We break down Backdraft and explore its explosive mix of brotherhood, fire-as-a-villain storytelling, and classic 90s filmmaking. From practical effects to emotional family drama, we revisit why this Ron Howard film still burns bright today.
In this episode, we dive deep into Backdraft (1991), the classic firefighter thriller directed by Ron Howard and starring Kurt Russell, William Baldwin, Robert De Niro, and Donald Sutherland.
We explore how Backdraft blends action, mystery, and emotional storytelling through its central theme of brotherhood—both literal and symbolic. The film follows two feuding firefighter brothers navigating a legacy shaped by their father’s sacrifice, all while uncovering a dangerous arson conspiracy tied to political corruption.
We discuss how the film’s practical fire effects revolutionized the genre, with flames portrayed as a living, breathing antagonist. Unlike modern CGI-heavy films, Backdraft relied on real pyrotechnics, giving it a visceral, grounded realism that still holds up today.
We also break down standout performances, especially Kurt Russell’s commanding role as a hardened firefighter forced into a paternal position, and Robert De Niro’s understated but impactful turn as a fire investigator unraveling the mystery.
Beyond the action, we analyze the film’s deeper themes:
We also touch on 90s filmmaking trends, including ensemble casts, practical stunts, and the “rugged masculinity” that defined the era—contrasting it with today’s Hollywood casting and production style.
Finally, we reflect on why Backdraft remains a nostalgic favorite, even if it isn’t a perfect film. Its emotional core, memorable characters, and groundbreaking effects make it a standout in the firefighter movie genre and a defining film of early 90s cinema.
Welcome to the Never Seening Podcast.
The only podcast called, Never seen It that's worth listening to with us tonight.
Mr. Daily Dares, aka Filipino Grigio, aka.
Alex Galo, Mr. Ghost Nerd 88.
Aka.
Justin Holden.
Return, Special co-host, former friend of the show, Mr.
Toner, aka Anthony Gardi.
And then there's.mer friend?
A former.
I did say amer.
Yeah..
I've been called forced by Adrian.
That's.
At least it wasn't a racial epithet.
Yeah.
Yeah, then there's Me Bootsig, and tonight
we're discussing the classic 1991 film Backdraft
So you punched out a window for ventilation?
Was that before or after you noticed you were standing in a wake of gasoline?
Two feuding siblings carrying on a heroic
family tradition as Chicago firefighters, but when a
puzzling series of arson attacks is reported, they are forced
to set aside their differences to solveve the mystery surrounding
these crimes, directed by Ron Howard, starring Kurt Russell,
William Baldwin, Robert De Niro, Donald Sutherland, Jennifer Jason Lee, Scott Glenn.
I mean, it's kind of a who's, J.T. Walsh.
It's kind of a who's who of 90s and 80s stars of
all levels, all backgrounds, and probably the the
more successful movie that William Baldwin has ever ever been in?
I dare say?
I don't know.
But we'll get into all that.
Justin, this is your movie.
I know this movie holds a special place in your heart.
Tell us, why did you choose Backdraft?
Yeah, it does hold a very special place in my heart,
specifically because it was like something that
me and my dad bonded over and it
also made me want to be a firefighter.
And this was still makes me want to be one as well.
You know, if I didn't have a bum knee, I
would totally try to like do voluntary firefighter
things and whatever I could to get into that community.
But at this point, it's kind of like
a fever dream.
No, not a fever dream, but it's a fever dream in some sense.
A pipe dream, that's it.
Pipe dream.
Yeah.
But yeah, no, it was it was a movie that I
bonded with my dad over in the past.
He was a, like, before my parents got
divorced, he was a, he was a part of like fire protection.
So he was the guy that would go clean like restaurant intakes.
You know, they get all greasy.
He'd go in there and
clean those, make sure that they're, you know, fires safe.
And he would also do inspections.
And he was he was my own personal firefighter
at one point in time in my life up until
he lost his job. well, he so it wasn't that he lost his job.
It was more on the lines of, he just stopped doing it because it was it was his own business
So he had his own business going on doing fire protection and
then he just completely like, after the divorce and everything,
he completely just went downhill from there.
But it just reminds me of my dad and things like that.
Are you old enough to remember the backdraft experience
or whatever they call at Universal Studiudios back in the day?
Did you ever go to that?
Yeah, I do.
I actually showed a video to Jess
and Donnie last night after like we were done watching the movie.
We watched of like the behind the scene things from the DVD.
And then I was like, hey, you guys remember the Backdraft experience
at Universal Studios Hollywood?
And I just put that on just kind of give like perspective I
was like, this was like the coolest experience for me.
I was really sad they got rid of it to replace it with the Transformers.
But it was it was a really cool walk through experience that showed you
like how the practical effects were made and like you
were able to really experience what it was like to work
on the sound stages or the, in that case, the
fire stage that they built specifically for that movie, which was really awesome.
It was a good it was a good thing.
But Universal unfortunately got rid of all the major bangers of what made the park great.
They got rid of that, the Terminator, the Back to
the Future, and now they're're going to get rid of the Simpsons, which replace Back to the Future.
I don't know what they're replacing the Simpsons with, but yeah.
I'm guessing they're going to backtrack and actually bring back to the Future back.
They're just going to revitalize.
I think that be be great.
That'd be awesome.
I do fear they may use AI to
enhance enhance that experience, but it remains to be seen.
Yeah.
So, I mean, like I said, this got so many big A-listers.
It's kind of crazy to me seeing De Niro in like more of a supporting
role where he's like, not the focus.
I don't know, I'll say, Anthony, I'll ask you, I mean, as a fan fellow Italian President Italian.
What do you think about De Niro?
I mean, he still plays a really good role, Don't get me wrong, but he sort of takes it back C in this movie.
Yeah, he does.
I think, you know, he's just kind of there as like the grizzled old guy that's,
you know, it's, it feels like they're jamming two, well, a few stories
together, actually, as they're telling this tale.
But you get, yeah, the brother tension going on as
a as the one story, then you get the tale of like these firefighters just trying to do good.
Then you get like a grizzled old cop story too, of like, oh, like I got to make my case.
So I think it's a fun story.
I think, uh, you know, De Niro had a fun character there.
I don't think it needed to be the star of the show.
Right.
The fun thing, I think, was Russell playing two
characters playing the father I was with just the mustache..
So that was him.
I'm not crazy.
It had to be.
I mean, I didn't go looking it up, and I was like, I was like, I was likeurt.
Because I saw this movie when I was a kid, so I haven't seen it for a long time.
And so I was like sitting watching it.
I was like, I remember Kirk Kurt Russell in it, but I was like, I remember the dad dying.
I was like, was he only in it for a short time?
And then
he popped back up and I was like, oh, that's right.
Okay.
They did that thing.
So, yeah, it was a fun, a fun little role for Kurt Russell to take the lead on, I think.
And Kurt Russell, I don't know why.
I mean, I know, obviously he's younger, but man, I don't remember him having like such a baby face.
Like he has kind of like a, am I crazy or did his face shape change over the decades?
Like, his face smaller.
Well, and I kept seeing like the
son, like his son with Goldy Honter.
Oh, Wyatt Russell.y.
Yeah, yeah.
I kept seeing Wyatt a lot in this younger role.
I was like, okay, I definitely see the resemblance there.
I kept seeing Alec Baldwin.
I was like, no, no, no, that's.
Because those jeans are strong in the Baldwin family, too, man.
Do you think it was for Alec Baldwin when the characters would be like, oh, Steven is so great.
And he's like, I do have a brother named Stephen.
I think He's got that that every time I
watch this movie, I'm like, I'm like, I wonder if he gets upset
that everybody's like going around calling Steven and he's probably looking around like, well, my brother's here?
What the fuck?
that's got to be tough to be that have that many siblings in
the industry and like not be successful as any one of them.
Like the Skarsgd kind of well, they don't have that problem as
badly, but like, I feel like Stellan Skarsgrd, obviously the dad,
is the most famous and then like, what you guys say?
Bill is maybe second and first after
uh, what's the tall, the really tall ones?
I forget his name.
You know what I'm talking about, though.
There's like.
He also got the Stones, though.
Oh, and the salallones, yeah.
Oh, that's.
What was was Sylvester Stallone's brother's name?
He has two brothers that are.
He's got two brothers.
One was like less successful and then..
I feel like one was on the third one was like really, really unsuccessfulful.
Okay.
I don't know.
Wasn't one of them on a sick?
