Unclear and Present Danger - Judge Dredd

Episode Date: May 27, 2023

In this week’s episode of Unclear and Present Danger, Jamelle and John are joined by David Sims of The Atlantic magazine and the Blank Check podcast to discuss the 1995 comic book adaptation “Judge Dredd.” Made in the era when Hollywood had no idea what to do with comics and science fiction properties, “Judge Dredd” is, in most respects, a failure. But within that failure is interesting glimpse into one of the major political preoccupations of the 1990s — crime. As such, the conversation touches on the crime discourse of the decade, as well as the culture of American policing. They also talk a bit about Sylvester Stallone. It’s a good episode, even if you disagree with us about the strength of the movie itself. We realized that we skipped an important entry in Stallone’s 1990s output, so our next episode will be on the 1993 film “Demolition Man.” We’ll see you then.Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.Contact us!Follow us on Twitter!John GanzJamelle BouieUnclearPodAnd join the Unclear and Present Patreon! For just $5 a month, patrons get access to a bonus show on the films of the Cold War, and much, much more. Our latest episode is on the 1970 political thriller “The Confession,” directed by Costa-Gavras.

As a city, we continue to grow. 73 citizen riots. Come and get us! Threat out your weapons and prepare to be judged! Judge this! Court's adjourned. Dreadly. You're a legend.

You are my finest student. Dread. Dread. You're under arrest. What's the charge? Murder. The enemy can falsify. Guilty has charged.

I am not the law. I am the law. You want chaos? The sentence shall be life imprisonment. I'm the chaos. Threat? Oh, fantastic! Let me crush him, Paul.

Excuse me? We're not together. Ah! We're going to war. You're a lot of fun to be with, Trey! Mr. High Endra! Stray! We're a lot of coming.

I'll be the judge of that. Tman, look out! Welcome to Unclear and Present Danger, a podcast about the political and military thrillers of the 1990s and what they say about the politics of that decade. I'm Jemal Bowie. I'm a columnist for the New York Times opinion section. I'm John Gans. I write a substack newsletter called Unpopular Front, and I'm finishing up my book. on American politics in the early 90s. And today we have a guest. We have David Sims, a film critic for the Atlantic,

and the co-host of the Blank Check podcast. Welcome to the show, David. Welcome, David. Hello, everybody. Thank you for having me. This week on the podcast, we watched the 1995 science fiction action, action comedy. The fact that I can't tell you what it is, it gets a problem with this movie.

Judge Dredd starring Sylvester Stallone, Armand Asante, Diane Lane, Rob Snyder, Yergen Proknau, who we've seen before in, what was it? The fourth protocol? Fourth War, fourth war. He's in a couple of these movies, yeah. So, Yurgen Prok now,

and the great Max Von Seidau, who I always love will just show up, who do his career, just show up in anything. God bless him. Well, he's, what do you call? Rent a prestige, basically. Yeah, sure. You need like 10 minutes.

Gravitus, that's fine. Right. And directed by Danny Cannon, it has a pretty solid score, I think, by Alan Sylvester. Is it Sylvester or is it, is it, Sylvesterie? Sylvester. Sylvester? Okay. Alan Sevastry.

And was shot by Adrian Biddle, who I only mentioned because he had previously led to his talents to aliens, the Princess Bride, Willow, Thelman, Louise, and we all love it. City Sliquers, too, the legend of Curley's Gold. A movie title I really like I think it's very funny And I can't tell you why I think it's funny I just so 90s

It's a very funny movie title to me Always has been Here is a very short plot synopsis In a dystopian future Dred The Most Famous Judge is convicted for a crime He did not commit While his murderous counterpart escapes The tagline for Judge Dread is in the future

One Man is the Law I suppose you can find Judge Dred to rent or buy on Amazon Prime or to buy on iTunes and I will just say do not buy this movie. So I especially think the iTunes price is like $18. If you pay $18 for this, you are a fool and deserve whatever displeasure you can get. So just rent it for a couple bucks on Amazon if you've never seen it. And I'll say the best thing about this movie is it's like 90 minutes. And so it's worth watching just to have it in your head while you listen to this.

Judge Shred was released on June 30th, 1995. So let's check out the New York Times front page for that day. Take it away, John. All right. Well, Ail Bomber links an end to killings to his manifesto. Two papers get documents. Terrorist says his attacks will end if text of manuscript is published promptly. unveiling an apparent motive and a possible way out of his murderous ways, a serial mail bomber

has delivered to the New York Times and the Washington Post a 35,000-word manifesto calling for revolution against what he says is a corrupt industrial technological society, controlled by a shadowy international elite of government and corporates figures seeking to subvert human freedom. The self-described anarchist in a series of self-accompanied letters, a series of accompanying letters, said that if his full manuscript was published by one of the newspapers within three months, and if that paper printed three annual fallout messages, he would stop trying to kill people. But the bomber, who threatened to blow up a plane this week, did not pledge to stop property destruction

in a 17-year campaign of postal terrorism. So this, of course, is the famous Unabomber, who turned out to be Ted Kaczynski, did not know it at the time. He had a whole ideology for his bombings, which he, this was one way to, to get published, I suppose. I don't know if they actually did this. I don't remember the Unabomber scenario. He's come back up recently for some reason.

But, yeah, the Unabomber had a kind of anarcho-primitivist ideology that was very suspicious of technology. He was, of course, living out in the woods. He had been, I think, I believe a mathematics professor. Yeah, so he was sort of an intellectual who went bonkers. Yeah. And eventually he was caught and is still in prison or did he die in prison? He's still alive. He's still alive. Ted because he's the Unabomber still alive.

So this was a big, not only was this obviously very frightening, but it was kind of a weird cultural phenomenon. The Unabomber, I would say in a macabre, even at the time, had a little bit of a cult following. You know, there was this famous police sketch image of the Unabomber, which turned out to look nothing like him. And, well, I mean, he was wearing a hood and sunglasses in the picture. But this became an iconic image and sort of subcultural groups kind of used it in an ironic and cheeky way to kind of disconcert or shock people. So the Unabomber, his political ideology did not catch on. But he was definitely kind of became a cult figure and a subcultural icon. You guys remember it that way?

Yeah, I feel like he became sort of a specific. like icon of of craziness quote on course craziness like you know in a more whimsical way

maybe I don't know why maybe because he was crafty and because he like lived in the woods there was something like you know romantic about this for some people

I'm not really sure there was something kind of new I mean I don't think he could really call his ideology either left or right has elements of both but there's something kind of new lefty about him

And I don't think he quite had the same sinister, even though he hurt people. He didn't have the quite same sinister feeling for people's school shootings, which started to happen around this time and also had a kind of subcultural cachet in a much darker way. But, yeah, I think you're right that there was something sort of almost not taking quite seriously about the Unabombo. So two things. The first is that I think that this subcultural...

whatever you want to call it, continues to the present. I think you can very easily find people who are like, the Unabomber was right. Ted Kaczynski was right about the direction of society. This is a little less serious. I feel like I saw on the internet somewhere somewhat like an eBay listing for an unopened package from Ted Kaczynski. And there was like, you know, no.

