FH Mini 117 – The Definitive Action Hero Ranking Pt. 2

Hi, floppers.

Before we start this episode, I just wanted to remind you we are in the middle of Flop TV Season 2.

That's right, the one-hour internet televised flophouse TV show

is here for you the first Saturday of every month through February.

Just go to theflophouse.simpletics.com and get your tickets or season pass for this all-new flophouse TV stuff.

We're covering movies we've never covered before.

We've got video segments.

It's amazing.

Just go to theflophouse.simpletics.com for flop TV season two.

This time, it's personal.

Hey, it's me, Stuart Wellington of the Flophouse Podcast, and we're here for another Flophouse Mini.

That's right.

Normally, we make episodes of a podcast where we watch a bad movie and talk about it.

But on the minis, we do whatever we want.

We normally goof around and do silly bones stuff, but this time we're doing serious bones stuff.

We are doing a no-nonsense breakdown of the best action heroes in cinema history as voted by the Flophouse.

We are voting them and rating them on three different categories.

That's right.

Radness, Badness, and Lucky Dip.

We have already got 10 out of the way.

If you are like, I'm lost, go back to the episode two weeks ago, listen to that shit and get caught up.

We don't have time for that because we got 10 more action heroes to talk about.

So, Dan, I think it's time.

Yeah.

I haven't even introduced my co-host.

I know.

That is, who's sitting to my left?

I could be a mystery, Dan.

I could be, I don't know.

I could be Dan Stevens.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Man, to be Dan Stevens.

To be sitting next to Dan Stevens.

No, I'm Dan McCoy, and with us, as always, is...

Elliot Kalen.

That's right.

And your main host tonight, Stuart Wellington.

Let's grip it and rip it.

Do you roll a lot of time?

But okay, it's eight.

Okay.

We are.

We're all the way, man.

We've looped all the way around.

We are back into the Johns, guys.

John Town.

That's right.

We are talking about the star of First Blood, First Blood Part 2, John Rambo.

John Rambo.

He's got the hair.

He's got the muscles.

He's got the bandana.

He's killed a lot of people.

He's a weapon.

He was trained to be a living weapon.

Yeah.

So let's talk about it.

Do you guys have opinions on Mr.

John Rambo?

Do you like those movies?

I like the first one, and I like,

I don't know, the one that I saw with Elliot, I kind of liked too.

What one was that?

The fourth one?

Yeah.

Yeah.

The one where he goes, he's in, he's in,

where is he?

Is it Malaysia or is it Burma?

No, he's in Burma.

Yeah.

With all the, where it's like he's older.

Yeah.

I hated the most recent one.

I don't think I've even seen two or three.

I'll be honest.

Oh, wow.

I remember liking both of those, but I was a kid and dumb.

Yes, those movies, those movies are dumb.

The last one I did not like, but overall, those are my, the first one is a good movie, but overall, the other ones are like guilty pleasures of mine because they're just, they're ridiculous, you know.

But the last one I did not like.

The way I live my life none of my pleasures are guilty

then you're not doing it right

uh

here's the thing though i i do enjoy uh some of the rambo but i would not call him

i don't know there's not a lot of radness for me for me there's not a lot of radness like he's like in the first one he's a sad man uh in all he's a very there's a lot of sadness

in the rambo

And uh, yeah, a lot of PTSD.

I don't know.

He has a bandana or like a headband or whatever.

That your worst nightmare line.

That was from.

He's got good lines.

Yeah, I don't know.

I'm going to give him a three, though.

This is not a rad action hero so much as it is.

When I think of Rambo, I sometimes mix him up with Charlie Sheen's character from Hot Shots Part 2.

Yeah, very similar.

Same bow and arrow and headband.

I'm going to give him a five

because I agree.

He's not a cool character you would want to be.

He's very sad.

He's haunted by the things that he's done and that have been done to him.

But at the same time, to be that character and get some good wise cracks out and kind of intimidate people, and also to know how to paint yourself up so you look like the trunk of a tree, just in case the guy you're fighting happens to walk by that one particular tree, that's

pretty bad.

