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Movies don’t get much better than surfer-heist popcorn flick Point Break (1991). Movies don’t really get much worse than surfer-heist popcorn flick Point Break (2015). What happened? Each week on the movie and culture podcast Captive Audience, regular ϳԹ contributor Alex Ward and his co-hosts break down a classic film that one of them hasn’t seen. This week, they invited ϳԹ Podcast host Peter Frick-Wright to discuss the Keanu Reeves cult classic, and the debacle that is the remake.
Podcast Transcript
Editor’s Note: Transcriptions of episodes of the ϳԹ Podcast are created with a mix of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain some grammatical errors or slight deviations from the audio.
Peter Frick-Wright: This is The ϳԹ Podcast.
It’s fun to watch movies with your friends. It’s arguably more fun to watch classic movies that your friends haven’t seen, but should have, and then discuss.
That’s the concept behind Captive Audience, a movie and culture podcast hosted by regular ϳԹ contributor Alex Ward and his co-hosts Sean Roney and Edwin Janes.
Each week, they force a movie on someone, and then record their immediate reactions. Usually, they’re really good movies. Sometimes, they’re really bad movies. This week, it’s both.
Point Break is the kind of movie that, even if you haven’t seen it, you probably know the jokes and references. Keanu Reeves plays Johnny Utah, an undercover FBI agent infiltrating a gang of bank robbing surfers. It’s just as awesome and ridiculous as that sentence makes it sound.
But, in 2015, Hollywood tried to recapture the magic. And in this one, Luke Bracey plays an undercover FBI agent infiltrating a gang of non-specific gravity athletes. They base jump, they rock climb, they go big wave surfing. If they do all of it well enough, they’ll achieve nirvana. Or something. They pull heists along the way but it’s not really clear why. The plot is just as muddy as it sounds.
I am a big fan of Captive Audience. The hosts are hilarious and smart and even if I haven’t seen the movie they’re talking about that week, it just sort of feels like hanging out with your friends. Of course, the episodes are better when you have seen the movie.
A few months ago, Alex and I realized that I had never seen the original Point Break from 1991, and none of the hosts of Captive Audience had seen the 2015 version. So they invited me on to discuss. And we had a really good time.
Here’s Alex.
Alex Ward: Gentlemen, we are washing up onshore, surfboards in tow, walking out of the theater after getting absolutely pitted in a barrel. Peter, you are joining the show. Thank you for being here. Uh, since you are here and this is the first time you saw the old Point Break from 1991, what did you think?
Peter: Um, you know, I have noticed that you guys have done a lot of really good movies on this on this podcast. I don't think you've done a perfect movie yet, and I wonder if this is it.
Edwin Janes: Oh wow. Wow. Twist.
Peter: Yeah. I actually, I mean, okay, it's not a perfect movie. I really enjoyed myself watching this movie. Um, Yeah. And, in like, in like, ways that I did not expect to. I kind of expected it to be like, so dumb, it's fun, which it is. But it's also got like extremely good forms of tension that I feel like, like old school, you know, holding your face in front of a lawnmower type stuff and like chase scenes.
Edwin: Not exactly that, but like that
Peter: type, you know, that type of thing, the general lawn care, uh, soft tissue tension. Um, it was great. I think, I think it got surfing like better than most movies get surfing.
Alex: Yes. Okay, I can't wait to talk about that.
Peter: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Uh, and, you know, I, I can only assume that, uh, working in the FBI was just, just as accurate as depicted in this film.
Alex: Yeah, I think they had the same, uh, training set for the gunfighting as Men in Black, uh, with those kind of moving carnival things in the front. Yeah, it just opens with Keanu just blasting cardboard cutouts
Peter: In the rain.
Edwin: I think most FBI training is done in the pool, right?
Alex: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of pool work.
Peter: A lot of getting bricks. Blindfolded.
Alex: Shout out to whoever is putting that test on for Keanu who goes like, 100%! Nice! Yeah, yeah.
Peter: The, the, and like the visual metaphor, of the beginning where it's like, like, you know, the gun training and surfing montage like all cut together very artfully It's it's just like it's a nice glowing neon sign of like this is a movie about guns and waves buckle in,
Alex: Guns and waves. Uh Sean, edwin now, uh a little twist here for the listener which is, we're also including Point Break, the 2015 remake. We're including in this podcast because we had all seen the old one. Peter had not, and none of us have seen the new one. So Edwin, Sean, turn it over to you guys. Uh, talk to me about your Point Break feelings after watching both movies. I think, I think we all watched both.
Sean Roney: Yes.
Alex: Where are you at?
Sean: Well, Alex, uh, I want to issue an apology. Already. I was a little, I was a little hard on love, actually. Um. I gave it. Our first episode. If I recall, I gave it one star. Uh. I'm gonna bump it up to one and a half, just so that I can give Point Break 2015 a zero.
Sean: Um, uh, this movie had nothing for me. I mean, besides it having some really incredible, like, Okay, maybe I'll give it a half star for, like, the locations and the, and the stunt work. But, um, this had none of the charm and charisma of, uh, of, of Point Break, the original, and, uh, I can't wait to, uh, dissect it.
Edwin: Yeah, watching them side by side, I mean, I, I had seen the original, but not in a long time, and I had forgotten how much I really enjoyed it. And, so much of the original, I think the reason that it became such a cult classic is because of the charm and the character and the weirdness that is brought in by the setting, Keanu, Swayze, Gary Busey, and a lot of the charm and character and memorable sort of features are kind of, you know, uh, missing from the one from 2015.
Like, there are a lot of times where it looks really beautiful, but it feels kind of empty. Um, where the original, you have things like the, uh, you talked about guns and waves, and just Keanu in the suit with the surfboard under his arm. Like, there's nothing that funny and strange and charming in the 2015 version of Point Break.
Alex: Yeah. I think you're, I think it's best illustrated by what you said about, well, let's talk Gary Busey. I mean, a lot of Gary Busey, uh, 91, he's still at his fastball. And then like his character in the new one, they're like, ‘Hey, listen, Papas is an acquired taste, but once you get used to him, you know, he'll, he'll, he's there for you.’
And he's just like, he seems like a totally normal guy. He's just got an accent.
Edwin: It took a while for me to realize that was Papas.
Sean: I did not make that connection until right now when you said the Pappas character in the new one
Alex: Yeah, same name. And he's like, he's an acquired taste. Not really. Then, in the new, in the original, you got Gary Busey being like, I took shrapnel all over Chiang Mai for you!
Edwin: I got a stool sample we can analyze. Wax! I became an expert. Incredible stuff.
Alex: Well, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to kind of uh just go through both movies sort of at the same time. Jumping back and forth um uh much like the jumps being made all over this new one. Several kinds of jumps.
Peter: Um it's not afraid of a jump.
Sean: No, it isn't.
Alex: And, uh, let's kind of just to get the basics out of the way here. First one comes out 1991, directed by Kathryn Bigelow. So already we are, we are way ahead of the new one in terms of name recognition.
Sean: Catherine Bigelow is an incredible filmmaker. She's made Zero Dark Thirty. Um, I think this is a less popular movie. Detroit in 2017 is a really I mean, you talked about tension, uh, building Peter, that movie is one of the hardest movies to watch that I've ever seen.
I think like, and, and to, I watched a couple of interviews of her talking about point break and it's really incredible. Um, especially like, uh, there's an interview of her on, on YouTube talking specifically about shooting the, the bank robberies, um, and how she uses the camera and blocking and even lighting to like, build, build the tension.
And, um, I mean, I think those scenes in particular are like some of my favorite parts of Point Break, the original. Um, so I, I mean, I think it's, she's such an important part to me of, of the, the, of the first movie being actually A really great film
Alex: And at the time she was married to James Cameron, um, who helped write this movie and our, our podcast has low key become a James Cameron and a Ridley Scott podcast because he was the original director slated for point break was Ridley Scott podcast because he was the original guy slated for Point break.
We just can't get rid of these guys. They're everywhere.
Peter: It's really a James Cameron appreciation podcast.
Alex: I had zero feelings on James Cameron before we started this. If I had to pick, I'd be like, he seems, he seems a little disconnected from society. And now I'm like, James Cameron can do whatever he wants, man.
Edwin: You know the original title for point break was The Way of Water?
Peter: Oh, it wasn't way of, no way.
Edwin: That's an Avatar joke.
Alex: Oh okay.
Peter: Um, uh, not only were they, were they married, but this movie, uh, came out the week after Terminator two judgment day.
Alex and Edwin: Wow. Whoa.
Peter: So. And, and, uh Point Break. Big week in the Bigelow Cameron household. Yeah, yeah. And, and Point Break debuted at number two behind Terminator 2. Uh, and thus resulting in the dissolving of their marriage.
Sean: I was gonna say.
Peter: It never recovered.
Alex: Has that ever happened? Husband and wife have a one and two movie? Yeah. At the same time? Yeah. That's crazy.
Sean: That is wild.
Alex: Uh, this movie was originally called Johnny Utah. Um, when once Keanu Reeves was cast in the title role, uh, the studio said, you know what? That doesn't say anything about surfing and they wanted to change it to writers on the storm after the Jim Morrison song, which is a pretty dope name for a surfing movie.
Alex: Uh, again, the studio, they decided, you know what? Jim Morrison does nothing to do with this movie. And then they settled on point break finally. So that's how this came to be. Uh, the first one eventually actually was initially production began 1986. Here's the cast they had in 1986 for this movie, Matthew Broderick.
I'm guessing as Johnny Utah, Johnny Depp as Bodhi and then Val Kilmer and Charlie Sheen. I'm hoping Charlie Sheen was going to be Pappas and Val Kilmer somewhere in there, maybe in John C. McGinley's character. I'm not sure. But, um, holy moly. That was with Ridley Scott. With those four?
Peter: That would be a very different movie, Matthew Broderick,
Alex: Johnny Depp?
Peter: Val Kilmer and Charlie Sheen. Yeah. But just putting Matthew Broderick anywhere near this movie would Completely undercut the movie that we watched, like the movie as it became.
Alex: Absolutely.
Peter: That just reeks of testosterone and, uh, you know. Every character, as the line says, uh, being young, dumb, and full of cum.
Sean: Blue flame special is what they keep calling him.
[Edwin: I don't think Matthew Broderick would have made that tackle on the beach. I think Buddy would have scored on him, he would have taken it to the house, yeah.
Peter: Yeah, and that's And then he just kind of like putts around for two more months, and then they eventually pull the funding for the undercover work.
Alex: That would have, uh, that would have been right on the heels of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which, I think asking an audience, to make the leap of Matthew Broderick from that into action superstar is is pretty steep.
Sean: Yeah.
Alex: So maybe it's a good thing that all fell through.
Peter: Yeah. Yeah, I think I think I mean I think like a movie could have been made it just would not have been like this kind of Vehicle.
Alex: Yeah.
Peter: Yeah
Alex: Speaking of a movie that Could have been made was made and should not have been made, Point Break from 2015.
Because it is an American–German–Chinese co-production, so there's your first red flag is this has got There's no one seems like they were in charge of this movie. There was way too many interests in this movie. It was sort of snake bit from the start. Uh, apparently a script for this remake had just been laying around for years and not until Erickson core who directed, or sorry, not directed, but cinematographer for what famous movie want to guess?
Sean: Fast and The Furious,
Alex: Fast and The Furious.
Got his hands on this script. And what we were then given is the first note I wrote down. Watching the 2015 point break, which is, this is REI fast and furious. This is, it felt exactly the same the way they did the shots, but they're like, what if we, what if I remade Fast and Furious, but it's outdoors, extreme athletes and that's about as far as the movie goes.
Sean: Right away, I actually thought it was monster energy point break because There's just monster energy logos everywhere when someone dies, which is so strange.
Peter: I'm wondering if any of these companies like paid to be in the movie I feel like they must have, right? It's so weird. It's very prominent product placement, but that also feels uh, like organic You You know, authentic to the, the, the activities, the motocross, the base jumping, like all that stuff has brands. It's like if, if, if you didn't have logos popping up every other frame, it would kind of feel strange.
Edwin: True, true.
But yeah, it was a really tight shot on the climbing shoe when they were free soloing at the end. Oh yeah. Yeah, that's right. Oh yeah. And a lot of Arc'teryx, a lot of Arcteryx jackets.
Peter: Yeah, but not like exclusively Arcteryx or exclusively anything. There's a lot of Patagonia. Um, it was just sort of like, they just sort of shopped on, uh, like, you know, they stayed away from the discount rack.
Sean: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, no kidding. I mean, this movie, uh, uh, had $105 million budget, um, so, which is pretty, that's pretty good.
Peter: You can make a movie for that, I guess. Yeah. Yeah.
Sean: It's about 90 20 movies for that. Yeah.
Alex: That's 90 million dollars more than the budget for 1991's Point Break.
Peter: Yeah.
Sean: So, there you go.
Peter: What's interesting though, I mean, just like, the fact that Erickson Core is the, he was the, the DP you said? On Fast and the Furious? Cinematographer, yeah, yeah, for Fast and Furious. And then directed this. Cause I actually wrote down, I was like, the plot of the first one, it's actually basically Fast and the Furious.
Edwin: I wrote that down too. It's exactly what I'm saying.
