Stargate

[00:00:01] Blank Check with Griffin and David, what's a say or two expert? All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check I'm on Planet X looking for a dweeb who wears green fatigues. He wears glasses. He has long hair. And he... shoot!

[00:00:35] Chicken! Yes! Yes, chicken podcast! Perfectly executed. Is that Kurt Russell's longest stretch of dialogue in the entire movie? I think so. Anyway... oh sorry. No I was just gonna say it is bizarre how long he goes essentially being a featured extra for swaths of this movie. Yeah.

[00:01:05] And then a point so like no no no he's actually no he's one of the stars. He's one of the stars. Sorry we forgot about that. He is still one of the stars. But I gotta say this is pretty star great. Oh, I see what you did there.

[00:01:18] Wow, he was trying to get that in there. Hello and welcome to Blank Check with Griffin and David. I am Ben Hosley because on today's episode we have a Ben's choice. What? I haven't heard that name in years.

[00:01:39] It's been a while. It's been since our classic... it's been our classic episode on Assassin's Creed. Yeah, okay right. Right, that was the last one. Iconic. Iconic, fully iconic. Love that movie. I think I'm gonna buy the game, the pirate one.

[00:01:59] You bought a switch and you've been using your switch to try to quit smoking. Yeah, that was the idea and now it's just become another habit. Sure. No but that's the goal is just eventually it becomes the all-consuming habit.

[00:02:13] Right, I sort of like... I move that into place right instead of like smoking. But right now they're both in place. Sure, sure. Now is Zelda the only game you have right now? Well I got the Mortal Kombat 11. You have the Mortal Kombat 11 which you are in. Yeah.

[00:02:31] You're not a playable character yet. It's so great. Yes, right. I mean who knows maybe with like an expansion pack. They're adding deals all the time. But you are... Your entire list of nicknames is in fact in the game Mortal Kombat 11 for those who don't know.

[00:02:47] Yeah, and you have to unlock Arnold which I don't know how to do. Interesting. Arnold or whatever, Terminator. Yeah. Because it's the Terminator... He just plays like a governor of California. But when you go to like his point of view screen... After he kills someone, after a fatality.

[00:03:09] Right. Oh and his like his heads up display. Yes. Yeah. Then it says like subfolder Ben Hosley and then the folder opens up and every nickname is listed including many series nicknames. But like in the initials of it, it's so great. Right.

[00:03:27] Who is... we should shout out who is that person? I forget their handle on Twitter. I don't know if I should say their name. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I forgot. But let's just say that it does exist there in the game. Yeah.

[00:03:41] And that perhaps whoever did it snuck it in. Yes. Which is even better because that totally fits my vibe. Yes. Bad boy activity. Breaking the rules. A blankie who is an SB, a classic sneaky boy snuck that Easter egg into the game and

[00:03:57] it maybe got a little more attention than it should have and I regret bringing it up on this episode now but let's keep it in and let's double it. All right. And we just heard it twice. We heard it twice.

[00:04:06] Ben, do you like Stargates because they break the rules of travel by creating Einstein, Rosen bridges across galaxies? It's also like wet tech but it's ancient. It's got all the things man. It is, I will say, you know how people say like Jaws 50% of the success is

[00:04:26] because of the score, right? Like that was like a Spielberg quote where he's like, that's like 50% of the movie. Whoever decided to make the Stargate look like water, that was 50% of Stargates entire success, TV shows, everything. 100%.

[00:04:42] This is a perfect episode to drop at this time because you're going through a bit of a brand transition. You've been really into wet stuff, slick flicks for a long time but it's almost like you've crossed through that threshold. I know.

[00:04:58] You feel like you've gotten all that you could get out of that and you've been rebranding as a dry guy. It's really into dry dusty stuff and this might take place in a God dang desert. I know. Once they cross through the water. Yeah.

[00:05:14] Very ironic that the water, the Watergate. Watergate. Let's call it what it is. It's a Watergate. It is a Watergate. Yes. Does, and Nixon's inside of it. You hear him. Yeah. He's like, I love this film. But yeah, it does take you to the. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Right.

[00:05:35] Right to the driest place on not earth. Not actually earth guys. Well, okay. I should introduce of course that was David Sims. You just heard. Hey, we also have Griffin Newman. Hey, and then and Faraguda. What's that? All right.

[00:05:54] We're in the house baby and we are going to discuss 1994's Stargate. A Roland Emmerich film. Wait, there's more setup that Griffin says for the intro of blank check. I'm trying to think of it. What is this podcast about Ben? Oh, it's about filmographies.

[00:06:15] Directors who have massive success and are here and are issued a series of blank checks to do whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce and maybe Ben when does when do those early successes tend to happen? I fucked it up.

[00:06:38] I said the thing you said you were trying to it's fine. It's all good. What happened early early early right? Yeah. Um, this is experience massive success earlier on the career which I just want to point out because this is his American breakthrough.

[00:06:53] This is the guarantor that gives him a independence day. I mean it's yes. So universal soldier. Yeah. Universal soldier gets him this he sort of climbs like by about like 30 million bucks at a time right? Like universal soldier that costs like 25 million.

[00:07:10] This costs like what like 55 million something like that. Yeah. Right. And it makes like 180 worldwide. Right. And this is so silly and everyone's like, ah, come on man like a gate to the through the stars is ludicrous but audiences are like we love it.

[00:07:26] I've heard a map to the stars but a gate through the stars. Right. And then so then he gets independence day. I guess that's his biggest but independence day was cheap. 75 million dollar budget. Well, well, well, it's pretty impressive.

[00:07:41] Well, well, I got things to say and let's let's state here very often Ben when we give you the checkbook when we let you pick the movie with a Ben's Choice episode. Yes. They tend to be very often films that are more driven.

[00:07:56] What you've really attached to is the movie star at the center of the film. You're Chevy Chase. Right. I think like literal stars in this guy. Well, that too. That's true. I mean we've gone from stars to a stargate but Chevy

[00:08:08] Chase and Bill Murray and Martin Short and people who were big to you. Yeah. You know influential to you. Assassins. Well, I was going to say. And then of course assassins. Right. Absolutely. The sort of league of assassins in general. Right.

[00:08:23] This is more of a director driven film which we have usually tried to scare you off from doing because we don't want to tip toe into territory that might be covered by a mini series someday. But we are and never doing Roland Emmerich.

[00:08:35] And this isn't that bit where I say we're never doing Roland Emmerich. We're not going to do. He is literally on the blank check black list of mini series. Yeah. Have fun Googling Roland Emmerich Brian Singer. This is our Roland Emmerich episode. Move it along.

[00:08:50] This is our Roland Emmerich episode is my point. Yeah. Okay. Sure. I can't imagine. I mean, I guess we could do. I'm starting to see if there's like a franchise. He's sort of in the Godzilla universe a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:04] I feel like if there was a fourth, a third American Godzilla, we could do that as like look at all the different American Godzillas. But I mean, that's about it. Two independent stays. I think this is the only time we're ever going to cover him on the show.

[00:09:16] Yeah. I mean the independent state franchise is not really compelling. No. No. But this is a big thing about Roland Emmerich to your point that like independence day is cheaper than you think it would have been, although that was a hefty budget for 1996.

[00:09:31] His big selling point to the studios at the time when he started making these films, when he made the jump from universal soldier to Stargate and then from Stargate to Independence Day is I know how to make these movies cheaper than anyone else because I

[00:09:46] have a lot of dialogue scenes that can take place in the same locations over and over and over again. I know how to structure these films on a script level so the big moments happen and you get your money shots for the trailer and

[00:09:58] they're doled out across the film but there's a lot of stuff in the middle in between that is deceptively inexpensive. And this definitely falls into that. This is the first time he's testing that model where you're just like there's a

[00:10:12] lot of the movie where they're just in a hut and then it's bookended by some exciting shit happening or a monster or fight scenes. Well, also, right. As you say, that very 90s thing of every big special effects shot feels like a big deal. Right. You know.

[00:10:28] He was one of these guys where it was like I'm gonna make your money count. I'm gonna give you the big money stuff but I'm gonna understand how to stretch that dollar in between the money shots and his other thing was I'm not gonna

[00:10:39] try to make these movies with Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson or Sylvester Stallone. Your guys were going to demand $20 million. I'm gonna pick people who are either A, a little bit like on the wane or B, haven't done a movie like this before and want the paycheck.

[00:10:56] Or C are just like, I don't know that seems like fun but they're like proven leads who aren't necessarily box office big budget movie stars. Well, he likes like also just the classic action guy nerd combo. Right. Totally. That was my first thought watching this.

[00:11:16] Russell and Spader and then independent state he's got Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum and then in Godzilla he's got Jean Reno and Matthew Broderick. Right. Like he keeps doing that until it doesn't work for him anymore. Yeah, no totally. And then that also becomes like a model

[00:11:33] that others follow. I think a problem is as we get to the end of the 90s and into the 2000s people stop having the conviction to hire an actor who is convincingly the brain guy and they start wanting an action star to also play that part.

[00:11:50] They just slap some glasses on someone. They're like your glasses in this one. Can I can I make my argument for the one that breaks it? Because the ideal of this model is obviously Goldblum in Jurassic Park and in Independence Day. Right. Yeah.

[00:12:09] Like he's the best version of that where it's like oh this guy is genuine movie star energy but he's not a conventional leading man. He's very tries. But you believe him as the brainy guy totally. And then the peak of it for my money

[00:12:23] is Nick Cage, not the peak I'm sorry the one that breaks it is Nick Cage in The Rock because at that time it's seen as a similar thing to Broderick or Spader where it's like Nick Cage in an action movie why would he do this?

[00:12:36] He's playing a nerd. He's playing a doctor. And he's so good in it and it totally plays off of the fact that he doesn't belong in a movie like that. Perfect film. Perfect movie. Perfect movie. Perfect film. Perfect film. And unlike Roland Emmerich we have

[00:12:49] no clear reason to avoid doing a Michael Bay miniseries for the time being. Sure. Yeah, no. There was no paper trail despite him being an unpleasant person. Well Roland Emmerich has given interviews. It's not even a thing where it's a secret. He has like done interviews where he's

[00:13:05] like I love throwing those parties. It's great. I'm not speaking out of turn. I'm saying Google. I should make a movie about slavery. He loves it. He loves having sex parties with Kevin Spacey and Brian Singer. The wildest thing about him is like yeah, let's get off that.

[00:13:18] But like Godzilla he's like Godzilla doesn't really work right kind of a bomb. Okay, alright he's like I'm definitely qualified to make a revolutionary war movie. Insane. Insane. That's the lateral move here. Wait there are two things I want to say here.

[00:13:34] The cage move that breaks it is after the rock works so well, cage is like okay I want to keep being in action movies but I no longer want to be the nerdy guy who shouldn't be in the action movie. Right, in Conn Arie.

[00:13:45] I want to be the cool guy. Yeah he's the cool guy. Right, so then it becomes if you cast a character-actory guy to be in an action movie he's like I got to get jacked? I got to be conventionally handsome. I don't want to be the low

[00:13:58] status guy anymore. The other thing is I think there was a secret sauce to Roland Emmerich which is that Dean Devlin was his nerdy guy and he was the jock. He was the more conventional movie star. Like Roland Emmerich in the creative team was the muscular like I'm

[00:14:14] going to do the effects and make ship blow up and Dean Devlin was like the nerdy guy who cared about the world building and sort of did the bare minimum what's the emotional backstory of these characters kind of stuff. And the patriot is the one where

[00:14:28] Dean Devlin stops working with him. Right, it's after that. No, he always produced with him. He stops writing. But that's a big shift. It is a big shift. I mean I'm sure I'm sure you had no interest in writing the Patriot. That's a Randall Wallace.

[00:14:41] No, it's Robert Roda. Take it back. I enjoy Day After Tomorrow a lot but Day After Tomorrow definitely feels like a movie that is lacking Dean Devlin. Day After Tomorrow is Puget Trash and I will never understand that movie's like cult. I love it.

[00:14:55] And you're not the only one. Yeah. Jake Jilly Hell's Hot. That's all you need to know. That's high bro trash. I'm fully aware that he's hot. There's no although he's so hot why is it fricking snowing in that movie? Well, that's how he survives.

