Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to Episode 159 of Sneaky Dragon! This week on the show: confusion; a tribute to Aaron Eckhart; time to re-visit Repo Man and some Alex Cox appreciation; a rain of shit on 90’s Batman; super questions; Dr. Strange opinions; where the film John Wicks falls apart; in defense of Guardians of the Galaxy; downward trending: Agents of SHIELD vs Teen Wolf; more super stuff; Ian gets schooled; Ian plans his epic war epic; Dave explains the “Cliffhanger” Effect; Is Krypton future Earth; Dave the superfan; the Woody Allen test; and, finally, Ian comes to praise Ash vs. Evil Dead.
Thanks for listening.
Our thanks to Heather L. Gilbreath for the wonderful Sneaky Dragon “snowflake” or mandala pattern.
If you’d like to print out and colour your own Sneaky Mandala, please download your own copy here and get out your DoodleArt felts!
Please leave your movie comments below: a film overwhelmed by its beginning or a film saved by an unexpectedly great ending. Also, a film you’d like to fix by changing one thing about that film.
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159? I could’ve sworn you did that already, LOL. Obviously a typo, I’ve done that myself many times
Second time in that last while. I must be having trouble believing that we’ve done this many!
Film overwhelmed by its beginning:
*KRAMPUS- starts really well, ends with a whimper. The fact that it’s a PG-rated Xmas horror film means it can’t ever really cut loose
*INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE- kickass opening with River Phoenix, then a lacklustre rest of the movie.
IMITATION GAME- starts strong, but trips over itself to avoid showing its main gay character doing anything remotely gay.
Film that starts poorly and rallies for an awesome ending:
*SPEED- basically it has 3 chapters: Elevator, Bus and Subway. Bus part kicks arse.
*SMILLA’S SENSE OF SNOW- cool film, but really gets amazeballs when it gets on the icebreaker
Film that would be fixed by changing one thing:
*I AM NUMBER 4- replace the heroine that the hero has ZERO chemistry with, with the male best friend he has HEAPS of chemistry with (see also BOURNE LEGACY, TROY, CLASH OF THE TITANS remake and the upcoming PASSENGERS)
Hey Ian and Dave,
I just got your care package. Thanks for the comics and stickers and stuff. I’ll send you some CD’s and stickers sometime of stuff that I’ve made.
“We’re So Jar” is great! It’s a really unique experience reading the dialogue because I can so clearly hear your voices in my head from years of the podcast.
“Dave’s Collector’s Corner” is a terrific idea for a comic! Fellow archivists and nerds would greatly benefit from any further installments of that.
I really liked Ian’s first sad story. The pages in my book were stuck together somehow, so I didn’t see the second page of that story until I had already flipped through the book like three times. So originally I thought that it was just a full-on dark humor story with no payoff. I got extra surprised by the twist lol!
Great stuff. Keep on sneakin.
-Ben
Thanks, Ben! My big worry is that the packages won’t arrive so thanks for letting me know.
Glad you enjoyed We’re So Jar. Thanks for contributing to the Q&A show. We appreciate it!
David
Yeah, I agree that Rachel McAdams didn’t get much to do in Dr. Strange. She did the best she could with the role as written, but the story would’ve unfolded the same way without her character. It’s like the screenwriters said, okay, we’ll make her a doctor and an ex-lover so you can’t accuse us of writing a clichéd “girlfriend” role. But her acting talents were a bit wasted. The roles that Natalie Portman played in Thor and Gwenyth Paltrow played in Iron Man had an effect on the plots in their movies.
Did you catch the warning against distracted driving in the end credits? Nice touch.
James Cameron’s The Abyss is the movie I’d rewrite the ending for. It’s a great tension-filled action adventure with strong male and female characters. But the ending is a real let-down. Maybe because it’s so much like the end of Close Encounters, right down to cheesy alien lifeforms with heads and a gigantic ship. And the special edition ending you can watch on YouTube is way too preachy. The special effects and sci-fi elements of the movie are strong, but it’s the realistic underwater action and human conflict that made it The Abyss a really great movie…up to the last five minutes. I would’ve had the deep sea inhabitants still save Ed Harris – maybe let him get a glimpse of a vast underwater colony before sending him and the drilling crew back to the surface in some organic pressurized rescue pod. If the roles were reversed and humans had to return an alien somewhere, they wouldn’t send it home in an aircraft carrier, would they? The scene that couldn’t be topped by the rest of the movie for me was when Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Ed Harris’ characters are caught outside of the underwater drilling base in a broken-down leaking mini-sub with only one dive suit and only enough oxygen to get one person back. She opts to let herself drown, gambling that her ex-husband can revive her back at the base. I thought it was a great metaphor for trust in a relationship.
Yay, awesome snowflake art!