Kill James Bond! - Episode 23.5: Stormbreaker

Episode Date: December 29, 2021

It's time: KJB has finally watched Stormbreaker, the absolute box office failure of an attempt to create a film series based on the young adult Alex Rider novels by Anthony Horowitz. A british schoolboy must infiltrate the secret base of computer entrepreneur Mickey Rourke and figure out just what da heck is going on- while avoiding the worst jellyfish model this earth has ever known. And to help them with this task, they've got the irreplaceable Phoebe Roy! Find Phoebe at https://twitter.com/prhroy And listen to 10K Posts at https://twitter.com/10kpostspod AND listen to Masters of Our Domain, with previous guest Milo Edwards, at https://twitter.com/mastersofpod Find the full episode at our reasonably-priced patreon!  https://www.patreon.com/posts/60192768 *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Find us at https://killjamesbond.com and https://twitter.com/killjamesbond

Not very British, I'd have said. Not very cricket, no. Hello and welcome to a bonus episode of Kill James Bond. I am Alice Caldwell-Kelly. Joining me, as usual, are Abigail Thorne and Devin. And we have a very special guest. We have Phoebe Roy. Hello. Phoebe, how's it going? I have the coronavirus.

I don't know what's happening. I've got coloured shapes in the corner of my eyes. I haven't been out of the house for almost a week. Let's do this. And with that in mind, Perfect mindset. Yeah, we got you to talk about a fever dream movie in and of itself.

I'm real sorry about this one. I'm real sorry. This is my pick. And I think it's one of the worst films I've ever seen in my life. Yes, it's Stormbreaker which is an adaptation of Anthony Horowitz's

the first of a series of novels about child spy Alex Ryder did anyone read the novels as a kid? I did I read a bunch of them I used to get them with a scholastic book voucher, and the one thing that I remember

about the Alex Rider novels is that they all had the logo of the series on the cover, which is a kind of slouching teen silhouette holding a flashlight. Right, okay. And this will be referenced in this movie, inexplicably. From the very first frame, this film is just like being beaten with a hammer. Did anyone else catch what the very first frame is? What's the very first frame of Stormbreaker? It is in all caps, the Weinstein Company.

Yep. Yes it is. Immediately I wrote, let's go. Perhaps the Weinstein Company. Yeah. Yes, it is. Immediately, I wrote, let's go. Stormbreaker. So the idea of- I just put teeth in my nose. You can't do that. So many of my notes for this film are written in all capitals.

That's just sort of the movie that we're dealing with here. Mine get increasingly deranged. The final pages are scrawled on the walls in blood. It is worth pointing out that this is technically a film about a child soldier. Yes, absolutely.

This came out the same year. This came out the same year as Casino Royale. The denouement of Casino Royale. The Den of Quake Casino Royale. Yeah, 1967. That doesn't seem like it can be accurate. 2006, it is. This is, like, dated for 2006.

Okay, so we begin in London at a school where 14-year-old schoolboy Alexlex rider is giving a presentation about how boring and shitty his uncle his last remaining relative is uh his and this is intercut with his uncle ewan mcgregor who is like i guess the big draw of this movie is like oh you're gonna go and see ewan mcgregor he's like a big thing in 2006. I remember this film coming out, and it was supposed to be like the big kind of Ewan McGregor revival, because he hadn't really been in much in the kind of preceding years, and everyone was like, oh my God, it's so exciting to see Ewan McGregor again.

