JoelSchlosberg

It's almost as if the script was written for JCVD as a child actor and then sat on the shelf too long, except that JCVD wasn't a child actor. Or as if the part was originally written for a kid and then recast as an adult without being rewritten, but it's so clearly a Mary Sue role intended for JCVD from the beginning.

The line "If we want something, we take it" could be an homage to the line "What I want--I take." in the silent version of The Thief of Bagdad. Relevant to the episode's discussion of age appropriateness: the 1940 remake changed the titular vagabond thief from an adult (played by a young-looking 41-year-old Douglas Fairbanks Sr.) to a kid (played by a young-looking 16-year-old Sabu). And Disney's Aladdin was originally going to be a Sabu-style kid:

Maybe the fighter is from South Africa and they just forgot about the "South" part?

And the clown makeup is reminiscent of Octopussy. They never have clown makeup and Roger Moore in the same scene, but then again, the first clown we meet in Octopussy is a completely different agent who is never in the same scene as Bond. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXSAHnc6rQU The globetrotting aspect of the movie is definitely going for a Bond movie vibe. Ironic that it's so less effective than Bloodsport's tightly confined location. And it's not even like the Cannon movies that failed to take advantage of larger budgets; it never looks cheap, but just doesn't succeed at a more epic tone the way Bloodsport does at a lean-and-mean, keep-it-simple one. On the other hand, it also starts off like it's kind of trying to be a Jackie Chan movie. The beginning's period, maritime setting is like something out of a Project A movie. The first fight scene, with JCVD using juggling clubs and stilts with precise timing, seems like it's going for the type of fast-paced fight scenes using objects at hand as weapons that are Jackie Chan's hallmark.

When Dux escapes, what does he do after he leaves the building with the shower? He's still on a military base which presumably has security on and within its perimeter. Not only does he manage to evade them, but the officers that tried and failed to arrest him are matter-of-fact about him having done so.

The trope of a fighter losing in a way unfair enough to not compromise their skill isn't only found in macho action movies.

But those examples didn't.

It's not like the webmasters trademarked the phrase. But point taken. A podcast of the name would have to be careful not to tread into the topic of bad movies, to avoid ripping off the website's idea. Unless the creators of the site come back from Internet retirement to do a podcast!

Another thing about this poster: if you had to guess which George Lucas movie was Cannon, wouldn't the most fitting choice by far be Howard the Duck? It totally has the punching-above-its-weight feel of a Cannon production such as Masters of the Universe, that had a big budget and epic subject matter but was made like (and looks and feels like) a B movie.

Given how much the violence in TMNT II was forced to be toned down, there's no way it could have had Kumite in it. Or are you saying you'd have liked to see how much it would have needed ridiculous substitutions like "combat cold cuts" for nunchuks?

And then there's this, which I swear is not Photoshopped:

Well, broken clock is the least charitable explanation They did do enough actual production on prestige movies that Roger Ebert said that “No other production organization in the world today—certainly not any of the seven Hollywood 'majors'—has taken more chances with serious, marginal films than Cannon." And Cannon had a surprising amount of established acting talent do actual work for them, not just on movies they picked up. Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films interviews Cannon actors as far from the "Chuck and the other Chuck" action-star type as and Elliott Gould.

The mention that it seems like “they had to walk through the streets of Agrabah to get to” the tournament is ironic since those scenes are of a real place! Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong was a huge crazy maze of buildings beyond the reach of the law, overbuilt so densely that they blocked out the sun. In the late '80s to early '90s, it was cleared out and eventually demolished. Several movies filmed there during that time: this, , the Jackie Chan movie Crime Story, and Long Arm of the Law.

Might the way Dux is simultaneously American and with a conspicuously non-American accent be implicitly meant to intentionally represent America? As Roger Ebert noted in his review of National Treasure:

Found this gem by one Andrew Wright on Amazon.com, it's an editorial review that for some reason only appears on the page for the VHS edition of the movie: Ironic that it's harsher on the movie that HDTGM.