I feel like, yeah, we'll have to look into that.
It's like Sylvester Stallone, but
if they were more italicized, that's what his brothers look like.
Dante Stallone and Frank Stallone.
Frank Stallone, I think, is the one that's..
Yeah, Frank's the.
Yeah, more popular.
Frank's Yeah, he got a little bit more moderate success.
And then, it was it Dante Stallone?
He was like very little.
Yeah, Dante Stallone.
Well, Frank Stallone was in Tombstone, which we covered on this show.
I don't know that.
Yeah.
He was in the first Rocky.
He was in Hudson Hawk?
Another movie we covered Another movie you covered, yeah.
That was one of your movie movies, Derard.
Dr. Stallone was a H?
What a full circle moment.
No, Frank was.
Frank?
Okay.
Yeah.
What was the movie we covered where you
asked Arnold what you thought about one of the actresses and he's like, well, she was like 13 or something.
You hit him with that.
That one two punch.
Do you remember Gerardi one?
That's the godfather?
That was the godfather.
Was it Oh, there was the godfather
You asked him, like that the girl and you're like, oh, yeah, she's 15.
Arnold's like, ah, man.
Classic money on NSIP.
An easy rug pool.
An Easy rug pool, yeah.
You won't get stuff like that on any of the other.. never seenits, but we won't get into all that.
But in all seriousness, though, like Donald Sutherland's in this.
Also a small role.
Very important role.
Did it feel like he was kind of like Hannibal Lecter in a way?
They go back to him or at least the Baldwin
William Baldwin's character goes back to him and he's like, but tell me why you
want to be a firefighter and I'll tell you the answer.
And he's like, fine.
And that was like, that was totally like a lter getting that the Lamb story out of Clarice.
No, I can't be the only one that noticed that.
It was really funny because Donald Sutherland
has such a short role in this movie, but it's so impactful.
He's so creepy and conniving and really is.
like Donald Sutherland really like takes a limelight for those few minutes that he's in the film.
He has his way of playing like sort of a subdued, unhinged villain role.
He was great in those in the
He was great.
Inasion of Body Snatchers.
Yeah, B. Oh, I've never even seen that movie, but I know I know his, the last scene.
The only you were on a podcast where you watched movies I hadn't seen.
The premise of the show, right?
Oh, what else?
Scott Clinton always plays a bad guy who was also in Silence of the Atlance.
He's the FBII director.
J.T. Walsh, who was in, We did the
Outbreak movie with Dustin Hoffman.
It wasn't called The Outbreak.
It was called, you can't remember the name of it.
It was a.
I think it was called Outbreak, wasn't it?
It was called album.
Outbreak, yeah.
With with him.
And then he's also in one of my favorite movies, a few good men.
And I remember Justin, you once pointed out too, and you guys say out of the bad memory.
But Justin, you once pointed out.
You're like, every time JT Walsh appears in something, he's always like a villain type role.
Because in in the Outbreak movie, he was like the guy that's like, no, we got to burn the town down
I don't care that we're sacrificing people.
It has to be done, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And yeah, that was a great scene.
But yeah, J.T. Walsh is in this.
He's like there, what is he is he a politician or is he a mayor?
What was he?
Yeah, what do they call?
He's running for Aldmanman mayor or something like that.
He was an alderman.
Wait What does that mean?
Do we know?
Is that a firefighter term?
He's a member of a city or a town council.
You know, he's like a council member.
Gotcha.
I thought was.
Are we talking about the guy that plays Swayzak?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yes.
There's like a poster behind it, like behind, what's
her name, and it says, Swayzak for mayor.
Yeah, he's running for mayor, but he's currently a council member.
Oh, okay.
That's what it was, yeah.
Yeah, so J.T. Walsh, he wasn't a bad guy and a few good men, but he was like, he does
put, you know, put a gun to his mouth off camera
and, you know, takes his life in that movie.
Very dramatic role.
But, yeah, other than the big name actors, I mean, what do we think?
You know, emotionally, this is a movie about brotherhood, right?
On multiple layers, not just the brotherhood between two literal brothers, but also the
brothershood between firefighters and stuff.
Yeah.
Did that thing do it for you guys at all?
I mean, was that relatable?
Anthony, you have a lot of brothers.
I should probably ask you first.
I mean, how do you relate floating around.
Oh, I mean, it
you know, there was a raw emotion.
They're like, they were at odds, right?
So found it hard to relate with anything personally that
I feel with my brothers, you know?
But it, like I said, I think it was a multi-layered story.
The thing that got me the most on this view was like, how
much a life they gave the fire and
how much the fire was the villain as well.
You know, it kind of had, these characteristics and traits to it
where it would fight back and it was kind clever.
You know, you almost felt like that final destination kind
of plotting that, like it was like, oh, it's, you know, breathing back and then it's going to come and get you.
So I really liked that, how they gave the fire life
That was, I think, the, the layer
that I kind of hooked onto the most of just like the battling against the fire.
And then everything else was the subplot of like, oh, yeah, it's all set up for
De Niro to put together that it's just this guy stealing state funds, you know?
and really stick it to, I think it's a little timely, right?
Kurt Russell's character to kill him all with fire.
And that fire felt like you said, not only, it felt like a villain because it was real.
Because this was pre, not pre-CGI,
but it wasn't the days before CGI was as.
Yeah, it was all practical fire.
Yeah.
To the point where like people like VFX artists still
go back to backdraft as they're like building
CGI fire because they're like, oh, like, how does it light an area?
Like, what is the heat look like as it's pushing through?
Like, they really hyperanalyze this movie for what it achieved.
Yeah, there was there was like a thing that
was watching on the featurete of the DVD.
And
Ron Howard was talking about how originally
he wanted to use CGI for the fire.
And I guess they spent like, I
think he said six months to a year on trying to perfect
the CGI for, you know, majority of the
movies. that was around the time when like CGI was like starting
to become like a more common thing in movies, like Terminator and
Alien and all those things.
You know, people were winning awards for like really good CGI for the time.
And so he spent like six months a year trying to like prep the movie to
use CGI Fire.
And he was like, ultimately they ran
some tests and they were like, this shit sucks.
So let's just see if we can work with like pyrotechnics and make it work.
And they were able to solve a
lot of puzzles to make the fire act
and manipulate it so they can get it to do what they
want with it to tell the story because Ron Howard indeed
said that he wanted the fire to be its own character.
And they did a great job.
And Ron Howard, he's probably the most reliable director in Hollywood.
I say reliable because I don't know that he's necessarily like a notur
director, but like you get him in there and he's just going to get it done, right?
Like he came in to do the solo movie when they were already like
halfway into it and he just like, well we'll just get it done, you know, he did the Grinch.
He's done, uh, uh, what was that movie?
A Beautiful Mind?
That was a great movie with Russell Crowe.
I mean, the guy's just like such a reliable director.
Interesting that he did Hillbilly Elegy, which was based on the J.D. Vance book, but we won't get into all that.
What do you guys think about Ron Howard as a directorctor of Paul 13, obviously?
Like, do you guys see maybe a little bit of an aur there?
Or do you think he's just like, no, just a hired gun
type of dude.
Alex, I'll start with you.
How do you?
You must have an opinion on this.
I not Ron Howard.
Yeah.
So I really like Ron Howard.
I don't think he's like a genius, per
se, but he's a very, very, very solid directorctor.
I think that's why so many people can count when they need something to get done.
They will hire Ron Howard to be the director for a film, right?
There's been a couple times where he's had to step in for
other directors where they had to like either leave or.
That was on Solo was that projects it was the two guys..
He stepped in for that.
And, you know, he actually met, I looked
back on it now and I was kind of harsh on solo.
But if you think about it as
like a summer blockbuster action fun film, that's what it was.
And he pulled it off.
I agree.
Like you said, it was a fun movie.
It was a little dumb, you know?
I had some dumb moments.
Yeah.
We didn't. exactly Hoan Solo got his name, but whatever.
Exactly.
Exactly.
But, you know, that's what I felt about Backdraft.
I think Backdraft was a very, very, very solid film.
And
it's really, it's really good.
It's a well-told story.
It's nothing breakthrough
as far as like storytelling is concern, but the special effects are amazing.
The way his vision for it was really really, really executed well.
But it's just like a classic story of good and evil.
A lot of
themes that are relatable, like like the sibling rivalry, like fighting bad government.
I can't see all that's relevant at all right now.
There's just I mean, everything is running smoothly.
I can't tell you what's
going on that's relatable to what's going on today
Yeah, yeah.
