The Lawnmower Man (1992)
You've always heard of the dead Internet theory?
Speaker 2:I've heard of it. I can't remember what it is now. Just Just that everything's fake.
Speaker 1:Pretty much everyone you interact with on the Internet is actually a bot at this point. I don't know. Yeah. I was, while waiting for you to put some music on YouTube and just all the comments underneath were just like if you're here in 2024. Who's here in 2024?
Speaker 1:2024 and we're all still here. So I go, this can't be real people. And I scrolled down and got to I find 2023 and we're listening to this. So fuck it out. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I find that every time I see a YouTube video that's like been recently uploaded, the first 4 or 5 comments are put from just women's asses.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The profile pictures are just artists. It's a woman's ass. And they're doing, like, really generic.
Speaker 1:Because no one really comments on the Leeds United highlights. They're always there on the bottom of them, and it's always just the cinematography on this is amazing. You should be proud.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Posted by woman's ass.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Posted by a pair of white knickers.
Speaker 3:This is
Speaker 1:why I stay off it. I don't have
Speaker 2:The Internet.
Speaker 1:Live on the Internet. Any sort of interaction with other problem right now talking to you 2 over the Internet.
Speaker 3:Wow. The cinematography here is amazing.
Speaker 2:Me and Ed are just bots. Fucking hell. We've been controlled by Cyberman.
Speaker 3:Hello, and welcome to so you think that was good, do you? A podcast where we take a look back at the films from your childhood and question the absurdity of their universes. My name is Evan, and I'm joined by the wonderful boys, Sam and Carl Bois. How you doing?
Speaker 2:After you, Carl?
Speaker 1:Well, I am not good, mate. Not good. I have given up coffee. I haven't had a coffee in 5 days, And I spent all of yesterday just inordinately angry. Everyone and everything.
Speaker 1:And there's a Starbucks across from where I work. And I but I promised my girlfriend I'm not gonna have a coffee for 2 weeks. And I very nearly cheated on her with a Starbucks yesterday.
Speaker 2:Oh, not with a Starbucks. You're gonna make it worth it.
Speaker 1:Well, that's it. I turned into basically a crackhead who's gone cold turkey. I was gonna storm out of there and go and get a latte because I was going in yeah. I needed my hit. How quickly, if I were into drugs, would I be sucking dick on the street?
Speaker 2:I think I've done the opposite of that. I bought some quite nice coffee beans and I bought like a big batch of them and I kind of feel like I've gotta have them before they start going a bit I don't know. They they vaguely go bad over time. So I've been having, like, 3 coffees a day and I feel like if I stop now, I might die. So I've been I've been making up for for your cutting down, I think.
Speaker 3:You gotta go to a clinic to tear down on coffees. Yeah. Okay. Coffee? Yeah.
Speaker 3:Can we talk? I've been on coffee for a few months. It gets better, but decaf coughs help. And it also helps that whenever I say decaf cough, I think of Sam. So I suppose
Speaker 2:We don't need we don't need to mention that.
Speaker 1:Is is is this a podcast, or is this just a meeting for addicts?
Speaker 3:I'm glad you came, Sam. Doing 3 heroines a day is mad.
Speaker 2:But I've bought some really nice meth.
Speaker 3:Can I use it before it comes up? Funny.
Speaker 2:It goes off. The best before on my meth is coming up.
Speaker 3:Oh, well, good. I'm glad you're off coffee, Cole. I'm glad you're on coffee, Sam. I'm just glad for you both.
Speaker 2:Speaking of, speaking of drugs and wild trippy things, what did we watch this week?
Speaker 3:Oh, fucking hell. Well, per your request, Samuel, we watched the lawnmower man 1992.
Speaker 2:Yes. We did.
Speaker 3:Let's do the plot stop, and then we'll get into some of the stuff around surrounding this movie. The eccentric doctor Lawrence Angelo puts mentally disabled landscaper, Job Smith, on a regimen of experimental pills and computer simulated training sequences in hopes of augmenting the man's intelligence. I fucking nailed that. In time, Joe becomes noticeably brighter and also begins to fare much better with the opposite sex. As he develops psychic powers, he realizes that those around him have taken advantage of his simplicity his whole life, and he plots a bloody revenge.
Speaker 2:That almost makes it sound Good. Normal and good.
Speaker 1:It doesn't even mention his plot to take over the world at the end. But
Speaker 2:It doesn't even mention the chimp with a Robocop headpiece and a gun in the first What? Two minutes of the film.
Speaker 3:As the editors realized, that entire sequence wasn't necessary as it's not in the theatrical release. But in the director's cut that we watched, it is the first 25 minutes of the movie that a what looks like a cyber enhanced chimp escapes this secret lab, runs around the streets.
Speaker 1:I mean
Speaker 3:Well, he's got like a whole big VR headset on and everything. He's shooting people. He's going nuts. They're hunting him down. He finds a simpleton who he becomes friends with, and then later on, the simpleton becomes the chimp.
Speaker 1:You say looks like a cyber enhanced chimp. It looks like a chimp and a nappy and a helmet with a revolver taped to its hand.
Speaker 3:Yeah. They're working top down. If he'd stayed in the lab, then he got more dubbed.
