world of The Last of Us, they infiltrate the espionage-infused adventures of The Grey Man and the muscle-bound heroics of Reacher, and finally, they start their Sinanju training with Master Chiun in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins and The Destroyer pulp fiction novel series. With a blend of analysis, enthusiasm, and Googling stuff, our hosts produce an episode that just may be... a perfect accident. Think Fast! And watch Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins on Tubi for free: https://tubitv.com/movies/306944/remo-williams-the-adventure-begins?start=true&tracking=google-feed&utm_source=google-feed Read the story of how Remo Williams really began here: https://www.pdfdrive.com/murphy-warren-sapir-richard-destroyer-001-created-the-destroyer-d194502575.html Do you have burning questions about zombie nutrition? Watch episode 5 of The Last of Us on Max and email your thoughts to the show. --------------We Spoil Everything-------------- Reach the show at DontEncourage@gmail.com
In this thrilling episode, our hosts dive deep into a captivating mix of crime, suspense, and action. They start by analyzing the gripping psychological drama and haunting atmosphere of The Alienist, they delve into the intense cat-and-mouse battle between geniuses Light Yagami and L Lawliet in Death Note, they survey the oddly barren world of The Last of Us, they infiltrate the espionage-infused adventures of The Grey Man and the muscle-bound heroics of Reacher, and finally, they start their Sinanju training with Master Chiun in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins and The Destroyer pulp fiction novel series. With a blend of analysis, enthusiasm, and Googling stuff, our hosts produce an episode that just may be... a perfect accident.
Think Fast! And watch Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins on Tubi for free: https://tubitv.com/movies/306944/remo-williams-the-adventure-begins?start=true&tracking=google-feed&utm_source=google-feed
Read the story of how Remo Williams really began here: https://www.pdfdrive.com/murphy-warren-sapir-richard-destroyer-001-created-the-destroyer-d194502575.html
Do you have burning questions about zombie nutrition? Watch episode 5 of The Last of Us on Max and email your thoughts to the show.
--------------We Spoil Everything--------------
Reach the pod at DontEncourage@gmail.com
Discourage us on Instagram @DontEncourageUs
speaker 1: The premise again is that the American government is murdering its citizens instead of arresting them, they wait until they have evidence and then they murder them.
speaker 2: Whenever he was gonna show up, that theme would come in. The music would rise, and then you were waiting for something to happen. Nothing happened.
He's the worst assassin ever. He, I was just gonna say, he's the worst assassin
speaker 1: of all time. So I got your notes for the podcast. Excellent. Was, was some of that, uh, AI generated? Uh, yeah. The first thing I noticed through the thing that made me most suspicious was the note about the actor who played ung.
Mm-hmm. Studying Snu Sanju. Oh, Sanju. 'cause it's not real. Because it's not real. That's
speaker 2: so crazy. Thanks. Chat. G p t always coming through in the pitch.
speaker 1: It's confident.
speaker 2: I really is confident if you read that, you are like, wow, wow. The ancient art of Sanju, Uhhuh. I
speaker 1: haven't heard of that one before. Yeah. I wonder if there are any classes in my area I can learn to, uh, raise my arms and run on sand without leaving footprints.
And if I raise my elbows, then I can run on water. It's
speaker 2: kind of frightening, you know? It's so good for so many things, but this whole idea that it will just give you just blatant misinformation. Oh
speaker 1: yeah. And, and work it in. It's like the devil, you know? He mixes falsehoods in with the truth. Seamlessly.
Seamlessly. So
speaker 2: you're running around talking to people about Sinan and this amazing new martial art that lets you walk on water 'cause of chat, G P T, you know how much of that's gonna happen in the future? This whole idea of misinformation, no fact-checking whatsoever. People getting all their information from an ai and if the AI behaves like this, they're just gonna be running around
speaker 1: talking nonsense.
How is that different? It's not really different, it's just
speaker 2: a little more advanced technologically.
speaker 1: I was gonna say that now we can blame the computer uhhuh slightly, but like
speaker 2: surgeons like, uh, had chat. G P T tell me how to perform a heart transplant.
speaker 1: And I like it. The guy comes out with, I told me with two hearts.
Yeah, that's what it says. It says right here, it said two hearts. Ugh. Take the AI to trial. Skynet's new strategy. They tried killing Sarah Connor and it didn't work out right. So now they're just gonna build robot, just lead us all in the wrong direction. Instead make us idiots. They really jumped. I was trying to build a cabinet and I built a robot that tried to kill me.
I followed the instructions
speaker 2: to a t I'm like, this doesn't look like a cabinet.
speaker 1: I don't understand. What is this? Where did I put my stuff?
speaker 2: Why does it have a gun in red eyes?
speaker 1: Welcome to, don't Encourage Us, the podcast where we talk about the big ideas behind fiction projects of all different kinds, books, movies, TV shows, video games, nothing's off limits. I'm your host, Harry Kim, and I'm here with my co-host Neilly. Hi Neilly. Hey everybody. Today we're talking about the Destroyer Pul fiction novel series, the Remo Williams movie Adaptation, and an upcoming Amazon show.
But first, what creative content have you been into this week? This
speaker 2: week I have really been taking it easy. I'm still working my way through the Alienist. This story about the late 1890s serial killer in New York. Mm-hmm. And one of the first, I guess, The first well-known psychiatrist. He's fictionalized, of course, who goes on like a detective mission to find out who the serial killer is.
It's a really interesting book.
speaker 1: He's the, uh, old original guard Alex Cross. Yeah,
speaker 2: the first Alex Cross. That's a good way to put it. There are a lot of really interesting parts of the book in terms of like forensic science, how like fingerprints weren't widely accepted at the time mm-hmm. As being a reliable way to catch a killer.
There's so many things that we take for granted now in just investigations and watching so many crime dramas that they just didn't exist. Right. Like any type of forensics around blood fingerprints, D n a, nothing Of course, at that time period. So there was so many crimes being committed and people just could never figure out who it was if it was done in some dark alley somewhere.
Yeah. Good luck
speaker 1: finding out who it was. Good old days, right? Yeah. The Jack, that reminds me. Have you seen, uh, death Note? I started watching it. A movie on Netflix or the, uh, the original,
speaker 2: the original anime. I really liked it and I, I forget why I stopped watching it, but it wasn't, 'cause it wasn't a
speaker 1: great show.
It gets into this kind of Sherlock Holmes mind battle. Mm-hmm. You know, so it really doesn't look like it. But the show is almost like an homage to the Moriarty Holmes conflict where youre investigating and you have to outsmart your opponent and think several moves ahead. And so it's a, it's a really, it's one of the most brilliant series that I've bothered to, you know, read the screen through the entire series, but it's really good.
How many episodes is it?
speaker 2: I don't know.
speaker 1: Is there any way to figure that out?
speaker 2: Uh, chat. G P t How many episodes
speaker 1: of Death Note one, it was canceled death note halfway through
speaker 2: the American Crime Drama starring Chuck Norris as a show about a
speaker 1: musical note that murders people pure confidence. Uh, up to date with last of us.
Did you watch episode five? I did watch it.
speaker 2: I enjoyed it to an extent. I'm still on the bandwagon of it's just gonna turn into the Walking Dead. It's such a bleak series that I don't know if I want to really continue watching. It puts me in kind of like a bad mindset. Mm-hmm. Because it's so depressing and so it, it gives you these moments of hope and then just kind of destroys them.
Mm-hmm. By how dark everything gets, you know? Yeah.
speaker 1: What did you think of the episode? I also may stop watching the series, but for slightly different reasons. They've fallen in this pattern of hitting the same notes. We're only five episodes in, but a couple times now they've introduced, introduced us to new characters and then killed them off like in the same episode basically.
And so that's kind of a cheap trick. Yeah. You know, especially because we're 20 years into this apocalypse. It makes it hard for the series to feel like a series instead of just a, a bunch of sort of self-contained episodes. You know, they've also hit the same note of survivors, people who presumably have made it this far committing suicide because of their love and attachments.
They've hit that note a couple times now as well. And again, we're only five episodes in, so it feels a little bit like emotionally cheap. Like the creators of this series are trying to, I don't wanna say win awards, but like they're trying to put on the window dressings of like a prestige series without actually bothering to build the foundation and do the behind the scenes work.
It's like a beautiful car, but the engine's garbage. Yeah. You know, because it is just trying to make it look shiny. That's kind of lam. I
speaker 2: would agree with you. I think in the way they introduce these characters, you feel as if they're in for at least more than a few episodes, you know? Mm-hmm. The Henry and Sam, that relationship was so interesting, and I felt like there were so many moments that were so nuanced in the acting, how they were survivors.
This idea of like, are you a good person or a bad person? Like how guilty he was around getting the, the, uh, medication for his little brother, but he had to do it. But there was a lot of that going on in the, in the episode, which I found really interesting. And it would've been, it would've been great kind of to see them on the road altogether.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And just the way they built up the two main characters and the interactions with them and how the girl was starting to get attached to the, to the little boy and kind of teaching him the ropes kind of like, and how to survive in that environment. And then it's just done shockingly again, and then we move on again.
Yeah. And is that just gonna be. Every episode, are we just gonna get reintroduced to a new character? Like, oh wow, that character's interesting. The acting's really good. You're starting to feel something for the character, and then, Nope, we're, and then they
speaker 1: kill themselves.
speaker 2: Yeah, they kill themselves, and then they go off on the next quote unquote, adventure in a new town.
