What Makes a Good Sequel? T2 vs SPEED 2

You know at one point I was using Coolio.

Oh really? Yeah, what's Coolio? I was like, oh really and then I thought wait, I don't even know what the hell that is What's Coolio

Screaming right now Coolio is a rapper.

Oh Yeah, I am NOT Hip to the rap scene.

You're like, what streaming service is Coolio?

That's what I, seriously, I thought it was like new app or something. Oh, wait, what? It's a good thing no one ever listens to the end of these shows.

That's great. It's a good thing Coolio doesn't listen to

You are listening to the silver screen happy hour, I'm Chris Wiegand along with my brother Jerome

present and accounted for

Alright what are the movies we are discussing today? Well, hold on, before we get into the movies, We got a couple of things to talk about.

Yeah, and our booze, don't forget our booze.

Yeah.

Actually, let's do that first.

Booze?

Yeah, cause my ice is melting.

Okay, well, yeah, let's, I'm gonna crack this open. So, first of all, let me You talk about yours since you got a poor, you, you're got melting ice over there. Mine's not as time critical.

And normally I don't even put really good whiskey on ice, but it's the middle of the afternoon. So I'm, I, I gotta, I gotta take a little edge off of it. I'm still going with the Blantons from previous episodes. I have not finished this bottle yet. In fact, I've only been drinking this during our show. So the bottle is surviving. Here we go. Listen. Let me get this over by the Oh yeah. So,

Well, I'm surprised you went with a higher end since we're, since we're talking about sequels. Right, right. And so, I actually had that in mind, because we're talking about sequels, and I was thinking about the movies, and I'm like, I don't know what to pair. There isn't much alcohol use in either of these movies, I don't think.

Right.

And so I just went to my refrigerator, and I'm like, what's the cheapest crap that, you know, sequels are kind of like, Nah, especially the second one we're going to talk about. So I, I thought, what does Speed 2 taste like? I think Speed 2 tastes like cucumber and lime spiked seltzer from Member's Mark. Yeah, that's right. I'm going to, I'm going to be suffering through this one. Hold on. Here we go. So you tipped,

so as you drink that, I'll tell the audience, you tipped your hand a little bit there. My brother just took a sip of Speed 2, if Speed 2 was in liquid form. So, alright, so we are, he tipped his hand already, showed you his cards. Speed 2 is one of the movies we're doing today. We're also doing Terminator 2 Judgment Day. And the theme for today is, what makes a good sequel? And what makes A crap sequel. Now we, we played with this similarly back when we did our Jaws episode. We kinda tied in.

Well, Speed 2 is better consumed drunk.

Yes, quite, quite better.

But before we get to that, we have some business to take care of.

We have some bittersweet business.

Well, yeah. First of all, let's talk about the bitter part. The sweet part, it's kind of surrounding it. I mean, the Lions played probably one of the best games I've ever seen them play in my lifetime.

Most people. If not for the bitter part, have us as one of the top teams in the league right now, after that performance, for those of you that don't know, at the time that we're doing this recording, we went into Dallas and beat the living shit out of the Cowboys, 47 to nine. They never scored a touchdown. Isn't

it the owner of GM's birthday? It was his

82nd birthday for Jerry Jones. He is the owner slash G M and. Dak Prescott and C. D. Lamb and those high paid offensive players. They never, they got three field goals out of it. Oh my gosh. It was an ass beat. So

gratifying if you're from Detroit. Well,

especially after what happened last year. When we played in Dallas and we got hosed by the refs on that bullshit two point conversion thing. So this was like a statement game. This was us coming out saying, we're not going to need a two point conversion to beat your ass this time. We're just going to beat the shit out of you. And you could see the anger and how like David Montgomery was running. Like he ran angry.

multiple guys to take them down when they could get them down.

So that was the sweet part. The bitter part is early third quarter. Our pro bowl defensive end, a captain of our defense, probably the best defensive

end in the league. Probably arguably

best defensive end in the league. Aidan Hutchinson broke both his tibia and fibula on a play where he was sacking Dak Prescott. It was a freak play. His own player's knee just got it at the worst angle and it just snapped it right in half. Yeah, it was gruesome. It's gruesome. And, and it's shitty because he's out for the year now, some are saying within four,

four to six months recovery time

with an injury like that. You hope he's back for week one next year. Like, it's just that bad.

He did release a statement. Or his family released a statement or something. He, he got word that he, if if the Super Bowl, if, or when Detroit makes it to the Super Bowl, he intends to be on the field. So. He's gonna

wrap six pounds of duct tape on

that leg and get out there. I would hate to see him re injure that thing. I would too. I would, I would, oh my gosh. I mean, if he's healthy enough. Give him one play, just so he can play in the Super Bowl.

He is a Wolverine after all. Oh my gosh, I know. He's a fighter. I don't know. No, no, but they did say that the surgery was an absolute success. So they expect 100 percent recovery, there was no complications, so that's good. That's a good first step. Right. Good first sign. I will say though, before we get on to the movies it's fair to say that we can blame Aiden Hutchinson's injury. and being out for the year on mom. Now, poor Sue, she gets such abuse on these podcasts.

what's number zero's name? You should have got him. He keeps getting penalties. He's a

rookie. You'll learn. But anyway, so I told myself I'm never buying a jersey again. And I haven't. This Christmas, this past Christmas, right before the NFC title game, I might add. Oh, no. Mom bought me this. We know how that game went. This Lions shirt, which I love, but in Jersey fashion. What's it say on the back, Chris?

Hutchison, 97.

It's got Hutchinson's name and number on the back of the shirt. Now it's not a jersey, it's a t shirt. But it has his name and number on the back. Thank you mom, it's a wonderfully comfortable shirt, and you caused Aiden Hutchinson's leg injury.

Well, I would just like to, I would just like to redirect all the, I mean I know there's Lions fans all over the, All over the world. But after watching Hutch this season, especially, there's a lot of new fans. I mean, he had the first few games, so many sacks. I don't have all the stats in front of me, but he's the sack leader right now. He's the NFL

sack leader. Yeah. He has more than some teams. And this was their fifth game because they had a bye.

Yeah.

So this is only their fifth game. They're four and one and he leads the league in sacks.

All our best thoughts and prayers go out to him and and I know the Lions, they stepped up after he left the field too. Well, and that's what people

said. The game was already well in hand. You know what? He got hurt early third. There was the entire second half to be played.

Right. And they still couldn't score a touchdown. No, we closed it out. So yeah. Anyway, just wanted to make sure we got that in there before. Yeah.

They didn't, they didn't pull the starters and put backups in until the fourth quarter.

Even though I have my issues with the script

and some of the acting. I have, I have some plot issues that we're going to talk about. I have one major issue. That I'll get to at the end. But still, with all the issues I have with T2, it's still a far better sequel than Speed 2. But we'll get to that. Alright, specs. 1991, directed by James Cameron, written by James Cameron and William Wisher. Running time 2 hours 17 minutes, budget of 102 million, which was a record at the time.

Was it animated?

Yes, it was. Okay, I think

we mentioned it before, I think we mentioned this movie before but I thought it was a different year so I could be wrong. Was it Aladdin? No, it was the year before Aladdin

and Aladdin was not nominated for Best Picture, but this one is true. What was it? Beauty and the Beast. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. So that was the number one movie of 91. T2 was nominated for six Academy Awards and won four of them, including Makeup and all the Special Effects Awards, obviously. The liquid metal thing was just mind blowing at the time. Right. The two Oscars that it lost were Best Editing and Cinematography, and both of those went to JFK. What a good year for movies, man.