So, is this the best movie Cannon made? Its straightforward charm definitely holds up better than any of their attempts to make more elaborate movies on higher budgets, as exemplified by previous HDTGM subject Masters of the Universe. (The Electric Boogaloo documentary quotes Golan or Globus that on their $20 million movies, they would rather be using it for 20 different $1 million movies.) And it's safe to say that it's better than almost all of their forays into prestige filmmaking. But do their rare acclaimed efforts like Runaway Train (which was nominated at the Academy Awards) or The Assault (which won; I'm not kidding) provide exceptions? Is the real question "how did a movie this good get made at Cannon?"

Or it could simply be a podcast about bad movies. One of the very first bad movie websites was literally called "Oh, the Humanity!"

Exactly why it's used by Monkey in the Kung Fu Panda movies. And it's no coincidence that a drunken fighting style is voiced by the Drunken Master himself.

Maybe they were intentionally making Ray Jackson seem like a bad guy so that it be even more badass when he turns out to be on the side of good after all? Like

I really like how Bloodsport avoids giving the protagonist an unnecessarily elaborate motivation. Watching it for the first time, I kept expecting one of the cliche motivations usually found in the genre to turn up, but it never happened, and it was a refreshing change of pace to have a hero in the action genre who enters a competition for the same reason as in sports movies: simply to win. #3 and #4 don't quite fit the usual trope of avenging a mentor/friend/family member as the major impetus. Shingo's death is acknowledged but not invoked heavy-handedly as a motivator (like ). Ray Jackson's injuries are after Dux is well into the tournament, and they avoid being used to make him the sort of movie best buddy (usually named ) whose demise midway provides a boost to motivation. The villains are nasty without having a grand Bond villain scheme behind the tournament (like, well, Han in Enter the Dragon), and Dux isn't a messianic, destined chosen one but merely top-notch in his field. And that Dux doesn't "get the girl" shows that romance isn't needed as a motivation either.

In fact, why was the opening flashback a flashback at all? In such a straightforward plot, why not merely show the earlier scenes and then the main storyline, in chronological order?

That plot seemed vaguely familiar, then I realized that the New York Times TV listings used to run this unforgettable blurb when it was on: “A street fighter uses a martial art he learned in prison to recover an ancient ceremonial sword from a wealthy businessman.” (I last read it back in the '90s, but I recalled the "a street fighter uses a martial art he learned in prison" part word for word.)

With regard to the puzzlement about how Helmer and Rawlins are generally dimwitted "but yet they always seem to get to where they need to go": isn't that pretty typical for stupid fictional characters, who may be inept in whatever situation they're in at the time, but manage to move the plot along over the course of the story for dramatic necessity? Even Dumb and Dumber themselves made it to Aspen.

The sweet thing about the PlayStation 2 version (and to some extent, its contemporary on the original Xbox) is that it's among a bunch of arcade game compilations released by various classic arcade publishers that were never re-released on later generations of consoles. The PS2 was late enough to have developed the ability to run the full-fledged versions of the games, but early enough that many of the golden age arcade companies were still around. So while dedicated units have some of the same games, it's easier to have one console and a bunch of discs than an assortment of cheap specialized hardware. As USgamer puts it: "The Best Arcade Machine is a PlayStation 2".

It actually used to be possible to play Joust, in a fully accurate emulation of the original arcade version, completely freely and officially in a web browser. Like several other classic arcade games — including Rampage, Robotron 2084, Satan's Hollow and the truly weird Bubbles — it was recreated via the Shockwave plugin for Shockwave.com at the turn of the millennium. For many years afterwards, the games were on the website of then-owner Midway Games, until the website went under and the games stopped working in newer versions of Shockwave. If you are going to shell out for a version of Joust on outdated hardware, there's no need to get a flip phone; it's been included in many of Midway's home console collections. I recommend the PlayStation 2 version of Midway Arcade Treasures, Volume 1: both the console and the compilation are fairly cheap to get these days, the games are the full original arcade versions, and the PlayStation 2 controller's dual analog sticks are really good for the collection's versions of Robotron 2084 and Smash TV (which is basically The Running Man in game form!) whose arcade cabinets had two joysticks.