So I'm going to

be rad.

So I'm going to give that a five for radness.

Dan, what was your score again?

I think I gave him a three.

Okay, let's go into badness.

How bad is that?

Now, on the other hand, this is where he cleans up because I haven't seen those middle movies, but it's my understanding that he single-handedly gets us a redo and wins the Vietnam War.

He wins the Vietnam War.

He pushes the Russians out of Afghanistan.

The guy is a one-man Army Corps.

Yeah, he's an OMAC.

Yeah, he gets a 10 for badness for me.

Yeah, 10 for sure.

And he's been stabbed and shot so many times, you know, and it just does not phase him.

It was watching Rainbow 3 that I learned that if, I think it was 3, where if you get shot, you can just fill the hole with gunpowder and light it on fire to cauterize the wound.

As a kid, I assumed when I would grow up, I would use that information all the time.

Dan, give me a roll on Lucky Dip baby.

Yeah, you got a 14 there.

14 for old John Rambo.

Ooh, okay, this is interesting.

John Rambo falls through a portal into mythological Greece.

How likely on a scale of one to 10 is he going to complete the 12 labors of Heracles?

Oh, I mean, that's, that's, I feel like it's a 10.

Come on.

He's going to kill that Nemian lion.

He's going to kill the Hydra.

He's going to steal that girdle.

How's he going to handle the stables?

The stables is the hard one.

That's the hardest one.

He's got to redirect that river.

If he can figure out a way to do it, just with the weapons at hand.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, to my knowledge.

Gian nine, then.

Gian stables is the hard one.

Yeah.

To my knowledge, John Rambo is not a half-god man.

So he loses a point for me for that.

But otherwise, I'm going to give him a nine.

He seems as as close to a Greek hero as you can get.

Yeah, for sure.

That is a good category for him.

Yeah.

Lucky for him.

Okay.

Okay, Dan, give me another.

Who's our next hero?

I got a six here.

Six here would be.

Wait, that's a nine.

Wait, it doesn't matter.

Okay, it doesn't matter.

So we have the star of Killbill and Kill Bill 2, the hero of Killbill and Killbill 2, the bride, aka Beatrix Kiddo, played by Uma Thurman.

Yeah.

I mean, she wears a yellow tracksuit around like a Bruce Leonard sword.

So I think that that's got to be like a 10 for Radness.

It's got to be a 10 for Radness, for sure.

She looks super rad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

What about badness?

I mean, almost as high.

She like kills all of the

99 whatevers or whatever.

What are they called?

The 99 whatever.

They call the 99 whatever's.

Now you have to face the 99 whatevers.

What are they?

Exactly.

She punches her way out of a grave.

Like, I don't know.

She teaches herself how to move her entire body when all she can move is her toe.

You know?

Yeah.

I think just out of like a weird instinct to not clean up too hard, I'm going to give her a nine, but maybe it should be a 10.

I don't know.

I'm not threatened by powerful women the way Dan is, so I'm going to give her a 10.

Okay.

Okay.

And let's give me a lucky dip.

How does, how does.

What if the category is digging yourself out of a grave?

Okay.

Okay.

So

if the bride was able to put all this revenge and whatnot behind her,

how likely on a scale of one to 10 would she be successful as a social media star?

Oh, I think pretty high.

I mean, she's

like

a beautiful white lady, and she's got a track suit.

She's got a kid at the end, right?

So like,

there's a lot of mommy influencers out there.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that,

yeah, she's and an interest in an interest in Asian culture, which is also, which can also be big online.

So, yeah.

Although she might get canceled for, again, being a white lady who's like appropriating that culture.

Yeah, that's possible.

That's possible.

Yeah.

I'm going to give her an eight for this.

Yeah, I'm also going to give her an eight.

Yeah.

Not bad, though.

These are, these are good scores.

These are high scores.