Speaker 1:I don't get the plan. I'm not surprised it was cut from the theatrical release because we're told that they're training super chimp soldiers who are gonna go into areas humans can't go to fight robots I feel like they must have sat there and gone maybe we just send robots to fight robots in places that humans can't go maybe not chimps that have we're told that it's got like a super brain it's been dragged up and now it's got super intelligence but all we see is the inside of his helmet and in the bottom right there's a set of flash cards that just get rolled through. And he only knows what's going on if the flashcard matches something that he can see in real life. I've seen chimps do that on YouTube.
Speaker 2:This chimp is being, augmented by this company that so Larry is the, the main character. He's the scientist that work that's working on this.
Speaker 3:Played by Pierce Brosnan. I think we should mention.
Speaker 2:Play by Pierce Brosnan. We'll talk about that. He works for Virtual Space Industries, which as far as I can tell is an organization with 2 employees,
Speaker 3:him and some bald guy.
Speaker 2:And neither of them know what they're meant to be doing. Because he's like he seems shocked that they're turning this chimp into a kind of into a soldier. He's appalled by this. It's like, mate, you you're the only one here. You're the only one working on it.
Speaker 2:How are you so shocked?
Speaker 1:You made the VR shooting game.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He made the whole thing. And It it's like he's he's just so focused on making this thing intelligent. Why? I What's what's the goal?
Speaker 3:Well, as you said, the filmmakers realized that too because the experiments they do on the monkey are radically different to what happens to Job later in the movie. 1 is it's supposed to be cybernetically enhanced to pick up a soldier, and Job literally gets psychic powers from virtual reality. So I I can see why all this was cut. What their end goal is. So I might as well mention him now because he's kind of a character throughout this film.
Speaker 3:Dean Norris in this, who plays the director.
Speaker 2:What was his accent?
Speaker 3:I no idea. Why was his webcam so close to his face and his mouth open whilst he was speaking the entire time. Why was he so much? Questions. He's the one kind of running this, and he's like the leader of some secret military thing going on in the US.
Speaker 3:And he was very interested in the monkey, but not concerned at all that it was killed. And then when he learns about Job, he's super interested in somehow getting psychic soldiers or something. We never learned who this enemy is. I I don't even remember the robot stuff. I'm concerned where they think those robots are that monkeys can get, sorry, chimps can get to that we can't.
Speaker 3:The tops of trees. There's a lot this film is having you accept when nobody knows what's going on it. Not a single character has got a grip on what is happening. Before we roll fully into the plot, let's talk about why this film is awful. So I think it could shed some light on stuff.
Speaker 3:So this is based, obviously, as this is Stephen Spring, on a Stephen King story. Technically, the story was Is
Speaker 2:it that?
Speaker 3:The lawnmower man from the collection night shift, which the children of the coin was also from. But this film had so little to do with that story. Stephen King sued them to get his name taken off the theatrical release, and then it came out on VHS. He realized his name was on that, and he sued him again.
Speaker 2:Just to I mean, so this is just the trivia that was on IMDB, but to add to that, apparently, the backstory to that is that New Line Cinema got the rights to the Stephen King short story, the lawnmower man. And they also had a totally unrelated script called Cyber God. And they just kind of went, should we just put the name on it? And they did. Along with Stephen King's name, despite it being a completely unrelated script.
Speaker 3:He was not happy. For comparison, let me give you the plot synopsis of The Lawnmower Man so you can see how
Speaker 1:Oh, no. I can I can go further over?
Speaker 3:Go on.
Speaker 1:I read it today just for you.
Speaker 3:Oh, please then. They'll you take over, sir.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's not gonna take long. When I say I read it, it's not like a massive amount of effort. I read all 6 pages of the law of law man today. So there's a guy who usually gets his lawn cut by one of the local kids around the neighborhood. And then 1 year, a cat runs into the lawnmower or a dog runs into a lawnmower and dies.
Speaker 1:And then the family freaks out and so he no longer has someone to cut his lawn. So his lawn gets overgrown. And then he finds an advert for someone who who will mow that his lawn. So he calls them. And they come round.
Speaker 1:And they see is this some short, chubby, hairy guy. And then he just leaves him to it. Go mow the lawn. I'll go lay inside. And then after a bit, he goes outside.
Speaker 1:And the lawn is being mowed by the lawn mower by itself. And the the short, hairy, stocky guy is completely bollock naked crot on all fours following the lawn mower and eating the grass as it gets left behind by the lawn mower at which point our main guy was called Harold starts freaking out and then it turns out that this lawnmower man is like a setter one of the Greek mythical creatures who works for pan and there seems to be some sort of underlying story going on with that he talks about some sort of bigger plan that's a part of all of this But then Harold freaks out that there's a naked chubby satyr eating grass on his lawn. So he calls the police. And so the satyr man kills him. The the lawnmower kind of just comes after him.
Speaker 1:Do you know the scene in this where the abusive dad gets killed by the lawnmower? It's basically that. It just comes after him and then lawnmowers him in the face. And then it's over. It ends with the smell of freshly cooked grass.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna say, I don't blame New Line Cinema for for just taking the name.
Speaker 3:Well, I
Speaker 1:assumed How
Speaker 2:the fuck would they have adapted that into a film?
Speaker 1:I assumed that this was sort of a they wanted to make some spin on flowers for Algernon, and then it just all went a bit wrong. And they wanted a coolest way for them flowers for Algernon, so they This
Speaker 2:was very much Steven's for Algernon.
Speaker 1:Just,
Speaker 2:well, yeah. That bears absolutely no resemblance to this film apart from a guy getting killed by Lorne.