I feel like it's getting rinse and repeat thematically.
speaker 1: They're definitely, in my opinion, hitting the same notes too many times for this early in the series. Mm-hmm. I'm still trying to figure out how bad Fedra is, because it seems like the minute Fedra pulled out of the city, it was like a countdown until they killed themselves.
Mm-hmm. So, yes, they were harsh. And the character that we meet says that they were, what did you say they were like torturing, murdering, you know, hanging people and raping and the rape. Okay. So if they're raping people, there's no. There's no reason for that. But if it took really strict discipline to keep these communities from imploding and to keep people alive again, I'm not, you know, I mean, again, raping iss terrible.
So obviously that's, that's wrong. They're the bad guys. I get it. But we haven't really seen them do anything that would seem disproportionate to the level of discipline or control, or whatever you wanna call it, required to keep humans from killing themselves or destroying their own society. Right. Am I, yeah,
speaker 2: no, I think you're making a good point.
This idea that we don't know if they're rogue factions within fedra, like some bad apples that are causing this type of chaos. Right. But then when they introduce these rebel groups, they're pretty bad. Yeah. How could they be? Right? Like,
speaker 1: how, how are they the future? Could Fed of Kansas City be worse?
Especially because they basically wipe themselves out in like a week, right? Or like, yeah, it wasn't even that long. They wiped out their entire community over Absolutely not an issue. Worth wiping your community out.
speaker 2: Right. And she's ruthless. They're absolutely ruthless. It's all suicidal.
speaker 1: Well, yeah. And let's risk everyone's lives to get revenge.
And it's like maybe Fedra needed to be intense, harsh. Yeah. To some extent
speaker 2: they're not making a very good case overall that federal is this evil demonic force that had to be erased
speaker 1: or that everyone else is worth saving. Yeah,
speaker 2: absolutely. It, it's just making the point. It's like every man and woman for themselves,
speaker 1: basically what it's, that's the safest route at this point.
Yeah.
speaker 2: Different uniforms. Same, same people. It's the
speaker 1: same exact thing. Yeah. Right. Exactly. So, quick question. A city, Kansas City, theoretically largely abandoned for 20 years. No insects or animals having moved in, no birds anywhere, no evidence of living things other than people. Nothing. Nowhere seems strange.
It's
speaker 2: a little bit odd. Yeah. They never make a reference to, was there some other kind of infection that killed off all the wildlife? Every single insect. Right. They haven't mentioned
speaker 1: anything. Yeah. Maybe those, uh, zombies or the fungus zombies are snacking on roaches and rats and little birds to stay alive.
Yeah, you're
speaker 2: right. It's just completely bare of anything else except zombies and, and humans.
speaker 1: How are those humans staying alive, the ones that are infected?
speaker 2: Another great question. I don't know. What is it? Is the fungus just, I thought the fungus fed off the body for 20 years till it, no, I'm getting to that.
Ah, it doesn't make any sense. It's feeding off the body and has an a limited food supply of some sort. Or is it getting nutrients from when they attack a non-infected person? But it just seems like they bite them and kind of, well, how
speaker 1: many non-infected people were the fungus zombies that were living underground countering on a regular basis?
I guess the fungus must be taking nutrients from the soil and then converting them to something that the body, the host body can feed off of for 20 years and maintain. Yeah, this is the thought outing musculature and good ligament strength and obviously a lot of flexibility well beyond
speaker 2: good, right?
They're like, yeah, gymnast enhance power lifters,
speaker 1: Cirque sole. Yeah, the
speaker 2: speed. They're also like sprinters, you know, like on the big one last sprinters,
speaker 1: that's all messed up. Yeah. That, that big one was, was super strong. So where's it getting fuel? Maybe they're eating the roaches and the rats and you know, the little crits that should be running around in the city.
I mean,
speaker 2: that guy's probably on a 10,000 calorie diet. Right? Where's he getting that? Or 20,000
speaker 1: calorie diet? Yeah. I don't easily, Hmm. I
speaker 2: don't think they really thought this through, did they? It's, I don't know.
speaker 1: Be nice. It's kind of if they would keep teaching us to separate it. A little other. That's what I was gonna say.
speaker 2: It's kind of odd that they set this really interesting precedent in the beginning. Mm-hmm. Teaching about how they found out about it, what it is, how it operates, and then they just gave up on that altogether. They
speaker 1: abandoned it completely in favor of basically the same plot already twice now. Yeah. I don't know
speaker 2: where this is gonna go.
I don't know if I'm gonna keep going on the ride every week. Mm-hmm. Or I'm just gonna wait until it's like season two or something and then just kind of binge it if it's worth it.
speaker 1: Yeah. I might just get chat G B t to summarize the episodes. Summarize for me. Oh, that's a good idea.
speaker 2: Uh, tbe it stops at 2021 right now.
It's knowledge
speaker 1: base. Is that right? Mm-hmm. Why is
speaker 2: that? That's what it was trained on, huh? Up until 2021. That's interesting. Mm-hmm. But I think this new one is more current 'cause it's not tapped into the current internet. Apparently. It's everything up to 2021 that it was like the knowledge set that it has.
speaker 1: Huh. So it's like the peak of human civilization, right? I guess
speaker 2: so. Should have stopped it. Like March, 2020.
speaker 1: And that's when, uh, the people creating it were allowed to go to dinner and public again and go to all these What? You could leave the game, game, the light. Yeah, that's right. Okay. Today we are talking about the Destroyer series starring Remo Williams, America's Assassin.
The premise of the series is something like what if what America really needs is more killing? It's a great summary. What do you think of that premise? I think it's an accurate premise. So we should say spoiler warning. So I've actually read now the first two books and I watched the movie. So we're gonna spoil at least those three things.
But there are 152 books so far. So even if I spoil the first two, there are 150 other ones that you can read. No other movies though. So anyway, you were saying, I was
speaker 2: saying I think it's perfect. I think the fact that they chose this man to be like America's savior. Mm-hmm. It's a lot of work. There's a lot they had to do to find this guy.
He was the only guy they could find to do this type of work. There was no one who had previously been trained.
speaker 1: Right, right. Who was kind of around
speaker 2: part of like a special forces unit or something. They find this like bumbling detective,
speaker 1: he's not even a detective. He's like a beat cop. Yeah. Beat cop to like
speaker 2: transform into a super spy.
What I found really funny about the movie is how quickly he accepts his fate. Did he find that kind of odd? They kind of tell him that this is what's gonna happen. He's like, okay, let's go. That was it. He didn't really protest at all. He never tried to like escape and be like, you know, forget this. I don't want to, I don't want to be involved in this.
I'm running. He just went along with it so
speaker 1: easily. Well, there's a lot about the movie that's interesting we're talking about, and there's a lot that's different from the books. So what do you wanna talk about first? Should we start with the movie, or should I talk a little bit about the books? Or we can
speaker 2: talk a little bit about the movie and then jump in the books and see where the differences really
are.
speaker 1: How about you give the audience a brief summary? Ooh. We'll see how that works out. All right.
speaker 2: Sam Macon is a tough Brooklyn, New York City street cop and Vietnam era Marine Corps veteran. He's unwillingly recruited as an assassin for a secret United States organization called cure. The recruitment is through a bizarre method.
His death is faked and he's given a new face and a new name re, christened Remo Williams. After the name and location of the manufacturer of the bedpan in Macon's hospital room, his face is surgically altered and he's trained to be a human killing machine by his aged derisive and impassive. Korean martial Arts Master Shun.
Though Remos training is extremely rushed by HUN standards, Remo learns seemingly impossible skills, such as dodging bullets and running on water and wet cement. Shun teaches Remo, the Korean martial art named Sinju. Remos instruction is interrupted when he's sent by cure to investigate a corrupt weapons procurement program within the US Army.
speaker 1: Nice. Nice. Wow. You've really gotten better at that.
1985 Film A Stars, uh, Fred Ward who passed away last year. Wilfred Brimley from the Diabetes Fame, diabetes Team Hall of Fame. Yeah, Kate Mulgrew, who's done a few different projects over the years, including Star Trek. It was directed by Guy Hamilton. Did you look him up at all? Learn anything about that guy?
speaker 2: Um, guy Hamilton, was he involved with Last Star Fighter?
speaker 1: Oh, I don't think so. Or the composer of this. The composer did. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, what'd you think of the theme? There's just a very brief remo theme that they use throughout the film. Did you like those few bars? I
speaker 2: actually didn't enjoy the score at all, and I wanted to talk about that a little bit.
speaker 1: It's a weird mix of synth and they try to do like the Asian bamboo kind of thing, and they throw in like European strings and then back to that eighties. Like do, do, do, do, do. And then the Remo theme gets thrown in randomly, like when he just speeds up a vehicle a little bit or that's does one little move they throw in his theme.
That's what I wanted to mention. I thought it was really,
speaker 2: it was kind of ridiculous. The intro I thought was one of the slowest est intros for a movie I've seen in such a
speaker 1: long time. Oh, it went on so long. It was just
speaker 2: for the audience. It was just shots of buildings in New York. Really slow kind of helicopter shots.
Some closeups that were really, really tight on like a window for no reason. And it went on and on and on. It seemingly went on for like 20 minutes. Yeah. But I'm sure it was only three and I
speaker 1: couldn't believe how, no, it had to be at least six or seven minutes. It was, it was so long.
speaker 2: I was trying to figure out why.
And were they gonna go right into him like climbing the side of a building? No. Right. It was just establishing shots of New York in case you had no idea
speaker 1: where you were. So many And you wanted a brief tour. Yeah.
speaker 2: It was kind of unbelievable. And in terms of the score, the score was really funny 'cause it would start elevating tension when there was nothing to really like elevate the tension around.