Actually, the thing that takes her down is I worry that she would have trouble with the digital interface because she's such an analog, hands-on hands-on person you know

she can she can really admire and understand a hatorio hanzo sword but i don't know if she's gonna be able to figure out that app yeah that's true okay dan give me a roll who's our next hero we got a 15 here a 15

is

okay

we have the stars of the bad boys franchise

detective mike lowry

And Marcus Burnett.

Yeah.

Played by Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.

These are huge movies, huge action movies.

Elliot, have you seen any of them?

I've seen the first two.

I've not seen the new one.

There's two newer ones, right?

Yeah, Bad Boys Forever and Bad Boy's Ride or Die.

Wow, you nailed it.

Yeah.

I've been

seeing the movies.

You have been paying attention to the billboards in LA.

Exactly, but I haven't seen either of those.

They lost me.

To be honest, they kind of lost me with those two rats having sex in the second one.

What?

Pause the fucking podcast.

The moment where the person sitting next to me couldn't contain themselves and started nudging me by how funny they thought it was.

I've enjoyed the two most recent ones.

The movies make a radical switch in tone from Michael Bay not caring about humanity to suddenly being like, hey, it's a love story between these two aging

police officers.

The trailers look much more serious than the previous movies.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, they're not great, but they're fun.

Radness.

How rad are these two dudes?

Well,

they've got a lot of the signifiers of radness.

I do not think it is quite so rad that they're two cops who go around just like wildly shooting things and like

running cars into shanty towns.

It's true.

Which, to be fair, Jack the Chan does in the first belief story too, pretty much.

The bad guys doing that.

Yeah, they level Follow.

This is a fantasy world, so I'm not going to, you know, take them too much to task for that, but I will give them just a five.

Okay.

I'm going to give them, I think I'm going to give them a six.

Okay.

Yeah.

I mean, they're fun.

Like, part of the success of these movies is you like spending time with them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

How bad are these bad boys?

They are.

It's right in the title.

It is right in the title, right?

But I feel like they are not, I don't know.

It's like they get the job done, but I don't think of them as like

Terminators, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like their strength is sort of like like the

power of friendship, honestly.

That's true.

Yeah, no, thank you, Danzy.

It's its own sort of badness, yeah.

Yeah, so in badness, I'm gonna give him a seven, I think.

I'm gonna give them

bad boys.

I'm gonna go sixes across the board.

Okay, give me a roll on Lucky Dip.

Lucky.

This might be their category.

13.

Lucky number 13.

Lucky number 13.

Lucky number seven.

Man, this, I feel like this is a fucking part of like a subplot of one of these movies.

How likely are they going to be able to successfully take a niece dress shopping for her first boy girl dance?

It doesn't feel like it would integrate very well into an actual bad boys movie.

Yeah.

I mean, like, I mean, they would not do a good job.

Well, but here's the thing: there'd be a lot of shenanigans.

That's true.

They'd end up with the right dress.

They would end up coming through at the end.

That's true.

So I'm going to give them a nine for this.

I'm going to give them an H because there's going to be a lot of broken glass along the way.

That's true.

Yeah.

That's true.

Yeah.

So

that was a good one for these boys.

Not so bad, boys.

Okay.

Dan, give me another role.

Another role brings us the number nine.

Okay.

So that, okay.

You would know him as the director of juror number two,

Dirty Harry himself.

He loves the film as Raider Juror number two.

It's received almost no release.

Yep.

We're talking about Dirty Harry Callahan, played by Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry film.

This is another one where I feel like we're going to have to separate in some ways, and I have been doing a bad job of this, the politics of the film and the character from the aesthetic and the actions of the character.

Also, it's interesting.

I mean, it's not like

it's not a critique or anything, but at least the first Dirty Harry sort of like...

reckons with the idea of like, oh, maybe a cop shouldn't be doing these things.

Maybe he's called Dirty Harry.

Like he's not called Great Harry.

Yeah.

He throws his badge away at the end.

You're not, you're supposed to feel a little queasy about it, but then the sequels are like, ah, forget all that.

