What’s Aged the Best?
Alcatraz; San Francisco car chases; Simpson-Bruckheimer logo card; characters who don't exist; former That Guys; Claire Forlani what-if; Connery's Alcatraz cabin; the film's politics
In the discussion (9)
Approx. transcript time · 00:49:50Read transcript
- Alcatraz: no movie using it has failed to be cool.
- San Francisco car chases are one speaker's pick, over the others' disagreement.
- The "losers always whine about their best; winners go home and fuck the prom queen" line is raised: it seemed the coolest thing at 13 but now reads as bizarre and very 90s.
- The Simpson-Bruckheimer logo card, and RIP to Don Simpson, whose last film this was; a 1996 EW piece quoted Connery that Simpson did not look right on set, and his legendary appetite for cocaine is noted.
- Action-movie characters who "don't exist" because their records were wiped clean are a winner every time.
- The cast list of former that-guys who graduated: David Morris, John C. McGinley, Philip Baker Hall, John Spencer, William Forsyth and Michael Bean, whose fan following is joked about as the "Bean Hive" and who always plays military men, as in The Abyss and Terminator.
- Claire Forlani's what-if: after Mallrats it seemed she would happen until Meet Joe Black; the belief that it still could happen has aged best.
- Too good for half-assed internet research: Connery made the producers build him a cabin on Alcatraz rather than travel to the mainland, compared with Arnold's private-plane demands on T2.
- The politics have aged well, unusually for Bay: a nuanced view of government and patriotism in the Hummel-Mason conversation, where Connery cites Oscar Wilde; the bluff ending, where Hummel refuses to kill a million people, keeps the film resting on whether he would do it.