Mm-hmm. It was just him walking or like whenever he was gonna show up, that theme would come in, the music would rise, and then you were waiting for something to happen. Nothing happened. It was so odd. It almost seemed like the score was mismatched to the action on the screen.
speaker 1: Yeah, it really
speaker 2: did. It was too intense while they were like establishing the scene, like the first few seconds of the scene and didn't seem to match with the action going on during the scene.
And the special effects, like the punches and stuff sounded so fake uhhuh as well. I found that so funny.
speaker 1: It was so, and the timing was off a couple times on the special effects, like the sound effects. Oh, the sound. I thought you meant the uh, window. Oh yeah, no, that was also, so there were a few action sequences.
They seemed to rely on practical effects, right. It seemed like they were really determined to do that and have the actors do stunts. So there were a bunch of very awkward shots where that really relied on sound effects because nobody was like hitting the ground that hard or actually making contact.
But they actually did this a couple times and I think the best example is what you're talking about, the glass shatters before he hits it. Yeah. But because they filmed and played it at normal speed, you can clearly see that the glass shattered before he hit it. And I happened
speaker 2: to be able to pause it right at that frame.
Yeah. I I tried it like
speaker 1: five times Yeah. To pause it at that moment. So I was like,
speaker 2: wait a minute, did the glass just shatter before he touched it?
speaker 1: Yeah. So that kind of stuff happens a lot. Like too much. Yeah. It
speaker 2: was really, it was really off. Did you also note the Statue of Liberty was built in, uh, Mexico City?
The
speaker 1: rep. So I wonder, true. Wonder if that was a true fact chat. G p t strikes again, I did read that they, uh, there's a scene for those of you who have not and probably will not see this, there's, there's a scene where three random construction guys accept, I don't know how much money, like a thousand dollars.
It seems like, it seemed like, like a stack of ones. Right. So murder a, a stranger. And really get into it. Yeah. They really get seriously. Yeah. They clearly would've done it for free. So let's, can
speaker 2: we clear that up for a second? Sure. So they were just random construction guys. They weren't actually guys, Dr.
Assassins or something, dressed up as construction guys. They were just random construction guys who were like, Hey, I've got some money for you. There's a guy up there, can you kill him for us? And they're like, yeah, let's do it. Right.
speaker 1: I don't know, it's very strange. Uh, let's go over the facts. We see the bad guy giving them money, these three construction guys at the base of the Statue of Liberty, and they're like, oh, okay, we got it.
One of 'em, like he, he repeatedly, I think they just dubbed that in. I think it's the same laughter anyway, so they're taking the money. They're dressed as construction workers, so if they were paid assassins, there's no reason to pay them. I. At the base of a public public park. Yeah. Why would you pay them out in the open if they were people you hired in advance?
Right. Because this is Remo
speaker 2: Williams. Nothing
speaker 1: makes sense. Okay. Alright, fine. So he, he gives them cash. They go up there to the top of the Statue of Liberty where Remo Williams is being trained to get over his fear of heights. And these three guys very clumsily attempt to what? Force him to fall. Uh, so it looks like an accident.
Yep. And then at the end when they fail, he kills what?
speaker 2: Two of them he hangs. One of them for
speaker 1: sure kills him. Oh yeah. One that guy's dead, then he throw one out or something. He
speaker 2: threw one out. So that guy's dead. And he tied a rope around his neck, threw one out. No. No, but, and the other one he knocked out, one of 'em, he knocked against like the side of that, like the elevator or whatever.
And then the other one he pulled into those two doors and like kind of like crushed
speaker 1: him. I thought that was the same guy. I thought there were three, I think he killed two. He killed two outta and he left one alive, I think, unless he somehow killed him, smashing his face and then closing the gate on him, right?
Isn't that right? I thought he didn't he like kick one out or something? I thought the one he kicked
speaker 2: out is the one he hung. So he kind of around his neck kicked him out and he flew out and I think the other one was laying on the floor and then he pulled the other one between, no,
speaker 1: okay. The two doors. But it didn't make, doesn't matter.
It was so extreme with that one poor guy. Like, so basically this idea that like three teamsters are happy to take cash from a stranger to murder another stranger and enjoy the hell out of it. They loved it. They love like, was super into
speaker 2: it. That's why I thought maybe they were maybe associated with the guy who was paying him.
'cause later on he had called him, oh, did you encounter my friends or something. So I know that he could have just been calling 'em, quote unquote his
speaker 1: friends, but Right. Well, the other guy refers to them as his guys. He's like, your guys are doing a great job or did a great job, but I, I don't see, like, he hired them in advance and then brought them to the, the Statue of Liberty and then paid them.
And then they, I mean, it
speaker 2: just doesn't make any sense. He just grabbed three random guys that are so thrilled to kill some guy on the top of the Satchel Liberty. It was for Cash Squad. For cash
speaker 1: in front of everyone. In front of everyone. Right. And he's just like, here, here's a
speaker 2: big wad of cash. Oh, thanks.
Let's
speaker 1: go, let's get him. Okay. So anyway, the director Guy Hamilton, they hired him for a specific reason. He directed four of the James Bond movies. Are we sure about that?
speaker 2: There's gonna be a lot of here. I don't trust anything anymore.
speaker 1: That's funny. Yes, I, I think it's true. Goldfinger Diamonds are forever live and Let Die and the Man with the Golden Gun. So he did some of the classic ones that established Bond as the valuable intellectual property that it is. So what do you think happened
speaker 2: here with Remo?
speaker 1: How did, what went wrong? Yeah, what went wrong
speaker 2: with Remo that went right with all those other
speaker 1: James Bond classics? Yeah. That's a good question. The director was a little bit older. Goldfinger was 1964. Man with a golden gun was 1974. So it's 11 years later. Tastes have changed at this point. If you think about the Bond franchise, it's gone way more sci-fi.
It had before. I don't remember when Moonraker came out, but we're, we're out of the um, uh, space race era. Well, yeah, the Sean Connery kind of classic bond. And we've now moved into the more humor forward, science fiction, future facing bond stuff. So maybe something happened with his director, maybe he changed or his style wasn't up to date.
Maybe I'd have to go back and look at some of those movies. But maybe, for example, they have eight minute establishing shots. In the beginning May maybe. The opening scenes are really, really long, and by 1985, people's tastes had changed. And because it's not a film from the sixties or seventies, we have different expectations.
So it could be that the writer for Remo Williams, the adventure begins was also one of the writers from the Bond movies. And the idea was that this would be a James Bond type product or project or ip. So they really had planned on a series of films, hence the name of the movie. Did you look at the production company?
Did you see who that was? No.
speaker 2: Was it Orion?
speaker 1: Nope. Dick Clark Productions. Oh, Dick Clark. Yeah. He produced it. Yeah. So Dick Clark of American Bandstand and rocking New Year's Eve and $25,000 Pyramid Fame he had at that point. Interesting career, by the way. If you ever want to Google it would probably make a pretty good like TV movie or something.
But Dick Clark had developed himself as first an on-air talent and then fancied himself pretty knowledgeable about what people want, what entertainment is. He had a TV production company, which makes a lot of sense given his career, and I think did pretty well. And this was one of their attempts to break into films.
Huh? The idea was he would get investors, assemble a team, get this intellectual property and create a franchise, a Bond American James Bond,
speaker 2: basically. Hmm. And was Fred Ward at the time just a, a big superstar?
speaker 1: No, he had done some stuff. They almost cast Bruce Willis, but Fred Ward I think had had like really well received supporting roles in some fairly big movies.
He was probably affordable, like he certainly could do action. He was willing to do stunts from what I gathered, and that was important to them as to have the actor do some of the stunts. So I guess he was just the best option from their point of view. What did you think of his acting in
speaker 2: this?
speaker 1: Oh man, that's a good question.
I don't think that he was given a lot to work with. And when we talk about the differences between the movie and the novels and the upcoming series on Amazon, I think it'll be interesting to talk about what aspects of the character are developed, like for this film verse, the novel verse, what they could do with the upcoming series.
I think the character of Remo Williams in this film was fairly thin. Mm-hmm. I think, uh, it relies a lot on the actors, kind of like, almost like Jim in the office, sort of that like reaction of like, can you believe this? Here we go. And, uh, this again, you know, so it's a lot of that kind of thing. There are some actual emotional moments, like when he thinks that Ian is dead and the truck crash, and I thought that both actors did a good job with those moments, but they are very, very brief.
I don't think it was great. It's not bad. I think Fred Ward has charisma. I'm not sure if a better director or better Script would've been enough to make this a series of films. What do you think? Since
speaker 2: I've seen it, I've been trying to figure out why, why it felt so flat. Yeah. There were moments that are, were really comical.
Like the introduction, like when they first meet each other, I was like, wow, this is really funny. The way that he's dodging all his bullets and Fred Ward's kinda like this physical comedy aspect. Mm-hmm. I thought was really funny. Between them, I thought that could have been a little more played up. I think they did a good job of that in um, the Karate Kid Uhhuh.
I think that kind of worked a lot better, that dynamic. Yeah, and that was what Karate Kid is around the same time. I'm assuming it would've been filmed around the same time as this movie.
speaker 1: Yeah. Now you've got me curious. Just,
speaker 2: I think it was 1984 and this is
speaker 1: 85. Right. That would clearly be an influence.
1984. This is the year after Karate kids, so, yeah. Yeah. Good catch. But I felt with this
speaker 2: movie, the score didn't work. Thought it was like trying to manipulate you at timezone, you didn't make any sense. I thought something was off about the acting, not with Sean and him so much as with the supporting actors.