What a great guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But then even then, in terms of ratitude, I think he's, I mean, I love Clint Eastwood.

Again, I don't agree with him politically, but I think he is a great presence on screen.

I love so many of the movies he's made.

But I don't know, in terms of ratitude, like it's not like I think of Dirty Harry as like a cool character, you know?

Yeah, he's got like, he's got some nice 70s suits.

He's got a really long gun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think I'm going to give him,

I'm going to, I've been, I'm, at this episode, I feel like I'm a little more

luxurious with my grading.

I'm going to give him a six on this one.

No, I'm going to give it a five, actually.

I'll give a five on ratitude.

He gets a five on ratitude.

I'm going to, I'm going to stay parsimonious, and I'm going to give him a five.

Okay.

Let's talk about badness.

How bad is this dirty police officer?

He's a pretty bad dude.

He's a pretty bad dude.

I mean, he takes down Scorpio.

Yeah.

You know, who the regular legal system can't even handle this monster.

Yeah.

And he's impossible to stop i mean he's i mean essentially he remains just a cop like he is not he does not ascend to like the level of action movie uh wildness that some of these yeah but like i think it is a testament to how dirty this hairy is that i'm still gonna give him a nine for badness i think i'm gonna give him an eight because yeah i feel like he's just not at the same level in terms of action as some of the others but he's so he has such a plom when he did like and the fact that when he you know the famous speech about how many how many shots did I fire you know like that's just him talking a guy into not reaching for his gun and that's pretty that's pretty badass pretty pretty badass that's verbal action verbal fighting give me a lucky dip for old dirty hairy uh that's a 13 again okay

um doop doop doop doop doop doop has to adjust in real time as many numbers have been eliminated yeah oh okay actually

i think he's gonna have a little trouble with this old lucky dip uh uh On a scale of one to 10, one being very likely to 10 being very unlikely.

This is not the election one.

Yes.

How likely is Dirty Harry Callahan going to be canceled or me too'd?

Oh, so likely.

Oh, one.

I mean, yeah.

No, very likely.

Yeah, very likely.

Very likely it was one, right?

Yes.

Unlikely it was 10.

Because the high scores are, you want them, the stuff that you like, you put at the high school.

Yeah, wait, wait, wait.

I was paying more attention to what you were saying, Stuart, than what you were.

Yeah, thank you.

So I messed it up.

So very unlikely is a one.

Oh.

Very likely is a 10.

Oh, then 10.

He'll be canceled.

I mean, he would go to jail.

Wait, so you're rewarding the bad behavior.

Wait, I'm just according to Stuart's score.

You know, Stuart score is 100%.

No, wait, I messed it up.

Yeah, wait.

Previously, the idea was...

The idea is that he should not get canceled.

So that's lower.

So he gets a one or a zero, right?

So wait, look, whatever one it is where he gets canceled, that's the one I'm picking.

Yeah, so that's low.

Yeah.

Low.

Yeah.

So he gets a low.

So we're both going going low we're gonna both give him a one i think for this okay we did it thank you guys he would he would certainly be brought up on charges i don't know if he would be convicted but he would he would be brought up on charges no he'd be reshuffled he'd be you know put on death duty uh yeah he he loses uh get a salary for doing nothing he's the kind of police officer that people protest about yeah you'd have to move over to true social for his social media needs um okay dan give me a roll for our next hero uh that's a four

four oh okay that you would know him as the show guns Executioner, formerly Ogami Ito from the Lone Wolf and Cub series.

Dan, have you seen any of these?

I have not.

This is going to be

fun.

Trouble for me.

Okay, well, imagine a man who can perform a cut on your neck that creates a whistling sound that is

something that swordsmen long to hear.

How ironic that they hear it from their own throat.

That's right.

Ogami Ito, the Shogun's Executioner, the baddest dude in the universe.

This is in the comic.

I don't remember if this FN's any of the movies.

In the comic, there's a scene where some guys are harassing a woman and to show them how to treat a woman, he has sex with her right in front of them and is not phased at all by the fact that all these bad dudes are watching and the woman loves it.

