Half-Assed Internet Research
Screenplay development history; the novel's video-game origin; Cruise's Oblivion turnaround; the helicopter line; the Matrix-like Louvre scene; beach plates; heavy battle suits; Rita's blade
In the discussion (17)
Approx. transcript time · 00:21:57Read transcript
- Getting ahead of half-ass internet research, the hosts read that eight people contributed to the screenplay and that the producers developed a spec script, sending writer Dante Harper the novel.
- They read that Harper found the book too complex but risked not being paid and spent eight months on it; Warner Brothers bought it for $3 million in April 2010, hired Liman, and Harper's script made the 2010 Black List.
- The story prompts a Barton Fink joke, corrected from Michael Gambon to Michael Lerner ("It's a wrestling picture").
- The Butterworths were later brought in; Jez is called an accomplished playwright who worked on some of the Craig Bond movies and Simon Kinberg also took a shot.
- The hosts say Cruise compared Cage's violent deaths to a Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon, and that McQuarrie finally found the funny tone the earlier drafts lacked.
- Movies with eight screenwriters are usually bad; the guess is that Harper's shape, the Butterworths' plotting and McQuarrie's dialogue survived.
- Resuming the segment, the hosts say Sakurazaka got the idea for the novel from resetting video games until finding the winning strategy.
- Asked about resetting FIFA, the answer is going further: looking up cheat codes online for 100 lives, which dates the last time he played video games. — Chris Ryan
- The movie integrates first-person-shooter and video-game logic seamlessly, making it the best video game movie without being an adaptation; Scott Pilgrim is the only comparison, while boss-level logic in Star Wars movies is annoying.
- The hosts read that Cruise began pre-production on July 20, 2012, less than a week after wrapping Oblivion.
- The farmhouse line about knowing how to take off but not land is linked to Cruise later flying helicopters in Mission Impossible.
- The hosts read that the Louvre scene with aliens attacking the ship resembles the sentinels at the end of The Matrix.
- They read that visual effects artists extended the beach with plates shot at Saunton Sands in North Devon, and that the battles were meant to recall Normandy and Dunkirk, discussed with Quentin Tarantino last year.
- They read that Cruise and Blunt wore the battle suits for real, averaging 85 pounds and up to 130 pounds, and hung from chains on iron frames between takes, which is likened to Aliens.
- They read that in the novel Rita uses a melee weapon because she ran out of ammo on resets; her blade is iconic but practically stupid, alongside the Full Metal Bitch bus graffiti and her crew's skeleton masks.
- Blunt's introduction doing the plank is called probably the movie's most iconic shot.
- Asked whether he can do that plank, the answer is no. — Chris Ryan