But.
Now it's.
It's all groovy, baby.
There's no problem with anything.
Justin, I'm curious this is your pick.
So, yeah, what do you think about Ron Howard as a director?
I would say relatively consistent.
I think he has a lot of influence
in movie history.
He has a lot of really solid films under his belt.
He's a pretty solid director.
Pretty solid actor.
Was it Happy Days?
That's where he got a start, yeah.
Oh, I think?
He as a child.
It was Leave It to Leaverver?
Right.
Something like that.
No, no, no.
It was.
Andy Griffith.
Andy Griffith, yeah.
Andy Griffith, yeah.
He was a little boy.
Yeah, Andy Griffith from starring Andy Griffith.
Yeah.
And little Ronnie Howard.
My favorite
Ron Howard role was the narrator in Arrested Development.
Like That's iconic at this point.
I did not know that.
That's Yeah, he wasn't cool.
It wasn't meant to be that way.
And then I forget how it happened.
He was just reading it out a loud and they're like, be the narrator.
And then they just did it.
And it's great.
So I love that his brother was in this.
You guys have to know his brother is the guy with the hair right here, the bald guy.
He's in all of his movies, I think.
What's his name?
Clint Howard?
Clint Howard, yeah.
He was
What was the Did you call me?
Was he Waterboy?
Was he in Waterboy?
He's like..
I believe.
I am.
I am not a handsome man, but...
That's good stuff.
Anthony, yeah, what do you think about Ron Howard as a director?
I'm sure you have an opinion on this.
I agree.
I think he's he's both relatively consistent.
I think he knows how to make an entertaining movie,
like all of the Tom Hanks Da
Vinci code movies Ron Howard did too.
And I mean, I feel like that was
I don't know, maybe like five, 10 years after national treasure, but
it was like kind of that same vibe, right?
So yeah, I think this is,
is similar of that kind of fast pacedaced driven story.
The only thing I didn't like was the montage that went on to show
how much time Billy Baldwin was spending at the firehouses.
It was the early 90s.
Come on.
They got to have a montage. have a montage
montageage.
You know, speaking of that montage, I think out of
all the movies we've covered on this show, this this
montage actually had like a little bit of value
to it because it's like, they're showing you like
the everyday thing, like, pass the time, everyday thing that firefighter have to go through.
It's like, oh, we're not just fighting fires.
We want to show you that we do other things.
We risk you.
C from a tree or Mush., all that good stuff, you know.
We catch chickens.
Catch chickens on the freeway.
Yeah.
Dude, it was a very solid montage.
Like, you can't There's nothing wrong with it, to be honest.
It's just, I don't know.
It show the passing point.
It did.
At this point, I feel like the montage doesn't age well.
So I think looking back at it, it's just like, okay, it's a sign of when it was made, right?
So.
It's definitely a fingerprint.
Yeah, nobody really does montages the..
It's.
Yeah, you just got to keep moving., to be fair on Anthony's
point, though, it's like, if we were to have like a modern day
montage, it just seems lazy and just slapped in.
And I think that's, you know, that's what it is..
is that like montage is kind of strange still, though.
Musicals, say rom-coms, comedies,
in general comedies always do montages.om think about why it works in a musical.
It's because half of the thing of a musical is the music.
In a montage, they're putting a song to it, right?
Because you need something to carry it.
Like if you just had it without a featured song, you musical to
fall apart. is a giant montage.
That's a giant, you know, that carries that carries the soundtrack.
Monttage aside, I love the way they shot Chicago.
Like, Chicago feels like its own character, too, in this movie.
Yeah, I agree.
There's a shot where they're at a park and you see the skyline behind them
off in the distance.
And I was like, that's beautiful.
Like that, a film look right there is
what people today want to emulate, you know, but back then they just shot on film.
That's all they did.
They really make a point to like showcase a lot of like landmarks and this film.
Yeah.
The Chicago, like the river, the Great Lakes or whatever.
Yeah.
And then they also have a lot of scenes on the classic
Universal back as well, and sounds stages that they used.
You can definitely tell.
There's like, you can see the escalator in the background skinning.
Yeah.
You could like the scene.
That was the one of the buildings from the backlot, for sure.
You know, they're able to dress it up to look like whatever they want, you know?
And I fail to mention the female cast of this movie, which I want to go back to really quick.
And by the way, this movie does not pass the Bechdell test, for those of you wondering.
But Jennifer Day in the fire truck didn't?
What are you What?
No, so the Bechtel T is a two named female character.ters have to have a conversation
that's not have anything to do with a man.
Oh, that was metrics..
In honor of Arnold, I thought you said the backdoor test..
Oh, the backdoor.
Yeah.
I missard.
Oh, Jason.
I passed that one.
Yeah, it did pass that one.
Pass that one in flying colors.
Jennifer, Jason Lee is such a cutie.
I think I was saying this in the disccord.
I was like, I forgot how pretty she still is very pretty.
Rebecca Des Mornet, dude.
She's also really pretty.
She is gorgeous.
And she's been in a ton of stuff.
She's like a 90s, like, like 80s hotottie
that becomes a 90s MILF.
A 90sIF.
I like that.
You know what I mean?
I like that, yeah.
I' 30 minute mark.
So, Arnold, if you're in the chat, go ahead and and swivel your hips for us while you're in there.
Let me see a lot of people to chat.
By the way, HLP, he's got something interesting to say.
He says, interesting how most of the movies that are reviewed are relevant to politics.ics.
Let's do a review.
Let's review a movie about starting fires
when lots of companies are being set on fire.
Hey, that actually tracks.
There's that's been going on lately.
This is actually topical.
That is why they probably want, in the end and
everyone Ubering so that they know exactly where you live.
Oh, yeah, because I was telling HLP that's probably cheaper to Uber at this point than to fucking have a car and pay for gas.
But anyway.
Yeah, lots of warehouse fires going on around the country.
I, you know, people are fed up.
People are fed up and they're fed up, you know?
I don't I don't know why they're fed up.
Do you think that's why this movie was taken off of all streaming devices?
Because they don't want people getting ideas For how to set really effect.fficient fires?
You know, that's an interesting conspiracy, right?
Look, just take it and run with it.
There's been weirder ones.
Physical media wins again.
Hey, there.
There you go.
You got your DVD.
It does feel weird that we're sort of, I don't
want to say regressing, but for lack of a better word, we're sort of regressing
to old formats and stuff.
And it really shows you that, yeah, people are tired of being being screwed over, right?
Justin, you were saying earlier, now shutter raised prices.
Netflix has raised his prices, what, twice this year already so far
Disney, everyone's raising their prices, we're going back to cable.
I found something, I found out something interesting about like
how Netflix pays their directors and when they fund a movie.
So they are talking about the new upcoming film
from Quentin Tarantino, who that he wrote, the Cliff Adventures of Cliff Booth or whatever.
That movie cost, like, what was it, $200 million or something they had to film, right?
Or they paid, they spend that that much money.
Netflix paid that much money.
But like, I guess $40 million is going to Brad Pitt
Who's.
Right.
Wow.
Tarantino's not directing this film.
He's just the writer, but they gave him $20 million.
And the director is somebody else.
I can't remember.
And he got $20 million.
I think it's David Fincher.
Yeah, David Fincher.
That's correct.
And so what's happening is because Netflix is
like, oh, we're not going to put your movie in theaters and anymore.
It's just going to be on Netflix
So they don't get back in.
A lot of these films don't get back in because they're not going into theaters, right?
So that's why they're paying these huge sums of
money to buy pay for these films and paying
these directors and actors up front such large sums of money.
Because if they went into theaters, they would actually get
a smaller cut at the very beginning and then get the back in.
But because they't Netflix can't guarantee a back-end,
they have to pay up front in order to that.
And so it's like, that's why I was like, man, $200 million for this film, but then it makes sense.
But it's, yeah, it is very, very, very, very ridiculous.
And here's the thing.
Netflix neutered the fucking physical media market because
movies used to make more money on the back end on DVD sales and all that, and then streaming came along, pretty much destroyed that
And now Netflix has having to raise their prices because they
need the money because people are not, you know, going to the theaters as much, right?
So it's like, where do you draw the line?
Like, how do you, how do you have a balance of like streaming but
also some theater releases and still make a little profit somewhere in the middle?
I don't know.
It's kind of their own fault.
They sort of became
their own worst enemy, I guess, in that sense.
Does Netflix have a warehouse somewhere?
Yeah.
