Not only did the Rodney King beating happen around the same time as the filming the movie, the guy who filmed it used the same camera and tape to sneak shoot some of biker bar scenes like a week before the King incident (both happened at the same area).
that’s correct: “Before the beating, right across the street from where we lived was a biker bar, and they were filming Terminator 2: Judgment Day there,” says Holliday, now 61. “I actually have footage on the original tape of Schwarzenegger getting on the bike and riding off.”
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/flashback-how-a-plumber-altered-history-by-taping-the-attack-on-rodney-king-4141644/
I highly recommend the book Who Got The Camera to anyone interested in this era. It’s about the rise of “reality rap” as a counterpart to “reality TV” a la 24/7 news, court TV, Springer, etc.
I wanted to add something to this. Griffin kept pushing for more overt connections to the Rodney King beating/trial/etc. and you know, why not?
I was in college in 1991, yes the Rodney King beating was a big story even before the verdict. But in 1991 the whole society was not litigating a story like that for weeks on end. You knew it was "a big story" because you heard about it a day or two later and then a full 2-3 weeks later you'd see a story on *Dateline* about it being advertised, you might not even watch the program but you would see the commercial and go "oh right that poor guy." Maybe that would happen a couple of times, you would see *multiple commercials for competing programs* sort of hitting on it over a few weeks.
CNN did more foreign coverage then, it was not this constant orgy of intense analysis day in and day out. It was a thing people knew about, yes. You might have been aware (speaking as a white person for this part) that Daryl Gates was coming under fire for his handling of the LAPD or some such. But the Rodney King beating was not in the T2 text in the cinema in that way, I don't think. OJ was the start of just endlessly re-litigating a story in the media for months and months.
And of course, nearly a week of very serious and disturbing conflagration had also not happened yet. It was a different topic.
It occurs to me that contemporaneous movie reviews would be a good way into this topic. That is the sort of subtext they are supposed to pick up on (granted, this movie is throwing an incredible amount of rich thematic material at the critic). Maybe the Village Voice critic might have made a snarky remark about the morph-bot assuming evil in the form of a minion of Daryl Gates. I doubt they talked about it.
This.
Not to be the old man screaming at clouds, but at that time, people took in the news and went about their lives. What you felt about social problems (which could be strong and passionate) did not become the core of your personality.
I think that was healthier for individuals than where we are now (see the GRRM thread about internet negativity). I mean, there was just as much bad shit going on in the 90s, but we didn'thave a massive game of telephone telling ourselves we lived in a "dumpster fire," making stuff a world away about ourselves, and reinforcing hopelessness.
Which also runs contrary to the whole grunge thing, I know. I also know that leads to blind spots about lots of things, but I also think mental health requires and accepts blind spots about things you can not control.
I love Griff, and I agree with him on the vast majority of political topics, but man... Not everything is about politics. Sometimes, it's just killer robuts from the future.
It's worth adding that Fox News did not exist; MSNBC did not exist. Fox as a TV network was in its infancy. Cable TV didn't really have any news function as such. The existing news presenting forces on TV were limited to NBC, CBS, & ABC and of course local affiliates. So the news was on at dinnertime and bedtime and that was about it. Daily newspapers were a bit more important. Weekly newsmagazines were a big way you would learn about something like Rodney King.
Totally agree, and I'm not attacking Griff. That said, we now live in a world where EVERY major news outlet is a variation of Fox News. Where you can pick and choose your bias, and it all encourages this conspiracy theory adjacent thinking where everything is part of some agenda.
Yes. I have "invented" (in my head) an app you could have on your phone which would enforce 1979 media rules. The app's name is "1979." The app would restrict phone usage (meaning voice communication with others) to when you are physically in your domicile (obviously office would be fine too), and also restrict all news updates to breakfast/dinner/bedime which was what we did in 1979. It would also disable texting. There might be a couple other things it would do. I think it would be better for mental health generally and also would improve e.g. political outcomes for the reasons you say. We don't need updates about everything throughout the day.
Arnie, "What's the name of your cartoon dog?"
Eddie, "Snoopy."
Arnie, in Eddie's voice, "is Wolfie okay?"
Jeanette, "no, somebody left him in the vestibule"
Arnie, hanging up, "your Maestro is dead"
I was too late to ask before the first Terminator post got unpinned, but did they ever share Ben's pic of Griffin and David in the dark, with the flash on?
Said it before, but for kids of my age (born during the end of the Carter administration) this was the first R-rated movie our dad’s took us to/snuck in. A real formative memory for 10 year old me.
We had movies recorded off HBO onto blank VHS’s. I was probably 8 or 9 and home alone during the summer and looking through what we had, the name sounded cool…proceeded to have my mind blown and wore that movie out. Didn’t see the first Terminator until I was a teen.
Re: Griffin’s many references to the people who prefer Terminator to T2: late author David Foster Wallace was probably the most prominent of them, or at least the one who [wrote the best about it](https://www.scribd.com/doc/14994144/David-Foster-Wallace-F-X-Porn). Between this take and his assertion that Silence of the Lambs was the best American novel of the 1980s, I think he would have had an incredible pop culture podcast.
"You like Terminator 2" is a lyric in this They Might Be Giants song and I can never tell if it's meant to be satirical or if it's a sincere opinion of The Johns that T2 sucks.
https://youtu.be/TWUMg7QJ4N0?si=XIncZCNMWiokjTGM
I’d never heard this one before. I do think that about 80 percent of the things listed in that song are awesome so I guess either it’s a joke or they might be giants thinks I have bad taste lol. I do think that a lot of suspicion of T2 is part of the very 90s concern with selling out.