And as I'm sure you're about to tell us, that was a little bit of a trick. We got gaslit by 2006's Salt Raker. You did. You got gaslit and you got girlbossed, because as we're getting this intercut thing of Alex Ryder talking about his uncle Ian, and how boring he is, this is intercut with him doing spy shit in Cornwall for some reason. Really badly edited. Like, so bad. Yep. Oh. Yeah. There follows a car chase through Cornwall which involves, at one point, a Punch and

Judy show being blown up by a Stinger missile. He has the fucking special James Bond custom nonce number plate on the BMW so it says Ryder because Alex Ryder Ian Ryder great sure and then within the first I want to say three minutes of the movie Ian McGregor is

Ian McGregor? Ewan McGregor is caught and compromised to a permanent end by the episode art for this. Explain to me how this man dies. So he's driving along

with the radio out, which means that he can't hear the helicopter above him, which then lowers down an inverted Damien Lewis. Spider-Man. Vertical integration, that's what it's called. Yeah, and he does the little Spider-Man thing

where he, like, upside down gives him a little kiss on the lips, and then he shoots Ewan McGregor dead with two pistols. Listen, when we say he's hanging upside down, we mean that he is hanging from the ladder of a helicopter by his foot his knees aren't around the rung it's just like his feet are on the rung and he's just hanging on it with two pistols and just simply shoots him with a gun which yes characters like special move or some shit because he does it again later like stop yeah yeah yeah there there are multiple instances of upside down damien Lewis in this movie.

And when I first saw this, this was the first sign that madness was about to set in. And I simply wrote down in all caps, upside down man. That's what they made him do in the audition. They said like, so Damien, can you go upside down? He's like, look, I'll tell you, it's pretty much the only thing I can do. And like, yeah, he's immediately written out of this movie. He's immediately killed. Did any of you catch that during the car chase, there's a little, there's some seagulls doing a double take.

Like it's a goddamn Roger Moore film. I didn't catch that. I know. He is killed for being too much like roger moore um but we see that like he's he's sort of perennially letting down his nephew alex rider and so it's because he's away doing spy shit constantly he has to live with his uh housekeeper Jack who is Alicia Silverstone wait, wait, but first of all

we have to endure a god damn terrible title sequence, and an awful song Stormbreaker that would have been better than what they got, it's just, I noticed that the screenplay is actually by Anthony Horowitz

he wrote it himself. Yeah. Oh, well. Don't give up the day job. It's a tight 90 minutes, I'll allow it. It doesn't overstay its bulk. Yeah, I guess. But also, watching the title sequence, I was very struck by some cast they got for this. Yeah. Oh yeah!

Some pretty fucking good actors, I mean, they had Bill Nye in this. We'll get to Bill Nye! Andy Serkis, Sofia Canedo, also Mickey Rourke for some reason, Robbie Coldfrey and Stephen Fry? This is like, you have some serious actors in here. Yeah. Jimmy Carr, also for some fucking reason. And the abiding thing about this movie is that none of these people remembered how to act.

I don't know what they did to them. Well, apart from Andy Serkis, who plays the giant jellyfish. Yeah, that's true. He did a great job. Yeah, he did a great job. Yeah, he was fantastic. So, the way that we introduce

Alex's housekeeper and, like, guardian Jack, is that she has gone... I regret to inform you... Oh, you must excuse this rather odd mixture of styles, but I refuse to go entirely Japanese. She's doing... She's making fucking sushi, and she speaks to Alex in Japanese, so that you know that they both speak Japanese. Mm-hmm.

It's a bit racist, also. It's insane. Like, she's got the headband on, she's like, there's a fucking- She's making sushi. The gong plays, she- yeah, mmm. place yeah 2006 baby in any case yeah yeah yeah dead uncle alex is like his deceased is then told oh your uncle has all japanese right but before they start eating they both say arigato which is like is that's not what you would fucking say you say something you say it's dakimasu but like what the fuck how is this what you're fucking up just prepared a fugu fish

sitting down to my fugu sushi and just being like hello but in japanese great perfect you're bloody not very British to not be listening to the fucking podcast on the bloody Patreon. And yeah, that's enough of that. If you would like to listen to the remainder of this wonderful episode about Stormbreaker,

I wish I knew what you could do. I wish I knew. I wish I could help you could do I wish I knew I wish I could help you but I don't I don't know other than going to patreon.com slash killjamesbond all one word and signing up for like a five or at least a month I mean other than that

I got nothing for you sorry oh come here you fucking