[00:15:09] Like all of the heat is just centralized with Jake Jilly and all and everything else is cold. So if you stay with him you survive. David I want to say actually thank you for enlightening me. I now realize that climate change is a hoax because that's true.

[00:15:25] If we were really experiencing a nuclear winter in the fictional world of that movie then why is he so hot? It doesn't make sense. I mean Day After Tomorrow another Roland Emmerich movie is a good example of how things change

[00:15:36] where I guess the nerd in that is Dennis Quaid like they start giving up on that. It's like his friend in the movie. We should point out as a podcast. Quaid does have a podcast name. Quaid's got a podcast. It's the Quaidison. He has acclaimed it.

[00:15:53] He has proclaimed a Quaidison. I don't know if there's like a consensus on that. If there's anything I know about Dennis Quaid is that it's a good idea to have that guy behind a microphone as much as possible. We just want to get as many of his thoughts

[00:16:08] on the record because the more he shares the happier we're going to be. I have to read his Twitter bio because it's so good. Where is it? I see it's on the internet. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure. Okay. Where is it?

[00:16:22] I sent it to you, right Ben? Is he the one that just married a 26-year-old? Yep. Okay. He has a 39 year gap with his fiance. Which is a hefty gap. I mean, you know. She's 26 years old. The plot of the parent trap is they're like

[00:16:37] are dads dating a 26-year-old and that movie came out like 15 years ago. 20, a full 20. A gentleman's 20. I did forget that. Here's his bio. an actor, musician, songwriter, writer. He separates out songwriter and writer, by the

[00:16:52] way, and podcast pioneer, Semi-Colon. He is also a jet pilot, amateur astronomer, fly fisherman, philosopher, low handicap golfer, medical safety advocate, and armchair historian. Wow. Rich people are annoying. Yeah. I do think that's an even though I'm defending there for tomorrow, which I love

[00:17:15] in spite of it being abject trash. It's so bad. Oh no, it's Denisans. We're messing this up. No, we blew it. Oh no. He's at my door right now with a flattering ram. The intruder himself.

[00:17:29] He's trying to intrude. He's intruding in your home. No, I was going to say, I think day for tomorrow the problem is that the roles are not defined because Dennis Quaid is kind of the old timer hero character we're talking about, the more conventional action hero. And then

[00:17:42] Jake Jilin Hall is not the nerd and they're not together. They're father and son, right? So there's like a family thing, right? Right. And then from there on out, like 2012, I also love as trash. It's objectively... 2012 is better trash. I mean, Roland Emmerich's thing is that he takes

[00:17:57] absolute junk conspiracy shit, which I'm sure Ben is about to talk about, and just turns it into something that's just very entertaining. Like, he's also silliness. He's also, he's Spielberg from morons. Right. Like everything is like the worst sort of like lounge act impression

[00:18:13] of Spielberg. But guess what? I love Steven Spielberg. I would watch a bad impression of Steven Spielberg because it still ends up being more artful than a lot of other blockbusters because he's ripping off the right guy. And like in terms of just like his half-baked characterization,

[00:18:29] but the striking at trying to have the profound emotional arcs that Spielberg would have, you know, like every character in a Roland Emmerich movie has a bad version of Elliott's arc and ET. But he definitely, he's lost it. I mean, you would write he's completely lost it.

[00:18:45] His movies are pretty boring now or they're just... Well, I mean, White House Down was not bad. White House Down is great. I forgot about that one. That one's good. He has the right stars

[00:18:54] there. Right. I haven't seen the last three. Well, you haven't seen Independence Day resurgence? I did not. I did not rise up and see the resurgence. Well, I will say there's a scene in that where

[00:19:06] the alien ship, which is like the size of a continent now picks up Europe and like drops it on America or something like that. Like it picks up one continent and drops it on another continent.

[00:19:16] Like a puzzle piece? And Jeff Goldblum says, yeah, a big puzzle piece. And Jeff Goldblum says, what goes up must come down. That's what he says to that. Does he say that dramatically right before Europe drops to America? He says it like kind of jokingly. And I'm like,

[00:19:29] isn't that like a couple billion people just getting dropped? Wait, where are they when this is happening? I don't know. There's somewhere else. There's a whole thing with oceans too. For that one, he didn't even try. He just was like, get me three hotties. Like he just,

[00:19:46] he got Liam Hemsworth, Mike Amanro and Jesse Usher. It was just like, I don't know. Find me three attractive people. Do you know why I didn't see Independence Day resurgence? I don't know. You had better things to do. No, not a joke. There was one mistake they made,

[00:20:03] which is that Will Smith isn't in it. That was an issue. Who gives a fucking shit? They were trying to make it for so long and then he finally got fed up of waiting for Will Smith to have

[00:20:14] an opening in his schedule because Will Smith wouldn't commit. And he was like, you know what, I think we can do it without him, which is one of the dumbest decisions of all time.

[00:20:22] There is no reason to make that movie without Will Smith back. They wrote the script with Will Smith in it. He was the president of the United States and at the end of the movie,

[00:20:29] he was going to get inside the fucking jet like Bill Pullman does at the end of Independence Day and everyone would have cheered and it would have won the Nobel Prize prize. It would have been

[00:20:37] terrible and we all would have loved it. Will Smith did a great job not being in that movie because that movie stinks to hi-hat. But don't you think it would have been better if he

[00:20:45] was in it? And do you know what movie he chose to do over resurgence? I don't know. What would he do? After me. Okay. Well, I mean, I'm sure there's a version of that of resurgence that's

[00:20:58] okay. But the script they filmed is not fantastic, I would say. Maybe need a little more honing from the five-credited screen right now. Just half of Europe on America, not all of Europe.

[00:21:11] What goes up? It seems like a bit much. But you go like post resurgence then it's a stone wall. Which is, no, that's a pre-resurgence. Oh, okay. That movie is hauntingly bad. I mean,

[00:21:24] that movie like... Well, that was like a shit show from the trailer. It's a shit show. They're like, who threw the first brick? This white guy. Yeah, right. I mean, politically, that movie's a shit show. It's also just unwatchable. Like it's not good anyway.

[00:21:38] Right. But the people who sparked the Stonewall rebellion were trans POC, and Roland Emmerich himself is an openly gay man, is one of the most successful openly gay men in Hollywood, and just openly recast all of those characters with handsome young white pretty boys.

[00:22:03] War Horse Boy is in there. It's War Horse Boy. But people asked him about that in interviews, and he just went like, well, you know, you have to sell a movie. You can't put a person like that

[00:22:11] at the front of the film. Jesus. And then he made Midway, which I did not see. Did not see. I also have a soft spot for his Shakespeare movie. I never saw the Shakespeare movie. Look, I mean, he's my flavor of trash. I'm not

[00:22:27] proud of it, but it almost always goes down easy. And part of it is that even in something like 2012 or a day after tomorrow, I think he knows how to execute these set pieces better than anyone else. If you're doing disaster porn, his looks better than everyone else's.

[00:22:44] At least for a while. Yeah, I guess no one's really taken the crown from him, right? No. And like here's what you compare it to. You go like, well, what about like something like War of the Worlds? The Rise of Skywalker?

[00:22:55] Well, that's a different type of disaster porn, Angela. But something like War of the Worlds, you're like, oh, this is like a great evocation of a disaster happening of like a horrific like apocalyptic event. Roland and Mark doesn't do that. He's like, how cool can I

[00:23:09] make the world ending look? Like I don't want us to be haunting at all. It'll be great. It'll be sure spectacle. And I think he does that incredibly morbid vaguely fucked up thing better than anyone else. Now, Ben Hosley, I want to throw this back to you.

[00:23:22] We should we should loop back around to the Stargate episode and we're not hosting. Why did you pick the Stargate? When did you enter the Stargate? These are all great questions. And since we are connoisseurs of context,

[00:23:36] for any listener who, you know, has not heard of Ben's choice before, here's the deal. A lot of these movies I watched on a porch. When I was a kid, I had multiple friends who porches I would hang out on and watch movies.

[00:23:58] They were cold sometimes, but we still watch movies usually watched inside the home. Not not in this situation in like suburban America. Often there's a people have a den right? Like that's a room in the house. You got a TV in there, maybe a couch or two.

[00:24:16] That's not that wasn't your vibe. Nope. And so these movies when like, again, when I have the option to pick, I like have always just wanted to pick the movies that I had on VHS or I would watch all the time that have just this like porch vibe.

[00:24:35] Here's a question I've never thought to ask. I don't think were you running like an extension cable through the window indoors out to the porch? Or maybe there's an outside outlet. That's what I want to know. That's what I want to know. Okay, okay.

[00:24:51] No, just either way. The lighting and the audio situation strike me as, you know, like, you know, maybe maybe you get some sunlight on that, that cathode TV, you're not going to see the screen too well. I mean, it was more that we didn't have any

[00:25:09] anywhere else we could watch the movie. Sure. It was really it, you know, the parents would be in the room and we would like have nowhere else to go. I mean, you weren't going to watch Stargate

[00:25:21] with a couple cops looking over your shoulder. Yeah, definitely not. Parents are the ultimate narks. They wouldn't take our candy. No way, man. Yeah. So as you as Griffin was sort of saying, like a lot of the things you've chosen have been comedies, you know, obviously endlessly

[00:25:37] rewatchable. We love a comedy. Yeah. And King Ralph has sort of been promised for a long time. That's always been the hopper as a future Ben's choice. It's our waiting for good though years

[00:25:47] for sure. Waiting for the question we were looking at the slot and we went is it finally time for King Ralph and then you throughout Stargate. And we sort of stroked our chins and went,

[00:25:57] that's kind of an interesting new angle. Like that's that's sort of a new expansion because at the time Assassin's Creed felt like a complete left field oddball pick, especially because it's a

[00:26:09] modern one because it's an HBO go at night while your girlfriend sleeps movie rather than a Ben porch classic. Yeah. And I kind of jump around. I mean, I get to curate how I want, but I

[00:26:20] feel like we're taking it in this direction. That's going to be a little bit more like TNT in the middle of the day, you know, you're on summer break kind of movie. We've covered a lot

[00:26:30] of TBS films and now we need to like build a wing onto the Ben's Choice Museum that is the TNT films. Yes. Assassin's Creed another universe would have been a 90s TNT staple.

[00:26:42] 100%. And it has the same vibe as Stargate in that it like it has a hint of conspiratorial nonsense. I was going to say, I was going to say this, you know, that this has the ancient aliens that

[00:26:56] has the sort of like Knights Templar kind of thing, but it's the same thing where it's kind of like something that a Wikipedia article could like plant a seed for you to then like think like well the thing is society is actually, you know, run by aliens.

[00:27:11] Because you often mock us for liking sci-fi when this podcast started and it was about Star Wars, you were like I don't get it. I don't understand why these nerds like this thing so much. So I was somewhat surprised hearing that you loved both Assassin's Creed and Stargate

[00:27:25] so much. I had not seen either movie until forced to watch them for your episodes. And in both cases like two minutes in, I was like, oh, I get this because this is like the kind of sci-fi

[00:27:35] Ben would have read in a zine. Like this is that kind of... Okay, yeah. There's no machine guns in Star Wars. Right. And I think the other aspect of it is, David, as you pointed out Stargate has

[00:27:46] the ancient aliens thing going on, but it really has the action Bronson watches ancient aliens on Visceland vibes. That's the real, that's the added element it needs to push it over the edge to being a Ben's choice.

[00:27:59] You know what I mean? It feels like a conversation starter for Ben as a teenager, right? You watch Stargate, you come out of that being like, I never thought about those dang pyramids. Like what's going on with them? It's Anarchist cookbook sci-fi.

[00:28:12] Oh man. I was so into ancient Egypt and tombs. What a surprise. Like mummies. It was definitely peak getting into that stuff. And because also it was into aliens too. And like, I've said on this podcast, I want to be abducted right now.

[00:28:34] I've always wanted to be abducted. Like if right now the roof you're under just ripped off and like a tractor beam grabbed you. I really love it. Ben would be like the kid in the movie just like use my body for thousands of years. Run right for it.

[00:28:48] I gotta say though, Ben, this is actually pretty much an ideal time to get abducted by aliens. I mean, we're talking mid-April 2020. I would love to be pulled off of this planet. Man, imagine leaving my house. That's exciting.