And he's just like, see, that's how you do it.

And these guys are like, how is this man able to get on boner?

You know, exactly.

With us looking at him.

Is this

Mifune?

Does he do this in the movies?

Who is it?

No, no, no.

I don't, actually, I don't remember the actual.

I'll have to look.

I can't remember his name either.

I'll look it up.

But it's not Mifune.

Okay.

There's other Japanese actors, Dan.

I just thought it was a very good idea.

It's not Takeshi Shimura either.

The other Japanese actor you were going to mention.

I'm at a disadvantage, but I'm going to say a seven.

I'm guessing at a seven.

He's pretty red.

He pushes around a baby cart that can be converted into a variety of different weapons and killing killing actors.

Yes, now that might be batitude, not reditude, but I'm going to say, it's a, wait a minute.

Why am I forgetting?

Well, I'm wasting my time looking up the

actors' names, but it's the, because I can't remember off the top of my head.

But I am giving him a nine in terms of ratitude because not only is he a super cool swordsman, he's a good dad.

That's, and yeah, I feel like he's a good dad to that colour.

I feel like Elliot of the three of us has a unique perspective on being a dad

and how rad it is.

Oh, it's a total.

He's a girl Wakayama.

That's

Okama Ito.

Elliot, have you ever given either of your sons the choice between

the sword and walking the demon's road of my Fumato or choosing the ball and joining their ancestors in the land of Yomi?

No, that's not a choice that I've ever given to my children, to be honest.

Oh, Gama Ito did.

But I think the thing is, this is a guy who's able to combine work with parenthood in a way that all of us wish we could.

And he's always there for it.

He's always there for the cub.

Yeah.

And he gets a, he gets, yeah, he manages to achieve that balance.

That's pretty incredible.

Dan,

Elliot gave him a 10.

Dan, you gave him a what for ratitude?

I gave him a seven.

Okay, batitude.

This dude has filled the entire shogunate with

bodies.

I mean, this is, that the hells are full of his victims.

Yeah, and he's, again, that he, he has a tricked-out baby carriage full of weapons

that he kills people with.

He's a master swordsman.

He kills people.

They don't even know they're dead till later.

So I'm i'm gonna give him a 10 on this one also

man he's doing great okay you can only guess at the i can only guess but the tales i have heard uh told make me think that he must receive a 10.

okay so now give me let's give me a lucky dip this might be a challenge for our boy got a seven okay

Ooh, this might be a tough one, mainly due to a language barrier.

How likely, on a scale of one to 10, can he finish the New York Times Sunday crossword with no hints?

Now, I do have to point out, he shouldn't be completing it right now because the New York tech union, New York Times tech union is currently on strike.

So

he shouldn't cross that picket line.

But imagine he did this way back in the day.

Yeah,

I don't know.

I mean, like, I don't know canonically, like, whether he

can speak English.

You know, again, this is an English language newspaper.

I'm assuming, presuming that the...

I don't think that he doesn't remember,

certainly not in the movies.

Yeah, I'm going to give him a one for this, unfortunately.

Yeah, he's going to lose some points.

I'm also going to give him a one.

He is, he is living at a time when not only would it be hard for him to learn English, but he's living at a time when Japan is effectively cut off from English language nations for the most part.

It's during the period before the reopening of Japan when America basically forced Japan to start letting us trade where we wanted to.

So I'm going to give him a one on this also.

Yeah.

I think he's going to lack both the language skills and and the frame of reference.

When it says blank morales, he's not going to know.

It's Esau.

He's not going to know at all.

It's always SI Morales.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's always S-I-E-Berries.

They love it.

Okay.

Give me another one, Dan.

That's a 13 again.

13.

Okay.

Guys, we got another classic here.

There have been so many of these fucking movies.

That's right.

His name is James, James Bond.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Stirred, not shaken.

Played by a couple of actors you might have heard of.

Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Daniel Craig.

Yeah.

Here's a Dalton.