Speaker 3:There are still a lot of Stephen King tropes in this movie. I'm not sure if it's just because of the era that this has come from or they added them to make it feel kind of connected still. But you've still got your Lenny type character who is introduced as soon as the fucking camera turns on, knock in needful things. We add Netty. The priests in it are Yeah.
Speaker 3:Completely antithetical to what they're supposed to represent. Pierce Brosnan is drinking constantly throughout this movie. Everyone in my town is a piece of shit, like Jake, the gas station owner, Peter's dad, who's abusing Peter and his wife. Bloody Job's future girlfriend has fucked everyone in town, or or everyone else is like a victim like Peter's mom. So everyone's gotta be weird still.
Speaker 3:Nothing really has anything to do with the main story, which is a guy who turns into a virtual reality god.
Speaker 2:It's kind of the 2 elements of a Stephen King thriller, which is really small town, weird people mixed with world ending states.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Just quickly, because you mentioned the priest and we kind of I accidentally watched, for the first hour of this, the shorter original cut as opposed to the director's cut. And then I went back and watched the the correct director's version. I saw a couple of things that they changed. One thing I found hilarious that they changed is that in the director's cut, after Job hides the cyberchimp in his little shack, The priest comes out, finds out what he did, and ends up beating him, to punish him for it.
Speaker 2:In the original cut, the priest is inside the church. He finds a dusty step that Job forgot to dust and then goes and beats him with a belt because he forgot to dust. And I did think as I was watching it, that's a bit of an overreaction, isn't it?
Speaker 3:It's odd that they included both in the director's cut then because I was confused why he'd come and out being angry about that and then be angry about with chimps. You'd think they'd have just chosen one over the other for each cut.
Speaker 2:Really hard. The the editing in this all around was a bit
Speaker 3:Well, yeah. As I said to you boys in our chat before we started, there is a disclaimer at the beginning of the director's cut that's like, look, we know there are some weird jump cuts in this. We've tried to take out frames here and there to try and make it less bad, but you just have to gonna put up with it. This film is 2 hours 21 minutes long. There is no need for that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:Cut out that whole section if there is an issue there. It is far too long as it is.
Speaker 1:This isn't your masterpiece to the point where, you know, the people need to see this scene. I know it's not perfect, but it's got to be in there, or it just doesn't get across the the story I want it to.
Speaker 3:But what about the chimp?
Speaker 1:It's just some guy called Timbs.
Speaker 3:But did you notice any other major things that were that was, like, were different about them? Or was it just really the chimp section that was the biggest thing?
Speaker 2:The main thing that I could tell that was different there were a few kind of establishing shots. There are a few shots, where Job is becoming more clever and he's kind of reading books and talking about hypotenuse. Those were cut out just to save time, I guess. But the main thing was just all reference to the fact that the chimp escaped is gone. And the movie kind of opens proper with Pierce Brosnan's character, Larry, waking up in a cold sweat as he dreamt that the chimp was escaping.
Speaker 2:He had a premonition. That that little fact that he's moderately psychic
Speaker 3:Just from Google VR.
Speaker 2:Doesn't especially come back. But I did want to mention so, yeah, that that scene where he does wake up, this is him establishing his character as this alcoholic, sort of neurotic depressed, scientist. He wakes up in the middle of the night next to his wife, flicks through a few sort of vague military channels. They're just showing footage of, like, tanks and shit. Lights up a cigarette, nudges his wife, wanders around the bedroom, opens the window, and watches his neighbor abuse his wife for a minute.
Speaker 2:I'm like, what? I don't blame his wife for leaving him. This guy's a prick.
Speaker 3:The wife though. The I know this is a different time. And I actually I don't know what the budget of this movie was, but if they'd spent all that money on Pierce Brosnan, I can't imagine there was a lot left for the rest of the cast. But she
Speaker 2:The budget was 10,000,000. So, yeah, they spent it all on Pierce Brosnan.
Speaker 3:She was awful.
Speaker 2:And fantastic CGI.
Speaker 3:I assume she was cut out completely in the other cut because she was Yeah. Atrocious.
Speaker 2:She had maybe 5 minutes total. She nags. She goes home.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah. Yeah. The the first thing she says is, I told you not to smoke in the bed, and then goes back to sleep.
Speaker 2:That's fair. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That is fair. Also close the window and turn the TV off. Yeah. It's 2 in the fucking morning. But, yeah, I think I'm not sure if they're military channels or if the reason they need super chimps is because everywhere is just that war all the time in this world, but it's never established on more than that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It'd be nice to see. I I
Speaker 1:assumed that would get built on after we see that, yeah, these news articles that are just running on every channel that everyone's being murdered everywhere all the time.
Speaker 3:Forest where the canopy is just robots.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I have no idea. I don't know what kind of world this is set in. It's never it's never elaborated on. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And the other thing about, fuck, what was it? Larry's character. Interested so that's the main character.
Speaker 3:Oh, Pierce. Pierce.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Pierce Brosnan. Interesting choice of casting.
Speaker 3:Right? What did he do wrong?
Speaker 2:I mean, there's a scene. That they had okay. We got this nerdy character who's like a VR programmer. Who should we cast? Let's get Pierce Brosnan and put him in a leather jacket with a single earring.
Speaker 2:That's exactly
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:The look we're going for.
Speaker 3:Jumper that's way too big for you.
Speaker 1:How how needed was VR within this story?
Speaker 3:Oh, no. Not all.
Speaker 2:It kept Totally irrelevant.
