Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Freejack

Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.

And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema Rewind, we're gonna be featuring an older episode of Weird House Cinema, the one we did on free Jack starring Emilio Estevez, Mick Jagger. What was Anthony Hopkins in this one?

Yeah? He is?

Is Renee Russo in it? Where's all of these names come from? And my memory, I.

Mean, it's it's all about Mick Jagger. It's all about getting the meat right.

Get the meat that's right.

All right? So in free Jack, there is one hundred percent chance of bone jacking occurring. And you know what, if you tune into Monday Night Football tonight on ESPN, I'd say maybe there's a fifty to fifty chance they'll be bone jacking. But I am to understand there's one hundred percent chance there's gonna be some sort of interesting shenanigans from PayPal. That's the word around the office here at any rate, Do with that what you will. Football fans,

Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

And I'm Joe McCormick. And boy, we have got a treat for you today, one that has been a long time coming for me personally, because we're going to be talking about a nineteen ninety Oh I've already forgotten the year. Was it ninety one or ninety two?

I believe it came out in ninety.

Two, Okay, a nineteen ninety two science fiction film called Free Jack. And I have a personal history with this movie, which is that I have owned this DVD for approximately fifteen years, and until this weekend, I had never watched it. I remember buying it for three dollars and ninety five cents at an East Tennessee used bookstore sometime when I

Yeah. I remember the VHS box art for this. I remember the the you know, the covers. I remember the trailer. It looks like it's gonna be tremendous fun. It looks really badass. In fact, I have very strong memories of when this came out because I was fourteen, and you know, I don't even remember what my favorite films were at that point. You know, I guess that's post Batman, so

You're like making a scrap booking the I.

Would do that with other films, like yeah, I had done that with Batman. When it came out, I was like cutting out all these pictures. I made like scrapbook pages of it. I was so excited about it. I did that with Dick Tracy.

That's fandom.

Yeah, and then this came and I'm like, let's do it. I'm down. This is the next one. This is going to be the next film that I'm crazy for. And then it hit theaters and I remember I was I was calling my local theater in the small Tennessee town that I lived in, and I was like, when are you all getting free Jack? When's free Jack coming? And they they didn't have an answer for that, because of course the answer was free Jack was not coming to a small town.

Is mister Jagger going to be here for the premiere? Can I get them to sign my poster?

Yeah? Well, I just thought it was going to be this huge thing that everybody was going to be obsessed with. Turns out people weren't obsessed with it. Turns out this was what a January release. This was a film that had experienced troubles, that was pretty much known, I think, to not be that good, and was just dumped unceremoniously in the January release window of nineteen ninety two.

Yeah, floppiject season. Yeah, but There's a lot of good movies get released in the winter, though, but oh yeah, a lot of this is something that I think often happens with horror movies that should be released in October. But there's just a sign of utter disrespect by the studios that release them, often good ones. I don't know if the studio is playing into it in this case, but like when The Witch came out, I think it

Yeah, I don't know. You know, as much as I love movies and I love charting all this stuff, yeah, I don't have as good ahead for other aspects of movie production, and you know, and certainly the calendar of putting them out another thing I don't usually have a

This is a parade of heavy hitters, both in terms of a list stars. He had Emilio Estevez, who was, you know, a big deal in the early nineties. He had Renee Russo, Anthony Hopkins, Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones. But then also it's just filled out with a ton of great character actors in the in the mid level roles.

Yeah, I don't think everybody's necessarily cast in a good spot. Right by the end of this episode, I will recast the picture in a way that I think will work better or would have worked better. But yeah, it's still a very fun picture to discuss, has a lot of cool elements in it, just everything didn't come together like it should.

No see this one's I think it's going to be a lot of fun to talk about. Ultimately, I think it's a little disappointing to actually watch and one of the main reasons is the weirdness and the absurdity is not concentrated enough. The movie goes on too long, it's stretched out too much. But we'll try to press it down into a diamond for you. The listener.

All right, well, let's let's go ahead and have that elevator pitch.

Joe, Okay, So the pitch is in the early nineties, Formula one racer Alex Furlong is about to die in a fiery crash when he is suddenly time warped into the dystopian hell of the year two thousand and nine by mercenaries under the command of Mick Jagger a guy named Visindak, and they want to sell his body to a rich dead man who's currently living inside a computer and needs a new meat vehicle so that he can

Yep.

Now, before we get into the contents of the film itself, this movie really does have something that I love, which is a good, crappy, early two thousands DVD menu experience.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. In fact, I was just talking to Seth before we started recording about how someday, someday, I almost want to do a whole exploration just of the genre of early DVD menus that tried to do too much and we're really aesthetically repulsive and had strange sort of CGI animations.

Oh wow. Yeah, I mean even the ones that were really well done, Like I think one of the first DVDs I bought, and I wasn't an early adopter on that technology, but I picked up this double DVD special edition of Big Trouble in Little China, the John Poker film, and yeah, it was they really put a lot of effort into it. You know, it's like so many different

Yeah. Yeah, so this one, it has these crappy CGI menus. One of the features it has is a rotating CGI jack like in the Game of Jacks. And I was confused at first, because again I despite owning the CVD for like fifteen years or something, I had never seen it until this weekend. So I was like, wait a minute, does the title free Jack refer to some kind of jack like in.

Jack's Oh, this would be the what's it called the spiritual Uh? Yeah, god? What they call it? The spiritual the spiritual switchboard?

Spiritual switchboard? Yes, yes, yes, So it's a piece of technology that actually shows up at the end of the movie and looks exactly like a Jack from a Game of Jacks.

Oh man, I just realized as a Jack. Was that on purpose?

I don't know, Like with the title free Jack? Yeah, I don't know. But then there's another thing on this DVD that was just cavir on my tongue. It was a menu option called Experience our Website, which when you click it, all it does is it takes you to a screen that shows you the URL of Morgan Creek Motion Pictures, which is www dot Morgan Creek, and then you have the option to go back to the main menu.

So you would have to like write it down on the sheet of paper and take it to your computer. Wow. So good.

Anyway, let's hit some trailer audio.

Alex Furlong is about to die and enter the year two thousand and nine, where immortality is only a heartbeat away, where money can buy anything.

Shouldn't you consider an alternative bite.

Started to deceive you, including life itself, lose your mind and you can live forever.

Free Jack.

See sounds exciting, sounds great, sounds like it's gonna be one heck of a movie.

Right. If you'd been a kid at the time, you'd be writing your local theater saying, make the free Jack World premiere happen here.

Yep.

But so there are some key concepts in the film that we're going to have to explain now, I think for this discussion to make any sense. And one of the distinctions that is that is most important is that between the bone Jack and the bone Jacker and the free Jack. Right.

So essentially, again, the whole idea here is people who died in horrific accidents in the past. A lot of times you know exactly when they died, where they died, and you know that there's like a catastrophic event like in this case a car wreck, a race car wreck, so you know exactly where in time and space to reach back and steal their body, in other words, jack their bones. It's called bone jacking, and the people who do it are bone.

