Speaker 1: All right, everybody, welcome back to the Surely You Can't
Be Serious podcast. This is episode two of our Christmas
comparison of Die Hard versus Lethal Weapon. And to start
it off, we're gonna have a very classic Christmas introduction
to this episode.
Speaker 2: All right, listen up, guys, twas the night before Christmas,
and all through the house not a creature was stirring
except the four usholes coming in the rear standard to
cover formation.
Speaker 1: It's Christmas time in Hollis.
Speaker 2: Please, Mom's cooking chicken.
Speaker 1: Oh man. If this is your first time to listen
to us, all I can say is welcome to the party.
Speaker 2: Pal Man. You know, we started this a year and
a half ago. I did not anticipate how much work
that we would be putting into this thing.
Speaker 1: But it's been an amazing year. Do you remember when
I called you about a year and a half ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, come out to the coast. We'll get together
and make a podcast.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm very proud of what we've done so far
this year. We've had an awesome time. We've made lots
of friends and put out what we think is a
pretty good product.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm hopeful that our listeners think so we've definitely
had a great amount of support from everybody, and this
is kind of an amazing, you know, like almost bittersweet
end to a thing.
Speaker 2: But I mean, we're just done with chapter one, ready
to go on to chapter two. So it's a great
way to end the season with two of the most
amazing movies of the eighties right at the time that
they're in all of their glory. It's Christmas time.
Speaker 1: It is. This podcast is not the is it a
Christmas movie podcast? But here just a little bit we're
going to talk about we'll touch on it whether we
think these are Christmas movies or not.
Speaker 2: Right more importantly, we will defend the fact that they
are Christmas.
Speaker 1: There you go, There you go.
Speaker 2: All right. Our executive producer on this episode is Chris
walkd In that's walked in with a d. It's I'm
sure he gets it all the time, Christopher Walking. But Chris,
thank you so much for your support. He is our
first Patreon subscriber to pay us in pounds.
Speaker 1: Love it, love it. Chris, thank you so much. We
appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't say thank you enough. If you want
to be an executive producer of one of our episodes.
Just go to our Patreon page. It's patreon dot com
Forward Slash Shirley Podcast, and you too can become an
executive producer of one of our shows. Okay, cool, all right,
So jumping back into it, I've learned a couple things
since our last episode, even though it was just a
short time ago, that I feel the need to share. So,
Joel Silver is the producer behind both of these movies.
We talked about him a bit in the last episode.
He was the one that got Shane Black in there
and Predator, and he's obviously the one that had him
write the script for Lethal Weapon. He's the one that
had forty eight hours, which then leads us to Stephen
Desuza coming in helping out on jib Stewart's script. He's
very much an integral part of both of these stories.
But here's something that I bet that most of our
listeners don't know. When he was in high school, he
went to Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey, and
during that time there he and a friend of his
named Buzzy hill Ring created the rules for the game
ultimatet Frisbee. They were the creators Joel Silver who has
given us some of the best movies of all time.
Also was one of the creators of Ultimate Frisbee. He
has been inducted into the Ultimate Frisbee Hall of Fame
because he was one of the originators of the game.
Speaker 1: That is freaking amazing.
Speaker 2: I can't believe that it's crazy. It's crazy then, and
he is the aereotype of the nasty producer. I love
watching this guy because if anybody ever complains about somebody
or something back and just like, oh, I hate that guy,
I hate. He has no fear about saying I hate
some big I mean, because who's the heavier hitter than
Joel sofar right?
Speaker 1: Not many here, right.
Speaker 2: So one of the guys that he hated was Michael Eisner.
Like they both work together at Paramount, right, and they
hated each other then. And he has been in a
couple of movies and one that you probably don't recognize
him from is who framed Roger Rabbit at the beginning,
you know, the beginnings of the cartoon? Yeah, yeah, and
then you know he has the wrong thing spinning around
his head. God, and the director's all, yeah, he shaved
off his beard. He plays the director in that movie.
