Pop Culture Happy Hour - Summer Blockbusters

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

Fifty years ago Steven Spielberg's Jaws was released in theaters, kicking off the summer blockbuster phenomenon. And you know a summer blockbuster when you see one: It's a film that's hugely popular and as a result, financially successful, and seen by lots of people. But not everyone has seen every last one of them. Today, we fill in some personal blockbuster gaps, and finally see a movie that absolutely everyone saw, except for us — including Armageddon, Beverly Hills Cop II, Ghost, The Fast and the Furious.Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Everyone knows what a summer blockbuster is. It's a film that's hugely popular and as a result, financially successful. By definition, it's a movie seen by lots and lots of people. But there've been a lot of summer blockbusters over the years, and not everyone has seen every last one of them. So we decided to fill some personal blockbuster gaps and finally see a movie that absolutely everyone saw except us. I'm Stephen Thompson.

And I'm Glenn Weldon, and today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're talking about summer blockbusters we've never seen until now. Joining us today is Ronald Young Jr. He's the host of Pop Culture Debate Club from Lemonada and the BBC. Hey, Ronald. Hello, Glenn. Hey. And also joining us is one of our producers here on Pop Culture Happy Hour, Liz Metzger in front of the mic.

Hey, Liz? Hello. Hello. So we asked everyone to bring in one summer blockbuster that they recently watched for the first time. Let's get started. Stephen, this is going to be an exercise, I think, in feeling, cut off from the mainstream. What big summer blockbuster

missed you that you have finally watched and why? Well, I'll get to that in a second. It's absolutely wild to admit that I have never seen the 1998 blockbuster Armageddon. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Okay. How dare you, Stephen? Now, for those who've never seen Armageddon, we're going to do a quick NPR style The Batman as a crime fighter. Armageddon is the Michael Bay movie where Bruce Willis is like the world's greatest oil driller, and he leads a rag-tag group of misfits on a mission to blow up a killer asteroid that is hurtling toward Earth.

Said asteroid is the size of Texas, we are told Armageddon, not to be confused with deep impact, which was the other killer asteroid movie in the summer of 1998. I think I never actually saw it because everyone I worked with said it was terrible. And that was that. I never really had a reason to revisit it until we inexplicably decided to embark on this particular project. And it is so fascinating to revisit this movie more than 25 years after it came out because it feels like both a pre-September 11th relic, complete with the destruction of one of the World Trade Center buildings. And it also feels like a post-September 11th relic complete with the, inexplicable destruction of Paris. This movie is such

ludicrous trash. I renowned non-astrophysicist that I am. I sat there with my arms folded like a little Neil de Grasse Tyson. It's not so much like I don't understand physics, but I do understand basic logic. And the way everything happens in space, the way everything hurdles against each other. Nothing makes any sense at all. Every explosion, and there are so many explosions, it's like whatever object is exploding

is just inexplicably covered in jet fuel at the time. The asteroid isn't just like five miles wide or whatever like a giant asteroid would be. It's the size of Texas. Entire cities in this film are leveled as like scene setting. At one point, they blow up Paris just for funsies. There are these long, point. Pointless digressions.

Liv Tyler is shot so glamorously. There's a gun in space. Don't forget that. There's also a gun in space. And it's just sitting there like, oh, that's, something's going to happen there. Chekhov's asteroid. The action in this movie, especially once they're all pantsing around on this asteroid, the action set pieces make no sense at all.

I will say watching this film, it did make me think about how much I miss DVD commentary tracks. Because, like, Ben Affleck. Fletk, like very famously, his DVD commentary track for this movie, is considered one of the great, just shade-throwing exercises in the history of commentary tracks. It's such a doofy movie. If you want 500 shots from the asteroid's point of view, this is the movie for you. But there's something about this like that is a bit of an origin story for Michael Bay and his direction to come because Armageddon is his third movie. His first two were bad boys, then the rock. His third movie was Armageddon.

He follows that up with Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys 2, The Island, and then straight in the Transformers. And if you look in all of those movies, there's a lot of ways in which from the cinematography, from the way that people interact with each other, he is setting the standard for what a blockbuster is going to be in the future. And there's people who make blockbusters that are barring elements from this, including I think at least one we're going to. talking about later that are barring elements from this film, which is he has a good sense of what the masses go to the theaters for, which I don't think necessarily is a good thing for us that

want to see a good movie and also want to be entertained. They just slide directly just into entertainment, which means that every single thing you said, Stephen, is exactly right. But I guess people just don't care when they're looking at it on a giant screen, you know? Well, it's the difference between being entertained and being pandered to. Yes. This movie is doing a lot of pandering. People went to the hell out of this movie as like objectively bad as I thought this film was.