Jackers, right, So they're bone jackers. And the person who gets bone jacked from the past to the future to become somebody's meat vehicle, that person is the bone jack.

Okay do they call them that? I thought maybe they were just jacks, but they're called bone jacks.

I think they're called bone jack So the victim is the bone jack. The verb would be to bone jack someone. And then if you're one of these mercenaries who does the bone jacking, you're a bone jacker.

Okay.

But then if a bone jack gets loose, then all bets are off and they're a free jack, right, It's like being a free agent.

So then they have to try and either jack the free jack or bone jack the free jack in order to get them back.

Right, for the bone Jack. Yes, yes, okay, that's right. But I was thinking about, Okay, so the people who who are the prime candidates for bone jacking in the premise of this film are It's basically going to be anyone who died on videotape with like a precise time code and so you know the time and place where they died, and that's well recorded and survives into the future.

Sometimes they don't actually die, right, Sometimes that stuff's fake. Right.

Oh really, I've never actually watched one. I just remember that was the thing when I was in high school or whatever this is if you don't remember, these were like morbid video cassettes of just like footage of people dying and in various ways.

Yeah, I mean, and I guess it does help if it is a case where something blows up, because then there's more, it's less mystery of the body suddenly vanishes, you know, right before they would die.

I mean, I think there'd still be a mystery. They establish in this movie that there's a mystery.

Yeah, but there's a difference between Okay, there was a car wreck and we never found the body to somebody fired a bullet at JFK and then he vanished, you know, and then it turns out he was bone jacked and now is a body for some like super rich dude in the future. Like that just doesn't make any sense. That would be a huge incident.

Okay. So the film was directed by a guy named Jeff Murphy who is a New Zealand film director who passed away in twenty eighteen. His breakout film seems to have been a New Zealand road trip movie that I've never seen, called Goodbye pork Pie. But he had a Hollywood period in which he directed films like Young Guns two, which I didn't check, but I'm pretty sure that does star Emilio Estevez.

It is, Yeah, it is an okay film.

Yeah, so connection there, Young Guns two in nineteen ninety Free Jack in ninety two, so you can see the connection there. But then he also directed a prestige period drama I think about the regency period known as Under Siege two Dark Territory in nineteen ninety five.

I've seen that one. That one has a terrible lead but has has some really talented people in it, because Eric Bogosian plays the main villain. And then I want to say, you have.

Who's Eric Bogosian? I've heard that name.

Oh, Eric Bogosian. He's been in a ton of stuff. You've definitely seen him in things I think he was in. Well, most recently he was in Uncut Gems. But he's been in a ton of stuff.

Yeah, he was in another Regency era drama, Charlie's Angels Full Throttle, and he was a voice. I just looked this up. He was a voice in Beavis and butthead do America.

Well, yeah, there you go. He's an impressive actor, I would say. But yeah, so I saw that movie. It also had Steven Saga on it, of course, but yeah, what can you do?

But Jeff Murphy was also a second unit director for some big, you know, mainstream films, like like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. He did second unit stuff. He did Dante's Peak, Triple X, State of the Union.

All right, So yeah, he had a pretty solid career. Now, one thing about this film, this is something I didn't realize back in the day when I originally watched it, and it was just kind of a creeping realization as I was watching it just the other day, and it is that this was filmed I think, entirely in Atlanta, Georgia, in the city in which we live, the city that we're recording this episode.

In around like you saw Peachtree in it, didn't you do you recognize suddenly when they're downtown and they're like, there's Mortes stations and stuff.

Well, by that point I had looked it up, but early on in the film, there's just a lot of like you're in two thousand and nine, it's in the future, and everything's like kind of gritty and industrial in a way that plenty of parts of Atlanta still are. So I was kind of thinking it was like, you know, it's kind of an Atlanta feel to it, and then I'm like, wait, I should look this up, and sure enough, filmed in Atlanta. Of course, nowadays everything's filmed in Atlanta,

This one has some of the exact same locations and streets featured in Baby Driver.

Yeah, like you could.

You could compare Free Jack and Baby Driver and do some side by sides.

Like they went to film Baby Driver and they're like, look, we'll give you the free Jack package. This is what it consists on.

You know, another dystopian future movie that uses Mortes stations. There were cut scenes from Escape from New York that were filmed in moretestations in Atlanta.

Yeah. Yeah. Of course the High Museum here in Atlanta is famously where doctor Hannibal Lecter was housed in Manhunter, the original adaptation of Red Dragon.

M h Yeah, so played by Brian Cox.

Yeah. Yeah, a tremendous role. That was a really really fun film, as I recall. But of course nowadays everything is filmed around Atlanta, so it's it can be excruciating at times. I find like I'm watching Cobra Kai and they film like all of it in Atlanta, like everywhere, Like I expect to see myself see out of my own house and take out the garbage in the background in a scene, you know, so I don't know, it kind of takes me out of the experience sometimes these days.

Yeah. So this was actually based on a novel, I think, but maybe loosely based.

Yes, the novel very loosely based on a novel by Robert Sheckley. He lived nineteen twenty eight through two thousand and five, and it was quite successful. The book in question was nineteen fifty eight More Tality, Inc. And originally I didn't have time to read any of this book. But originally the transit is from nineteen fifty eight to the year twenty one to ten, so much further in the into the future.

But anyway, Yeah, by shortening that length though that that dramatically changes what's possible with the plot in terms of meeting people who you previously knew and not appearing to have aged a single day in between.

Yeah. So it's supposedly a good book. I'd love to hear from anyone out there who's read it. I read that it, you know, it doesn't again, doesn't have much to do with this movie. I don't think the terms free jacker bonejacker used it all in the book, and I think there's supposedly a sequence in it where a guy the main character, gets in line for something and then finds out it's a suicide booth, which of course is a gag in Futurama in the first episode of that, right,

Ah, two great sci fi scripts.

Yeah, all right, now we've got our lead. Our star, Emilio Estevez plays the character Alex Furlong. Now, Estevez is, of course the nephew of noted B movie icon Joe Estevez, And you lead with that, Yeah, yeah, I mean he's also the son of acting legend Martin Sheen, whose, of course real name is Ramon Estevez. So if you weren't aware of that, like Martin Sheen, that's his Hollywood name, his real name is Estevez. H And yeah, so you know Martin Sheen from stuff like Apocalypse Now or Spawn.

I was just thinking how funny it was that you don't you don't often put it together in your brain, or at least I don't that like Martin Sheen, who played the President on the West Wing, who's this kind of like grumpy but kind irascible fatherly figure. He's presented this lovable nerd. Is also the main character from Apocalypse Now and the villain from Spawn.