[00:29:03] Yeah. Yeah. And just like, I don't think the virus has spread to spaceships, right? Well, we don't know though. Well, no, but come on. Instead of your apartment, you're on an alien spaceship. Cool. I would not resist at all. All right. You've got ancient Egypt, right? Mummies.

[00:29:21] You got aliens. So this movie is bridging those two things and it has a stargate in it. Yeah, it's bridging them with a wormhole. Well, no. Stargate should be in more movies. Well, yeah. This is crazy.

[00:29:33] I think this is an interesting point you're making, Ben, because there are many movies with aliens. There are many movies that cover ancient Egypt and some capacity. There are a smaller section of movies that overlap the two,

[00:29:46] but there is literally no movie other than Stargate that covers all three circles in the Venn diagram. That is ancient Egypt, aliens and a stargate. You are correct that this is a cinematic dead end in that way.

[00:30:01] There should... I want there to be like portals as a genre. Like a Netflix portal movies. Ben, can I ask? Were you someone who was already into the idea of like how did the pyramids get here,

[00:30:19] ancient age aliens before this movie? Or was this movie kind of an activation point into that sort of level of theorization? Activation. Yeah, because I mean you were pretty young. Did you see this in theaters? No, I saw this on a porch. This was STP for you.

[00:30:34] This was the premiere for you. It was a straight to porch. I definitely saw this in theaters. Really? I was eight years old. I was definitely... I was old enough to now have an interest in moderate action. That's crazy. You know what I mean? Nothing too intense.

[00:30:54] So you and your family walked out of your Upper West Side apartment and walked to what, the Lowe's 84th Street? I mean Lincoln Square 68. You nailed it. It was 1994 my friend. Okay, cool. Well, we're on the same page. Of course, you grew up in New York City

[00:31:09] and you saw the movie in New York City and that's all I was trying to say. Because I think Star Trek Generations is also 94, right? Or is that 95 maybe? No, that's 94 as well. Those are like the early this Star Trek Generations,

[00:31:22] the early blockbusters I can remember, like action movies that I can remember seeing in theaters and as a kid being kind of like, this is a lot. Like there's guns, there's explosion. Like it was sort of the next step up from your Disney career.

[00:31:38] Do you guys notice the reload, the cocking sound effects in this movie? Are amazing. They're so present and loud. They're mixed so loud it's perfect. And they sound so fake. It's like out of a video game.

[00:31:54] I mean when you're a kid and you're like pretending to have a gun, that is a clot, right? You really sell the cocking of a gun. Can we say that this movie has a very strange relationship to guns? Oh, sure.

[00:32:07] This is when Roland Amarick hasn't quite figured out how to do the like melodramatic human emotional storyline. You don't think it's close to the Iron Giant at all? I just think I love that they... He makes the barest effort and then you sort of forgot about it.

[00:32:24] At the beginning. Right, because like in the beginning he nails it. Can I say that's like my favorite part of the whole movie? They're like that guy's little nuts. What's up with him? Kid shot himself. Oh, weird.

[00:32:35] I was gonna say that's where I go into like this is a bad impression of Spielberg stuff. Because you have like this moment, the sequence that's entirely visual, where it's like wife looking out the window. Smoking a cigarette like at the kitchen counter.

[00:32:49] Military men come in, can we talk to him? You can try. Okay, good. That's actually good. We're telling us a lot in one line of dialogue. This guy is long hair. Right, then we cut there long hair. He's staring off looks despondent photo of the sun.

[00:33:04] He's holding the gun. Right, you're like okay I'm getting a vibe of what's going on here. There's some pieces to be filled in, but I at least have a sense of who this character is and it's mostly being conveyed visually and through energy.

[00:33:15] And then the two military guys go to the car and they're like what happened to that guy? And they're like you didn't hear? Sun shot himself in the head with a gun. Now he's broken too bad probably no coming back.

[00:33:27] Like they have the one scene where they're trying to like explain it subtly. And then the following scene they just walk out. Just say it out loud. Fully list his character biography as if it's on the back of a trading card.

[00:33:38] Good thing we're sending him on a mission where he might blow something up and not care about his wife because what's there to live for anymore anyway right? Not to spoil the movie, but after that it's not spoken of again until basically right at

[00:33:52] the end James Spader is like are you good? And he's like yeah I am good. It's like that you're like this is it. All he needed was a little Stargate trip to clear his head out. Well he needed to hand a machine gun to a child.

[00:34:05] I know, I know he's all worked out. I know he finds a new son or you know at the other end of the galaxy. Knowing that this movie deals with like alternate dimensions and all this sort of

[00:34:17] shit when it goes from here shaggy haired Kurt Russell despondent with the gun looking like he's on the verge of committing suicide himself to then two scenes later he shows up worlds crispest haircut like completely together man on a mission all business.

[00:34:36] I was like is this an alternate reality version? Does Kurt Russell play two different characters in this movie? And he just seems super high functioning if a little bit impersonal for the rest of the movie.

[00:34:50] Yeah and then there's like the one scene where he over reacts to the boy taking the gun. Yeah he does give a kid a cigarette. Gives a kid a cigarette doesn't want the kid to have a gun. That's good. That's good lessons.

[00:35:03] And then there's the moment when they sneak into the temple and he just goes like fucking full ramble with like the gun hidden under. Yeah take us through the plot of Stargate. Man are we all hyped or what? This movie man.

[00:35:16] Very exciting movie lot of fresh and provocative ideas. Okay. Like Stargates for example. Such as Stargates. Such as the Stargate. So we're Einstein Rosenbridges. What's that? It's forming an Einstein Rosenbridge which is basically what we would think of as a wormhole.

[00:35:33] That's not canon David okay call us Stargate please call by its proper name. David I do want to ask because I feel like maybe you want to get into like the writing or pre-production of it or should we just get into the plot.

[00:35:45] I'll just sort of throw out that when I was 10 I was thinking about it right because that's how about how old I would have been in 94. Sure. I was definitely into stealing basketball cards. Sure sure okay okay I knew you were gonna say that it was so obvious.

[00:36:04] Yeah and I was like the kind of kid that had pegs on my BMX and I would like you know ride around on that and cause damage. Yeah you're the kind of kid I was scared of yes I understand. Yeah. Yeah as a kid.

[00:36:16] Um yeah it was just a good time. Like I look back on all this finally hanging out in the woods getting up to no good. Oh you know uh this is what I want to talk about. You guys ever ring the doorbell and run away? No not really.

[00:36:31] You never ding dong did ditched? No. It always seemed like a very low reward situation. No it is always so good. Anyway that was the kind of stuff I was up to when I was 10.

[00:36:45] Um Ben I will say the the origin of this movie if that's what you're asking for in terms of context seems to be that Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich really wanted to make a franchise. They had proven themselves with Universal Soldier that Roland Emmerich had made a bunch

[00:37:00] of German films before that that Dean Devlin was the key to him getting it to the American studio system and that he was sort of the nerdy sci-fi guy. They designed this to be a trilogy that was always their intention. Right.

[00:37:12] They wanted this to be their Star Wars. They thought this was going to be like the table setting for their money franchise. Anytime there's a successful movie and especially when a movie spawns a whole media franchise like Stargate has with multiple TV shows there is almost always

[00:37:28] someone who comes out of the woodwork and says uh I wrote this movie 15 years before they made the movie. Like you know Finding Emo becomes the highest grossing animated film of all time. Someone goes I sent a spec script to Disney in 1984 that had a fish in it.

[00:37:44] Clearly I wrote this movie and then the case is thrown out. There is a guy who showed up sometime in the late 90s with evidence that he had directly shown a script to Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich called Egypt's Scape who was himself

[00:38:02] a very big sort of conspiracy theory, I think scientist nerd. Sure. And I believe the case was settled out of court. It seems that perhaps. Yes his name was Omar Judy it was settled so we don't know exactly what the terms were.

[00:38:18] But very often especially with big studios behind it these cases will get dismissed and the fact that there was a settlement points towards the fact that maybe some guy showed them a concept that did not work as a script that was maybe a little too

[00:38:32] heady that they ran with and turned into Stargate. He sued them for 140 million and it was settled out of court for 50 grand. Okay all right so they didn't give him much. They didn't give him much. He didn't even get a Stargate out of it. He didn't.

[00:38:47] He should have. Because I can only imagine how much money Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin have made off of this script considering all the TV spin-offs and all that. I was doing that math as well there are a few cases in which I think someone because

[00:39:01] of the nature of how this movie was made because of the fact that no one thought that it was going to spawn a franchise like this. It was a French co-production they sold distribution to American studios later.

[00:39:11] I have to imagine they have such a good piece of Stargate as a property and then you go like 10 years of the first show like five years of Atlantis, a season or two of universe and then an animated one plus like all the merchandise and whatever.

[00:39:28] If they had never done anything again for the rest of their careers they would be living insanely well off of just Stargate. You started to tell us David about what the shows were like. Oh sure. Yeah we can delve into that.

[00:39:43] Well I mean this movie comes out in 94 and Stargate SG-1 debuts in 97. Obviously Kurt Russell was replaced with MacGyver, Richard Dean Anderson. This became Richard Dean Anderson's post MacGyver cash cow right? Mm-hmm. Everyone else was replaced mostly by guys you've never you know like sort of Randos right?

[00:40:05] It was a Canadian one of those shows that had a lot of Canadian stuff going on. I guess French stayed on. Wait who stayed on what? French Stewart. French Stewart did not stay on no his character is replaced and renamed everyone. Everyone is replaced.

[00:40:22] Oh he's in Stargate universe I'm sorry. He played Dr. Andrew Covel in Stargate universe. Is that a different character? It must be because yeah came around. Because yeah his character is a recurring or a regular character on SG-1 I guess the original Stargate TV show.

[00:40:43] Right the guy he is is a yeah a recurring character. And it's just basically their military has this gate and they keep going to the same like. The gate's still there? Yeah. And it's connected to a network of gates now.

[00:40:59] There's many other Stargates the whole Milky Way is littered with them. And so they can go all over the place fighting. That's smart. Egypt aliens there's various gods. Four gates. Yeah but like there's all kinds of gods like you know who are other Egyptian gods right?

[00:41:15] And it's like there's a whole expansive universe of you know infighting within the alien races and all that there's other aliens that eventually show up. I mean it ran for 10 seasons 214 episodes it mostly it began on showtime and used to be kind of like

[00:41:34] hyper violent not hyper but it was more like R rated. And then it moves to the sci-fi channel and becomes a little more anodyne. But then there's Atlantis. Then there's Atlantis five seasons.

[00:41:46] Insane seems to be doing what Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin had always planned to do with the sequels. What they said was they want to make a trilogy where each one would be discovering a new Stargate.

[00:41:58] A new kind of mythology right tied to a different culture a different sort of myth. This is like Atlantis is like what's another thing. But how what happened all of that stuff their big goal was we want to make a trilogy of films

[00:42:14] that will ultimately connect it all mythologies to say that they all were the byproduct of aliens coming here early on in human civilization. And then so yeah so Stargate Atlantis they find like an Atlantis Stargate and it goes to

[00:42:27] Atlantis and Jason Momoa plays in Atlantean and there's all kinds of other fun stuff. It was like that and Baywatch Hawaii were the two things that made him he was for so long like a kind of like king of syndication actor. Yeah.

[00:42:41] So do we have this movie to thank for Aquaman basically? Kind of. Kind of. And then you have Stargate universe in which they're on a spaceship that's lost in an unknown era of the universe and I guess it must have a Stargate too. I don't know.

[00:42:58] And that had Robert Carlisle and Ming Na. Stargate universe was the other two shows had ended and they were like okay now we're going to make a big budget one like this franchise is clearly proven itself. Can we make the breakthrough show that becomes like a mainstream success

[00:43:13] and let's get really big name actors in all the parts and it got canceled after one season because it was too expensive. Two seasons. Two seasons. It did too. Sorry. But yes I mean right if you're working in a higher budget you're gonna be you gotta

[00:43:24] you know you can't just skirt by. But there is also an animated series that is out of canon. Yeah. Yeah. It's called Stargate Infinity or something like that. It's an idea that has legs and the reason is because anything can be beyond those Stargates.

[00:43:40] It's so good and now I want to throw this out as just a thought experiment. Okay. Sure. Okay. Like did they work from just writing like Stargate on a board? Like do you know what I'm saying? Probably. That's where the writing process started.