Speaker 1:Bugging me that we just kept getting thrown into apparently, this was groundbreaking for the time. It's fucking nightmare fuel nowadays it's just 90s Microsoft windows screensaver
Speaker 3:shit yes I've written that letter
Speaker 1:with everyone just we're told it's amazing because they go these my hands But just I feel like the whole story is that he's got this amazing drug that makes people super smart. Turns a guy from being almost bang on simple Jack from tropic thunder.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 1:Yeah. To yeah. And then he just kept getting shoved in a VR gyro thing and spun
Speaker 3:around and
Speaker 1:and and sometimes. Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So on that yeah. So Job is this kind of Simple Jack type character who gets
Speaker 1:He's got to be the inspiration for simple Jack.
Speaker 2:He has to be. It's bang on. It's the same character.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Down to the Dougherty. There's there's three aspects to his training. He gets injected with these neural enhancing drugs. He gets random vaguely scientific sim symbols, blasted at him.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And he gets put in a gyro and spun in circles.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm convinced at least one of those is doing nothing.
Speaker 3:I think 2 of them do it all.
Speaker 2:They did all 3 at once, and they went, shit, it worked.
Speaker 3:I think it's just the drugs. But he
Speaker 1:also gets because
Speaker 3:most of this just Just
Speaker 2:the drugs, I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 3:Is tripping out. And before before we move on, the so there's like 3 types of that's big fucking port marks here CGI in this. There's like what Cole mentioned where it's like the when you'd play music in Windows Media Player back in the day, that's what he sees in his eyes. It's just Oh,
Speaker 1:that that is it. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Visuals, triptych, things like that. Then there's, like, where it's just a 3 d model of a man, and it's like that episode of community I sent to you boys. And then there's where they actually try to model something that looks real, like the bees or the lawnmower man that they put in Jake's head or the fucking poo poo beast he becomes when he kills his girlfriend in the VR plane. And that reminds me of
Speaker 2:the gestalt. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Do you remember when we watched Mortal Kombat and that fucking CGI lizard came out of reptile.
Speaker 2:Fuck. Yeah.
Speaker 3:The lizard. Fucking rough to watch that. This was a lot worse than that.
Speaker 2:This was worse than anything we've ever seen before. Oh, yeah. And I will say
Speaker 3:If that
Speaker 2:wasn't coming across.
Speaker 3:In every way, this is worse than anything
Speaker 2:we've seen before. But one other thing, the, so the towards the end of the film especially, there are extended scenes where people are in VR talking to each other and there's facial animation going on. Woah. And it is, to a t, it is the videos that people used to make with Gary's mod with with the mouths moving and the big eyes wobbling around. It is spot on.
Speaker 3:As soon as anyone enters VR, the first thing they say is, oh my god, those are my hands. It's so fucking shit.
Speaker 1:It's it's the ending of Johnny Mnemonic all over again.
Speaker 3:Yeah. They're exactly I'm not sure how many years apart they were, but there is such a line between these drawn.
Speaker 1:But we we discussed it at the time, but I feel like it needs to be brought up again. Because some parts of this almost felt like it was touching on stuff the matrix did. Like, there's a part where he just gets shoved in a chair, and they just keep sticking CD the CD into a computer and he's getting the encyclopedia Britannica thrown at him. I guess. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:Now he knows all of history. But now I know kung fu. And I feel I feel like this is just as much the reason as Johnny Mnemonic is. As to why when they made the matrix they went, we'll just film the real world and say it's VR.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think. Someone's gotta try it to prove that it shouldn't be done.
Speaker 3:Because well, but the the thought process they should have is, if it's virtual reality, it should look like reality, which is why it's so fucking uncomfortable when you watch these movies and they're in virtual reality and they say everything looks real and it's not. It's like 5 fucking colors they can get on the screen. Otherwise, it would crash when they try to export the fucking film.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of this where I think maybe it's because we're watching in 2024 that we watch it and go this is fucking nightmare fuel. Because like I said this was considered groundbreaking CGI in 1992 I think it was whereas now it's just like I say Microsoft Windows screensaver or Windows media player maybe a emotionless evil government Zordon on a screen is terrifying when it you haven't lived through too many Zoom calls with 60 year olds who don't know they should sit further back from the camera, which is just ridiculous now.
Speaker 2:It is hilarious now. And And from the CGI point of view, yeah, this is a time when basically video games were almost entirely 2 d. Mhmm. It's not like anyone had anything to compare this to. This, as far as CGI went, I imagine I haven't done my research.
Speaker 2:I imagine it was pretty groundbreaking, but it doesn't change the fact that, my god, it looks fucking shit now.
Speaker 3:I suppose this was also, to some degree, a horror movie. So maybe they weren't going for realistic, but just what would have been terrifying at the time. If you've never seen this before and you went to the cinema, saw this film, and then all of a sudden, this was your first introduction to, like, a new way of scaring people, maybe it would have had a a greater impact. But not now. Not how many years has it been?
Speaker 3:30 years later.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And the design itself is very kind of the design of everything is pretty creepy. The lab is I mean, it's all very crystal maze. Just sort
Speaker 3:of weird.
Speaker 2:Is that
Speaker 1:is that because of is that because of Tim's little bald head?
Speaker 3:Is that why you're thinking of crystal blades?
Speaker 2:That that plays a big part. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And every scene that Pierce Morgan isn't talking about Job's progress, he's talking about, like, how VR can be used to save the world and change humanity and evolve them. I I loved it when he he's first getting Job down into his lab in the basement in his house before he takes him over to the main, like, military lab. And he he strapped him up. He's gotten in VR for the first time. And then Pierce Brosnan sits back in his chair, puts on his fucking Nintendo power glove, and starts, like, monitoring Job's brain on his shitty fucking desktop in the basement.