That's right. There's no responsibility for what happens. Yeah, what happens. I saw that. That's why he was in the news. I knew there was some, he had recently. been discussed. The other thing that I think it's worth saying is that

around this time the novel Ishmael by Daniel Quinn came out, came about 92 and was fairly popular. It very much of this is of the same anarcho-permittivist

ideology, suspicious of the development of agriculture, for example. Well, that's pretty primitive. That's where we went wrong. That's the idea. Yeah, yeah. That's all right. all went wrong. We started farming, yeah, we started farming, and that was the beginning of the end for humanity. So I think some of this was just like in the air, even beyond the Unabomber.

Absolutely. And this is also, we're getting a bunch of like William Gibson adaptations in film at this time. I think there's something happening here with sort of like suspicion of technical law school society, of which the Unabomber represents like the extreme form of that. But it's happening on a continuum. them. Well, in top of being an anti-Semite and kind of a Nazi, or actually a Nazi, the Ruby Ridge guy, Randy Weaver, had all these crazy theories about computers taking over, too. So, I mean, which is not true, can we say? But, I mean, it was obviously the technological

shift was creating these kind of morbid symptoms. Only 90s kids, right? Like, that's the thing I know, and I don't mean to be flip about a person who literally murdered people, but there is something. But for some reason, he attracts that. Yeah. Yes. And I don't know why. Yes.

Yeah, it's strange. I think it's the name is silly. I think that's part of it. It's like to silly. Yeah. Justices in five, four vote reject districts drawn with race at the predominant factor. Uncertainty about how the decision applies to other changes. In a bitterly contested decision that could erase some of the recent electoral.

gains made by blacks in Congress and state legislatures. The Supreme Court ruled today that the use of race as a predominant factor in drawing district lines should be presumed to be unconstitutional. The 5-4 decision declared unconstitutional Georgia's 11th congressional district now represented by a black Democrat Cynthia A. McKinney, which the Georgia legislature drew in 1992. Cynthia McKinney. Sorry, that takes you back. She ran for president, didn't she?

She sure did. Wait, you guys don't remember Cynthia McKinney? It was a whole thing with her. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Go on, go on, go on. No, no, that's fine. Yeah, to satisfy the Justice Department's insistence that a third majority black district could be created

for the state's 11 member congressional delegation. But while Justice M. Kennedy's majority opinion was phrased in quite sweeping terms, it left many important questions unanswered about how the new standard should be applied in other cases. Among most pressing questions is how the lower courts are just, decide when race has been the predominant factor as opposed to one factor among others in the ethnic geographic and partisans due of electoral politics. So this is sort of the beginning of the taking a part of the Voting Rights Act, am I correct? That's, yeah, that's pretty much, maybe it's not quite the beginning. I think there's a ruling a couple of years prior to here

that is basically neuters disparate impact as like a thing you can, you can, you can, you can policy off of. But that's kind of civil rights law broadly. This is, yeah, the Voting Rights Act, and this is the court beginning its campaign of taking it apart. Obviously, you know, the court's conservatives have always been hostile to the act, but it wasn't really until John Roberts, who has made, who kind of made dismantling the Voting Rights Act is like his cause of his life that it really picked up. You know, I think we discussed this case in a previous episode. I'm not going to go too much into the details here. But what I will say is that the striking thing about conservative jurisprudence on race and boating and on race in general is how it obliterates

any distinction between something that upholds racial caste and something that undermines it. They refer to this as colorblindness, but it's actually a bit more than that because it has the perverse effect of allowing a status quo of Ray's hierarchy to sustain itself, you know, without, maybe not with government support, but to sustain itself nonetheless. And this, I think this case is a great example of that because in his opinion, Anthony Kennedy, who I got to say, I know he wrote a Bergerfell important ruling, but Anthony Kennedy fucking sucks. Not like the worst, obviously, not even the worst on the court during his tenure, right?

No. You know, this is Scalia, Thomas. Rehnquist, who everyone forgets, there's like a literal segregationist. Yeah, he sucks. So he wasn't the worst, but he, nonetheless, he sucks. But so in his opinion, Kennedy says, just as the state may not absent extraordinary justification segregate citizens on the basis of race and its public parks, buses, golf courses, beaches, and schools, the government may also may not separate citizens into

different voting districts on the basis of race. This sounds reasonable on its face, but then as soon as you give it like 10 seconds of thought, you're like, well, this is fucking stupid, right? Because like the reason that we segregated on the basis of race in public parks and such was to uphold a system of racial caste and oppression. And the reason we're allowing the government to take note of race and drawing voting districts is to explicitly counteract that history of racial oppression.

Right. What conservatives seem to want out of the Constitution out of this is sort of a single universal rule that applies to no circumstances. But this is not how constitutionalism works. This isn't how the law works or how life works. And I'd even go as far as to say that

this understanding of the Constitution is wrong. I think Justice Katanji Brown-Jackson made this note, and during oral arguments during the affirmative action case, that's the court is currently deciding. But the race, there are three race-conscious amendments to the Constitution, the 13th, the 14th, and the 15th. And each of them was crafted explicitly with the idea of undermining racial caste, right? There is some, there is jurisprudence that comes up at the 13th in particular, which holds that the government has a compelling interest in not just ending slavery,

but in ending the badges and incidents of slavery, right? Which people have interpreted basically to mean sort of like the afterlife of slavery. And I think you can make a really good case that the Constitution very clearly says you can't have a caste system based on race. You can't have race hierarchy in a country that's unconstitutional. And you can do what you need to do to get rid of that, which is a distinct thing from saying you can't. utilize race.

And conservatives have basically obliterated the distinction in order to be able to say, well, isn't affirmative action really as racist as Jim Crow? And it's like, no, it's not. You're fucking idiots. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that was a big part of the racial backlash in the early 90s and late 80s was this kind of fake universalism of saying affirmative action is racist and these and minority set her sides

and quotas are racist. So, yeah. Why isn't there a white history a month? Yeah, why isn't there a white? There's a lot of that bullshit. Why isn't there a way? Actually, my favorite example of this is when Richard Spencer, which I know Richard Spencer are racist, but it's still very funny. He was like, why isn't there a W-A-W-A-CP? And it's like,

what do you think the N stands for? An N-W-A-C-B buddy. Oh, they're one. What do you think the N stands for? It's not what you think. Oh, boy. Yeah, there used to be an N-W-A-N-A-W-P, which was David Duke organization. So ruling on, let's just do this other, quickly do this other.