Well, I don't know if it..
I mean, did they't kill their DVD service?
I think recently they got rid of their DVD, very
recently. set fire to their DVD warehousehouse.
They have a warehouse full of like a bunch of non-claimed DVD rentals.
It's just a bunch of those slip covers for
all the DVDs that' all empty..
Well, tomorrow that warehouse is going to become an AI data center warehouse, so that's going away, too.
And everything's going to eventually going to be replaced by a data center.
I think they're even trying to build one in your neck of the woods.
Well, no, Arnold's not here tonight, but in the desert, they're trying to build the data center.
Yeah,
Coache, they're trying to build the data center.
Or Indiana.
I'm sure there's already one in V Nevada and San Diego somewhere, I'm sure.
Everybody knows the good thing about the desert. is there's a lot of water to, you know.
Yeah, oh, yeah.
I got so much water to go on.
What do they say?
One AI prompt is like a bottle of water or something like that?
Water, which you need to put out fires like in the movie Backdraft.
You see how I brought it back?
We do the circle, gentlemen the week.
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
What else do you else do you want to say, Justin, about this movie?
Because this is this is your movie.
And was it at the forefront of your mind or what made you think about it?
Because I feel like I haven't thought about this movie in decades, you know?
Oh, I think I think about this movie quite often, actually.
I do consider it to be one of my
truly like favorite films.s of Roman Empire?
Yeah, I would say so.
I mean, trust me, I know that there's much better movies
out there, but I think this has such a huge nostalgia factor for me.
Yeah.
That it becomes like my number one favorite movie.
And it's like, it's not a perfect movie.
It definitely isn't.
But it's very nostalgic.
I think the drama within it
is very well done as well.
And aside from like William Baldwin,
like this being like one of his major serious roles,
I think he did really well, albeit some corny scenes here and there.
I think coming from like, what, biodome to
doing something like this is, or is it reversed?
I'm not sure what who other brother came out.
I think that was Billy Baldwin?
Oh, no.
Stephen Baldwin.
Billy Baldwin, who was just, a.k.a.
William Baldwin.
And then in that case.
And in that case, for this Baldwin in particular,
I think for them to take on such a serious dramatic
role that has a little bit of like thriller to it.
I think they did an extremely good job and,
very surprised that they didn't really expand
beyond this film.
But Kurt Russell, though, man, he is, he takes
the fucking show in this movie..
Like, he has some good films under his belt.
I think this one
this movie really showcases his
acting ability because he he's playing this
guy that is like, taking the reins.
You know, he had to raise his brother after his father died.
And he's playing that, you know, he's playing like the father figure.
And he even says in the movie, he's like, you know, I raised
you and you just go off and do your thing and it's like, you don't appreciate me.
It's like, damn, like when he's talking to
his brother about that, I'm like, damn, dude, it's like
that, that's some hard truths
that he has to like realize what,
like, because they're both in the wrong in their own way, but you
have this younger brother that he spent his time raising,
just kind of like going off and trying to do the next get
rich quick scheme because at the beginning, like the bartender's
like, oh, I have all your cards from all of your like
uh, you know, career adventures and, you
know, being a fireman is going to be the next thing on that list.
And I think what he was trying, what,
Steven was trying to nail in to his brother is
that like, is this really something that you want to do?
It's like, it did dad really
inspire you to become a fireer?
fighter or are you just doing this to, you know, get
on the next get rich Quick scheme?
And I think he, uh, as an actor,
Russell Crowe Russell Crowe.
William Baldwin.
Kurt Russell.
Kurt Russell really nails it in, and it's a believable character.
Out of all the characters in this movie, Kurt Russell's
Steven really sets up the
stage for the events to come later on in the movie.
And it does end up becoming like a full circle thing where
you know, Brian finally realizes he's like, uh you
know know, whether both
his dad and his, you know, spoiler, both his dad and his brother end up dying in this movie.
And at the end, he kind of just has, it seems
like he now has the respect and
the responsibility that, you know, like, okay, I know what this job's all about.
I know what I need to do, and now I can move
on and continue like the family tradition of being a firefighter.
But it took, it took a lot of like convincing
from his older brother to realize that, hey, you
know, like, is this really what you want to do?
Like, I'm not trying to bully you out of this
but I'm trying to show you the reality of what you're getting into.
It's not just like you can pick up and go like like
an Amazon warehouse or anything like that.
You can't just like Don' boxes or just don' set fire to it.
Yeah.
But it's just like, it's not, it's not a regular job that
you can just take those risks because he even says, he's like, no, you have a bad day here.
Someone's going to die.
Yeah.
I love that moment at the end where Russell's, he's being rescued.
He looks over.
He's like, that's my brother.
right there.
I, God damn it.
Yeah, he gets the shit.
And by the way, Kurt Russell, I was reading about this.
Kurt Russell did a lot of his own stunts in this movie.
So much so that they credit him in the.
I didn't watch it myself, but they credit him and the credit says, as one of the stunt people, him and
him and apparently.
And the guy that plays X. Yes, Scott ended it too.
Yeah.
They had made this today, it would be it would just not be the same.
Even with all the technology and everything that we have today that we didn't have in
91 It'd be volumes, it'd be green screens.
Right.
That's what I was saying.
Like it would be all CG.
It would be all pretty pretty face, pretty boy actors.
Although, what was the fire movie that they just
went through the awards season this year about the Palisades Fire?
Was that movie or a documentary?
No, no, no.
No, no, no.
It was about the school bus.
I don't know, actually.
Oh, man.
Yeah, it was that one that, I mean, it was all CGI Fire, but it looked really good.
Did it look.
Yeah?
Yeah.
So, I mean.
I haven't seen it yet, but there is a backdraft too that came out in 2018 I
about that.
They made a backdraft too.
Yeah.
Donald Sutherland and Willie Baldwin both
repriseed their roles in that movie, but those are the only two that reprise their roles.
It came out in 2019.
I heard nothing about this movie.
Yeah, Back in a bottle of Yoohoo.
Electric boogaloo.
And am I just biased because I was raised in the 90s as a kid?
Like Or did movies back then just have like more, I don't know, manly looking actors?
Am I crazy?
Or is that just like, I'm looking at it through a weird lens, a modern lens or something?
Because I feel like back then, I don't know, like there just weren't
as many pretty boy actors in movies like this.
Like, what do you guys think?
I mean, I mean, I don't know.
Baldwin and Russell are both pretty boys.
That's true.
Yeah.
I mean, I honestly think William Baldwin is the best looking out of all the Baldwins.
Yeah.
Oh, really?
That's interesting.
I think so.
Yeah, but, like, Scott Glenn, Scott Glenn's a great actor, by the way, and nothing against him.
He He's a rugged looking, good looking dude.
Rugged.
That's, but you would see it right there, rugged, right?
Yeah, I did.
Russell is rugged, too.
I wouldn't classify Billy Baldwin as rugged, though.
I think he's a pretty boy there.
He's definitely a pretty boy, for sure.
Where does De Niro rank?
I guess he's older in this movie, so, you know, he's a little bit on the grayer side, right?
He's rough around the age.
He's
Yeah.
He's a rugged guy.
He's a rugged guy.
Yeah, he's rugged.
But, like, you look at the actors now, you look at like Timothy Chalamet.
I wish we talk about him too much on this show, but I'm just using him as an example.
There's nothing rugged about him, and he's Paul Ereades.
Like, you know, I don't know.
I guess it doesn't always have to do with looks, but I just noticed
that it just seems like casting back then was just a whole different vibe than it is today.
What's that's the picture from the Boys?
He's a liber?
He's a liber.
What's that actor's name from The Boys?
He's kind of...
And he act He's been acting for a while.
Carl Urban, yeah.
He's pretty rugged.
But he's also been acting for a long time, too.
Yeah, he's I guess that doesn't count.
More grizzled.
Well, he grizzled.
Early 2000s.
That's when he was making his mark, right?
Like with some of the J.J.
Abrams stuff.
Yeah, I think so.
He's the best
judge D. But to be fair, like, you know, Chalamet is a good actor.
Austin Butler is a good actor.
Zach Effron has proven to be a good actor.
I'm shocked at how good of an actor that guy is.
Batista.
Dave Batista.
And look at that.
Wrestler turned actor.
Bieber's married to Haley Baldwin.
Oh, he is.
Yeah, is that what no one's talking about in the champion?
No, no, that's what Ronaldld was talking about on his other ch.
He's importing those into our chat, I think, is what's going on.