They just didn't seem very believable to me. They were very much caricatures and just the way they behaved was so flat.
speaker 1: Are you talking about the, um, bad guys? Are you talking the talking about
speaker 2: Okay. Really the bad guys.
speaker 1: Yeah, they, and that's the thing there, there wasn't much effort to give the characters any additional dimensions.
Mm-hmm. Kate Mulgrew, her character of the Army officer investigating the problem. You know, we should probably give a little more context. So Remo Williams is recruited and trained by a secret American government organization that only the president knows about and the, I guess, three people who work there plus une.
So for technically, so those are all the people in the world who know that this organization exists. Its purpose is to assassinate any American who is committing terrible crimes and is unreachable by the justice system. Wilford Brinley leads the organization. He has a fleet of, or a, uh, what do you call, flock of computers, what do you call it?
Mm-hmm. A giant room, A server farm. Server farm, sure. That he uses to track down Americans who are in power positions and doing terrible things. Then they gather the evidence they need, they send in Remo Williams, and once they have that evidence, they assassinate the person, make it look like a perfect accident, and then move on.
And this is an origin story. So he's recruited and trained, and his first mission is around a arms, uh manufacturer, an American company that builds weapons, everything from a new assault rifle all the way up to something related to the Star Wars program like killer satellites. And they're corrupt and dishonest, and soldiers are suffering the consequences and so on so forth.
So the bad guys are these contractors and some, I guess the military. None of the military people are
speaker 2: bad, right? No. The military, the captain or whatever, the head of the military seems to be on some type of
speaker 1: payroll. I. He's been instructed to make those, they've corrupted. Yeah, that's right. They've corrupted a couple Army officials.
I guess he's bribing him or whatever. Yeah, you're right. That's right. And one of them is Kate Mul Gru's boss. And so she's investigating this problem and you know, the malfunctions and getting closer to discovering that this organization is cutting corners and lying and endangering soldiers. And Fred Ward is sent in and basically rescues her.
But the point I was gonna make is I think she's a good example of characters or actors not really being given much to do. Like her character starts off as the sort of plucky, I'm a woman in a man's world character. Mm-hmm. And it's fairly cliche, but the actress I think, tries to bring a little bit of depth and actual vulnerability and emotion to that character instead of just being a hard ass or a cliche.
But then her character switches roles essentially to the, and distress. And then back and then back again several times. And for the latter, what the last third of the movie, she's just trailing along. She's in danger briefly. He only really saves her seemingly because he's also in danger. Like they're both in danger.
I don't know if there are any moments where he really goes out of his way to save her. She's just kind of there Anyway, it was odd. I don't think the actors had much to work with, whether they were good, bad, or neutral.
speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point. It's oftentimes, I think, hard to really get that. 'cause you know, you get these performances from actors where in the hands of another actor, there would've been nothing.
Right? But they're getting given very little to work with and they make that role so memorable, and that's what they're known for.
speaker 1: Okay. Yeah. Well, good example. Wilford Brimley speech about all of them committing suicide. If they get caught, like the rule is for cure. If they're ever caught, then they all just basically commit suicide, make it look like an accident.
And his delivery of that actually held some weight,
speaker 2: I thought. Yeah. I mean, I think he's a, he's a talented actor. Good examples of what you were saying. Yeah, exactly. Because overall I think this is the type of material that given to mediocre actors, it just really, really can fall flat. '
speaker 1: cause there's really nothing there.
Do you think, uh, Jack Nicholson, uh, Al Pacino, uh, some other super talented actors at the time might've been able to spice this up a little bit, carry it,
speaker 2: maybe spice it up, but not make it a great movie. Okay. Because of all the other factors. And I thought the pacing was odd too, but maybe it's just 'cause it's faded.
No,
speaker 1: it's from that era. No, no. It, it's odd. There are a lot of films, like Jim Kata is basically the same plot and it came out the same year. Right. So there's a lot of films like that. And this pacing could have been done better. It's always awkward to do an origin story and then an adventure. But the pacing of this with the training and the action sequences was very odd.
speaker 2: Yeah. It seemed almost awkward where it kind of took you out
speaker 1: of there. Yeah, out of the movie. I think it's classic screenwriting, like screenwriting 1 0 1. There are certain, like if you do 120 pages for a film, give or take a few pages, there are page numbers where certain things need to happen. Mm-hmm. And nobody has done that better to my knowledge than say Pixar like 10 years ago.
You know, animated movies need to be really perfectly scripted before you do anything else because you can't really make a lot of changes, or at least that used to be the case. And so you know what page number things need to happen. And I think this film breaks that rhythm or those rules multiple times and it's jarring.
I
speaker 2: think the editing's jarring
speaker 1: too. Yeah, that's true. It
speaker 2: made it even worse. So you're taking like a poorly paced script, having really strange editing happening or editing that wasn't paced to the action correctly. Mm-hmm. Or maybe it's films of that era. I don't know, like in terms of like the early eighties movies, if their editing style is very different to what we're used to now for that type of movie.
And I would say it probably is the amount of cuts in a modern movie of the same genre would be much more than the amount of cuts in a movie of that era. Yeah. So it kind of speeds up the entire pace
speaker 1: of the movie. Yeah. I wonder if it could be recut.
speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great
speaker 1: show idea. It'd be interesting. It'd be interesting to have a Yeah, right.
Reality show. Recut Remo Williams. Just take, take movies that have like a cult following or you know, they basically, one of their, they're not terrible, but the editing didn't do it any favors. And then have people make versions and put 'em up on YouTube. That actually would be a cool thing to do with a, uh, with an IP that's dead.
Yeah, that would be really cool. Just sit, modernize it. Yeah. If you had more footage, prove the score.
speaker 2: And improve the score. Oh yeah. Prove the editing and see what you could get.
speaker 1: Just give it to, to teams. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it would be a great movie. Who knows. That'd be a cool, fun project actually. I wonder if you could just run a YouTube channel doing that.
If somebody had connections with studios, you know, somebody owns an IP and it's like they're not giving anything away. They might even reinvigorate it. Yeah. And so they give you the rights and whatever extra footage there is and you try to cut it, rescore it, maybe do some, uh, little AI enhancements. Yeah,
speaker 2: that would be an interesting idea.
An interesting show idea. There's a, actually a set of interviews or a YouTube channel. It's called Sunday Conversations. I don't know if you've ever seen it. They're these really short celebrity interviews, but they're edited so ridiculously that they become like really hilarious, kind of like satirical type of interviews.
Hmm. Where you know, the guy's asking ridiculous questions, but they'll do very odd zooms on the person being interviewed and they'll just hold on their face like a little bit too long Uhhuh. And there's like an underlying kind of like soundtrack that increases the tension artificially. You know what I mean?
Like Yeah, absolutely. But he asked the question, he is like, what do you, you know, what do you think about animal rights? The interviewer asked this. The guy that he's interviewing and then he's like, I don't believe that porcupine should have AR 70 ones, or whatever the hell done it is. And then it cuts to the person being interviewed, but you're never really sure if their reaction is to that or to something completely different.
And they're just kind of looking in this very weird way and it's zooming in on their eyes and then it'll cut back to the interviewer. And he's like completely straight-faced. The point thing that the way these interviews are cut, they're hilarious and it's all in the editing because I'm sure it's a, you know, it's an all right interview, but then when it's recut and it adds all this extra tension, it just becomes really funny and really
speaker 1: awkward.
So I think what you're saying is you would like some of our many, many thousands of listeners to get a copy of Remo Williams and see if they can cut a scene or a segment into something that is really surreal and maybe disturbing.
speaker 2: I'm actually telling them to stop the podcast right now and go do that and come back and upload it to our YouTube channel in the comments,
speaker 1: and then we'll pick a winner channel like we could afford a YouTube channel.
Come on. How much are those now?
speaker 2: 10,000 Bitcoin.
speaker 1: We'll never make it on YouTube. 2,500 Ethereum.
speaker 2: I don't know how much they cost now.
speaker 1: So we haven't talked about, uh, the yellow elephant in the room. Mm. Joel Gray, who, uh, I'm gonna say, first of all, I thought he did a good job acting. Mm-hmm. He played Cun and he is an Caucasian actor in yellow face, basically wearing makeup to appear to be an elderly Korean man.
Mm-hmm. So that's a little bit, uh, of an interesting choice. Probably not something they will do in a modern remake. Alright.
speaker 2: And you're like, when is this movie from, is it 18 hundreds or, you know, 19, 20? Or
speaker 1: is it It's a London stage play, right. 1938. I mean, it's, it's not like they couldn't find a Korean actor.
I guess the director really liked this actor, Joel Gray. Again, I think he did a fine job. I, his portrayal is inherently offensive, but other than that I don't think he did. I don't think the actor added anything to it that made it offensive, you know? What do you think about that?
speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it was such an odd thing to watch.
Yeah. The character's extremely offensive. I mean, I found so many of the characters in this movie completely offensive, but then understanding that backstory, they give 'em prosthetics and made 'em look like that. Mm-hmm. Seems like an odd choice, you think. And of all the actors that, that are out there, they couldn't have chosen someone who was.
speaker 1: Who was Korean to play the role, or it was the year after Karate Kid came out. Right. So odd choice. So anyway, uh, now that we're a little warmed up, I uh, think it's time for us to play a game that I thought of. This is a game I call more or less offensive. So it's an eighties movie, so everything is at least a little bit offensive.
But I'm gonna tell you about something in the film and then I want you to just tell me right off the top of your head. Is it more or less offensive, more
speaker 2: or less offensive than our character in Remo
speaker 1: words? No, just more or less offensive. Okay. Just not than anything doesn't make sense. Just, uh, whatever example, a white guy playing a Korean, is that more or less offensive?