What was it, what were you knew about Cynthia McKinney? I was interested in that. She's just, I think of her, again, only 90s kids. I mean, I believe it was 2008 that she ran for president, right? Yes, she ran on the green part. against Obama. Right, right. But it was partly in this fit of peak

because she had been sort of primaried out by Hank Johnson because she got to be kind of a conspiratorial figure in the early 2000s. Like in the 90s, she was like,

I think a more mainstream left-wing Democrat from Georgia. And then in the, she lost an election. because her district got re-drawn, then she got back into Congress for one term, but started, like, doing stuff like, did the FBI murder Tupac?

I'm going to have, you know, like, you know, did a lot of, like, classic 2000s conspiratorial stuff, not even, like, you know. Green Party style stuff. Not the good stuff that we got now, you know, more like, you know. And so she got primaried out, and then she ran for the Green Party, and I think she has only gotten more

whatever, you know, conspiratorial since then. But I just, I was just, I was like, wow, you know, Cynthia McKinney, haven't heard about her in a while. She's a bit of a reminder, I think, that prior, kind of prior to Bernie Sanders, like that the American left in national politics

was just like a lot of cranks. Yeah, kind of fringy. Yes, like intentional. It's true. It's very easy to resign to fringiness. And now the cranks have moved into the center, because cinema is a little bit of a result of that world, and she has some of the style of it,

but now it's just kind of like a corrupt centrist. Very strange person. Ruling on religion, court says university must help subsidize Christian journal. A sharply divide Supreme Court open the door today to greater governmental support, government financial support, for religious organizations ruling five to four

that constitutionally acquired to subsidize a student, and Religious Magazine on the same basis as any other student publication. You missed the university. The university here is my alma mater. Oh, the University of Virginia. The majority rejected the university's argument that it would violate the constitutional separate, because it's a state school. Is it?

Yes. The majority rejected the university's argument that it would violate the constitutional separation of church and state to use university funds to help pay the printing costs for the explicitly Christian magazine. To the contrary, Justice Anthony Kennedy, your favorite, said in the majority opinion, once a state-sponsored university decides to underwrite the private speech of any group of students, it may not silent the expression of selective viewpoints on the grounds that the expression is religious and content. Vital First Amendment speech principles are at stake here.

How do you feel about this? I don't know. It doesn't seem that crazy or unreasonable to me. I don't, I'm not as, I think, coming from New York where everyone is a sick, liberal and there's not that much fear of like power of religious conservatives and a little probably a little more tolerant of religious speech and just I'm like I'll leave them alone but um this doesn't sound like a horrible ruling but I'm sure it set up some precedence for for bad things yeah so I think I think this ruling in this case right because like the Supreme

Court can just issue rulings that are narrowly tailored to a particular case, the particular case, right? I think actually in this case, this is rightly decided, right? Like, once the university decides, because you pay, part of your tuition is a student fee that goes towards various organizations. So once you've committed to paying for printing for, you know, any kind of other student organization, it does seem kind of weird to say, well, except for, except for you, because it's religious. And it's like, I don't know. That seems kind of silly. Just like, just like, just have a standard rule. Everyone gets access to the printer or whatever. I think the issue comes that it does seem to

be the beginning of a thing, which we're seeing really now play out in a big way now in which religious liberty becomes basically like a club with which to beat other constitutional principles. Right. The idea is that there's something exceptionally. important about religious organizations that doesn't give them the same First Amendment rights as everybody else, but actually gives them pride of place in the world of speech and civic organizations, which is sort of a conservative attempt to be like, well, you know, religious groups are the fundamental part of keeping a secure and order in society, so we have to favor them and they have a whole policy agenda around. And yeah, religious liberty. religious liberty is the euphemism, newspeak, for actual the predominance of religious organizations. Right, right. So, oh, this is interesting because this will probably never happen again in our lifetime.

The Cruise of Atlantis and Mears, as they appeared on television yesterday. U.S. craft docks flawlessly with Russian Space Station, an American Space Shuttle dock with a Russian space station today for the first time, doing so flawlessly that space officials hope it will aid joint ambitions of the Russian-American space programs. Ten astronauts agreed one another with hugs, handshakes, and kisses on the cheek, chattering away in Russian and English while speeding around the earth

at nearly five miles a second and the biggest craft ever assembled in space. It was the first coupling of American-Russian spacecraft in two decades. Oh, yes, they did things like this in the Cold War as gestures of goodwill, but let them leave their cameras behind for heaven's sake, a bemused Russian astronaut aboard,

that's not what bemused means, but we'll let that go. aboard Mirr said as his outpost filled with shuttle astronauts eager to record the event for posterity. So yeah, I mean, you know, there were a lot of events like that. I mean, I think I remember this happening. This is kind of thing like a child would fixate on because it has to do with space. But there was a lot of these like utopian moments in the early 90s and in the mid 90s where it seemed like, oh, we're shaking hands with the Russians. We're cooperating in space. this is going to be the new world and maybe Russia will be we'll see this in upcoming movies

maybe Russia will be our ally there was talk about Russia maybe joining NATO you know like there so obviously the relationship between Russia and the United States has changed a lot in the last 30 years but yeah this was an interesting moment and one of those post-Cold war moments where it seemed like you know the the separation between East and West was was falling Should we do this one about Arafat? So a faded icon is asked what he's done lately. The posters of his smiling face are badly worn now.

The penance with his likeness tattered by breezes whipping up dust on Gaza streets. But the sand-covered square where he was welcomed back by his people a year ago is now carefully tinted park with a spanking new playground. Like the posters and penance, the ulcer Arafat is a faded, though enduring national symbol to most Palestinians in the the Gobitzer Strip and the West Bank, a year after returning last July 1st from decades in exile, he is undergoing a transformation in many Palestinian minds. These days, having spent most of the last year in this impoverished strip, Mr. Arafat has viewed less as an icon and more as a public servant, judge less by the fire of his speeches and the ability to improve the quality of daily life.

All right. Well, this is interesting. Yeah, as you may know, Arafat, the leader of the PLO and the leader of the faction within the PLO, not as Fata, returned to Israel after being in exile. He spent some time in Tunisia. He spent some time in Lebanon. He spent some time in Libya. I think maybe some other places. And this is sort of the beginning, as mentions it here, Muslim militants opposed to Mr. Alphrat's record with Israel have defied him.

attacks on Israelis threatening the expansion of Palestinian self-rule. So basically, this is the beginning of the fall of the secular PLO, which had a socialist orientation and a kind of left-wing nationalism and was aligned with the Soviet bloc or the non-aligned movement, which was sort of aligned with the Soviet bloc, and a rise of a different kind of nationalism in Palestine and in Israel, now we can see it as well, which is a religious nationalism of a much more, right-wing bent and more inclined to reject the politics of compromise because, partly because of their, you know, religiously inspired vision. And also, the fact is that Hamas, who I'm talking about here, has also proved itself to be, proved itself to be a more competent deliver of

social services than the PLO and what eventually became the cause of the authority. So this is a big shift that's beginning to happen in the 90s. And we see this now that the politics, you know, well, the Palestinian Authority still controls the West Bank. Gaza is under the control of Hamas. They won an election there and then kind of used power to remove the PLO. So, yeah, this is the beginning of a big political shift in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that we're still living with the consequences of.