Yeah.

JFK, T2, Robin Hood, Silence of the Lambs Beauty and the Beast. Okay, it stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as the T 800, Edward Furlong as John Connor, Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor, Robert Patrick as the T 1000. Earl Bowen as Dr. Silberman, Joe Morton as Miles Dyson, and a very, very small role for Dean Norris of Breaking Bad fame, who was Hank in it out when I

saw him. I forgot he was in it. Well, I probably didn't even know who he was at first. Well, I didn't know

who he was. S. W.

A. T.

team leader, and oddly enough, one year before this, he was also cast as S. W. A. T. team leader in Gremlins 2, The New Batch. Haha, that's funny.

So did you, when you saw his eyes and heard his voice, did you know it was him? I knew immediately, immediately. And I haven't watched T2. I haven't

watched T2. Yeah, I haven't watched T2 in years. So as many times as I've seen this movie, I hadn't seen it since before Breaking Bad. So this time when I saw his eyes, I knew immediately, I'm like, it's Hank! There's Hank! I did the exact same thing. Alright, so when did you first see this movie?

Oh, probably at the theater. I don't remember. Yeah, I know it. I know I went and saw it. I don't remember who I saw it with or anything. But yeah, 91.

I distinctly remember the marketing around it. Oh, it was massive. And Guns N Roses did a video and a main song from the movie, right? Yeah, yeah, yep. And Arnold was in the video. Like, not just scenes from the movie. It was, if I remember the video correctly, It's like concert video, but Arnold's in the crowd and he's like heading towards them to like kill them or something. Guns and roses. Something like that. I don't know. I just remember he was in the video.

Oh, it's probably on fricking happy meals or something. It was rated R,

Rated R and it's on lunchboxes. I'm curious. I should look

that up, but what kind of marketing did they do? Fast food marketing? They had to have.

Well, and you know, obviously the box office speaks for itself, but Arnold was just hitting, I mean, we're talking, this is prime Arnold time, right? Like, Terminator 1 was in 84, it was 7 years earlier, and in those 7 years, man, he had fuckin Predator, right? He had Commando, you know what I mean? Like, he was really Sort of, I mean, he hadn't done True Lies yet, but I think he did Twins with Danny DeVito already, so it's like, his appeal. When did he do Daddy Descartes?

Didn't he do Daddy Descartes? Oh, that was after, that was way after. Yeah,

but he did The Running Man. Like, there were, Arnold movies were huge through the 80s. When was Total Recall? That was in the 80s, right? Total Recall was that might have been 1990, that might have been right before this. You have to look that up. Come on, you're the IMDB guy, do you have that up there in front of you? We could you could actually just give me a quick run of Arnold releases prior to Total Recall

1990, yep.

1990, so the year before. So he was really in prime Arnold time here. And timing is everything. And, and Terminator had become such a cult classic on video, you know? Yeah, big time. That when they announced the camera was gonna do this sequel And Cameron himself was, was hitting all strides too. He had done Aliens and then he did the Abyss, where if you watch the Abyss, he plays with the technology that would later be used for the liquid metal, right? The water.

Yeah.

You know, so he kind of played with all that stuff ahead of time to sort of like, you know, test it out. So both of them hitting their stride at the right time. It was perfect timing for the movie. All right. Log me.

Holy cow. I didn't know this. Arnold's first movie, Hercules in New York, 1970.

Yeah. Is he credited as Arnold Strong?

Yeah, as Arnold Strong, Mr. Universe. And it wasn't

his voice either, they had somebody dub the voice. Oh, seriously? Yeah, it's

so awful. That's hilarious. Wow, yeah, he really came into his prime in the 80s, early 90s though.

Oh yeah, Conan and shit. Everything. Terminator. Conan 2, The Destroyer. Remember that one? I remember that always being on cable when we were kids. Yeah. Alright, are you are you just gonna spend the episode reading, or?

I'm just looking, I'm just looking through his credits. Yeah, he was in the You Could Be Mine video from Guns N Roses. That's the one you're referring to. And that's the one they put in the movie, obviously. Yeah. Log me. I have a problem with this log line. Let's have it. A cyborg, identical to the one who failed to kill Sarah Connor, must now protect her 10 year old son, John, from an even more advanced and powerful cyborg.

Well, there's actually trivia with that that I didn't include in my notes, but I remember reading some about it where he grew so much during the shoot. I bet. Not just his voice was changing. They had to re dub some of his lines because his voice was changing. Yeah. But also, he sprouted to where there's scenes where they had to have him speak. standing in a hole so that he would still be shorter than Linda Hamilton. That's hilarious. I didn't realize that. And that's just during the production.

I mean, we can look it up. I I'm guessing he was around 13 or something like that.

Yeah, I think so. But, but I have problems with the log line other than 10 year old son.

Yeah.

The log line, not to sound like Peter Griffin from the family guy, it insists upon itself. Like it's, it's assuming you already know everything about the first movie. Right,

right, right, right. So, yeah, you're like, who's Sarah Connor?

Yeah, like, what if you don't know who Sarah Connor is? Right? Like, you know, again, a logline should be something that wants to draw you in. And if you read a logline like that, you're like, ugh, I gotta watch the first movie first. You know? Yeah. So, anyway. Yeah, alright. Alright, we have the beats. Opening image, kids playing as it cuts to post nuclear war reality of machines running the world. This is just before the opening credits with Sarah Connor's voiceover setting up the film.

Yeah. All right. And I would say in that, in that part there, they, As a storyteller, they did, he did a pretty good job telling the audience, if they've never seen the first movie, Oh, these are foster parents. Yes. He's not being raised by his mom.

Right, because that, right after he says get in there and do what your mother tells you, John actually says, she's not my mother, Todd. Yeah. So that tells you right there. And he puts some stank on Todd. Yeah, I was like, oh, that's shit. So, yeah. So there you go. Number two of the four point push, Catalyst. After all main characters are introduced, and they do it pretty cleanly, it all happens in four straight scenes. The T 800 arrives. And then they have the biker scene. The T 1000 arrives.

right?

So he doesn't know what's going on at this point.

Well at first I think he assumed the cop was just trying to bust him for stealing his ATM money.

Sure, absolutely. And then he sees a biker with a shotgun walking towards him and he's like, What the fuck? Should I go to the cop now? Like, you know, this guy's gonna try to kill me. Uh, For all he knows, the biker with the shotgun is the kids, is the credit card that he stole, right? So he's probably thinking, oh fuck, maybe the cop will help save me in this situation.

Yeah.

Um. Arnold reveals he was sent as protection from the other Terminator, the T 1000 and this puts us officially into Act 2, because now it's John's upside down world, right? The world he knew up till now is completely changed. Alright, funny games. One of the first orders of business is John wants to warn his foster parents that they're in danger. This is a funny phone scene. I love this scene in the payphone and it's actually spawned memes that like and, and I see them.

So

it's great. But anyway, so it's a pretty funny scene. Sad if you're friends of Janelle and Todd. Well,

and they actually show how stepdad dies.