By the end, like the music has been pummeling you for two and a half hours. You do have a certain like, aw. Can I ask you about that music, Stephen? Like, I don't want to miss a thing, the Air Smith song.

Did that play? You want to close my eyes. Did that play during the movie or just over the credits? So basically, there is a scene that invokes the song where it kind of comes up up and it's a scene, it was sung by Stephen

Tyler and it is a love scene with his daughter, Liv Tyler. It's invoked, it kind of comes up almost as a teaser about halfway through the movie during kind of a moment of respite. And then it just like booms through the closing credits.

It is a very effective song. I dunk on Diane Warren a lot, but that song is doing work. Liz do you have any Armaged thoughts have you seen this film? I was but a wee lass when this movie came out. I would not have been allowed in the theater. Oh yeah. Except on baby day. I mean, I think bad sci-fi movies, specifically bad science sci-fi movies are good because they have bad science rules. But does this movie have bad science rules or do you feel like it's just like we're glossing over? Because

I... Both. It has both. And it was very like, we never want to pay taxes again. Am I right? Oh, my gosh, yeah. I mean, it's a good demand if you think about it. It's a good demand. It's honestly what you should be asking. 100%. Yeah.

Okay, well, that is Armageddon. Thank you very much, Stephen Thompson. Ronald Young Jr., what's your pick? And why'd you miss it? My pick was Beverly Hills Cop 2. Oh, boy. Beverly Hills Cop, the original. Again, it's a fish out of water story,

starring Detroit Cop Axel Foley, as portrayed by Eddie Murphy. It is a fish out of water buddy cop movie in which this black detective from Detroit is solving a crime in the hoity-toity and largely white, Beverly Hills. This plot, that is the plot of Beverly Hills Cop, that is also the plot of Beverly Hills Cop 2, which came out in 1987. I was born in 1984. That's when Beverly Hills Cop came out. Beverly Cop 2 came out in 1987. So it was not of the Eddie Murphy era that I know.

The Eddie Murphy era that I know involves the Nettie Professor. It involves life. So this wasn't my era is the thing. But I will say watching this for the first time, I realize that this is kind of, in a lot of ways, the prototype for the modern buddy cop movie. Sure. I enjoyed the movie.

There's a lot of Eddie Murphy. I'm getting a lot of the origin of what he's doing. We're still finding out what his personality is. Watching this movie, he had already done 48 hours. So it just feels like as he's moving forward its career, this is an inflection point, but it's also specifically so many bigger things happening in the second one versus the first one. For instance, there's a cement mixer armored truck car chase, which is just something that you would only put into a blockbuster.

But so many blockbuster beats in this film for it to be a sequel. And we complain about IPs and sequels now. And this is something that just has been a fact of Hollywood for decades. Had you not seen Beverly Hills Cup one also? Or had you seen that and just not seen this? Why did you pick this one? Glenn Weldon, I watched both movies in about a three and a half hour span. Back to back.

Sorry, go ahead. Then you'll be able to answer my question because my memory is that Beverly Hills Cop 1 was a much shaggier gamble, where they were kind of like betting on the charisma of one Mr. Eddie Murphy. And Beverly Hills Cop 2 seemed like all the edges had been sanded down. It had been engineered to be a blockbuster down to the big final scene in a warehouse at a time when every action movie ended in a warehouse. Is that true? Yes, but I will say the first two acts of Beverly Hills Cop are exactly what you're saying, that shaggy mess that you're talking about.

By Act 3 of Beverly Hills Cop, they've dialed it in. Once they figured that out in Act 3 of Beverly Hills Cop, Beverly Hills Cop 2 is all Act 3. It's all wisecracking Eddie Murphy firing guns and the two other police detectives that he's working with, all working together to solve this crime against like the crotchy, Lieutenant or police chief. We're going to do it no matter what. We don't care what this guy says.

We don't go buy the book yet. Exactly. All of that like happens. That's the entire movie. And again, that's setting the tone for every buddy cop movie that comes after it in terms of like the modernity of these films. They know what works. How does it age? I mean, one thing I remember about Beverly Hills Cop is there's this long kind of awful aside where it's just like Eddie Murphy doing gay voice.

That does not age well, obviously. what does age well is black folks interaction with the police department. There's ways that there where I was like, well, this could have been made last week. And then you see Eddie Murphy going to gay voice and you're like, well, this could have been made in 1987. It's completely different. All right. Well, that is Beverly Hills Cup 2 and also theoretically, Beverly Hills Cup 1. Thank you very much.

