Episode 247 - 2:22 (Live in Portland)

[Cameron H. 23786]

Paul, June, and Jason discuss the 2017 science fiction thriller 2:22 recorded live from Portland, OR! They talk about aerial ballet, sacred geometry, the badassery of air traffic control, and much more.
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[UltimateTrekker 18]

Let’s talk astronomy. If a Star only 30 light years away goes supernova we’re all dead. 
 

 

[jimkiler 84]

Did anyone else notice when Dylan first walks up to Sarah in the bar, she asks if he wants to get out of here.  He says yes.  Cut scene to a bar.  But weren't they just at a bar?  If I say i want to get out of here it is because i need a change of scenery but they simply switched bars.   Maybe the first place was a restaurant but it definitely had a full bar and therefore i was confounded on their choice. I was expecting them to go to a park or someones apartment, not another bar.

 

Second did anyone else notice that the police did not give a f*** about Dylan when he was dying on the floor of Grand Central Station.  Only two cops were shown hovering over Jonas but they were no longer securing the scene, they instead appeared to be talking oblivious to the dying person.  Does this mean the final scene of Dylan as a pilot never happened because Dylan bleed out ( not from a gun shot wound but) from the apathy of first responders.

[jimkiler 84]

How could Jason, Paul, and June not realize the twist in the plot? I love you guys but i was surprised none of you three figured it out.

 

Here are the clues i picked up on:

1. the beginning we see the murder in Grand Central Station but never see faces only bodies and the gun.  Clearly they wanted us to not know who those people were.  (Which turne dout to be a red herring since it was not the same actors playing those three characters.)
2. Dylan and Sarah have the same birthday in 1987.
3. Sarah and Jonas were previously a couple.
4. When Dylan visits the sister who explains the murder love triangle happened 30 years ago it became obvious to me what the twist would be.  At that point the little interest i had in the film was gone and I started playing on my phone while watching the movie.

 

@Cameron H. i love that you keep the Jason twitter joke going. I wish they would occasionally bring it up in the show.

[Cameron H. 23786]

2 hours ago, jimkiler said:

@Cameron H. i love that you keep the Jason twitter joke going. I wish they would occasionally bring it up in the show.

I wish I could take credit, but I just copy and pasted it from the podcast description  

[DrGuts1003 462]

The episode does a great job of pointing out the large flaws of this movie, but there were several small things throughout the movie that really irked me.

1. I found the throwing away of the trays with the flight info to be incredibly wasteful.  Why not throw out the paper with the flight info and just reuse the tray?

2. I was bothered by Teresa Palmer putting her ice cream cone inside the cup with Dylan's phone that was being used as the speaker.  There is no way his phone or that speaker are not a complete sticky mess with melted ice cream.

3. Dylan ended every text message with "D."  You are not sending letters or even email, you do not need to indicate who you are in every text message.  What an unnecessary waste of time.

4. If  Jonas does not intend to kill Teresa Palmer, then why does he bring a gun with him when they try to go away together for the weekend?

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

I think for this movie they shot 2 minutes and 22 seconds of stock footage and just keep reusing it all as montages, slow-mo moments, flashbacks, and patterns.

[RyanSz 3140]

1 hour ago, DrGuts1003 said:

The episode does a great job of pointing out the large flaws of this movie, but there were several small things throughout the movie that really irked me.

1. I found the throwing away of the trays with the flight info to be incredibly wasteful.  Why not throw out the paper with the flight info and just reuse the tray?

2. I was bothered by Teresa Palmer putting her ice cream cone inside the cup with Dylan's phone that was being used as the speaker.  There is no way his phone or that speaker are not a complete sticky mess with melted ice cream.

3. Dylan ended every text message with "D."  You are not sending letters or even email, you do not need to indicate who you are in every text message.  What an unnecessary waste of time.

4. If  Jonas does not intend to kill Teresa Palmer, then why does he bring a gun with him when they try to go away together for the weekend?

I wonder if there is something more to the tossing of the trays that was either cut from the movie or just not explained because it also seemed wasteful to me, though I thought perhaps someone else was taking the papers out and restocking the trays later. I also noticed that Teresa ended every single one of her texts to Dylan with 'xxx" which I have never seen in a movie outside of a person who is having an affair, only for their significant other to find the text on their phone.

As for Jonas' intentions at the end, I do think he had the intention of killing Teresa as a backup plan, which is why Dylan had to go to the train station to stop it from happening.  It's clear to me that Jonas, who I though was played by mumble-horror mainstay Joe Swanberg for half of the movie, also knew he was a reincarnation as he was stalking Teresa with his whole mega-apartment being filled with portraits of her and that collage of headshots of hers, and saying things like how he hopes Dylan realizes how good he has it being with her and other clingy crap. Then when they are at Grand Central, he asks the ticket guy for tickets to that station that has been closed for 30 years, which if I'm that ticket seller I start wondering why multiple people are asking for tickets to a place that hasn't been running in decades. It's at this point Teresa is starting to see the signs as well and realizes that Dylan was right about the connection between them and the victims from 30 years prior, piled onto by Jonas calling her the previous girl's name. So when she starts to push away from him as he's got both hands on either side of her face and is beet red demanding she say she loves him, it's clear the next thing would have been him using that gun on her right then if Dylan hadn't shown up and taken Jonas' attention off of Teresa. And Dylan breaks the cycle of 2:22 by taking the bullet meant for Teresa, which didn't happen in 87 as evident by how piss poor it was explained in the movie. The standoff concluded with the cop killing the pregnant woman, the guy she really loved killed the cop, and the cops killed him and then framed him as a criminal to cover up the fact that this detective just unprovoked murdered a pregnant chick.