The angry, you know, throwing his stuff down, which was
an inside joke by Spielberg and Zamechis because it was
supposed to be like a Disney cartoon, and so they
had him playing the part with would be like the
Michael Eisner part because they knew that they hated each other.
And when and when they showed it to Eisner, Eisner's like,
who's that actor because he had his beard shaved off,
and they're like, it's Joel Silver and he's like, well,
he did a good job.
Speaker 1: That is great, man. I didn't know that. That's fantastic.
Speaker 2: Have you seen Tropic Thunder? I have.
Speaker 1: It's been a while, but I have.
Speaker 2: Okay, but you remember the Tom Cruise part. Absolutely, it's
it's a parody of Joel Silver. That kind of raunchy cigar.
Speaker 1: Show makes sense. Ye, sure, that makes sense, both of
these movies. I have a feeling some cocaine news. What
I've got something for you? Yes, go ahead, Okay, this
is something that I learned.
Speaker 2: Okay, that blew me away. All right.
Speaker 1: I don't want to try and top you right on.
Speaker 2: The top, man, this is what we're about.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to top you, Okay. I just found this.
Blew my frigging mind. Okay, Yeah, the Mrta House. All
the action in lethal Weapon happened one, two, three, four,
right and one. Joshua crashes the car through the front
door too. They blow up the freaking toilet part four.
The whole house like gets blown up, right right? Okay,
So the Merta House, it's a character in all four
of these movies. Right next door to the Myrtal House Okay,
this is on the Warner Brothers ranch.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Right next door to the Myrtle House is the Christmas
Vacation Chivy Chase House. No, So that means that, in
this fictional world that the Myrtas live in the same
house as Todd and Margot. Right, why is the floor
all went Todd?
Speaker 2: I don't know Margot? So, what what did Roger Murtaz
say when he saw the lights finally light up at
the house?
Speaker 1: There is a world where the Murtaz and the Grizzwolds
live next door to each other.
Speaker 2: That's crazy. That is crazy.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, so appropriate that they're both Christmas movies though,
it absolutely it is, and we will tell you why
in just a little while. Right, do we want to
get into the plot.
Speaker 2: We're kind of, yeah, let's jump in the plot. Let's
let's bounce. Do you really want to jump?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that every time with it. That's fine
with me.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. So both of the movies start off and
we see our main characters vulnerabilities right off the bat.
Right the first time that you see John McClain, he's
got white knuckles in the airplane because he's scared of flying. Right, So,
your big, big hero character, You've got to keep in
mind that this was going on at the time of
Rambo and Commando and Conan and where the big hero
was invincible, and we introduce our big hero as the
guy who's scared of planes.
Speaker 1: In order to relax, he's got to make fists. Was
his toes your toes? Well?
Speaker 2: And I guess that's really not all because even as
it carries on, we get more vulnerabilities. He's obviously got
marriage on the rocks, and he's also obviously got an
impulsive mouth that we see when he's arguing with his wife.
Speaker 1: He's kind of a jerk. He's a jerk to Holly,
and he's a little bit of a jerk to our guy.
All coming out of the Gate, and then.
Speaker 2: With Leith the Weapon, we've got my gosh, suicidal Martin Riggs,
you know, just living in a dirty, nasty trailer, drinking
beer from last night, naked to the toilet. How many movies,
by the way, in a row was mel Gibson naked?
Speaker 1: Mel Gibson's butt got a co starring credit in like
his first ten movies, I know.
Speaker 2: And then we've got Roger, who's too old for this.
Speaker 1: She's fifty years old. Fifty damn years old.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Have we talked about the bathtub scene?
Speaker 2: I don't think we did. Maybe we touched on it, yeah,
But so let's just my wife put this movie on.
I mean, God, God bless her. I didn't even ask
for it. She put it on as a Christmas movie midday,
all the kids are there. I'm like, honey, this is
not a kid. It didn't matter. Our kids and my
nine year old little girl loved it, loved this movie.
But that first scene when they're singing him Happy Birthday
and they come in and he's in the tub. All
of us were like why, why why except my wife,
and she's like, I think it's a cultural thing. And
every single one was like, no, it's not it's not
a cultural thing. I don't think that any culture does that.