Yeah. Yeah. The stepdad hasn't died yet. You can hear it though. You can hear it. Oh yeah. The sound, it sounds like a knife going through cantaloupe. Like yeah. There's a little blade right through his head. All right, anyway, so in this moment, after finding out that they're dead, Arnold actually gives a praise of the killer speech, which we've talked about in previous podcasts regarding the T 1000. John says, you're telling me this thing can imitate anything it touches?

Yeah,

right

what they

can

and can't get away with the thing. Jesse had a problem with that She's like, wait a minute. It can't do complex things, but it can imitate people and their voices

Yeah, but that's not metal does doesn't that's not a mechanic nothing machinery. It's it's organic. Yeah details So Anyway, this is going to be important when we meet up with Sarah later. Speak of the devil, the B Story! Speaking of Sarah, at about the 39 minute mark, Sarah, who has already been introduced as a character, she kind of gets revisited here, this time as the B Story. She's the B Story because she's going to help John achieve his spiritual goal.

exact thing. He sees the pictures. Because he was there in the first movie.

Right! He was in 19 He was in that police station! Yeah, he left right Didn't he pass Arnold? He passes him! Yeah. He walks in and gives his famous I'll be back line. Silberman's only alive because he left for the day. So anyway, he sees these pictures of him. He sees the pictures of him at the mall that day. The cop says, We know you know who this guy is. Your son is missing, and his foster parents have been murdered. He uses the words murdered.

Yeah.

We know this guy is involved.

This is a quote. If I was the doctor, I would have been like, I would have been having PTSD flashbacks because I knew what happened at that police station. And he knew all those cops. Yeah, he knew all the cops. Yeah. So, and then you see that guy alive, killing people today. He

murdered 17 police officers that night, he says. Men with families. And in the background is Silberman like, yeah, yeah, I was there. Like, he didn't say anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You think he would have been like, I know, I was there. Like, holy shit, is it possible Sarah's telling the truth? Yeah. The kid's foster parents have been murdered, and the cop says, we know this guy had something to do with it, or this guy's involved. And Silberman doesn't even look!

Like, they might take 20 minutes, but it's edgy, you see. Most action films can't pull off a 20 minute action scene. Right. Right? It either gets boring, or it's a one trick pony, or you just kinda, you know, whatever. His, there's so many different elements to his action sequences, like, like the, like the one we talked about already in the mall. It starts at the mall. Then it gets into the fucking canal system in L. A., you know what I mean?

liquid, what,

nitrogen? Oh, that one's later, that one's later. Oh, yeah. But but, but yeah, so you see my point, like, when, when Cameron sets out to do an action sequence, that fucker's gonna last 20 to 30 minutes, like, it's a big one. Okay, that takes us to the midpoint scene. About one hour and seven minutes in, they're seemingly safe now. They're heading for the south. Somewhat safe on their way south of the border, Sarah asks about the man who created Cyberdyne, Miles Dyson. And Arnold lays it all out.

So where the hell's he been? What's he been doing?

Riding around, just looking for nobody. At this point, they convince Dyson that he has to destroy all his research. By the way, there's a pretty cool sequence where they get to Dyson's house and Arnold cuts the skin off his arm to show that the work he's doing, the research he's doing is going to evolve into this AI machines you know, monster program that's going to take over the world.

I gotta, I gotta be honest, watch, this is the first time I've watched this movie. Since chat GPT came out. Okay.

It's scary, isn't it?

Yeah, I almost had an anxiety attack. I was like, I mean, we're watching, you know, this week we're watching Elon Musk unveil his new robots. His AI robots, and I'm like, what, what are we doing?

Yeah.

What are we doing?

It's, it's like, I saw a meme about that too. Somebody, there was like a headline about Elon Musk and his AI. And then the first comment was, there's literally four or five Terminator movies on why

And he makes a joke about it when he unveiled them. Do you hear that? No, I didn't hear that. He's like, yeah, they're pretty cool as long as they don't become Terminators. Ha ha ha. And I'm like. You frickin idiot.

Wow. Good God. It's inevitable that AI will become self aware, right? Like, they know this, right? Unless they're putting a feature in there that makes them dumb. But, how can you do that? But anyway, alright. Where did I leave off here? Alright, at Cyberdyne, Here's, oh, okay, wait. So they convince Dyson that he has to destroy all his research, right? And they gotta go to his place and, and Burn all the research or whatever. So now they're at Cyberdyne.

Yeah, you'd think everything would be. They use the elevators! Especially the thing that's hypersensitive to, you know, turning a key. Yeah, and when they go to leave, they

get on an elevator! Wouldn't those be on lockdown too? Then, they rig the entire place with explosives, including drums of gasoline. Where the fuck did they get all this from? I thought the same thing. They couldn't have got it from Enrique in Mexico because A, he's not storing that shit with all those guns down below in a hot basement somewhere under the desert. Two, even if he did have it somewhere else, they don't bring it with them in the car. Right. In the station wagon.

which, which theory of time travel you subscribe to. Okay. So, so again, you have back to the futurist.

We kind of already know a little bit that we're going to get to, but as an audience member, that would, could be a thought of why didn't they just disappear? And did the main characters realize, Hey, wait they didn't disappear. Yeah, right. Something's not over yet. Like, it's not over yet. Right? It's not over yet. And even at Dyson's house, I think the wife says, I notated here, the wife says, aren't we changing the future right now?

nitrogen. I don't think it was nitroglycerin. Oh,

what did I say? Nitroglycerin, I meant to say liquid nitrogen. It would've blew up real big if it was nitroglycerin, Arnold gets the, gets the drop, his famous line Abta baby before shooting the frozen T 1000 into a bunch of thousand little pieces, of course, because the heat in the steel foundry. They melt and reform back as the T 1000. I remember when I was shit, I had to, I was 16 years old or turning 16 when I saw this in the theater.

Yeah.

Right? He's frozen. He can't move now. He can't do anything. And I remember thinking, it only takes a split second before Arnold shoots him, that I remember thinking for a split second, what the hell are they gonna do with him? Like, you can't put him anywhere where he's gonna fall. Like, is he just gonna be stuck like that forever? And then Arnold gives the line and shoots him and he gets shattered into a thousand pieces and I thought, awesome!

So

maybe that will have something to do with it. But instead I'm thinking, They can't, they can't kill this guy. There's, there's nothing they can do. He just fucking reforms again. So so that was done very well because that's a tense scene. When she's hurt, Sarah's hurt, they're trying to get her out of the truck. But all the little liquid metal pieces are starting to come together. Yeah. And it's already forming up before they're even out of the damn truck. It's like move man, get going.

Backup battery.

Backup battery plan! Alternate power! He opens his eyes, he gets up, and it's kind of funny because Arnold's acting here is kind of, it's not funny, but it kind of serves like when he wakes up, he's looking around like, where is he? And he's like, oh shit, I'm nailed down by this pole. I better take this pole out. You know what I mean? So he does that first. And then he grabs his grenade launcher, which has one grenade left, of course. And he arrives, you know, he gets up, ready to fight again.

Identify another plot hole from that scene.

Oh, okay, go for it.

His arm is in the machinery.

Okay. Okay. So I was going to get to that later, but okay, we can talk about it.

Well, it's, I mean, you know, they make this big deal at the end in a couple of scenes about destroying everything, all the evidence.

That's what I was going to mention later. So,

yeah,

so he does leave his arm jammed into gears and he has to detach from it in order to break free. That actually happens before. All of this because when he saves Sarah Connor's life, he's already at one arm, right? So yeah, his arm does get left behind. That's a little plot twist there for the end.