It really has a lot to do with the end of socialism and the end of the Cold War. Okay, I think that's pretty much it. Is there anything else here that looks interesting? Yeah, I think we can move on. There's something at the bottom about a balanced budget, but we already talked enough about that in previous episodes. Oh, yeah. We've gone through this. Yeah.

Okay. Judge Dread. So, David, the reason why I'm really glad to have you on this episode is that you, Judge Shred is first of all a very important piece of British pop culture and you yourself grew up in the UK I did

I did in fact I moved to the UK right when this movie was coming out June 1995 oh wow when I was 9 years old did you get into Judge Shred as all as like a teen or yes although I mean have you guys ever read Judge Shred stories

like the comic books I've read a couple around when I was 12 13 my friend had a huge collection of like weird comics and alternative comics and he had a lot of 2000 ADs with judge straight I don't remember them but I remember looking at them for sure I you know when I was you know in my teens or whatever and I was like reading comic books a lot and going to the store and buying my X-Men's and my you know whatever hot indie comics were happening like you would pick up to because it's it still runs I mean it's like the longest running

in a way like there's like zillions of issues of it um and judge dread is incredibly fascinating and the um the setting and the world is so interesting but the comics are like insanely dense and like when you're a teen especially i was like so overwhelmed by them versus the sort of like very clear uh lines of like a marvel uh comic book like just the like these panels just like packed with dialogue and information and crazy detail and wild violence and like stuff like that and so dread was always very cool like I was always very like uh intrigued and impressed with judge dread but it's also it's a very big dead's world so I don't I'm no expert on all of it's more sophisticated it was I don't know if this was an underground comic in in the UK but

it seemed a little more sophisticated than um US comics Yes, sure. And more like politically challenging or whatever, politically inclined in any way. You know, but also still like pulpy, serialized sci-fi storytelling, right? You know, not so highfalutin that, you know, you don't have like panels of Judge Dred punching someone through the face and saying like, gaze into the fist of justice or you know like stuff like that right right right right this absurd

universe it's very it's very robo copy I feel like and yeah yeah that's exactly obviously drafting off of robocop you know poorly and yeah I think that's I think that gets to sort of the the problem with the movie which we can kind of get in through

the production of the movie Judge Stred is over the top but it's also explicitly satirical it's sort of you know it's dark, right? It's, it's, it's the, um, kind of the conceit is that dread, although the, the, the protagonist is by no means a hero. And the whole system that he works to uphold is horrific. And that just isn't in the movie whatsoever. People have been wanting to make a dread movie for a minute. A number of folks were considered to, um, to direct the film among them,

Ronnie Harlan and Richard Donner. Um, a Richard, uh, Richard, a Richard, a Richard, Donner Judge Dredd movie just sounds completely insane. Although maybe, I don't know. I'd see it. I mean, you know, McTurranen would make sense in some way, right? If you're in this period, I'm trying to think of like the world. What about Alejandro Jotterowski's Judge Dred? The thing is, when you say Rennie Harlan, and I have no beef with Rennie Harlan and he made very fun action movies, but, you know, a cliffhanger would have been like the movie he's making around now.

But that means Hollywood is aiming pretty low. They're like they're not seeing this as a sophisticated story. Right. They're like, we need someone who will give us some high octane shit, you know. Right, exactly. Eventually, it comes to Danny Cannon and Stallone is brought on pretty early on. Schwarzenegger obviously was considered for the role, but like Stallone was cast.

And to be that this movie ever had a chance, that chance kind of vanished when Stallone was brought on, because Stallone at this point in his career is he's not, he's not, it's too much it's a hot streak, but like there's some good movies prior. Demolition Man was a hit. Cliffhanger was a huge hit. And Stallone is known to be a guy with a pretty big ego, like some control over his productions. And so, So he had some firm ideas about what this was going to be, and he conceived of it as like an action comedy. And actually took a pretty active hand in rewriting the script once it had to be cut down. He seems to have like tried to erase that because he said later, he said, oh, I loved it. It was political. And but he kind of, oh, so he was responsible for ruining it. I mean, I'd say lots of people were. Okay.

Look, if there's a film with Sylvester Stallone And the film is bad He is partly responsible for it I say that as someone who Who enjoys many, many, many Sylvester Stallone movies And I agree with you, Jamel, that like he was in this He had had a big slump in the, in the early 90s

Because like Rocky 5, stop her my mom will shoot He, Oscar, he'd had these like three bombs And then like right now he's kind of like He's sort of pivoted to sci-fi and stuff. He's doing all right for himself. But yes, he's legendarily, the man is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter. And he still considers himself very highly, I think, in that sense. And he would come in and he would be like, oh, yeah, I've got some idea.

You know, we should do this. You know, and like that would mess with movies all the time. Right. Which is very much what happened with this movie. Although again, because I think as you put it out, David, some of this is just like conceptual, right? Like the casting Rob Snyder, for example, having this kind of comedic element is very clearly this was being conceived of as like a standard issue Hollywood action film, right? Where you have kind of the buddy cop dynamic, where you have a love interest. Poor Diane Lane who has like nothing to do in this movie.

It's tough. It's a tough role for Diane. I love Diane Lane. I think she's wonderful. She's a very beautiful one, but I think she's a great actress. And I felt so bad for her in this movie because it's sort of like you got to do something with this love story subplot that just feels completely out of place with the aesthetic of the movie. So that's how they're clearly conceptualizing it. And Stallone wanting it to be an action comedy as well, just like doesn't help out.

And so even though I think there's actually some stuff about this movie that is quite good. The design is quite good. Yeah, it's kind of cool. Obviously inspired by Blade Runner, obviously inspired by lots of that stuff. The William Gibson stuff that's kind of popular around the time. Yeah, you can see some homage as a swelling green there. But it also just looks great. The design of the robot, I think it's actually.

really cool. I like to like how it feels out of the comics in a neat way. The special effects are good. Like the action sequences aren't bad. And it's always funny to watch an action sequence in a bad movie in this period because you're like, you know what? Not great, but at least there's like real explosions and like, you know, physical things happening on a set versus versus all your actors looking at, like, being on a parking lot? No, the action is all right. There's some later stuff where you can feel like Stallone was like, hey, I'm not going to do that stunt.

But, like, you know, largely it's fine. Yeah. So, but on the main, this is not a good movie. It was very apparent when it came out that it was not a good movie. I think in terms of how it did relative to other things that came out that weekend, the Power Rangers movie came out around the same time. I think the same weekend the Power Rangers movie came out and did much better than this. This was the third weekend for Pocahontas and Batman Forever, which also finished ahead of it.

It finished behind Apollo 13, which opened this weekend as well. Oh, yeah. This is a tough weekend. I really got a task kicked. This is the... And it end up making less money than its fellow summer action or Congo. Oh. And we should do that movie.