Yeah. I mean, he's been in so many different types of films. He's been in some crap, you know, not as much as Joe Estevez, but you know, but he was in some really great films, especially early in his career. Nineteen seventy Three's bad Lands by Terrence Malick, wonderful picture.

Emilia Estevez was was, I guess, pretty young at the time this was filmed. I don't know exactly how he was in his twenties, I guess.

Yeah, I'm not sure, but he was. Certainly he was chugging right along. I mean, he'd been in the Breakfast Club, the Young Guns, films, Repoman, a true cult classic, the Mighty Ducks that came later, I guess, and then of course he was in Maximum Overdrive, So you know, he's been I think this was a movie that came out at a time when he was very much the sort of name you would put ahead of Mick Jagger on a film.

That's pretty weird. So, of course, the thing that mainly drew me into this when I picked it up at the used bookstore was that it stars Mick Jagger, and I had no idea Mick Jagger had ever been in a movie at this time. Of course, Mick Jagger the lead singer of the Rolling Stones. I was so my mind was so rendered by the idea of him being

Like, you were afraid that his performance would just be so good that it would change you on a fundamental level.

Yeah, how can you really make informed decisions about transformative change?

Yeah, it's so. Yeah, Mick Jagger's presence in this film is interesting. Mick Jagger is I think you would call him an intermittent actor at best. You look him up on IMDb and most of his film credits are himself in concert footage. But when he does act, when he has acted, it's been all over the place. So his first screen role was the lead in nineteen seventies Ned Kelly, which I haven't seen it, but it does seem very much like, Hey, we got this young fella here. He's

I think I've heard of it, but I've never read it, Okay.

And then in nineteen ninety seven he was in an adaptation of Bent, which based on the play by Martin Sherman. This is about the persecution of homosexuals doing the third Reich, you know, very very serious, very stirring piece of drama. And then he'll still occasionally act in things seemingly when the mood hits him. But I think this is this may be free Jack maybe one of the few, like really like big budget kind of action films that he

This, well, because one was enough, clearly. I mean his role in this film changed him, It changed the world, I would say, probably my Well, I don't know. There are a couple of things I really did love about Free Jack One was just a spectacular scene with Frankie Faison that we'll get to in a minute. But Mick Jagger also, he really rules this movie, especially when he's not talking.

Like he's best when he's not talking.

Yes, just reaction shots where he's wearing a spaceball's helmet or a shot that suddenly cuts to him and we get to see him in a coat with like gigantic shoulder pads and you know, ankle link dragging. It's his costume. Is Mick Jagger's costumes, Mick Jagger's reaction shots and occasionally when Mick Jagger laughs at something that this movie really kicks into high gear.

He has absolutely has a great coat in this His costuming is is phenomenal. But but yeah, I guess it's one of those things you can't help but compare Mick Jagger the actor to David Bowie the actor. And with David Bowie you were able to in I think most, if not all, of his film roles, the mystique of David Bowie the musical performer translated to the film roles

David Bowie's visual presence in a film is the equivalent of the creaky lore theme from the soundtrack to The Lord of the Rings. You know, like it really it conjures up the same kind of fog of the ancients.

Yeah, absolutely so. We'll have more to say about mc jagger's performance in this film as we proceed, but we should. We should also hit on the fact that Renee Russo's in this she plays Julie Redland, the love interest in the past that is also the love interest in the future. And say what you will about this movie or Russo's I think, you know, perfectly fine but probably forgettable for performance.

Anthony Hopkins has an excellent check collecting scene in this film. Yea, Anthony Hopkins is a fabulous actor, but this is I would say you could show this his scene in this movie as like the classroom textbook example of phoning it in if you were trying to explain that concept.

Yeah. I mean he's not asked to do much. No, his character from the get go is dead and is just a like brain waves and a giant jack in the sky. Yeah, but still he's Anthony Hopkins, so he classes up every scene he's in and makes you believe it on a level that just Emilio Estevez is not capable of doing it.

Yeah, it's a little rough. I guarantee you that when Anthony Hopkins delivered his lines in the single takes of the scenes that we saw that made it into the final version of the movie, that was the first time he had read them.

Yeah, I would not doubt it. Now. Another actor that I think everybody will will pretty much recognize now that that is in it is Jonathan Banks, who plays his character Michelette Micholette.

Michelette Michelette. He's like, he's like a creepy he's a business executive, he's a suit Yeah.

So uh yeah. Banks was born in forty seven. He's had a whole career of playing heavies with eyes you can't trust. He's got these Yeah, he's got these these eyes. You just look at him and you're like that, that guy's bad back. He's a lion.

Yeah, he's he was.

Made to play like mercenaries and dirty cops and you know thugs. You know, that's like his whole thing.

He looks like somebody whose hobby is shoplifting golf equipment.

Yeah. Now, everybody now definitely knows him as Mike, first from Breaking Bad and then from the fabulous prequel A Better Call Saul, And he's tremendous on those shows because it gives him a chance to be this cold, heavy but also play this aging, emotional human being with you know, with human connections in his life. That was not always the case with the kind of roles that Banks would have because he's he's been in so many things. He often plays again like cops and heavies. He was Deputy

Yeah.

But his first screen role is a nineteen seventy four education short from the Los Angeles Public Library titled Linda's Film on Menstruation. Oh, so it's worth looking up.

You know.

It's just educational short film and it's on YouTube, and you get to see baby Jonathan Banks in there playing like this gruff guy who doesn't understand menstruation.

Oh, he's like a don't do what Donnie don't does.

Yeah, Like he's sitting on the couch and he's like, I don't understand menstruation. So that the woman in the room turns on the TV and there's an animation. There's a cartoon that explains it all.

So oh I see.

Yeah.

So he's he's ready to learn. He's not somebody who's just like just doesn't get it.

Yeah. But his face he has that. One of the great things about Jonathan Banks. He has a great, like smoldering look, like he's great at at just expressing that I don't I don't really care what's going on here with my with my you know, just my eyes and kind of like the melting features of my face. So

God, the cast is huge.

Yeah. For instance, you have this character named Brad who shows up in the past and the future, played by David Johansson, which if you like me and you, I don't know, you grew up watching the right era of MTV or the right reruns of Saturday Night Live, then you probably will recognize him as Buster Poindexter.

Oh no, I know him as New York Dolls and Scrooged.

Oh yeah, yeah. That was one of his big screen roles, is Scrooge. There's another great one, and that's Tales from the Dark Side, the movie in which he plays an assassin in the Cat from Hell segment, which is based on a Stephen King short story.

Oh yeah, I remember that.

I remember the cat like goes down his throat and jumps out his stomach.

Yeah.

Great, yep, yeah.

Oh, but he's great in this.

Yeah. Yeah, he's great. He's like, what is pit boss or something? He's somebody knows in the past, and then in the future he looks him up, and of course now he's in the Hell City of two thousand and nine America. This character, Brad is just a low life who instantly betrays him and gets shot.

Yeah. Amanda Plumbers in this.