Speaker 1: What what eighteen and sixteen and fourteen year olds bargain
on their dad taking a bit?
Speaker 2: Right? A bath?
Speaker 1: A bath?
Speaker 2: I mean why a number one? Why is he taking
a bath in the morning? Right? I mean who, I
don't know guys that take baths generally at all, but
in the morning. No. What And you.
Speaker 1: Can clearly see there's not a lot of bubbles. No,
the bubbles are gone.
Speaker 2: No, you got a little turtle head flowing to the top,
and it's just no, not comfortable.
Speaker 3: Leave.
Speaker 1: The weapon would be exposed.
Speaker 2: I mean, any other human being that I know if
this happened, would be grabbing the towel, like, what the
heck are you doing?
Speaker 1: To get out out of here? We wanted to say
happy birthday. You can tell me later.
Speaker 2: So then let's go back to diehard called action machine
guns firing and women screaming with tops off and all
kinds of stuff. And he's got this split second to
get out of the room because he's just been making
fists with his toes. He's got no shoes, barefooted, but
he does grab his gun. That's a man with priorities
right there.
Speaker 1: That's right, grab your gun, worry about your shoes later.
First of all, I just want to say point it
out right out of the gate. John McLean's attitude about
attending his wife's company Christmas party. It's probably the same
as yours of mine. Yeah, how soon before we can
duck out of here? What is the shortest amount of
time I'm obligated to be here?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Okay? This is the eighties, and I know that we
would like to say this, but there are three playmates
in the movie die Hard. Okay, So there's three playmates.
Speaker 2: In the movie. Okay.
Speaker 1: One of them is the topless girl at the very beginning,
which that's the scene I've always kind of got to
put my hand over my son's eyes. There's one. I'll
give you one, one playmate right there.
Speaker 2: Right the story behind that one, by the way, Okay,
she got that part.
Speaker 1: She got that part because Joel Silver was interested in
dating her.
Speaker 2: With the quotations with the fingers right there. In order
to this radio not TV, we get to see the
quotation mark.
Speaker 1: In order to convince her to date him, he had
to give her a part in a movie. And that's
her part.
Speaker 2: What a payoff, all right.
Speaker 1: So she was in Playboy, all.
Speaker 2: Right, that's number one, all right, Number two, Well you
got the girl who's the actual Playboy magazine that's on
the wall.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. That's November of nineteen eighty seven, play
Playboy centerfold on the wall right there.
Speaker 2: And that boying sound. I got to capture that boying my.
Speaker 1: Girls girls, all right? One more, The World's Greatest Action
movie had three playmates that barely get noticed.
Speaker 2: Only hot girl f not that the girls at the
party weren't nice looking girls, and there were the police
officers were nice looking girls, not police officers. Girl at
the airport.
Speaker 1: Girl at the airport, ding Ding ding Ding named all
three of them. Good job, Google's search all right, back
on track.
Speaker 2: Okay. So then the call to action for Riggs and
Mertaw obviously is Huntsucker. Right. Huntsacker is like, you've got
to get him and you've got to kill him, right,
you gotta.
Speaker 1: Kill him, you gotta do you gotta kill him. You
gotta find him and kill him.
Speaker 2: Come on, you'll find him, you'll find I mean, you've
killed him. You can do that, you owe me, right,
And so this is where we see the big differing
dynamic between Merton Riggs, because Riggs, I mean Shane Black toxic.
I've heard him say this five times. Riggs is the
monster that gets put away until we need him. Right.
He talks about the gentrification of America and how people
live their happy little lives in suburbia and know that
the war is over, and this guy is the only
guy that really knows that the war is still going on.
We've got two veterans here, and by the way, John
McClain was also a veteran like this was. It was
originally supposed to be a three act movie where the
first act is in New York and you find out
about his veteran status and you really developed the character.