Speaker 3:And this guy will do anything not to just use his fucking mouse. There is no way that clamping that thing onto your hand and being attached to your fucking monitor is easier than just pull up and down and move it a mouse around the screen.
Speaker 2:I loved the way that was the way that he throughout the whole film when he's monitoring Job's kind of progress. The way that they show, I guess, how he's doing is there's a 3 d brain on the screen Yeah. And if he's getting stressed, the brain starts wobbling and big warning signs come up and it goes, whoop, whoop,
Speaker 3:whoop, whoop.
Speaker 2:I love that as a depiction. Always got a shaky brain.
Speaker 3:I did find that this film gets or at least the actor who plays Job gets a lot more watchable as he gets a bit brighter. His acting was better as like a maniacal scary smart person than it was as simple Jack at the beginning. I was pretty rough to watch, which was a lot of the movie.
Speaker 1:You mean once he got to just stand and stare? Yeah. Once once his instructions from the director was stand and stare.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That helps.
Speaker 1:His acting was so much better.
Speaker 3:He got no lines for the next 80 pages.
Speaker 2:It was that. Yeah. It was he showed intelligence in this film by combing his hair Yeah. And taking a shot.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah. He took
Speaker 2:a shot. Like any scene where he's got his top off is meant to show he's getting smarter. And any scene where Larry or Pierce has his top off is he's getting more depressed. You can track where you are in the film by who's got a shirt off. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:We've mentioned it. But, yeah, as so as Job gets smarter and he's becoming in his genius phase, when he's also pulled, what's his what's the name? Marnie.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's her name. Yep.
Speaker 2:As she's described, the town pike.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He I think we get I think we get one of the weirdest scenes in the film. One of the weirdest scenes in the film which is saying a lot.
Speaker 3:I did not know that.
Speaker 2:When he takes her into the VR lab and then he puts them both up. And it's almost too weird to talk to. He fucks her into a CGI dragonfly, then turns into a frog and kind of eats her a bit.
Speaker 1:But Oh, I thought he was, like, I thought he was ejaculating out of his mouth.
Speaker 2:Oh, I mean, it could have been.
Speaker 1:Oh, because then I can't stop. And then things kept coming out of his mouth.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It was like a a little a a I can't remember what they're called. Someone shoot them out of their mouth and it attaches on. I thought it was sucking all the water from the saliva. Yes.
Speaker 3:Because when he takes her back to the house, she's, like, just lying on the bed
Speaker 1:Yeah. She is.
Speaker 3:Laughing.
Speaker 1:She's literally had her brains fucked out. But I thought he turned into like a VR spaff monster and was just
Speaker 2:But so I was I was kinda glancing through the Wikipedia plot synopsis of this. And the way that they summarize this scene is quite accurate but fucking batshit. Oh, yeah. They say
Speaker 3:It does.
Speaker 2:When when when Job invites his new lover, Marnie, to the lab to engage in cyber sex, he accidentally lobotomizes her.
Speaker 3:Really accurate.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That sentence epitomizes this whole movie.
Speaker 3:That whole scene from first entering to, like, how they meld together and everything and but every now and then it cuts back to the like the real world and it's just 2 people gyrating in balls protecting big spins. It's so fucking trippy. And then, like, I didn't know what it meant when he turned into the giant purple frog thing.
Speaker 2:Nobody does.
Speaker 3:They could have cut this out easily. They could
Speaker 2:have cut it out so easily. The only thing more perplexing than that with their relationship is how quickly her lawn grows. Because he mows that thing every fucking day, I swear.
Speaker 3:He's never turned that machine on once, mate. It's established that he's not all there. This is why there's only like 5 people who live in this town, and he's mowing lawns every day because he's just pushing a fucking trolley over it. There's only fucking lawn. They don't know how to tell him.
Speaker 2:With the lawnmower switched off. It's like giving you it's like giving your little brother a con a controller that's not collect connected from PlayStation. But, yeah, he he gets smarter and that takes us into his villain arc.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I just Which,
Speaker 2:like you said, is mostly just shots of him staring from quite far away in a spandex suit.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's a lot of just standing and staring. And I feel like I touched on at the start. He's he ends up having this plan to take over all of cyberspace. But I feel like that came after they realized that his original plan was just revenge on the people who'd been mean to him when he was stupid.
Speaker 1:Just the guy who abuses his son, the the guy who works at the petrol station who's always mean to him, the priest who abuses him. Yeah. And I think maybe they went, oh, I mean, he could have probably just kept his 65 IQ and taken that chimp's gun and achieved all this. We're gonna have to do some more.
Speaker 3:The chimp could have done this as long as the cards flashed up in the bottom right. Yeah. We get a string of terrible CGI here as well. The the priest and also it's very confusing about what his powers are, because whilst he does become a cyber god, he does seem to have, like, significant control over reality whilst he's in it. Like, see, it sets the priest on fire.
Speaker 3:Good quote, Marx. That's all done in CGI. He
Speaker 2:He sets him on gods. Yeah.
Speaker 3:He he then goes to a gas station. And I thought this was being set up for something quite cool again. Like he was gonna do a fire thing with everyone, because there was an establishing scene earlier where Jake, who's the guy who works at the gas station, walks over to Job whilst he's pouring petrol into a can. Jake has a cigarette and Job freaks out, obviously, because you can't have cigarette near petrol. And then later on, this exact same thing is set up again.