Sean: That is true. That is, that is true. Fast and Furious was kind of inspired, was totally inspired by Point Break 1991. Cop goes undercover in this like subculture that he knows nothing about. You know, rises to the top quickly, falls in love, like has, has some, yeah, falls in love, like has some also weird, like, relate, like love, like father, son, brother, romantic relationship with the, with the guy who's at the top.
Alex: Homoerotic undertones, just heavy in both.
Sean: This is really point break 2015. It might be the most homoerotic movie I've ever seen. I mean, the amount of time spent of muscly boys looking deep into each other's eyes is staggering.
Alex: I'm here for it. You know, I just. No one was not easy on the eyes. I'm not complaining.
Sean: Just saying, calling it like I see it.
Alex: That yacht party in 2015 one was maybe the most Uh, precise collection of hot people I've ever seen on camera in my life. What, what's, where is this? What is this? Yeah,
Peter: this is a movie where actually like the celebrity cameos or like at least the outdoor sports celebrities that just sort of show up on screen. I don't know if you guys pay attention.
Sean: No, not really. No, didn't catch a single one.
Peter: They actually look like the, the kind of like, you know, like they are not stereotypically beautiful enough to be in this movie. Yeah. Okay. And they're like, some of them are literally like models that turned into surfers.
Yeah. Um, yeah. So like, Laird Hamilton has a big, he, he rides up on the jet ski and then, and tows, uh, 2015 Johnny Utah into the wave. He's on the boat during the party too. And he just looks like, he's like the only person over 24 on that whole boat.
Sean: Right.
Peter: Um, Jeb Corliss is a famous bass jumper. He shows up a couple of times. Um, yeah. And then Steve Aoki, did you guys catch?
Edwin: That was the one that I caught, yeah. Noted outdoor celebrity. He's the DJ at the party.
Sean: Oh my god.
Edwin: And then, like, he even throws the cake in his face, which is the, yeah.
Sean: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, wow.
Alex: It's a whole thing. Um, but anyway, I'll kind of put a bow on the new one of, of sort of how this movie came to be, uh, all of these different interests were involved in making it, the funding came from so many places and as a result, it was sort of very hard to make this movie and eventually the focus became basically what you said, which is a collection of, of commercials almost is what it felt like, uh, with stunts in between them.
And in fact, people who worked on this movie. Um, one of the producers says this movie was more of an expedition than a production, because the stories behind pulling off some of these stunts is far more interesting than the movie itself.
Sean: yeah, we, you know, we just watched, um, Rumble in the Bronx, uh, which I don't know. I think that episode is coming out next. If you're listening to this, um, and, uh, at the end of that movie, yeah, Peter, have you seen that?
Peter: I have not seen it. I don't even, I don't actually even know what that is.
Alex: It's a Jackie Chan vehicle. Oh, we shouldn't have even said that. Just go in. Just jump in two feet.
Sean: But at the end of Rumble in the Bronx, there's a big stunt reel where they do, where they like show a lot of behind the scenes footage of some of the stunts or like they let the cut run longer. I was really hoping for that at the end of this movie. I think that would have been, like, I think a, like, you know, a documentary about this would be far more interesting and entertaining than watching the actual movie.
Edwin: The, all the stunts in, in the 2015 Point Break kind of feel like the last scene of an outdoor documentary. Like everything builds up to the jump and then everything builds up to the free solo climb and everything builds up to every everything that they do, but but they just kind of go right into it like we leave at dawn and then all of a sudden they're at the top of the mountain ready to snowboard down first light.
Sean: Yeah, yeah, we got a lot longer to goand they're at the time we jump first night.
Alex: When is it going to wait right now? There's no way you would say yeah. When they're, when they're doing the armored truck heist with their avalanche, yeah, what is this happening? Right now? It's like, all right.
Sean: Yeah.
Alex: Can I get a briefing?
Sean: Bodhi never, never tells Johnny Utah the plan. Not in the old one. Not in the new one. That's consistent. He does the opposite. He puts a rock in his bag. A rock you would definitely notice. You would definitely notice. Uh, it's a great prank.
Alex: There, there was some similarities and we'll probably do this, Get into later of the characters, but I did notice there was some lot of bullshit boat.
He says that you're like, what, like, do you actually believe that? And then if someone ever like called him on it, he just have another mythical thing. He would say, like, at the end of the 2015 one, when he really, you know, he learns like Johnny Utah's FBI agent. He's just like, Hey, man, all you had to do is ask and he's talking about why he did all the crimes and like, it starts out with Johnny Utah, basically asking him all of these questions and every time Bodhi says, she wouldn't understand, man, you don't get it. All you have to do is ask.
Sean: Uh, such an asshole. What a dick.
Alex: Uh, so here's, here's what happens in the new, new point break. Here's the, here's the, here's what I chalked up as activities they did.
Peter: I, I am so excited for this plot summary, cause like, this is my second time seeing it, I don't know that I could give you a summary of the plot.
Alex: Okay, over the course of this movie, they go dirt biking, skydiving, base jumping, big wave surfing, free diving, fight clubbing, snowboarding, rock climbing, and some good old fashioned hiking.
Sean: Man. The fight clubbing was the fight clubbing. That was otally unhinged. What a cool group of guys. Just getting together for some bare knuckle boxing. First of all, light that car on fire so we can keep our security guard warm while we go fight in the basement of this old factory. For no reason that is ever explained.
Edwin: He tells papa's Something's going down in Paris tonight. I can feel it. And I thought, all right, cool. There's gonna be like another big party, another cool set piece. He's gonna have a chance to meet and mingle with these people. And no, it's just a bunch of guys like under a bridge fighting shirtless. And it's not even a bunch.
Sean: It’s like, twelve.
Peter: Five. And the only guys fighting are the guys that were just In the last scene yes, it's like why did we go to Paris to fight we could have done this on the boat.
Sean: Also, I I wrote that line down because I was like that is the vaguest Like I heard yeah, I think I heard on the boat that something's going down in Paris. Oh great
Alex: I wrote this down too! We just spent 10 minutes on the boat watching everything happen You And then he says something that was like, could we have just seen him hearing that on the boat and then we don't need this scene? Like, what is going on? Anyway, the script's a mess. Let me just, just so we don't have to do it later. Can I just do a quick plot run through?
Sean: Yeah, go for it.
Alex: Of the new one. This is of the 2015 and then we'll go back to the first one here. Uh, so extreme sport athlete Johnny Yuta, who calls himself a extreme polyathlete. Peter, have you ever heard this term?
Peter: That's not a real thing.
Sean: Okay, that's when you love more than one athlete, okay? That's yeah, you like Kobe and LeBron, it's okay.
Peter: No, It'd be like you like LeBron and Mia Ham.
Alex: As long as they're sponsored by Gatorade, yeah. So Johnny and his buddy Jeff are doing a cool motorbike line where they're going down these bridges You You're insane, Utah. There's no way we could do that. Hey man, you just gotta go for it. Uh, famous last words from my guy, Jeff. Uh, they re This motorbiking ends on a jump into a lonestone column where Jeff Overshoots the landing, falls to his death. Slash, looks like he's basically killed by Johnny Utah, who could have grabbed the guy, but instead kind of looks like he pushes the bike off. He doesn't want to pull up the whole bike. Grab the guy, grab the buddy, his arms right there. Definitely.
Edwin: Last poor Jeff. We hardly knew ye.
Alex: Um, hard cut. Seven years later, Utah's FBI agent. Please don't ask questions about why his motivations for doing
Sean: I, I did like the scene where the guy is grilling him. And he's like, are you really an FBI agent? And he's like, he's like, I went back to school when all my friends had already graduated. Like, how could you, how could you, and you doubt like my commitment to this? Like, it's like, get out of here.
Peter: It's the first onscreen depiction of an adult college student. New territory.
Sean: Yes. We didn't get to see the montage of him yeah, sorry.
Alex: No, keep going. No, no, go ahead. Go ahead.
Sean: Well, we didn't see the montage of him sitting at the front of every class, raising his hand, you know. First row. Fighting his way through the ranks at the same time.
Alex: Utah! By the way, please, uh, Please, uh, derail us, because we got two plots to get through this.
Edwin: Okay I have one more then, I have one more then. Pat it out. I love, I love how he said, uh, when they're about to go on the dirt bikes, he's like, Think of all the YouTube views. And then, seven years pass, right? Or all the time in school, and then when they find him again, they're like, I know you from YouTube.
And, like, they talk about YouTube so much, like, it is equal importance at every stage of the journey. And he's like, if a tree falls in the wood and it’s not on YouTube, do you see it? Did it happen?
Peter: Then is now. It's both a kingmaker, and uh, uh, unnecessary evil.
Edwin: His name should have been Johnny YouTube.
Alex: See, that's what we need.
Sean: That's really good.
Alex: That's why you get a salary. So yeah, seven years later, Johnny Utah's FBI agent candidate. Technically, he's actually not FBI yet. Uh, in which he's then, for some reason, they bring this candidate to attend a briefing on this skyscraper heist where we see criminals stealing diamonds in Mumbai and escaping via base jumping out of the said building, um, uh, in Mumbai.
Another heist happens over Mexico, uh, where the people disappear into the cave of swallows. I feel like, uh, cave as your getaway. Tough spot to get back out of without being caught goes right through to China. Neither here nor there. Uh, we'll dig our way out. Yes.
Sean: This is where, this is where I think one of the biggest flaws with the 2015 point break is that it doesn't have the the heist, like it doesn't really have the like, I mean, I guess they're there, like they do happen, but they're just not, we have no stake in it.
And like in the, in the 1991 point break, those bank robberies are like, the camera's like right in there. And we're like with all the people who are like really scared and like the camera's like whipping around and it's. And it's so action packed and like the way that the heists are filmed, like they're driving the dirt bikes through the warehouse and grabbing a bunch of diamonds. Like, I don't even know what's going on. Like we haven't been introduced to like,
Alex: no, it's all happening.
Sean: They're watching…
Alex: Security footage while they're getting briefed. And to just show you how lazy this movie in 2015 was, they're like, how do we connect this to the first one?
Oh, let's put little president, paper, whatever, and just tape them on the helmets that they're already wearing to conceal their identity, just tape those president's, uh, faces for no reason, um, while they steal diamonds, and then, I thought, more insulting than more morally wrong than robbing and stealing diamonds is just throwing them at poor people from a high distance.
Sean: They also drop three pin bikes on all those people.
Alex: Like Like, I don't know get down!
Sean: They kill so many innocent people. They kill so many people.
Alex: Offscreen, offscreen. Off screen.
Sean: I don't know what the raw diamonds, how are they getting, how are they getting from just dropped in a slum in Mumbai to like, how is that going to make people money?
Edwin: They didn't show the corporations ending in like a squadron to go clean up the diamonds and get them back for the people.
Peter: Yeah. My thought was like some, some enforcers is going to show up and like just ransack this entire community, like getting every single diamond back.
Alex: Honestly, that would be a much more interesting and worthwhile movie. Then what we, then what happens next? Uh, I will say I'll just continue this up until he meets really quick. So John in Utah, uh, basically his research is this and decides they're doing this thing called the Ozaki eight, a list of eight extreme ordeals to honor the forces of nature. And they've already completed three of those.
And he predicts that a fourth one will come in this huge wave in France. Uh, and finally he has been sent to France undercover where he meets pop us. Hey, then. Go to France, the go to this wave and Utah rides a tube, gets absolutely tubed out. You have surfed before. Have you surfed this?
Edwin: Cut to wipe out.
Alex: And that's where he then is absolutely bamboozled by this wave where Bodhi bails off his board to go save Johnny Utah. And, uh, that's how he gets to meet Bodhi.
Sean: Yeah, uh, I mean, I guess one thing that, one improvement, if, oh god, it's hard to say, but, uh, from the, from the 1991 version is like, for all of Patrick Swayze's enlightenment, he doesn't do anything for anyone. So I, I, I kind of like,
Edwin: That's why I like him.
Sean: Like, so I understand the addition of Like this whole Robin Hood thing for Bodhi as like to yeah, but and and yet somehow it doesn't do anything.
Edwin: The most interesting part of the whole story was that it seems like that the robberies were the the people that were suffering were these corporations with American ties. And it was like, but they gave all the money away.
And like, I thought that was like the, like, what are the more interesting things that the movie could have done, but they didn't spend any time doing that and like pass the first two robberies that we only see on screen. Um, and then even at the end, when they blow the war, they mostly just blow up the gold mine.
They don't really like give any of it back. Like I think there was a lot more about protecting the planet being one with the planet and I would have liked it a lot more if it were more of the Robin Hood element.
Peter: Yeah, here's a question just while we're still on the you know kind of in the first act here is like at what point did this movie tip its hand as like a bad movie?
Alex: Oh, I wrote this down. Uh, I said, the dialogue, acting, and craft of this movie are already in question 15 seconds in.
The first lines of dialogues are so heavy handed, it's so bad. Right away, the acting, it's just, it's awful.
Uh, so, I, I, right away, it was just like, this is gonna be terrible. And I said, during that opening dirt bike ride, I was just waiting for like, automotive commercial voiceover like the new Mazda X5 like I was just waiting for that because it felt the entire thing felt like a commercial
Peter: Hmm, okay.
Alex: Yeah, and then he kills his friend.
Peter: Because I guess like with my I had seen this before and so my Expectations were even lower and I feel like I Feel like it was a good 10 minutes 15 minutes where I was just kind of like, this is better than I remember. Like, this is okay. Do I have this wrong? Did I, is this like, is this like a functional, you know, does this movie maybe work a little bit? And it wasn't actually until the scene where they described the Ozaki eight.
