The Rocketeer
Hey, Do You Remember...?
Christopher Schrader
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 28 November 2014
⏱️ 103 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There was so much to say about The Rocketeer that we had to bring in a very special guest to help us revisit this one. Dean from The Science Fiction Film Podcast dropped by to share his memories of the movie and his thoughts on it two decades later.
Donna and Carlos were pretty hazy on the details of this one, but Chris remembered most of the plot and the one major problem he had with it as a kid. It's still a sticking point for him now, but quibbles aside - there is so much to love about this movie.
Topics include: Disney's plan to reinvent the modern blockbuster and how it sort of blew up in their face, the differences between this and Dave Stevens' original graphic novel, James Horner's amazing score, some pretty significant problems with Cliff's character and his journey over the course of the story, Carlos' disappointment that Peevey isn't Albert Einstein, what exactly those Nazis were doing in that forest, who put a flare gun on that zeppelin, and much much more!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, do you remember The Rocketeer? |
| 0:06.6 | Hello and welcome The Hey Do You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose-tinted glasses to see how it holds up. |
| 0:32.1 | I'm Chris. |
| 0:32.8 | I'm Donna. |
| 0:33.5 | And I'm Carlos. |
| 0:34.4 | And today we're revisiting The Rocketeer. |
| 0:53.3 | Music And I'm Carlos. And today we're revisiting The Rocketeer. After discovering a jetpack stashed away in one of his biplane, stunt pilot Cliff Seacord sees an opportunity to put together an act that will not only thrill audiences, but also allow him to pay off his otherwise insurmountable debt to the owner of the airfield. |
| 1:07.6 | Trouble is, the mob and the FBI are in a race to see who can track the item down |
| 1:11.9 | first. Cliff's dreams of fame and fortune are dashed when the people he cares about are put in |
| 1:16.5 | harm's way and he's forced to take on the mantle of the Rocketeer. An adaptation of Dave |
| 1:22.0 | Stephen's graphic novel had been in the pipeline since the early 80s, and after a series of |
| 1:26.3 | false starts, Disney finally |
| 1:28.0 | greenlit the project early in 1990 with one major caveat. The more adult aspects of the story |
| 1:33.9 | would have to be severely toned down in favor of a more family-friendly approach. This also came in the |
| 1:39.6 | wake of Dick Tracy and several other Disney productions whose box office grosses ultimately did not |
| 1:45.0 | justify their inflated budgets. Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was head of the studio at the time, |
| 1:50.0 | was trying desperately to shift away from the traditional method of manufacturing blockbusters. |
| 1:54.9 | It's not that he was in favor of cutting corners, per se, but he did feel very strongly that when |
| 1:59.5 | it came to these high concept releases, |
| 2:01.9 | ingenuity should trump production values. The emphasis was being placed on all the wrong elements. |
| 2:07.4 | In a leaked memo, which is readily available online, he actually predicted the troubling future |
| 2:12.0 | of how these types of movies would be made and marketed and was attempting to course correct |
... |
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