So it's interesting they eliminated that whole thing. Okay, but anyway,
these old war veterans, some of them, obviously they've got
the sniper mentality of some people just need to die, right,
And obviously Riggs is still in that world have a
nice day, and so he's this Frankenstein that the rest
of society wants to hide and put away until evil
comes back into their lives in the middle of suburbia,
and then it's time to get Frankenstein out and say
we need you to save us right now. And so
when Huntsackers like you've got to kill him, you've got
to kill him, Roger Murtaw is like, we're going to
do this by the rules, and we're going to get him,
We're going to rest him, We're going to protect you
and Riggs. First thing he sees from these guys is
Huntsacker getting sniped from the helicopter.
Speaker 1: Which is a great scene by the way. I don't
know if you know this or not, mister Joshuas shoots
Huntsecker from his helicopter, yes, which Riggs doesn't notice shows up.
I mean, it's just kind of appears.
Speaker 2: That's that's a weird thing, for sure.
Speaker 1: But the bullet goes through him and through the carton
of eggnog that he's holding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I.
Speaker 1: Guess this is from The Manchurian Candidate. Oh okay, which
was a Frank Sinatra movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that movie.
Speaker 1: Okay, hang on one second. D One of the things they
talk about in the movie is that Riggs is a
sharp shooter from the war right. That was his background.
He was nineteen years old and is one of the
great marksmen in the Vietnam War.
Speaker 2: Right when I was nineteen, I did a guy in
Laos from a thousand yards out a rifle shot in
high wind. Maybe eight or even ten guys in the
world could have made that shot. So the only thing
I ever could I have one.
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, I read up on the scene where Riggs
is hiding in the desert and Murta goes to meet
the bad guys who's going to try and get ran back,
and he pulls out the hand grena and all that stuff.
So Riggs is in the weeds shooting this rifle and
he's dropping bad guys left and right. I don't know
if you know this or not, but that rifle, that
very rifle was designed for a specific purpose. The nineteen
seventy two Olympics, when those terrorists took the Israeli Olympic
athletes hostage. Yeah, the swat team or whoever arrived to
kind of deal with that situation was lamenting the fact
that they didn't have any sharpshooters and they didn't have
any guns that were good enough. And so that gun
that mel Gibson used in that scene was a specifically
designed as a quick, accurate from long range to take
out bad guys due to that Olympic terrorist incident.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Okay, that's awesome. Okay, So Merta wanting to play
by the rules is kind of his refusal to go
into the world of Frankenstein, to go into this mass killing.
And he keeps trying to keep trying to get him
not to kill people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I used it. That was ooh, still alive.
Speaker 2: Now we questioned him.
Speaker 1: You know why we questioned him because I got him
in the lake.
Speaker 2: I didn't shoot him full the hole to try to
jump off a building. Where's no fair. The building guy lived.
Speaker 1: Now whatever, be no killing, no killing?
Speaker 2: Right? Have you met anybody that you haven't killed?
Speaker 1: I haven't killed you yet.
Speaker 2: Don't do me no favor. And then John McLean's refusal
of the call. He's not trying to be Rambow, right,
He's trying to get the cops.
Speaker 1: He runs and hides. Yes, he runs, he pulls the
fire alarm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's trying to get people to come help, the
people who should be helping. He's trying to get to
come help, and he can't get him to come.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, he wants the fireman to show up so he
can kiss their fin Dalmatians.
Speaker 2: So you've got this very interesting thing that he's working
against both the obvious enemies and against what should be
the good guys, what should be the authorities. Right, he's
working against both of them. Both of them are against him.
Speaker 3: Attention, whoever you are, This channel is reserved for emergency
calls only.
Speaker 2: Sound like I'm warned a pizza. That's right.
Speaker 1: He's pretty unappreciated glass, Okay.
Speaker 2: And then we talked about the fact that die Hard
is sort of a buddy cop movie.
Speaker 1: Right, I would say so, but yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2: But it's interesting these two movies. If you call Diehard
a buddy cop movie, they are like number two and
number three of the buddy cop genre. Number one you
want to guess what do you think it is?
Speaker 1: The number one?