We should do that movie. I like that movie. And the Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep romance, The Bridges of Madison County. An American masterpiece. Yeah. That's interesting.

Wait, is this movie rated R or not? That's actually... I think it's... It's P. No, no, it's rated R. It's rated R. It's R.

I think that must have been part of the problem Like it's you know It's an R rated movie So it's got that going against it But it's not like Not nearly violent or fun enough to be an R rated movie And yes it's really right you know It's target audience is like 12 year olds

Yeah I'm actually shocked at this is R Because it I mean it doesn't It's got like squibs you know It's got like enough sort of like gun violence probably But yeah it's uh I think that there was a weird subgenre especially in the 90s, which I was definitely attracted to and my friends were attracted to, of like,

it's overly, it's too violent. Like, it shouldn't be for kids, but it is for kids. It was like this ultra-violet. It was like this fucking, like, they're trying to make little like clockwork orange kids. Like there were all these like things that were like idiotic like this, but like extremely violent and like, oh, you really wanted to go to that movie or you had like a friend who would let you watch it.

But like your parents really didn't want to see that kind of stuff. I think that that doesn't exist. much anymore but I would put this in the canon of like uh I don't know like what do you want to call it juvenile delinquent core or something like that sure yeah it seems like you know what I notice about oh first of all I just want to say that putting Rob Schneider in this role it's just so annoying like the like this whole trying to turn him into the comic relief of the movie is so grading and overdone and yeah it's just it's unforgivable yes it's unforgivable it makes the movie on watch almost on not not not

a character that has any, I think, this is not like a judge-stread character if that makes sense. Right. What's especially strange about Rob Snyder's presence in this movie? Is it half to them, it almost feels like he's ADR'd in, if that makes me sense? Yes. Like, they'll cut to him

and he's like, it's like he's, no one else is on set, but him? It's possible that that literally had, like, that they were like, Rob, can you do like five minutes of jokes and we'll just kind of pepper it in where we can. Right. Right. It's very, the first time I noticed

I was like why isn't he standing next to anyone and then it just kept happening I was like this is really weird it's weird that they're just like cut the Rob Schneider joke and he's awful I mean no offense to Rob Schneider

but I mean he's kind of a crazy person now so plenty of offense Robes yeah so this movie was it was a bomb did not do well and you can kind of see the effect on Stallone's career like after this he's just in a series of bombs

I think I think he does do copland at some point after this but just a fine film it's a great movie but that's that is that's kind of like the one of the exceptions uh otherwise it's just like a lot of a lot of trash a lot of not great stuff and he's not really in anything big again uh until the expendables no he truly like detox which is a terrible film from 2002 i think is his like last theatrical release for quite a while and then like he bounces like he's the villain in spy kids three he does a another Rocky movie. He does another

Rambo movie. Like he's, you know, that's his way back is to, to go to you know, the classics. But for a while he really is like, you know, not seen in movies. Which happened to all of them. Like Arnie has a terrible late 90s and he

pivots to becoming a politician. Then Dan like vanishes from screens in the late 90s. You know, like that whole era of action stars goes away for a while. Yeah, right. Right. For sure. Before we get to talking about politics and theme stuff, I will say, just on the note of that Rambo movie, have either you seen that 2008 Rambo movie? Yes, it's incredibly violent in my memory, like, even by the slender to the Rambo movie, like, like, shockingly nasty.

No, it is, not only is it shockingly violent, and I feel like I may have a stronger memory with this because I watched it on a plane. and so there's just like some grandma behind me and she'd like glance over and see a guy's chunk get blown out of him but it's also it's also like horrifically racist it's just like it's it is insane it's an insane movie if we ever get that far in this podcast

I'll talk about it but Judge we talked a little bit about this before he started but dread either the comic itself being the satire of the United States as you said David very robocop in its sentiments and is really kind of heightening some of the authoritarianism of American life,

the commercialism of American life, kind of like really heightening and running with it. And none of this is in this movie whatsoever, this movie, which is pretty much a straightforward kind of like action movie, Judge Dread, frame, he's trying to clear his name. There's an evil plot, blah, blah, blah. There's like not really much of the politics of the comic in this movie. be whatsoever. And in a very weird way, because it's Delon and because he's like the hero, the film has no particular even inkling of a critique of the system. And in fact, like, and in fact, part of the story is that judge tried to try to uphold the system of the judges, which

objectively is a horrific system of like summary executions for like any crime deemed as such by the judge it's like really really horrible stuff but the movie kind of just treats it as like yeah this is the baseline and this is totally it's okay it's fine yeah the movie is like he's a good judge she's the best judge actually he's very good at it yeah

even though he like locks Rob Schneider up for whatever nothing the system is that's the thing about the movie that's so strange about it is like they're fighting to there's a deeply conservative

thing about the movie, which is, like, they're fighting to keep a system in place that is intrinsically bad, but just trying to prevent from a worse, more authoritarian. They're keeping, like, a pretty authoritarian regime in place to prevent, like, insanely authoritarian regime. And, like, oh, there's some semblance still of the rule of law, even though pretty much not. So the picture is extremely bleak. You're like, oh, we've defeated this coup to overthrow a very horrible, regime and put in something presumably worse, which makes you wonder, actually, if this

movie, if you, let's say, for example, we lived in the actual universe of Judge Dredd and this movie came out. Couldn't you imagine this is a piece of propaganda against any kind of like reform movement in the system being like, oh, look, actually, they're worse. You know, we can't, we have to keep this system in place as flawed as it is because the alternative is some kind of nightmare. I mean, the system is already in. nightmare. What I also noticed reading about this is that as Jamal hinted at, the social context, which is so rich in 2000 AD, was just dropped in the movie. Like, there's a whole story about how there's mass, there's like 95% unemployment or something like that. It's a very dystopic

and view. It's like, well, machines and AI, interestingly enough, have gotten rid of the necessity for employment. So people just have nothing to do with themselves. And they engaged in this like meaningless riots and wars against each other, tribal wars against each other. And then the government encourages people to commit suicide because of overpopulation. This is a very dark dystopia, which kind of is like, oh, yeah, there's crime. In the world of the movie, there's crime, but why? There's no, there's no hint at social context. And, you know, Judge Shredd is invented in the late 70s in Britain when Britain is experiencing like insane unemployment levels and the three-day week.

stuff like that and you know like it's all it's all sprouting out of real anxieties and sort of exaggerating them to you know insane levels this movie is more just kind of like I don't know he lives in like a Robocop land

with like big high rises but don't worry he has a really cool gun and a motorcycle and he is the law so you know if you cross it he'll shoot you it's there's like a thought that's like brewing in my mind because Robocop likewise comes out of, I mean, obviously Paul Verhoven, not an American, but comes out of a similar moment in the United States, right? Sort of we're well into the process of de-industrialization in American cities.