Also did this movie have the most overt, on-the-nose soundtrack ever? The ballet song was about being alone and finding someone to love, the park dance song had a similar message and if I recall the flashbacks had some overt music.

[Greg T 48]

I know Dylan thought he saw the day he died, but he really saw the day everyone missed their train.  The movie showed the train on the board as being scheduled for 2:22, so it should be just about ready to pull away from the platform as they all mill about in the Great Hall. 

Also did the aerial ballet have 2 superhuman performers or was it only like 15 minutes long?  I have trouble believing 2 acrobats would have the physical stamina to extend a 10 minute circus act into a 90 minute show.

[AdrianFlynn 68]

Teresa palmer has done more movies with numbers than bruce willis

222, 237,parts per million  kill me 3 times, triple 9, i am number 4, grudge 2

Also filmed before virus and jason said to avoid this stay inside for 2 wks 

[ChunkStyle 1160]

I can't recall the last time my reaction to a movie's climax was so at odds with what the movie was going for.  I laughed out loud when Daario the 2nd whispered "boom".  I'm glad I wasn't in a theater to ruin the experience for the one other person that would have been there.

The part of the movie that bugged me the most is all of the other characters who served no purpose other than to establish the pattern to be noticed.  Fate had to intervene in all of their lives too just to put them in the right place and the right time.  I think if you start tracing back each of their lives that brought them to that moment then it will very quickly spiderweb out and everything in the world is just clockwork to get to the Grand Central Station showdown.  Essentially this movie leans very hard into the idea of predestination which I have never cared for at all.

 

[UltimateTrekker 18]

When your boyfriend tells you he is the man that killed you 30 years ago and will again it’s best to get away as fast as possible 

[Scary_Mirage 32]

Corrections and omissions:

Paul misspoke - the (awful) Jim Carrey movie is "The Number 23", not Se7en.

There actually is a good time numeral film - 4:44 (Last Day on Earth), which is 2011 film directed by Abel Ferrara about people trying to find the meaning life on the final day of Earth's existence. (Scientists predict that due to cosmic radiation destroying the ozone layer, all life on Earth will end on 4:44 AM EST.)

4:44 is a doubling of 2:22!!!

 

P.S. And, fun trivia, in Japan (and other East Asian countries), 4:44 is an unlucky time because the pronunciation of four is 'shi', which is also the word for death (and the characters look similar.)  So in many Japanese  horror films and video games (e.g. Katasumi and 4444444444, Harvest Moon) 4:44 has a creepy significance.  Hotels and hospitals often don't have a fourth floor or a room 444, like how in America hotels won't have a 13th floor. 

 

 

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

So the three people who died in 1987 were reincarnated because their souls left their bodies when they were killed in entered the bodies of babies born that same day.

Ergo, this movie is positing that babies don't have souls until they are born. Fetuses must not have souls.

Which makes this the most pro-choice movie ever. Interesting how a movie that's all about fate is REALLY all about the right to choose.

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

 

8 hours ago, DrGuts1003 said:

3. Dylan ended every text message with "D."  You are not sending letters or even email, you do not need to indicate who you are in every text message.  What an unnecessary waste of time.

Don't forget that although Dylan's body is 30 years old, his soul is at least sixty. Which makes sense because signing your name to your texts is a total boomer thing to do.

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

3 hours ago, UltimateTrekker said:

When your boyfriend tells you he is the man that killed you 30 years ago and will again it’s best to get away as fast as possible 

This movie should've just been called "Red Flags Ignored" ... Sarah becomes immediately invested in a guy she's known less than a week, and when he totally makes a sense at her place of work, and then starts talking crazy about letters, and she becomes convinced he's gone mad, she should have said, "to hell with this ... I just got out of a too-intense relationship with a long-haired moody psycho model asshat -- I don't need this shit in my life." 

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

Poor Michael Huisman, he deserves so much better than shit like this and World War Z not too mention the later seasons of Game of Thrones. 

[DrGuts1003 462]

I somewhat get Dylan’s ex-girlfriend trying to maintain their birthday gift tradition, but why does she buy him two tickets?  Why waste the money on a ticket that will likely go to waste?

And it also seems cruel because he’s naturally going to think that she wants to go with him.  She couldn’t find a nicer way of telling him she’s moved on and has started dating someone else?

[Greg T 48]

1 hour ago, Scary_Mirage said:

Corrections and omissions:

Paul misspoke - the (awful) Jim Carrey movie is "The Number 23", not Se7en.