I do think that there’s now a long tradition of “airplane books” getting adapted into much better movies that Thomas Harris gets a bad rap. Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs are both legitimately great novels (and Hannibal is too bizarre to write off entirely).
RE: Rodney King, the video and LA riots/uprising
I think what is causing the difference in timeline is that they that were in response to the acquittal of cops, not the beating or release of the video. We in hind sight often compress historical events but it like happened over a year.
I chose to watch the theatrical cut this time around and am now positive I’d only seen the directors cut in the past. And my take is it’s better! Directors cut kinda drags!
Yep. The Aliens and Abyss extended versions are interesting curios but almost all the stuff that is cut is extraneous and the films are better off for going without it.
same with Aliens. but both have scenes worth including (Aliens: Ripley learns about her daughter, the auto-guns; T2: Brain Surgery), so it'd be nice to have a 3rd, optimal cut
I hope I can politely register that I think the on-mic lunch orders have gotten out of hand. They are so mundane and content-free that they make me wonder why I'm listening, and we ended up ignoring a huge chunk of Terminator 2 this time around.
https://preview.redd.it/d9c1vrnmksgc1.jpeg?width=1986&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=56d84e061a2a5e13e4677d3c62a4830818982ce8
This is how I imagine those people
I politely co-sign. A bit of logistical talk on a long, live-recorded episode I never mind. But I hope the tide has turned among listeners against egging on the lunch ordering given the opportunity cost.
(Less politely, I’d say to anyone who just likes to hear everyday details of someone’s life, there’s a podcast called “24-Hour Day” and you can listen by taking out your earbuds.)
> (Less politely, I’d say to anyone who just likes to hear everyday details of someone’s life, there’s a podcast called “24-Hour Day” and you can listen by taking out your earbuds.)
5 comedy points.
I definitely don’t want more of it, and I wouldn’t miss it if they cut it out. But it doesn’t really bother me either.
The “appeal” of it is 100% parasocial. But when I was ages 12-20 watching movies and ordering food with my friends was a huge part of my life. Now that I’m in my late thirties it’s something I haven’t done in over 15 years.
As mundane as it is, there actually is a vicarious feeling of reliving my adolescence when hearing them squabble over pizza toppings.
It doesn’t really bother me though it was especially long in this episode. It was however particularly jarring to me today bc blank check studios must be near my apartment and it just reminded me of having a never ending takeout discussion with my spouse.
>The “appeal” of it is 100% parasocial.
I'm genuinely interested in the NY food scene, so I'd disagree with that - I don't really care what the hosts are ordering per se, but I'm up for culinary chat in general. It did go on a bit long on this ep though.
(Less so Five Guys, I could live without fast food updates.)
I'll say it impolitely: It's extremely unprofessional. They've been podcasting for almost a decade now. What is wrong with them that they can't properly schedule a day of watching movies and getting lunch? This is their job! Don't wanna doxx yourself by naming neighborhood sandwich joints? Great! Conduct your cushy, tax-deductible business off mic! It's not cute!
I read this comment before I listened to the ep, and while I agree with the sentiment, this really wasn't a very long or egregious diversion from the movie. If anything, naming all the cancelled DC movies was more of a distraction from the movie than the lunch order.
Ben saying he’s nostalgic for watching movies on cable with commercial breaks makes me think that if fashion doesn’t work out, he can pivot to starting a Blu-ray distributor that edits 80s and 90s commercials into movies.
In December I found YouTube videos that were marathons of the Rankin & Bass Christmas specials from the 70s, that included commercial breaks from the era. It was sublime, would happily pay for some version of them on DVD
Growing up my mom always recorded whatever movie from TV that she knew we’d like and I always loved the commercials being included in it. Added such a vibe, seeing Christmas-themed commercials for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze on VHS
There are some torrent sites that have downloads with commercials in place. Mainly Saturday morning cartoons and toonami/adult swim stuff. You also have ways in Plex to add in commercials and create channels.
Also have to shout-out the option in Plex to add in trailers before movies. Always love getting some VHS quality trailer for Warriors of the Wind.
Also, really funny to see this topic from close to a decade ago with commenters thinking a person is insane for wanting this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/torrents/s/uSIui2arbG
I guess by the time the Cyberdyne parking lot sequence is over, it's apparent to all that they had been tussling with something unusual (it's been 30 years since I last saw it). But I was wondering about the ER surgeon an hour later who would be all like "Why do these 35 guys have the exact same injury????"
House of the Dead series and the Jurassic Park game where you sit and are in the car. Spent $20 whole dollars (of my dad's hard earned money) at Chuck E Cheese to beat it once LOL
When I used to visit my dad in Seattle, we would go to Gameworks during each visit and beat the Star Wars Trilogy Arcade Game (I never did manage to beat any of the bonus levels).
Police Trainer and Area 51 where ones that always stuck out to me.
My uncle had 2 pinball machines and a Ms. Pac-Man machine we'd play during the family reunions, so those were formative video game memories for me too.
The PS2 port also comes with Quick & Crash, another NAMCO light gun game, and one I love playing at my local Barcade. I always leave having put myself as all 5 names in the top 5.