He's accidentally getting the two chats confused.
He's sending us stuff that he's meaning to send
to his OnlyFans chat.
Oh my God.
Anyway, well, yeah, so that's backdraft.
So I was confused about one thing.
So the whole subplot with the investigating of the fires.
So to be cleared,
what's his name?
The guy Scott Galland's character, he was behind it for
political motivations.
Or what was the motivation?
He discovered the plot. and he was like, this is like
they're making cuts that are getting firefighters killed all for a profit.
So I'm going to take them all out individually,
not start big fires like he was creating the backdrafts to smother the fire.
So it would just kill the targets and blow out the fire so it's not burning anything on the air.
That doesn't seem so bad.
I mean, he was protecting his brotherhood.
He was protecting his brotherhood.
He was Louigiing a couple of guys, okay?
Again.
Might be relevant for the Times.
I don't know.
I don't know why.
Abs. That's.
I did not get that, but now that you explained it, that makes so much sense.
And I honestly can't blame him that much on if I'm being honest.
I. Hold on, wait, wait.
Let's just say I get Hold on.
You didn't see that earlier on until now?
I thought he was mad.
about something and he was in cahoots with J.T.
Walsh's character, but J.T. Walsh's character was a whole not story because
J.T. Walsh's character was the person he was trying to get, right?
He was trying to get him.
Eventually.
Like, eventually, yeah.
But we didn't even know that Scott Glenn was the guy Unt until the end.
Like, yeah, they misdirected to Kurt Russell for a while.
Like I said, I'd seen this movie and I was still going like, wait, is this Kurt Russell?
I was like, I thought it was the other guy.
Like, it's a little last minute, but towards the end there, I was like, I guess it was Kurt Russell.
Wow, okay.
I like that red herring of making it seem like Kurt Russell
was behind it because I was thinking, oh, shit,
like, if that's the real twist, that's great.
But I feel like they were on the brink of probably setting him up, which
it almost happened because his brother was like, what the hell?
Like, are you the one killing firemen?
And that's why when he went to his boat, he's like,
you know, he's, was it Brian, or sorry, Stephen McCaffrey,
It was like, if, you know,
if he said something along the lines of, like,
if you could look at the way you're looking at me
or something like that, there's like a quote he says, it's like, uh, something like that.
And then that's where it's like, oh, okay, so now Stephen
is aware that Brian, his brother is suspecting him of
uh, you know, arson or killing all these people,
making these fires and or these backdrafts in particular.
It was a, it was a very nice touch.
Yeah.
But I'm glad like Stephen was able to
step up and be like, hey, like, this isn't, this isn't me doing it.
And then we had that brotherly team up at the end there.
Yeah.
I also like how this movie did that thing that you only seen in movies where
Deiro's character walks in when J.T. Walsh's character is having that press conference.
He's like, you know, you got an answer for this.
And he throws down all the files and all the presses there.
And it's like, I don't know if that would happen in real life, but it's still such a dramatic moment that works in this movie.
He's just like, here's all my proof.
Isn't theero the perfect guy to do that, though?
It's like, I can't picture anybody else doing that in that, in this film.
That's what I mean.
Like, oh, hold on.
De Niro's going by right now.
Okay.
So I lived on his fire for that warehouse fire.
He was here.
We have a recording.'s actually in Amazon. 744 p.m.
Yeah.
But, no, you're right.
De Niro did.
That was He is a perfect character for.
I'm glad he got closure on that.
I didn't know how they were going to close the loop on Deir's invest. investigation.
I love that he burst in there all dramatically and dropped the files
and the press is like, give us more answers.
And he's like, no, no, we're done, we're done here.
And then, yeah.
But see, that's actually, you know, what's more unrealistic than that
scene, the fact that somebody in a position of power was being held accountable because you just don't see that in real life.
I thought you were going to say the fact that firefighters rode an elevator up to a fire.
I feel like that's a pretty hilarious part of that.
I forgot about this.
There were a lot of things.
I don't think they consulted firefighters a lot on this film.
I'd have to look it up, but a lot of things felt
very much like, okay, that was that was very Hollywood.
We appreciate that.
Well, lot of the extra for real firefighters.
Also, don't like firefighters in an all emergency responders?
There's like a button where they could bypass, like, I
don't know if it makes the elevators elevators, right?
They have like a don't have to go pass floors, yeah.
Yeah.
Ron Howard did
actually spend a lot of time with the
Chicago firefighters to get a real real sense of how.
I think I think the elevator scene in particular, I know.
Super unreisticistic, but I think that was that was kind of like a joke.
Like firefighters always tick the stairs, but because
they're such like the renegade, you know,
fire department, like the the toughest, you know, I't
It was just like one of those, I don't fucking care moments.
I think that also probably showed Bulls
bullheadedness and like resistance to.
Like because he was obviously having a hard time with
his brother, and that was just him being boneheaded in
that situation being like, oh, I'm in invincible.
Nothing can touch me type of like mom moments.
Or like so how he was always very hurried.
Like, we got to get there fast stairs are longer than elevator.
Yeah, exactly
So I, I feel like the elevator scene was more or less like
a joke and, uh, a play to like what
firefighters tell you to not do.
The opposite of.
Yeah, Hollywood logic applies a lot in movies like
this because sometimes doing it a certain way is more dramatic.
It's more visually interesting.
How are you going to have a conversation like that if they're all going up the stairs?
Like it's easier.
Let's just put them in an elevator
and film it in one shot and it works.
I think it was a a great scene of the way.
You know I love the fact that you see the smoke kind of get
sucked in through the bottom of a door at one point, right before the guy opens and then, boom, backdraft.
And that's the name of the movie.
I think we did it.
Did you have any more thoughts, Justin, before we start to wrap her up?
What do you think?
I think in my opinion, I don't think we talked enough
about like the scenes with fire.
I don't think we talked about that character, fire itself a whole lot here.
Let's get into it.
I mean.
No, because I think the movie is very impressive.
Like I said earlier on, like Ron Howard could have easily
chosen to do CGI, but no, everything in the movie
was practical effects to some degree.
I mean, I'm pretty sure that a lot of it was slightly altered in certain areas.
But a lot of the scenes where they they show like the rolling fire
on the ceiling and then there's like the scenes
where like it's shown rolling out on the ground and things like that.
Fun fact behind that is in order for them to
get the, because I guess it doesn't just roll on the floor like that, but it rolls on the ceiling just fine.
So for them to get that scene where the fire is rolling towards Brian's character
And then they have like that twisting fire and everything.
Well, they actually had to flip the,
they had to flip a whole scene upside down.
So the scene where it shows his legs, it's actually just
like stationary legs and it's filmed upside down.
So the flames are actually hitting the ceiling and it's
rolling on the ceiling, but they flip the scene around to make it look like it's rolling on the floor.
Going towards the.
You're coming towards the camera, yeah.
And then they actually built
a special for like the, the little twister fire spiral thing.
They actually built a device and they actually show
it off in, or they used to show it off in the Universal
Studios experience, but they built this
spinning thing specifically that lit on fire to
show it like spinning, making it look like it's alive and
things like that, giving it more character and dynamics.
So I thought that was like a really cool.
thing to add.
That was a great effect.
They did something similar in Independence Day.
I saw a video about that the other day.
They put the set on its side,
basically, the camera pointing up and then the fire just comes towards the lens.
And all those shots from Independence Day were pretty much done the same way.
And with real fire.
Apparently, that scene in particular, it was it was the White House scene or something.
Oh no, no.
It was the
Empire State Building scene.
For the ending, they just flipped it upside down.
They shot the same scene.
It's just they incorporated the spaceship over it, so it exploded.
I thought that was pretty intuitive, actually.
The White House was like a model.
It was a lot of models.
The White House model was like a 30- foot long model or something like that, and then they just blew it up.
Amazing.
Amazing.
And that's what I'm saying.
They wouldn't do that these days.
It would just all be CGI.
I will say one of the biggest goofs
in backdraft is when they're in the warehouse, with the mannequins, like earlier on in the movie.
There's, there's a scene where everything just, they're like, we got to get down.
And everything just starts exploding.
I don't know if you noticed, but the windows from
the outside in explode.
Like there's nothing like, I mean, the windows are exploding.
I think that's a pretty hilarious little fall.
The can actually explode, though, right?
not like that.
If it's hotter?
Not like full on.
Not the explosion.
From the outside in, I don't think that's happening
Yeah.
I think, but it's pressure.