Sean: Yeah. Where I was just like
Sean: He’s doing his, uh, his book report on it.
Peter: Yes. On his first day as a candidate at the FBI. And he just like takes one glance and is like, Oh yeah, this is the Ozaki eight. They're three of eight. Like these are all connected all over the world.
Um, and I was like, Oh yeah, that's right. This movie does nothing. Right. But it wasn't until that point, actually, I actually felt like it was watchable or like could have been salvaged until I guess the introduction of the movie. The biggest plot device.
Edwin: Yeah. For me, uh, it was the scene where he meets Samsara and they go swimming.
Sean: Yeah. Let's talk about Samsara.
Edwin: Well, it's just, uh, it's just, uh, it's like, wow, they can see remarkably well under this water next to this yacht. And they, like, find this, like, underground cavern or something. Like, it's very, very strange. And they, like, both grab rocks to, like, get them there. I, I just, it was, it was just kind of like, What? Why? What? What? Where are they going? Why? Why are they doing this? It was very, very strange. And then they were like, Let's just be here. I expected him to be like, like, Him to be like, Okay. But I'm like, I'm really tired. We should probably get back. I didn't, you didn't tell me to take, like, a free diving breath.
Alex: You didn't tell me we were going to do this.
Edwin: Yeah. Right, yeah. Yeah. Underwater a long time. Yeah.
Peter: Yeah, I actually I read a little bit about the filming of that one It was it was pretty interesting. It was one of the most difficult scenes to film. Which honestly if it was if it was turning out that difficult and it was you know It plays such a small part of any kind of plot. It matters so little like why didn't they just cut it? But um.
They, they had a hard time finding stunt doubles for these two actors, and they said anytime we found someone who could, uh, who could go down that deep, they would either be currently decompressing from, like, some sort of underwater mishap, or they had already died.
Everyone else: Oh.
And so it wasn't, they ended up finding a professional surfer, Mark Healy, who's kind of like, uh, you know, quintessential water athletes, uh, in the outside world. So he was
Alex: Water polyathlete?
Peter: Uh, yeah. Water polyathlete. If anyone comes close, it's
Eding It doesn't matter what kind of water, he's there for it.
Peter: Yeah. It kind of is. He's like spearfishing, he's a professional surfer, freediving, like, he'll do it all. He can stunt double for Johnny Utah. Um, and, uh, yeah, and then they had to have, they had to have, uh, like, divers all through that uh, You know kind of course that they swam on which I guess is not that surprising or interesting, but crazy.
Sean: No that yeah. That scene is so weird and I mean so Sam Samsara played by Teresa Palmer who I think is actually a Good actress. I really like Warm Bodies from 2013 if you remember that Zombie romantic comedy. Uh, but, um, Yeah, Samsara is like the ultimate pick me girl. Like, she's just She's just there to hang with the boys and carve her own path or whatever her whole thing is.
Peter: Shred her own waves.
Alex: Loved the green screen insertion of her on, uh, A giant tube wave coming out where he first sees her. Yeah. Uh, by the way, shout out to uh, uh, what is the actor's name? Delroy Lindo, longtime character actor who plays Johnny's boss in the FBI. Who? Yeah. That's my favorite line.
Sean: He's the only actor I recognized.
Alex: Yeah. Yeah. He's, he's been in tons of movies. I like God in 60 Seconds, Devil's Advocate, Romeo Must Die, The Core, Domino. Uh, you know, tons of movies, a bunch of TV, domino. He has my favorite line in the movie kind of at the end of this third act when he Again, FBI candidate, not a full agent who tells him this theory of the Ozaki eight and his first reaction to it is you own a suit son?
Uh, to just send him, send him surfing. So let's pause there on the first act. Um, catch up the old movie here. Now the old one. Old one's a little different how they get there. It just starts with him finishing the FBI training, which is a much better way to do this, which is just like this guy loves the FBI. Like I will no longer question his motives or his alignment. He loves the FBI.
Edwin: See you later football. It's now FBI for me.
Alex: And like you said, it also starts, uh, you mentioned Peter that kind of the gunshots and the surfing that happens and then that sort of reverses where we, we basically get John Utah beginning his career at the FBI and then seeing, uh, getting briefed on this ex-president's robbery.
And right away, the ex president heist is so much more thrilling and grabbing than anything that happens in the entire 2015 movie.
Peter: Uh, yeah.
Alex: The look of it. I mean, this is probably up there top five. I would say like movie heists in terms of just it's pop cultural impact what it looks like having, you know, uh, Reagan, Nixon, LBJ and Jimmy Carter, the funniest president mask you could use, uh, for a heist. I feel like it's just immediately this classic heist scene.
Um, and it's great. It's just, it looks cool. Like you said, the camera movement's amazing. Um, and again, we're learning this through a brief, just like they do in the first one, but you learn a lot more about the people robbing the bank here, uh, that they only take cash. They're gone. They're in and out in 90 seconds.
And then pretty quickly we learn, uh, we get Busey, whose theory is that they're surfers, um, sort of leading to, uh, the end of the first act when he meets Bodhi by infiltrating the surf community
Sean: By taking one surf lesson.
Alex: Taking one lesson, getting his ass beat by a local, and then moving straight into just getting pitted, absolutely tubed out, which I've never done, despite years of trying. How long have you been surfing? A lot longer than one lesson, I'll tell you that.
Edwin: I do. I do think it was funny that he like read her file. It was like, Oh, parents died. I got my end. And then he went to the restaurant and he tells that story and wins or like, like she offers to give him one lesson. Um, I think one thing that I, I like from the original versus, uh, the 2015 version is the introduction of Bodhi. Like they see him out in the water and she's like, that's Bodhi. They call him the Bodhisattva. Like, I love that you, they, like, you see him in his elements a little bit. Like there's like, he's like, wow, that's Bodhi versus like Bodhi is just kind of the guy. On the yacht, or whatever.
Alex: Well, he cuts him off on the wave. Uh, is when he meets Bodhi. Uh, which they're claiming is a wave off of France, clearly on a tropical location, with a giant party yacht right next to one of the most treacherous waves on planet Earth. Sure. Why not?
Peter: That’s actually, that's actually not that farfetched. So that, that wave is, uh, this wave in, famous wave in Tahiti, Chopu, uh, and it is just this like massive reef break and the boats, uh, you'd actually, if you really paid attention to it, you could see like the boats that were kind of like in, in shots that also included the waves versus the sort of cutaways to the big yacht. Like those are local boats. Those are the boats that are always there anytime Chopu is, is working. Um.
Alex: but those are. Those are like 20 foot small barges that can handle waves coming through the super yacht, which is apparently right next to all of them. I was like, I don't know, guys, that's a little close. I don't think we want to be doing this.
Sean: That, that part of, of, of the 2015 movie is, is pretty cool. Like, I didn't know about this, about this like surfing haven that's just kind of out in the middle of the ocean. And like, as these huge waves are coming through, like all these boats are like going like vertically over these waves and there's like a big party happening and jet skis everywhere. I mean, that was pretty neat. If that's really what that place is like, I mean, that's, that's awesome. Yeah.
Peter: Yeah. Yeah. There's a good documentary about this, uh, with Laird and like, you know, a bunch of other surfers. It's called Riding Giants, and you see kind of like the definitive ride, the first time that Chopu was ridden, and it's like this gorgeous shot with Laird kind of in the pit the foam or like spray comes up and he's completely obscured You don't think he's gonna make it.
There's like no way he can make it and then he's like heroically emerges from this wave that's like unlike anything anybody's ever seen.
Alex: Yeah
Peter: And that, and that honestly like kind of cemented Laird's like that, that made him, uh, I mean, he was already made. He was a movie star and, and, um, doing stuff like that, that sort of made him as a, as a surfer.
Alex: This got him a bit cameo role in the 2015 point break.
Peter: Yes exactly. You can't have, you can't have Chopu without Laird.
Sean: It's like winning the lottery.
Alex: Yeah. It's also a shallow coral reef. If you're wondering what the name Chopu translates to loosely in English, it is to sever the head or the place of skulls. Which is right where the wave pushes you underwater if you wipe out and it's only for quote extreme very experienced surfers in peak physical condition AKA Johnny Utah fresh off his FBI trading test getting towed into the wave where he cuts off Bodhi. Now, this is, I mean, Johnny Utah is probably not surviving that uh in real life but in that movie, they do.
Sean: Well, Bodhi saved him. Yeah. Y
Peter: eah. Bodhi saves. Bodhi just got down underwater and pulled him out of there. Easy. I want to, I want to jump back to the first one though. I do think that, like, they do a pretty good job of depicting just, like, the, the sense of learning to surf as an adult. And there's that great scene with the kid who's just like, oh yeah, you can, you can pick up anything late in life.
And Keanu's like, I'm 25. Which honestly, like, even in, uh, in the, you know, one of the, the kind of bigger surfing memoirs of recent years is Barbarian Days, by William Finnegan. And he talks about like, you know, one of the, one of the things about surfing is like, if you pick it up after the age of like eight or nine, I think he says, you'll never be like a truly competent surfer.
You'll never like have it down to your bones. Um, and I, so I liked like that little addition of just kind of like, Oh yeah. Like you, this is something you need to do as a kid in order for your body to kind of like learn the motion. Um, and then, and then just that feeling of like, you know, I feel like it was depicted on screen very well being out there, not knowing what you're doing, wiping out on a wave and then somewhat like coming up and being like, was that okay? What did I do? How did it go? And, um, someone's just yelling at you, right?
Alex: Yeah, I thought Keanu. It's very clearly actually Keanu doing this and Keanu picked up surfing as a hobby from doing this movie because he really learned to surf. But there are some shots of him catching just little breakers and it's real like that is. That is real, everything on his face, the joy you feel when you actually ride away for the first time. It's really truly not much like it, which is I think what Bodhi tells him. It's like, there's really nothing like it. It is an extremely addictive yet hard thing to do. Um, and it takes a lot of time. So, they kind of, they kind of let you show you some passage of time that he's been practicing and he's like, learning how to surf.
I mean, in the plot recap, it says, uh, once he meets Bodhi, Roach, Gromit, and Nathaniel. Uh, The group is wary of Utah, but they accept him when Bodhi recognizes him as a former college football star, quit due to the injury. As he masters surfing, Utah finds himself drawn to the surfer's adrenaline charged lifestyle.
So as he casually masters surfing, uh, he's listening to Bodhi talk about philosophy and figures everything out, right? About surfing. At least, uh, we first, I first went surfing. Peter and I worked on a story for the outside podcast about a surfer getting swept out into sea. And we went and did some field recording, um, out in the ocean.
That's the first time I ever went surfing. I've how long ago is that? Five, six years.
Peter: That was 2017.
Alex: 2017? Really?
Peter: Yeah, because I was on the beach with a broken leg.
Alex: That's right. So I would have been 28 when I started. And I feel like I started about 25 years too late to be good at surfing.
Peter: Uh, for sure.
Alex: So, I don't, whatever. Surfing, as much, as good as the movie is at showing surfing, know that, you know, It's much harder in real life.
Sean: But he was one of the best quarterbacks on the football. That's right. He's a D1 athlete. He can do this stuff. Ohio state starter. Big deal.
Alex: The Ohio state.
Sean: The, oh, thank you very much.
Alex: Uh, Pappas kind of already has this entire thing figured out. Just no one's listening to him at the FBI. I love that. That he's, he's like, I got this theory. They're like, tell us again, hang 10 bro. Also like John's going to Ginley as the FBI director is fantastic. Dr. Cox from scrubs. You might know him. He's just always plays this guy and he's, he's perfect here.
Peter: Yeah, it does. It does seem like, you know, an overly toxic work environment to be in, but like, it's all kind of consistent, like the whole movie is just like cranked up to 11 in, in the same way. Like the surfing is a little bit too big. He learned surfing a little bit too quickly. Every conversation is just like a little bit too aggressive. And, but like, that's, it's really good screenwriting. Like, where every con– every line is sort of like the most important argument you've ever had.
Alex: Yeah. Mm hmm. And delivered with like, just, just complete commitment and passion. Yeah. Like, I kind of wonder how they got these performances out of some of these guys.
Peter: Because it's just like, no, no, no, do it as if this is the culmination, the climax of the movie. For Gary Busey, they're like, Gary, 10 percent less, please.
Edwin: Gary, act natural. Yeah. There is an element of the, like it being consistent throughout the movie and with a lot of the characters, even Keanu being like, don't you feel alive? Um, like that's kind of how that must be the direction from behind the camera, you know, don't you feel alive now?
Alex: I did like that though. It kind of made sense of like this jaded old agent with this kind of new literal quarterback hotshot and who's full of confidence and like, they actually kind of balance each other out because Johnny just wants to like run at it. And, uh, and Pappas is like, actually has some stuff to bring to the table of like, Hey, I've researched all these things. We've done lab tests on these contaminants. I think we can figure out where they are. Um, so they actually ended up being a pretty good team.
Peter: And those are, those are pretty good. I mean, there's also like sort of draw from the real world surfing kind of community. Like, like pollution in the ocean after a big storm is a real issue. Um, so I thought, I thought it did a good job of, of just kind of making it plausible enough.
Sean: Yeah. I think I like that. That's a great point that, that like the thing that, that, that ties, that they, they're able to put this all together is the surf wax. Versus in the 2015 version, it's that he knows about this made up thing called the Ozaki deal.