Speaker 3:He's got a cigarette next to the petrol. And then for some reason, Job strangles him with 2 of the hoses, creates this is the most perplexing thing about the movie actually. A mini lawnmower man that now, for eternity, will rotate over Jake's brain.
Speaker 2:He's gonna mow his brain. Yeah. He's got a lawn mowing mouth, and he's gonna mow his brain.
Speaker 3:It's a little bull's head with a lawnmower mouth.
Speaker 2:And anyone who hasn't seen this film is gonna think that we're kind of not explaining that very well. Watch the scene.
Speaker 3:That's the best I can do.
Speaker 2:That's what happens.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And And there's the dad that he pretty much kills in the same way that the man is killed in
Speaker 3:In the book.
Speaker 1:Stephen King's The Lawnmower Man. Do you do you think if they had established that he had these abilities in VR, you know, very the matrix again, Neo has his powers in the matrix and they come out of the matrix. Would it have I'm not saying it would help, because it would have added to the run time, but would have made for a better story. If he's doing all this stuff in VR and then then he starts to do it in the real world.
Speaker 2:If there was some VR game where he can turn people into balls, then it would have set up the fact that in the latter half of this film, he turns a lot of people into balls.
Speaker 1:There's so many ball people in the end of this film.
Speaker 3:They spent too much on the budget on the fire, the lawnmower man, and the moving lawnmower. So everyone from here on out gets the same effect, which is turn solid shape into models. And then And that's when
Speaker 1:you find your favorite move.
Speaker 2:They looked at the whiteboard with the list of ideas, and they said, right, we finished off those. The rest of it just says balls. I guess we're doing that.
Speaker 3:Just to touch on what you were saying there, Carl. This would have been a way better movie if if it was just a guy seeing if he could get powers in VR, and VR looked like it was real life like the matrix. And then he started exhibiting powers in real life, but that, like, the thing of the movie would be if whether he realizes he's ever in real life. Like, he thinks he's getting powers in the real world, but really he's always just in VR. And it's really just
Speaker 1:that Yeah.
Speaker 3:The addiction to technology or something. Just some message to this film would have been nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah. To be fair, I mean, you could throw shit at a wall and see what it looks like and go, this is a better idea than what
Speaker 3:they had. When written right here, but it just says balls. Balls. Yeah. I've got nothing to expand on this, but I am gonna say it.
Speaker 3:Peter and his mom are surprisingly sad over the piece of shit dad getting shredded. And they're, like, really broken up about him. But in every scene, he beats them.
Speaker 2:The thing is they're surprisingly sad about the dad dying. And yet, Pierce, Larry, is surprisingly unfazed when his wife is riddled with bullets. He just steps over the corpse and heads to that van.
Speaker 1:What? Neck. Neck. Neck.
Speaker 3:Wouldn't let him have stumped cigarettes in the bed.
Speaker 2:He steps over the corpse and just, stubs out a cigarette on
Speaker 3:it. Oh.
Speaker 1:But the
Speaker 2:thing I the other thing so this is the scene to contextualize this where Dean Norris has sent the goons to, to capture him and Job. But Job has classic Job turned them into balls. And they they were sent there to intercept the 2 of them and take them to headquarters. But when Pierce leaves the house, he walks over to the van and there's just a load of c 4 in there. It's like, oh, these are bad blokes.
Speaker 2:They probably got bombs in the van, haven't they? Yeah. They have. Creative bombs. It labeled bombs.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah. Obviously. And then I think Pierce even says bombs. Just in case we weren't sure.
Speaker 2:It's one it's one thing short of like a big black sphere with a fuse coming out the top. Oh, bombs. I love that.
Speaker 1:Is you say his name's Norris.
Speaker 3:Dean Norris is the actor's name.
Speaker 2:Dean Norris
Speaker 1:is the actor. He somehow gets the wrong end of the stick, and he's like, he's also developed a laser weapon. What kind of laser weapon have you seen that turns people solely into floating spinning balls. I don't know what they told him was gonna happen in this scene before they did the CGI.
Speaker 3:Karl, there are robots in the trees. We will take anything at this point.
Speaker 1:An enormous golden head appeared in the sky.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:People turned into balls, and he went, there's a secret laser gun somewhere, obviously. It's
Speaker 2:it says a lot that both me
Speaker 3:and I forgot about the giant twinkling golden head
Speaker 2:that appeared in the sky.
Speaker 3:Oddly, the best looking part of the movie. I was pretty sold on that. It was very,
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Who's that gold guy from Guardians of the Galaxy? It wasn't far off him.
Speaker 2:Ego? I don't know.
Speaker 3:Adam Warlock. That's his name. So, Job summons Terry? Is that his name? Terry's like being he was the priest brother and who's been his mate throughout this movie.
Speaker 3:I fucking love that Job can turn people into balls, set people on fire, create little lawnmower men to torment a man for eternity, but he has to phone his mates to get a lift downtown. He cannot get from a to b.
Speaker 1:Didn't get his license yet. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And then Terry gets shot as soon as they get into the facility. I have skipped over the bees. We can touch on that in a sec if you want. But this I don't know what
Speaker 1:you say about the bees.
Speaker 3:They're shit.
Speaker 2:The only the only thing I had to say is that I genuinely made a note while, like, are these magic bees or are they just bees and the CGI is that bad that I can't tell what they are?