[00:43:55] I think it looked like James Spader's chalkboard at the beginning of this movie. I think it started with a board where they were just writing all these ancient Egyptian symbols. I mean let me take it. Here's my idea. Well here's my idea. Go ahead man. Star blank. Mm.

[00:44:09] If you just start there I swear to God like we could you could like make 20 movie ideas out of just that process do you know what I mean? Star jail. Boom. You've got a like a space prison break movie. You know what I'm saying?

[00:44:25] Ben, Ben you should watch. Yeah you would love lockout. Ben you would love lockout. Lockout is unfortunately called lockout but it should be called space jail. Like that's about someone who's escaping from space jail. But Ben I'm doing you a mitzvah right now.

[00:44:42] Lockout is Guy Pierce playing Snake Plisken. It's 100% stolen beat for beat that character and it's rather than having to get the president out of New York he has to get the president's daughter out of a space jail. Yeah she's in a space jail.

[00:45:00] As you're saying Ben like imagine it's 1990 I don't know three right? Like during your movie multiplex you see a poster. Okay the poster is The Great Pyramid of Giza. Fine cool with a portal hovering above it that's like beaming alien energy at it okay.

[00:45:24] So the build stars are Kurt Russell and James Spader which is no actor faces on no faces. No it's just portal pyramid like those are your two things we're working with.

[00:45:36] Because you see Spader first build and you go is this an erotic drama and then you see Kurt Russell and you go is this like a stripped down action film? Right I guess it's Kurt first build. But it's first build.

[00:45:50] You're not looking at the actors you're like Stargate. But if you cast your eyes to the top of the poster though you would be like James Spader like I mean what was James Spader's biggest movie before this?

[00:46:03] He was not a box office guy I mean he was an esoteric. Actor he always knew to resist being pigeonholed as a conventional leading man. He played creeps and weirdos anyway and then and then tagline pretty good it will take you

[00:46:17] a million light years from home but will it bring you back? It's a big question I mean yeah pretty great. But it's just confusing considering that you're seeing a pyramid where you're like well that's on earth.

[00:46:30] It's just a lot of questions I just think it's an eye catching image right? Yeah. Can I just say quickly before we get back onto the plot of the movie? Because I was trying to make sense of the extended Stargate universe.

[00:46:46] Carries over the characters right Spader and French Stewart and Kurt Russell's characters into the original TV show but all of their names are changed. And some of them it's like oh O'Neill is spelled with two L's instead of one L.

[00:47:01] Or some of them are like we changed his name from Dave to Jack. Well I think it was also because they didn't want to step on Emreck and Devlin's toes. MGM wanted to milk this property and the two of them had gone on to Independence Day in Godzilla

[00:47:15] and it seemed like they weren't going to make a Stargate 2 anytime soon. But they also didn't want to negate anything that those guys might do in Stargate 2. So there's this weird degree of plausible deniability of like well maybe this is a different character.

[00:47:28] He's almost exactly the same except his name is spelled with one different letter. And then in like 2008 Emreck and Devlin were like I think we're finally ready to make Stargate 2. And it's going to take place in a way that it doesn't negate the TV series.

[00:47:45] It will fit in between Stargate and the TV series. Then it never came about and then like another seven or eight years later or 10 years later like 2018 they announced full reboot. Emreck's gonna direct it. It's planning to be a trilogy and then also never happened.

[00:48:01] But in both in the first case Russell and Spader were on board. I mean sure why not? Can I read you guys the quote from James Spader about why he chose to do this film?

[00:48:14] Says he admitted he did the film for money and he found the script to be awful. He said acting for me is a passion but it's also a job and I've always approached it as such. I have a certain manual laborer's view of acting.

[00:48:26] There's no shame in taking a film because you need some fucking money. Wait so I can't quite tell if you're saying that this was a page off very subtle. Well you know the other incredible paycheck story about this movie right?

[00:48:44] Jay Davidson, Unknown Model is spotted at a party cast in the crying game right? A role that necessitates a completely unknown actor because the twist is predicated on you not knowing the gender of the actor.

[00:48:57] So a crying game comes out becomes a sensation. Jay Davidson gets nominated for best supporting actor. Through the process of making one movie and the ensuing sort of media like excitement and an Oscar campaign and all of that, Jay Davidson is like I don't like movies.

[00:49:15] I don't like fame. I'm out of this. I'm back to being a model. I have no interest in the film industry. No interest in being an actor anymore. After having one of the most celebrated debut performances in decades. He's so good in both this and the crying game.

[00:49:32] So doesn't make another movie and then Roland Emmerich reaches out and is like you have to play Rob. This is like you have the otherworldly sort of presence that I need for this character

[00:49:44] coming in in the last 30 minutes. You need to make, I need someone like you to make that much of an impact with the limited screen time. And Jay Davidson doesn't want to do the film so

[00:49:54] badly that he just goes I'll ask for a million dollars and then they won't give it to me and then I'll be able to say well I would have done it so that you know people don't get mad at

[00:50:05] me and Roland Emmerich calls his bluff and Jay Davidson gets paid one million dollars for Stargate and then never appears in a movie ever again. Two feature films. One of them gets him an Oscar nomination. The second one he gets a million dollars for probably 12 minutes of

[00:50:21] screen time. Well yeah, that's when you hang it up once you're in Stargate. You're done. You're done. You're done. Perfect career two for two. Yeah. I would also like to point out the whole trivia

[00:50:32] page is just Jay Davidson fucking hates this. He also hated his costume so much that at the final cut of his final scene that he had to shoot he fully stripped naked on set like didn't go to

[00:50:44] his trailer and then he retired right after this movie so his retirement literally just fully nude. Yeah, he's one of those people who is like I just don't I don't like this. I don't like any of this.

[00:50:56] Nothing horrible happened to me. There's no tragic backstory. I just this sucks. Making movies sucks being in this industry sucks. I got my million dollars smell you later fuckheads. The other wild thing is do you know who Emmerich's like backup choice was? Who?

[00:51:14] John Gilgit. Oh my god. So he was like if Jay won't do it I'm zagging. I'm getting an old guy. I'm going old. But it's also just like was was Jay Davidson's voice dubbed over or just

[00:51:27] heavily modulated? Oh, I think completely dubbed right. I mean either way you can't hear like whatever it's because it's modulated so crazy. You're talking a million dollars for probably 12 minutes of screen time with dub dialogue. Refuse to wear the big mask thing because it was too heavy.

[00:51:46] So basically is just like you know mostly not wearing clothes mostly just on one set saying lines that will be redubbed or whatever cool million great and yet I think it's an

[00:51:58] excellent performance and I think makes the movie. I agree. I think the movie doesn't work without it. I think you can fucking throw Kurt Russell and James Bader in the garbage and replace them with

[00:52:09] MacGyver and the muscles guy they got for the TV show the movie would still basically function would not function without Jay Davidson. It is the best shot in the movie is the reveal

[00:52:19] of Jay Davidson is the CGI like Morph. Agreed and it's also one of these weird things. It's almost like the Tommy Lee Jones effect where like if Tommy Lee Jones hates being in your movie, it only makes your performance better. Like for what this movie needs from raw,

[00:52:34] it helps that Jay Davidson just has such disdain like general all encompassing disdain every moment he's on screen. Total fuck you presents at all times. What is the stupid fucking movie I'm in even talking to humans just completely grosses me

[00:52:51] out. All I want to do is be in my pyramid spaceship and be tended to by my army of Unix and otherwise leave me alone. It by complete accident ends up lending the movie an incredible air of legitimacy makes the movie feel substantive is that Jay Davidson

[00:53:12] hates being in this movie. Yeah, like in the TV show, I believe the alien villains are played by people who like monologue and they have big personalities and all like they don't do this again.

[00:53:24] No, they're played by people who want to be acting on Stargate the TV show. All right. Well, we're close to an hour into the episode. So let's get into the plot. You said that you were a connoisseur of context. You want some context?

[00:53:39] No, I thought it was great. We covered so much territory. Dingdong and ditching. I mean, all kinds of stuff. Yeah. We already sort of talked about the beginning of the movie, which starts off strong. We learn a little bit about her Russell's character in which his son

[00:53:56] was I want to say I watched the director's cut on my my Blu-ray. I was trying to find it. Yeah, which has the first scene of raw being abducted. Oh, the director restructures it. Yeah, it's not. It doesn't really change anything. And I don't think it's really necessary.

[00:54:15] No, this did Egypt first. Just the little white girl discovering and stealing a necklace. Right. But yes, instead, Ben, we see the discovery of a Stargate. Someone digs one up or digs a real Indiana Jones opening. Yes. There it's dusty. They found this circular thing,

[00:54:35] right? And they're picking it up. It's our Stargate. Okay. Fuddy duddy archaeologists. And there's a little girl, okay, and she's got to lock it. Okay. Boom. Fast forward. She's old now. You're not wrong. And she's going to see Spader just

[00:54:54] bomb hard. Okay. Has any movie centered around an old lady holding onto a necklace for decades? I don't know. Not fucking been a homerun. Every movie should open or end with the reveal of someone holding onto a necklace forever. So everyone walks out because

[00:55:18] they don't believe in the truth, which is that aliens built the pyramids. Sure. They're all right. There's also so many movies that have that in the early where it's like a scientist is like, but my papers and everyone's like, no, no, no,

[00:55:34] you're you're a crackpot. Like we'll never listen to you. This is a time where if you were into conspiracy stuff, like obviously the internet was like, I think kind of around. But it's like

[00:55:46] you really had to hunt for all that trashy kind of stuff. You know what I mean? Well, no, this was right when Al Gore invented the Stargate website. So the internet was really just forming at the time of this release. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Anyway,

[00:56:01] the old woman talks to him and you know, like in this really fun, great setup where it's like raining hard, you know, and he's all like got his papers and stuff. That's fun. You know, it is a storytelling trope I love, which is very, very passionate, intellectual,

[00:56:24] is constantly laughed at and dismissed by everybody. And then there's just some quiet benefactor standing in the back, not showing any support of their theories, but then inviting them into their expensive car once they're leaving the building. Yeah, because there's

[00:56:41] actually yeah, there's some there's some shit going on like this. Yeah. He's not some people know he's not such a crackpot. Right. But she's not she doesn't want anyone else to notice that she knows that he's not a crackpot. She's trying to keep a lid on.

[00:56:55] So she just quietly stands in the back and then when everyone else is gone, she waits patiently in the car to invite him in and go like you're fucking on the right track.

[00:57:05] And also your life's a fucking mess and you have no other choice but to do this project for me and also hold my necklace. Does she give him her necklace? Yeah. Yes. He's about to go through the game. Okay. But okay, boom. Now we're in a military base.

[00:57:24] All right. And they meet Richard kind in the gang. Richard kind not enough of him. He's so good. Okay. Very spelt a spelt. Yeah. Definitely. And this is a movie that really proves it's cruel to be kind because he is so dismissive of James Spader without reason

[00:57:46] because James Spader fucking takes him to school. He corrects his entire translation on his first crack. Right, which I love when a character comes in and people have been working for years and he just

[00:57:57] nails it right away. Yeah. That rules because you're like, oh man, well of course this guy's the best. Right. That's just good storytelling. And kind has that energy of like, good luck son. I work through every possible angle of this thing. There's nothing you can do.

[00:58:14] And then James Spader is like, let me just see Stargate in my farts. And I think the best symbol to use would be the one that looks like a pyramid. Is there one that's maybe pyramid-y?

[00:58:27] We've never thought of that. They had Egyptologists right who worked on the movie to make sure that all the like the higher glyphics and the language are relatively accurate. Well, this movie is hard sci-fi. Yeah. Okay. And so then you also though you have Kurt

[00:58:43] Russell coming in, taking over. Right? You know, he's got a new haircut. His life's totally together now. Now he's all together. He's in military mode. Cut his hair. Doesn't look like such a damn hippie anymore. No. And he's not sad. He's just like extremely stoic. Very focused.

[00:59:03] And I mean, you know, there's just going to be some back and forth between him and the old lady. I don't even remember what they really talk about. But I mean, all this setup, I will say

[00:59:15] to the movie's credit, they zip through. Yeah. It's pretty quick to let's turn the Stargate on and then let's go through the Stargate. Right. If you're like me and you have ADD, you're like, hell yeah, let's just keep on rolling. Right. Right. Right. All right. So I feel

[00:59:33] like the one thing I want to mention with sort of the vibe of the military in being involved in this project, you know, because like Area 51 as we all know is a place where aliens are being stored

[00:59:45] currently. Right. Currently. They're on ice. Or do you think they're like walking around? I think they like are wearing lab coats and working at computers. Yeah. The only person on ice is Austin Powers. So Ben, do you remember when there was that was it last year?