Uh, more offensive. More offensive. Okay. The only Asian in the film is a master of martial arts. More or less offensive. Less offensive. Okay. Old white man is the boss. More or less offensive. Less offensive. Okay. All right. Bold choice. Chung's remarks about women making babies and blessed silence. More offensive.
More offensive. Okay. All right. Good cure relies on countless computers, but has no IT department More, less offensive. More offensive. Okay. Cun? Always eating rice more or less, more offensive. Okay. The joke about remo smelling like hamburgers more offensive. Nice. Good. I was gonna, I was gonna call you out on that one.
That was very consistent. Thank you. Both food related jokes both tied to people's ethnicity. You are not racist. Okay. Last one. Me doing this bit on more or less offensive. Oh, definitely. More offensive.
Very good. All right. That was, that was helpful. That was palate cleansing. The whole
speaker 2: thing was so ridiculous in
speaker 1: so many ways. It did seem like it, um, was slightly, uh, Above the average in terms of things that might, they really dialed it up.
speaker 2: Yeah. You know, if you were a little bit confused, they just threw in like a racial slur or something from Wilfred Brimley to just s spice things up about, about Shun and that was like one of his guys.
Right. They're on the same side.
speaker 1: Yeah. Okay. Anything else about this movie? I have a few questions, but was there anything about this film that you wanted to talk about?
speaker 2: His actual training? Mm. Did you find his training just so subpar in terms of your classic montage scenes, let's say from the A team or something when they're getting ready for a fight with the bad guys?
Mm. That was so much more entertaining around the same time period. That's why I'm bringing it up. This seemed like it was just his fear of heights and he had to dodge bullets. Those are the two main things that he was really training for. That we actually really saw. No, no,
speaker 1: there was other stuff. They made a point of that running on the beach sequence where he can like use his breathing to levitate or whatever that was.
And the sequence I think I probably liked the most, the training one was all about balance. When he has to hop on the magazine rack and the furniture piled up and then he gets to the like loft level and then he has to do it blind or in the dark, it
speaker 2: just, I dunno. Something about his training was so dull and something about in the karate kid, the way that he was trained and all like the little one-liners from Mr.
Miyagi about why he was doing it. It was just so much more clever I thought in every way and much more memorable. This almost seemed like they watched those scenes and they're like, we can't do exactly what he's doing there. We gotta come up with something else and we gotta do this kind of, I dunno. I felt like kind of half-ass exercise in him becoming this super spy and then he seemed to be ready pretty quickly.
In terms
speaker 1: of
speaker 2: Yeah. What
speaker 1: he had to do. Right. That is a real problem. The books tackle it differently. I think that the training stuff is actually some of the better stuff in the movie, but it could be done way, way better. I think it's very interesting, especially to like, you know, adolescent boys or kids, you know, this idea of martial arts training being done in a city instead of like in the hills of Asia, you know, in the back country of Asia at a monastery or something.
This idea that you could do it in a city and in a loft, you know, on a rooftop with random pieces of garbage. I think that that is, uh, one of the more appealing aspects of the film. But yeah, I definitely think it could have been done way, way, way better. It wasn't terrible, it just,
speaker 2: man, it started off really strong with his, you know, breaking into Chung's apartment.
I dunno. I found that so funny 'cause it was so ridiculous. And again, the pacing was really weird and off, but it worked so well for that scene in particular, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where he's just beating himself up, beating himself to a pulp, and Sean's just standing there. I thought that was really clever the way they did that.
Yes. And then it just kind of went downhill from there, in my
speaker 1: opinion. Absolutely. No, I think for the new series, that's something that they'll try to salvage and maybe make more interesting and better, but I think it would be a mistake to do it in a traditional martial arts film training way, or even to do a montage.
I think it's great that it's an ongoing process. Mm-hmm. Like Remo is always being trained. He just occasionally has to go on missions. Um, and then the training can always be sort of funny and unexpected and play off of everyday modern things. I think that works.
speaker 2: I think so. For a series especially. Mm-hmm.
Do you know who's gonna be
speaker 1: playing Remo? I don't think they've cast them yet. At least the word's not out as far as I'm aware. Who would you cast? Ooh, good question. What's the name of that actor? Kind of a pretty boy. He beefed up for Baywatch. He's like the younger, good looking guy. He was also in a comedy with Seth Rogan.
It's not Jason Momoa, right? No, no, this is, um, he's like a shorter guy. I can't remember his name, actually. Not Zach Efron? Yes, Zach Efron. That's who I'm trying to think of. He's a good actor. I don't know if he's a good actor, but if he is a good actor, if he could find a version of this character and they emphasized his looks a little bit less.
If he can play like a, well, I'll describe the character from the novels and when we get to that part, and so that's, if he's capable of playing that to some extent, then it could be a good choice. Does anybody come to mind for you? It's funny, the
speaker 2: first person that came to mind was Tom
speaker 1: Holland. Interesting.
So you want this to fail? Yes,
speaker 2: I do. Secretly call me. I think he would add that like kind of naivety to the roll of fish out of water. I, he's so good at doing that when he is first realizes he's Spider-Man or whatever that I thought it would be a nice,
speaker 1: yeah. Interesting. I don't know, we'll talk more about what aspects of the character were different in the novel and then maybe that'll help us think about who we would want in that role.
But it's not a terrible choice. I think they chose Fred Ward. Because as an actor, he's got that kind of blue collar vibe. Mm-hmm. He's believable as a less polished, like if he was a construction worker or You mean like Bruce Willis? Yeah, like even more so though Bruce Willis looks a little bit more polished or could be a little more upper crust, whereas Fred Ward definitely looks like it would be a stretch for him to play.
The born wealthy, grew up wealthy. He looks a little more hardened, I guess is the word I'm looking for.
speaker 2: I've got the actor for the role, but I'll save him until
speaker 1: All right. Are you sure We have no meaningful structure here If you, if you're afraid to lose it. I think John Bernthal would be good. Yes. Okay.
John Bernthal could be good. Can he do comedy or can he do levity? I guess
speaker 2: that's a good question. He's been in a lot of different, a lot of movies and a lot of varying roles, but I haven't really seen many of them. He's
speaker 1: comedic timing. That's the look for sure. So if you make Zach Efron look like that a little bit more, or have him take his normal approach to comedy and mix in a good bit of John Beal's approach to most roles, or Jeremy Renner, um, might be too old, but yes, I, yeah, no, he could do it for sure.
You're definitely in the right ballpark, I think. All right. So what else? Anything else about this movie that we need to talk about, that we need to talk about or should talk about? Well, obviously you know, the name of the film was Rema Williams. The adventure begins and it was the beginning of over 30 years of successful movies now.
So it's always great when a movie walks up to the plate and points over the fence, you know? Right. Point to the outbid before it even takes the swing. Same high, the first pitch comes in. Yeah. Yeah. Always fun.
speaker 2: And the ending just really set it up for the adventures continuing. Okay.
speaker 1: Yeah, let, let's talk about the ending for a second.
So they refer to the term perfect accident. So the whole point of this super secret organization is that no one know that the American government is murdering American citizens. I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh because I know it happens, but, or I imagine it happens. I don't know it, you don't have to kill me.
I don't know anything. Anyway, I imagine it does happen, but the, the premise again is that the American government is murdering its citizens instead of arresting them. Yeah. Let's talk about
speaker 2: that for a second. They wait,
speaker 1: they wait until they have evidence and then they murder for that. I'm sorry. This series is gonna be great.
I can't wait to see how they dance around this stuff. Anyway, all right. So they, they don't want anyone to know they're doing that. And so the perfect accident that he arranged was to be some sort of random person running around on a military base. Such that they, the entire base is involved in trying to track him down.
And the main bad guy uses a 50 cow to try to kill him
speaker 2: with absolutely no plant,
speaker 1: nothing. He had nothing, and I think this was the perfect accident. He drops a log on top of a pile of other logs that knock the Jeep down a hill onto the beach, killing everyone on the Jeep, except for the main bad guy. And then he, he knocks him out, throws him back onto the Jeep wreckage, and throws a burning branch into a nice little channel of fuel that's been dug.
How did
speaker 2: he light that branch? He
speaker 1: used friction with his super finger power. Yeah. From tapping the board, I guess I, mm-hmm. Who knows? And so the investigators are gonna come, they're gonna say, well, the entire base was firing munitions. Somebody who got away. And then the three civilian arms, what are they?
Arms dealers that are there on the base. They die in a, in a Jeep accident. And then as part of this accident, it's like a hundred soldiers show up, not a hundred. Yeah. Yeah. They see a suspicious person take off on a boat after watching another suspicious person run across the water to the boat. And they left a soldier who they had been working with on the dock, and he is gonna stamp accident on the report.
Yep, exactly.
speaker 2: That's exactly what's gonna happen because that all makes a lot of sense.
speaker 1: He's the worst
speaker 2: assassin ever. He, I was just gonna say, he's the worst assassin of all time. It's hilarious. Basically, he shows up by, what did he stow away underneath a Jeep or something, and then he he rolls into bases
speaker 1: out.
Yeah, like on the, in the middle, middle of, middle of the day. In front of the main, right in front of somebody. He just flips. He rolls right out there and pops up, puts his hat on, good to go. Dust himself off and he's good to go. Worst, worst, ready to assassin, secret anything of all
speaker 2: time. He had absolutely no plan going in there
speaker 1: whatsoever.