There actually is a good time numeral film - 4:44 (Last Day on Earth), which is 2011 film directed by Abel Ferrara about people trying to find the meaning life on the final day of Earth's existence. (Scientists predict that due to cosmic radiation destroying the ozone layer, all life on Earth will end on 4:44 AM EST.)

4:44 is a doubling of 2:22!!!

 

P.S. And, fun trivia, in Japan (and other East Asian countries), 4:44 is an unlucky time because the pronunciation of four is 'shi', which is also the word for death (and the characters look similar.)  So in many Japanese  horror films and video games (e.g. Katasumi and 4444444444, Harvest Moon) 4:44 has a creepy significance.  Hotels and hospitals often don't have a fourth floor or a room 444, like how in America hotels won't have a 13th floor. 

 

 

Another good one is a racing documentary called "1" that looks back to the most dangerous era in grand prix racing and the efforts made to improve the almost nonexistent safety features of 1960s racing.

[DannytheWall 196]

I wonder if the filmmakers were going for something poetic by having the meetcute between a pilot and a dancer happen by way of an aerial ballet? 

No one asked why Sarah was on the plane in the first place? I thought that might have some bearing on the character or plot, but, like most things in the movie, Nope. 

Paul asks, why go to Grand Central at all if it's supposed to be the site of this tragedy? Well, Jonas' Plan A was to go to the airport, when he picks  up Sarah. So yeah, he WASN'T going to go, but then The, I don't know, Unvierse or something sends a text that informs him the plane is canceled, and Jonas very casually says "Yup, let's go to Grand Central." 

Then elsewhere Jason asks, was Jonas going to kill the woman at the end? He not only has the gun from his studio, but it's in a big holster on his left hip. We can put aside the question if the woman would even have noticed this (perhaps she thought he was just happy to see her?) -- but since we know they were first headed to the airport until he got a text from the airline, does that mean he was going to roll up to the airport with a loaded gun on his hip? 

There's just so many things about this movie, which I guess makes it pretty perfect as far as HDTGM goes! 

 

[DannytheWall 196]

I'm surprised Paul and Jason didn't connect 2:22 to the comicbook heroes Hawkman and Hawkgirl. These two characters have had many incarnations-- as space alien war heroes for their home planet, as star-crossed lovers from different castes in ancient Egypt, to archeologists during World War II. The throughline that connects all these iterations is that they are doomed to reincarnate, be drawn to each other, and to die tragically because of their similarly reincarnated rival who cursed them in the first place. (Jeez, just typing it all out reminds me that comics are weird and I love them.) Maybe because of that, I didn't find the central conceit that difficult to buy into, or maybe I'm just crazy and seeing patterns all over the place. 

D

[jimkiler 84]

1 minute ago, DannytheWall said:

I'm surprised Paul and Jason didn't connect 2:22 to the comicbook heroes Hawkman and Hawkgirl. These two characters have had many incarnations-- as space alien war heroes for their home planet, as star-crossed lovers from different castes in ancient Egypt, to archeologists during World War II. The throughline that connects all these iterations is that they are doomed to reincarnate, be drawn to each other, and to die tragically because of their similarly reincarnated rival who cursed them in the first place. (Jeez, just typing it all out reminds me that comics are weird and I love them.) Maybe because of that, I didn't find the central conceit that difficult to buy into, or maybe I'm just crazy and seeing patterns all over the place. 

D

Or even compare this to Hancock in that sense.

[DannytheWall 196]

I don't think "sacred geometry" has ever been one single philosophy, in the same way there are some mystical practices like Kabbalah or Wicca or something like that, with clearly (or clear-ish) defined principles and practices. It is also fairly distinct from Numerology. It is usually used as a term to describe the harmonic patterns that exist, mainly in Islamic art, whose tradition of visual art precluded the depiction of God in a human way. The term is used in a more generic way these days, in the same way to Google is to simlply do a web search. 

That being said, the idea that math and its ability to capture and define patterns, structure, and order upon chaos, has often been associated with mysticism and philosophy from as far back as ancient Greece, Arabia, China, etc. Math/Sacred Geometry exists in a Venn diagram-my sort of way as it overlaps with divination, design and symbolism, and communing with something devine and larger than ourselves. In that sense, the movie's "about" sacred geometry, as by understanding, decoding, and using capital-M Math allows you to tap into the structural being of the universe.    

[hornacek 43]

Once the film told us that Dylan and Sarah were reincarnations of the 1986 couple, I realized why part of the plot seemed so familiar - because I had seen it already in the (much better) 1991 thriller Dead Again, where Kenneth Branagh is a private eye hired to discover amnesiac Emma Thompson's identity, and eventually learns that they are reincarnations of a couple from the 1940s where one killed the other.

SPOILER FOR DEAD AGAIN

So at that point I kept waiting for this film to reveal that the reincarnated souls were gender-swapped and that Dylan was actually the woman in 1986 and Sarah was the guy.  But this film couldn't even get that right.

[Catfish 72]

I love the idea that, according to Paul, the script that Armie Hammer read said something like, “Dylan watches the aerial silks ballet, but it’s not that good”, and that is what causes him to turn down the part.