Who Killed Jonnie's Turtle

Joe: If we could somehow eliminate the 90′s for Stallone, we’d be cutting out Rocky V, Daylight, Judge Dredd, Demolition Man, Oscar, Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot and just about every film he gets panned for. The only good thing we’d be taking out is Cop Land.

Steve: Actually, I’m very pro-Demolition Man.

Joe: You’re very pro-stupid.

Steve: I think it’s a beautiful example of 80′s/early 90′s action movies.
Muscles, explosions, glorification of said muscles and explosions.

Joe: Regardless, I’m just saying that if we took out the 90′s, he goes from Tango & Cash to Get Carter.

Steve: Yeah…

Joe: No one liked Get Carter, but he was trying to branch out.

Steve: Yeah, on the whole, he needs to lose the 90′s.

Joe: His quote about fake-muscled super stars was pretty accurate. America was fascinated with skinny heroes like Michael Keaton and Keanu Reeves.
There’s no room for him in there.
Arnold hit hard times too, especially with that Batman poop show.
I think the 90′s needs to apologize to the 80′s for fucking shit up, and then the 70′s needs to apologize to humanity for existing.

Steve: No, all the best rock music is from the 70′s.
What we really need to do is wipe out the 60′s.
That was the birth of evil.

Joe: Mmm… I feel like parts of the 70′s (fashion, architecture, politics, oil prices, tele-evangelists, plaid pants, etc.) really need to apologize.

Steve: Yeah, all true.
But the really evil stuff like the sexual revolution, the proliferation of divorce, glorified heavy drug use, etc. all came from the 60′s.

Joe: I feel like it came from the last part of 60′s. There was this odd quote from a throwaway Soderbergh movie where a character says. “The 60′s weren’t the 60′s, just ’68 and half of ’69.”
So maybe we ditch like Jan. 1 1968 – Dec. 31 1974 (Nixon resigns in there)
that really gets rid of a lot – wood stock, MLK’s murder, RFK’s murder, both of Nixon’s elections, etc.

Steve: True.

Joe: Although, if Nixon never gets elected, where does that leave the Watchmen?

Steve: Oh they’d be fine.
As long as there was still a Vietnam War.

Joe: ’68-’74 gets rid of most of the deaths in Vietnam, changes it to more of an Iraq (hey why are we over there, 10,000 Americans got killed) from an “Oh my God, hundreds of thousands of young Americans lost their lives in a war fought completely the wrong way for reasons no one remembers.”
They’d be less snarky.

Steve: Nah.
I have a theory that the level of tragedy that actually took place is not directly proportional to how pissed off Alan Moore is about it.

Joe: You know what I thought about when I saw the first 10 minutes of Watchmen?

Steve: What?

Joe: Alan Moore thinking “You know what would make me more pissed than reality? This other reality I created. Oh man, I’d be so pissed if that actually happened. Holy sh*t, now I am pissed, f*cking Nixon’s fourth term, I’m so pissed.”

Steve: Hahaha.
Truth.

Joe: It was just so odd that he created an alternate reality that every American would have hated…but then passed it off as acceptable. Just really an odd premise. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t a big fan. You can rewrite the future however you want, but rewriting a past that really wasn’t possible makes it hard to grasp I think.
Unless it’s Abe Lincoln vs. Vampires.
That’s awesome.

Steve: I kind of disagree.
The only thing he changed was that America had a god-like superbeing on our side during the Cold War.
I’m pretty sure that would have made most of that stuff happen.
Probably not the four-term Nixon thing, but even that wouldn’t be a huge jump.

Joe: Mmm… I don’t know, didn’t seem believable.

Steve: Well you and I have grown up in a world where two-term limits are just a given.
But that didn’t happen until FDR.

Joe: True.

Steve: In Nixon’s day, there were still people alive who thought of that as a new-ish law.

Joe: But, whatever.
We already had this conversation three or four times.

Steve: We did? I don’t remember having the “feasibility of Moore’s Nixon thesis” discussion.

Joe: Well, we’ve had the overall “Why Joe does not and Steve does like Watchmen”

Steve: Oh. Yeah, the book was better.

Joe: I want to see Battle: LA next weekend, want to go?
or this weekend.
whichever.

Steve: I saw it Sunday.

Joe: Damn.
I was spinning from vertigo.

Steve: No, no.

Joe: How was it?

Steve: I saved you.

Joe: Really?

Steve: Oh yeah.
It’s the worst movie since 2012.
Discounting Avatar, obviously.

Joe: Wow.
I had high hopes for Aaron Eckhart. That makes me sad.