The 80s recession is several years past, but large parts of the country didn't actually recover from it. So there is like concentrated poverty, places like Detroit, as we've talked about on a previous patron episode, are depopulated, economically depressed. And so Robocop does reflect both sort of like the hypercapitalism of the Reagan 80s and like the very real despair that struck urban areas, the fear of urban areas that kind of gripped the country. And Verhoven brings all this to the film, brings his politics to the film, and produces like this really effective piece of like action satire. And just this judge dread movie is almost as if like, I mean, it's kind of like the Robocop sequels in a way. Even though those still retain some of the political DNA of that first film, this movie is like, Hollywood was like, let's try to make a Robocop, but like completely vacated of any politics. It's just like remove all the politics in rebel cop and give you the same basic idea just without anything that might make an audience like even vaguely uncomfortable.

What's funny is that this does come at a moment where the fear of violent crime, fear of cities is still like very potent in American society. I think the crime bill, the famous Biden-class. Clinton crime bill has signed the previous year in 94. Right. More cops. Right. This is Julian.

A hundred thousand judges on the streets. Give them all lawgivers or whatever the gun is called. This is Giuliani is elected around this time as well. So this is sort of Giuliani's New York. And in everything that means and brings with it. This is an era where gangster rap is popular and thus. there is much more, I think, like, public and awareness of inner city crime in Los Angeles. And that becomes its own kind of like meme in fear of crime.

I was watching recently a clip from the movie The Substitute, which we got to do on this podcast with Tom Barringer, right? Sort of Tom Barringer going into this school. And you think it's going to be like a stand and deliver type of movie, but it's like what if stand and deliver but the teacher beat the shit out of the kids. Oh, God. is it that there's like what is it like a drug cartel in the school or something like that's like a drug cartel in the school but even before you know there's a drug cartel in the school tom barringer is kicking the shit out of kids yeah so and like talking about vietnam while doing it it's a crazy movie and we really we really got to we really got to do it in that podcast but that this is all to say that despite the fact that dread is almost like consciously vacated of any politics. It is hard to watch the movie and not think about the political context of the mid-90s, which is this crime panic. Having said that, and to the movie's

credit, like, none of this is particularly racialized, right? Like, there's the, which, which is part of, I feel like it's part of the absence of politics. Like, because there's no, it's like, it's not even like generic, it's generic criminals. It's sort of like generic bad guys. It fits that The gang, the one like speaking gang leader you see is played by James Riemar. Who, who was a, he was a rent villain in the 80s and 90s, obviously. Like he did it all the time. Like he was, he was certainly easy, an easy choice for that. But he is an unpolitical figure as a villain, as a cell, you know, as a tower block warlord or whatever he is.

Exactly. Just like no, no political content there. And that's what I find so interesting about this movie. It's both so reflective of the 1990s, but also, so it's reflective of 1990s in like both senses in both kind of the anxieties and concerns of a lot of Americans, but also in this sort of like deplitization of so much of stuff, of the attempted depletization of culture in the 1990s, the kind of like, well, we're kind of past politics now. right um it's all i think in a way it has a politics and anti-politics because of it's just like look the reform has to come within it's it's it's the movies portrayal of anybody who's not a cop or a drug like the judges are all her not heroic but they're strong you know even the bad guys are like in the

in the world of the civilians are just totally degenerated and degraded people and I get, there is not a racial aspect, but there is this cast separation of the world into like, well, the judges are tall, strong, handsome, organized. And the rest of the world, it's not even, is, is a totally criminal, you know, it's a totally criminal world. There are no, they're not even, they're just keeping a world in line. There's not even a conception. There's a thin blue line between orderly and good law giving citizens.

Rob Schneider is the stand in for someone who's not a cop in the movie. and he's a simpering coward and nothing. And like this is an interesting piece of cop ideology, which is like, or extreme cop ideology, which is just like the cops are the only government, the only civilization, the only virtuous people, outside of them, it's not even that there's criminals, everyone is a coward and a nothing. And you can kind of see some development of that in police and police's own conception of themselves now with this thin blue line business. It's like police nationalism.

A state within the state, the only remnant of virtuous American values, and the society outside of them is totally lost. So it is a really, I think it's not, yeah, it loses all of the political satire of a robocop. And it kind of flips it on his head and is like, we need these people. We can't allow them to go too far and become too authoritarian. or let a crazy person go, but Judge Dred is, you know, as this arbitrary, brutal character is the hero of the movie. And it's just hard to, it's just hard to escape the feeling like the politics of this movie are bad, like not even absent. They're just like, what is it

saying? It's just saying like we need an authoritarian system of police, you know, with, with some, with virtuous people in charge, not the, not the total lunatics. But that's, The police nationalism point is a really good one. I think it's, there was a moment after, I think it was maybe right after Michael Brown's killing where there are people using the slogan Blue Lives Matter, which were so so revealing. Like it's been overtaken by thin blue line kind of paraphernalia imagery, the American flag with like black bars and the blue line. But I always thought Blue Lives Matter was so much more evocative of what, that the mental state there was, which is that like being a cop, which is like a profession

you choose, right? Like no one, you're not born in blue as much as some people are like to believe. Except Judge Dren is, right? Exactly. Yeah, she's genetically engineered. He was actually born in blue. But this idea that like cop is like an identity category deserving of like, yeah, yeah. They said anti-cop, they talk, this is the, I mean, they're dumb as shit all off of the people

advocate for it. But they talked about anti-copr racism. They use that term. They said it's racist. I think this, I think you're right for this movie does kind of, um, gesture towards that. Of course, it's not, it's not like, it's not really developed in the 90s quite yet. I mean, this, this, this, um, police nationalism, I really like that turn of phrase. Yeah. Obviously, the thin blue line existed in the 90s, but the sense of police as almost like a Praetorian Guard in society feels like very recent, feels like in the last 15 years. Like it's been a development within the culture of law enforcement, perhaps in response to heightened criticism of law enforcement, but nonetheless, it's a thing that didn't quite

exist in the same way when this movie came out. It's a loss of like, okay, look at the way cops are presented. like cops have with these like Punisher logos along with the thin blue line stuff like they view themselves as some kind of commando force something like that it's not like oh it's a blue like it's not like oh he's a blue collar irish cop anymore who's a little bit tough and has to get rough with the criminals and the bad guys but is ultimately kind of decent and necessary it's something a little the fantasy is much more well sci-fiish and a little bit like oh we are these kind of robotic order keepers a la judge dread or I mean the Punisher obviously has like kind of revenge or angry passions but is it is you know masked or

in a uniform it's not like it's a very different conception of the police than I don't know one from the middle of the century I think I think it begins to develop in the middle of a century because it's sort of like a everyone this is liberals are always like oh we need to