[00:59:59] It feels so long ago when all the teens were going to Naruto run at Area 51. I wanted to go where it was like, we know it's near here. Let's all meet at this point on the map

[01:00:10] and then we'll just Naruto one run. And the military had to be like, please don't do that. We're going to be obligated to shoot you. Like the military had to be like, we all appreciate

[01:00:23] a good joke. David 2019 was also like our world is so insane right now. 2019 was a year in which the New York Times and like three or four separate articles have confirmed that there have been alien

[01:00:37] spacecrafts on the planet. And like it's just getting buried under like like whatever Trump just said, like I know it was. Right. Trump would be like, right. Kofi V and everyone would be like,

[01:00:49] what does it mean? And then the Navy would be like, here's some videos of spaceships probably. I don't know you check them out. Yeah. Can I say I have a friend who was friends. I have a friend

[01:01:00] who was jealous. I have a friend who had told me, hey, I just got like the biggest tip of my life. New York Times is going to break a story next week that will actually change the world.

[01:01:17] And I was like, oh, is there some crazy like movie news coming out? Is someone about to be like canceled? Is there some scandal? And he was like, no, you cannot even comprehend. I cannot tell you

[01:01:29] anymore. But I just have a friend who's working on the story and it's going to drop this week and it will actually change the world. And he sent me the link when the first government acknowledges an unexplainable UFO phenomenon. Here's the record of all these times that like

[01:01:45] fighter pilots have seen spaceships and shit. And he was like, boom. And then I just saw the world not really react to it. And then for six months after that, like every couple of weeks they would

[01:01:59] drop another little story. And it would just be like, oh yeah, no, okay. Yeah, I guess it was because the New York Times wrote about it in that way where it was like video comma,

[01:02:10] purports to show, you know, like, and everyone was like, what is this about like taxes or something not interested? Like they took it too seriously. You had senators being accused of being sleepy and low energy all the time. So that had to

[01:02:24] make the front page. That's true. That's true. Marco Rubio did sit in a big boy chair and he is a little baby boy and we needed to talk about that a lot. Top story. Yeah. So all right,

[01:02:36] all of this to say that the military always looks at like the presence of aliens as a threat. Okay. Yeah. Which is like this trope that I feel like, like why is the military always trying to

[01:02:50] like make a situation bad? Do you know? Wait, what do you mean? Like, do you mean they find a stargate and they don't like it? They're always like, sorry, how can we be bad? You know what

[01:03:00] I mean? Like it's like alien technology. How can we be bad? Like, I think it provides good dramatic conflict within a movie. Interesting. An sci-fi movie that you always need to have a believer and a skeptic. Yeah. And in movies, the skeptic tends to be someone who wants

[01:03:14] to bomb them to death. God. To address your question seriously, like, and I think this is very easily talking like post Vietnam for a good 20 years, the military is is a totally suspicious entity

[01:03:28] in movies. Like, and the rock is sort of at the peak of that where the rock is basically about the military being like, we never got over Vietnam. So we will occupy the rock. Right. There's just such massive distrust at anything the military says is necessary.

[01:03:43] Right. And they're shitty at their jobs. And like you say, they're always like, and also maybe what if we like snuck a nuke through the stargate? I don't know. Maybe that's a

[01:03:51] fun idea. Like, you know, like, like in Armageddon, I mean, there's a nuke on the space shuttle and everyone's well actually no, they're going to blow up. All right. I take that back. Take

[01:04:00] that back. Oh, no, it's right. The line in Armageddon that I love is when William Fickner has the gun and will Patton says, what are you doing with a gun in space? It's a great line.

[01:04:10] But Stargate also it's just like they don't lay out the track. They just sort of go like, here's a bunch of military dudes acting really sketchy. They're really cold to James Fader. There's clearly something that they're doing that's fucked up. And they like,

[01:04:23] they only know how to blow things up. It's same with Independence Day where they're like, let's nuke the aliens. Well, nuke them that'll do it. It's both not really a plot twist and also not really established. It's just kind of like,

[01:04:38] you have to know that their motivations are bad and you hope that Corrossell will see the light by the end of the movie because you want to be rooting for that guy. But you're right. It's barely a fight. They're just kind of like barely.

[01:04:50] But they I mean, they are like hoping that Spader is going to be the guy who helps them get through the Stargate. They don't want him to go with them.

[01:04:58] But Spader kind of makes his case for I'm probably the only guy who could help you get back out. Yeah, but he's a bit of a sneaky boy about it. Let's be really is he sneaking into the

[01:05:07] fucking box at the Barclay Center. So all right, let's just go over some of the stuff leading up to them going in the Stargate. We'll get it over really quick. Great tech. Like great screens. Great. Like even the master sort of like movie

[01:05:22] moving thing looks great and like really is effective. I wanted to talk about he gets the locket right before he goes in, which is an important thing for later when they get through the Stargate. Well, there's nothing else that's really very

[01:05:42] crucial, right? He just finds what the seventh symbol is and that unlock turns it on. Do you like that everything is like vibrating and like they're like, we've only gotten to six like as it steps up. I remember. As they like poke a button.

[01:05:55] So I think it's cool how he's all he's into all these like dead languages and stuff. That's something that I've always felt like would be cool to know or study, but then it's like study. I'm not going to do that. So I just wanted to mention I think

[01:06:08] that's cool. Oh, sure. Right. You should learn Aramaic then. I don't know, man. I mean you got time. I do have time that's true. I could get Rosetta Stone for that. You're going to need the real Rosetta Stone.

[01:06:26] Can we talk about the moment when I saw it? I imagined must have instantly transformed this movie from a one-time porch watch to a Ben Hosley porch classic. I would say I want to say forky also while we were watching this was like,

[01:06:43] man, this is a real Ben joint. Like it was very obvious. Go ahead Griffin. And then said trash. Of course. The moment where I went this, I understand its gold label status in the porch classics collection is the visualization of traveling through this

[01:07:02] stargate. Yeah. Like science center, planetarium opening. Yeah. This is some real like in card. Exactly. Yes. It's a CD-ROM version of the final flight sequence from 2001, a space Odyssey. It's like you could say it's like, I don't know,

[01:07:27] vaporwave or something? Maybe a tad. Yeah, right. I didn't think about this as like the fountain of vaporwave. Yeah, exactly. Even just like the poster aesthetically feels like that. Yeah. I mean the stargate itself looks like a vapor wave.

[01:07:44] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which also that the graphics on that too is so of its time, right? Like, all right. So let's just get into it. They're going through. They've got some little

[01:07:56] droid boy going ahead and then they're, I mean, which is it feels kind of crazy how little setup they have other than him just being like, well, I'm a Seeky boy and I have to go. And they're

[01:08:08] like, all right, and now we're going in. They let him enter the stargate like 30 minutes after meeting him and bringing him to see the stargate. Yeah. If that he's like, I don't know, you're

[01:08:19] going to need some kind of symbol. They're like, he nailed it. Let's take him to the stargate right now. Right. They're like this military like troop, they have their bags packed, they show up every morning at 8am ready to walk through the stargate and they're like,

[01:08:32] just let me know if you figure out that code. James Spader shows up, he cracks it and they're like, we're good to go. Do you want to come with us? And he calls you up to make get him

[01:08:41] done in five minutes. I'll get you a lawn chair. Yeah. Right. All right. So we get to see them unlock like the coolest thing ever, which is a stargate. They unlock the gate. They unlock the gate. That's true. The stargate. Yeah. They override

[01:09:00] Mark Maron's wishes and he hates this film. He finds it offensive. And they get out on the other side and sort of like a very much a representation of my current sort of journey. Now they're in

[01:09:12] this arid desert alien land. They move through the wet into the dry. Into the dry. It's so striking. It's like it really the light of it just brings this whole new energy. Okay. And now you're like, cool. They're on a new friggin planet that has oxygen.

[01:09:31] Like what's going on here? Right. They go from thinking, oh, this is just a weird alien planet to then recognizing, oh my God, these are what they think the ruins of a long gone civilization. Yeah. They think they're entering into ruins. But an actuality

[01:09:52] it's like a whole new planet and with like human beings that have evolved in their own way and they have like this dead language. It's just like it's so exciting. Man, I would love to do something like this to go through Stargate and find yourself on another

[01:10:09] galaxy's planet with a lot of cultural where humans have been stolen. Yes. The idea is right that Ra was taking humans from our planet and putting them here, right? Yeah. From an actual ancient Egypt. Yes. And they've been stuck here ever since.

[01:10:26] And then Egypt started to fight back and he was like, all right, well, I'm going to keep closing the Stargate. Right, right, right. But he has suppressed them so that they have never

[01:10:35] evolved past the ancient Egypt. He has outright writing. Right, right. But you got that cut like as they're emerging where you see the pyramid and then behind it you got all the moons. You got three moons, baby. Yeah. Not one. Two of no this different. Exactly. Right.

[01:10:55] All right. It's a pretty arresting image. I do like it. It doesn't look well. I've seen one moon. I've even seen two suns. But three moons? Now I've seen everything. It's the rule threes, baby. Three moons. Ultimate heighten.

[01:11:12] And so they meet this like alien horse in the desert or something. It's like a yarn steed. Yeah. And so it's got a saddle though. Oh man, there's people here. They had set up like a base camp so they split off. Right. One fraction stays behind of the

[01:11:31] military guys. Spader and Colonel and like I think two other military dudes, they go and they are going to investigate some like tracks or something. Oh, there's the hijink of Spader getting dragged along by the alien horse. An extended. This movie's got such a light touch.

[01:11:53] Yes. I had to check the credits. I paused it because I went, I thought this was a Roland Emmerich movie, not an Ernst Lubitsch film. It's got the velveteen touch of a dandy fob. Do they ever explain what's up with the alien horse thing? It's just, you know,

[01:12:11] that's an alien planet. Yeah. They want to sell some more toys. What do you mean? What explanation do you need? I mean, right. I like the look of it. I like that it's a big old puppy thing. That's fun. Love it.

[01:12:21] It is funny that they're like, yeah, these guys are humans. They're stuck here and also they have alien horses anyway. Yeah, Rob probably brought it with him from his home planet. I don't

[01:12:30] know. But why didn't he bring it into earth? Why is he fucking skipping on the alien horses for us? David, don't look an alien horse in the mouth. Okay. It's a gift to us, the viewing public.

[01:12:44] Listen, we don't need to know why this planet has the same atmosphere and like oxygen as president's gravity is the same. Absolutely. And like we can just exist like we would normally would. We don't need to answer those questions because these movies cool. Okay? That's all it's

[01:12:58] going for. Accept it gladly. And I've kind of skipped over like the trope of like the military at this time, especially as just being like bullies in this specific way. You know, and they're just being mean to Spader. But I guess.

[01:13:14] A bunch of jocks. Yeah, they're such like jocks, man. Yeah, he gets bullied by French Stewart. That I mean that really talk about French Stewart. It's completely insane. We have to talk about its national emergency.

[01:13:28] His arms, he has my arms. Okay. He's supposed to be in the fucking military and he has my level of arms. And he's not an expert in anything because then at least I'm like, okay,

[01:13:41] he's an expert in fucking yep, yep, yep, wine, wine, wine is what he's an expert. He should fucking work in a restaurant all the wine. Okay. It is funny though, because it's like when French Stewart breaks out with

[01:13:56] her rock from the front of the Stuart is holding up a bottle of doing proper work. What is that? Pino Grige? What are we looking at there? Yeah, it's a Pino Grige. It's a big boy.

[01:14:06] That's a big boy. It's a chungus. David is holding up a chungus of wine. I just got a delivery today. Okay. Keep it in your pants. David, could you just come in a little closer? A little closer? I thought that was pretty cool.

[01:14:25] For the listener home, Ben leaned in really close to his computer screen thus himself executing a visual bit that will be lost on the audience. Yeah, that's good. All right, so we're in the city at some ancient primitive place.