Speaker 2: First? No? No, no, first, Like we're we've the buddy cop
genre starts. Where do you think it starts? Man, I
don't know. We get forty eight hours?
Speaker 1: Oh good, call Stephen Desusa.
Speaker 2: Yes, and so both Jeb Stewart and Shane Black both
pointed forty eight hours and say this was the beginning
of the cop movie. A lot of people will say
lethal weapon, but forty eight hours is really the first one.
Speaker 1: I can see that.
Speaker 2: I can see that. And so you've got Al Powell
and you've got John McClain, and obviously Al is there
as kind of a mentor to help kind of guide him.
Not that he's like wise, but just that he's a
voice of reason and support when it appears that the
whole world is against him. Now, the question for me
to you is who is the mentor between Riggs and Murta.
I don't know, what do you think? I think it's both,
as much as you can cheat that answer, because it's
just not in the next movie.
Speaker 1: Shoot.
Speaker 2: Okay, So Murta is trying to be the mentor for Riggs, right,
He's trying to assure him that there that there can
be a better way. You know, Riggs has gone into
full crazy and is just hanging on by a thread.
Speaker 1: Hey, look, friend, people either think I'm suicidal, in which
case I'm aft and nobody wants to work with me,
or I'm trying to draw a psycho pension, in which
case I'm aft and nobody wants to work with me. Basically,
I'm ft. I don't want to work with it, Hey, don't.
Speaker 2: I ain't got no choice. Yes, we both aft.
Speaker 1: You could do this all day, right, Okay, Hey, one
thing I want to talk about as we're moving through
the plot. I'm sorry, no, leave the weapon. There are
three scenes that introduced Rigs.
Speaker 2: Okay, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: One didn't make the movie, but it's in the director's cut.
And so you have the Rigs where he's at home.
He's bare naked and drinking last Night's.
Speaker 2: Be when everybody saw in the theaters back in nineteen
eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Clearly he's sad and depressed and messed up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: Then you have the other one where he's at the school.
This is on the director's cut. He shows up, there's
a school shooter.
Speaker 2: There's like a snipe sniper yep.
Speaker 1: And he everybody's ducking for cover. Rigs walks out in
the middle of daylight, right, and he says, I'm still here.
A hole guy tries to shoot him and Riggs drops him.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, let's have miss a couple of times. Like,
he doesn't even start shopping, he's shooting immediately back. He
just stands there, just trying to let a cigarette all time.
Speaker 1: It's the equivalent of Rambo screwing his explosive arrow tips
in while the guys are trying to shoot him, he's
just getting ready.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, right, so.
Speaker 1: That was in the director's cut. Then there is a
deleted scene Riggs is at a bar and these three
robbers try to work him over.
Speaker 2: And we talked about that a little bit last time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so interesting sound quite forget that I wanted to
be that dark, Like the bar scene was too dark,
and then the sniper scene was too immediately killing a guy.
Speaker 2: They wanted the character to not be quite so dark
as Shane Black had written him, because they wanted there
to be hope. You know that. You look at those
two scenes and there's a guy with no hope, and
so what you have then instead is the Christmas Tree
slash drug deal scene, which is fantastic. And you told
me about one of the guys who's doing the drug deal,
the very last guy to survive. He's like he's lost
his mind, he's got the crazy eyes and he's threatening
him at the end the long airage.
Speaker 1: Okay, yes, I absolutely learned this and I was blown away.
So the Christmas Tree lot where Riggs is doing this
drug deal and he's paying a hundred bucks for all
of the cocaine in the world and they're like one
hundred thousand. I love the line where he's like, they're like,
you ain't a real cop, and that's a real bad
dumb a real cop and this is a real kick gun.
And he says it was such intensity, I'm not going
to try to match it. But the last guy left,
the guy where he's like, hey, shoot this guy, just
shoot this guy. That guy's name is Blackie, Dammit, damn it, dammit.
His real name is John Ketis. He is the father
of Anthony Ketis, lead singer of Red Hot Chili Patrick.