It's stuck in the air from outside.
It's It's pretty hilarious.
If you go back and watch that scene, you'll be like, okay, like
it's the windows are physically exploding.
Yeah, it's it's pretty hilarious.
Yeah.
Alex?
Yeah, so I think another big goof was the
scene after when the fireman was pulling the hose,
and then there's the bra attached to it.
Like, how did the bra get attached to it?
It got like, like wrapped around it?
Threaded.
It got threaded.
How did that happen
Like, they must have either, like, done some
crazy shit underneath the
hose to like remove their undergarments.
And then she like, I don't know.
That it was just weird to me.
It's like he pulled he's pulling the hose and he had to unhook it to remove the bra.
I don't know.
I thought that was like, the physics on that don't, don't math.
It's possible that they were using the hose for other purposes, maybe.
It was was a raucous roll in the hose, you know?
Yeah..
It just got caught.
You know, Or maybe that's not a hose.
Yeah.
Where's Arnold?
We need Arnold for this part?
This is his expertise.
Oh, I want to point out another goof as well again earlier on in the movie.
That first scene where we get like our first like glimpse
at like a backdraft is when that guy is like walking
up to his thome or whatever
and he's walking up the steps and he
opens the door and he just goes, And
then, so if you look really closely at the scene and you pay attention to like
the next few scenes after, so the, the,
I'm assuming a dummy, I would hope it was a dummy.
Like, so the door explodes and his body goes left, right?
Yeah.
His body goes left away from the car.
And then, then the next couple of scenes later, you notice
that he actually goes through the windshield of the car.
But if you look really closely, you see the mannequin going, far left away from the vehicle.
So that's another little goof as well.
There was a shot where someone goes through a window earlier
in the movie and it was clearly a dummy because the
way it folds like this.
I'm like, yeah, that's a dummy.
Nobody would physically bolt like that unless it's
like an extraordinary amount of pressure or something.
I don't know.
Yeah.
But it's funny.
I didn't catch it when you were talking about, though, so that is interesting.
You know, the biggest thing I related to was Kira Russell's character in the sense of him trying to chase after his ex.
I was like, bro, what are you doing that?
You guys are divorced.
Like, move on.
You know what I mean?
Like, come on.
I think it's fucked up.
In my opinion, I think it's fucked up that she was even there
at that, that retirement party.
Right.
Yeah.
I think it was, I think it was fucked up that issue because she knew he was going to be there.
She knows that he probably has like an issue with her seeing someone else.
So
I'm assuming so early on.
I don't know who the other guy she was saying and what his role
was with being there, but I feel like it's kind of missting.
Wasn't he like another captain a lieut at another station?
A fellow firefighter.
Probably.
Regardless, she knew that
he was going to be there.
She's a badge bunny.
Yeah.
She sure liked herself some firefight.
That's.
She loves those men in the univer.iform.
She loves the spell of smoke.
High visibility turns her on.
Anybody else notice, by the way, that every single firefighter was
smoking when they were putting out the fire?
Yeah, I love that.
Every one of them was just like cigarette.
They've already inhaling a bunch of smoke,
and then they're like voluntarily smoking.
Yeah..
It's like a stick stasis at this point.
That's another like cool, interesting thing I noticed
that I just remembered is
you notice, they're all smoking and everything, but there
there's this scene where Kurt Russell's character is
just, he's like, he's like, it's showtime.
And then he just goes in without a mask and then you have his
little brother going in with a mask and I'm'm like, okay, like,
I think that that was a pretty neat little detail to Ed because it's
like he's, he's used to the smoke at this point.
He's used to.
Well, he tells him like, save your oxygen or whatever.
Save your oxygen.
Yeah.
And it's like, he doesn't even have an oxygen tank.
It was it was pretty insane.
It just shows.
It just that he's done it like once or twice at least.
They didn't have those..
They must have not have had them in the 90s, but like, I know, like when I worked
on TV, Anthony E probably, I remember going to Flyers and the firefighters have those
beeps that go off when they're not moving long enough.
That was after.
That had to have been, yeah.
Yeah.
I was noticing, like, these guys seem so healthy and Nobody's coughing.
Nobody's hacking lung, but they're smoking.
They're inhaling smoke.
They're still in their prime.
That's what they are They're still in their prime..
So I thought that was interesting.
Well, they're not going to show that.
They should have.
They should have, damn it.
I wanted to hear that
You know, type of shit.
They did mention in the movie.
Show us heroes.
The thing about firefighters is that we all firefighters die young or something like that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What did you guys think about the big chemical warehouse finale
Because that's obviously this whole movie is set up for
that big, big blockbuster scene.
I think that scene is what makes the
movie one of my favorite things about that is that scene in particular.
If you're along for the ride, you're in it.
And it almost feels like you're there.
The way they set up is like you're there with them, like trying to
get through this maze of fire.
But I mean, what do you guys, what do you guys think about that?
Most modern shows or movies would have like one or two little fires
in the beginning and then they save up for the big one at the end.
This movie was like, no, we're going to do fire scene after fire scene after fire scene.
And then we're still going to have a major fucking fire scene at the very end
in the warehouse, with the scaffolding and the pipes and the barrels, and it was huge.
It was a huge set piece.
Like this movie must have caused a ridiculous amount to make just
for all that alone, all the different fire set pieces, which were all great, by the way.
The propane budget. the bud budget.
Hankkill was on the case
But yeah, I loved it.
I loved that last virus.
You know, that was honestly made the whole movie worth it, you know, building up to all that.
I think it's interesting to think about this came out the
same year that Terminator 2 came out because like that end
scene kind of felt reminiscent of the end scene of Terminator 2 with like a slag pit.
Like here you also had axe and Bull, like over the fire pit.
You know, it's like both movies this same year and
and funny enough, Terminator 2 like, you know, swept
all the special effects categories that that year, which it did Backcraft lost out to.
Yeah.
So yeah Yeah, Hans Zimmer, Hans Zimmer, even though
like the soundtrack to Backdraft is amazing, Hans
Zimmer still lost out to Terminator 2's soundtrack, which is crazy.
That's great.
I mean, Hans Zimmer has been killing it for decades.
You actually know about Beauty and the Beast one original score.
Oh, did it?
Oh, yeah.
There you go.
Damn.
Well, that's. be unfortunate.
That's score.
Fantastic.
to this day.
I think Disney has ahouse somewhere..
Julian Andrews?
What does she win?
No, Wood.
Oh, gotcha.
Yeah, the movies of
the early 90s to late 90s, I mean, just banger after banger after banger.
Obviously, there were bad movies
But, yeah, I don't know.
There's something about that era.
There's something about this movie, the whole aesthetic of it that, like
you said, Justin, very nostalgic, just the way it was filmed.
Visually, the beautiful skyline shots of Chicago were great.
I love the ending scene.
I love Stephen Baldwin going off.
William Baldwin.
I call him Stephen Baldwin.
William Baldwin going off into the sunset, literally into the sunset, in the fire truck.
And then you get that awesome wide shot of the
city panning up and stuff like just what a way to end it.
Like, the whole movie is a ride, right?
It's just a ride and it's a good ride.
I like how they didn't really end
the movie because they had like the words that it was like, oh, there's like
one, and whatever fire firefighters this day.
But they didn't really end with like a fun factor.
They just ended with like, oh, there's the know firefight.
We acknowledge the firef.
I no other fun facts at the end.
But yeah.
Also, it makes you want to go to Chicago, which I've never been, but it looks like such an old timey city.
Yeah.
And it's like, you know, living in Denver, like I'm a lot closer to it now than I was, you know, obviously in the West Coast.
You could take a train.
I could take a train.
Yeah.
It would take 55 hours to get there and
s.
Yeah, I could take a train and I'd love to go to Chicago.
Like, it looks like New York, but in the middle of the country.
I don't know.
It just has a big skyline similar to New York or one of these days.
Go check out Bean.
Maybe get Arnold to come with me.
Arnold says that main backdraft song, it is so fire.
I see what you did there, Arnold.
They use it in the original Iron Chef Japanese show.
Oh, interesting.
I didn Justin, I have a question for you.
The fact that Backdraft and Terminator 2 came out in the same year
and then Terminator 2 taking a lot of the awards that could have gone to backdraft.
How does that make you feel?
I Those seem like two of your top films.
They're my top favorite movies.
Like they're both great.
Like, they're both amazing.
Does it make you bitter that, like, Backdraft didn't get anything
Or at least like.