[01:14:42] No one can communicate to each other. So it's going to kind of come through and just like gestures. I wonder if they submitted Stargate for Best 4 in Language film that year at the Academy Awards because it is like 50% in Stargate ease.

[01:14:56] They are speaking as James Spader later says, like some form of ancient Egyptian, like some concept of how that might have sounded. Which by the end of the movie he's like fluent in. He goes into like a hallway with one of the ladies and she's like, you know,

[01:15:11] this is called this and he's like, oh, I totally get it. All right, give me five minutes. All right, so anyway, here's the exposition. Here's how we got his powers. Yeah. But they try to, with their fingers, draw symbols in the sand in order to ask them

[01:15:25] questions and explain where they came from. And they get fucking freaked out. They don't like that. No way. You're not allowed to do that. You can't write. They immediately think that they're like kings or something, right? Or like part like gods, sent by the gods.

[01:15:40] They think they've been sent by the gods, partly because he's got the raw necklace. Yes, right. From the old lady. And so they also tried it. Oh, there's that gross thing where they offer the woman, which you know, yeah, it's a gentleman.

[01:16:00] Yeah, he is. He's a gentleman. The woman that is played by, let me get this, Alexis Kruznatz. That's the boy. No, it's a. Milly Avatar. Milly Avatar, right. Who is conveniently the whitest person there. She is. Yeah. Interestingly, the female lead is very, very ill with green eyes.

[01:16:23] She's Israeli. Yes. Can we talk about another cast member here though? Eric Avari. Yes. Who plays sort of the main elder bearded. Yes. Yes. He's an Indian American actor. Stargadian. This kick starts. What were you going to say, David?

[01:16:40] No, I was just going to say he's one of the very few actors to also be in Stargate SG-1 as the same character. Oh, interesting. But you're right. This kick starts him playing. He's in the mummy. He has a surprising blockbuster run, Eric Avari.

[01:16:55] Because before this he's like a sitcom actor. He's one of those guys where they're just like, we will cast you for any ethnicity in a sitcom. Like he himself, I believe is Indian, but they'll have him play Egyptian. They'll have him play Hispanic.

[01:17:08] They'll have them play Middle Eastern. Like they'll do anything, anything, anything. And that's like his zone. He's doing like Seinfeld and Shears and stuff like that. And then it's like Stargate, the mummy, Planet of the Apes. Yep. He's in the movie. The Bird of the Man today. Yeah.

[01:17:25] Mr. Deeds. Mr. Deeds. Yeah. His final sci-fi blockbuster. He is fucking great in the mummy. He is so good in that movie because he's the guy who's like in the library, who's like what this book says is bad. Like he's always very, very solemn.

[01:17:42] There are a lot of bad news from him. I just love you. Look at his career before this and it's like his biggest movie role is Encino Man and he's mostly a sitcom actor. And then Roland Emmerkassum in this and people are like,

[01:17:54] oh, he's really good at bringing gravitas to like silly blockbuster, like matinee films. And then he just has this run where he totally remakes himself as like a genre actor as the guy who just like gives the thing the like the grave importance. What's the other one here?

[01:18:13] There's an oh, the 13th warrior. Sure. One day we'll do that on the pod. We will one day do that on the pod. And then in Daredevil he plays Electra's dad. Yeah. And he was in Heroes, right? He played I think the Chandra Suresh.

[01:18:31] He played fucking what again? Did no one watch Heroes? He was the dad of the... I just remember Save the Cheerleader, Save the World and Zachary Koso was terrifying. You did have to save the cheerleader to save the world and they did do that, I think.

[01:18:43] I don't remember. And Hero? Hero is the best. So we have Spader and the female character. What is her name? I'm sorry. You mean her name is Shari. All right. So Spader and Shah break off.

[01:19:00] And I sort of then feel like we need to introduce now the tribe of kids, the miscreants who are great. They're designed great. They rule. They seem to have a lot of fun. It's similar to like the Lost Boys and Hooker or whatever.

[01:19:14] It's like a bunch of cool teens who might as well have skateboards and slingshots or whatever. But because we're in ancient Egypt, they're going to have more of an ancient Egypt thing going on. But there's the one who sort of becomes begrudgingly a surrogate son. That's to Rassler's.

[01:19:31] And like so that's why I was saying like there is that pairing there. That's going to be a running thing throughout the movie. He gets to finally offer the parental advice. He never got to offer a son, which is don't touch my gun.

[01:19:43] But like no, he never got to do that. You know, no, no, no bad. Yeah. Here, take a cigarette instead. Okay. But I wanted to point this out and we'll just move along. If an alien handed me anything, I would drink it.

[01:20:00] So if an alien had you like a glowing blue liquid, a chalice. Okay. Yeah. Right. If he handed me a floating like severe of like liquid smoke, I'd just put my head right into it. Okay, Ben. I mean, why the hell not? Yeah.

[01:20:16] And this is the ultimate test. If you watched before your very eyes unobstructed an alien piss into a glass and then hand it to you. No. How do we know it's pee? Well, that's why I'm asking. That's why I'm asking. Would you take the jump?

[01:20:32] I would try to figure out if they're secreting something for me that's good. You did used to vape a juice that was called alien piss, did you not? That is true. This is canon. Absolutely. I had picked that flavor for an advertiser we had on the show.

[01:20:53] It's a great flavor. But no, I don't think I would drink alien pee necessarily. So there's one thing you wouldn't drink if an alien handed it to you. But otherwise anything else. Okay, okay. All right. Glad we clarified. I'm glad we did too.

[01:21:07] So all right, I feel like now it's just going to basically come down to Spader has to figure out the like one missing symbol, right? To get them back. Yeah, he's been like he's looking for the way back.

[01:21:21] Well, this is like the Emreck Devlin thing I'm talking about though, because this movie finds a way to sort of just like kill time for 30 minutes without anything really expensive happening. Yeah, totally. It's a lot of looking at a wall while curr rustles in a tent. Right.

[01:21:37] And just like the only special effect really is just a bunch of people, a bunch of villagers. And some people. Right. And so it's true how it's like pretty chill for a while and then a pyramid spaceship shows up. Yes. Yeah.

[01:21:51] So the other soldiers that are still at base camp where they entered, God's raw himself shows up in a friggin pyramid spaceship. He's got a pyramid scheme. He's got a and yes, thank you. Yeah. Ten comedy points. It's a good point. It's time to call him out.

[01:22:08] He has a literal pyramid scheme in a way raw was the original Bernie made off. And so we learn pretty quickly that he was trying to escape death and was an alien. Okay. Like and the design of the aliens kind of classic. Your classical manide alien. Yep.

[01:22:26] And so he went to primitive earth and he inhabited the body of an Egyptian and we had a word now. And he made his whole pyramid scheme happen with some stargates and now he's off to the races and he's still alive.

[01:22:43] And yeah, I guess he's kind of just checking in. Can we just point out that there are two different Academy Award nominees in Ra's palace? Yeah. Because Jaman Kounsou is also like the Anubis warrior. Yes. And he is credited as Jaimon. Just single. Just Jaimon. It's cleaner. Wow.

[01:23:05] Oh, you're right. He's Horus. He is Horus. Yes. Someone Carlos Lachow is Anubis. But I do love their scheme where it's like they wear the alien masks to make them. They look pretty cool. Like really. Oh, fucking cool.

[01:23:20] They look like the what you would see on like a wall in Egypt. It's got like the Anubis. The hieroglyphics. Dog head. But that makes people. Do they have a dog arm? I don't know. That makes people think that they're gods. That makes people think they're so cool.

[01:23:32] Right. Yeah. Yeah. And Ra has this cool kind of pharaoh mask. That's his vibe. And he's got the eunuchs. I don't think it's cool or chill either. Especially with the context of talking about this director, I feel like we should just skip over that. Maybe just move on.

[01:23:50] Yep. But yes. And he's got some henchmen. The henchmen have like seemingly just like laser staffs. Laser staffs. Yeah, it's a couple of laser staffs. I will say good on Kurt Russell when he gets his hand on one, he figures out how to fire it immediately. Immediately.

[01:24:04] No learning curve for him on that. Yeah. Yeah. Guys great with guns. So they kill all the military guys pretty quickly. And it's a very simple and I'm sure like on the cheap scene. Yeah. It's a lot of just like them getting whacked around the corner. Basically. Yeah.

[01:24:22] Yeah. Conveniently there's a dust storm. Right. Right. And then also I don't know if this comes here later, but I feel like what needs to be pointed out is this movie, not that it predicted, but drones in 94. Guys, I mean, God, it was so ahead of the curve.

[01:24:41] And say that Stargate invented drones. Yeah. Let's say. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I feel comfortable with saying that. 100%. This movie is proving something, which is drones are cool and you should have Stargates in your movie. That cosine fully. Thank you so much. I do also like the Stargate teleporter.

[01:24:59] Oh, right. That's like an elevator. The multiple rings. Right. Yeah. It's a very cool effect. Yeah. And it's a pretty good little Chekhov's gun. Like, you know, it's set up as just kind of cool world building and they find a way to have it like pay off dramatically,

[01:25:17] like two different ways in the last chunk of the movie. And yeah. And I like how it's like, you know, we know they have Stargate technology and it's just like a little mini version of that. Right? Why not? Yeah. Makes sense. Who wants to walk through a hallway?

[01:25:29] That's a fucking slug. God, what a pain. And that pyramid is big getting up around that thing. Huge. Yeah. Okay. So we meet Ra. Come on. Can we talk about meeting Ra? Yeah. Ra has cool eyes. His voice is great. Yeah. I love the modulation. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:25:47] I mean, it is pretty good. It's effective. It is pretty effective. He was spooky to me when I was a kid. I was very freaked out by Ra. Yeah. Yeah. Me too. I did think it was a little distracting how in the Ra scenes,

[01:25:59] you can hear Jay Davidson on the phone with his realtor trying to figure out what he can buy for a million dollars. Thankfully they were able to lower in the mix. So it's very subtle. But no, I know it can be distracting.

[01:26:13] He'll mouth out his dialogue to be dubbed later. And then anytime anyone else is speaking, you hear him low in the mix going like, I mean, like, no, I would love to have a little money left over. But also, I want to get maximum value.

[01:26:23] Are there free bathrooms? His and her sinks. And it's weird how he's holding a folder with laminated sheets and he's just flipping through it. Right. He's got a Corcoran group folder. Yeah. He's got fabric samples he's looking at. Yeah. Right. Right.

[01:26:41] No, I think that the morph of the mask into his face is the best moment in the movie. I love that it's not what you expect it to be, right? But it's a perfect, as we said, perfect casting. No one looks like him. He's got an incredible look.

[01:26:58] It's right in the pocket for 94 too. That kind of like United colors of Benetton. Like, you know, like that sort of the type of person who was front and center in a fashion campaign then, right? Like the sort of like androgynous, beautiful, angular person. Totally.

[01:27:14] And because as you said, Jay Davidson refused to even wear the helmet, whereas with like Jaman and whoever plays a newbis, you can tell that they shot them with the helmet on and then shot them with the helmet off and like morph those two things.

[01:27:31] So that it's a slightly cleaner visual effect. But with Jay Davidson, the unintended result is that it ends up looking like the Michael Jackson Black or White video where it doesn't look like the helmet is peeling back. It looks like the helmet is morphing into a human face.

[01:27:48] Yes. Which rules. Rules, totally rules. I want to say about his layer, to me really, it also sort of just like looks like a history channel reenactment. Totally. I wonder if they like made money by renting out this set to history channel for the following 10 years.

[01:28:08] They must have. Like they just left it standing and it was like an Airbnb for documentary film crews. Yeah, man. As soon as like they wrapped Cleopatra and Mark Antony were like waiting in the wings to go film the scene.

[01:28:27] I mean, they use this for gods and monsters, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. Is it Gods of Egypt? Gods of Egypt. Gods of Egypt. My mistake. All right. Well, okay. So something we skipped over is we should just talk about the nuclear bomb.

[01:28:42] I mean, we set it up earlier in the episode, but we see Russell at one point lock and like load this like nuclear bomb, I guess. It looks like a trash can. It looks like Wally. Yeah.

[01:28:55] It does look like a trash can, but with a flashing light on it. Yeah. And a couple of metal arm things. And treads. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why did he bring the nuclear bomb? It's just sort of like a backup, just sort of like just in case.

