What’s Aged the Best?
Opening credits; human-shield gore; plasma wall TVs and video calls; virtual-reality tennis; ESPN World Series from Tokyo; Cohaagen raising the price of air; "Give these people air"; fingernail-polish tech; the humor; Sharon Stone; the safety-deposit-box message
In the discussion (10)
Approx. transcript time · 00:48:23Read transcript
- The terrible but beloved opening credits say 'Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna present'; the hosts wonder whether those producers were real or pseudonyms.
- In the airport escalator scene Quaid uses a bystander as a human shield who is shot many times, and Richter stomps on the bullet-ridden chest with a squishing sound; the hosts cannot recall that much splatter in earlier action movies.
- The hosts say it first got an X rating for gore and had to be scaled back, but Verhoeven would not cut the human-shield stomp.
- Futuristic predictions: plasma wall TVs, video calls like FaceTime, possibly Johnny Cabs as Uber or Tesla autopilot, and Lori's virtual-reality tennis, her best moment in the film.
- An ESPN promo for game five of the World Series live from Tokyo is enjoyed even if the prediction missed.
- Cohaagen raising the price of air is a classic subtle evil move; the hosts work out how air billing might work through dome taxes and compare it to Trump in a pandemic.
- It leads to Arnold turning 'air' into three syllables in 'Give these people air.'
- The fingernail-polish tech is singled out.
- The humor carries and is funnier now; the line 'If you want to live, don't hang up' is believed to have been lifted for Terminator 2; Sharon Stone has aged best.
- A late addition: the cryptic message in the safety deposit box, a trick that works every time.