Alex: And that this wave is definitely one of them, right? Yeah. That he's just like, oh, well they were in this town at this time and this town at this time. So that's like the Ozaki eight.
Sean: Whereas like, yeah. And in the 1991 version, they actually do something, you know, some believable and yeah.
Alex: Yeah. I mean, this is where, and this is where the two movies fundamentally part ways, I'd say, right. Which is the original Point Break is. A crime, like crime first drama, right? It's like a crime thriller or crime action. I would say versus the 2015 is much less concerned with the crime and much more concerned with the action. They put all their chips in the action.
Edwin: There's a moment in the sorry.
Alex: No, go ahead.
Edwin: There's a moment in the 2015 one where he goes back to Pappas and Pappas says we had surveillance. We saw what you did and he shows him the pictures of him. Hooking up and then yeah, I think it's yeah, it's either him or the director who says your job was to observe and report.
But instead he's like, in the fight club, he's doing the cliff jump, he's doing.
Alex and Sean: Yeah. Yeah.
Edwin: Your job was to observe and report.
Peter: Yeah, there are, there's, I mean, the 2015 one is obviously, it's like more of this, but like, even in the first one, um, There's a little bit of a sense of like, it's almost like this movie came out, like, episodically, or they wrote it episodically, where like, okay, we're already committed to some stuff that's already happened in the movie, and now we need this other stuff to happen, and so we're just gonna pretend that that's okay.
Like, like Bodhi sort of goes from this, like, spiritual, like, surfer seeking enlightenment, like, you know, an exaggerated version of him. And then, like, two thirds of the way through, he twists into basically, like, the Joker from the new Batman's, where he's just like…
Edwin: Ladies and gentlemen.
Peter: Yeah, he's like kidnapping now and yeah, and just like murdering people or like getting them murdered and not caring and yeah, right.
Alex: You can't be Hey, that's their choice, man. It's like, well, yeah, they do follow you blindly. Is it? Bodhi? I don't know, man.
Uh, back to the first one. Okay, so we'll pick up from kind of where they, they, they meet Bodhi in both of these. Uh, something I much preferred in the first one too, is the way that Johnny Utah discovers. Who the ex presidents are or who the bad guys are, which is, they kind of initially think it's this other gang, right? With…
Sean: Anthony Kiedis. Anthony
Alex: Kiedis. They follow, they follow that cheat back and they're like, they all got rap sheets. Uh, these are definitely the guys, which turns out there was another under, undercover investigation going on that they ruined. Um, so I liked it. Like Pappas and Utah are in the doghouse with the FBI right away.
Um, I think it just works better for the story. And then. Because like, it makes sense that Johnny Utah has already formed a real relationship with Bodie. That's not based on him thinking that he's the ex president. He just literally vibed with this guy in the ocean. And so there's some. When Johnny Utah finally is watching them surf and realizes, oh my gosh, I think, I think these are the guys.
There's some real conflict in Keanu Reeves face. There's some actual, like, spiritual, uh, uh, turmoil where he's like, Shoot, I, I gotta arrest this guy who's become my guru, basically. Uh, that just doesn't exist in the new one.
Sean: It works so much better in the 1991 version, because Keanu is a policeman first. We're, our introduction to him is him really, you know, being all about being in the FBI and being great at it. Whereas in the new one, his thing first is being a, uh, an adrenaline junkie. And then, you know,
Alex: Polyathlete, please.
Sean: Yeah, pardon. Uh, and, and so I don't know, the stakes just don't feel as high for him.
Sean: I mean, he, it just seems like he's just, This was his way to get a ticket into this extreme group. And now he's down with all the like, crazy snowboarding and stuff like that.
Edwin: There is an element, or there's a line in the 91 film where Keanu says, Uh, I'm learning, I'm doing all the surfing on my own time.
We're on top of all the case work. I don't know why they're so upset at us. And, I think that's a throwaway line, but it is kind of important that he is still functionally doing the work of the FBI agent. And in the 2015 version, he's just, he's out in these beautiful Alpine vistas. You know, there's like nothing else to do out there. And there's only five people, the four of them and Samsara or sorry. Yeah. Right. Six, I guess. But yeah.
Sean: And then like when Samsara jumps off the boat, he like says to himself, he's like, you are an FBI agent. And then he's like, Oh, well. And then he jumps off the boat. Provisional.
Alex: Free diver. Yeah. Uh, by the way, quick shout out to, uh, some of the guys in the crew, specifically Roach, who in the new one, the first thing Roach does is throw away a Roach he's handed. Like someone's finishing off a joint and hand him and he grabs it and throws it away and I'm like Hmm, I think roach would kill that thing, right? He'd finish that thing off.
Sean: Of course.
Alex: How do you get his nickname?
Sean: Yeah, cuz he doesn't smoke roaches.
Alex: Thought that was funny. Um.
Sean: Oh, but you know, I do want to say too, like Edwin, yeah, you're right. The, the, the chief of police or whoever he is, is getting mad at them. And in the 1991 version, that was a little bit of a moment where it's like, this is just in here because they need this in a cop movie. Cause it, it is like they're working the case. Like you guys have no leads on who this is. Like they're doing their job. Why are they in trouble?
Alex: But they have total conviction in their investigation. And it makes sense later on. When they almost have to break Johnny out so they can like finish what they started. Right. When he's, he's basically arrested for being an accomplice.
Um, but that's much later. Uh, once they, once Utah does suspect who they are, he doesn't really like, he kind of flips the switch and he's, he sort of knows what he has to do him and Pappas stake out this bank where they think that they're going to rob and they show up. Um, it's a very funny way. They sort of miss that car pulling up.
Yeah. You see, he's like two, give me two. I need two meatball subs, like, bro, I don't think you need two meatball subs right now. And then when he gets it, he goes, why didn't I get three? I'm starving.
Peter: And you really commit to that, that device of the two sandwiches.
Edwin: And they take the time to, for him to order and for her to tell, I'll have two meatball sandwiches, a tuna on wheat, and a lemonade, please. And she's like, that will be 7.15. Like, and they go through like the whole thing.
Peter: Whole transaction.
Edwin: Like, yeah, while the car is pulling up.
Peter: It's a callback to the shrimp and fries ordering scene, uh, with Tyler. Uh, where he gets, I'm joking, like.
Alex: Okay, okay.
Sean: To go, a motif. Yes. What do you want? Shrimp and fries.
Alex: There's a very similar scene in our upcoming Rumble in the Bronx episode that I can't wait for you to hear. When he orders ice cream at the park. Uh. But anyway, this leads to, uh, this chase, uh, scene that happens. And I find, I don't know about you guys. I'm, I'm someone, I kind of find chase scenes pretty tiresome in most movies.
I'm sort of just, especially car chase scenes. I'm just ready for it to be done. I'm not interested. This one, completely different. This has got Bodhi in the Reagan mask. And it's just a, it's just a chase on foot, mainly through this neighborhood. Um, yeah, that ends with, with, uh, you, Johnny Utah jumps into one of these sort of flood control channels that are around LA. Um, he's got a clear shot on Bodhi decides to fire into the air instead, this chase scene was awesome. I thought this was super, super cool. I love the way that they're moving through houses, through properties. I like a good…
Sean: Once again, this is the brilliance of Catherine Bigelow, I think she's talked about this scene as well and just about how she's like, you know, I needed to create a maze and I need it, you know, so that's why it's very much we were in these tight spaces and then we turn we move into a new space or we encounter an obstacle or Someone throws a dog on you.
Edwin: I was going to say, okay, the most practical thing that to, to slow down Johnny Utah is Bodhi turns and locks the door. Yeah. That's a good thing. Very practical thing to do. The least practical thing he does is pick up the dog and wait for him to come through the door. Then throw it at home. Come here, buddy. Really quick, real quick. Yeah, who’s a good boy? Okay, be real quiet.
Alex: Look, the 1991 Point Break is not without its warts, say that, you know, but when you hold it up next to 2015, oh my god, it's just pure gold. Speaking of gold, what's going on in 2015? You want to ask?
Peter: To lead into that same, that equivalent chase?
Alex Yes, it's the same general time in the movie that's going on. I mean, okay, let's see. They there's, there's the snowboarding scene, uh, where we lose chowder.
Peter: You can just say some other stuff happens and other stuff.
Edwin: There's a, there's a deleted scene where they bring him a bowl of chowder and he throws it off the boat.
Sean: Ah, chowder, chowder. No, thank you. Never needs chowder.
Alex: Ah, or maybe he gets seasick when they're on those boats all the time. Grows up, you know, they go straight from. Well, for actually, first of all, there's the wingsuit scene, which we should probably talk about, because I would say for my money, that was probably the best part of the 2015, um, movie was the entire wingsuit.
And again, there's not much payoff for all of these stunts in terms of how it integrates with the plot, the storyline. I mean, there is, but it's pretty darn flimsy. The whole point is check this shit out and the wingsuit at least earn that. Cause there was some really, really cool shots. There was one shot where they are coming up to the ground and they sort of hit this second canyon that almost looks like it's hidden, um, a little slot. And they kind of graze, one of them grazes the meadow grass as they go over that. Yeah. That was rad.
Sean: That, that was very cool. That, that in particular was really cool.
Alex: Correct. I mean, dude, like, but it felt like a YouTube video. It didn't feel like a movie. It felt like I was watching, you know, a GoPro thing on YouTube.
Edwin: I love when they flip into the parachutes. That was super cool.
Sean: Oh yeah. Yeah. Instead of watching Point Break 2015, I feel like you could just type Red Bull into YouTube and like, you, you'd basically get the same payoff.
Edwin: You know, Red Bull does cool stuff with their athletes, like the challenges and all this stuff, like for real. Yeah.
Sean: Yeah. No, I mean, that's what I'm saying. It's like, that's really what the, that's what this movie is. I mean, the, the, the, like
Edwin: Wasn’t there that guy jumped from space, like down to earth.
Sean: Totally.
Peter: Yeah. There's. It feels like, you know, you watch these movies, these stunt works, like, or, you know, the The Red Bull clips or, you know, whatever monster energy, any, like whatever does Travis Pastrana dirt bike videos. And you're just like, why don't the stunts in movies look like this? Like, this is so cool, it was filmed so inventively, um, you know, like, why, with a hundred million dollars, why can't you get things to look like that? And uh, it turns out you can, it's just like, you gotta do the other part too.
Alex: That part costs a hundred million dollars, and now you gotta just fill the rest of the movie with bullshit.
Sean: Yeah, it does like it's almost it's like Point Break 2015, it almost feels like pornography and how it's just the plot is just there to move us from one stunt scene to another. Really?
Alex: Yeah,totally
Sean: And let's let's do this because every man shows up at the door and he's like, did anyone order a parachute?
Alex: So really quick run down of the Ozaki 8. Um, and this will basically serve as the entire plot analysis of the 2015 plane break emerging force whitewater rafting through the Inga Rapids in the Congo. Unfortunately, one we don't see that I was the most interested in seeing would have loved to have seen that. Birth of sky, which was base jumping from Mount Everest. Awakening Earth skydiving into the cave of swallows in Saint Louis Potosi in Mexico.
Uh, I believe they called it a air to cave transit, the world's first air to cave transition or something. They used a term that was like, yeah, what is that? Um, uh, but I'm glad that explained you get a wide shot of the villagers in Mexico while money's just raining down on them and then you just see, you see two bodies just plummeting towards the earth and at first you're like, whoa, where's the parachutes?
And they do explain that where they're going into a very deep cave where tget landed. Um, The life of water is the next one. That's number four, surfing a wave over 60 feet tall, the Life of Wind, uh, a wingsuit proximity [01:00:00] flight, uh, the Life of Ice snowboarding down an unwritten mountain, the master of six lives, which is the free solo climb and angel falls in Venezuela.
And lastly, the Act of Ultimate Trust, placing your life. Into the hands of nature. And that's the 2015 point break. That's those eight.
Peter: They do it all.
Alex: And we only see half of them, but that's it.
Peter: It sounds like they did a couple of them twice. I was kind of like, didn't they already base jump off of the peak of Everest? And then they're like, now we're back in the Alps, space jumping again, just to, you know, really make sure we had that one colored in, or something.
Sean: Didn't they surf twice?
Peter: They surfed twice, but, uh, Bodhi didn't. He never completed it. He didn't make the wave, because he had to save Johnny Utah.
Edwin: I mean, the thing where they do the jumpsuit dive, it seemed like they did that entirely so that they could have the scene where they have the dialogue where it's like. Until you reach the point where you break.
It seemed like the entire point of the jump was to have that dialogue, and then for them to jump, and then for them to really, like, scream and hug each other at the bottom. Which, I do imagine that is what you do when you complete a feat like that. I can only imagine what that's like.
Peter: Have you guys ever been skydiving?
Alex: No. No. Would like to.
Peter: Yes, one time and it, I mean, I'm going to sound like a, like a point break character here, but it was like the most extreme physiological adrenaline rush I have ever had. I was shaking for the rest of the day and then had like a two day hangover almost from it.
Sean: Wow
Peter: And and like those scenes in in both movies where they're just like they get to the bottom. They're just like their eyes are huge and they're just sort of like we've been trying to kill each other all movie and now we're hugging. And screaming like I was like, oh that actually works. That's pretty accurate. Yeah
Alex: After that wingsuit jump with them. Yeah. And they're like, all right, now we're, we're cool. Cause like that was life changing what just happened. Yeah, for sure.