professionalize the police we need to professionalize the police never mind that some of the things that we associate most with police being totally unaccountable has to do with system professionalizing and turning them into kind of civil servants in an unaccountable bureaucracy, you know, of course, so that's a flaw. But like, I think some of it has to do with this weird, perverse professionalization of police. It's like they're not a member of the community. They're a, yeah, like you said, a Praetorian Guard. They're an, they're a cast above they're a special group um not just like oh this guy happens to be a cop and he goes home

to his family and you know so yeah i think that that started appearing in this movie david any thoughts yeah i mean i think that the the fundamental issue that this movie runs into that have you guys seen the other dread by the way i sort of forgot to ask that you know the no i haven't i have i have which is which is an amazing movie that completely like understands what it's doing you know it's like it's a mirror image of this movie basically um but this movie like cannot get over the the idea that stalone has to be the square drawn hero uh even though he literally has a golden eagle on his shoulder and is basically like a fascist warlord you know like the satire in the like they give him the costume they put him

in the situation that you know where where the satire is on the surface so I can watch the first 20 minutes of this movie which are really the only part of the movie that are Judge Dreddy like after that we're lost in this conspiracy plot and then

it's sort of like whatever more of a Hollywood thriller like but like the first 20 30 minutes of this movie are like Judge Dredd is on the street you know tackling crime and he he is a parent

of the self-importance of policing. Like, even though Stallone is not really playing that and the movie is not really playing that, it is still unavoidable. Like, the visuals of the film make it unavoidable. And I don't know if, you know, I know this movie was cut to ribbons and, like, Stallone decided it had to be a comedy

and give himself a catchphrase and all that. But, like, you know, so maybe there was once some intent to parody, like the sort of self-importance of like of policing but like I still

I still just laugh I mean like even the remake even the other dread film loses the eagle epaulet whatever you want to call it because it's too impractical

like it doesn't make sense for anyone to actually wear that in person right like how could he possibly how could he like get through a door with that thing? Right right right right

but it's part of the it's part of the comic book costume so they did it anyway I don't know. It's all very interesting. I mean, and I wish, you know, I wish this movie just had like the slightest self-awareness about it, but it doesn't really seem to. But yeah, I think all of that is generating in the 90s, right?

Yeah. I think it seems like the perfect Judge Shredd movie would be a synthesis of both movies, which like somehow is more well made and intelligently done. but the kind of silly, as you said, the parody of police self-importance in the costumes and the over-the-topness would come through. It seems like it did be in it.

I think it's like, as we said, like on the level of design, this movie is quite interesting because I think it's like, oh, they've, like it's almost like the people who were in charge of production design like were very like,

oh, like I get the message that this is sending. Like so on the level, this art, right. Yeah, this makes sense. On a visual, on a visual, the movie remains kind of intelligent about what it's saying. And I think that's what attracted to like kids I knew who were like kind of arty and into comics for the art because they're like, yeah, it's the signifiers on the visual level are pretty smart. It's like, oh, look at the way this

guy looks. Like what does that say? But I mean, then the script and the acting just like doesn't live up to it. Right. Yes. And like obviously the, Jamel, I don't know, Jamel, do you like the sort of Alex Garland dread, the 2012 dread? I like it quite a bit. I mean, I think sort of I think you're great, I think you're right to say it's a mirror image because it, it also isn't like particularly political. I mean, it, it, it, it captures, like, that political, yeah, no. Right. It captures a creepy authoritarianism of dread, but it reads it much more straight. Like, there's, there's none of the element of, of parody or archness about it.

It's just sort of like, this is what it is. Right. this is life in this dystopia like yeah right and i think i think i think that makes sense given that the movie very much it's just like a pure action film right it's very indebted to the raid um in particular it's very much of that yeah of that uh of that type of action film like the i mean frank i mean we've kind of already said this but like the the dread that would make be truest to the comics it's just robocop like robocop is that movie right um top to bottom. Right. Yeah. Like Robocop is almost like dread origins. It's like the beginnings of, hey, can we take this city and kind of, you know, build on top of it and, you know, create this futuristic megopolis, you know, that will eventually go out of control.

Yeah. And it's worth saying there was a Robocop remake not too long ago, which also was like completely vacated to politics. Right. Yeah, I never saw the remake. It seems like to. Right. It's very bad. It's very bad. There's a like one scene in it that's noteworthy that has like these real elements of body horror to it but other than that it's just like it's it's um it's very terrible and I almost wonder you know given the Robocop remake

made by like an American production team this movie made by an American production team I just wonder if it's just something kind of about Americans operating in Hollywood that have a hard time with doing that kind of satire of American society

yeah but I mean the thing is demolition man which is just a year before this film right they said 94 or 93 it's yeah like that is an incredibly effective satire of like now it's set in like a utopia a quasi utopia rather than a dystopia obviously but like that and maybe that's why stalone grew convinced like this needed to have comic elements because the comedy and demolition man basically works it's a very silly movie but it's like having fun with the idea of like the future out of control where and like whereas in dread the comedy is that he says i knew you were going to say that you know like that's it there's no deeper right should we do should we do demolition man why don't we do so when i was going to

when we get to the end of the podcast i was going to say we're going to do demolition man next because i i forgot i forgot it i thought we were i thought it was later in the 90s it's actually earlier so we're going to loop back that that is and and excellent film in my opinion demolition man is 80% masterpiece 20% forgivable silliness what one of and we'll talk about this when you'll the episode one of um wesley snipes great performances of the 90s like simon phoenix is an amazing performance it's it's that early period of wesley snipes like new jack city and major league and that and you know where he would come in and be your second lead who was so so you know what and they can't jump like you know he was so so energized and then i feel like hollywood in the midnighties also put him in kind of a more boring zone you know like i'm sure you'll do murder at 1600 at some point on this podcast that's a classic terrible political thriller like you know where he doesn't really get to be you know fun like he's he needs to be

very very fun we've talked about how hollywood just did not seem to know what to do with wesley's Knipes for a variety of reasons. Like, a very energetic, very sort of like, you know, kind of horny actor who was out of place in a milieu where especially dark-skinned actors were kind of just slotted into like respectable, you know, respectable black man territory. Again, we'll talk about this, but that's part of why there are some people who look at Denzel Washington to collaboration with Tony Scott and are like, well, why are you doing this? Like you're like a very high caliber actor. And Tony Scott is great. My theory on why

Washington works so much with Tony Scott is just because Tony Scott let Denzel Washington do like crazy stuff. Like did not, did not like kind of cast him in a Denzel Washington role, but cast him as a sleaze bag as like a failure, like variety of things. Thanks. Okay. No, you're right. You're right. He often would have him play more flawed protagonists

rather than just like the hero cop who's going to save the day or whatever. Right. You know, like Man on Fire being the number one example, right? Right. Yeah. Love that movie. Okay. Any last thoughts on Judge Judd before I move on to wrapping out?