He would've never, ever closed that investigation ever.
speaker 2: No. Somebody, he was just gonna wing it
speaker 1: on a military base and murdered four people.
speaker 2: How about the invite to go check out the, uh, AR 60, Hey, I know you're a bad guy, and he just invites, uh, Remo into the Jeep. Hey, let's go check out the AR 60. I have it in this isolated area of space.
That's part of clever,
speaker 1: clever plan to make that look like an accident. So two people were trapped in a room and what poisonous gas was released? Poison. Poison gas
speaker 2: just got released in there and they all died. Why is that even a thing accidentally?
speaker 1: It's a military. Why would they need to gas a room?
speaker 2: No reason.
What's that room for anyway? There's a lock on it's nonsense and Diamond Tooth Diamond too. That was one of my favorite scenes. Hilarious. I've seen that guy before in other movies. Have you ever
speaker 1: seen him? Okay. Uh, probably without the diamond tooth. I don't think I'd recognize it. He can't really throws you off, doesn't it?
He doesn't have a lot of lines. I mean, yeah. Boy, so many weird, weird choices. I. It's a strange movie, right? The end blows my mind truly, right? The whole point is that it's supposed to be a secret, but there were literally a hundred witnesses at the end,
speaker 2: heavily armed witnesses who don't do anything.
They're just like, who's that guy? I'll see you later.
speaker 1: I'll give them that. I mean, they have no idea what's going on with the chaos on there. That is not a typical day at the base. Right. And they're probably all like mad at this guy who's been yelling at him over the speaker, you know, the bad guy. You know?
So I can't imagine them not pulling the trigger. But they're all witnesses. Yeah, that's a good point. I don't know. The eighties was a wild time. Maybe this kind of thing happened a lot. Strange, strange stuff. Oh, I mean, they would assume he was a Russian or some sort of foreign agent who killed three or four people on a military base.
Right? You would think so. That's the assumption. Yeah.
speaker 2: Okay. And where do they go from there?
speaker 1: Where are they headed? I don't know. We'll never find out because the adventure didn't continue. Maybe in the next one, he is on trial, he's just running from the military for the rest of the series. Maybe
speaker 2: he's just in that boat
speaker 1: cruising around, you know?
Or maybe, maybe there was like a post credit scene that I didn't wait for where everybody in cure commits suicide because Oh yeah, they've have to. Right. It's such a failure. Yeah, exactly. Maybe that's why the adventure didn't continue.
speaker 2: It's funny how they described the previous assassinations as being these like incredible secret assassinations, right?
All
speaker 1: mm-hmm. Perfect accidents. Perfect accidents. Robin Hood,
speaker 2: would you consider this a perfect, uh, accident?
speaker 1: Mm. Close, close, real close, right? Yeah. Maybe if he had, yeah. Rolling logs. Dodging of artillery fire. Prior to killing people. There's obviously cameras in the facility they had to escape from. Well, they have
speaker 2: human sensors, remember?
One
speaker 1: guy. Oh yeah, that was my sensors are detecting a human. He's detected a human, but he's 50 feet above the ground. What is that technology and why
speaker 2: is that there? Do they have like human, human detectors 50 feet
speaker 1: above the ground? Why is there a logging camp on a military base? So
speaker 2: many questions. So many questions.
It's a paper mill slash army base. Final question. Why did Grove just blow up the fake satellite all of a sudden?
speaker 1: Oh, uh, with a laser. I think what they didn't explain, but they were trying to imply is that Remos set offs, okay, so for those of you who are probably not gonna watch this, part of figuring out the bad guys evil plan is to break into their manufacturing facility.
They break in and it's actually Remo and his handler, the guy who lost an arm, and I guess that's why he's not the assassin. I don't know. So they split up, Remo goes looking for evidence, and he stumbles upon a, uh, satellite in a room. But as soon as he goes in there, some sort of laser system destroys the satellite.
And it's supposed to be like a Star Wars, anti-ballistic missile, satellite, I think system. It's that whole like cold War thing where, you know, mutually assured destruction. If we could get the upper hand, you know, that would be great or something. So I, what we're supposed to understand is that Grove, the military company intentionally destroyed this.
And because they set up the system to destroy it, if anyone got in the room, because if they got in the room, they would figure out that the system is fake, the satellite system doesn't work, and they'd be ruined. So having it look like somebody, if someone breaks in, having it look like that person destroyed, it allows them to keep going and get more money and you know, not get in trouble.
Right. So that was, but it was unclear if they intentionally set up Remo so that he would break in so that they could cover their tracks and blame him. So I wasn't
speaker 2: really sure about that. It seemed weird. That whole sequence was odd to me. That's what I was asking. Like the whole destroying of it and like, why didn't they destroy Remo?
Right then they knew about Remo and they could have just like gotten Yeah, they, they don't have any trouble, you know, shooting at sense. Any other point in the movie? Why did
speaker 1: they stop there? And I don't think they did on purpose. I think he legitimately escaped. I don't know. But I, I will tell you the funniest part in the movie to me was, were the dogs.
So, yeah. Again, when he gets into the manufacturing facility, there are I think three Dobermans mm-hmm. That are guards. What ensues is a battle of witts that Remo loses a couple times. Uhhuh and one dog in particular almost defeats him. It's pretty funny. I like that a lot. And if, if I did a sequel to this film, I would absolutely put the dogs in it.
I don't know if it would be a running joke that dogs outsmart him and are more skillful and trained than he is. Or I would bring back literally the same dogs, you know, and have them just stationed in a new facility, like guarding it or someone's home or something like that. Like, but that's funny. The rats were funny too.
Yeah, that was pretty good. But I, I love the dogs outsmarting him, not just like, oh, he has to fight dogs, but they literally outsmart him. Oh yeah. Yeah. It was good. And it kind of works for this character because the way he's portrayed in the film is that he is not too bright. Mm-hmm.
speaker 2: And it, you know, it fits perfectly.
Yeah. And that's why you would do pick a not too bright. Super assassin to save right world,
speaker 1: right? Somebody who's physically capable and trainable, but not really gonna think about the big picture or come up with a lot of his own ideas. You know, just sort of a weapon you can send in is gonna do his job and leave because you know, this whole setup is bss.
Right.
speaker 2: And not really know what job he's doing or how he's gonna get to his target or just, yeah, kind of haphazardly figure out a way to kill the guy accidentally. Right? Yeah. By timing the Jeep perfectly with the rolling logs.
speaker 1: Oh God. Yeah. So well planned. All right, good. So there are some differences with the books that are probably worth talking about.
So the book series classic pulp fiction stuff. So nothing too complicated. I read the first two, they were published in the seventies. Interestingly, there was an eight year gap between the first and the second book. So in the first book, you get the origin. Cure actually framed him for murdering a junkie.
He has tried, sent to, uh, death row, and on the day he's scheduled to be executed, he, um, is wheeled to, or like a priest shows up, tells him the only way you're gonna survive is if you do what I say. He's wheeled to the electric chair and then they fake his death that way and take him out in a, uh, in an ambulance, uh, and recruit him.
So it's a, it's a little bit better of an origin. Basically everybody he knows, he thought cared about him or that he was friends with or whatever. They all turn on him when he's convicted of this crime. When they come to him, he, it's truly at a point where he has no one and he's quite bitter. And I, I like that a little bit more.
'cause it helps explain why he would so willingly walk away from human relationships, you know, and live this life. Mm-hmm. Although, I will say the character constantly in both books, fantasizes about running away. Oh, he's not invested in the mission. Yeah, he's, he's always thinking about it. He's looking for opportunities.
He's not like seriously committed because he always decides that he could never relax, that someone would show up and kill him one day. Mm-hmm. But he still thinks about it a lot. And that's how little he's invested emotionally in this mission. So he is not a patriot
speaker 2: at all. I see. Are his
speaker 1: handlers the same?
No, it's a little bit different. There is like a head of the agency. There is also a man who more directly recruits him, and that man has a hook for a hand. And he's actually the former Remo, or you know, they don't go by that name. It's not James Bond. But this guy was the assassin until he lost his hand, I guess, and they needed to recruit someone new.
I see. So this guy is, is retiring and moving on to a more like handler position. And you know, spoilers for the first book. So stop here minus the hand.
speaker 2: What a handler position minus.
speaker 1: Oh yeah. Good. Yeah. Yes. Remo refuses or isn't ready. I forget how it goes. I think he refuses to go on a mission, the very first mission.
And the guy with the hook hand actually dies on that mission or he, he gets injured, he fails, he gets injured, and then he commits suicide in the hospital. Oh, wow. And at that point, Remo Remo was sent to kill him in the hospital. Remo refuses and decides he's gonna go on the run instead of killing this guy.
And uh, and then he sees in the paper, like after a bender, Remo goes on a bender that night. Next day he sees in the paper that the guy he was supposed to kill killed himself, but he made it look like someone murdered him. Cure says, good job, Remo. And he's still in business, so there's some more twists.
It's a, it's a lot more violent. There's more sex. It's darker. Remo as a character is they consider him a weapon. So it's kind of like he was, so, they don't talk about this at all in the movie, but prior to him being recruited, one of the reasons they recruit him is because in Vietnam he basically proved he was a natural born killer.
Like his unit would send him in to situations like by himself, where he needed to infiltrate and kill people on his own. And he did it and didn't really care. So he was very good at it and not particularly emotional about it. So he's a, like a natural born killer, and that's why they decide to recruit him years later when he's a cop.
So they frame him and bring him on board, and he's very callous towards others in the series so far. I mean, only two books in, so maybe the character changes, but he's very callous, doesn't really care about others. He doesn't take himself too seriously. He has very little ego. He doesn't really try to advance or get ahead, or he doesn't have goals in life.