Edwin: That’s funny. I remember, so when we were in college, there was like this coupon book that you got when you were like a freshman or something like that, and it had one of the offers, like they're all stuff to do around Eugene, Oregon.
And one of the things was for skydiving. And I remember, I don't know if they actually use this coupon to do this, but one time I was walking, I think to your house, Sean, or to go hang out with you, and I ran into one of your roommates. And I was talking with him, and we were walking back to that house, and he was like, Hey, I'm sorry if I seem really weird right now. I went skydiving earlier today, and I can't get over it.
Alex: I believe it, man. I've never gone. I would love to. Yeah. I I would be scared to go if I. For listeners that don't know Peter's like six five played college basketball like big guy I would just be kind of freaked out. Like there's no way you were not bigger than whoever was jumping with you, right?
Peter: They had to find a guy they like…
Alex: Right away, he’s like they find a guy I'm like, I'm good
Peter: His name was Dive Out Dave. And I was like, I was, I, I, I wrote about this at one point. I was like, I kind of wanted him to be like, like, you know, air to like a, a shipping fortune or something like, you know, or like, sure. Find out his wife is pregnant or like, you know, they're like that invented hostess cupcakes.
Edwin: Yeah. You wanted to know that he had something to live for something to live for.
Peter: And he literally just like stone faced me and was like any any kids? No, are you married? No. Do you have a dog? Nope, I just I just go skydiving. Anyway if he's listening shout out to dive out Dave I guess.
Alex: That was the fifth member of Bodhi’s crew. He's like, this is Roach. This is chowder, Dive out, Dave. He only does one thing. Anyway, so all of these stunts I just listed, these eight stunts are going on. The new one, uh, interceded by some crime happening again.
One of their things is returning the gold that was ripped from her guts, from earth's guts, back to her. And by doing this, they rig a mountainside with explosives, completely Blowing up a mountain causing a massive avalanche that then spills gold that mountain all over the top of the mountain.
Peter: That mountain was a dick anyway.
Alex: I hate that mountain. Um, this is where, uh, this is where Johnny Utah blows his cover in the new one. Um, once this happens, cause of course he can't, he's an FBI agent, man, I can't go along with this crime. And he saves the drivers of these trucks and then pursues Bodie further down this. Mountain ravine.
There's another chase. Lots of chases. Uh, eventually there's a Bodhi does escape because Utah can't get up after the crash. They do mirror that with the old one as well. And he shoots the gun a couple times to show that Oh, I did shoot at the suspect when he was fleeing. That's assuming why he shot his gun. Yeah, that's what I…
Peter: In the first one, I think that he, like, he says, you know, I missed when I shot at him. Like, that's why my clip is empty and like all that. And then in the new one, they're just like,
Alex: No, you didn't. You, you don't miss man. Like what really happened? Oh, yeah. Good, good script writing.
Peter: There's a reason at the very beginning, the, the, the instructor is like a hundred percent. No, no, this guy's never missed a shot in his life.
Alex: Not on the field. It does make sense in the 2015 similar chase Bodhi gets away The movie gets distracted with this kind of FBI plot where they freeze the sponsors assets of this crime crew There's this weird billionaire character Who hires Steve Aoki for his private boat party?
Peter: He just hires Steve Aoki to push a cake in his face.
Alex: Yeah, and then we're just kind of ripped from that to this Italian mountaintop.
Edwin: Before we move away from the chasing, I did kind of laugh when they both hit logs on their bikes and fell. I thought that was kind of funny. I don't know if I was supposed to laugh, but I did find it kind of funny.
Alex: I wish they would have cut from that cut from them hitting the logs to the scene in hot rod. Uh, when Andy Samberg's falling, they fall down the mountain forever.
Sean: Really quick too. There's a part in that party when, uh, the guy gets the cake in the face where we, we like see somebody else at the party who's walking with a group of people.
And he's like, did you see this video? Uh, and like, he's watching a video on his phone of, uh, of Bodhi and the gang doing something. But as they walk through the party, this guy's like holding the phone out in front of him and they're all walking with him Watching the video. It is the most bizarre bit of blocking. It's so weird.
Edwin: I thought Peter you were going to say that that guy was one of the outdoor Celebrity or athlete cameos because that scene seems so strange. The party would just kind of open up for this one man in a Monster Energy beanie to like hold out a phone and show people while they were walking. I thought, yeah.
Peter: He might have been, I didn't recognize him, but I'm not like the, the, the, the final word in outdoor sport cameos.
Alex: Uh, uh, there's some, there's some weird, weird blocking choices. The hardest I laughed watching the new one was actually more towards the beginning. There's a moment when Johnny Utah's coming back into the FBI office. And he's getting, he get, he's walking by a guy in the hallway and just as they pass by and the guy doesn't slow down, he goes, what's going on? And as the guy turns around, as he's walking away from Johnny, Utah describes the entire Mexico, US plane carrying money over Mexico got hijacked. And then there's a follow up and the guy's still walking away.
Sean: Yeah.
Alex: And he's like 40 feet past him by this point.
Sean: All Johnny says is what's happening.
Alex: Nameless. character just tells him the whole thing as he walks away from him. I'm like, okay, what's going on. Followed up right away by Johnny Utah's boss, calling him Utah. And right away, Johnny corrects him. He's like my real name’s…
I forget what he says.
Sean: His real name is Brigham. It's Brigham.
Alex: My real name is Brigham. Okay. Boss didn't know that. And then that same conversation, he goes. I know what happened to your friend, Jeff, was it, you know, the guy from seven years ago who fell off a mountain and you don't know this guy's actual name. Cool. Good job. You own a suit, son.
Sean: Uh, gosh.
Alex: All right. Back to back to the first one here. Uh, and then we'll, we can wrap up with these plots cause there's not much left in 2015. There's the free solo climb that kind of is the end of this.
And then, uh, uh, back in 1991, of course, he's Bodhi has yet again, uh, slipped Johnny Utah after Johnny hurts reaggravates the old leg injury. Um, tough to watch as, as a fellow suffer from leg injuries, making that jump. A 10 to 15 foot jump. I mean, that's what gets Jackie Chan and Rumble in the Bronx. Another preview for next week's episode, who also breaks an ankle from a similar jump. Bodhi yet, yet again, gets away. Um, there's a campfire later that night. Tyler discovers Johnny Utah works for the FBI breaks up with him.
Sean: Did your parents even die?!?
Alex: And then we get a skydiving scene in the original one. Hell yeah, that is awesome and it felt kind of similar to 2015 where I'm like, why are we doing what's the point of this extra stunt? But then the filming of it is so fun and so cool and I don't know this. This was a very very cool stunt the entire skydiving scene served as like a way to sort of ingratiate Johnny Utah, even though they know he's an FBI agent of being like you're not you're not leaving this crew. We know you're not.
Edwin: Well, there's like a, there's a, there's like a dramatic irony thing where we know that they know that he is an FBI agent and he's like, I could kill him. And, and Bodhi says, no, no, no. I got a plan for him. And, you know, the whole time they go up there, there's that thing where he's like, uh, where he, he's like, who packed my, who packed where, who packed my chute?
And he's like, I did. And he's like, but if you don't trust me, you can take mine. And then he's like, no, no, no, you shouldn't take his, you should take mine. Like there's like an element of like, are they going to kill him by giving him a parachute that doesn't like, there's like a tension and a drama there that I thought was really, really effective, you know, because then at the end,
Alex: Yeah, it was like the poison scene in Princess Bride. Uh, I thought you would take that one, so I took this one. But no, none of that happens, they just do the jump. And, uh, Johnny Utah, they're in Utah, above Lake Powell, which is where they land. Uh, I didn't realize, does skydiving to you land in water? Is that a I feel like that's bad for the shoot, and potentially there's tangling going on and drowning in question.
Peter: That's more, I think that's more of like a military thing. You would, you would do that. Um, I don't know. It doesn't seem like a good idea.
Alex: No. Uh, there is some precedent for why they have this skydive. It comes up a little later in the movie in which Johnny Utah makes the most insane decision I think I've ever seen a character make in a movie, just jumping out of a plane.
Ah, he kind of has a freak out and he grabs the gun and just jumps out of the plane, uh, after Bodhi. So that, they sort of set that up here, um, where this drop where they're all holding hands together. Yeah, really cool footage of that whole skydive.
Peter: Yeah, but it's all so it kind of feels like like the the screenwriters just needed to establish that. Oh, yeah. They also go skydiving. So we're gonna show them skydiving so that like later that same day they can go skydiving And have like kind of a climactic showdown.
Alex: And that and that jump is like because they are That's how that's what the getaway plan is is jumping out of this plane, right? so again There's, there's, there's reasons the script is good here. We like this script and everything makes sense.
Sean: Also, um, Patrick Swayze apparently did a lot of stunts for this movie. He made 55 skydiving jumps for this film.
Alex: And refuse to have a stunt double. Cause he's like, I did all the other stunts. I'm doing this one.
Peter: Yeah. I actually read that the studio had to like hold him back from just jumping for fun when he wasn't filming. They're like, look, dude, you have to, you're going to do 55 jumps for us. You can just like, wait till that's wrapped. Wow.
Edwin: That'd be a huge liability. Absolutely. Yeah.
Alex: That was his version of like, I'm surfing on my own time, dude.
Peter: Yeah, exactly.
Alex: By the way, Peter, are we sure Swayze hasn't just didn't, become addicted to skydiving, fake his own death, get plastic surgery, and is now a Dive Out Dave.
Peter: Uh, what's his height and weight? That would be the. It's the giveaway.
Sean: Five foot six.
Alex: Okay, so. There is, uh, I didn't mention that they do have one last big, uh, bank robbery as the ex-presidents. Of course, this is where, uh, Gromit shout out to our boy Gromit gets killed in a shootout, uh, while that's going on, we also learned before this, that Bodhi has arranged for his friend, Rosie, a non surfing thug to hold Tyler hostage.
This is kind of a weird wrinkle where he gets leverage over Johnny by holding Tyler hostage, even though he's, you know, not about that, man. Um, but, this is another place where Bodhi's, uh, philosophy kind of gets flimsy.
Edwin: His morality is very, uh, convenient and flexible. He's like, I don't like this. I can't imagine, can you imagine doing this?
Peter: Yeah, there's a, there was a Kathryn Bigelow quote that was like, you know, Uh, I wanted to do a movie where your villain wasn't a villain at all. He just had like a weird philosophy and I was like, did she not watch the last third of this movie?
Sean: Yeah.
Peter: Like, he's very villainous.
Sean: Yeah. It's terrifying. Yeah.
Alex: He shoots that guy right in the chest. Yeah. He, he has his, he has, he has Tyler kidnapped, held hostage. Um, yeah, I don't, I don't know. It's, it's, it's, I don't know.
Peter: I don't know if she earned that one that, I don't know. No. Quote.
Alex: Yeah. I think that was a concept that was pretty foreign though at that time. Like, I feel like we get this a lot nowadays where you get villains that are like, you know, I can kind of see where they're coming from. Yeah. Yeah. I think. Yeah. Like Killmonger, I thought, in, uh, Black Panther. I was like, you know, he's got some points. He's not totally wrong, and I'm like…
Sean: And what a public speaker.
Alex: You know, Thanos isn't totally wrong. The world is kind of overpopulated. Uh, no. Um, so after this, this is where, uh, Pappas and Utah, well, Johnny Utah gets arrested after this heist because, or this, this bank robbery because he is sort of part of it. He's then held accountable. Pappas breaks him out. And, uh, and they go to the airport and this leads to this, uh, this jump out of the airport, out of the airplane after Roach is, uh, Roach is seriously wounded, our guy Roach.
Alex: And I think he, but he manages to pull a shoot at some point.
Edwin: That's where they're like, like, all right, bro. All right, man, you're going to make this jump. And he's I'm really cold and he's like still bleeding and he's like, don't worry, I'm gonna put this jacket on you. You're going to be all right. And he's like, all right, I'm good. I don't know buddy. Jump out of this plane real quick. Okay.
Alex: Pushed out. It's like, I don't think he's making it. Yeah, I don't think so.
Edwin: I do love the, when the pilot comes out of the plane and he's like, Hey, I can't take you guys to San Felipe. And he goes, get back in there and start the engine.
Alex: Okay. Okay.
Edwin: Just that quick moment for him to come out and be like, I don't know about this, guys.
Peter: That feels like a like the actor had like a sidebar with the director and he's like, I don't think this pilot would actually do this. Like, yeah, you're right. Better, better show him like protesting once.
Sean: Reminds me of our hovercraft driver in Rumble in the Bronx.
Edwin: There is an element of one of the other characters in the, not, not buddy, but one of the other guys is like, ah, he said where we were going. So I guess there might've been some sort of element of they've like spoiled where he's there, where they're going to fly to or something like that. But it, it did seem really funny. He was like, I can't take you guys to San Felipe.
Sean: Yeah. Shut up. Okay. Let's go. My bad. Well, when you put it that way.
Alex: uh, uh, as I previously mentioned, uh, Johnny Utah with the full send full send out of this plane where he catches up to Bodhi. Um, in what might be, for Bodhi, that's gotta be one of the most shocking things ever is to be skydive, well into a skydive, like, like a 90 seconds, and then someone basically taps you on the shoulder and grabs you, and you're like, what? Where'd this guy come from? Uh, so Johnny Utah uh, they sort of have this game of chicken with pulling the chute. Which Johnny eventually does. Again, prayers up for Johnny Utah's knee after he hits the ground again and gives out again and Bodhi gets away again.
Edwin: Bodhi, they're about to fall and he's like, 5, 4, and he goes, Bodhi goes, we're gonna be meat waffles. And before we, before we move on, I have to say the pilot has another great line. Where he's like trying to call. He's like, Rosie, this is Air Force one. Do you copy? Do you copy? And the pilot's like, I can't keep mowing the lot up here, man.
Alex: Oh yeah. We did. Yeah. We didn't talk about that fight scene. I forgot back at the beach with the, uh, the gang and the locals that's with the lawnmower. Yeah. That's.
Peter: Oh I didn’t catch that.
Edwin: I love when Gary Busey shoots the lawnmower so it stops running. That's amazing.
Alex: Busey takes some, some precise gunshots, uh, in this one. Not only that lawnmower one, but he also shoots the one guy holding the hostage. Inside the house. Uh, chowder or whatever the equivalent of chowder is. Jeez. Bisque. It's my boy, Bisque.
Sean: Stew.
Alex: Stew!
That's awesome. Uh, uh, the last one, the last, the last guy to die and his crew in the first one is Roach, uh, and then in the new one, it's Gromit, who's the guy who falls during the free solo climb.
Uh, the free solo climb is basically the version of the skydive that's happening in the old one, right? Sort of this last final set piece before the kind of, you know. Epilogues where they surf away at the end, but in this one, it is a free solo climb that again, almost as unlikely as, as, as Utah jumping out of a plane and catching up to a skydive, he begins a free solo climb and catches these two guys way up the mountain.
Alex: Um, and a free solo climb of this type next to angel falls. I mean, batshit insane.
Edwin: I'm no climbing expert, but it feels like it would be a bad place to do a free solo climb next to the running water.
Peter: It looks a little wet there. Yeah. I mean, they have chalk, like, the chalk is to dry your hands off, so.
Alex: Got some chalk.
Edwin: It did look, when Gromit is hanging off and he's like, he can't make it, and it looked like Bodhi is about to throw him chalk. Because as if that would solve his problem.
Alex: Here, take this dirt bike.
Uh, yeah. And yeah. Gromit says, see you soon. And then just, just talks it just in the afterlife. Yeah. Yeah. Trusting nature and, uh, the laws of nature do their job there. Uh, anyway, this all ends both of these things. The skydive. The free solo climb, uh, ends in Bodhi getting away.
And then in the 2015 point break, we jump ahead nine months or sorry, 17 months in the old one. They jump ahead nine months. Um, where in the old one, uh, again, Bodhi has mentioned Bell's beach before we get this early in the movie. There's a 50 year storm coming. I will not miss it again. That pays off in the script. Good job.
In the new one, uh, 17 months later, Johnny Utah is able to locate him in a boat in the middle of the ocean at a…
Edwin: He's on the set of The Perfect Storm. On this closed location.
Alex: Where they Just fished out Mark Wahlberg.
Peter: Where they fly him out in a helicopter to have, uh, two seconds Like two minute conversation and then get out of there.
Sean: It's, it's so much worse than the 1991 because, because in the 1991 version, right? Keanu goes down onto the beach, uh, by the way, cannon beach in Oregon.
Alex: Yeah.
Sean: Um, for this final scene. and, and behind Keanu are like, it's like a whole army of police officers and stuff. Yeah. Right. And the Australian police. So. There's a little bit of like, you know, okay, Keanu kind of has to do this because all his buddies are there, but he's gonna let him go out into the ocean. Um, and, and ride one last wave in the, in the 2015 version. Uh, Johnny goes alone on a helicopter out to this boat. Has the helicopter like I guess there's a helicopter pilot, but like he goes down onto the boat. They hug and then he waves to the helicopter pilot gets back on the helicopter and goes away. He didn't have to do any of that. He just could have been like I don't know where he is. Well, he goes he's like he goes, you know, if you go out in that wave, you'll die and he goes I know isn't it beautiful. And he's like, okay, you've made, oh, you've convinced me and then I just wanted to make sure you knew.
Edwin: Yeah. And don't forget, when he gets back on the helicopter, he goes, the helicopter pilot turns to him and goes, where to? And he goes, and he goes home. It's like, well, that's great. We're kind of in the middle of the ocean. We have to go back. I don't know where you live, man.
Peter: They drop them off at 341 Riverside.
Edwin: Yeah, exactly.
Peter: It's the most expensive Uber.
Sean: It's not, it's just a tourist helicopter service. It's not even the police
Alex: The whole time, I got kicked out of the FBI years ago, man. Yeah.
Peter: Uh, not, not only a cold state park, Alex, isn't that, isn't the beach at the final scene in point break 1991. Isn't that where you did your first surfing.
Alex: I thought we were at, um, Beverly Beach.
Peter: I don't think so. I don't think I've ever been to Beverly Beach.
Alex: We went to Ecola first, I believe, for some reason. Then we switched and I think we went to Beverly Beach State Park. If you would have just said yes, we all would have believed you. Yeah. And that would have been such a good, yeah. Let's try that again. Definitely not cutting this out. Yeah, that's where I first surfed.
Edwin: Wow. Amazing. Amazing.
Alex: And then, and then you and I, Peter had a scuffle and I cuffed you. That's right. And, uh, then you convinced me to let you go and I was like, one last ride.
What a cooler ending that they actually have in the 91 version that they actually have, like just a hand to hand fight in the surf that kind of ends with Johnny Utah, kind of losing, but he gets the cuffs on him and then they have this like last moment where, where Bodhi's actually, um, kind of loses his control a little bit.
Where it's like, come on, man, like, let me go. You know, I got to do this. And it's back to that sort of push and pull that they've this tension. We've been feeling the entire movie is paid off still right at the end. And the choice that Johnny Utah makes at 91, you know, tosses his FBI badge into the ocean. As if that's all it takes. I quit!
Peter: But in the same way, like, if, if, uh, Johnny Utah hadn't gone to Bells Beach slash Cannon Beach, Oregon and Bodhi had, he was still going to surf that wave.
Alex: Right.
Peter: So like, there is that similarity in the two of like, he didn't need to go and Bodhi would have died the same way at the same time.
Sean: The only thing is that like, like, I believe that Keanu, like Johnny Utah, Keanu, like has inner conflict that there is a part of him that's like, I, I do want to put you behind bars. Like, I'm an FBI agent. Like, don't you dare for one second, like, think that I'm not. And it's, and it's, it is a moment, like a decision that he makes in the moment, uh, because he realizes that he just can't do it. Um, but, I, I didn't buy, you don't have any of that in the 2015 version.
Edwin: Well, there's a moment in the 2015 version where Pappas goes, Here you go, got this fast tracked. And he opens it and it's his badge. And it's kind of like, well, it doesn't seem like he wants that at all anymore.
Sean: No, no, he wants to do the most dangerous snowboarding of all time. Or like, that's what, that's what that character really wants deep down is, is what we see time from the very beginning of the movie. So it just, I don't know. Yeah.
Edwin: I have to say, you know, thinking of that scuffle that, uh, Johnny and Bodhi have at the end in 91 on Bell's Beach slash Cannon Beach. Um, all I can think about now is just like, if it were Matthew Broderick, still fighting Swayze for some reason, and just really losing that confrontation. He like, manages to get the cuff on him, but it's like his hand to Bodhi's ankle. And he's like, seriously, just let me go.
Alex: He just, he uses him as the surf leash for his board. He's like, all right. Hold on to this for me. Guess you're coming with me. Isn't it beautiful? I love that. He knocks out Matthew Broderick and then just drags him through the sand.
Peter: He surfs on Matthew Broderick at Bell's Beach.
Alex: All of that would have been much better than what we get in 2015. Both of these And with, yeah, but he's probably dead, right? Cause he kind of, kind of falls on that wave. Um, and it doesn't look like there's much chance of survival there, but.
Sean: Deaf, dead.
Alex: Deaf, dead. And there, that's it. They're over. Both movies over somehow.
The 91 version is about 20 minutes longer than the, uh, 2015 version. That's how I did think the 91 version felt about 15 to 20 minutes too long. I thought they could have trimmed a little bit at the end.
Edwin: Yeah, although I kind of, I mean, I don't know, it feels more of the time, I think. To just, it feels more natural to spend more time with a movie in that way. I feel like, uh, maybe it's our modern sensibility where it's like, you want things to like, cut a lot shorter. But yeah.
Peter: Well, like, I mean, just the number of fences that they jumped over in that chase scene. It's just, it's like, it's like, wow, they're gonna, they're jumping over another fence. Like there's another house to run through. And then they're just like, and then another fence and then another house to run through. It's like, it's kind of insane, but it was like weirdly surprising.
Alex: That they're just all kinds of, all kinds of fences. There's all types of stuff, all kinds of dogs.
Edwin: They also spent, we spent a lot of time with the guy who's the undercover cop in the bank on the floor. Being like, you have a gun on your ankle, right? When I move, you back me up. He's like, please don't do this. Please don't do this.
Alex: By the way, that guy's totally right. He's like, I really don't want to die, man. You're outnumbered. You're outgunned. But like that scene could have been him being like, no, don't do it.
Edwin: And then he does it anyway. Like we really, there's like the fact that we get the dialogue of him being like, please don't do this. It's so funny to me.
Alex: And then he gets just shot in the back like three times that guy so pour one out for that Security guard at that bank that day whose instincts were completely correct.
Peter: Yeah.
Alex: Anyway, so I don't know what I think from here like larger Differences between the two. Why did they remake it? Does this movie need to be remade again? Like what, what, what does this say about, about us as movie fans that this, this movie in 2015 is so much worse than 91. What, what happened in those 25 years between these movies do you guys think?
Sean: I feel like Peter nailed it where it was like you see those like Red Bull like Athlete clips and and things like that and and you think to yourself, you know why can't this be in a movie and and they just missed the mark? They just they put all their eggs in that basket and and didn't didn't didn't make a decent film
Peter: It's like the yeah, go ahead, Edwin.
Edwin: No, no, no, please.
Peter: Well, I just think like every I don't I feel like everyone sort of had this idea in college at some point or something like where they're like, you know Why don't they make sports movies with real, you know football players or real basketball players or something? And like the you know, the the sports would look so realistic and this almost comes off as like an attempt to do that with real athletes or something. Um, but then you also like need them to act. Yeah.
Alex: And I mean, the acting of both movies is, I mean, especially in the first one is good. The second one, it's not terrible all the time. Like again, I like Delray Lindo plays the boss. The guy plays Bodhi is like, he's okay. No, he's, he's not bad. Edgar Ramirez is his name, the actor. And like, he's good.
Peter: Honestly, it is more of a problem with the writing. And then I'm curious if you guys had this issue of just like everybody sounds like they kind of have a sock in their mouth. Like, it's really hard to understand what words they're saying, and I know this is like more and more an issue in movies where like the mix is just sort of like so off, but like, and I wonder if it's like also because the things they're saying don't make any sense so you can't kind of like anticipate where they're going or like what they're about to be talking about.
It's like, oh, Samsara just died. Are they talking about fresh powder or like, you know, grief and loss. I have no idea where they're going to go.
Edwin: I think,
Sean: I mean, oh yeah, Edwin, I think
Edwin: the thing that stands out to me, I mean, with just with these movies in general is that Point Break from 91 endures so much for so many different reasons. I think like, One of the biggest reasons is the characters and the charm that these characters have, like they are very unique and strange and distinct and memorable, um, and I also think that the movie does a really good job with its scale, even though it's like L.A., Southern California, it's very convenient that it all turns out to be this one beach with this one group of surfers, or maybe these two groups of surfers, but like, I like how contained it feels, like they don't, uh,
Sean: Yeah.
Edwin: Like, they, they, they're kind of within the same, uh, sandbox, pardon the, um, image. But, uh, in the new one from 2015, the characters really don't have much of any charm. And they all kind of feel, like, everyone in the crew feels very similar. Um, even Bodhi doesn't seem that like different from the other people in his group.
He doesn't feel like he has is dispensing a ton of real wisdom throughout the movie. And then also the scope and scale is so gigantic. They go all over the world to anywhere they want. Like the set pieces are–
Alex: Every sport.
Edwin: –and beautiful. And then the movie itself gets kind of lost against like the sheer cliffside. Of the mountains or the, like the, the ocean or something like that. So it's like, they gave us more of what we didn't need.
Sean: Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's a great point. And I mean, really like point break is kind of like a movie about LA in a way to like, you got, you got Mulholland drive and the, uh, the LA river and all the surf culture, and you know, they're out on the boardwalk and stuff like that. It it does, it has so much more identity than, than the 2015 version.
Peter: Yeah. Yeah. It kinda reads like they're just trying to make as big a film as possible.
Sean: Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. I liked your, I liked your way of saying like, it, it's like kids, like being like, what if this happened and what if that happened? What if they drive dirt bikes out of the building and like, yeah. ,
Alex: Oh dude. What if there was like eight stunts and they were trying to do them all in order?
Edwin: I kind of think that you could still, I mean, I understand why they remade it. Cause there is like something really compelling to these ingredients, the undercover cop, the spirituality element, the questioning of the, all the structure that you're, that you come from as a part of it and like this different world that you become like, like in the spirituality element, I think is super interesting.
But like, I think those are seeds where you could grow like something really, really cool and different or very unique. Um, but I don't feel like it really achieves that with the remake.
Alex: Yeah, I think that the spirituality you mentioned Edwin, I think is super important. Like, why is this guy named Bodhi, right? And like a Bodhisattva and doing some Googling where basically what a Bodhisattva is, is an enlightened being who have put off entering paradise in order to help others attain enlightenment. And that is kind of the central push and pull at the first movie is Johnny Utah, who is, uh, quite literally a servant of the law.
And there's a line in both movies. That's why be a servant of the law when you can be its master. It's kind of what sort of where Bodhi and his guys are operating from. And so to have Johnny Utah, an actual FBI agent, literally servant of the law, being tempted into this other world that he knows and is sort of falling for, like, that's a very interesting bit of tension there. And it's so much more pronounced in the 91 version than 2015, which is, ‘Hey, let's, whatever we got to do to get to the next stunt, let's do it.’ And I think the, the, that question is actually kind of poked at and prodded in the first one of like, where is, where is the line between your duty to your job, who you are, what you believe in versus what your heart and your is telling you and kind of getting your? I mean, when you're 25 and the first cool guy with long hair, like Patrick Swayze to walk up and be like, ‘Hey man, you don't have to do any of this.’ And you're like, ‘What? Yes, I do.’
Sean: Come with me, bro.
Alex: That's, that's what that movie is.
Sean: Yeah. You know, I think, you know, I think there might be something too, to like, Patrick Swayze's like a little older when this, when, when they did the 1991 movie and in for the 2015, uh, version, they wanted to get Gerard Butler to play Bodhi. And I think that would have been a better movie.
Like, I think like, you know, he's got, he's, he's got a little bit more of like, he's a little older. He's a little different than all the other people. Better abs. Coming off 300 dude. Yeah. It would be believable to me that, you know, he is like a, you know, a, a wiser person who people are kind of interested in.
I didn't think, you just didn't get that with Edgar Ramirez. I feel like he, I feel like he did a good job. He did his best. It just, it just wasn't, it wasn't very good casting. He is pretty, you know?
Peter: Great hair.
Sean: Yeah. You know, I like how there's always that one little piece dangling.
Edwin: There was a, there, you know, there are times during the 2015 version where I kind of wish they would go back to surfing, because like, that felt like such a core element, a point break from 91. But I do kind of think if they had made it more about the mountain and what it was like, if they had done it through like snowboarding, the base jumping, the mountainside living that they do, because they show that it's really beautiful, it makes you want to go hiking and camping.
Alex: We didn't talk about their homestead life. Where they're all wearing like hand knit shirts in this beautiful mountain house.
Edwin: It's lit in wood. If, uh, she's like climbing a boulder by herself and they pull up and they're like, yeah, but if they had kept it more contained to that setting and talked about the wisdom that you find in the mountain, in nature, in like the, the solitude and like the adversity of you climbing a mountain and like kept it more focused like that, I think the spiritual elements could have been a lot stronger. It could have been a little more compelling in that regard. Yeah.
Sean: Yeah, check it out. Like, I feel like you could do, you could remake Point Break and you could put it in, like, Vegas. And, like, focus on the rock climbing and, of course, like, you know, the heist could be with the casinos and, like, I mean, it's, there's so many ways that you could go about it. And.
Edwin: They could free solo the sphere?
Peter: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the questions kind of at the heart of point break are kind of genuine real questions of like how that you kind of face when you're 25 is like how much of society am I going to buy into and like what of the you know, the things that really bring me happiness and joy are these other activities and like, like, what's the balance there?
And like, yeah, you could make this in almost any setting with almost any sport. Um, surfing just happens to be particularly good, a particularly good vehicle for that one. Yeah.
Alex: Cause it all makes sense. It's, I mean, basically it's an LA movie, the first one, right? Like that's primarily where it's concerned and it's like, where's a big city you could rob a ton of banks in, but also you like surfing.
It's like, okay, let's do this whole thing in LA. It's a little more contained. Um, and it feels like a crime movie that features surfing versus whatever the 2015 version is, which is a, which is a series of Red Bull ads with some hot guys, uh, fighting under a bridge occasionally. I can't, I still can't get over that fight club scene.
Peter: Oh, it makes no sense.
Edwin: And you know what he says? He's like, ‘I think I found what I'm looking for,’ or something like that. And, and Bodhi's like, ‘Alright.’
Peter: Um, what I was, I was wondering, uh, does anybody know if this is the first time that a character like jumps out of an airplane without a parachute on film? Is this like, I don't know, the genesis of that trope?
Sean: That I don't know. Okay. I'm trying to, I'm trying to think of, uh, are there any other times you can think of?
Alex: Yeah. Those are much later.
Edwin: Well, fast in furious, it's the first time a car jumps out of a plane without a parachute.
Peter: I just, that the moment when Bo or not Bodhi, uh, when Johnny does that in the first one, I actually, I like, felt myself go. Like I, it was genuinely surprising that that's what he chose to do. Like, I, I did not see that coming. Um, and I thought that'd be really cool if that was the, like first timethat it ever happened.
Alex: I can't think of one.
Sean: I bet it is.
Alex: Any last notes anything else just moments we didn't cover cuz I I'm very excited to get to the Dundee Awards for these movies But before we do yeah, what else you got?
Peter: I noticed this just looking at IMDb. Here it is, okay, just just a weird trend in Keanu Reeves choice of movies Yeah, so he plays in Point Break. He plays Johnny, Utah in Bram Stoker's Dracula. He plays Jonathan Harker You Much of Do About Nothing, Don John, Johnny Mnemonic, Johnny, Constantine, John Constantine. John Constantine. Uh, he's in this weird indie movie called Generation Um, and his character is just John. Uh, his character in Cyberpunk 2077, the video game.
Alex:Yeah.
Peter: Is Johnny Silverhand. Yeah. And then. I played that game. John Wick. Of course.
Sean: Whoa.
Peter: It's all It's, I don't know, it's wildly lumped towards, like,
Alex: What's this character's name? John? Maybe his name could be John. What about John?
Edwin: He was in, um, Johnny English? No, that's. Sorry.
Alex: If you rearrange the letters to Neo, it's John?
Peter: That's right, that's right. Well, I guess, I mean
Alex: In the Matrix, he's just John.
Peter: John. That was the original. That's what got him to say yes. Although I wonder, like, growing up with a name like Keanu, I wonder if he's just like, man, I wish I was just named John.
Alex: Probably, yeah. Keanu, we're thinking Dave for this one?
Peter: No.
Alex: No. It's gotta be John. Gotta be John.
Sean: That's a lot. That's,
Alex: That's surprising. A lot of Johns. A lot of Johns. Yeah.
Sean: That is, yeah, really surprising. Um, well, what do you say? Should we hand out some Dundies?
Alex: Let's do it. I would love to. uh, of course the Dundies is a shout out to our OG podcast, the Michael's podcast company, where we hand out Dundies, uh, for things you may or may not want to win in these movies.
Alex: They can be a Dundie, uh, for anything given to anyone or anything. It is completely up to you. Uh, who would like to give out the first Dundie? I have one. I would, uh,
Sean: Oh, yes, go ahead. Go ahead.
Edwin: Best costume. The guy in the lab from 91. With the white jacket and the bowtie, they bring in the hair samples, and the guy in the police lab is wearing like a white scientist coat and a bowtie, and he holds up the chart and he's like, I think we got a match. It's such a funny concept, it's amazing.
Alex: 90s, early 90s science in movies is just, it's perfect. Glasses, everything.
Sean: Uh, I want to give a Dundee for ugliest tattoos to everybody in Point Break 2015. Wow. Everyone, come on up stage. Everybody. I mean, really, they all kind of have the same sort of look to them. Uh, all, all the, like all the tattoos kind of look the same. Every character really, I think Edward, when you were saying like Bodhi doesn't even stand out, like they all look the same, like they all have the same facial hair, hairdo,
Alex: Same leather jacket.
Sean: weird, like tribal tattoos. Um. But yeah, no, I thought those were particularly unfortunate.
Edwin: I kind of struggled with the image generally, like generally speaking, like very, very broadly speaking. And as a, I feel kind of silly bringing this up, but like as a person of color, there were times when it's like, there are a lot of semi bearded European men, like throwing money down to groups of black and Brown people. This is hard to watch.
Alex: There sure was.
Edwin: Oh, we’re raining money from the skies.
Alex: Yeah. We give back more than you think.
Peter: Yeah. We bury this gold under mountainsides.
Edwin: The people are hungry. Let them eat diamonds. Yeah. Um. Let them eat our meat waffles. Yeah. Is there, uh, next Dundee. Anyone.
Peter: Um, I want to go, I want to go, this is, this is a, this is a, a hot take, but least plausible moment from either movie.
Peter: Oh. I want to go 1991. Uh, we haven't talked about Tyler at all.
Alex: That's true. Yeah.
Peter: As their relationship is sort of blossoming, they've, uh, spent the night naked together on the beach, which I would imagine bonds you in ways that are, are pretty indelible. Johnny Utah comes in and he's like, you know, I've got to tell you something. I've got a secret. It's big and she says, no, no, no, not now. And so it's like, you imagine your partner or boyfriend or girlfriend being like, I've got a big secret to tell you. And you're like, it can wait. I don't want to know.
Alex: He actually, he tries to start saying it and she goes, men are the worst at this.
Peter: Yeah.
Alex: And then he's like, oh, sorry, sorry.
Peter: Here it is. Don't actually say it. Don't actually say it. I don't want to know. We need to hard cut to another scene later. It's ridiculous. Yeah.
Sean: Yeah, that's a totally unrealistic reaction.
Alex: Uh, I've got a Dundee for the 19, or sorry, the 20, no, yeah, the 1991. Uh, point break the Dundee for the DK Metcalf chased down award to Johnny Utah, the beach football scene. Cause I mean, Johnny Utah throws probably 15, 20 passes over the course of that game, unclear what's going on in that football game, except for that scene, which ends with. Uh, Bodhi on a long breakaway 90 yard escape and Johnny takes off, has the angle all the way and somehow tackles them about 40 feet left into the ocean because when they start the football game, they're up on the shelf. They're in the dry sand that entire game and throughout that entire chase and it's just like. Gah! And they're just in the waves.
Edwin: You'd think if he hadn't been caught, Bodhi would've just kept running out into the deep surf. Bodhi! You have the ball! He just Forrest Gumps it.
Peter: The movie overall is not afraid of wet denim.
Alex: No, the 90s and 80s were golden age for wet denim.
Peter: Like the opening scene in the rainstorm, he's wearing jeans, the tack on the beach, even and then like the final scene too, he's wearing a full on denim jacket, jeans, and just soaked. That brought back some, some traumatic memories for me.
Alex: It's upsetting. Wet denim clinging to skin is kind of hard to…
Peter: You can't really think about anything else.
Alex: Quickly to DK Metcalf was a receiver for the Seahawks who had a famous full field chase down tackle a couple seasons ago. So little context. Alright, who’s got home?
Edwin: I have a dundee for, uh, least believable dinner scene, and it's from Breakpoint 2015. It's when they all sit down, and outside the cabin, and like, he walks up with the wine, and she walks up with the big cast iron pot and puts it on the table, and they all like, say grace, and then Bodhi says, ‘Let's eat.’ And they cut away pretty immediately, but like, she goes to like, ladle something out of the pot, and it's like, man, there is nothing in that pot. You can tell by how easily she moves the ladle around inside of it. It's like, man, that pot is empty. Yeah. Scene in a hundred million dollar movie. Yeah.
Sean: Put some chowder in that pot?
Alex: Just something to move the ladle
Edwin:Yeah, bro. That is air soup in there. There's nothing going on. It is. It is imagination pho.
Alex: You're right. I didn't even think about that until you said it. I was so distracted the entire scene at that homestead or wherever they were, cause it just came out of nowhere. And you're right. The way that they greet her when she walks up, like Sean and Edwin and a lot of our friends used to have a. Every New Year's, we'd have like a big house party somewhere outside of town. And like, as soon as the next person arrives at the party, everyone goes like, ‘yeah!!’ It felt like that, except there's only four of them in the middle of nowhere.
Peter: And nothing ever happens in that location. They, they never, it's never, it's never anything more than a montage of dinner.
Alex: That's where I wrote down the Fast and Furious comps because it's like family dinner. His family, you know, and instead of Coronas, they've got whatever mulled wine they made at the, at the shack and the way their outfits harshly changed from like the leather and denim when they're in Paris to whatever clothes they're wearing at that house. It was hilarious. It's amazing.
Edwin: Johnny and Sam Sara walk out of their way to like sit down by a rock, just the two of them with a blanket on like they like really take the time for them to hike out to a rock and sit down.
Alex and Sean: Yeah
Sean: You know what, maybe this is a moment too to give out or well, I guess I'll give a Dundee to like weakest love story to both Point Breaks. Like, there really isn't much going on here between, uh, Johnny and Samsara or Johnny and Tyler. Uh, it really is, it almost feels like, honestly, them being like, he's not gay for Bodhi. He likes girls. Like, that is all, like, that is pretty much the only purpose that those two, that those characters serve.
Peter: Yeah.
Alex: Yeah, they are pretty thin plots in both. Yeah.
Sean: It's true.
Peter: Yeah.
Alex: I mean at least, at least in the 91, like Tyler is kidnapped and there's some like leverage there. Like it. It has a plot device, but it's still pretty thin.
Sean: Well, he shoots Samsara.
Edwin: He seems surprised naturally, but he doesn't seem distraught.
Peter: No, no. He is just like, ah, he immediately, uh,
Alex: 100 percent never missed.
Peter: dematerializes and materializes at a train station to then run at Bodhi for no reason.
Edwin: He's gonna jump the train tracks, and then the train comes by. That really made me laugh. He's like, you didn't see the train coming? You didn't hear it coming? Also, I didn't realize it until you said this, Peter, but he had to take this like long slow gondola ride down with the dead body.
Peter: He probably, he probably jumped up onto the roof of the gondola.
Edwin: For fun. He like climbed up on the roof. He like climbed back down hung it swung from the bottom of the gondola Yeah, I'm back up.
Peter: Yeah left to a different gondola.
Edwin: I have another done any other Dundee I have two. Um, and they can go back to back because they're kind of the same person. So, uh, one is, uh, worst supporting drink, which is when, uh, in 91, Keanu and, uh, Gary Busey are sitting around. They're looking at file folders. They're talking, Gary Busey's talking about the stool sample and stuff. He, and there's like a Chinese takeout container on one of the top, uh, shelves or whatever. And at one point, Gary Busey just picks up from off screen a bottle of Jack Daniels and takes it in a big swig. And I remember watching it just thinking like, ugh, Jack Daniels has never seemed less appetizing. Like, that looked terrible, when like, ugh.
Sean: There's so many empty beer bottles in that scene, it's just like, Are they like hammered? Like what is happening?
Alex: He might've just been drinking off that thing.
Edwin: This is not a Dundee award, but do you remember when that guy in the house pours beer on his cereal?
Sean: Oh yeah, that's right. I'm so glad you've mentioned that. Yeah.
Edwin: Uh, the back to back Dundee, the second half of this Dundee is to, uh, least cordial uh, dinner guest, which is Gary Busey eating those sandwiches, man. He was just like, Oh boy, I do not want to be in that car. He should have got me three. And Keanu's like, yours is the one that looks like roadkill.
Alex: The meatball sandwich is their worst sandwich. Yeah.
Peter: It's, it's interesting, like, how much of this movie it, like, I don't know. You guys have seen this before. I was watching this for the first time. It does feel like a lot of this movie has, like, shaped my life in ways that I wasn't aware of. Um, just like the, like, you know, the, the lines, like, you know, it's not, it's, ‘it's not tragic to die doing something that you love.’ Um, like I've heard real people say versions of that line seriously at times. Um, and, and they, you know, it seems like they meant it. Um, and like, I don't know, to the, and just like the, the sort of like hyper masculine, uh, all the problems of the 90s that this, that, that sort of came, like, flowed through this movie into the rest of the decade, um, felt, it felt very much like finding some sort of, like, uh, you know, early Egyptian hieroglyphic or something that, like, laid out the path to follow, or that we followed sort of culturally, at least in, like, big mainstream movies over the next two decades, or decade. And then You know, 2015 almost felt like that whole narrative dying loudly.
Alex: Yeah, kind of like much it's like macho fatalism where it's like, ‘Hey man, I'd rather be my own man than be alive,’ or whatever. And it just manifests in a lot of ugly, bad, bad ways.
Peter: And the world just goes, that, that doesn't actually work. Like both in a life or in a movie.
Alex: That's a good, that's a good call. That, I mean that like 25 year stretch. I mean, geez, lot, a lot happened in there, but, um, I'll tell you what, it started with a much better movie than it ended. This Point Break, which leads me to my last Dundee award. Uh, 'cause I rented the new one on YouTube. Cause that's, you can't find it. You gotta rent it. Uh. And the Dundee for the worst YouTube comment to at Carol Rosen from seven years ago on the Point Break YouTube. “This is one of the most powerful movies of our time. Not just the extraordinary visuals, but the message about nature, life, and the spiritual message is really what this is about.”
Peter: Huh. Huh. Well. I hate to quibble with you, Carol.
Alex: There was a lot of comm There was a lot of comments on this movie, but That one, for some reason, had the third most likes. It just made me laugh. This is one of the most powerful movies of our time.
Sean: Yeah, there is like There is something very, yeah, very macho, almost misogynist about, like, the, the, both of these movies that, you know, it is, 2015, that's still pre, um, Me Too and all that, um, as, you know, especially, like, these movies, of course, failed the Bechdel test, um, and…
Alex: Really?
Edwin: Samsara barely speaks at all. She's like, it means wanderer. I want to find my own path. It's like all she says. Just be in this moment.
Peter: Pretty much.
Alex: She should have said let’s go free diving tonight. Be ready.
Peter: Or, since she didn't, hey, why are you following me?
Sean: Yeah. Yeah. I jumped off the boat to get away from you, obviously.
Alex: I dove down 30 meters, unassisted, to get away from you.
Sean: In the dark.
Peter: Yeah. The first one, I was reading about the first one, I'd never seen the term, uh, female gaze written. Um, but it was, it was like, 1991 is the, it was like one of the best examples of the female gaze, uh, making itself known in a movie.
Sean: That's interesting, yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, cause it is, Kathryn Bigelow is the director of the movie.
Peter: Yeah, yeah, and it's a bunch of hunky guys doing their thing shirtless.
Sean: And I don't know, maybe there's something to why that one is so much better than the 2015 version.
Edwin: There's also a lot of like first person camera in the 91 version that I think is super effective. Yeah.
Sean: Yeah. Handheld.
Edwin Yeah.
Alex: Yeah. This movie, uh, the first one only came out five years after Top Gun, which I think set the bar real high for shirtless hunks on the beach doing stuff on the beach.
But Kathryn Bigelow must've saw that and said like, what if There were 10 more scenes just like that one? Let's do it.
Edwin: What if they played football?
Alex: And James Cameron's like, I think you're way too into this, son.
Edwin: James Cameron's like, what if they were blue instead? And taller. Tails.
Sean: Uh, This is typically the part of the show where we give a ranking, so I guess we'll give a ranking to, to each movie.
Alex: Uh, I'll give the ranking, uh, from the 2015 point break, the same number as the amount of people in Bodhi's life left alive after he passes through, which is zero. Or we'll say one for Johnny Utah. But really, zero out of five friends still alive, that's what I give 2015. Total zero. I'll give it, I'm not even rounding up. I'll give it a quarter of a point for the wingsuit scene. That's all it's getting from me.
Sean: I'd give, I'd give the original, the original Point Break is really fun, and I think it is ultimately a good movie. I'm gonna give it three ex presidents out of four ex presidents.
Alex: Oh, that's good.
Sean: Um, and, uh, yeah, I guess
Alex: Leaving Jimmy Carter off?
Sean: And I'm gonna, I'm gonna give, uh, and yeah, I mean, 2015, I don't want to cut an ex president in half. So, uh, it'll have to be a zero.
Peter: Um, I'm going to go out of, so, you know, the surfboard I want is a, is a 10 footer. The surfboard I have is an eight foot six. Uh, so I'm gonna give the first one, 1991 is, uh, 8 feet 6 inches.
Sean: Nice.
Alex: Perfect. Uh, and Out of 10 feet?
Peter: Out of 10 feet.
Sean: Nice.
Peter: Uh, and, and 2015 I'm gonna give it 1 inch. Like, you can tell it's there, but you couldn't surf on it. I'll get it.
Alex: Perfect.
Edwin: Uh, I will give the original Point Break 3 out of 2 meatball subs, because there should have been 3.
Alex: Whoa.
Edwin: So, it's not, it's not like 150 out of 100, it's closer to like 100 out of 100. And the only reason is I think it's just kind of perfect for what it is. And it's not like a perfect movie by any stretch, but there's a reason that it became a cult classic that it's like so many of the character names and tropes have kind of endured. Um, it's like such a, like, it's like, it's one of the big ways that I imagined Patrick Swayze and even Keanu to some extent, like I imagined them in these roles a little bit, Gary Busey, for sure. Um, and then the original point, or sorry, uh, the 2015 Point Break, I will give, uh, a single meatball out of two meatball subs.
Because there were some fun scenes to watch. I was not bored. Yeah, sure. Um, that's incredible locations.
Sean: Incredible.
Edwin: Yeah. The scene on the yacht where they play the black key song. I was like, man, 2015 that sums it right up.
Alex: Right. Yeah. I mean, you're, you're right, Sean, that it did like, it had some really stunning panoramas. Some of the stunts were filmed in a very cool way.
Sean: Which is a big documentary about polyathletes.
It looked awesome, but. It just was like, it would have been better if it wasn't a movie.
Alex: I've never ran into that problem in a movie.
Sean: Well, Peter, thank you so much, man. It was such a pleasure having you on Captive Audience.
Peter: Thank you guys for kidnapping me and, uh, not telling anyone where I was until you got away in the plane.
Sean: You bet, man.
Peter: This is awesome.
Edwin: It might sting a little bit, but it was an insurance policy.
Alex: I think we set a, I think we set a runtime record, but we were talking about two movies.
Alex: That's true.
Alex: That's a first for us.
Sean: Double feature.
Alex: Yeah, this, this was fantastic. We coming up next on our show, by the way, I urge everyone go check out the outside podcasts. Uh, if you haven't already, that's we're doing sort of a feed swap, um, with them. And so that is Peter is the host of that.
I have, I've popped up on there from time to time. Um, check out that for more outdoor focused stories and everything. Or I think you have some, some more surfing content, right?
Peter: We have some surfing stuff coming up. Um, just we're all, we're, we're, we're like a poly-podcast. Um, everything, everything, uh, kind of outdoors, outdoors related. Um, but really cool stories. Uh, you know, we do a wide variety of stuff that, um, is very, as different as we can make it. Honestly, we try and plan as big a sandbox as possible.
Alex: Yeah, it's wonderful.
Sean: And for our listeners too, Peter made one of the best podcasts I've ever listened to, which is Missed Fortune, I love, about treasure hunting. Please go check it out. It is, it is such a fun story. And.
Peter: We will have covered this thoroughly in the intro, but, uh, uh, Captive Audience is, is one of my favorites. Sort of culture podcasts. Um, it's not, you know, it's a movie podcast, but like, I feel like you guys do get into sort of bigger conversations and broader issues a little bit. And, um, I really just like hanging out with you. So it was awesome to do it.
Edwin: Oh man. Thanks man.
Sean: We like hanging out with you.
Alex: Thank you so much. We like you too. Now go get pitted on this barrel to show us that you like it.
Sean: You really are the Johnny Utah of this group.
Peter: What's funny is I, I wrote this down watching the first one.
Peter: I am actually, I think I am Bodhi. I am always trying to get people to do. Sports and stuff that they should have no business doing because I want to.
Alex: How many first time surfers have you taken out?
Peter: Oh, I have a, I have a surf board that is just for first time surfers that I'm, that wanted to learn surfing and I take them out and it's like, okay, this is your board. Everyone gets their first ride on this board. It's big and stable.
Alex: right. I, as one of those people, I will say, uh, Peter is an excellent boatie. It was a little weird when he sent me a hostage video of one of my old friends and was like, Hey, man.
Peter: You got to do this next one with me or I kill this. We're going surfing tomorrow.
Edwin: I will tell you. I will tell you that for my surfing experience. I had a cousin who tried to teach me how to boogie board when I was like 14, and I did so poorly that the lifeguard swam out and told me to stop. He like, swam out there, and he's like, I don't know if you should be doing this, man.
He's like, I'm gonna get you now or later, so just get out now.
Edwin: I was like, okay.
Peter: That was during the big preventative lifeguarding kick. Just get people out of the water.
Edwin: The safest way to swim is to not swim at all. It's abstinence.
Alex: And Edwin, and Edwin left LA for a landlocked country, Switzerland.
Edwin:Practice safe swimming, everyone.
Alex: Yeah. Uh, all right. Well, that was, that's been it for us.
Alex: Again, go check out the ϳԹ Podcast. Uh, you can find, or not find us, but you can email us. What is that email, Sean, where listeners can write in? We've been starting to get movie suggestions, which is fun. Uh, where can they do that?
Sean: Yeah. Send us listener suggestions because we are making a list of those to save for something special at some point. And you can email us your thoughts on Point Break 1 or 2 at CaptiveAudiencePod@gmail.com. Also follow us on Instagram @capoddpod.
Alex: next week. We've got rumble in the Bronx coming up from 1995, the Jackie Chan classic. So, uh, watch that if you'd like, before that comes out or don't watch it. And just listen to the episode. Cause I think that would also be fascinating.
Sean: It will make you want to watch it.
Alex: Yeah, it'll make you want it. Yes. If you think point breaks had a crazy ending, you just wait for rumble in the Bronx, uh, in terms of bad guys and how they end up. So. Until next week, vaya con Dios.
Sean: Come on, compadre.
Peter : Alex Ward, Sean Roney, and Edwin Janes are the hosts of Captive Audience. They also host a hit podcast about NBC’s The Office, called The Michael Scott Podcast Company. And actually the fans of the Office pod, as they call it, have made their own fan podcast where they talk about Alex, Sean and Edwin the way Alex Sean and Edwin talk about the characters on The Office. Like everything on the show this week it’s awesome and ridiculous.
This episode was produced by Alex Ward. Music and sound design, as always, by Robbie Carver.
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