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 Diehard 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 useholes coming in the rear standard to
cover formation.
Speaker 1: It's Christmas time in Hollis. Please, Mom's cook a.
Speaker 2: Chicken in college.
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 in to 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 got out what, well we think is.
Speaker 2: A pretty good product. 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. 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, it is.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: Go, all right. Our executive producer on this episode is
Chris walked 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 YouTube 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 Jim 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
Ultimate 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 type of the nasty producer. I love
watching this guy because if anybody ever complains about somebody
or something back and was 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 so far 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 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 which 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.
Speaker 2: Yep, for sure.
Speaker 1: 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 that
blew me away.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: I don't want to try and top you right on
the top, and this is what we're about. 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.
Two 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 Chevy Chase House.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: 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 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.
Speaker 2: Appropriate that they're both Christmas movies though.
Speaker 1: It absolutely it is, and we will tell you why
in just a little while. Right, do we want to
get into the plot we're kind of, yeah, let's jump
into the plot.
Speaker 2: Let's let's bounce. Do you really want to jump?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that every time with it.
Speaker 2: That's fine with me. Okay. 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 with your toes?
Speaker 2: Well? 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.
I'll coming out of the Gate.
Speaker 2: And then with Leith a 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.
Speaker 1: Maybe you touched on it.
Speaker 2: 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 there's 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 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.
Speaker 1: No, what And you can clearly see there's not a
lot of bubbles. No, the bubbles are gone.
Speaker 2: No, you got a little turtlehead flowing to the top.
And it's just no, not comfortable, Lea.
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 their tops off and
all kind 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.
Speaker 1: He's got no shoes, he's barefooted.
Speaker 2: But he does grab his gun. Does that's a man
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 mcclean'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
in the movie.
Speaker 2: Okay. One of them is the.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: There's one. I'll give you one, one playmate right there,
right maybe 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.
Speaker 2: Her with the quotations with the fingers right there. In
order to this radio and 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 right.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: My 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.
Speaker 1: Girls, not police officers.
Speaker 2: Girl at the airport, girl.
Speaker 1: At the airport, ding ding ding Ning 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 kill him.
Speaker 1: What you gotta do, You gotta kill him.
Speaker 2: You gotta find him and kill him. 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 got two
veterans here, and by the way, John McLain 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 them, 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 Joshua shoots
Huntsecker from his helicopter, which Riggs doesn't notice shows. I mean,
it's just kind of appears.
Speaker 2: That's weird. That's a weird thing, for sure.
Speaker 1: But the bullet goes through him and through the carton
of eggdog that he's holding. Yeah, and I 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 3: 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, the only thing I
ever could have one.
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, I read up on the scene where Riggs
is hiding in the desert and Murtad goes to meet
the bad guys who's going to try and get ran back,
and he pulls out the hand gerna 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 keeps trying to get him
not to kill people. Yeah, I used it. That was ooh,
still alive. Now we questioned them.
Speaker 1: You know why we questioned him because I got him
in the lake.
Speaker 2: I didn't shoot him from the hole to try to
jump off a building where it'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, which should be the authorities. Right, he's
working against both of them. Both of them are against him. Attention,
whoever you are, this channel is reserved for emergency calls only.
Lay sound like I'm wannering a pizza.
Speaker 1: That's right, He's pretty unappreciated.
Speaker 2: Glass. And then we talked about the fact that die
Hard is sort of a buddy cop movie. Right I
would say so, but yeah, go ahead. 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?
Speaker 1: Man, I don't know what you get?
Speaker 2: 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 interesting cop movie. A lot of people will
say lethal weapon, but forty eight Hours is really the.
Speaker 1: First one I can see that. I can see that.
Speaker 2: 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 for me to you is who is
the mentor between Riggs and Murta.
Speaker 1: I don't know, what do you think?
Speaker 2: I think it's both, as much as you can cheat
that answer, because it's not the next movie. Shoot. 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 ft and nobody wants to work with me.
Or I'm trying to draw a psycho pension, in which
case I'm a ft and nobody wants to work with me. Basically,
I'm ft.