He doesn't have this like firm sense of who he is. And at times he will have like a flash of anger based on ego and make a mistake. But generally speaking, he's unusual in that respect. He doesn't, and that's, that's gonna be a hard thing to portray in a series where an actor is supposed to play someone who just isn't all that invested in his own success and happiness.
And the character especially doesn't like people with big egos. He'll go out of his way to make them pay for that. So he is kind of petty. Let's see. He's not very bright or clever. They got that part right. I don't know why they did an eight year gap. The first book, he goes on that mission, he's very new.
He doesn't use any really crazy skills. He basically manipulates people, eventually kills the person he's supposed to kill and then he just leaves. Then the next book, it's eight years later, he's much more trained and he's been doing this and he is able to kind of be on his own more. He isn't connected to Cure as closely and then they just send him on mission.
So I don't understand why they did that and I don't know, future books, maybe there's additional gaps You, you know, big time jumps. I
speaker 2: dunno. I wonder if a lot of the Gray man is kind of based on this Rema William or Destroyer series, I don't know. And has that whole kind of mirrors in a lot of ways where he is kind of betrayed by the CCIA A or that organization.
He ends up on the run there like. Kind of rogue forces within the C I C I A that won him dead. There's coverups. There's that whole thing. He's not good at emotional attachments. He is always a loner. He's always like going after the actual bad guys and avoiding anyone who's like good being injured.
Mm-hmm. It's kind of interesting. There's a lot of, yeah, seems like a lot of similarities. And I'm sure the author read those books or has heard of them. 'cause it sounds like a very similar plot line.
speaker 1: Okay. Interesting. Yeah. So let's talk about the concept for a minute. Why is this so popular? 152 books a movie.
There were attempts at other movies, they started working on a sequel for this. They're talking about bringing it back for a series on Amazon. I think they're comic books or graphic novels based on this. People
speaker 2: were fascinated with this idea of secret organizations within the government and the idea of a lone assassin committing crimes on behalf of that.
Said secret organization in the government. It's really intriguing to people, I think. Do you think
speaker 1: people approve of that idea or is it just something that like makes sense? There's corruption, somebody's gotta do something. It may as well be a government sanctioned assassin. I see
speaker 2: it almost on the same, on the same level as uh, U F conspiracies, that the government's hiding something.
They're always hiding something. So this just makes it a much more interesting plot that it's almost like a given assumption that the government has all this secret activity that's happening that we don't know about. And this kind of gives you a glimpse into what that could possibly be in a fictionalized way.
And I think people really gravitate towards
speaker 1: that. Yeah. It's a classic example of a good guy doing bad things. Mm-hmm. And that's something that people do really like. Is
speaker 2: it the classic heroes journey that he's on?
speaker 1: Right. Not really. Right? Is he? I guess, uh, maybe not. Yeah, because he's untrained at first.
Yeah. Yeah. So I guess it has that, I mean, he's, he's sort of like the wolverine of agents. Mm-hmm. You know, James Bond type stories. 'cause like a lot of these other ones, like Jim Kata or whatever, like any anyone trained to go take out an organization that's too powerful for any one person to do anything about, or the government can't stop them.
What is it? A Knight rider criminals who operate above the law? Uh, or the A team. Right? Right. He's like all that. Except he's kind of a bad guy. Like he's a bad person. Uh, maybe that works better. Like, maybe that's part of why this clicks for a lot of people. It's like, well, he's an assassin, so it makes sense that he's also kind of a
speaker 2: jerk.
Well, isn't James Bond just like that in a lot
speaker 1: of ways? Yeah. He used to be, but he's gotten a lot nicer. Mm-hmm Now he only, he's only mean in very specific circumstances. Because
speaker 2: it's almost like he's trying to normalize his life now. Before it wasn't even a consideration in the older movies. He
speaker 1: just Right, right.
Is who he is. Yes. That's a good example right now. Now he's like trying to settle down in the last movie. He's like trying to, trying to be a one woman guy. But the original James Bond, maybe a lot of the appeal is like, yeah, he's a bad, he's doing bad things 'cause he is a bad person, but he is on our side.
So maybe that's the appeal here, but is that timeless or is that of a time, is that gonna be received Well, if they try to do it again, is it gonna be like, yeah, it's like, you know, he's Wolverine. He's the
speaker 2: Punisher. Do you think he has to be relatable in the sense that I do for people to really gravitate towards him?
speaker 1: I do do, for this to be a series like, I mean it's obviously the Pulp Fiction novels are a series, but for an Amazon TV show, I do think he needs to have relatable elements. Like he has to love animals. Like did you see Reacher? I. The Amazon version. I didn't. No. So in Reacher, they actually stop the plot a couple times.
Like they stop the story so that reacher can rescue a dog from an owner who's like weirdly out to get his own dog. And so Reacher goes in, slaps the guy around and takes his dog from him and that dog pops back up. And it's entirely to make this hulking beast who snaps people's necks and shoots people right and left.
More likable and relatable and understandable. And prevent him from becoming too dark of a character. I think so, yeah. I would say. What do you think, does Rema Williams need to be relatable?
speaker 2: I think overall, yeah. 'cause I think in terms of a series or a movie, if there's nothing for you to hold onto in terms of the character at all mm-hmm.
Just becomes, he becomes a vigilante villain. You don't see any redeeming characteristics in, in that particular protagonist. And I think over time it makes the audience give up on him.
speaker 1: I think today it's important to differentiate in the audience's eyes between somebody who is relatable and likable versus somebody who is like a gun nut or ultraviolet.
There's a big chunk of America that views another big chunk of America as a bunch of gun totting, unnecessarily aggressive morons who like violence for the sake of violence. And that audience, the people who obviously are not that way, they're not that simple, but people who live in a part of the country where, you know guns are around and maybe that side would gravitate towards Arimo Williams, but you can't.
It's gotta have broader appeal. So he also has to exhibit traits that appeal to the broader audience like the rest of the country, that they never would learn a martial arts, right? Mm-hmm. A martial arts, arts, right? They would never learn any of them. Yeah. Real. Or imagine they don't get in fist fights, they don't think of assassinating people as a solution.
They don't, do you know what I mean? The stuff he does can't make him only relatable to people who, I don't know how to phrase this in a way that would make sense to everybody, but some people are more comfortable with these elements. Some people are less comfortable, it's less a part of their daily life.
He needs to appeal to all of those people. Everybody. Mm-hmm. Does that make sense? Yeah.
speaker 2: Yeah. 'cause it's a serious, on a major platform, right? They can't have a wholly unlikable character. Right. And to give him that broad appeal, he has to really connect with like base elements for everybody. Like
speaker 1: universal element, right.
It can't look like a cliche. It can't be easy to put 'em in the wrong box. Mm-hmm. So whoever they cast needs to bring elements that appeal to an audience that isn't as rough and tumble in their daily life, but he has to play a character that's believably physical. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that's tricky. It's gonna be really tricky.
I'm curious to see who someone who would callously kill, but he doesn't seem like a bad guy. Right.
speaker 2: A complicated character.
speaker 1: Yep. You know? Yeah, absolutely. And that relationship he has with his master is really important for humanizing him. Otherwise, he really does seem like a living weapon.
speaker 2: How do you think they're gonna handle that aspect of it in this series?
Since they did such a poor job and it was, there was such a racist portrayal in the original movie, how do you think they're gonna do this one? What's gonna take away those elements in a
speaker 1: series. So I spent a little bit of time listening to the, um, audio books for a few of the newer novels because I was curious how the characters had evolved.
And actually, by the way, in addition to just someone reading the audiobook, there are a lot of audio dramas where it's one person, it's not really an audio drama, what do they call it? Has a soundscape. Yeah. So they added special effects and things like that. So it's not just one person reading it, but it's one person reading it with sound effects.
Mm-hmm. And stuff like that. Mm-hmm. So these are that popular that they actually went and did that step for a lot of the novels. So this stuff is very popular from what I've gathered in just, you know, my research I guess, is that Ian's character. Is not really offensive. He continues to evolve and develop.
He's always the kind of ultimate badass in the room. But he is also a relatively peaceful person. In some ways, I think they probably don't lean into that sexism that they had in the movie. In the film, he, as you recall, he loves soap operas. Mm-hmm. So they try to cr make him a character of inconsistencies.
Mm. I see. So that he stays away from being too one dimen or two dimensional. Or one dimensional. I see. So there's a lot of really cool stuff you could do with that if you, now, I guess these days it absolutely has to be a, probably a Korean actor. Mm-hmm. Thankfully, there are tons and tons of really good Korean actors, so that's not a problem.
Hopefully. Hopefully whoever they pick has a lot of fun with the role and is a major star. I think in the series, Chun is sort of in and out. It's a highlight when he's in the series, and they'll probably do flashbacks to training sequences and stuff throughout the whole series. But, uh, hopefully whoever the actor is can bring just enough of the cliche martial arts master so that it, it, it feels like that anchor is there.
But then after that, just has a lot of fun with a character who sort of tortures his student, but believes, and they emphasize this in the novels again, just in the little bit that I've read, but when he tortures Remo, he does it because he doesn't want Remo to die. Mm-hmm. So he, like literally in one scene in the book, inflicts intense pain on Remo, he like, you know, pops one of his ribs out, I think is what happened.
But he does something to him that leaves him in pain for days and he does it so that Remo will learn the lesson. He was trying to teach him in that moment how important it's to appear more helpless than you really are. Mm-hmm. And to be wary of someone doing that. Right. So he tricks him, pops his rib outta place and remos in terrible, terrible pain for days.