Ronald Young Jr. Liz Metzger, what's your pick? I picked 1990 Ghost, the thriller, Romance. Good choice. Well, okay, we'll get into it. Oh, Liz, you're in danger, girl. Oh, boy.

Nicely done. Nice to what you did there. Patrick Swayze is in this. He is in a beautiful relationship with Demi more. They are this gorgeous couple. They've moved in together. She does pottery. But tragically, he dies and becomes the said ghost.

But the only way they can really communicate is, thankfully, who is playing this sort of fortune teller medium and they're able to communicate. This also stars Tony Goldwyn, who looks like a zoomer. Everything is actually very zoomer-coded in this film. And it is a story about a love that lasts and that even if you die, you can come back, you can bother Whoopi Goldberg and also try to figure out who killed him. This is a film that I haven't watched for, like, specifically the reason that it terrified me as a child. Like, I walked in on my parents watching this film, and it begins with very ominous thriller music.

Scary. There's dusty rooms. Scary. There's sexy pottery. Terrifying. And then soon after someone gets shot, very terrifying. And then there's a home invasion. And that's when I walked out of the room.

So sitting this down, I was like, that's a movie. That's a movie. You got five Academy Award nominations. And what's good is fun. What's not good is long. It's very long. It's over two hours. And I think Whoopi Goldberg is the best part.

She's not in it enough. And to me, she's so beautiful when she's crying. And she's so confused. I don't know. It was a movie. I can't believe I was scared of this movie for years. Years. I grew up with my parents.

watching that in the other room. And for me, like, especially being raised in a Pentecostal Christian household, I had conflicts with my preacher, dad, and missionary mom watching this movie where the demons are dragging people to hell. And I didn't even see it. I can only hear it in the other room. Can you imagine being a seven-year-old child hearing this in the other room? And you're like, why are you watching this? Where's Jesus? The thing is, if you're only hearing the sound of someone being dragged down.

hell. You are being spared some of the jankest special effects. There is that. But there's one where you basically make out an outline of the scary beastie dragging the person to hell. And it is so cheap looking. I loved this movie when it came out. This movie came out the summer. I turned 18. And I saw it at least once in the theater and cried all over the place. It is on balance still a movie I would recommend. And I agree. that Whoopi Goldberg is very funny in it. I mean, it's of an era where the comic relief performance

was very likely to get you a best supporting actor or actress, Oscar. And I think Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore are their very wet-eyed performance. It's true. I found them very compelling. I think DeMeree more in particular

is very compelling in this movie. I'm going to tell the story when I saw this movie in the theater, even though it's a romance, and I wouldn't normally see a romance, I'm going to tell that story because it begins. So I was backpacking through,

Europe. And I was a little homesick I now realized because there's no other explanation for why I would go see this movie. I had not experienced any kind of mass media in months. Exactly. So I turned this corner and there's this theater playing this big American movie with stars whose names I recognized. And it was like, why not? And I had never heard of the movie, but then I looked on the poster. And I saw that it was directed by Jerry Zucker. And I was like, oh, right, airplane, top secret. Police squad. This is going to be great. It's not what I was expecting. And I sat down in the theater and the only thing I remember is that Whoopi was funny

and Vincent Chiavelli as the subway ghost. What a big swing. What a fun performance. Ghost rules. Ghost Sensei right there. Very be a leaf. And those shadows dragging Tony Goldwyn to hell. Yes, it looks janky, but in my sleep derived, low blood sugar state. That was

more profoundly unsettled than I was prepared to be at that time. The music cues are quite ominous. Nah, I can't do it. But the visual effects looks like somebody caught ghost out of black construction paper. This also had Unchained Melody, right? It does. The pottery seat.

Yes. It was a big kind of era for Unchained Melody, I think. All right, thank you very much, Liz. Ghost. That's a pick. Okay. So when I look down this list of top sellers, I was like, well, I've seen all these movies.

I must be a special snowflake. Look at me. I'm such an astete. And then I realized, no, the definition of Blockbuster is lots of people who say it. It's not a thing that you've seen all these movies, Glenn. There was one franchise that I had not seen anything from, and I started off not seeing it because, you know, just it missed me, right? I mean, like, it wasn't a deliberate choice or anything.

I just thought, well, that's probably not for me. Then about the fifth or sixth sequel, this franchise started achieving a kind of cultural currency. Everyone was talking about them. That's when it became a deliberate choice on my part. I decided I would be the guy who has never seen any of these movies. You know, a small but still measurable percentage of my personality would be that I've never seen any films in the fast and the furious franchise. Look, in life sometimes you know that some things are not for you. That's fine. These films don't need me. They have their fans. A discerning critic like Linda Holmes loves these movies. We talk about them all the time. She finds them ridiculous in a satisfying way. And I'm told by other people. Oh, they're wild. They're over the top. And they use language that suggests to me that what camp is to gay men, Fast and Furious films are to straight people.