Okay.

But maybe at that point though, he would have done it immediately, right? Yeah,

yeah, yeah.

Killed her, and then immediately become Sarah. Right. But anyway, okay. We're trying to help, we're trying to help, we're trying to save the plot flaws. Okay.

Blast,

cock, blast, cock, blast, all the way down. I should say pump, pump and blast, pump and blast, all the way down to where he, one more will do it, and she runs out of bullets. Now wait, I was gonna, oh that was my Hightower Surprise, sorry. So, she's got him, she's got it won, right? She's about to win! And the Hightower Surprise, she ran out of bullets. So or shells rather, she not only, does she only need one more round to push him over the edge, but worse, she watches him.

Right.

They destroyed Cyberdyne, they destroyed all the research, and they destroyed the arm and the chip and everything. But the one arm was left behind. Yeah. Somebody found it. And they eventually Figured it out. Yeah, Elon Musk found the arm. That's what it was. All right, so There's more on this in a second. I'm gonna get to my biggest problem with the whole movie Okay, well not the whole movies my biggest problem with the ending closing image the road now, right?

A lesson. Do we need a lesson?

I do not need to be preached to by James Cameron.

Yeah,

right. He just showed me gratuitous violence for two hours and he's going to tell me whatever. He's good at preaching. Have you seen Avatar? I mean, come on. Yes! Oh my god! at you. Anyway, but we mentioned in the John Wick thing, right? When John Wick starts talking about the dog was the symbol of his wife. We knew that! Yeah. You didn't have to tell us that. I hate when they have to explain it. Well,

that's another part I hated about this movie. It was a, it was a line John Connor had early on.

Which one?

It was it was after the after Arnold got him and, and basically explained everything to him. Yeah. And he was sitting there and he's like, oh man, all these years I thought my mom was crazy or something. Yeah. And she was right. He didn't have to say any of that. Yeah. We, we knew it. I didn't even include that scene in my notes. Yeah. Because it's,

it's so, it's unnecessary. Yeah. It's an,

that whole scene's unnecessary. I was like, irritated by it.

Yeah, plus he can't act. Come on. I mean, it was his first movie, but leave him alone. All right.

I would have said the, the, the, the complication for John would have been that he didn't want the Terminator, something that's made to kill. He didn't want him to kill. Yeah. But

that, but that's just one element. Like that's not, that's not the overall problem of the story. So now when both characters arc, instead of just like the lead, a lot of times the legal arc and the buddy. The buddy love, the counterpart is just there to help them. But when both arc, it's called a two hander. Sometimes there's a third person. And even in the case of when Harry met Sally, there's four people. They're called a three hander or a four four hander.

Okay. So, again, it was done for, oh, so the audience can laugh. Ha ha ha ha. Okay. However, it is clear That as a, as a character, he does arc. He learns humanity why you can't just kill people. He says at the beginning, you can't just go, John says, you can't just go around killing people. Why not? I'm a terminator. You know, like, but he teaches them that there's value in human life, right?

Sure,

sure. So and then he learns why humans grow attached to themselves, why they grow attached to each other. And thus why people cry when that attachment gets threatened. So he does arc for a cyborg. He does arc his tangible goal is to protect john connor which by the midpoint They're on their way to Mexico. He's done that. He's pretty safe at this point. In fact, if they didn't ever return to LA to stop Sarah from killing Dyson, the T 1000 may have never found them. It may have never found him.

Yeah.

Right? She's not a Terminator, and human life should be preserved. She gets all the way to close to killing Dyson. Right. She's got him in her crosshairs, and she stops. Right? So that's

her

lesson that

needs to be learned. Another pretty traumatic scene, because that was right in front of his wife and daughter. And son! His son! Right in front of

his son, yeah. Um, So we often talk about the mirror image of the protagonist and the antagonist, and how if the hero makes bad choices, they could end up like the villain. Remember we've talked about this in previous episodes. We used examples in the past. Indiana Jones, if he made bad choices, he would be Belloc. Uh, H. I. McDonough in Raising Arizona. We said if he made bad choices, he ends up Leonard Smalls, the biker, right? He had the same tattoo. It was great. I love that choice.

Yeah.

He should have been the one to lower the T 800 into the lava. The only thing I can think of that Cameron would make this decision is that, you know, Sarah was in the first movie. She killed the Arnold looking Terminator from the first movie. This is maybe a bookend. She kills this one, too, or something.

Yeah.

It's not strong enough. It's not strong enough for me. John was crying and he didn't want him to go. So he couldn't do it again. You're failing at the arc. The spiritual goal would have been so better fed this way. If John did it, that's my only problem with the ending. It's my biggest problem with the movie and it comes right at the end. I mean, again,

not a big deal, but it's still, but again, it kind

of is to me when I was watching it this time, I never thought this before, but now I was watching it for this podcast. It hit me. He's got tears rolling down his face. How fucking perfect and emotional would it have been? It

would have been a way better ending for sure. If he

wiped the tears away and took the controls from his mother and said I got it. I need to do

this. And by the way, mom, go grab that arm in the gears

Yeah, so we can throw that in the lava too, you dumbass. You forgot the arm. Again! So anyway It would have totally solidified him as a wartime leader fulfilling his duty. I thought his spiritual goal was mostly met. That would have nailed it. Yeah, and they fucked it up.

Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah.

All right, trivia. Unless you have something to add on Ark and other plot flaws, did you have a note of plot flaws that you hated? No.

Oh,

we got them

all.

I think,

I mean, I think you covered them every time you mentioned, I'm like,

Oh

yeah, that too. That sucked. All right. But before we get on, we have to say for anyone listening for our one listener, my brother and I both did love this movie. It's like, this was a big movie for us in the nineties, right? Like this was such a fun sequel. And I don't know, it's still fun. Like again, watching it for the podcast, I noticed a lot more things that I didn't like. Yeah. But including the ending, but it's still fun.

And it's funny though too, the special effects for the time, they were amazing. But now looking at it going, oh man. I mean, the molten, the metal, the liquid metal guy, I mean that was, it's still pretty cool. I think the worst special effect that I saw was when he appeared through time travel and it burned the truck. It burned, it burned out, but it was the orb. The orb looks so fake.

Well, it wasn't just that. My problem with that is his human flesh didn't burn.

Yeah,

right. This ball burned through a truck. Well, maybe it's just the outside

of the ball.

But he, okay, but it seemed like the inside was hot too. I don't know. It just seemed like his skin was okay. Like it's supposed to be human skin, but anyway. I was going to say the, actually what I noticed was the worst special effect. Which I never noticed before. When he impersonates Jeanette Goldstein who plays foster mom, Janelle. Right? By the way, who's in Aliens, you know that's Vasquez in Aliens. I didn't realize that. And she's the Irish mom in Titanic. No way.

mom.

Well, not just that, to Janelle. Yeah, right. Like, that change right there is huge. She's also in Lethal Weapon 2. She's part of Murtaugh's crew in Lethal Weapon 2. But anyway when he impersonates her and kills the stepdad.

Yeah.

When he turns back into not the hand part, but when, when she physically turns back into Robert Patrick in T 1000, it's really, it's an awkward, like step, like almost like stop motion animation where the transition is made. And this time watching it for the podcast, I was like, ugh, with all the other great special effects, that one kind of sucks. They could have probably redone that in remastering but all right. Trivia. Co writer William Wisher appears in the film.

yeah.