And then eventually Hun gives in and puts Remos rib back in place. And he apologizes for doing that because he said he did it because he is tired of Remos complaints and waking him up in the middle of the night. But Cun sleep is more important to him than his love for Remo. So, so that's like a, a, it's funny, but it's also like a, a serious emotional dynamic or part of their dynamic is that he truly is invested in Remo living and this, and so he inflicts suffering on him and puts him through all this stuff in order for him to become someone who could possibly survive.
So, you know, I hope they capture that.
speaker 2: Yeah. With the special forces training. Where they put them through. Mm-hmm. Extreme torture so that they survive in those real world
speaker 1: environments. Makes sense. Yeah. So the new show, do you think it should be more grounded action? Do you think it should be science fiction?
Do you think it should be fantasy? I would say it more
speaker 2: of an action series.
speaker 1: Okay. So more grounded action. More grounded action. The film is fantasy. It's not science fiction. James Bond generally stays in the realm of science fiction. It depends on the film, but a lot of it is science fiction, right? Meaning the advances, the technology is relatively believable, or at least it's presented as relatively believable, and the setting is meant to be near future or present day.
I'm
speaker 2: gonna change my answer. When I think of science fiction, typically I think of space science fiction. Oh, okay. In terms of this type of series, Those aspects of science fiction, like the James Bond aspects mm-hmm. Could make for a more longer running show and something a little more interesting in terms of who he's going after.
Mm-hmm. If you weren't confined by the typical rules of your straight action genre.
speaker 1: Right. Well, that's what I, I think a lot of what makes this series fun and interesting, especially visually, are the training sequences and the kills. Mm-hmm. Right. So the movie, I think, did not do a good job with the Kills, but the books do.
There are a lot of great action sequences and Remo very smoothly and effectively takes people out a lot of the time. Sometimes it's a tough fight, like they make it a point, especially early in the novels, if he's up against someone who's spent a lifetime. Fighting being an enforcer or having some sort of training or practice, then it's, it can be a harder fight for Remo, but a lot of times when he is up against people who have no training, they're not, or very little or they haven't kept it up, he takes 'em out and he does it pretty maliciously and with some enjoyment.
Especially if they were trying to kill him or they're jerks or whatever. So I think the movie is Action Fantasy and I would point to him levitating. Oh yeah. You know, being able to like float above the ground as an example. Not the only one, but as as really like that kind of seals it, you know, there's no science fiction in this.
It's fantasy. Right, right. So my uncertainty is around, is the new series gonna be Action Fantasy Action sci-fi. More grounded action is the reason the movie didn't work in part action fantasy, or is action fantasy not something that's likely to work now because people don't view the, um, martial arts as so mystical.
It's almost offensive, this idea that somebody who studies, uh, martial art can like channel their or do these kind of mystical things. Mm-hmm. I mean, you could make it like, it's not just action fantasy, it's action mysticism, you know, kind of like a big trouble in little China. Yep. But I don't know, I, I could see this being action fantasy, the new series that could make it stand out.
You'd have to hang Yeah, that's true. Hang a lantern on it and be like, Hey, that's crazy. And probably could never happen. You know what I mean? Like there'd have to be some dialogue there. But, but I
speaker 2: mean, wouldn't it have to be, I guess now that I think about it some more, wouldn't it have to stick to the action fantasy?
Because of his ability to dodge bullets and like you said, yeah, the levitation aspects. I think so. It would take
speaker 1: away the, I think you're right. I think it'll have to be action fantasy. So as I understand it, in two of the, uh, Remo or the Destroyer series, pulp fiction novels, Remo fights a werewolf. Wow.
That's different. Yeah. Yeah. That's different. Yeah. I think it's gonna have to be an action mysticism, subcategory of action. Fantasy. I think there's gonna need to be something more to this martial art than just it's, you know, super intense training of a human to their peak ability. It's gonna have to be like, no, there are a lot of lost secrets that the other martial arts were never able to capture or continue.
Which means in the rules of this universe, there are probably other sources of mysticism or, you know, fantastical elements and a werewolf maybe would not be outta place.
speaker 2: That would make things pretty interesting. Show things up.
speaker 1: It could, right? It could go bad real fast. That is a fine ass line to walk.
Like I think the M C U is walking that. Mm-hmm. Or they're trying to, and I think humor goes a long way, which this has. So from a certain perspective, this is a cross between Jack Reacher and Spider-Man or whatever, guardians of the Galaxy, chunky guards of Galaxy. Sure. Yeah. So yes. I think if you can capture that feel, it's weird to think of it.
I think you have to forget the eighties movie. You have to wipe that from your brain. Yeah. Because the eighties movie, you know, was it Golden Child was another film around the same time where they tried to do kind of thing, and it sort of works some of the time. Like I'm sure there's a few movies that I'm not thinking of that made it work, but like Karate Kid, which you referenced is not at all that it's just
speaker 2: an action film since they have so much source material to go on.
Oh yeah. It'll be so unbelievable interesting to see how they interpret it. We were talking about the last of us earlier, sounds like they're following the video game to a t. I've never played the video game, but that's what I keep hearing, that it's like almost exactly the same as a video game. So if they were to take it directly from the books, from what you've read so far, do you think it has a chance to be very successful and is it unique enough to do that or is it still dated?
speaker 1: I would need to read one of the newer books, some of the writers. So this series has had multiple different writers over the years, but I do know that like a comic book writer wrote some of the books that are well received or uh, one or two of those are popular ones. There is definitely a way to do this.
I think that they probably need to stick closer to the newer novels, would be my guess, and move away a little bit from the older novels and definitely the film. I think if you do that and you approach it a little bit like a superhero project, but a much darker, more grounded one than the M C U, you keep some of the violence and some of the sexuality.
So it's more aimed at adults. I think you can do it. So I don't know if you saw this, but the person developing this new series was a writer on season one of Breaking Bad and then he moved up the chain and eventually became a producer by season six, or an executive producer, I forget. So he's one of the guiding influences for Breaking Bad.
speaker 2: Yeah, that'll be really interesting because they, there's so many ways, it sounds like this could go since there's so many books and does it become a kind of like a period piece where it takes place in the seventies or early eighties and they go that way? Oh yeah, they could do that. Or do they modern, modernize the whole thing and take elements?
speaker 1: Should they do that? Should they set it in the seventies or the eighties?
speaker 2: I mean, that's a really good question. I haven't read the book, so I don't know where he ends up in modern times to be able to make that call. But it could be an interesting take. But then along with that, you have a lot of the limitations of that time period in terms of technology and like, let's say the fantasy aspect of it that you could do in more modern times.
You know, like, well, it's like's still the era of payphones and Yeah. You know, like there's all of those technological limitations. So is it more interesting to have him in a modern setting where you can take him in so many different directions? Or do you kinda limit him and that becomes more creative and fun?
You know, I think it
speaker 1: could be better. So first of all, Walter White is another example of our Wolverine characters, you know? Mm-hmm. So maybe the tone will be easier for this guy, this producer. Second of all, one of the advantages of setting it in the seventies or eighties, especially the seventies, is that it can kind of be of that time, That movies that back then had more mysticism and supernatural elements mixed in with action, and that wasn't seen, seen as weird.
And the idea of a martial art, you know, having kind of mystical elements also specifically was not weird. So it kind of gives a little bit of an excuse to the series if it's set in the past. It's sort of like, judge this in accordance with movies that came out set at that time. Mm-hmm. Kinda like if you made another like monster movie, like a Mummy or Dracula movie, or not Dracula as much, but like a Mummy movie or a, uh, werewolf movie.
Yeah. If you set it in the present, it's judged one way. But if you set it in like the 1940s right, then it automatically kind of gets judged in a different way. And some of those elements that don't work in a modern day setting are fun and amusing and applauded. Because they, it's like, um, they recently did that Marvel Werewolf TV show and they intentionally made it black and white so that they could say, okay, well yeah, we get it.
This is a werewolf story and it's kind of cheesy and Yeah.
speaker 2: Yeah. I see what you're saying. So that could help. What really popped into my head was Kill Bill, how he had these like seventies style montages and this idea of her training with kind of like a mystical style. Oh, I see. Martial arts trainer, you know?
Yeah. Yeah. With this whole, the whole modern vibe. He kind of fsed those two elements together.
speaker 1: Okay. Yeah. So he gave it that kind of, um, BMO grindhouse feel mm-hmm. With the editing and some of the pacing choices and things like that. And it made those elements of the story more enjoyable instead of less your typical revenge flick.
Right, right. Where they would've stood out as stupid or, yeah. Dated. But would that
speaker 2: carry for a whole series? Would an audience get really tired of seeing that?
speaker 1: I don't know. I think it's an interesting question. Good. Anything else about, uh, Remo Williams before we leave him to his continuing adventures? No, I
speaker 2: wish him the best in his new adventure.
speaker 1: Excellent. He is gonna need it. Yeah. He really will. Alright, so thank you listeners, thank you to all the amazing, talented people who made everything we discussed today. We'll be back next week to discuss the films of Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo. Can't wait for that. I don't know if you notice Wilford Brimley never stands up.
He sits the entire film.
speaker 2: Huh. That's a great fun fact to leave the
speaker 1: audience with. Yeah, I noticed it. So I was sitting there the whole time waiting to see a scene where he's on his feet. It's not gonna
speaker 2: happen. I bet. Same chair. You're gonna keep waiting.
speaker 1: Alright. So as always, stay away from those like and subscribe buttons.
Remember, don't encourage us.
speaker 2: Yeah, please don't.