Speaker 2: Of course, of course they look so much alike. That's awesome.
How about that? Yes, okay, So the original question is
Murtaw the mentor or his Riggs the mentor? It looks
like Roger Murta until when they take his daughter, Riggs
becomes the mentor. Riggs has to be the one that says,
but we got to do it my way, we got
to kill him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great point, great point. And then I would say
that Riggs kind of gives that mentorship back at the
end of the movie. Okay, Frankenstein goes back into the
castle at the end.
Speaker 2: Of the movie, right, Okay, So then We've got two
guys who cannot be good cops. They can be good cops.
You've got the scene with Tony. You won't hurt me.
Police officers have rules.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what my captain keeps telling me.
Speaker 2: Smack. Now, even at that point, he wasn't trying to
kill Tony, right, that was just a happy.
Speaker 1: Accident, really, that was he was very lucky.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yes. And then with you know, Riggs is obviously
got a bad habit of killing people too quick. And
so Murta is like, can we can we just question
the guy? I shot him in the leg. It's still alive,
you can question him. Okay, let'st I.
Speaker 1: Want to back up a step because right before Murtaz
shoots that guy in the leg, let's back up a second.
There's a suicide jumper that Riggs goes up to help
down right. His job is to bring him don and
Merto says, look, no guns, no jiu jitsu, just bring
him down. That's his instruction. So Riggs, as we know, suicidal.
This guy is clearly suicidal. He goes up and says, hey,
you want a cigarette, and when the guy reaches for
a cigarette, he cuffs him. And that's the do you
really want to jump? Okay, And if you watch that scene,
there is a blooper in that scene that bugs the
crap out of me. Really, So here's the deal. When
Riggs pulls the guy off e, they're gonna jump. As
they jump, there's a slow motion where both guys are
clearly stunt men and they're both leaping. Their handcuffs break,
oh and they link hands. They like lock hands, and
I'm like, guys, can we can we try it again? No?
Speaker 2: CGI, and you can't yea. So it was still the
best take.
Speaker 1: Every time I watch it, I'm like that those cuffs
break instantly and they hold hands all the way down. So,
but that scene is great because you learn that Riggs
really is suicidal, right.
Speaker 2: Because what follows immediately after that is Murta offering him
his gun, trying to get him to prove that he's
really not crazy. But what he does instead prove I mean,
gets his thumb caught in the hammer of the gun
as the trigger gets pulled.
Speaker 1: That and I watched that with my son. He didn't
catch that until this last viewing. Yeah, and when he
sticks his hand, the hammer hits home and pinches his finger.
Speaker 2: Yep. So yeah, I mean half second later and he's boom,
he's brains on the wall like full metal jacket. Yep. Okay,
all right, you're ready to talk enemies, Yes, okay, we
have in both circumstances, a bad guy and a bad
guy's number two, which might be worse than the bad
guy himself.
Speaker 1: True.
Speaker 2: Right, You've got Hans and you've got Carl. Hans' job
is to keep things in order. He's not concerned about
John McLean insomuch as getting revenge on him or anything
like that. He just wants to keep him from up
the plan. You've got to stick to the plan, right,
stick to the plan. And then Carl I want blood.
Speaker 1: Carl doesn't want neutral, he wants dead.
Speaker 2: And then for lethal weapon, we of course have the
General General Mcowster, that's right, who is ultra calm in
all circumstances. Right, and then we've got Joshua, who is
reserved in control but has the crazy behind his eyes,
which is why Gary Bucy was the perfect choice.
Speaker 1: He was awesome that he's that albino jack rabbit son
of a bitch that shoots rigs.
Speaker 2: Right, okay, And so the distinction is on the enemies
here though, is in die Hard, You've got a whole
slew of bad guys, and they did really a very
good job of giving each of these what would normally
be just kind of faceless henchman names and personalities.
Speaker 1: It's really true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, John is also, as I said just before, working
against Dwayne T. Robinson and Johnson and Johnson and Thornberg. Yeah.
I mean, he's got everybody in the world against him.