Onto the street. There's a cop right there, and the cop says, oh, I have a hit and run felony. But that's the co-writer of this movie. Oh, that's hilarious. He also has done some work on the Die Hard films. Uncredited consulting. He was 26 years old. At the time of the first Terminator. He's known James Cameron since he was 17. Wow. Arnold's salary for this film, for T2, was 15 million dollars. Which by today's money is nothing, but it was a lot back then.

Okay. The biker bar scene at the beginning was not only located across the street from the infamous Rodney King beating, The Rodney King beating literally happened the night they shot that biker scene. Are you serious? Yes, according to James Cameron in this, in the DVD commentary. Wow.

Isn't that crazy? That is crazy. All

right, the original idea, this is another good one. I like this one. The original idea was for Michael Bean To play, who played Kyle Reese in the first Terminator, to play the T 1000. Oh, wow. That Skynet thought if it impersonated John's father, it'd be easier to get to him.

Oh, that's weird.

Yeah. Cameron and producers later thought the role reversal of Arnold now being good and Reese now being bad, would confuse audiences. Yeah. So they just scrapped the idea altogether. That's probably a

good thing. 'cause I did, I, you know, you kind of have 'em on a pedestal from him. And, and from, from, from that and from aliens. Aliens. Yeah. Yeah.

Hicks. Yeah. Hicks. Oh God. I, I love that guy. Lastly, my last piece of trivia here before we move on. The model number for the Terminator is technically T 101. But the nickname is T 800. They're essentially the same thing. So whenever you hear Arnold say, CYBADINE SYSTEMS MODEL T 101 That's the same as him. The Arnold looking Terminator is the T 800. Why? Why'd they do the nickname like that? Exactly, so here's my question. If the model number is T 101, then make the nickname Frank? Or Bill?

why? Why?

Why then? But anyway, that's all I have for Terminator 2 Judgment Day. If you have something else to add. Great movie. Now, we're gonna get more into, at the end of the second one, the sequel aspects, when we run it through Jerome's sequel gauntlet. But already, the connections to the first movie are there, right? Like, this is an obvious, really good sequel. Oh yeah, it all ties together. It all ties together. Yeah, there's a lot of continuity

in the story. Which brings us to our next film. And we're gonna get to six degrees at the end of the show, so.

Alright, I have to crack open my, my lightsaber for this.

Alright, I'm cracking open a new one too, so in the same vein as last time, this ugh. For Speed 2, I'm going for Passion Fruit and Key Lime Spiked Seltzer from, from Member's Mark. Which one

is this

one? What's it called? It's Passion Fruit and Key Lime.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, it sounds frickin nasty.

Ooh. I like that pop though. I guess I'm gonna have to do you one better. I'm gonna have to compete. Ah,

here I go. You ready? It is better than the cucumber, I guess.

Nice little pop of my own. Ugh. For anyone that does know, or maybe you're listening to the show for the first time. When I say my lightsabers, I have these tall 25 ounce gigantor cans of Mick Ultra. They come in large blue cans. They're my lights.

Well, and used to get the bud light, which are very, which were all blue. Yeah. All

blue. But

these I'm guessing you have a better, better deal on the Mick ultras.

No, they're actually, they're actually like a, a buck more.

Oh,

but like if the three pack.

It all tastes the same to me. I'd go for the cheap ones.

I do when I'm really strapped for cash. I do go for the cheap ones. But the McUltra tastes better. All right, Anheuser Busch, now's your chance to rope us in for a advertisement. Why

would they? They're getting free advertising. Yeah, they're getting free. They're

getting us for

free.

Well, you know what? It doesn't always have to be that way, Anheuser Busch. I could go to somebody else. I could crack open a tall Coors Light.

It just occurred to me. Speed 2 happened when Judgment Day should have happened. 97. Oh,

that is the end of the world then, isn't it? Written by Randall McCormick and Jeff Nathanson from a story by Jan de Bont based on characters created by Graham Yost. I'm gonna go into a little bit of an assault here on the writers because the script was so bad. And I don't want it to sound too arrogant. They are, after all, professional writers and I am not. But, I will say that Yonda Bont was contractually obligated to do a sequel on the success of the first one.

Yeah.

So We have to forgive a little bit that he was probably like, You know, I want to go off and do other things. He did Twister right before this. So, you know, he probably wanted to do other things, and they're like, No, you gotta give us a speed sequel. And he's probably like, Dude, and I can't get Keanu? Keanu read the script. And decided not to make the movie, after reading the script. He chose the movie Chain Reaction instead.

Hey, that was a good choice.

Yeah, so if you're the director, and you just lost Keanu, I don't know, I guess this is what you come up with. So, you could argue that the Speed franchise made and broke Jan de Bont's directing career. Don't get me wrong, highly respected cinematographer. He did Cujo, Die Hard, Hunt for Red October, Flatliners.

Some

bangers. The aforementioned Lethal Weapon 3 that we talked about in the last movie. So he was okay. This is all before.

Well, yeah, what do you do after speed to

his last American film credit as director of photography was lethal weapon three in 1992. So he didn't even go back to cinematography. It was almost like once he became director, he's like, I'm not going back to that shit again. I'm a director now. Like, that's it. Unfortunately he, he finally got his chance to direct and hit two relative blockbusters with speed 1994 and twister 1996, both big six, six, Then after Speed 2, he's only directed two movies since then.

He might just be retired counting his residuals money coming in.

Or it's one of those, did you retire or did Speed 2 retire you? Right? I don't know. Coincidentally, writer Randall McCormick may have also been bitten by the cruise control bug. Of his six writing credits on IMDB, that's it, six of them, four of them are Speed 2, Scorpion King 2, and Scorpion King 3, and Blue Crush 2. Oh no. These are all forgettable sequels. He hasn't had a credit in Hollywood in over 10 years.

Well, they, you know, they, they wrecked a lot of stuff.

The final set piece of the ocean liner crashing into a small town, that alone cost 25 million. Wow. It's the most expensive single stunt in film history as Jan de Bont, Jan de Bont did not want to use any CGI and literally built a small town just so he could ram the cruise ship into it.

Wow. That's crazy.

Oddly enough, it made 162 million worldwide. So it sounds like it made its money back, but you know, with all the money they spend on distribution and marketing it really, oh, and by the way of that 162 million worldwide, only 48 of that was domestic.

That's rough. Yeah.

So that's a tank. That's a tank. Although oddly enough on there, on the worldwide list, it did land a respectable eighth. On the 1997 list. That's not bad. Top 10. Right. But again, like I said, only 48 of that was domestic. So the domestic list is way farther down, but worldwide it's number eight, considering production costs and unlisted marketing and distribution costs. It is considered a bomb by most stretches in Hollywood.

when I was watching this, the scene where the ship's flooding and everything, and I'm like, oh my gosh, Titanic came out the same year.

Same year. Weird. Yeah Titanic is was at 1. 8 billion. It's about double that. If you adjust for inflation it garnered speed to cruise control, mind you back on the speed to now garnered zero Academy award nominations, though it did win the Razzie award for most. I'm sorry for worst remake or sequel. It's only Razzie win despite seven other Razzie nominations. So it was nominated for eight total Razzies. And even failed at winning the Razzies. Like it only won one worst remake or sequel.

know, since you mentioned the Worst it frust the movie frustrated me, and it I I can't I don't think I can blame her acting ability because I've seen her act. She can act. She's fun. She's delightful. I love her. But the lines they gave her, they made her out to be a, just a, like a dumb It was almost like the stereotypical dumb blonde, even though she's not blonde. It might be one of the

most male chauvinist films I've ever

seen. It was horrible and I kept thinking to myself, man, this, I mean

And

her

face is the poster.