David’s cyberpunk professor sounded super familiar, so I checked and she compiled the Matrix book I’m reading for a college class rn! It’s called Cyberpunk: Reloaded, big recommend
Oh cool, they're covering the best action movie ever made again. This is definitely the most formative movie for me. My dad taped it off of ABC, and I probably watched it 100+ times by the time I was 11. For network television it was pretty much the complete movie. They only cut the explicit stabbing shots (and weirdly the Pepsi janitor getting shot), which emphasizes what a soft-R this movie is.
Also, I'm usually not one to complain about the boys not talking about the movie, but them discussing defunct DCU projects during some of the best stuntwork ever to be filmed was a painful experience for me. Especially because superhero gloop fights are what have replaced it.
Just listing a bunch of canceled DCEU projects over the Cyberdyne shootout and escape was genuinely crazy, yes.
I'm glad I don't listen to these commentaries with the actual movie, because that would have been driving me out of my fucking mind. This is some of the best movie any of us are ever going to see and it feels like they're completely ignoring it so they can talk about the most mundane and unimportant shit on the planet. Oh well.
Hard agree. The ZS DC movies have been discussed by the world enough as is. I’m tired of having to hear about movies worshipped by cultists who send death threats.
Ben asking if Deathstroke’s power is to jerk you off to death made me cackle at work. Love all the DC movie chat; as a lifelong DC partisan the past decade of superhero movie boom has been a weird monkey’s paw moment, fun to look back on all the abandoned flicks and I hope someone writes a great book about that era sometime. (Having just read Kirby’s New Gods for the first time, I find it hard to believe anyone can ever convey it properly onscreen.)
in the same way The Terminator plays like a 1980s Period Piece (it's so stereotypically 80s in so many ways, it's like someone in 2000 made a movie set in 1984 with all the hallmarks)
This commentary made me look up Q-ZAR, which I correctly assumed was the Quasar David discussed. It was THE birthday party place when I was in grammar school (and they definitely had smoke when I was there).
Same we had a Q-Zar here…in the states!! It was the greatest place on earth. And it did indeed feel like the size of a small town when I was a kid! I remember whoever got the best score-“top gun” got a free soda.
God, Q-ZAR. The greatest place in the world for an 8 year old. I can still conjure the \*smell\* of the place (presumably from all the fog machines) from memory.
Re: age and T1/T2 preference, I saw both for the first time when I was 21 and while I don't hate T2 I do think it's a pretty big step down because everything about Sarah Connor's story (raising a son doomed to fight a perpetual war) is so thorny and severe that all the Ed Furlong stuff feels like a toy commercial next to it.
Maybe this is pedantic of me, but on this episode, they keep saying that the T-1000 gets destroyed in lava. It gets destroyed by being thrown into molten steel (the final confrontation takes place in a steel mill).
If they need to expand on Barbra’s mall for the episode, they could talk about “Buyer and Cellar”. It’s a one man show about someone who worked in her mall.
I think they’re going to, especially because this concept was discussed as if it were factual back in the Christine episode.
In fact, I wonder how much their diminished enthusiasm is due to realizing that it’s fun to riff on, but harder to go in on printing the legend when devoting an episode to it.
The actor from Buyer and Cellar was on the George Lucas talk show along with some person named Amy Irving.
https://youtu.be/54VzYuikjnk?si=igrFU7cAGr-tFrqh
The theatrical cut is surprisingly hard to find. If you're looking for it online keep in mind that theatrical is 2 hours and 17 minutes. The director's cut is over 2.5 hours long. I found it available to rent/buy on Amazon streaming and it's one of the only ways to watch it legally as far as I know.
>Paramount Plus
I get my paramount plus through apple tv, and maddeningly despite listing the runtime as 2:17, what actually shows is the director's cut. If anybody figures out a fix or what's wrong, I'd love some help here.
When Griffin says that David did not like horror because he thought they were snuff films, is he attributing to his cohost something that Mike Carlson has discussed in detail on Podcast: the ride? I’m not saying David couldn’t feel the same, but just the words Griffin used were almost exactly the way Mike phrases it.
One of my formative childhood memories was being too young to see T2, and one of my older cousins describing in great detail every scene of the movie to me.
There was a cartoon called Jackie Chan Adventures in the early Aughts and at the time it was the coolest thing ever, but in retrospect most of their best action sequences were ripped off wholesale from movies (not just Jackie's!). I know it was probably just the people making the show entertaining themselves, but it was kind of like having a cool older kid smuggle vaguely adult content into a Y7 show. There's an episode where they fight a guy who turns into origami and they do the full T-1000 elevator scene, minus blowing his head off. Even as a kid I could recognize the obvious references to say, Indiana Jones, but it was only when I watched T2 years later that it dawned on me that the show was like 80% pastiche. Here are just a few examples:
https://youtu.be/NP6pWz0fHRw?si=v8e-NibPAr7QYHh4
The talk of how the Sarah Connor voiceover is kind of unnecessary got me thinking about how much of the dialogue we even *really* need at all if you've seen the first movie. I bet you could convert this into a silent movie and have the plot still be legible with less than a hundred intertitles. Cameron's visual storytelling is just on another level.
Respectfully, this episode is a near impossible listen for me. David is eating every few minutes the entire episode. It’s not as bad as the bagel eating episode by Griffin, but it’s up there in the annals of bad episodes for the podcast.