Yeah, the daughter of the late great Christopher Plumber, best known for She's probably best known for stuff like pulp fiction and The Fisher King. She often plays characters with a really fantastic frantic energy. She's a wonderful character actor, I would say, a wonderful weird character actor. She's also in an excellent episode of the nineties Outer Limits series that I recently watched, titled A Stitch in Time, where she plays the time traveling doctor Thereesa Givens, who, like Go,

Wow.

In this, she plays a nun with a shotgun.

That's right. I kept calling her sister Shotgun when.

I think that's her name. I can't remember what else it could be. I think she's just none. Actually, I think she's credited as Oh, let's see who else we have. Okay, we have grand l Bush places character Boone, who's sort of a corpo samurai, like right out of the Cyberpunk role playing game and video game franchise.

Yes, he's like a he's like a corporate executive slash bodyguard or like mercenary type guy. Who. So he's he's in the corporate world, but he's skilled. He's got a katana and stuff.

Yeah, he's always carrying around this short samurai sword and he has a gun. He's wearing a big suit. Yeah. So he's yeah, like I say, right out of Cyberpunk.

So I knew this guys from die Hard, in which he's one of the two FBI agents who come in. He's Special Agent Johnson. It's him and Robert dove Who are the two FBI guys?

Oh, okay, yeah those are some some Dovey's definitely heavy. I think I probably knew Bush best from playing ball Rock and Street Fighter too. No street Fighter. It's not street Fighter too. It's just street Fighter, the Jean Claude van Dam version of that. But yeah, he's been in a bunch of so. He was in Exorcist three, he was in License to Kill. I think I remember him from that. Basically, he did a bunch of nineties action. He was in Demolition Man. But make no mistake about

Oh, he was in Hair.

Yeah, he was in Hair. He did a lot of TV work. He did Roots, he was in the color purple. And again, this is one of the weird things about free Jack is that it brings people together because he like so, yeah, he also met his wife, his wife of twenty six years in counting on this picture. What okay? So his wife, she was a journalist for Beet and she was on set to interview him about his role in this film, and magic happened. The magic of Freejack brought them together.

Free Jack, I mean it just gets people in a place where they're ready to commit, you know.

All right. Up next, this is another bit player in it. He just has one maybe two crazy scenes.

I think just one scene, but he's great in it. This is Frankie Faison, yeah, who you might know best from playing Burrell in The Wire, but he's also Barney in the Hannibal Lecture movies. He's a great actor. He's very good at having like a kind of a calming presence,

Yeah. Yeah, and his character is listed as Eagleman. Yeah, that's his.

Whole eagle monologue.

Yeah yeah, it's a yeah, this is the weirdest thing in the whole picture at this scene, Like this is Frankie's keeping it weird for us with this one. But yeah, Yeah, He's been in a ton of things over the years. He was a Landlow in eighty eight Is Coming to America. But then in terms of sort of horror and sci fi stuff, he was in Chud, he was in Cat People, He was in Maximum Overdrive with Emilio.

And several don't we have several Maximum Overdrive people in this movie?

Yeah? I guess we do. Yeah. And then for another Stephen King connection, the Langealiers, he was in that as well, that TV adaptation.

Oh maybe we should talk about that on Weird House if we ever want to watch a four hour movie.

Oh man, I never saw it. I just I read though it's novella it's based on, and loved the novella.

But it is awful. It is, you know, made for TV Stephen King stuff late nineties, early two thousands, whenever it was that came out. It has unbelievably bad CGI monsters and they just run around eating up the screen like the screen itself.

They're supposed to be like the Critters, like they're basically Stephen King wrote The Critters as time munching Kremlin monsters.

Yeah. My memory about it is that it's about a cast of people on an airplane who all have their own demons that get explored in flashbacks. And then also there are monsters that eat time.

Oh yeah, I mainly remember the monsters that eat Time from the again from the novella. Okay, one more bit player just to mention, and that's this guy John Shay who plays his character Morgan. I don't know much about this guy, but his IMDb headshot looks so much like Jeffrey Epstein. I feel like he's destined for some for a biopick there. He also played Lex Luthor on Lewis and Clark you know who Adventure as a Superman.

Yeah.

Music wise, the score didn't really do anything for me, I have to admit, but it's by Trevor Jones, who scored a lot of eighties films that I love, such as The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Time Bandits. In the nineties he did Dark City. So again, nothing in this picture really blew me away, but I think his was, particularly his work in those hints and films was really really good.

Oh I like it. I like his score on The Dark Crystal. Yeah, that really help score that driving pace in the film. In fact, that should come down to someday. I want to, I don't know, have a good argument with somebody about which of the Dark City cuts is better, because did I say Dark Crystal or Dark City earlier?

For you? I think you said Dark Crystal earlier. Then you said Dark City, which got me excited because I had no idea there were different cuts of Dark City of Dark City, Yeah, that's what. So there's one cut that is maybe artistically superior because it cuts out some kind of bad voiceover narration at the beginning and a few other things. But the original cut has such great pacing, like it just drives and drives. H. I don't know, we'll explore it someday. Yeah, yeah, that's that's a fun one.

But one of the things that I thought was funny about the music by Trevor Jones. So when you get to the opening credits of the movie, it is just cgi shards flying around the screen like an after dark screensaver, while you've got saxophone music playing a tune that sounds a little bit like the melody of the reins of casta Mirror. It's like a cross between rains of Castmer

Whoa, it's not not what did I say?

Sorry?

Different?

Better? No, this is Emilio Estevez. You just like see his butt and he's wearing like green underwear, and he's his alarm clock's going off, and he's like you know, and his sheets are tossed all over the place.

Uh.

And I don't know why I didn't know it first, why they made that choice to begin with his butt, but I think it's explained later on once you finally get all the premise wheeled out.

Okay, I don't remember the explanation, but yeah, I'll roll with it. Like the whole opening segment of this section of this movie, I understand most of the choices they made, you know, like they want to establish who he is and what his connections are with people in the past, and we want we want to have a bone jacking scenario that is susceptible to disruption. So it but still you're watching it and you're like, I would just wish they would go ahead and bone jack this guy so

Yeah.

It starts off with Renee Russo and Emilio Estevez just flirting a lot. It's almost overwhelmingly Sacharin. They're just like telling each other how much they love each other, and he's like, I'll win that race, honey, you just watch again. He's a race car driver and they're talking about like what will the other driver's wives be wearing? And so I think they're engaged again. Emilio Estevez playing this guy

Little do they know, though, there is about to be a catastrophic car wreck. And then that's when the bone jacking will actually begin.

Right, the bone jacking will begin.

Oh.

But we also we meet Brad the manager. Remember this is the guy from the New York Dolls. Brad seems to manage Emilio Estevez and some other racers, and he says things like, you do the driving, I'll do the jiving, and so he's going out schmoozing with potential sponsors. I think there's this guy who introduces himself with the name of the company. He says like Champion Spark Plugs, and then Emilio is disrespectful to him and says like, hi,

Yeah. It sets the tone for the rest of the picture, like it instantly dissolves the magic of him just looking just you know, being there, grim faced and all in the cool coat.