No, I mean, my take on this movie is the first 20 minutes are bad in a fun way. the next 70 minutes are bad in an incredibly uninteresting way. And, like, it's, you know, we didn't even mention Armanda Sonti, not that we needed to. Like, there's nothing to say about him in this movie. He's an interesting guy to think about. Like, he's like a great, you know, trash sort of be villain guy at this time, like, you know, who would occasionally come in and be really, really fun in a movie. But in this, like, I think he's been told.

like you should have you have to give like a Stallone performance because you're like his twin or whatever you're like his genetic double and so he's doing this weird like take on Stallone that is that is not effective if I'm being kind right yeah yeah yeah I don't know that's about it yeah it's it's um it's funny we've we've often said that the the worst bad movies tend to have the most be the most interesting to talk about with regards to politics, but even this doesn't really have that much of it in it. It's kind of just, it's like a failure across every level you could imagine other than a production design. And it kind of, it makes sense that it's forgotten. And no one really has fond memories of it.

Like, another movie that came out this year, we're not going to do this on the podcast, but it's an instructive comparison point. Street Fighter came out this year. with John Claude Van Dam terrible film and Raoul Julia famously is the last role terrible movie

but has a much much more fondly remembered and has like a real cold following and I think I think that just is a testament to just like how this one completely falls flat so to listeners

if you've never seen Judge Dread you know watch these things that follow the conversation but also if you can tell me watch it without spending a dime. I highly recommend you do that. And if you feel no inclination to watch it, don't watch it. It's not particularly good. Okay. That is our show. If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. We're available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher Radio, and Google Podcasts. And

wherever else podcast are found. If you subscribe, please leave a rating and review. It really does help people find this show. You can reach out to all of us on social media if you want to. Not anymore. I mean, I specify find social media and not Twitter because John has is he subject of political persecution by Elon Musk's Twitter and we think I'm on Twitter David's on Twitter

you can find this not really necessary the podcast is on Twitter UnclearPod you know this and you can reach out to the podcast over email at unclear and present feedback at fastmail dot com for this week and feedback we have an email from another

person named John titled Following up on True Lies podcast, I want to comment on your recent episode discussing James Cameron's movie True Lies. You both astutely pointed out the toxic masculinity pervasive in the movie and the impact that Cameron's divorce may have had on the script. But even for that era known for hyper-masculine actors in their eye-candy co-stars, I thought then and now that True Live stands out in its misogynistic treatment of Jamie Lee Curtis. And I think this should have been called out even more in the podcast than you did. the movie contained the standard tropes of glasses wearing librarian morphing into a beautiful woman just by dressing to please her man and her overall lack of agency. But the scene where Jamie Lee Curtis is interrogated, and I would say mentally waterboarded by Schwarzenegger and Tom Arnold's characters in the agency's black ops site, was very disturbing and excruciatingly long. And there was another one where she's forced to debase herself to Hidden in Shadow's Arnold, which was also quite uncomfortable.

This isn't even counting the scene where Bill Paxton's character almost rapes her. I may be wrong, but I can't think of another pop action movie in the 90s. I was so blatantly misogynistic against the ostensible co-star of the film by the film's hero. This is even more interesting because Cameron gave us so many strong female characters in this movies over the years, including my favorite, Sigourney Weaver and Aliens and Linda Hamilton and Terminator 2 Judgment Day. Anyway, keep with the great work, and I look forward to future episodes. Thank you, John. And I think we both think you're very much right that it was hard to watch.

I mean, we talked about it a little bit how awful it was, but I guess we didn't bring to light the gender aspect of it. Yeah, what they did was highly unethical in torturing this woman, essentially. And it was all kind of done for laughs. Like, oh, ha, ha, they've kidnapped her, and they're forcing her to do intelligence. Yeah, like, yeah, but I think the comment is exactly right. The interrogation scene where they're behind the two-way glass is bad, but it's that bedroom, it's that hotel room scene that I find just like, kind of unwatchable.

Yeah, it's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. David, have you seen True Lies recently? Yeah, not in a few years. We did do it in our podcast way back when it's never been a film I am fond of. Not that I don't understand. It's a James Cameron movie. It has good action.

But yeah, it feels, it's up its time. And, like, a lot of Cameron movies are very much not of their time. Like, you know, they're very, they endure really, really well. And True Lies feels like a bit of a relic. But it's just also never been one of my movies. So I don't have any, like, lingering love for it. It's, it's okay. Yeah.

I think it's interesting that, yeah, I think I see most of Cameron's movies are very much like you could watch them whenever. Like Terminator 2, if that were made today would stand out. out as like, you know, a great movie. And also, there's not really anything about you need to change. Like, maybe like the arcade thing, the arcade thing early on might be a little less legible, but. Aesthetic stuff that is, that is very fun in 90s about it, but that's just fun in 90s. Like, it's not, yeah, politically outdating or whatever. Yeah.

Yeah, no, agreed, agreed that those are really terrible scenes. And the film is pretty misodontistic. Again, this, I made, I said this in the inner episode that all of this is actually why the movie does feel like it's like a failed parody, if that makes any sense. Like an attempt to sort of like Cameron satirizing Cameron, but like it just doesn't work because like Cameron's not that funny versus the last action hero, which is I think I am a huge apologist for it, as I've said before. And I think it's like really quite good. But yeah. True lies. Nothing else to say about that. Thank you. Thank you for the, for the note, John. Episodes come out every other Friday. So we'll see you in two weeks with, as I said, demolition man from 1993. A very fun movie. Here is a very short plot synopsis. I thought I had that up. So now I have to find. it. Not a movie that's easy to sum up in one sentence, I would say. Not at all. That's why I really need to find this plot synopsis. Okay, here we go. Simon Phoenix, a violent criminal cryogenically

frozen in 1996 escapes during a parole hearing in 2022 and the utopia of San Angeles. Police are incapable of dealing with his violent ways and turned to his captor who had also been cryogenically frozen after being wrongly accused of killing 30 people while apprehending phoenix um i i can't wait to watch this movie again it's it's just just reading that fills me with delight um crazy movie uh and we'll cover that next uh david do you have anything you want to plug anything you want to share for the audience no when is this episode going up pretty soon yeah friday i think um yeah so you know um my podcast blank check uh is dare to listen to. We're doing Buster Keaton right now.

And in fact, Jamel, you are on an episode that shall be posting in a week, I believe. So this is somewhat certain different as crossover. So listen to that. And my criticism is at the Atlantic. The Buster Heaton episode was a lot of fun. We did the general and battling Butler. I feel like, I honestly feel like that episode, my appearance on your show is almost like the platonic ideal of a Jamel appearance because I just like spent a lot of time talking about

late 19th century American history. Yeah, damn right. We have a Woodrow Wilson tension at one point, I believe. Yeah, yeah. So we're going to the 20th. It's very on brand for me. So if you don't, if you guys don't listen to Blank Jack, you should listen to Blank Jack.

It's a wonderful podcast. Okay. For John Gans and David Sims, I'm Shemal Bowie, and this is unclear and present danger. We will see you next time. Thank you.