Here's the interesting part. You've got well trained German mercenaries,
and then you have well trained American mercenaries, and you know,
Diard versus Leath a weapon. But the superiors don't seem
to be against Mertaw and Riggs in this movie. It
kind of happens that way in the following movies a
little bit, not so much this one, and the other
police officers are helping out like this is. It's definitely
they've got some support, whereas John is acting completely on
his own, well except for Ellis. He's gonna help him out.
Speaker 1: John Boy, Hey, John Boy, Hey, you know one of
the things I was gonna mention. You kind of brought
it up there. But in the Lethal Weapon movies, the
LA cops are not incompetent. In Diehard, the LA Cops
are completely incompetent.
Speaker 2: Certainly Detective Dwayne t. Robinson, Well and Al Palell drives
a car.
Speaker 1: Like the turning a car and that Swiss cheese. Yeah,
but you got Dwayne t Robinson. The guy's coming in
the front door, clueless guy who grabs the rose sticker
on who.
Speaker 2: The quarterback is? By the way, do we like THEO.
There's a lot of hate for the there and I
think THEO is absolutely hilarious. I love the fantastic When.
Speaker 1: He comes in his opening scene, he's like magic. This
is just to a c back to magic, over to
Kareem boom. Yeah, just he has that great interesting Hey
do you want to hear my Danny Glover invitation more
than anything in the world. Okay, I don't do invitations.
I got when invitation is very short. Danny Glover as
Roger Murta, Yes, hey, rigs, he riggs, thank you, thank you,
thank you. That's all he said, is like a fifty times.
Speaker 2: He does do that a lot. It doesn't do that
a lot. Okay, So what do you think is the
lowest point for these guys, Like, what's the lowest point
let's start with John mclan what's the lowest point in
the movie.
Speaker 1: When he's picking glass out of his bare feet.
Speaker 2: Totally agree, Totally agree.
Speaker 1: That's not an eighties tough man. When he drags himself
into the bathroom leaking blood everywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's that. I mean, have you ever stepped
on glass before? Oh? Yeah, hurts, Yeah, yes, it does.
Speaker 1: All things being equal, I would rather be in Philadelphia when.
Speaker 2: I step on glass. Yes, nice, nicely done. It is
a fly in the oit Mann. So at that point,
this is where he when he reaches that low point,
he has that moment of revelation where he realizes what
a jerk he's been to his wife. And this is
the thing he talked about Jeb Stu realizing whenever he
almost got you know what, it gets hit by the
what he thinks is a refrigerator box. I mean it
is a box, but it's just the box, right. He
thinks he's gonna die, having just had a fight with
his wife where he knows he's wrong and is never
going to have the opportunity to just say I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: The low point for Martin Riggs, Yeah, when he pulls
the trigger of the gun and murt Todd gets his handcut.
Speaker 2: By the hammer.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, like you said, half a second later, brains
on the wall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that for it to be truly the
lowest moment, there has to be the turnaround, Like, there
has to be the turnaround. And so I'm gonna say
after he's been tortured by the electric shock, because he's
just I mean, he's hanging defeated, he appears to be
dead and still manages to come back to life. And
I'll say this, the scene where he grabs the guy's
head with his legs is a bit absurd.
Speaker 1: It's absurd because the.
Speaker 2: Guy's just letting his hands. Really, this guy's just gonna
let his hands hang back.
Speaker 1: They need to register Riggs's ankles as leith.
Speaker 2: Right, And so I would say that also Murta's lowest
point is that same incident. Right, they're both captured, they're
both tortured or beaten, and his turnaround is I'm ready
to break the rules. Yeah, I'm ready to do whatever
it takes to get these guys.
Speaker 1: Hey. One of the things I want to point out,
just a little tidbit, go ahead, a little side tidbit. Yeah,
I don't know how to verify this, but there's a
scene right after the suicide jumper, Riggs pulls down the
suicide jumper. Yes, Murta uses a mobile phone to call
the psychiatrist and says, look, this guy's really crazy. She's like, absolutely,
he's crazy. You should not be around him when he blows.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: My understanding is that is the first on screen use
of a cellular phone.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to verify this. That's one of
the things I read.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: You know what the internet is?