Yeah,

it's it's her movie. She's top billing.

She's above the title. Why'd they do that? I mean cuz

and she serves almost zero purpose in this movie.

Yeah What was the what was the movie where she was the mom that they they were helping the football player? She was the one she won

the Oscar for the

blindside She was like a strong female lead in that movie and I loved that I loved her role in that movie cuz you know, she was I don't know She wasn't a push you even have

to go that far later Like before this movie came out. Yeah, she did while you were sleeping a romantic comedy that she carries.

Oh, yeah Yeah, she absolutely carries that movie. She's got a long list of movies that the scripts were just way better You know way better. I hated how the script portrayed her in this movie.

I'm telling you it's it's so If I was a woman I'd be offended I'm offended as a man I would be more offended as a woman that That this is the lead, this is the above the title lead, the main person coming back from the first movie, and you give her literally shit to do. And it's mind boggling because Jan de Bont, whose second big film, which came out a year before this, was Twister, where Helen Hunt almost carries that movie.

Well, I can tell you when did you see it? I don't remember. I I hope I didn't see it at the theater I I'd probably remember I would probably remember walking out So I'm sure I probably rented it. I remember renting it I mean, I remember seeing it a long time ago shortly after it came out So it was probably when it came on video or whatever but yeah, I miss remember thinking that it was just ridiculous.

Yeah.

You know, that was kind of my overall, and I wasn't a, you know, I wasn't studying film and I wasn't like doing this. You don't have to hate this movie. No. Yeah. I just remember thinking it was ridiculous. It was just ridiculous.

Now it didn't help that at the time it came out, I was in film school. I was in my final year. Almost. I was going into my final year. So I was taking all kinds of screenwriting classes. So probably that didn't help. But when I did see it, I think I saw it on video when I was in college, I didn't go to the movies. I did not spend

probably around it. We had, you know, we were, we had just gotten married the year before. So, well, I worked at

Blockbuster, so I had free rentals all the time. And this was one of the movies I brought home, watched on video. And I want to say I turned it off. Like halfway through? That might've happened with us. I don't remember. Because I don't remember watching the ending originally. I think I YouTubed the video YouTubed the ending years later. And I don't remember why. Somehow this discussion of Speed 2 came up and I remember thinking, You know, I never did finish that. I wonder how it ends.

ending took way too long too.

Yeah,

yeah. You know what I mean? We'll get to that too. That whole, that whole ending with the ship, where we're going to get there, that happens and then you still got to go get the bad guy.

Don't even get me started. That's so bad. It's so bad. Like I don't know. Well again, we'll, we'll get, we got a lot to get to. So It's almost like they

did have a formula from the first movie because the same type of thing that where they stopped the bus But that wasn't the end. You had to go get the bad guy.

Right, but not at all. I think, I, I think you're right on that, but they also tried to mirror that the bad guy is a disgruntled former employee of some sort. Yeah, right. You know, so they pulled that formula from the first movie. Yeah. But they fail miserably. Yeah, it was horrible. It's like, hey, I made a really good margarita. Now I'm gonna make another one. But instead of tequila, I'm gonna use seltzer water. Like, it's not gonna be the same at all. So so there's that.

like I said, I might not, I remembered a lot of the scenes when I watched it. I watched it today. So you just got done with it. I just got done with it. And I'm like, yeah. So it's fresh on your mind. But there was a lot I didn't remember too. So it might have been one of those things where we watched it, we fell asleep, we woke up, it's still on, you know. Sad to say I had to watch it twice on this podcast. So let's, let's get through this quickly then, cause everyone's tuning out now.

got it, no, we have to, no, it is, you're right, sorry listeners for turning you off. You have to listen to this because we're gonna get to why it's so shitty. Not just that it's a shitty movie, but why it doesn't work as a sequel and T2 does. Alright, log me.

Alright. A computer hacker breaks into the computer system of a of the Seabourn Legend cruise liner and sets it speeding on a collision course into a gigantic oil tanker.

Worst. Logline. I've ever heard. We don't even know that there's an oil tanker? Until the end of the movie.

Yeah.

Right? Like, how is that the log line? If you go to the movie based on that log line, you're like, where's this oil tanker? Like, what the fuck? There is no collision course set either until the second half of the movie. Like, we don't know any of that. None of that is on the radar. Yep. Alright, we have sort of the beats. Alright. Opening image, Alec Shaw airborne a throwback to Jack's car being airborne in the first movie.

Yeah,

yet there's no that's a setup with no payoff

with no point

with Tim Conway, which Right tells itself that it's a comedy, right? This is supposed to be funny. But here's the thing If there was a moment later in the movie where she has to take controls of the boat, you know what I mean? We'd get like, oh the driving test. It's now coming into play here. It's a setup and payoff She has almost nothing to do the rest of the movie She's asked to

do nothing.

Yeah, and she doesn't learn anything

because at the end of the movie she does, she retakes the test and crashes the car. And

crashes again! So, what's the whole point? There isn't one. Theme stated, if you want a theme at all. After the coincidence of bumping into each other while he's doing his police work and she's failing her driving test, by the way, coincidence, number one, they kind of interrupt each other's day, right? And he gives what can only be described as the closest we're going to get to a theme slash arc.

That's what you sound like, you've got that taste in your mouth.

that Mel Gibson movie. Alright, so, 4 point push uh, Insighting incident, 9 minutes, and you know what I just thought of? Sorry, it's part of our thing to go off on tangents. Remember in Airplane? When the lady's getting sick on the plane? And she goes, I haven't felt this awful since we saw that Ronald Reagan movie. Hahahaha! I just had no thought! That's how I feel right now! Alright. That's great. Alright.

Sorry, back at it. Maybe I'll make her face in that scene from that movie the cover of this episode.

Four point push. Inciting incident. Nine minutes in, Shaw suggests that they take a cruise vacation. This is the inciting incident because without the cruise obviously this movie doesn't happen. They arrive at the cruise ship and have some coincidental bumps with the bad guy. Coincidence number two and three. One, they're sitting right next to each other on the little speedboat that takes them to the cruise liner. They're sitting right next to each other.

Yeah, I know.

Like, and they just happen to be right there to hear it.

Yeah.

Too many coincidences, way too many. All right. So, Catalyst. Now at this point, we're already in script disaster because there's no catalyst or debate to propel the protagonists into Act 2. Mostly because, and I put this in all caps, THEY DON'T KNOW THEY'RE IN DANGER! That's the problem with this movie! If there's a catalyst at all for this movie, for this story, it's mainly for the villain alone. It's for Willem Dafoe's character of John Geiger.

Yeah. Yeah.

If we're going on the story being Annie's unwillingness to marry a cop. Well, hold on,

hold on. It wasn't William Defoe.

Yeah, well, okay. Number one, because he's Willem Dafoe. Yeah. Number two, he's got the perfect bad guy face. I mean. Right, he

looks crazy.

No, that's what you need to put on the poster for this episode. That, that one look he has where his eyes are really big. I'll, I'll send it to you. It's the speed two picture of Willem Dafoe. Alright.

The next shot, they show the vomit bucket next to his bed! So, alright, anyway. You, they could have made the debate the next scene. When they're, I guess that would be the debate the next scene, where they're shopping. And they have yet another lover's spat, sort of like he wants to get married and she doesn't, kind of thing. Right, right. So, again, now, we're at this point, and if you're unsure whose story are we telling, Annie's, Shaw's, or Geiger's, I couldn't tell you. I don't know.

the first movie.

No, no. The poster tells me she's the lead. Sure. But the story doesn't at all. And again, it makes hard, nailing down the catalyst in the debate makes it almost impossible if you don't know whose fucking story it is. Break into 2.

Right.

So think about this already from an action

Yeah, movie standpoint. You could have ended this movie. Just get everyone on those lifeboats. Everyone's safe and secure. They'll figure, they'll take care of this guy.

There's no stakes. There's no, there's nothing in the back. T2, the world's humanity was in the balance.

Yeah, yeah.

In this movie, nothing is in the balance. They're free to leave whenever they want. And what's the

story continuity and everything from the first movie? Sander Bullock has PTSD, I guess.

Oh, in dating. In dating. In dating, yes. Not in real life, where that could have been a real thing. Yeah. I

just survived

something,

I almost died. I married John Wick and it was not, or I dated John Wick for a while and it didn't go well.

Yeah, so now I have PTSD in relationships. Not getting on buses or cars or boats, I can do that just fine. Funny games.

This all sounds like a romantic comedy, doesn't it? Like, it doesn't sound like an action movie at all. If the movie is Geiger, if this is Geiger's movie, there is no B story. So, one could argue from a story standpoint that even Giuliano Juliano? Could it be arguably a B story, since he's instrumental in helping Shaw save the boat in the end? Maybe. Take your pick, it doesn't matter. Alright, more fun and games.

any danger. So I mean, an hour and five minutes in there should have only been 25 minutes left in the movie at that point. I didn't need to be for an hour and a half movie. Romantic comedies are an hour and a half. It didn't need to be two hours long.

So. Now, there was the fumbling around with the evacuation where people were in danger and she helped out there, I guess. Not really. Shaw helped and she just assisted him. You know, as a little good woman should, assist her man. Okay, that was meant to sound very snarky. Um,

Yeah, I'm just nodding.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. That's how they make her character seem! I know, it's awful! She's just there to support Shaw and his saving of people. Like, anyway. But that's, to her, the only part of danger is the evacuation process. This is the first time she knows that there actually is a bad guy.

And he dumps the ship. Hold on a minute. Why would those diamonds have been on the ship?

Well, there was a scene during dinner, weren't they showing them off? They were auctioning them or something?

It just seems like a weird thing to take on a cruise.

Well, it was, they were there to sell them or auction them or something. There's something in the dinner scene where he wants to propose to her and he's communicating with the deaf girl through sign language. The diamonds are presented there for the first time and I can't remember what it was.

Yeah.

Yeah. They're there for an auction

or something. They just made up some BS, but it just seemed weird.

They just made it up so he can steal diamonds. Yeah, exactly. Not for any real purpose. Just to steal diamonds. Okay. So he then climbs Shaw then climbs into the cockpit where Geiger and Annie are. Are you ready for the big action sequence where he saves Annie? Because he just takes her and they jump out. That's all. Geiger does nothing about it. Right. He just watches it. He takes Annie and he gets out of the boat, or gets out of the plane.

Yeah, it

just

breaks.

It's just detached. Good for them. Execution of the new plan. So, oh, that was the execution of the plan. Shaw saves Annie by stepping out of the pontoon, which then suddenly breaks off for the plane for no reason, separating them from Giger, who's clears the tanker, by the way, that's now a dramatic moment for Geiger, is that he has to get his plane up high to clear the tanker, only to then turn the plane and hit an antenna. The way it hit it and just stuck there. It just stuck there.

lever! And he's in the water, and he can hear it. Yeah. Okay, whatever. Alright so he throws Annie in the water. And then he goes in after her. When he comes up, She's suddenly very far away from him. Now, get this, they're on the pontoon. He throws her in the water, and then he jumps in right after her.

Yeah.

Into the water. When he comes up, she's like 30 feet away! Like, how did she get that far from him? They jumped in the same spot! But, whatever, okay, it doesn't, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. There's a heavy current, I guess, I don't know. He swims to her, and then he has to kiss her so that she can breathe underwater. You know, not take her up to the surface so that she can breathe.

Well, the final scene was Sandra Bullock retaking her driving test.

Oh, yes, you're right

and then it fades to black or goes to black then you hear it crash The car crashed because apparently I

think that's a post credit thing Like they do with

Marvel.

No, because I didn't watch the credits. I think it, well, I think they're showing the ship when it says directed by Yann DuBont. And they start doing credits, but then they do that thing where they show her. Fail her driving test. But as soon as the credits

started rolling, I turned it off. But it was just funny. But that puts the exclamation point on the chauvinistic bent that the writing had for this movie. Yeah, she can't drive. Because, you know, this dumb woman can't drive. Of course. Why would she be able to drive? She had to retake her test after all this trauma. And of course, she still can't drive. I mean, she's a woman after all.

She's a woman. She can't drive. And she can't be expected to do anything during crisis. It's so bad,

man.

So we write her to do nothing during crisis.

It made me angry. I was like, I have three daughters and a wife and they're all very capable women.

I've got two daughters and a wife and both of my daughters would be far more efficient on this boat than Sandra Bullock was written to.

I mean, I would dare say my wife's a better driver than me, but that might not be saying much.

I've seen you drive. So notes

Yeah, right after we had this, would she say traumatic circumstance? Yeah,

we just had the one thing you hated, now all of a sudden you are embracing, right? There's no growth. Now, at worst, she could just be like, like you said, PTSD. She could be in shock right now. So she's saying yes to a marriage while she's in shock. So kind of a dick move on Shaw's part to propose at that moment. Right. When you know that she's not of sound mind. Right? But whatever. Okay. I don't know. She didn't learn anything. What about Shaw's arc? What lesson does he learn?

in the line of duty. I'm just saying, I'm just saying that's fucking dark. Oh, I'm just saying they could have wrote that into the story. That's why she's not with them anymore.

Right. So he, I was like, Jesus, where did that come from? So, okay. So yeah, let's say he died.

hero. That would have been superior to this movie, especially if they would have rewrote her, her character. And actually gave her something to do.

She would need an arc too.

Yeah.

Right? So, not just that she's with a boring guy and she wishes he was exciting, but what if, You know, I don't know. She needs to arc somehow, you know, maybe she loves the exciting cop idea because she herself is boring and she doesn't want to be with a boring person.

first movie

because I mean she was being fed information about what to do, but still she had to do it Yeah,

you know,

absolutely.

And she had the balls to do it! She was way stronger in the first movie than she was in the second movie. Alright, so if we move to Geiger's motivation he developed an illness, he needs leeches because of his copper poisoning. Also like I said, it's basically a rip off of the villain in the first movie, right? Dennis Hopper was a disgruntled former cop, lost his thumb. So they kind of do the same thing with the foe here. Problems with the script. So Mac returns.

yeah.

Is that how Annie met? Through Jack. I mean, I might have to, I'd have to suffer watching this again to go through and see if there was a line of dialogue or something I missed that maybe she met Shaw through Jack? I don't know. I don't think so.

Yeah, it's funny. IMDB says he's uncredited.

Yeah, so he's

That's crazy.

Okay. Okay. So, like I said, this movie is loaded with coincidence. The Shaw cop scene at the beginning with Annie's driving intersecting and all that stuff. All the times they bump into Geiger, blah, blah, blah. There seems to be no consequence for getting off the boat. The villain even tells Giuliano to get the passengers off. We talked about that. If that's the case, there's no stakes. There's no tensions. Protagonists can leave whenever they want. There's no urgency.

Yeah.

Okay,

what do you

got?

Same with Alien and Aliens.

Alien and Aliens, right? They kept making movies after that, and they're nowhere near as good. Right. You know, Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back, a lot of people, not just Return of the Jedi, a lot of people think every movie after Empire has failed to live up to those first two movies. Yeah.

I mean, I liked Return of the Jedi, but

I did too, and it's a perfect See, here's my argument with Return of the Jedi and Godfather 3, they're both needed. Right? You might not like them as much. They're essential. Exactly. The character needs closure. And that's essential. Alright, so anything you got to add? What do you think of Jerome's sequel gauntlet?

I like it. I like it. I wish it didn't take two hours to get to it.

Well, I could have led with it, but then our show would be ten minutes long.

No, it was fun though. Because, you know. Well, that's what we're here for, right? Yeah, it was fun doing it. It was fun. And uh, you know, if you're an aspiring screenwriter, and maybe, you know, you might have an opportunity to work on a sequel. You gotta consider these things. Use Jerome's sequel gauntlet. There you go. There you go.

got for me?

Alright I was going to choose the the little girl in Speed 2. Oh, the deaf girl? The deaf girl. But she, this was the only movie she was in. Oh. She was in this and X Files. And shows, TV shows. That makes it difficult. Yeah, so I went with someone else. So I chose, the two actors I chose. Cheryl Wait,

wait, wait. Before anyone asks, the reason why that makes it difficult We don't use the movies that we talk about today. Yeah. So they have to at least be in something else for us to do this. We, we challenge ourselves that way. Alright, go ahead.

And I, and we have done that before where you had to use the movie. I had to. But I just wanted to go with two different ones. So I went with, and both these, actors they do a lot of like action. I shouldn't say a lot. Some of them didn't do many. A couple of these actors, I think the first one, she's only done, maybe a dozen. Four. Oh, was it four?

Four film titles and like 66 stunt titles. Like, she's a stunt, she's a stunt person.

Right. But anyway, so Cheryl Bermeo? Bermio? Bermio. Okay. She was one of

the pe What was her character name in Speed 2?

Passenger 2. Or something like that. Yeah. Passenger 2. And Terrence Evans.

Yeah, he was in T2.

Yes, and he was the semi truck driver, one of them. He was

the semi truck driver, okay.

I think he was the tanker driver, if I remember correctly. I could be wrong. Which,

which one? Well, it seems like every truck driver gets thrown from the truck. Yeah, so it didn't matter. So he's one of those guys. Okay. So, When you first texted me, I was like, my god, we're now doing stunt people, like, this is where we've gotten in our challenges. Well, it's,

so the point is to try to see if we can't connect to actors that were on the big screen. Right. Within six degrees.

So, for anyone else that knows, like, of course, this isn't Stumped Jerome, we actually just want to know if it can be done. The closest we got to being stumped is when we did those two foreign language films. Yeah. Because we found that European actors and actresses it, it was harder to find connective pieces. So, okay. Cheryl Bermeo was in a 2000 movie called The Convent. With Adrienne Barbeau. Remember her?

No.

Yeah, you do. She was in Back to School with Rodney. She was Rodney Dangerfield's wife. Oh, okay. Getting him back to school. She was in Swamp Thing. Remember that great 80s movie, Swamp Thing? Oh, yeah. I loved Swamp

Thing. Yeah, I loved Adrienne Barbeau. It's on cable all the time in the 80s. Yeah, I know.

I had such a crush on her. Anyway, she was in The Convent, and she was also in Argo in 2012. The Ben Affleck movie. Also in that movie was John Goodman, who was in The Runner 1999 with Terrence Evans. Oh my God. So three? Wow. That's pretty good. The Convent, Argo, and The Runner connects Cheryl Bermeo to Terrence Evans. Who'd have thunk. That took some work, by the way. I had it in four and I'm like. There's more here. I know there is, you know, at one point

I was using Coolio. Oh really? Yeah. What's Coolio? I was like, oh really? And then I thought, wait, I don't even know what the hell that is. What's Coolio?

Oh, okay. Yeah, I am not hip to the rap scene. You're like,

what I, seriously, I thought it was like a new app or something. Oh. Wait, what? It's a good thing no one ever listens to the end of these shows. That's great.

It's a good thing Coolio doesn't listen to our show. Anyway, Coolio was in one of those movies, I think, and I was trying to use other movies that he was in.

So, I have heard of Coolio. In my defense, doesn't it sound like an app?

he wants to use it for. It doesn't matter. If it's got his name, that's all you need. Oh, that's good stuff. Alright, so good, good episode. Absolutely.

and for the record, I, I was, I wanted to do something like Aliens for the good, you know, for the better example of a, of a sequel.

Yeah.

But still, I love T2 also. I think the

reason I poo pooed it is because by the time you text me that, I already had T2's notes done. I'm like, I'm not going back and doing another one. So T2 was the one I watched first because I have it on DVD. So real quick, you said you watched the director's cut. Did it have more issues than the theatrical version?

Yeah, there was more unnecessary dialogue. That's why it was cut. Oh. Yeah. So, and I, I didn't even care to take the time to discuss that since, you know.

I know that it doesn't uh, and again, I have the DVD, but I've never watched the extended version. I've only seen the theatrical version. The extended version, doesn't it have a dream sequence where she sees Reese again or she talks to Reese?

Yeah, yeah. Okay. That was in the, in the director's cut or whatever it was, the, the cut good? I don't know if I've

ever seen it. It's no good?

It was alright, but it wasn't necessary for the, for the movie. Yeah. You know, she, she was dreaming when she was in the hospital. That wasn't in the original?

No, not in the theatrical version.

Okay, I couldn't remember. Cause I saw that scene and I was like, I couldn't remember if it was in the original or not. It's been so long since I saw it.

I, I do remember too I, I think it was on the director's commentary. The scene where he has to pull the metal rod out. Huh. That wasn't originally shot. That wasn't originally in the movie. Cameron had it to where the, the T 1000 shoves the pole through him and he supposedly dies, right? And then, when he emerges To blow up the T 1000 at the end, test audiences was like, Where the fuck did he come from? Like, we thought he was dead!

Right.

And Cameron had it like that originally because he thought it'd be more of a surprise, but it was too much of a surprise. There was no organic way to get him from one spot to the other. So he calls Arnold, and tells him, you gotta come back, we gotta reshoot. By the way, that makeup took seven hours to put on. Oh my gosh. At that point of the movie where his face is all fucked up? Yeah. So he tells him, you gotta come back, you gotta do seven hours of makeup, so we can shoot you rebooting.

Oh my gosh, that's crazy.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

Well, it's good stuff, man. So yeah. Take it away. Yeah, go support your local cinemas.

Keep drinking and keep watching.