No, It doesn't remind me bitter because Terminator 2 deserves it.
It is the best action film of all time.
I love that movie.
I don't care what anybody says.
No movie. like, I love like the Mad Max movies.
I love Fury Road, but
Terminator 2 is going to be the movie.
If you've never seen Terminator and
you're like, oh, I want to watch some like really big blockbuster action
movie, that's always going to be the number one movie, especially if you've never seen it.
My number one action film orgasmo.
Orgasma.
You haven't gotten to Terminator 2 since Terminator 2.
No movie sci-fi action epic has come close to Terminator 2.
Don't you you guys think?
I mean, honestly, what's the closest thing to Terminator 2 that we've gotten since CI 2?
And sci-fi?
Like sci-fi action?
Sci-fi action.
Just something on that scale, something that quality is to.'s
James Cameron as well.
Well, that was in that pates determinator, 2, but I'm talking about since
then, like, what's the closest thing we've gone to?
A time travel
action movie.
You know I't know.
Nothing, really.
I don't know what comes close.
I mean, you have new genres, right?
I think, if anybody did action films
on the level of James Cameron, I would maybe say, like a Michael Bay film, right?
Yes.
I think, as cheesy as we like to say, like bassosions
are fucking awesome.on.
I am here.
Armageddon, the Terminator.
I mean, the Transformer movies, The Island, which is
bad for many reasons, but like the action elements of it are fantastic.
You know, I'm like, I
feel like, I feel like there's different, not that there's different levels, but it's different styles of action.
Like, there's sci-fi action.
And then there's like, for me, my personal favorite is like gunplay, like hand-to hand comt action.
That kind of like fight scene action is like my favorite.
I honestly favor that over explosions
and things like that because that's why I love the John Wick series.
That's why I love like Kung Fu movies, you know..
me, it just feels like it just feels organic.
Whereas like, I do love the spectacle, but like,
it just feels so much more tangible in an action
sense to see somebody get punched in the face
If we're talking action sci-fi too, like The Matrix was kind of.
Oh, yeah yeah.
So I think action. in sci-fi
and the intersections between, like it's still going strong.
Yeah, it doesn't get any better than like Terminator or,
I mean, backdraft is like to me, I this is the first time I watched this.
I think it was incredible.
Like, the special effects we already talked about this before.
It's You can't do this these days.
Or they won't.
There's a great comedian.
There's this guy on TikTok I follow who does a great series of videos about
different pop culture stuff and weird, fun facts and blah, blah, blah.
And he was talking about today, he was like, did a video about why did
special effects look kind of worse today than they did back in the day?
The Jurassic Park, right?
Even this era of movies.
And he was basically saying, like, look, like, there's companies that only
do VFFs and the studios go with the lowest bidder.
So you're getting a studio that was the lowest
bidder working under very tight time constraints.
And sometimes those companies go under, like famously for the Life of Pine Mo.
That studio went under it and they won an Oscar.
So you're not getting the best.
You're getting the cheapest studio to do the VFX for today and under a time crunch.
So that's part of probably why the reason why
VFX don't look as good today, in some respects.
Obviously, they're better in a lot of ways..
HLP says he asks about the fifth film and what we think about it.
Personally, I think.-
I think the sci-fi action, it wasn't the action wasn't
super memorable to me
but it helped, the action helped carry
the story, if that makes any sense.
It's it wasn't.
It's a character driven movie than action.
There's a lot of action in it.
But I think it's more focused on like the characters, the camaraderie, the comedy
more so over the action.
The action.
When it did happen, it was very, very cool, stylized over the top.
But ultimately, I think Fifth Element just had
a really good sci-fi story to tell in general with
their fun, silly little characters.
It wasn't like Michael Bay Bombastic.
It was
action enough to be able to be like, ooh, and then help carry the story.
But then the character is really were like Justin said, character driven.
It's also kind of unfair to compare modern movies with James Cameron at his promming, right?
Because that was like peak, peak James Cameron.
I think James Cameron making Avatar movies would argue with you on that.
Well,
I like those.
I like them, but it doesn't hit the same.
I don't know why.
Maybe I'm just old.
I haven't even seen the third one.
Technological advances that they are making on like water
modeling and like CGI for water is Fantastic.
Insane.
It is insane.
The Avatar movies are just like, they're throwing money at them to
test new technology, right?
I think, I feel like that's what they're just basically doing.
Well, it's just passion projects.
It's like he's saying, oh, hey, Disney, I need to film Avatar 3.
And so part of that, I need to research the
Titanic just for water flow thing.
So I'm going to take a sub down there.
You guys are going to pay for that, right?
And so like, he's just got a guy with expensive hobbies.
Can you take a couple of billionaires down there with him?
James Cameron can stay on the boat.
Just send them down.
Now we need to get James Cameron obsessed about fires in warehouses.
that was most recent Avatar movie is Fire and Ash.
It is, yeah.
That was called Fireron?
Not as much fire technology in that one.
I say they're expensive, but to be fair, the Avatar movies are just
a Zoe Sadana with a mask on her face capturing her
expressions and then they just get it all digitally..
It's all.
They're not really building sense. video game.
Yeah.
I think backdraft in its own sense kind of like
led the wave to, for like special effects, especially how
fire is used and manipulated in future movies.
Because I don't think any movie involving fire was at this level
and quite frankly, like, we probably wouldn't
even have all these like really cool, like firefighter movies if
it weren't for, like movies like backd.
I don't think any movie holds up.
Like, any firefighter movie, Lder 49,
whatever other firefighter movies are out there, There are quite a few.
None of them have had the same effect as this movie.
And I think this is why.
Spider-Man.
He saves people from fires that movie.
Or one of the Spider-Man movies, he save somebody from a fire.
He saves people from CG fires,
When I was a kid and Backdraft
came out, I remember my dad buying
me and my brother little firemen outfits and we would go
into the backyard and we would play like backdraft.
We would play firefighter.
Uh, and it was cool because I would have like my cowboy boots on.
I'd have my yellow jacket on with my red hat.
I like I had like a backpack with like fire host
stuff, like similar to like the Ghostbusterspack.
But it was like for firefighter hoses and everything
And I remember one time I got in really big trouble because
you know those blue plastic pools or whatever?
Yeah.
So I was going around like trying to check for like for
fire and I used my boot to kick in the plastic
pool and I kicked like a piece of it out and I got in so much trouble
Because you flooded the whole yard or what?
Because I, well, I didn't flood the whole yard because it's those small kitty poles or whatever.
But I but my parents were pissed because I broke it.
They were more met, I broke it than anything.
There you go.
But anyways, gentlemen, that's the movie.
That's Backdraft.
Let's go around into our final thoughts.
I'll start with you, Justin.
Give us your final thoughts on Backdraft.
Yeah, Backdraft.
Definitely biased here because it's a nostalgic thing reminds me
of a lot of like my childhood and, uh,
my dad and all the fire at fighting equipment that he used to get me.
And, uh, honestly, like the special effects
in this movie are phenomenal just because they're practical.
The fire that they produce in this movie are
able to like manipulate in the this movie are, is is just
so jawdropping and and inspiring on what
they can do with something that is seemingly
untameable and they were able to, you know,
really latch on to the things that they developed to
kind of make the fire manipulate the fire to
do what they want for certain scenes.
And I'm sure I'm sure it was literal hell.
A lot of the actors had to endure high intensity heat.
A lot of them had to be set on fire for,
which is why they were credited in their stunts because the
guy that plays Axe, he was lit on fire.
They were saying that he was lit on fire
for like four takes, and he
was exp explaining that like for every take, he had to like wiggle
it, especially for the ending scene where he's holding on to Kurt Russell from falling.
They had to like re ignite him to shoot that scene on multiple
different times.
And he was saying that he like
it got to a point where like when he was kicking around, he kicked some of that
like igniter fluid into his pants and it ended
up melting his underwear off. and he was like getting
singed on his balls or something.
Yeah, so so a lot of the actors actuallyured
some, some actual pain and intense heat during the filming of this movie.
Talk about light and fire under your ass, huh?
Yeah, For real, though.
But it's really inspiring too to see
these actors that normally, like these days they would,
they would definitely have like stunt doubles to do most of the work,
but it's always cool to see like the actor be like,
I'm very invested in wanting to show the accuracy
and being involved in
wanting to do these stunts because, you know, in real life, these people, they have no choice.
Firefighters have no choice.
Like, if you're a firefighter, you have to go in.