Speaker 2: You get me to drive?
Speaker 1: No, you want a fresh cry?
Speaker 2: Okay? And then again another parallel, the Triumph saving a
kidnapped member of the family. Right, yeah, both movies. You
have a kidnapping. Both movies, the heroes are related to
the kidnap victim and have to save them and paying
frea fantastic No, it's amazing. Love it. So that brings
me to the death of the bad guys. So let's
talk about enemy death in lethal weapon. Okay, death number
one is the general, right, Murtag gets the general so
to speak. My who was it? I think Caleb was
watching my eleven year old It's like he doesn't even
get to shoot him. Right, That was that was an
interesting thing. You know, He's he dies kind of of
his own.
Speaker 1: He flips the car, the car's on fire, and there's
grenades laying around.
Speaker 2: Right. It's his it's his own instruments to put him
to death. And it's his own arrogance that puts him
to death because instead of like taking cover or backing
the car back into the garage, they're like, let's just
drive as fast as we can at this police officer
who has to have a gun at this point. Right,
but you see him break down. I mean that death
scene where he's just panicked. He's lost all composure.
Speaker 1: It's there's a grenade by my face, yep, and I
can't reach it. Yeah, hey, right before that scene, just
back up just one second. So Riggs does the lethal
ankles on. The torture guy comes in, takes over, shoots
some bad guys. Joshua and the general get away. Okay,
Now the pursuit is on at this point, and he
rescues Rhann and Mercha. Yes, when they come out, they
go to the heavy metal dance club whatever it is, right,
oh yeah, and he.
Speaker 2: Just starts blowing people away, right, and like, nobody notices
right after they shoot the bartender. That was another thing.
I was like, why did people not start until like
the fifth guy died.
Speaker 1: Riggs just walks out and just starts shooting people. Yeah, Now,
we as the audience just take for granted that those
are bad guys. Clearly it's a front.
Speaker 2: For They had a name tag on he said, bad guy.
It is all right.
Speaker 1: Riggs just walks out and blowing people away. Hey man,
we're closed.
Speaker 2: Boom boom boom. You don't have to go home, but
you can't stay. And then we have the death of Hans.
Speaker 1: The death of Hans.
Speaker 2: So we talked about these movies being cowboy movies, yes,
and we'll talk in a bit about them being Christmas movies. Yes.
But you've got the hero at the end of his rope,
and what does he do when he realizes he's only
got two bullets? Two bullets, two bullets and two bad guys. Yes,
so you have the perfect end to a cowboy movie,
a joke followed by a bullet in the head. It's awesome,
so awesome. So what does he do? He comes in
with the machine gun in his hand because he has
taped his revolver, although I know it's not a revolver.
Folks don't know. Write in to his back with tape
that says, season's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, more Christmas. Yes, yeah, absolutely, it's a
face off here it is. It's the show down.
Speaker 2: And to further emphasize the cowboy moviness of it all,
Huey Lewis gets the bullet in the head after in
the middle of his laugh jack funny joke. Actually, I
guess it's Hans that makes the joke. It is the
worst pronunciation of mother ever. What was it you said again? Oh? Yes, a.
Then Hans doesn't die right way. And of course the
damsel in distress has to be saved. And you know,
she's being pulled out of the window. And what is
it that won't release from her hand? It's that Rolex
watch for that job she got.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the one that Ellis was so intent on John
looking at the beginning.
Speaker 2: Yep, so has to release the rewards of her women's
lib so that the cowboy hero can save us.
Speaker 1: Right, quit your job, stay on with your husband.
Speaker 2: Is that the message? Yeah? Kind of is, right, kind
of is. But hey, you know what, that's part of
the reason that guys love this movie. All right. Well,
that does it for episode two of the Diehard Versus
Lethal Weapon.
Speaker 1: All right, d The good news is you don't have
to wait that long. We're actually going to release episode
three tomorrow. Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas.