Apex Mountain on The Rewatchables
46:42 – 51:55… Yeah, man, that image of him just chewing on the cigarette, that hard close-up. Spielberg doesn't do close-ups like that. It's very, very memorable. Okay, Apex Mountain. This is a tricky one. Oh, it's Jeff Goldblum for me. Yeah, he's nominated. Totally. And here's why. He's the Han Solo of this movie. Look at this. See? See? I'm right again. Nobody could have predicted that Dr. Grant would suddenly jump out of a moving vehicle. Alan! Alan! There's another example. See? Here I am now by myself talking to myself. That's chaos. If you have the guys devoted to pulp, this is the Star Wars rule, right? Then you …
The whole segment, as transcribed
So Sam Neill actually talked about this in the documentary and said, the minute I saw in the script that Sam's character was chewing on a cigarette throughout the whole movie, I knew he was going to die. There was no way he was making it out of the movie because smokers do not make it out of these movies. That's great. It's a funny joke. Yeah, man, that image of him just chewing on the cigarette, that hard close-up. Spielberg doesn't do close-ups like that. It's very, very memorable. Okay, Apex Mountain. This is a tricky one. Oh, it's Jeff Goldblum for me. Yeah, he's nominated. Totally. And here's why. He's the Han Solo of this movie. Look at this. See? See? I'm right again. Nobody could have predicted that Dr. Grant would suddenly jump out of a moving vehicle. Alan! Alan! There's another example. See? Here I am now by myself talking to myself. That's chaos. If you have the guys devoted to pulp, this is the Star Wars rule, right? Then you must also have the guy with the hip modern sensibility who can make jokes and pull you out of pulp 13-year-old boy universe. Who can tell the audience, it's okay to like this movie because this isn't going to be Gandalf running around the forest, right? This is for you, world. Absolutely. And he is so good at that. He is. And really, by the way, the novel, his device, and we're talking about plot devices, his device in the novel is Michael Crichton saying, I want to take all this complicated chaos theory and feather it through the novel. And I need this ponderous guy to talk about it. Totally different in the movie. He's Mr. Humor. That's one big pile of shit, right? Like, he's the guy to come in there and say, all this dinosaur stuff, I'm going to raise an eyebrow. Yeah. I mean, as much as I loved this as a kid, this is another kind of thing, the thing I reconsidered as an adult. I don't think I really got him, I didn't read him as cool when I was a kid. Like, sort of, he just seemed a little, like, I didn't think he was like a geek or something, but I didn't quite get the Goldblum charm. Well, he gets a couple, there's a couple interesting choices they make with that character, right? One, he's an all black. He's got the black horn rims before that's cool, and he's got the black button down. And then he gets the, kind of the beefcake shot, the cheesecake shot. That's what it is. He's got his shirt open, and he's laying down. Which is now his leg. Which is lived on so much longer. Of course. I didn't even remember that from the movie when it became an internet thing. It's just such a funny thing. And it actually, it just explains who Goldblum is now. You know, Goldblum is very, sort of, svelte and muscular in The Fly, but that's a, that's kind of a body horror movie. This is like him just being like, I'm a nerd hunk. He kind of invents an archetype. I remember logging onto the Prodigy Network to see him talk about where you could buy those glasses in 1993, 4, somewhere in there. It was an awesome early internet moment. Dr. Ian Malcolm is very aspirational. He definitely is. Any other. He was very cool. I just want to make that clear. He was. When we go through best quotes, I mean, half of them are Malcolm quotes. He just got so many great lines in this movie. Any other Apex Mountain nominees? Spielberg, would you say Spielberg? Probably not. If we're forced to talk about other people, sure. But I mean, he's scaling the mountain, but has not reached the summit. Well, he's, I mean, he's, he's now, he's going down. I mean, he's just, he just, his summits are so high. Tune in July 4th for the Jaws. He's already been on K2. Right. And this is like, you know, him, him just doing a smaller mountain. Right. Right. One controversial entry into this one, the T-Rex. He went on to bigger and better things in a lot of people's minds. But I think this was peak, this was peak Tyrannosaurus. I love it. I would agree. Let's take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor. If you love scoring amazing deals at incredible hotels, you'll love Hotel Tonight. Hotel Tonight partners with hotels to help them sell their unsold rooms, helping you find sweet deals at cool top rated hotels. Hotel Tonight shows you the best deals at hotels you actually want to stay at. No more scrolling through endless lists of choices. Even though their name's Hotel Tonight, they're not just for last minute bookings. You can book in advance, perfect for planners and procrastinators alike. Hotel Tonight is perfect for spontaneous weekend getaways, staycations, three-day weekends, road trips, business bookings, and more. It's so easy to use, too. Book hotels in 10 seconds in just three taps and a swipe. There's even the HT Perks program, where the more you book, the better the deals get. I am hopefully headed on an exciting vacation in September, and I plan to be using Hotel Tonight to find the best place to stay. So get the Hotel Tonight app now to start scoring amazing deals at incredible hotels. That's Hotel Tonight, the only booking app you need. The Unintentional Comedy Award. One of the things about this movie is that, as we've said a hundred times now, it just kind of works. It doesn't really have that dopey 90s stuff that doesn't work usually. I would only say, and I find the technology in this movie to be very cool and still very credible, even though it's what we now recognize as prehistoric, as David said, computers. But like, you know, that's a Unix system. I mean, that stuff is, in terms of Unintentional Comedy, that's pretty awesome. Oh, yeah. Yes, that's absolutely right. When, what's her name? When Lex is like, I know computers. I know what hacking is. That sequence at the end, that's a little bit laugh-worthy. I honestly don't know how I was supposed to take it, because, again, if this scene were in Indiana Jones, I think it would have been clearly played as a laugh. But Sam Jackson or Arnold, when his arm is discovered, is a little bit like, I can't... The wrong shade? Huh? Is it the wrong... Yes, it's confusing, but also just the door swinging with an arm on it.
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A grade for each call is not built yet. The board's answer is shown; whether the pod landed on it is a separate judgement, and it is not made here.