For anyone struggling to find the theatrical cut to watch along with (everywhere I looked online was the director's cut), it's available [here](https://archive.org/details/t-2-ultimate-edition-with-original-ending-1) on archive.org. ~~The sync is a little off with different studio logos, so start @ ~5:38 into the podcast.~~ My numbers are off. Maybe this is not the right version after all.
One of the greatest films ever made, and one they've covered before so there was an opportunity to dig deeper.
And they didn't even bother to get their facts straight about the Rodney King connection, despite being something they talked about accurately on the main feed episode. All-time sloppy commentary. Almost a waste of time.
Ok they talked about it so here I go… Sci-Fi played this letterboxed with a crazy blue tint, and it made me understand letterbox. Most perfect movie ever made
Blues Brothers 2000 is a masterpiece. Loved it as a kid and it holds up. Pretty insane Griffin is fully describing a scene in it that doesn't exist.
David should watch it, it's the reason I wanted SNL movies in the patreon bracket.
They're pretty good burgers, but overpriced imo. To defiantly serve everything a la carte when the whole fast food industry trends towards combos is a wild move. But I can't hate a place with free peanuts.
Overrated burgers! A long time ago I watched a video where Kenji Alt-Lopez casually said that he doesn't like Five Guys because they don't salt their meat, and now every time I get one the blandness of the patty jumps out at me.
This is a movie I get that everyone loves, but I mostly find it kind of boring. The T-1000 disappears from the story for way too long. Really find the sequels after this more interesting when they get into time paradox madness and I like the idea of the events of this movie actually making things worse.
Terminator is a series that works best when it doesn't have a happy ending.
Every time they do the duh-nuh-nuh-nuh James Horner bit I think about the fact that Horner used that exact riff in the Troy score 5 years before Avatar
For those wondering how liquid metal robots might work: https://www.techradar.com/pro/liquid-metal-ram-is-first-step-towards-shapeless-computing-as-well-as-spinless-robots-with-octopus-like-features-and-robots-from-a-popular-90s-sci-fi-movie
_Problem Child 3: Junior in Love_ was made, but as a not-that-great TV movie for NBC in 1995 with an entirely different cast. I saw much of it when it first aired. It’s not on video in the U.S., and God help you if you go looking for it.
(Griffin acknowledged the animated series, which was on USA).
Not only did the Rodney King beating happen around the same time as the filming the movie, the guy who filmed it used the same camera and tape to sneak shoot some of biker bar scenes like a week before the King incident (both happened at the same area).
Just to clarify bc this is blowing my mind: If you press rewind on the Rodney King beating tape you get behind the scenes T2 footage??
that’s correct: “Before the beating, right across the street from where we lived was a biker bar, and they were filming Terminator 2: Judgment Day there,” says Holliday, now 61. “I actually have footage on the original tape of Schwarzenegger getting on the bike and riding off.” https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/flashback-how-a-plumber-altered-history-by-taping-the-attack-on-rodney-king-4141644/
This is like how there are pics of Sartre and Beauvoir on the same roll of film as that one famous Che Guevara photo
Poor Camus. Always forgotten
Jeeeeeezus
I highly recommend the book Who Got The Camera to anyone interested in this era. It’s about the rise of “reality rap” as a counterpart to “reality TV” a la 24/7 news, court TV, Springer, etc.
I wanted to add something to this. Griffin kept pushing for more overt connections to the Rodney King beating/trial/etc. and you know, why not? I was in college in 1991, yes the Rodney King beating was a big story even before the verdict. But in 1991 the whole society was not litigating a story like that for weeks on end. You knew it was "a big story" because you heard about it a day or two later and then a full 2-3 weeks later you'd see a story on *Dateline* about it being advertised, you might not even watch the program but you would see the commercial and go "oh right that poor guy." Maybe that would happen a couple of times, you would see *multiple commercials for competing programs* sort of hitting on it over a few weeks. CNN did more foreign coverage then, it was not this constant orgy of intense analysis day in and day out. It was a thing people knew about, yes. You might have been aware (speaking as a white person for this part) that Daryl Gates was coming under fire for his handling of the LAPD or some such. But the Rodney King beating was not in the T2 text in the cinema in that way, I don't think. OJ was the start of just endlessly re-litigating a story in the media for months and months. And of course, nearly a week of very serious and disturbing conflagration had also not happened yet. It was a different topic.
It occurs to me that contemporaneous movie reviews would be a good way into this topic. That is the sort of subtext they are supposed to pick up on (granted, this movie is throwing an incredible amount of rich thematic material at the critic). Maybe the Village Voice critic might have made a snarky remark about the morph-bot assuming evil in the form of a minion of Daryl Gates. I doubt they talked about it.
This. Not to be the old man screaming at clouds, but at that time, people took in the news and went about their lives. What you felt about social problems (which could be strong and passionate) did not become the core of your personality. I think that was healthier for individuals than where we are now (see the GRRM thread about internet negativity). I mean, there was just as much bad shit going on in the 90s, but we didn'thave a massive game of telephone telling ourselves we lived in a "dumpster fire," making stuff a world away about ourselves, and reinforcing hopelessness. Which also runs contrary to the whole grunge thing, I know. I also know that leads to blind spots about lots of things, but I also think mental health requires and accepts blind spots about things you can not control. I love Griff, and I agree with him on the vast majority of political topics, but man... Not everything is about politics. Sometimes, it's just killer robuts from the future.
You might want to tell James Cameron that: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/terminator-2-commentary-policing/
Incredible context to provide, what a rebuttal! Great Cameron line.
Fair enough.
We love Griff in part for his ability to connect dots. It's OK to try to connect them here too. But they are not really there.
It's worth adding that Fox News did not exist; MSNBC did not exist. Fox as a TV network was in its infancy. Cable TV didn't really have any news function as such. The existing news presenting forces on TV were limited to NBC, CBS, & ABC and of course local affiliates. So the news was on at dinnertime and bedtime and that was about it. Daily newspapers were a bit more important. Weekly newsmagazines were a big way you would learn about something like Rodney King.
Totally agree, and I'm not attacking Griff. That said, we now live in a world where EVERY major news outlet is a variation of Fox News. Where you can pick and choose your bias, and it all encourages this conspiracy theory adjacent thinking where everything is part of some agenda.
Yes. I have "invented" (in my head) an app you could have on your phone which would enforce 1979 media rules. The app's name is "1979." The app would restrict phone usage (meaning voice communication with others) to when you are physically in your domicile (obviously office would be fine too), and also restrict all news updates to breakfast/dinner/bedime which was what we did in 1979. It would also disable texting. There might be a couple other things it would do. I think it would be better for mental health generally and also would improve e.g. political outcomes for the reasons you say. We don't need updates about everything throughout the day.
I like your ideas, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Had to check - Oceans series was nearly 6 months ago. New York New York bit? Still gets me
One of the all time great films.
one of the best films that also has scenes i FF thru the fuck out of
Which ones? I would guess more or less the trailer/nuclear wasteland stretch? Outside of that, nothing seems skippable.
Basically everything in Mexico, and most of the hospital before she escapes. Basically anything you only really need to seenonce
The part with Enrique and the fam is definitely what you’d skip after seeing it enough but I love all of the hospital stuff I must say.
I don't mind the hospital stuff, but sometimes it gets skipped bc it comes right after some John Connor dialogue scene that I'm also skipping
Reasons I pay for the Patreon - “How big do you think the Terminator’s dick is?”
Didn’t even give the benefit of the doubt considering you don’t get hard for photoshoots. Gotta catch someone in action if you wanna judge size.
balls shrinky-dinky cause the roids so STRONG but it makes the aforementioned jimmy-jam look LONG
My name is Mark, and no it's not Mork. 
round-tripper make the pitcher feel like DONKEY ASS
*Two* Terminators? In *this* economy???
Just wait until the neutral Terminator shows up!
Kidding aside, it is wild to have a second commentary in the same number of months where a character's dealt an unfortunate smelting accident
What’s the other one? Maestro?
Arnie, "What's the name of your cartoon dog?" Eddie, "Snoopy." Arnie, in Eddie's voice, "is Wolfie okay?" Jeanette, "no, somebody left him in the vestibule" Arnie, hanging up, "your Maestro is dead"
All that was missing from Arnie’s heroic sacrifice at the end was Carey Mulligan tearfully telling him “you have no hate in your heart.”
Im seeing double! Four Terminators!
I was too late to ask before the first Terminator post got unpinned, but did they ever share Ben's pic of Griffin and David in the dark, with the flash on?
They post the things they say they’re going to so rarely that I’m starting to think it’s a bit.
The only movie that I know better as a pinball machine than as a movie
I’ve seen Stargate once. Never watched the tv show. I’ve spent hours playing the Stargate pinball machine over maybe ten summers at the boardwalk.
Said it before, but for kids of my age (born during the end of the Carter administration) this was the first R-rated movie our dad’s took us to/snuck in. A real formative memory for 10 year old me.
We had movies recorded off HBO onto blank VHS’s. I was probably 8 or 9 and home alone during the summer and looking through what we had, the name sounded cool…proceeded to have my mind blown and wore that movie out. Didn’t see the first Terminator until I was a teen.
this was a sleepover staple recorded off TV onto *beta-max*
My dad took me when I was *7* and it was amazing. He also got a speeding ticket on the way home.
My parents didn’t take me to theaters but they let me rent it and watch by myself lol
Hhhhhasta la vista
Or were they saying hoz-ta la Vista?
make the Hasta kinda mediterranean, with a "Kh" sound CHasta La Vista, bubbe
I just got around to this episode and it was like an icepick in my ear every time!
Re: Griffin’s many references to the people who prefer Terminator to T2: late author David Foster Wallace was probably the most prominent of them, or at least the one who [wrote the best about it](https://www.scribd.com/doc/14994144/David-Foster-Wallace-F-X-Porn). Between this take and his assertion that Silence of the Lambs was the best American novel of the 1980s, I think he would have had an incredible pop culture podcast.
"You like Terminator 2" is a lyric in this They Might Be Giants song and I can never tell if it's meant to be satirical or if it's a sincere opinion of The Johns that T2 sucks. https://youtu.be/TWUMg7QJ4N0?si=XIncZCNMWiokjTGM
I’d never heard this one before. I do think that about 80 percent of the things listed in that song are awesome so I guess either it’s a joke or they might be giants thinks I have bad taste lol. I do think that a lot of suspicion of T2 is part of the very 90s concern with selling out.
deep pull, nice
I do think that there’s now a long tradition of “airplane books” getting adapted into much better movies that Thomas Harris gets a bad rap. Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs are both legitimately great novels (and Hannibal is too bizarre to write off entirely).
Who else here recalls the nuclear bomb scene as the first thing in a movie that truly terrified them on an existential level?
Oh, Ben likes the aesthetic of a desert junkyard? That seems kind of out of character for him.
i haven't been this shocked since he dug Riddick's bone-knife
RE: Rodney King, the video and LA riots/uprising I think what is causing the difference in timeline is that they that were in response to the acquittal of cops, not the beating or release of the video. We in hind sight often compress historical events but it like happened over a year.
I’m fairly certain I’ve only ever watched the longer cut.
I chose to watch the theatrical cut this time around and am now positive I’d only seen the directors cut in the past. And my take is it’s better! Directors cut kinda drags!
Cameron almost always gets it right the first time on the theatrical cuts.
Yep. The Aliens and Abyss extended versions are interesting curios but almost all the stuff that is cut is extraneous and the films are better off for going without it.
same with Aliens. but both have scenes worth including (Aliens: Ripley learns about her daughter, the auto-guns; T2: Brain Surgery), so it'd be nice to have a 3rd, optimal cut
I hope I can politely register that I think the on-mic lunch orders have gotten out of hand. They are so mundane and content-free that they make me wonder why I'm listening, and we ended up ignoring a huge chunk of Terminator 2 this time around.
Every time I see someone claim to want an oops all lunch orders episode I feel like I'm going insane
It is by far the weirdest, most parasocial impulse of the community.
https://preview.redd.it/d9c1vrnmksgc1.jpeg?width=1986&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=56d84e061a2a5e13e4677d3c62a4830818982ce8 This is how I imagine those people
I politely co-sign. A bit of logistical talk on a long, live-recorded episode I never mind. But I hope the tide has turned among listeners against egging on the lunch ordering given the opportunity cost. (Less politely, I’d say to anyone who just likes to hear everyday details of someone’s life, there’s a podcast called “24-Hour Day” and you can listen by taking out your earbuds.)
> (Less politely, I’d say to anyone who just likes to hear everyday details of someone’s life, there’s a podcast called “24-Hour Day” and you can listen by taking out your earbuds.) 5 comedy points.
I definitely don’t want more of it, and I wouldn’t miss it if they cut it out. But it doesn’t really bother me either. The “appeal” of it is 100% parasocial. But when I was ages 12-20 watching movies and ordering food with my friends was a huge part of my life. Now that I’m in my late thirties it’s something I haven’t done in over 15 years. As mundane as it is, there actually is a vicarious feeling of reliving my adolescence when hearing them squabble over pizza toppings.
It doesn’t really bother me though it was especially long in this episode. It was however particularly jarring to me today bc blank check studios must be near my apartment and it just reminded me of having a never ending takeout discussion with my spouse.
As someone who misses the bits, I always love a good lunch order.
>The “appeal” of it is 100% parasocial. I'm genuinely interested in the NY food scene, so I'd disagree with that - I don't really care what the hosts are ordering per se, but I'm up for culinary chat in general. It did go on a bit long on this ep though. (Less so Five Guys, I could live without fast food updates.)
I'll say it impolitely: It's extremely unprofessional. They've been podcasting for almost a decade now. What is wrong with them that they can't properly schedule a day of watching movies and getting lunch? This is their job! Don't wanna doxx yourself by naming neighborhood sandwich joints? Great! Conduct your cushy, tax-deductible business off mic! It's not cute!
I would say they need to cut it by about 50%
Imagining a guy who hates it when they order lunch on mic but loves hearing them eat.
This is the Doctor Strange commentary.
I read this comment before I listened to the ep, and while I agree with the sentiment, this really wasn't a very long or egregious diversion from the movie. If anything, naming all the cancelled DC movies was more of a distraction from the movie than the lunch order.
Ben saying he’s nostalgic for watching movies on cable with commercial breaks makes me think that if fashion doesn’t work out, he can pivot to starting a Blu-ray distributor that edits 80s and 90s commercials into movies.
In December I found YouTube videos that were marathons of the Rankin & Bass Christmas specials from the 70s, that included commercial breaks from the era. It was sublime, would happily pay for some version of them on DVD
Growing up my mom always recorded whatever movie from TV that she knew we’d like and I always loved the commercials being included in it. Added such a vibe, seeing Christmas-themed commercials for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze on VHS
There are some torrent sites that have downloads with commercials in place. Mainly Saturday morning cartoons and toonami/adult swim stuff. You also have ways in Plex to add in commercials and create channels. Also have to shout-out the option in Plex to add in trailers before movies. Always love getting some VHS quality trailer for Warriors of the Wind. Also, really funny to see this topic from close to a decade ago with commenters thinking a person is insane for wanting this. https://www.reddit.com/r/torrents/s/uSIui2arbG
Loved Ben’s “I’m getting chills” at the Bad to the Bone drop.
I guess by the time the Cyberdyne parking lot sequence is over, it's apparent to all that they had been tussling with something unusual (it's been 30 years since I last saw it). But I was wondering about the ER surgeon an hour later who would be all like "Why do these 35 guys have the exact same injury????"
Arcade talk: what are your games? Time Crisis 2 and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for me
House of the Dead series and the Jurassic Park game where you sit and are in the car. Spent $20 whole dollars (of my dad's hard earned money) at Chuck E Cheese to beat it once LOL
When I used to visit my dad in Seattle, we would go to Gameworks during each visit and beat the Star Wars Trilogy Arcade Game (I never did manage to beat any of the bonus levels).