Right. So then Emelio's racing, Alex is driving along, and Mick Jagger has a bunch of guys getting ready to do something. They're like guys wearing these reflective foil suits. And then there's a hacker guy who of course is wearing sunglasses inside while he's operating a computer. The hacker guy is named Ripper, and he's got these cool scars on his face, and they're locking onto a CGI version of Alex, and then Alex's car flies off course in the past and it's about to explode in a fireball,

But anyway, well, I will I will come to the picture's defense here and say that this would make sense in the sence you're jacking somebody's bones out of such a delicate moment in time. Okay, the timing could be a little off. And what do you do if they come through and they have like a head wound or or some sort of a laceration, like you didn't get them quite in time. You need to be able to treat them immediately, So that's my excuse.

Okay, I buy it. Yeah, I mean it would be necessary even though it's not ideal. It's just something you gotta do if you're going to be bone jacking people. It's the price of bone jacking, right. And so the doctors do. They're trying to stabilize him. They're pumping in, you know, doing the CPR and stuff. They get his heart beating again, but then they realize, oh, no, Emilio Estevez still has brain function. This is bad because he's

Yeah, it makes no sense at all because he just have something called like a mind wiper, you know, and just use that because once you bring in the idea of lobotomizing, it makes it seem like this brain's not going to be worth putting somebody else's mind. Jan if you're gonna if you're gonna screw with it and lobotomize it. But yeah, it's confusing.

Good point. But just when they're about to jab his brain, the Jagger convoy is attacked to people with guns pop up on rooftops all around. They start blowing stuff up.

Yeah. He tells them, yeah, stunners only don't want him damaged. And I have to say, there are two things in this movie that I think absolutely three things. Eagleman absolutely works, Mick Jagger's coat works, and then the Stunners are pretty great. So these are the rifles, these space age looking rifles that the Bonejacker Squad has that seem to shoot like

They use like ballistic weapons.

Yeah, they don't care about keeping the meat neat right.

But so here we get a big chase scene. He's running all over the place. At one point he gets in a taxi and then gets kicked out of it, and so Alex is running all over the place, like he tries to go to Renee Russo's apartment. He's trying to find people that he used to know because he somehow doesn't realize that he's in the future. I think this is a pretty standard accidental time travel or unwitting time travel trope where the person's like they just won't

And it's like what, yeah, yeah, pretty buy the books. There's a lot of stuff in this film that is just by the books, right, this sort of picture.

But everywhere he goes, people are like, oh my god, he's a free jack. So everybody knows what this is. This is a it must be on the news every night. It's like, you know, today three free jacks were apprehended, and.

Hey, yeah, how often does this happened? It's enough that there is a slang for it. Yeah, and everybody's on the lookout for it. Like I feel like if this is on the bonejackers for just being kind of sloppy.

The bonejackers are really they are screwing up a lot. It sounds like, yeah, and there's this dystopian pa, you know, like the future totalitarian society has pas everywhere that just blair stuff at people. So it's going like everybody off the street, there's a free jacket large anyone on the street will be fired upon. And then of course we see the truest sign of dystopia, which is a giant digital billboard and says welcome to New York Thursday, November

Well, the movie implies, and at times expressly states that that Emilio Westavez, his character, is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, right. I think Anthony Hopkins character refers to him as a dullard at one point. So yes, yeah, he's uh yeah, he needs to check. He has to double check to see what year it actually was earlier today.

So later we meet some corporate creeps. They're like in a giant elevator that's going up millions of floors, in a skyscraper that reaches up to the clouds. There they're in this weird skyscraper that looks like a combination of an office and a church. It's like the Cathedral of Business, you know, the Basilica of Saint Dick Fold. And uh so one of the suits is Jonathan Banks. Again, that's Mike Irman Trout from Breaking Bad, who we were talking

I wonder what if the other free Jack on hold they had Joe Estevez. Yeah, and they're they're like, come on, we got Joe s as ready to go enough. Yeah, Emilio, it has to be Emilio. I don't want Joe, I don't want Charlie. I don't I want Martin. It's got to be Amidia And.

There's actually another reason for that that we'll get to later.

Oh.

But then we get a scene that's a meeting between Mick Jagger again, he's playing this this mercenary named Victor visindek with with Jonathan Banks. They like meet up to scheme together.

Yeah. So two things about this scene. First of all, the office set is incredible in this This is one of several interior sets that are in this movie that are really cool, Like they just like they went crazy with art decorating it and like this one has like this crazy fractured redstone wall behind them, which is really good. I appreciate that. But then the actual scene, the actual energy between Mick Jagger and Jonathan Banks, it's just weird, like and it seems like the casting is so off.

I kind of agree with you there, Yeah, except that would have given us fewer chances to see Mick Jagger wearing the Spaceball's helmet.

True, true, And I don't think it would have saved the picture in any way. But but yeah, this scene is pretty great in a dumb way. You got like basically saying like you were supposed to bone jack that guy, and it's like I tried. Now he's a free jack. You're off the case. No, I'm still going to bone jack that guy. I always bone my jack. Basically.

Yep, that's pretty much it. He tries to fire him, and Mick Jagger's like, no, you can't fire me, you know, yeah, I'll get that meat. A funny thing, Rachel was watching parts of this with me, and she pointed out that Mick Jagger's delivery in these scenes is very late season Sir c lanister.

Oh, what what do you mean?

Just the kind of like vindictive cold frown and a similar delivery. And I don't know. I mean I saw it when she said it.

No, no, no, I could I could get that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but this is gonna be one of the ultimate like weird things about Jagger's performance is that what he gives us here in this scene is not what we get later on. Like his his performance is just all over the place, Like he's a cold professional in one scene and then he'll be something completely different in another.

Yeah, I can't wait to talk about the scene where he's like doing hacker tricks on a car on a wine delivery truck.

Yeah, he becomes the Riddler out of out of the later on.

Yeah. Anyway, Alex ends up taking refuge in a church, sleeps on the floor in front of the altar, is ambushed by Amanda Plumber in the form of Sister Shotgun. She pulls a shotgun on him and and they meet. They talk about things. She is shocked to learn that he's a free jack. They argue about this, like she yeah, she seemed skeptical that he's a free jack, And then he explains things to her and she eventually ends up trying to help him, like she's she explains the whole

Yeah, yeah, his buddy Ripper. And this is another great interior set with like really strange art on the walls and it looks lived in, like it was really well done.

Yeah, there's a red couch backlit white walls with masks all over them, like a strange rectangular clock, a mountain revolver, and cutouts from pin up magazines.