[01:29:08] As someone who watched this like two hours ago, he brings the bomb because it was his assignment to if they sensed any danger. Yeah. Right. When they got to the planet, he was supposed to get his men across

[01:29:22] and then he would stay behind and blow it up because he's got nothing else to live for. He yearns for death. He doesn't tell his soldiers. No. He doesn't tell French Stewart. Or there is another character actor who's like, I feel like I've seen a bunch of times.

[01:29:38] Yeah. He has really good rules. John Deal who rules. I love John Deal. That guy's the best. Yeah. But he's like the right hand man. Yeah. Kolaski rules. But yes, he, Ra hits him back with you brought a nuke.

[01:29:52] Well, I'm going to put an alien crystal next to your nuke. Send it back. Shut up out of that. It'll blow up the whole planet. It's a hundred times now. More powerful. Pretty good. It is a power move. Yeah.

[01:30:06] And like that's just like classic one month, one umpmanship, you know? Yeah. It is. And Kurt Russell gives him credit. He's like your plastic. Good job. I feel like we were talking about this on the rise of Skywalker episode recently,

[01:30:24] but it definitely feels like a move where kids are like, yeah, well this will make it a hundred times stronger. It's infinity plus one. Yeah. It is so infinity plus one. Yeah. And they're jumping around a lot. This is when they do all the spectacle.

[01:30:41] This is when Roland Emmerich brings out all the effects. The those ships come out the like ancient Egyptian spaceships. Drones. And it just becomes a lot of action. Yeah. It seems like they were kind of going to go towards like we're going to

[01:30:55] because they find out those people are all humans. So it's like, are we going to help them and they do, but like they don't bring them back to earth or anything. They're like, yeah, they just they got their own thing going here. We'll give them some guns.

[01:31:07] It's all good. I mean, right. I mean the uh uh James Spader's uh Beloved who there's the weird scene where they make a joke about him being her husband and then she says, don't worry. I didn't tell them that you didn't want me.

[01:31:26] And then he smooches her and then they're officially in love. Obviously, I'm super horny for you even though I met him yesterday. But then she gets shot in the middle of this. So then he has to bring her back to Roz Bath to bring her back to life.

[01:31:38] Even though Kurt Russell has already activated the bomb. And a lot of this is just like Kurt Russell learning to want to be alive again. And nothing makes him feel more alive than murdering a bunch of Roz bodyguards. Right.

[01:31:52] Nothing makes him feel more alive than distributing assault rifles to the peasant children he has met on this alien world. He has like a full Rambo sequence. Like he goes all the way back and he's like actually guns fucking rule.

[01:32:05] I'm going to smile while shooting them and give them to everybody and encourage them to do the same. I love Kurt Russell. He's an incredibly charismatic actor. He's extremely hot. Yeah, he's a good looking guy. He's a movie star.

[01:32:18] It's wild how he has nothing to do in this movie. Nothing to do. What you're describing. And also it's kind of fundamentally bad casting because it feels like this part is written for

[01:32:29] like a Bruce Willis, like an action star who has an innate sense of sadness to him. Kurt Russell is very charming, very confident. He does not play vulnerable. Very high energy. Yeah, like likes to have fun. Yeah. So he just ends up seeming bored most of this movie.

[01:32:45] I enjoy looking at him. I mean it's always fun to look at Kurt Russell. But you never get the sense of like, oh man, this guy's still really broken up about his son.

[01:32:54] Yeah, but at the end he's kind of like cracking jokes and like looking snarky as he starts shooting people. Yeah, but you know it was a real time for him because he got Captain Ron in 92. Okay that's fun Kurt Russell. That's wild Kurt Russell.

[01:33:08] But then you have Tombstone Stargate executive decision escape from LA soldier. That's a real run of him playing sort of square tough guys. Yeah. So maybe that was just his, I don't know he just sort of like swang that way.

[01:33:22] Maybe Clinton got elected and it really ground his gears. I don't know. Well it's like the 80s were his John Carpenter run where he did all these sort of like and they're very like sly parodies of classic action heroes.

[01:33:35] And then the 90s it was like let's remove the satire from it. Let's just do the most straight up. I mean I think his best movie of the 90s is Breakdown which is an amazing movie. Breakdown fucking rule. But that's a dramatic movie.

[01:33:50] There's not a lot of fun. That's all tension. Totally. And then like occasionally he would do like your 3,000 miles to Graceland like he would be weird. But Tango and Cash you're leaving off. Well that's 89. Oh fuck I thought it was 90. That's a long time ago.

[01:34:04] Okay it was I thought. I was wrong. I was very wrong. I was very wrong and please arrest me. Go ahead Ben. I would like to say something right now. Okay here we go. You know you gave me the opportunity to pick this episode.

[01:34:21] We gave it the choice. Yeah. Give me the choice. It's great. I love doing this. It's fun. John Carpenter. Come on when are we gonna do him? Guys he came close. He fucking rules. Came close. The thing. What was it? You could do this all day. 2019. I know.

[01:34:40] Did he make the finals or was it the lot? No he made the semis. I think he made the final four. Oh okay. Yeah yeah yeah the final four yeah. He got close. It was definitely boosted by your sort of campaigning for him.

[01:34:52] I've been thinking about it more and more lately. Can I throw out a thing? Because on the fifth anniversary. I'm gonna throw out the thing. On the fifth anniversary episode we teased the idea of doing a Losers bracket for next

[01:35:06] year's March Madness where every contestant was someone who had never made it past the first round. There is another idea that has gained some popularity on the reddit which is each of us picks each director. Sure we have four quadrants.

[01:35:22] It's like a division thing so there's like a Ben division and division Dave division Griff division and essentially each one of us gets to have one of our picks go to the final four. The final four would be right each of our champions. Right. Right. Okay all right.

[01:35:38] I'm just throwing that out there. All right I like that. I think that's cool. John Carpenter lost to George Miller by like 30 votes. Yeah it was 50-50. He's Peter Jackson and Penny Marshall yeah. Yeah like Ben who else would you have? Like let's say you have Carpenter.

[01:35:55] Harmony Corrin. I will say it is very hard to jinx someone over Zoom. We did just say that perfectly synced up. You really did. You really did. Good. Okay all right Carpenter. Harmony Corrin. We would have eight each right?

[01:36:15] That would be the we would get to pick eight guys each. I will say I would like started drafting this like I was like who would my eight guys be

[01:36:23] and I'm not going to read who my eight would be but I did Griff division and then I did Ben division, Ange division, David division and I never got around to filling out the rest of them except for Ben where I just wrote Carpenter Corrin.

[01:36:35] I wrote those two and then forgot about it. I'm trying to think who the other like Ben Champs would be. Yeah I mean because like I have like the obvious people I just like but we wouldn't do because it's like territory that's already been covered. Such as?

[01:36:51] You know like an Anderson, a Tarantino. But I mean this is you know this bracket would be the time to you make your things. That's true right I know but I would want to carry more like like uh outsidery kind of choices

[01:37:04] because like I feel like that's just my vibe. I think you would have recourse to pick David S. Ward. Wow. He directed Major League, King Ralph, Major League 2 and Down Periscope which I'm just going to assume you've seen. Fuck yes I have.

[01:37:20] I mean a miracle run an absolute miracle run. He only has six movies but four of them are Ben's picks. Definitely. Major League makes me cry so hard every time I see it. But David you are leaving out the most incongruous thing about David S. Ward. Go ahead.

[01:37:38] His only four films are the four films you just mentioned. No he made six films but. Oh okay I'm sorry. He made six films that are very much of a piece with what you just said but

[01:37:47] his breakthrough was that he won an Academy Award for writing The Sting. He did write The Sting. He also wrote Sleepless in Seattle. He great writer I guess. But you would not expect that the man who wrote The Sting would go on to direct

[01:38:05] Major League 2 and I say that with no disrespect to Major League 2. Look the guy's an auteur he wrote Major League. Yeah. He didn't write Down Periscope who wrote that looks like that was written by Lucifer. He also was one of the writers on Flyboys which was Dean Devlin's

[01:38:26] first post-Roland Amrick movie full circle. That's the one with James Franco right that's the World War One movie. Yeah. Yes and it was a movie financed by what's his name? Ellison pre-Anna Perna because his son loved airplanes and he wanted to make a

[01:38:47] movie for his son and his son David Ellison who now finances pretty much every Tom Cruise movie is like the fifth lead in it despite having no history as an actor. Wanted to be a flyboy.

[01:39:00] He said I have a nice handsome son and he likes to be in a plane. I'm making him a movie for his birthday. Now I want Larry Ellison sorry. David I mean Ben you got to pick your A I'm going to figure out who might.

[01:39:12] We're doing that later let's finish up our Stargate episode. I know I mean I mean later I mean later. Yeah we'll we'll revisit because I definitely I want to I want to think on it.

[01:39:22] I just want to tease the idea for later but I like that a lot. All right fun idea. Let's get through the plot though I mean I'm trying to think of like what else there is. Big end. Kind of get a point off with a portal. Right.

[01:39:36] Kurt Russell. I know I know but leading up to sort of our end of you know the end fight. I mean there's not really anything that's sticking out to me that I want to really go over.

[01:39:48] Wants to commit suicide wants to let James Spader go back but then they end up realizing the right thing for them to do is to switch positions. Kurt Russell needs to go back home with his newly invigorated sense of life

[01:40:00] and James Spader needs to stay there and study this civilization and also settle down become an honest man. And bang a lady. Yeah in the desert he has to have some desert sex. He definitely needs to have some dry sex.

[01:40:14] I would just like to point out a better version of this but extremely so I realized halfway through this movie that I was watching Atlantis the Lost Empire. Atlantis the Lost Empire. Bam. Yeah. Yeah. Very similar you're right.

[01:40:27] Dorks with like floppy bangs and round glasses that are like scrambling with all their maps and papers and shit and everyone's like look at this fucking dork. And then a rich benefactor shows up and is like coming to my car you're right everyone

[01:40:41] else is wrong don't tell anybody. Right and then there's like a hot sexy lady that's like oh I actually can help you except I will if in Atlantis it's Cree Summer Plankita who's a great character and actually has like more agency and is more interesting.

[01:40:56] Ben have you ever seen Atlantis the Lost Empire? I have not. You fucking love it. Yeah. It's a joint for sure. Yeah you did get it. Disney hand drawn animated film in which they were like we're done with princess musicals

[01:41:07] so we want to make action movies for boys. The entire film is designed by Mike Minyola who is the artist who created Hellboy. So the whole movie it's a Disney movie that looks like a Hellboy comic and just correct it is almost exactly Stargate except with Atlantis.

[01:41:24] To the point where he like stays behind and he's like I want to learn more about this culture and they're like all right bye nerd. But also like a ragtag crew where you have like the sordonic like explosives expert

[01:41:35] and like the mining guy the French guy named Molliere who looks like a rat and has goggles. Cool. It's a pretty like diverse crew too. You'll fucking love it.

[01:41:45] All right I wrote it I wrote it down I just want to say though if I was ever on a crew I definitely would be the explosive no question. Absolutely no question.

[01:41:52] Yeah like that rules to me because that guy you're like all right whoa what's up with him. The character looks. His thing is explosives yeah that's what's up with him. He is a French no he's not French but he's played by father Guido Sarducci

[01:42:09] and he is an explosive expert who wears a medieval armor. He's got a mustache and a bull cut and he wears like a fucking armor plate like a night. Dude that's a good look and Michael J Fox is the lead he looks like James Spader in this movie

[01:42:24] and he's like you're telling me there's an Atlantis under the water yeah. All right so this is what I'll say to get us through okay I just wanted to point out and we've already I think talked about it but there's that dumb scene with Spader where he's just

[01:42:37] like translating their language right which is like they're gonna incite them to be able to now go to the Stargate get out of there and then I also want to mention when the kids

[01:42:48] take it upon themselves with the guns and they're like gonna go lead the fight back at like the entrance to the Stargate right where the alien ship is parked. I really thought it was cool as a kid to see that they're like like he's like telling his dad

[01:43:04] like no I'm gonna fight and that is like I think powerful storytelling for a young Ben to be like I know it's right I know what we need to do we can't just be weak we gotta go and

[01:43:18] bring it to him you know. So this movie really changed your life. Yeah man definitely I've been trying to find a Stargate ever since okay so there is just the fighting that's going on outside

[01:43:34] with some of the military men and the kids and I just think that's it's like insane right because it is children who are being put in harm's way but it also is cool like I said.