Speaker 3:The second one, I think, I'm I thought it was like it was a hallucination because the bees were just floating around not doing anything, but it was probably just a limit of the budget. Anyway, Terry gets blasted by the a sniper who had appeared earlier on in the movie, and I love this scene because it is the greatest under reaction in the movie followed by the biggest overreaction. Terry gets shot, does not flinch at all, and then instantly dies. Just flops his head back even though he was shot in the chest. Nothing.
Speaker 3:The actor was like, I don't wanna put anything into this. People overdo weird death scenes all the time. I'm just gonna fucking dissipate. And then
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 3:Fucking Job screams so fucking loud. You can see the fucking capillaries in his eyes bursting. Such a moment of quiet to something so Visceraly unpleasant. Visceral. Yes.
Speaker 3:That's perfect. Yeah. Horrid.
Speaker 2:Oh, speaking of, visceral, he he gets away with his plan. He gets back into the lab, and he hooks hooks himself up to the little gyro. And then his plan is to beam his consciousness into the computer. But I don't think anyone saw it coming that that meant it would squeeze all the juice out of him.
Speaker 1:He got emptied like a fucking froube.
Speaker 3:I think they set that up earlier in the movie because remember when he opens the bathroom mirror and then he uses his powers to empty the tube of toothpaste. And you wonder why on Earth they do that, and then his body empties in that exact fashion later on.
Speaker 2:Well, what okay. So what I was gonna say, on a similar thing is that the way that Pierce describes Job at the start of the film, which is a superb line. I don't know if you remember this. He's talking about Job, and he says, his mind is like a clean, hungry sponge, which is 3 fucking baffling words.
Speaker 3:I thought you meant
Speaker 1:the, like, 2 or 3 times, he just goes, this retarded man.
Speaker 2:No. Disguise him as a clean, hungry sponge. That metaphor doesn't make sense. It's just three words. He's a round smelly omelette.
Speaker 2:I thought a clean maybe this is the sponge having all of the, I don't know, hunger squeezed out of it. All the brains squeezed out of the sponge.
Speaker 3:I think equally possible theories. And and then he I guess he becomes a god in that realm, but fucking Piers walks in, tries to blow up the building. For some reason, Piers gets in there and tries to fight him. I don't know why he just didn't put a smaller timer on the bulb and leave. I don't
Speaker 2:I don't know why Piers does anything at this point. Why doesn't I mean, he takes bombs into there. He's a he's a technician. He does real he doesn't know how power switches work. Right?
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah. Like, he hacks
Speaker 2:in to to lock up the mainframe. Just pull just pull the plug, mate. It's much easier.
Speaker 1:I wrote the exact same thing. Just turn it off.
Speaker 3:And do
Speaker 1:you know how fucking angry I got after over 2 hours of film when he set a 15 minute timer on those box? 15 minutes. And then Then
Speaker 3:we watch that
Speaker 2:climbs
Speaker 1:into climbs into the VR machine and just has a chat. Just get shouted at.
Speaker 2:How did he think that was gonna go?
Speaker 1:Set a set a 5 minute timer and run away.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yep. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Once you see that he's been squeezed out like a toothpaste tube, probably give up on saving him and just set the timer.
Speaker 3:I love that he walked over to a body which is clearly just 2 d now. Takes the helmet off like he's gonna save him, and then the head disintegrates. It's really funny.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It looks like one of the guys that drank too much water in, the tuxedo.
Speaker 3:Yes. And then after he goes into the VR, he says to Job, come with me to try and save him. How? Where's he fucking going?
Speaker 2:On a floppy disk, I guess.
Speaker 3:But he, Job wins in the end, doesn't he? He he does say earlier on in the movie, once I become a god, all the phones in the world will ring at the same time, and then at the very end of the movie, that happens. So we have to assume that that's what happened in the sequel.
Speaker 1:But what does that mean? Today.
Speaker 2:Yeah. What's the what do you reckon he's done after that? Just like, alright. I did it. I made all the phone rings.
Speaker 3:I've touched God.
Speaker 1:No one's got a landline anymore, so I'm powerless.
Speaker 2:In 1992, he decided to take over the network, but the network was dial up. He's in AOL and he's still there. He's got like 4 lines that he's still taking over and embodying. But this is so I find this really funny that Internet in the early nineties was yeah. It was through the phone cables.
Speaker 2:It was Yep. Dial up. And taking over the entire Internet, probably fine, to be honest. I mean, what's what what what power are you getting?
Speaker 3:Well, no. He just comments on the YouTube videos. Oh, man. This is the cinematography in this. I can't remember if that was during or before the podcast.
Speaker 3:So that reference might be yapping to everyone else.
Speaker 1:He was here in 2024 listening to this.
Speaker 3:Is that us done with this movie?
Speaker 2:Well, I suppose I mean, I'll mention it now since we're talking about the the end of the film, is that there is a sequel where we get to see, I assume, what Job does. I haven't seen it nor has anyone else because so both of these both this and the sequel had a budget of 10,000,000. You mentioned one of you mentioned that this made a 150,000,000 at the box office, which is pretty respectable in that budget. The sequel, on a budget of 10,000,000 made $2,400,000 which is the lowest number I have ever heard for a movie making.
Speaker 3:Yeah. They could have
Speaker 1:made like 13 more before they broke even though. All that profit off the first one.
Speaker 2:If only they had. They could have probably children of the corned up and just had it run forever.