Speaker 2: I don't want to work with it.
Speaker 1: Hey, don't.
Speaker 2: I ain't got no choice. Yes, we both aft.
Speaker 1: Do this all day, right, 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. Okay, oh yeah, one didn't make the movie.
Bits 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. Yeah, okay.
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. There's like a snipe sniper yeap, 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 towards the guy 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. Yeah okay, right, so 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. So can you quite figure that out?
Speaker 2: I wanted to be that dark, Like the bar scene
was too dark, and then the sniper scene was too
immediately killing a guy. 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 one hundred Bucks for all
of the cocaine in the world, and they're like hundred thousand.
I love the line where he's like, they're like, you
ain't a real cop.
Speaker 2: And that's a real bad dumb a real cop.
Speaker 3: And they said a real pink gun.
Speaker 1: 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. Damn it,
damn it, damn His real name is John Ketis. He
is the father of Anthony Ketis, lead singer of Red
Hot Chili Patrick.
Speaker 2: Oh, of course, of course they look so much alike.
That's awesome. How about that? Yes, okay, So the original
question is martaw the mentor or his Riggs the mentor.
It looks like Roger Martin 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 mentor ship back at
the end of the movie. Okay, Frankenstein goes back into
the castle.
Speaker 2: At the end 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, pficers. 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 accident, really
was He was very lucky? 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 shot him in
the leg. It's still alive, we can question him.
Speaker 1: Okay, Let's I 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 down, and Mertos 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?
Speaker 2: You really? Okay?
Speaker 1: 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, we can we try
it again?
Speaker 2: No, CGI, and you can't. 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.
His brain's on the wall like full metal jacket. Yep. Okay,
all right, you're ready to talk enemies, Yes, okay, we have,
in full circumstances, a bad guy and a bad guy's
number two, which might be worse than the bad guy himself. True. 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 sing 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 mccowster, 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 Busey was the perfect choice.
Speaker 1: He was awesome that he's that albino jack rabbit son
of a bitch that shoots rigs right.
Speaker 2: 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,
y Diard versus lethal weapon. But the superiors don't seem
to be against Marta and Riggs in this movie. It
kind of happens that way in the following movies a
little bit, but 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 going to
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 as well, and Al Powell
drives a car like.
Speaker 1: The tournament car and that Swiss cheese. Uh yeah, but
you got Dwayne t Robinson. The guy's coming in the
front door, clueless guy who grabs the rose sticker on his.
Speaker 2: 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 ac 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,
he rigs, he riggs, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2: That's all he said, is like a fifty times. 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 McLean. 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?
Speaker 1: Yeah, hurts, Yeah, yes it does, all things being equal,
I would rather be in Philadelphia.
Speaker 2: When I step on glass. Yes, nice, nicely done. It
is a fly in the weight man. 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 Steward 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 going to 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. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The low point for Martin Riggs. Yeah, when he pulls
the trigger of the gun and Mr Todd gets his
handcut by the hammer. Okay, okay, like you said, half
a second later, brain's 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 going to
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 guy's.
Speaker 2: Just letting his hands out. Really, this guy's just gonna
let his hands hang back.
Speaker 1: They need to register Riggs's ankles as lethal.
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, little side tidbit. 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, it'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.
Speaker 1: Amazing, love it.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: 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 merch On. Yes,
when they come out, they go to the heavy metal
dance club whatever it is, right, Oh yeah, and he
just starts blowing people away, right, and like nobody notices
right after they shoot the bartender.
Speaker 2: That was another thing. I was like, why did people
not start running 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 Dagon, he said, bad guy.
Speaker 1: It is all right, Riggs just walks out and blowing
people away. Hey, man, we're closed.
Speaker 2: Boo boo 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.
Speaker 1: It's awesome, so awesome.
Speaker 2: 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 or 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?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yes, ah. Then Hans doesn't die right away, 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, Yeah, the.
Speaker 1: One that Ellis was so intent on John looking at.
Speaker 2: At the beginning. 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.