Yeah, yeah, it's strange. I didn't know how to take you. And I also couldn't tell if like Ripper and Jagger's character was supposed to be like, like, are they do they live together here? You know, like I was expecting like some more development there and then we didn't get it. So I guess maybe they don't. They just work together, but because then they just talk about the business of bone jacking.

Right exactly. Ripper is played by Issi Morales Junior, who and he's the hacker who was wearing sunglasses inside earlier. Oh and we find out Mick Jagger has a lie detector computer that he tests out on Ripper. And then I don't recall this ever being used in the film. Again, it's being set up as if it's like Chekhov's lie detector machine. Did you did this ever come up?

Again?

No, I don't think it did. Another case of kind of wasted space.

Totally pointless. Yeah. Yeah, But then the next thing is really while while Emilio Estevez is traveling to meet his old manager, Brad, the New York Dolls guy he won through two thousand and nine New York City, and this is this is trying to give us some of the texture of the future.

Yeah, and it's just your basic eighties Hell City take on New York City with the sex clubs is a weird future car transporting chicken cages across town.

Oh yeah, I like that, But it's also like cheesy medieval movies like you know, Braveheart or something, and that anybody who's not a CEO just has dirt smeared on their face.

Yep, yep. And then of course we get a street gang, like a Warrior's Escape from from New York s Street gang, and it's it's super confusing too, because the gang we see like, there's this this this African American gentleman, and he has a helmet on that has both a Confederate flag and a swastika. They just like threw everything at the helmet and I have no idea what these guys are, what their deal is, except they like to shoot guns in the street.

I don't think it makes any sense. It's sort of an unspoken convention of dystopian hell city sci fi that the people of the future use the political symbols of the past with no particular meaning or coherence, which, in a way I think about it, that's I think the current kind of true. Over time people just use symbols of the past with clearly without understanding what they mean at all.

But ultimately these this is this is just action. He's moving through anyway to get from point A to point B.

Right. So Alex meets up with Brad, and Brad's like, oh, wow, you're a bone jack or I mean, you're a free jacket. So they're hanging out, and I love how they're in Brad's apartment and people. You just hear people constantly getting shot and screaming outside the window. Sounds like the future. The wars out in the streets never stop. Yeah, And Emilio Estevez is like, well, why me, Why why do they need my bones? Why am I the bone jack? Why can't they just take somebody else's body?

And oh yeah, because that's a great point that you don't think about until this point exactly.

And Brad's like, well, the answer is obvious. You're clean. You're from the past, so you haven't been exposed to all of the pollution and drugs that have ruined everybody else's body in the future. Plus everybody who's alive today has been living for years without an ozone layer.

So yeah, the ozone layer is gone. So this makes me wonder is this part of the pre Highlander two chronology? Oh yeah, because it's set in what twenty twenty four, So I think you could line up.

This movie has a lot in common with Highlander two.

Actually, yeah, not as good, not as good as that is.

Good. Well, I would say, actually it's better than Highlander two, but Highlander two is better to watch.

Yeah, well, I don't know. I think I would say it's better than Highlander two.

But you mean you'll say Highlander two is better.

Highland two is a better film, okay, and also a better viewing experience. But then anyway, it's still fun.

It's so.

Yeah, we continue moving through the city here, even more dystopia cyberpunk tropes are rolled out. You know, big business controls everything. Japanese businesses have this superiority, environmental disaster, future drugs, bodies for sale, immortality for the rich. It's just checking off all the boxes.

It's all there. Yeah, And like every other sci fi movie from the late eighties and early nineties, it assumes that Japanese corporations are soon to take over the United States.

Yeah everything.

Yeah, and so the Japanese business panic is which actually was in Diehard too, I seen, oh.

Yeah, was it? Okay.

It's a pervasive assumption of the movies of the time, you.

Know, speaking of cyberpunk, I've been playing the Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven game. Oh really, Yeah, And that's one of the interesting things to engage in with it is to think about, like, this is a very it's a very nineteen eighties vision of the future that really doesn't match up in many ways with sort of modern sensibilities and all. And yeah, you have all that stuff like the like Japanese business panic that are a part of it, and yeah, it's it's it's weird to think about.

Well, that panic plays into the first scene where we meet Renee Russo of two thousand and nine, who I will say looks exactly the same as she did in nineteen ninety one. He literally does not look like she has aged a day, So I guess maybe she has not been exposed to the sky without ozone or something

I don't recall, do we know McCandless is actually dead and that he's the patron looking to get inside his bone Jack body.

So technically no, that is a real spoiler that is revealed at the end of the movie that the person looking for Emilio Estevez's bone Jack body is actually Anthony Hopkins. But you are not supposed to know it at this point. You're supposed to think he's still alive and just communicating with her through video phone calls. But no, it's absolutely obvious. I had never seen the movie before and I was like, Okay, Anthony Hopkins is the person who needs the Stavez body.

Okay. See, I couldn't remember if like the trailer spoiled it for me or marketing material back in the early nineties. But I feel like I always knew, like there was never a twist here for me.

Yeah, it's it's a thousand percent obvious.

So then you're back to Brad and Alex walking around. They're trying to find Renee Russo. Brad's trying to help him find her because it's like, oh, once you know she sees you, she'll she'll help you. And so Brad takes Alex to a diner where for some reason, people start pointing guns at each other. And then you find out it's a double cross because Brad told told Alex that he was gonna help him fire the Renee Russo, but instead he just calls up the police to collect the bounty on his old friend.

Yeah, and again, this is a whole section of the movie that takes way longer than it needs to.

Yes, and this turns into a car chase Emelio Estevez driving a police motorcycle around, driving through restaurant kitchens. I see some familiar Atlanta streets in the scene, and eventually Alex like crashes through a checkpoint and we get to see some of the roads and stuff. But he's going to Renee Russo's apartment.

I have to say, I like they have a mix, an appropriate mix of some old looking conventional cars, but then also some snazzy future cars. Not flying cars, road based cars, but futuristic in appearance.

Most of the cars, or at least the nice looking cars in the future, are covered by some kind of single piece fiberglass carapace.

Yeah, which seems like a good solution. You know, you don't have to completely redesign your space cars from the ground up. Just get some sort of sleek body to put on top of it, and you know, it ends up looking pretty good.

It's just a Honda Civic with a big one piece top on it. Yeah.

Yeah, they're essentially parade floats, right.

Also, the horses and carriages in the future, there's lots of horses and carriages all over the place.

Huh okay, yeah, I forgot about that.

But Alex goes to Julie's apartment, Julia's renee Russo he breaks in. He's like, hey, I'm here. I got bone jacked, you know, but now I'm a free jack. And they argue, let's pick up exactly where we left. Yeah. Yeah, So, I don't know, seventeen years or something have passed for her it's been I haven't done the math, right whatever. Some number of years have passed, and he's just like, hey, you know, how are things and she's she freaks out.

I want to see a remake where the Renee Russo character is totally not into this and she's like talking to her husband or partner and he's like, yeah, God, my ex boyfriend from seventeen years ago turns out he's a free jack. Won't leave me alone. I've told him like that was seventeen years ago. Like, life moves on. I'm sorry you went through this, but I cannot help you.

Right, I've got the end of it. I'm an executive at McCandleis. I don't have time for this.

Yeah like you, Yeah, you were a mistake seventeen years ago, and I really am not about to pick that same mistake up and run through the streets with it.

That would have been an amazing direction, but no. Instead, she's just like single and at first she's skeptical, but you know what's gonna happen. Come on, Yeah, and then this turns into a car chase. Mick Jagger like finds Emelia Estevez at her apartment and then he starts chasing him down in this red land boat that is just hilarious. But Alex hijacks a truck full I think it's like a wine bottle delivery truck. It's full of these neon

Say, real quick though, I have to say about that wine vehicle. Yeah, I'm watching it this time. I instantly thought of Amy Sedaris's regional wine lady Ronnie Vino from her television series At Home with Amy Siderius. And I don't know what she drives. She's this hilarious character that goes door to door selling wines. But like, this has to be Ronnie Vino's vehicle. It is stolen here.

Well I have to check that out. But anyway, I thought the scene was funny for multiple reasons. Number one is that, yeah, I understand Alex. Forlong our protagonist is supposed to be a race car driver, so it makes sense that he would have some skills at evading these mercenaries no matter what he was driving, But still it

Yeah.

Oh, and it's got a laptop inside the cab where he's driving that Mick Jagger keeps coming on, like popping up on the screen on the laptop and harassing him while he's driving and saying like, you can't get rid of me that easily, And he'll try to close the laptop and then it'll just open up automatically and Mick Jaggery jaggers and laughing at him.

Yeah again he suddenly his character is suddenly the Riddler or something. You know, it's like a complete shift from what it was earlier.

And the mercenaries who worked for Mick Jagger, they're all dressed like spaceballs once again. Eventually, Furlong escapes this scene by jumping off of a bridge into water from a height that would absolutely have killed him. He drifts down the river, I guess, and he ends up. He ends up washing up on a dock somewhere and he meets Frankie Faison, who we mentioned earlier, who's just hanging out at a dock next to all this toxic water and

Well, and it works too, because the kind of monologue you'd expect to get from like a crazy person, you know, that lives under a bridge in the in a dystopian future, Like it shouldn't make sense. It should it should have this sort of raw energy to it that's kind of muddled by strange thinking, and it totally shines through. It's it is the best scene in the whole picture.

It's like simultaneously incoherent and wise.

Yes, yeah, And in that very sagely you're like, I don't know what he just said, but I think it was really important, and I will I will buy him. It's the same trick that shaman throughout history have used, and Eagle Guy has no exception.

Yeah, but anyway, so we come back to Renee Russo and her colleague Boone, who again this is Grandel Bush. They go looking for Alex and the slums and they sort of make up, right Rene, So it's like if I'd known it was really you, and so they're happy now again together. She believes it's really him and she's going to help him free Jack. She's going to help him escape somehow, and her plan is, oh, and they see a digital billboard that's like, oh, the bounty on

Yeah, it's actually pretty great, you know, because they just went ahead and had the Furlong character just get totally wasted, like he's a kind of a dumb dumb and this expresses it, you know. He just he drinks too much of this bar. He's out of it, and he's just starts gabbing to the journalists here and she's like, roll it, We're gonna get the ratings tonight. So I actually kind of like this scene.

Weird connection is that. So she was I think married to Mick Jagger, at the time, but Jerry Hall is now married to Rupert Murdoch. Yes, that Murdock.

Wasn't she also in Batman? Wasn't she the model character that Jack Nicholson's Joker scars with acid? I think she?

Oh, I don't remember that.

Yeah, yeah, I think she popped up in a number of films during that period. All right, So from here we go to Morgan's apartment and once again, once again some great interior decorating.

Yes, giant foot art. He just has these like twenty foot tall feet sculptures in his house.

Yeah, very cool. Yeah, and I really think we should credit where credits due. First of all, for mc jagger's coat. Lisa Jensen was costume designer on this film, and then art direction for the film was James A. Taylor, Set direction by Bruce A. Gibson. So really, without this bunch, I'm not sure what we would be looking at in these scenes.

I agree. So I think they're just negotiating like that they're going to get him out of there, like Morgan's gonna arrange for him to escape somewhere. And then and then there's a love scene of course, Emilio Estevez and Rene Russo they they're you know, they slip into something more comfortable and there's some saxophone playing in the background and you get all that.

Yeah, but again, more just wasted space in this film, like this previous scene wasted space. Then there's this, and yeah, I.

Could really trim this down. Yeah, there is something that's utterly inconsequential to the rest of the film, but a good B plot scene where Amanda Plumber just kicks Jonathan Banks in the testes. Yeah, and they really milk it, like he does the classic sinking to the floor, moaning with his eyes rolling back kind of thing.

Yeah. It accomplishes nothing though for the plot or for these characters, Like I don't really know why we bothered with this.

So Emilio Estevez is getting ready to escape. He's going to a boat and he's going with Boone I remember Grandel Marsha And they're walking together and Boone is explaining that he has become a people to the city, like he inspires everyone because he has a free jack and the people are like, wow, I guess if he could be free, I could be free too or something.

Yeah. It's a little flimsy, but clearly they had to establish why Boone would help him. Yeah, if there's ten million, and I think it's supposedly more. At this point, it keeps going up, like there's a tremendous amount of money on the table for the guy. Why are you helping him? And he says, well, you inspire my grandma.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, And I'm like, okay, I'll buy it. I'm not happy if.

By my grandma loves you.

Yeah.

So they're supposed to go get on a boat, but then bam, boat explodes. It's a Jagger ambush, and then it's a double double cross because Jagger is trying to capture Furlong alive. But then these other dudes show up and start shooting at Mick Jagger and shooting at Emilio Estevez, and I think Boone is like, those aren't bone jackers. There's someone else in the area, and so they're all they're all running around. You find out Boone has a katana and he's like a total badass and he fights people.

Yeah. I mean basically, you have Jagger's bunch wants to finish the bone jacking contract, and then Jonathan Banks's bunch they don't want the bone jacking to take place because they don't want Anthony Hopkins to get his new body because then he's still in charge of the company if that happens. Yeah, we don't really learn that till later, but that's why we're building up too.

That's right. We find that out from Jonathan Banks and a big another exposition dumb scene. But everybody's running around chasing, shooting at each other. There's a big fight scene between Emilio Estevez and a large, strong bone jacker who gets electrocuted. During this whole sequence, Mick Jagger is creeping around in a hilarious helmet. But then there's a scene where Furlong has a chance to kill Mick Jagger, but he doesn't.

I mean this ridiculous. Yeah, that's just ridiculous. It's way too much of a lead too, Like why you just spend like they established it's gonna take costs like millions and millions of dollars to catch this guy again. You've got him, but you're like, no, I'm a man of my honor. I'm gonna let you get away again.

Right, So they eventually they go back to mccandles's headquarters. He meets back up with Renever, so they go to McCandless headquarters to meet with Jonathan Banks and have Jonathan Banks explain the whole plot. Yep, and Renee Russo and Emilio Estevez end up end up going up to the Spiritual Switchboard to find you know, there's a number of double crosses yet again, and people trying to kill each other.

Yeah, it's you know, clearly whatever is happening here, it can only take place at the top of a high rise in Manhattan aka Atlanta, And yeah, it raises a lot of questions, like, I guess the big one is what if we are actually dealing with spirit Like what if this film is presenting a future in which which there is a spiritual reality to the individual, and that's why you have some sort of crazy contraption, because there's like an actual ghost soul, you know, like there's an

Yeah, it really does explore some Cartesian territory.

I think.

I think you can give its it's philosophical credit, especially because so they go up to the Spiritual Switchboard and they meet McCandleis that's Anthony Hopkins, and he's full on lawnmower Man beyond cyberspace. He's just hanging out in digital worlds with digital diamonds. Our heroes are transported to a giant VR castle inside what looks like a Utah desert, and Anthony Hopkins says, welcome to my mind. And Anthony Hopkins has been faking being alive through video simulation the

Now the film does get very briefly and just into the philosophy or another. The philosophy really, I guess you would say the ethics of bone jacking, which is kind of interesting because you know, he's like they bring up the point which I mostly agree with here, like he was gonna Emlio wes Vez's character was going to die. That was going to happen, and they can't really interfere with that, like that would be that would really mess up,

Oh you think so, huh, you're a pro bone jacking, are you?

Well, I'm I'm I'm not in I guess I'm not entirely pro bone jacking. I mean it does symbolize, you know, the a great deal of unbalanced privilege in the future for the few individuals who can afford immortality, which you know, we still see plenty of science fiction that deals with that, because that's ultimately a that's a reality we're potentially facing. You know, these longevity science improves, you know, who's going to be able to afford it? Who gets to have

Yeah, as sort of they kind of half address it. There is a line where Amelio Estevez says to Anthony Hopkins, you don't need a new body, you need a new soul.

Yeah, and he's like, yeah, whatever, meat, Ye prepare.

To have me in your meat. And then there's a psychedelic mind transfer scene, but it doesn't complete because Jonathan Banks shows up to kill everybody. I guess because oh, because he just wants Anthony Hopkins to die so that he can take over the business.

Right. He needs this to fail, and he's been trying to make it fail the whole and then the last thing he's going to try is just shooting the crystal, which he does, but then he shot himself.

No.

I think Renee Russo she shoots.

Why does she have a gun?

She gets a gun something, she shoots the crystal stops the transfer, and then there's a question. So Emilio Estevez is there and it's like, uh, is Anthony Hopkins mind in him or is it still his mind? And there's a standoff with Mick Jagger and Jonathan Banks with their all point and guns at each other and they're all trying to figure out is that really Anthony Hopkins or not? And they're going to kill him if it's if it's still Amelio Estevez, but Jagger's gonna let him live if

Yeah, it's I mean, it's not a bad ending. I like the whole mystery of it, like did it work? Did it not work? And it's like a kind of a fun double cross ultimately a face turn for Mick Jagger's character. But it does take a long time to get to this point in the picture.

It does, and it strikes me as like that would be a cool thing in the future, if there's some kind of like a prestige attached to the idea of being original meat. You say like, no, no, no, my mind is still in the meat that it was originally and this is not new meat.

Well, you know, I mentioned the nineties Outer Limit series earlier. This whole film would have made a really solid forty five minute nineties Outer Limit episode. Yes, Instead, it's like twice that length, and I think that's the one of the problems here.

There is a really funny rock song that plays over the end credits. I had to look this up. It's by The Scorpions and it's called Solid. It's called hit between the eyes, and the lyrics include lines like late at night, when you're all alone, take a ride to the danger zone.

Yeah, but that's it.

As we've been saying, I think this movie's pretty awful. It has some real pleasures in terms of ridiculous dialog and shots of Mick Jagger looking really funny in certain costumes. I think it would be better if it was like thirty to forty minutes Shorter leaned harder into the absurdity. It could sort of veer into camp classic if it were like that. As it is, it's kind of an uncut gem.

It would have been nate if the first time Emilio's character jumps off the bridge and you say, oh, that would have killed the normal person. What if he does die and he's immediately bonejacked again?

Bone jack to a second future. This time it's twenty twenty. Things are even worse.

Yeah, yeah, with all your points there, Oh, here's my casting workaround. Okay, that could have improved things. Okay. Grand Al Bush plays our hero Alex Furlong, Okay, yeah. Amanda Plumber plays Julie Redland, the love interest.

Okay, nice, Yeah, she's a exec at McCandless.

Yeah, Yeah, Jonathan Banks and Mick Jagger switch role, so Banks as Vicendek and Jagger as Michellette.

The corporate guy with Faberge eggs.

Yeah, Frankie still plays the Eagle guy, but in a far expanded role. I don't know how they just get more screen time for that.

Care he should become like the full on Obi wan Kenobi of the movie. He's just like throughout the whole thing is like this sort of the guy to character.

Yeah, Anthony Hopkins remains mccandle's because he's fine in that, and then the rest just fill in as needed. I don't know. Emilio can play somebody. Yeah, Buster pointe exer can do whatever. But I feel like, get the weirder actors, the more interesting actors up towards the top, That's what I want, and Smick Jagger more appropriately get the meat. All right, Well, if you want to get the meat. Lucky for you, again, this was a thirty million dollar picture,

I wonder if the Blu Ray has the same menus. My god, Blu Ray made in like twenty fourteen or something still has the page just for the url of Morgan Creek.

I bet it has like just a loveless, like film studio template. Like whatever everything else had that came out that wasn't didn't have like a cult following or you know, wasn't a huge hit. It just gets the same treatment as everything else.

Hey, everybody right in about your favorite DVD menus. What's the worst DVD menu you've ever found that? What's the most absurd dedication of an entire menu option you've ever found?

Yeah, the most over ambitious animation from swishing from one page to the next. Yeah, I'd love to hear about it. Or oh god, some of these, especially some of the kids DVDs from back in the day, they would have games like really, oh god, like really rough attempts to have some sort of a click based game on the DVD. It was rough.

Sometimes they got Easter eggs, you remember those, where like you'd move the cursor around to a thing that you didn't realize you could move it to and then it would play a hidden scene or something.

Yeah. Oh man, I hope there's still I do love hidden tracks and Easter eggs and stuff, and I hope some of that's still going on. All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and close it out here. But yeah, this was free Jack. We hope you enjoyed it. Again.

Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello. You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

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