Speaker 3:I will never watch the sequel. There's not a fucking chance. Do we have any bad reviews before we get into
Speaker 2:the question? Before we get into our opinions, couple of quick ones. 4.5 stars by number 1 Bratz fan says, I love the hacky religious implications of Jeff Fahey's character being named Job, but I would have named him something more subtle like John Mower. And then, half a star by Zonkers, So this is how it feels to chew 5 gum, which is bang on.
Speaker 1:That is fantastic.
Speaker 3:Oh, great stuff. Well, Sam, since you picked this bloody movie, we'll start with you. So you think this was good, do you? I don't know what that intonation was.
Speaker 2:This is this is a weird feeling. I I haven't gone first in a while. I usually just play off what you 2 say. There's not much to say here. No.
Speaker 2:Of course, it wasn't good. I didn't think it was gonna be good. I'd never seen this before, the last couple days. I have to spread it out over a couple of days. But I'd seen trailers.
Speaker 2:I'd heard people talk about it, and I knew that it would be a fucking great time to watch it. And I will say, I really enjoyed watching the insanity with just like, I never knew what was gonna happen next. So I had fun watching it, but god no, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:Utterly insane. And as I said, either during or before, this legitimately might be the worst film I've ever seen. I mean, I've seen The Room. I've seen Birdemic. I've seen quite a lot of bad films, but this might top all of them.
Speaker 2:Ev, what about you?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Worst movie ever. I think the only element, I like is that Pierce Brosnan, in some way, brings something to this. He wasn't right for the character, but at least he is a good actor. And he tried for a role.
Speaker 3:I don't think he realized what a piece of shit he was making when he was doing it, because he looked like he was taking it quite seriously. When he was in the gyrating ball and making faces for, like, shots that was supposed to be establishing what they were doing in the virtual reality. It all looks great. It doesn't look like he hates it at all. But it it does not save this movie in any way.
Speaker 3:Also, would never recommend it.
Speaker 2:Imagine being Pierce Brosnan doing this whole film, then they take it away to put the CGI on and do the editing. And then sitting there in the premiere watching.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's like a big What a fear that must have been. Benny Wall. Right. If I had a time machine, that's where I would go. The premiere of this movie, but I would watch Pierce Brosnan.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Legitimately, probably the worst film I've ever seen.
Speaker 3:Yeah. There we go.
Speaker 1:Because it's it's like the it's like the everything film. It wanted to be a bit of everything. So I know this came before, but you've got your gumpiness with the special needs character who we're gonna learn learn to love and he's gonna grow, and then there's almost the conspiratorial movie side of it, where there's people playing against Pierce Brosnan behind the scenes and trying to take advantage of his experiments. And then there's him doing his experiments, the weird sciency stuff. And for a 2 hours and 15 minute movie, 40 minutes of him sat talking into a fucking Dictaphone.
Speaker 1:Oh, he wasn't bloody needed. And then a little bit of Tron shoved in there as well. Just a bit of that crazy sci fi ness so we can get some of that. And it's just like they just took a bit of everything. I mean, oh, we should have some of this.
Speaker 1:It should be a sci fi film, and also a horror film, and a conspiracy film, and a thriller. And I think they went to hit every genre. Comedy at the start when he meets Saiboman the chimp. And it it's just mad and maddening.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We didn't even mention well, we did. But the other thing that they threw in, which is putting a chimp in a nappy and a helmet, and yes, sellotaping a a gun in its hand. So animal abuse on top of everything else.
Speaker 3:I will say I've watched a worse movie in than this also associated with Stephen King. I'm not gonna say watch it. I'll I'll maybe send the trailer to you because it it is actually awful. It's on prime. I think it's called Killed by Stephen King or something like that.
Speaker 3:It's got some shit title. I'll send the the trailer over. I watched it because it's supposed to be a comedy, horror comedy based on people who went to Maine and then Stephen King characters start turning up and trying to kill them. I thought it was gonna be a scary movie type deal. So it's like, oh, this will be shit, but enjoyably shit.
Speaker 3:It turns out it was a fucking home movie with just people in it somehow ended up on prime. Truly, truly, truly awful. Worse than this movie that I would never bring back to the
Speaker 2:pod. That sounds great.
Speaker 3:It's really bad.
Speaker 2:Hey. Speaking of, this is the first Stephen King film, that we've covered that didn't have Randall Flagg in it. Mainly because it wasn't a Stephen King story.
Speaker 3:I was tempted to try and sneak one in, but after reading that Stephen King detached himself from this, I would like I
Speaker 1:assume the title of this episode will still be Stephen King, the lawnmower man. See
Speaker 3:if
Speaker 1:he comes after us.
Speaker 3:We need to come back to you. Brilliant. Well, for everything, boys.
Speaker 2:That's all.
Speaker 3:Beautiful. Well, thank you both so much for joining me, and thank you all for listening. Please do leave us a 5 star review wherever you're listening, and follow us over at Twitter and Instagram at say you think pod. Next week, I believe it is my choice?
Speaker 2:I think so.
Speaker 3:Yeah. My film is longer than this one, and now I'm afraid it's as bad. It is called Dream Catcher. It's 2 and a half hours long. It begins as one movie and then turns into a completely different movie.
Speaker 3:It's got a bit of a Dusk till Dawn vibe, but worse. So I look forward to hearing your opinions on that, and until next time. Goodbye.
Speaker 2:I've touched god.
Speaker 1:Cyber Christ.