Steve: Dude, I couldn’t believe they got Aaron Eckhart to say some of that dialogue.
I said to Sarah, “This movie has everything.”
In a single unit of Marines, they had the guy with a pregnant wife,
The scared virgin kid who’d never been in combat,
The young leitenant nervous about his first field command,
The staff sergeant with a bad reputation because he got people killed on his last assignment,
The guy whose brother got killed on the staff sergeant’s last assignment,
The guy who was about to get married,
They had a scene with a guy writing a letter beginning with the words “My dearest wife-”
And a later scene where he entrusts that letter to someone else with his dying breath,

Joe: Ok.
You win.
I shouldn’t see it.

Steve: (The woman down the row from us audibly groaned at that part)

Joe: I owe you something for taking the bullet.

Steve: Oh that’s not the best part.
EVERY COOL EFFECTS SHOT WAS IN THE TRAILER.

Joe: Oh man.
What a waste.

Steve: Even with all that horse crap, there wasn’t even any great eye candy to make it worthwhile.

Joe: Ugh, so crappy.
Anyway, lunch.

Steve: Aight later.

Steve: It’s amazing how spending three seconds trimming my mustache to uniform length can make my entire beard look more presentable.
Maybe we only look at someone’s top lip to judge their beard.

Joe: Maybe.
Did I tell you I had vertigo last week?

Steve: Yeah.
You’re all better now?

Joe: Mostly.
I get a dizzy spell now and then, but if I stay hydrated I’m fine.
I guess dehydration is part of the problem.
Something in my head was inflamed, so my whole apartment was a carnival ride wednesday morning, complete with vomit and a strange urine smell.
Had to go see the doctor, get medicine (including Xanax) and watched Star Treks 1, 2 and 3.
Although I didn’t like being sick, I’m glad I was able to watch Star Trek 3 and realize that I was a fool to like such a huge pile of crap.

Steve: Vertigo must have made the Star Trek movies seem like awesome action thrill rides.

Joe: Star Trek 2 was amazing on Xanax/vertigo.
Carlos Montalban in the most amazing breast plate ever was so cool, and the ear wig thingies were super scary.
I watched Star Trek 3 while mostly sober.

Steve: Ricardo

Joe: Right.
Ricardo Montalban.
Out of all the Star Trek movies, you know which line always sticks out the most?

Steve: Yeah, Star Trek 2 would be the perfect movie if they hadn’t cast a whiney dweeb with a blonde fro as the son of James Kirk.

Joe: Oh yeah, possibly the worst miscasting of the 1980′s.

Steve: I can’t understand why that one is so many people’s favorite Trek movie, and the main reason I can’t understand it is that kid.

Joe: With the exception of that kid, it’s a good movie.

Steve: Yeah.
What line sticks out the most?

Joe: “What does God need with a starship?”
From the fifth one I think, which is the worst turd that ever turded a turd.
And you know why it sticks out the most? It’s both a legitmate and mentally retarded question at the same time.

Steve: I would like to make a comparative judgement that may lead to an internet discussion of mammoth proportions.

Joe: Ok.

Steve: Star Trek V, though it is the worst Star Trek movie, and one of the top ten worst major sci-fi movies of all time…
Is still less despicable than Rocky V.
I could sit through Star Trek V way more easily than I could Rocky V.

Joe: …

Steve: I know, tough call, but I’m pretty sure it’s true.

Joe: I think that’s true for 2 reasons:

Steve: Yeah, Tommy and Gunn.

Joe: 1. Star Trek movies were already up and down. By that point, 2 and 4 were well received and 1 and 3 were Turd Ferguson.
2. Rocky movies were all awesome or at least spectacular from 1-4, culminating in a bomb of epic proportions.
3. As bad as that blonde kid was, Tommy Gunn was somehow worse in every way.
4. Putting Mickey in as a sign of dementia was like Jesus resurecting as a mummy or something.
5. Someone finally punches Paulie (who deserved to lose his front teeth after the way he treated Adrian in Rocky 1 and ruining their finances in Rocky V) but then somehow the audience is expected to feel bad for Paulie?
On a side note, how fucking long was Rocky in Russia? He goes to train for a fight, gives Paulie the keys to the castle for 6 months at most, and Paulie destroys their finances?

Steve: Oh yeah, not to mention the kid’s age jump.

Joe: Ok.

Steve: He’s like four when Rocky leaves for Russia and like 13 when he gets back.

Joe: You just reminded me of how awful that kid was.
And yet, somehow Tommy Gunn was worse.

Steve: Dude Tommy Gunn is such a bad actor, I wouldn’t believe him if he was reading my diary to me.

Joe: Dude, he’s such a scary guy now. he’s got HIV, denies there’s such a thing as HIV, still boxes in like underground fights… it’s like he’s training to be Joker’s deranged henchman or something.

Steve: He denies there’s such a thing as HIV?

Joe: Yeah, he denies HIV exists.
He has lesions on his face and he denies HIV exists.

Steve: That’s… insane.
And only further proves that Rocky V is the worst thing ever.

Joe: Yup.