[01:43:46] And then inside you got Russell and Spader and they I guess have some kind of then extended scene again with the Prince do they fight I don't even remember. Yeah how does he I'm trying to

[01:44:03] remember how they end up killing Rock. They cut one of his soldiers head off and they fight him and I think he runs away to his ship and they portal the bomb because they realized they like he

[01:44:18] tries to disarm the bomb and he's like I can't oh they must do we talk through the whole execution and all we did all that right the whole yeah yeah yeah Spader Christ the gun on him all that

[01:44:29] stuff they they portal the bomb and then in the final moment before Rock explodes you see the alien face which is pretty yeah you see the alien yeah yeah that's such a funny hijink to like you know when

[01:44:40] the bad guy drives away and then he doesn't realize that the bomb is in the back yeah I mean you talk about ding dong ditch what's funnier than placing a bomb in someone's vehicle and leaving

[01:44:52] so they do in Birds of Prey yeah yeah um yeah good moment in Birds of Prey so yeah and that's it also the people rise up that was a cool scene I like seeing all those people running in the

[01:45:06] desert that was a striking scene and they revealed the guards to be false gods they they take the helmet off oh yeah also pushes the button God's great name for a metal band sure but yeah I mean

[01:45:16] the movie ends very abruptly it's like they realized they got to switch places Russell should go back home and learn to love life again and James Spader should stay there and the movie ends with

[01:45:28] one final journey through the Stargate portal which is how all movies should end yeah well it should keep going yeah first person POV I mean I wish the Stargate graphics had lasted throughout the

[01:45:38] entire end credits yes that would be cool that'd be really fucking cool that would have ruled but that's Stargate man that was fun I I uh I love this movie it's so like

[01:45:53] to try and frame it a little bit if why I feel like there's this some kind of like aesthetic or vibe that I can't necessarily pin down to it where I was joking before it's like I'd like got

[01:46:02] this light touch it's so thin yes like kind of how I feel it's so thin but at the same time when you were talking about Spielberg it made me think this is like a bad version of Spielberg

[01:46:13] it's thin storytelling but you feel safe it feels comforting to me in some weird way other than it obviously I have a connection to it because I was nostalgic and watching as a kid but I feel like

[01:46:26] there's something from maybe movies of this time I don't really know but I love them I agree with you and I think bad Spielberg is like bad pizza it's still pizza yeah it reminds me enough of the

[01:46:39] thing I love and if you're gonna rip something off rip off the best like there's something comforting about trashy blockbuster movies aiming to be Steven Spielberg rather than aiming to be whatever

[01:46:53] they aim to be now okay so can I do my little corner here yeah the score for this movie is by David Arnold who went on to become a very successful composer including many of Roland

[01:47:03] Emmerich's biggest films Independence Day also did four James Bond's in a row I think he did the last two Brosnan's in the first two Daniel Craig's maybe you know he's a guy he's a journeyman

[01:47:15] this was his first real movie I think only second job ever he was still working I believe at a video store when he was composing this film and Roland Emmerich credits him with making the film feel

[01:47:26] a lot bigger in sort of scale and scope but there's the one cue that isn't the main theme although I guess it kind of is but the very high jinksy version of it when James Spader is being

[01:47:39] dragged by the star horse right and I was like I've never seen this movie before why does this sound so familiar and then I found out I did some digging that musical cue is one of the most

[01:47:54] used cues in the history of movie trailers because I was like where do I know this from and I was like I just I have this image in my head of hearing the score and seeing a title card say

[01:48:08] an adventure 10 000 years in the making you know like something like that so then I looked it up can I just speed round some of the trailers that use the Stargate score okay I'm gonna

[01:48:20] just read these off as quick as I can the time machine dungeons and dragons water world warriors of virtue volcano the mummy mighty joe young the man in the iron mask lost in space jumanji dragonheart nymphs island chicken little the polar express independence day sky captain

[01:48:35] the world tomorrow deep rising titan a mission of mars spirit stallion of the samaritan it is one of according to a website that I use as a database to try to identify music from trailers it is the

[01:48:50] sixth most used trailer cue of all time in terms of instrumental not song right so then I started digging into this further and three of the five results above it were all credited to the same

[01:49:07] artist not a composer name that I recognized or a score from another movie but something called immediate music and then I went down this rabbit hole and there was a company called immediate music that exists just to create very cheap to license trailer music so they create scores

[01:49:26] that sound like scores you've heard in movies to help establish the tone in a trailer but they have never actually been from a film and they got popular enough that now immediate music has like 30 different albums on itunes and they are incredibly bizarre I will not list them

[01:49:44] I implore all of our listeners to do this search themselves immediate music they have albums where every album title and every track title is like a sound alike to a type of movie you've seen or

[01:49:56] heard before and then the tracks are just like tempo for slightly offbeat comedy and that's like one album's name and then the tracks are different like this is the track for if

[01:50:08] a slob meets a snot this is a track for someone meeting their their lovers parents for the first time crazy crazy crazy so anyway that's the rabbit hole I went down the track in the stargate

[01:50:22] soundtrack that is used so much in trailers is called mass drudge drag master didge drag I assume that's the name of the creature yeah look that up and then also look up immediate music on itunes

[01:50:39] that's the end of my corner all right well I think that's the end of this episode as well wow wow did it we did another bench choice thank you guys this was fun well um I look forward to maybe

[01:50:55] getting to pick another one down the line yeah what would be apart from Ralph what do you what do you got well I think I pitched one time the Simpsons movie and we didn't hate that idea oh I don't

[01:51:09] hate that idea at all I'm also just looking at our schedule here right now there is in between our next miniseries and the miniseries after that which I think it's been announced at this point Nora Efron is starting next week we're starting with when Harry met Sally

[01:51:29] even though she did not direct it because it feels important to the canon so next week will be when Harry met Sally and then we're running through the proper Nora Efron filmography but in between Nora Efron and March Madness winner Robert Zemeckis we currently have slotted Wonder

[01:51:43] Woman 1984 that's assuming that it ends up coming out then which is this point is a big question mark so I'd say there's a 50 50 chance that we need a Ben's choice on August 16th

[01:51:58] hey another thing we haven't done though the box office game thank you sorry David come on let's do it quickly let's do it quickly quickly my computer is dying and I'm feeling too lazy to

[01:52:12] get my adapter I want to see if I can get all the answers before my computer's battery dies alright all right fine that's all the way down okay this movie opened in October October 94

[01:52:23] it opened to 16 million dollars and was a sort of surprise hey it held really well it actually increased in October opening of all time October something like that dead spot yeah totally total dead zone so it made 71 and 200 worldwide which was a nice you know four times

[01:52:41] it's budget worldwide big conking hit created a whole media franchise um so it opens number one number two at the box office is it's only in its third week one of the big surprise hits of the year

[01:52:55] it's going to go on to get nominated for best picture it has already won the kens palm door what is the movie the the piano nope that's 93 oh pull fiction I'm sorry pulp fiction

[01:53:09] pull fiction which like Miramax successfully spins out of a can when into a hundred million dollar grosser absolutely insane absolutely insane that movie made a hundred and seven million dollars all right number three is an action movie with a sort of slightly fading star I would say

[01:53:29] big female lead and a male lead whose his best days are behind him this is a really crappy movie is it the one with Stallone and Sharon stone yes but what's it called it's Stallone and Stone

[01:53:40] and it's called ah fuck it's one of those titles that the studio only just had in a bucket it could be anything yeah it's the way to like ah take this one it's not it's not the getaway it's not the

[01:53:53] runaway no close no it's like what if something was someone was good at something oh the specialist he's a bit of a specialist yeah or maybe she's a specialist I don't know I've never seen it um

[01:54:09] number four is a movie that I offhand don't really remember at all so let's see oh oh right this is um it's a remake it's two big stars who are married oh is it the marrying man no I don't even know what

[01:54:26] that is that's a great title though Alec Baldwin Kim Basinger sure but no it's not that but similar like big celebrity couple oh is it the Warren Beatty and that Benning one yes

[01:54:37] and it's a remake of a of a Delmer Dawes Delma Dave's movie I think um it's not called love story it's called love affair love affair what if they had a love affair yeah Gary isn't it also like one

[01:54:50] of Catherine Hepburn's last movies Catherine Hepburn is in it I think it might be her very last film right I'm at 5% battery I'm at 5% battery I have one more movie number five number five

[01:55:02] at the box office is a really weird movie that is in my memory kind of interesting was a huge bomb it's going to be two monsters unleash no um about it's a biopic about a really weird guy I have no

[01:55:19] idea how to explain this it's not hot huh no no uh big stars uh big actors it's an Alan Parker movie oh fuck uh oh god in between his hits the commitments in a Vita he takes this big swing here

[01:55:41] and it mostly just baffled people it's a weird biopic with a big star that baffled big star big star although not like a you know you know like a respected actor type star you know not like a

[01:55:53] marquee idol yeah I'm at 4% battery um I'm gonna guess no I will not I found though an old list of movies I had put together for Ben's choices so we'll get into it we'll get into it uh 4%

[01:56:06] battery um what kind of what kind of figure where what what world did this figure it's based on existent oh boy um he well he uh was let me tell you the guy was a doctor the guy was also

[01:56:22] he had something to do with cereal the road to wellville yeah thank you and I really hated masturbation I got it from doctor I got it from doctor I'm a doctor I invented corn flakes and if

[01:56:33] you jerk off that's bad so I'm gonna bet all kind of things that'll stop you from doing it Ben have you ever seen The Road to Wellville I have not but I know I know it's so like I know about

[01:56:45] it because I heard um some podcast about the history of Kellogg's and how insane it actually is was it a reply all right yeah that sounds right I think I heard on the dollop but

[01:56:57] yeah I feel like it's been a discussed thing um yeah Ben if you had seen The Road to Wellville on a porch we already would have done it as a Ben's choice it is such a Ben's choice movie

[01:57:07] and it is a movie that I would see it would always play on Comedy Central when I was home sick from school because I was a sickly child uh I'd get sick like twice a month and it's very

[01:57:18] uncomfortable and bizarre and it probably would be one of your 10 favorite movies of all time right it must have been one of those movies that the cable channel's just got for like 12 bucks

[01:57:28] you you burn it off on Comedy Central at 11 a.m exactly this is just it's just ballast for the schedule right it's just so you could fill two hours okay Ben we're at 3% battery

[01:57:39] wrap us up take us home okay so here are some of the other movies that I've pitched to you guys oh my just sort of leave it at that yeah all right here's the list tanker all yes yeah that's a good

[01:57:52] one Joe dirt Joe dirt fuck these are this is gold oh my god or airplane sure sure yeah there are a little more of a blank check candidate I know we never did oh okay I wasn't sure how long

[01:58:09] is her filmography it's it's weird branches into three right there is a way we could structure that as a mini series and maybe do it I would say leave it off the list the rest of the contenders

[01:58:21] are really good the other one you've mentioned in the past is don't look back be Bob done yeah I love that too you know it yes yes but what about masked an anonymous man he should do

[01:58:34] masked an anonymous do you like that movie though no you don't I don't I don't know it it's the weird written by Bob Dylan and directed by Larry Charles co-creator of Seinfeld director of borah

[01:58:47] yeah and it's right it stars well Bob Dylan among other people it's just a weird Bob Dylan movie from like when he was sort of back when he was kind of in Victoria's Secret mode yes okay yeah

[01:59:00] no I've never seen any Dylan movies that's something I should like where he's like Pat and Garrity kids or something heck are you okay that movie's not bad huh I don't know maybe I'll do that

[01:59:10] I'm gonna check out Dylan movies but all right we gotta go his computer's gonna die yeah I mean I become the let's wrap it up guys come on let's end the episode dude but do the only time

[01:59:20] this has happened um okay um I just don't want to have to get out of this chair I don't want my computer hold on no I know it's like okay thanks uh to um and just very good help

[01:59:35] yes here nail thanks to uh Lane Montgomery for the theme song thanks to Joe Bowen and Pat Reynolds for the artwork check out our patreon called Blank Shack Special Features you can go to reddit.com

[01:59:54] for some real nerdy shits and um and as always put more stargates in your movies 2% battery nailed it cool