Correct. So I've had friends who try to sell me on these movies saying, oh, Oh, you've got to start with five. Five's when it gets fun. No, you start with four, not five. Okay. Sorry, I have an opinion on this. Go ahead. But the thing is, Ronald, I looked it up.

Four, five, seven, and eight. And I'm calling them Fast and Furious Four, five, seven, and eight because I refuse to engage with their actual names, which are stupid for me to acknowledge. It's true. They all opened in April. And I couldn't square that with our brief here because April is not summer. I'm sorry, words mean things. So I started with the OG. I started with the Fast and the Furious, which premiered on June 22nd, 2001.

Here's the plot. It stars Vin Diesel, Paul Walker. Walker is a cop who is infiltrating the world of street racing to try to find a gang of elite drivers who are hijacking trucks. I would love to sit here and tell you guys, look, I was wrong. What a revelation. What a fun ride. I sincerely hope to sit here and go, I get it now. But 20 minutes in, my husband, who had also never seen any of these films, turned to me,

and he said to me what I was seconds away from turning to him to say, which was, I don't get this movie. people love them. I understand they get bigger and broader and sillier and more fun. That's a phrase people keep thrown at me. Oh, then they become spies.

And I'm just going to sit here and dump on this movie that people love for the entire segment here. I'll just say that there is so much posturing and preening and tiresome kind of adolescent performance

of masculinity that I couldn't find a way in. I couldn't get a handle on it. There's like a moment where they pull up to a light, another car pulls up, and it's some rich. D-bag and they exchange words and

Vin Diesel says, smoke him and, you know, they smoke him. He gets smoked and that's the whole sequence. That's the point of it and I was sitting there going like, Vin Diesel, at the time of this, you were in your 30s. What do you do? You're doing? We talked about Swayze, right? This guy had movie star charisma and

Diesel, the kind of charisma he has is dirt bag doing donuts in the Wawa parking lot charisma, right? That's it's not the same. He has lung charisma. I will say this. Like, everything you're saying, is accurate. And I feel like this entire series is reprehensible.

Even though I'm a big fan of it, it is also reprehensible. Say more, why reprehensible? Because everything you're saying is 100% true, especially when you get from Fast and the Furious to Fast and Furious and Tokyo Drift. I have to tell you, I know you've heard this before. Four, five, and six are good action movies. They're good. If you just sit down and have all the information you have about the first couple of movies,

and just watch four, five, and six, it's good. In 7, 8, 9, it goes off the rails. Paul Walker dies. They decide that they can do anything they want. The Rock is pushing a missile with his bare hands on the ice. Like, it gets real, real, real bad. But there's a trilogy in the middle. It's actually just like Star Wars, if you think about it.

Okay. You're not going to convince me to keep going with this. No, I know I'm not. I liked when the car went under the truck. I like the stunts. I liked being introduced to actor. Rick Yun, who plays the rival gang leader, Johnny Tran. He is a strikingly high individual,

and I will be seeking out his body of work. I liked Ted Levine. He plays Paul Walker's weirdly sympathetic boss, but if you can spare me a few minutes on Wikipedia, what's to recommend these films? Someone told me that the first Fast and Furious was a lot like watching the first Magic Mike because it takes itself really seriously

and it has this really insane filter of tepee atone. We were like, this is the underbelly. They're doing something not above the law. I think this is a movie that's silly.

And I think sometimes you just got to watch a movie is silly. And also stunts, I will say. Maybe that's just me that like kind of a second screening it where you're like,

I'm going to look up. We're going to watch a really sick practical effect stunt more or less. And then I'm going to look down and I'm going to hear the sound. There's a race. I'm going to look up. And I'm going to look back down.

I appreciate the practical effects. I love a cool looking car going fast, but spare me the talk of family. We want to know what you think about our picks, and we also want to know what summer blockbusters you need to catch up on, too. And now that I see it, I'm like, no, sometimes you don't need to. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash PCHH and on letterboxed at letterboxed.com slash NPR Pop Culture. We'll have a link in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show, Ronald Young Jr., Liz Metzker, Stephen Thompson. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me.

Thank you. Thank you. This episode was produced by Hopsafathema and Lenin Sherburn and edited by Mike Katzif. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy, and Hello, Come In, provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.