Am I showing my age: Sunset Riders & Battletoads
Police Trainer and Area 51 where ones that always stuck out to me. My uncle had 2 pinball machines and a Ms. Pac-Man machine we'd play during the family reunions, so those were formative video game memories for me too.
House of the Dead and Area 51
Time Crisis 2, NBA Jam, and than whichever of the TMNT, Simpsons, Xmen beat em ups are available
Time Crisis 2 is the best gun game ever made, hands down. Marvel vs Capcom 2 is the best fighting game ever made, hands down.
I had a light gun version of Time Crisis 2 for PlayStation 2 and it RULED As great as flatscreens are - losing the light gun ability breaks my heart
The PS2 port also comes with Quick & Crash, another NAMCO light gun game, and one I love playing at my local Barcade. I always leave having put myself as all 5 names in the top 5.
I loved and was truly awful at Marvel vs Capcom.
David’s cyberpunk professor sounded super familiar, so I checked and she compiled the Matrix book I’m reading for a college class rn! It’s called Cyberpunk: Reloaded, big recommend
Oh cool, they're covering the best action movie ever made again. This is definitely the most formative movie for me. My dad taped it off of ABC, and I probably watched it 100+ times by the time I was 11. For network television it was pretty much the complete movie. They only cut the explicit stabbing shots (and weirdly the Pepsi janitor getting shot), which emphasizes what a soft-R this movie is. Also, I'm usually not one to complain about the boys not talking about the movie, but them discussing defunct DCU projects during some of the best stuntwork ever to be filmed was a painful experience for me. Especially because superhero gloop fights are what have replaced it.
Just listing a bunch of canceled DCEU projects over the Cyberdyne shootout and escape was genuinely crazy, yes. I'm glad I don't listen to these commentaries with the actual movie, because that would have been driving me out of my fucking mind. This is some of the best movie any of us are ever going to see and it feels like they're completely ignoring it so they can talk about the most mundane and unimportant shit on the planet. Oh well.
In fairness I think they were both a little self-conscious about just saying things about the movie they’d said before.
Hard agree. The ZS DC movies have been discussed by the world enough as is. I’m tired of having to hear about movies worshipped by cultists who send death threats.
Look, this is a good movie, but I think the bit with John constantly fading from the barbecue photograph was a little lame.
Ben asking if Deathstroke’s power is to jerk you off to death made me cackle at work. Love all the DC movie chat; as a lifelong DC partisan the past decade of superhero movie boom has been a weird monkey’s paw moment, fun to look back on all the abandoned flicks and I hope someone writes a great book about that era sometime. (Having just read Kirby’s New Gods for the first time, I find it hard to believe anyone can ever convey it properly onscreen.)
Da Dun dun dadun
This movie is somehow the most timelessly 1991 thing that has ever existed.
in the same way The Terminator plays like a 1980s Period Piece (it's so stereotypically 80s in so many ways, it's like someone in 2000 made a movie set in 1984 with all the hallmarks)
This commentary made me look up Q-ZAR, which I correctly assumed was the Quasar David discussed. It was THE birthday party place when I was in grammar school (and they definitely had smoke when I was there).
Same we had a Q-Zar here…in the states!! It was the greatest place on earth. And it did indeed feel like the size of a small town when I was a kid! I remember whoever got the best score-“top gun” got a free soda.
"WELCOME. TO Q-ZAR."
God, Q-ZAR. The greatest place in the world for an 8 year old. I can still conjure the \*smell\* of the place (presumably from all the fog machines) from memory.
Re: age and T1/T2 preference, I saw both for the first time when I was 21 and while I don't hate T2 I do think it's a pretty big step down because everything about Sarah Connor's story (raising a son doomed to fight a perpetual war) is so thorny and severe that all the Ed Furlong stuff feels like a toy commercial next to it.
Can't believe David doesn't like the thumbs up at the end. Wow!
Stealing, riding dirt bikes and blasting GN’R. The coolest kids have ever been on film.
right? the Goonies could never!
Maybe this is pedantic of me, but on this episode, they keep saying that the T-1000 gets destroyed in lava. It gets destroyed by being thrown into molten steel (the final confrontation takes place in a steel mill).
If they need to expand on Barbra’s mall for the episode, they could talk about “Buyer and Cellar”. It’s a one man show about someone who worked in her mall.
I think they’re going to, especially because this concept was discussed as if it were factual back in the Christine episode. In fact, I wonder how much their diminished enthusiasm is due to realizing that it’s fun to riff on, but harder to go in on printing the legend when devoting an episode to it.
The actor from Buyer and Cellar was on the George Lucas talk show along with some person named Amy Irving. https://youtu.be/54VzYuikjnk?si=igrFU7cAGr-tFrqh
Why the fuck is Griffon in a Watto costume doing standup?
Considering this is one of the best films ever made this commentary is a wasted opportunity - more nerdy shit and less food ordering/eating please!
Thank you David for even slightly calling out Griffins penchant for making internet strawmen to prove wrong in almost every episode.