You're the one that it's going to be like the first person
to try to stop this fire or whether... it's
like a building on fire, a house on fire, you know,
that they're going to be there to go in and deal with it
And I think I have a lot of respect for
a lot of the actors in the this movie to be able to do these stunts,
to endure being lit on fire, to endure the heat.
So, yeah, phenomenal movie.
Wonderful story.
You know, it does, admittedly, it
is a little corny in some places, and, you know, that's okay.
It's it's the 90s.
I let it slide
I definitely give this movie a five out of five
for me. regardless of like the little mistakes here and there.
I just think that the mistakes in this movie
just just show like the the human Hollywood side of things.
And I think that's okay.
It's a pass.
It's a pass for me.
Some other movies that make mistakes like this, I probably
wouldn't give it so much of a pass backdraft 1991 Tastic
drama thriller about, you know, firefighters.
And I think that's a very inspiring movie
that's still even to this day inspires me to be want to be a firefighter.
This movie also, like I said before, I don't think any firefighter movie has ever
come close to beating out this film in any sense.
I think Ron Howard is a phenomenal director.
I think he did enough research to understand
things that happen in the firefighting community and
just life in general, five out of five.
Ghost scen 88.
You can find me on Instagram.
I believe I'm Ghost Nerd 88 on Letterbox now.
So go find me on Letterbox.
I have a lot of movies and reviews, some of them funny that you can read if you want.
But that's my whole spiel.
Thank you, Justin.
Appreciate that.
Anthony, what are your final thoughts on Backdraft?
Yeah, I like this movie.
Like I said, I think
it depicts fire as a character really well.
So it definitely fits that vibe of like, oh, let's
take this inadant object and this thing that's not usually
Yeah. you know,
not usually a villain, and let's let's give it life.
So that's fun.
And I think technically it's still shoot, you know, it depicts
fire in a way in films that we don't capture anymore than that a lot of modern films draw from.
Definitely has some corny things.
I think Kurt Russell like adopts and loses
an accent throughout the movie, and at no point is it a Chicago accent
or like a Midwest accent.
It's just like weird things that he picks up and drops.
So like that one, I'm like, oh, you, you could have done a little something there.
I also had read that Brad Pitt was almost cast
in Billy Baldwin's role, which could have
been fun, and then he didn't get it and he ended up doing Thumb on that year.
Boys, right?
Yeah, right.
He was a total pretty boy.
But I think, you know, definitely had some better acting chops.
Maybe not that early in his career, but definitely homes it.
So, you know, that starts to call in a question of like what could have been.
And then there's like the elements of, you know, Sutherland's
Villains and how it played very similarly to
Anthony Hopkins and Silence of the Lambs, which came out the same year
You know, again, the similarities to Judgment
Day could just be that all these studio execs want the same thing, right?
And it's just kind of coincidence.
But I think a little of it then pulls it away from like that five-star perfection.
That said, I's still a great movie.
It still holds up.
It's fun to watch
I give it a four out of five.
Where can people find you?
Uh, nowhere.
No.
Oh, oh, well.
No, I'm I browse the inwebs
occasionally at Toner, TON 3R.
Or you can find me.
I think I'm on Letterbox there as well.
And don't talk about gang violence,rity, whateverever you do.
Not talk about.
Risky, risky stuff. subject
Thank you for that, Anthony.
Alex, what are your final thoughts and where people find you?
This is a movie that I really enjoy as well.
And a lot of times, especially when it's the first time I've seen it, don't really take notes.
I don't really sit through them and not to say that, I can't.
I couldn't, but I just thought that it was such a fun film and
there wasn't really much to say about it, to be honest.
it was one of those films that, for me,
was kind of a classic Hollywood film, classic storytelling,
as I mentioned before, good versus evil.
It was a unique take on like a villain, the fire being the villain.
The real villain, you don't really know that it's
them until like much later on.
Like you see Scott Glenn's character
you don't realize that he's the bad
guy, per se, but he was in a sense, he was still trying to do
good by his brethren.
He was, it was just one of those, like things where like how they say
a real bad guy doesn't know that he's the bad guy.
And the same thing too, with Swayz.
Swayzac.
Swayz.
He comes off as a bad guy in a sense because he's a politician.
He kind of seems conniving and he kind of disbelieves
that he is the bad guy for a little bit because
the arsonist, whoever's doing committing these
crimes is like going after all these politicians and
he's just, it seems like he's just trying to protect himself, right?
Until you get the evidence and at the end of the day, you don't really know,
or even get a feeling that he is the bad guy, the true bad guy.
So you kind of like put it off to the fire.
The fire is just the, is the villain.
Ron Howard is just like a very
consistent strong director.
And I believe that he's just the classic go-to director.
If you want the job done right, you can count on Ron Howard.
The casting was well done, especially for like the Who's
Who of like 90s acting.
If you look at Donald Sutherland as the
bad guy, he comes off a little over the top, yet
I think that's what he was going for.
That's fine because that's not the 90s for you.
This is also kind of a time capsule.
This style of film would never be made today from the
montages to like the special effects to
even like some of the politics and the
visuals, like a firefighter smoking after like putting out a fire.
I think back then it was kind of tongue-in-cheek, kind of a joke, but
today it's like, they take their health a little bit more seriously.
I know a lot of firefighters don't smoke.
Speed rubbing cancer.
Exactly.
But other than that, I think it's a very great film.
I really loved it.
And I give it a four out of five.
You can find me at Daily Dares at all
the socials.
Oh, nice.
Is that Tony the Tiger?
No, this is the guys that I met.
Oh, put a shirt on, gentlemen.
No, I'm kidding.
He's a wrestler.
Come on.
We're a wrestling.
You know why you guys want to wrestle?
No Arnold tonight.
So, no sleep meter, but I'll give my quick.
Hold on.
He has a sleepel meter in the chat.
Oh, does he?
Yeah,
He has a.
Somebody made that offer.
Let's do it.
Yeah, Play the drum I read it..
Hold on, hold on, hold on..
I'm read it for Arnold.
Let me prime my.
Let's get ready for the Arnold Snoop meter.
All
right, and Arnold says 4.5 out of
out of Four and a half out of five for me and a
Z rating of zero.
Wow.
That's great.
Got to do theum roll..
Gotta do the drum roll.
Hold on.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
And my Z rating is...
Zero.
Zero.
Man.
I love it.
We keep failing at the drum roll part.
I know.
There it is there.
Ah, thank you.
I know I'm blurry.
There you go.
You're back.
You're back.
Thank you, Arnold.
Thank you, Arnold, for your input.
What did you eat, Arnold?
Ice cream cream beer again, probably, right, Arnold.
Arnold ate the flu.
Does the flu?
He seasoned it. with a little paprika.
Oh, man.
Good stuff.
They're laughing, so we did something right.
Even though we always get the timing wrong, but that's the beauty of doing a live stream, guys.
That's the beauty of this.
One day we'll get the time O BT too big.
Now, Arnold says, now it's time for
B double OTZ2B
All right, so here's my
letterbox for you for Backdraft.
Kurt Russell at his peak, a Baldwin brother in his prime.
What's not to Love?
Backdraft is pure 90s spectacle in all the best ways.
The fire effects still hit because they're real, they're dangerous,
they're unpredictable, and alive in a way that CGI rarely captures.
You can feel the heat coming off the screen
The same goes for the stunts, with the main cast fully committed,
adding a layer of authenticity that's hard to fake.
And then you've got Robert De Niro and Donald Sutherland,
both showing up in smaller but crucial roles and elevating the whole thing with their presence.
More than anything, backdraft feels like a time capsule
of a bygone era, when big studio films leaned on
practical effects, movie star charisma, and just enough chaos to keep things thrilling.
It's messy, earnest, and undeniably entertaining.
I had a blast revisiting it, and it left me nostalgic for
a style filmmaking that doesn't quite exist anymore.
And for that reason
I get backdraft four stars out of five on Letterbox.
You can find me on Letterbox and Boots too big.
You can find the show everywhere else.
We're everywhere, guys.
We are on TikTok.
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A big thanks to Mr. Kyle and a Burn cycle for intro and outro music.
You can follow Kyle on Instagram at selfies underscore foodndersnderscore and underscore pets.
B thanks to Mr. HLP for the Arnold Doza Meter music
And that's all we have for tonight, gentlemen, and
anyone else who's listening, ladies and gentlemen, do we have any final words from the gentlemen?
You go, we go.
That's my brother.
Oh, good stuff.
That's my brother, God damn it!
Oh, man.