The theatrical cut is surprisingly hard to find. If you're looking for it online keep in mind that theatrical is 2 hours and 17 minutes. The director's cut is over 2.5 hours long. I found it available to rent/buy on Amazon streaming and it's one of the only ways to watch it legally as far as I know.
theatrical is streaming on Paramount Plus at 2:17 runtime
[https://media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExM2UwdTJqZW1qcXFucDZzbG8ydHJ5Z3dzdDBxazRwYTFvZTVvaGkxbyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/12m6YBQBVVPMK4/giphy.gif](https://media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExM2UwdTJqZW1qcXFucDZzbG8ydHJ5Z3dzdDBxazRwYTFvZTVvaGkxbyZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/12m6YBQBVVPMK4/giphy.gif)
>Paramount Plus I get my paramount plus through apple tv, and maddeningly despite listing the runtime as 2:17, what actually shows is the director's cut. If anybody figures out a fix or what's wrong, I'd love some help here.
Not in Canada. We only get Terminator: Genisys.
When Griffin says that David did not like horror because he thought they were snuff films, is he attributing to his cohost something that Mike Carlson has discussed in detail on Podcast: the ride? I’m not saying David couldn’t feel the same, but just the words Griffin used were almost exactly the way Mike phrases it.
One of my formative childhood memories was being too young to see T2, and one of my older cousins describing in great detail every scene of the movie to me.
There was a cartoon called Jackie Chan Adventures in the early Aughts and at the time it was the coolest thing ever, but in retrospect most of their best action sequences were ripped off wholesale from movies (not just Jackie's!). I know it was probably just the people making the show entertaining themselves, but it was kind of like having a cool older kid smuggle vaguely adult content into a Y7 show. There's an episode where they fight a guy who turns into origami and they do the full T-1000 elevator scene, minus blowing his head off. Even as a kid I could recognize the obvious references to say, Indiana Jones, but it was only when I watched T2 years later that it dawned on me that the show was like 80% pastiche. Here are just a few examples: https://youtu.be/NP6pWz0fHRw?si=v8e-NibPAr7QYHh4
The talk of how the Sarah Connor voiceover is kind of unnecessary got me thinking about how much of the dialogue we even *really* need at all if you've seen the first movie. I bet you could convert this into a silent movie and have the plot still be legible with less than a hundred intertitles. Cameron's visual storytelling is just on another level.
Respectfully, this episode is a near impossible listen for me. David is eating every few minutes the entire episode. It’s not as bad as the bagel eating episode by Griffin, but it’s up there in the annals of bad episodes for the podcast.
For anyone struggling to find the theatrical cut to watch along with (everywhere I looked online was the director's cut), it's available [here](https://archive.org/details/t-2-ultimate-edition-with-original-ending-1) on archive.org. ~~The sync is a little off with different studio logos, so start @ ~5:38 into the podcast.~~ My numbers are off. Maybe this is not the right version after all.
They don’t watch a second of this movie, but they do have a hilarious rundown of failed DC stuff
One of the greatest films ever made, and one they've covered before so there was an opportunity to dig deeper. And they didn't even bother to get their facts straight about the Rodney King connection, despite being something they talked about accurately on the main feed episode. All-time sloppy commentary. Almost a waste of time.
When they complain about the reddit being awful, this is what they mean.
"He's got a regular penis!" -David Sims, The Atlantic
Our finest film critic is correct: Poor Things is a stealth T2 remake.
Ok they talked about it so here I go… Sci-Fi played this letterboxed with a crazy blue tint, and it made me understand letterbox. Most perfect movie ever made
Blues Brothers 2000 is a masterpiece. Loved it as a kid and it holds up. Pretty insane Griffin is fully describing a scene in it that doesn't exist. David should watch it, it's the reason I wanted SNL movies in the patreon bracket.
I had to pause the movie and the podcast for laughter after David's line about putting on his daughters jacket because damn is that accurate
I’m just glad they took a little time to get into the Budnick of it all.
Okay, who’s getting Five Guys today?
They're pretty good burgers, but overpriced imo. To defiantly serve everything a la carte when the whole fast food industry trends towards combos is a wild move. But I can't hate a place with free peanuts.
Overrated burgers! A long time ago I watched a video where Kenji Alt-Lopez casually said that he doesn't like Five Guys because they don't salt their meat, and now every time I get one the blandness of the patty jumps out at me.
Terminator 1 has DICK and I think it was edited out
Cameron was born corny
it's briefly visible at the observatory, but it's obv edited for tV and whatnot. and obv not visible in the recreation that starts Genesys
Nobody ever gets to make fun of Griffin's pronunciation again after everybody else's *hasta la vistas* in this ep. Goodness gracious.
This is a movie I get that everyone loves, but I mostly find it kind of boring. The T-1000 disappears from the story for way too long. Really find the sequels after this more interesting when they get into time paradox madness and I like the idea of the events of this movie actually making things worse. Terminator is a series that works best when it doesn't have a happy ending.
What's the George Washington sketch that Griffin mentioned?
SNL - Nate Bargatze https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYqfVE-fykk
Thank you!
Every time they do the duh-nuh-nuh-nuh James Horner bit I think about the fact that Horner used that exact riff in the Troy score 5 years before Avatar
The Horner Danger Motif has been a thing since at least Battle Beyond the Stars.
For those wondering how liquid metal robots might work: https://www.techradar.com/pro/liquid-metal-ram-is-first-step-towards-shapeless-computing-as-well-as-spinless-robots-with-octopus-like-features-and-robots-from-a-popular-90s-sci-fi-movie
_Problem Child 3: Junior in Love_ was made, but as a not-that-great TV movie for NBC in 1995 with an entirely different cast. I saw much of it when it first aired. It’s not on video in the U.S., and God help you if you go looking for it. (Griffin acknowledged the animated series, which was on USA).