Beer Brosnahan.

Bierce Brosna.

George B.

George, the lazy bee.

The lazy bee.

Wow.

Well,

here's the problem you run into.

Like,

if this was the 60s, obviously highest marks for radness uh you know the the tides the cultural tides have turned against some of the signifiers of james bond

that was dislike of the beatles yeah yes he was wrong about the beatles and he was wrong about the uh way he treated most of his yeah female cohorts at that point uh

yeah but He does, he is like kind of the avatar of like, here's a bunch of cool stuff.

Like, here's, you're going to wear a tuxedo, and you're not going to care if you're a spy and people know your name, and you're going to drink martinis.

You're going to have gadgets.

Yeah, you're going to be good at gambling.

You're constantly cool and collective all the time.

Gambling.

You're going to do the coolest thing there is.

Baccarat.

I mean,

all that said, I mean,

have you guys ever, have you ever gone to like a Vegas casino and been like, I want to go play Baccarat?

I don't know how to play it.

Otherwise,

the John Barry theme, boys.

I'm playing some Baccarat.

I mean, if you count the song as part of his general effect, then it goes up a couple notches because that's such a cool rad song.

Yes.

I, yeah, that's the thing.

Like, even with the...

I do count the song, but even with the shit, I still kind of have to give him an eight for this, I think.

Oh, see,

I'm going to give him a nine.

Yeah.

If the song is factored in and just like, I feel even though he has so much of the older stuff has aged poorly, he is such the ur text for that, for Action action star like that is that's as far back as you can go before it starts to seem kind of like

weirdly disconnected from what we think of as it as an action hero today yeah and badness how bad is james bond

this is a hard one because he like he's done so much he's saved the world so many times and yet like i feel like there's a certain lack of total badness to him.

I'm also going to give him an eight for this.

It's hard to explain, but I just.

I'm going to give him an eight on this one

give him an eight on this one.

I feel like if you put him in a room with some of these other characters, he would not do, he would not have much of a chance.

But if you put him in a factory

or on a crane or something like that with some of these other characters, he would

skiing.

Exactly.

Jesus, put him on skis.

He's going to wreck everybody.

Yeah.

Okay.

So give me a lucky dip for old James for Jimmy.

That's a 12.

12.

Okay.

We've done that one.

We've done that one.

one.

You want to cross some of these off for sure?

Okay.

Oh, he wasn't crossing them out?

Now, if James Bond were to appear on a

yeah, how do I frame this as a?

I've been having some challenges framing this.

It's so good that he didn't get the giving advice on a date one.

That would be a bad category for him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Also, the getting canceled one.

He'd be

like.

Okay.

If you were to

transport the character James Bond into a rom-com Oh, on a scale of one being wouldn't work at all.

10 being, he would fit in seamlessly.

It would be a normal rom-com.

James Bond is basically a rom-com character.

Where does he fit?

I think he still gets pretty high.

I mean, like you say, normal rom-com.

I think you might want to spin it where it's like.

Like a 90s rom-com.

Like most.

I mean, like, this is true of most rom-coms where like someone needs to learn a lesson.

Like, maybe he needs to learn to like not be be so sexist, but he's a dapper man who wears evening wear and is suave.

I would give him a seven, I think.

Oh, see, I'm going to give him an eight because I could see it going either way.

Either he is the guy who learns a lesson or he is the bad boyfriend who the main character has to has to win the girl of his dreams from.

And you understand why she's with him because he's so cool.

And he's so suave, but you know that she shouldn't be with him because he's sleeping around and also choosing,

you know.

Dr.

Game Show is a podcast where we play games submitted by listeners with callers from all around the world, and this is a game to get you to listen.

Name three reasons to listen to Dr.

Game Show.

Kyla and Lunar from Freedom Main.

Dishes, folding the laundry, doing cat grooming.

Okay, thank you.

Great.

Oh, things you could do while listening.

Yeah.

I i love that the read i'm like why do you listen to this show and lunar's like dishes fantastic manolo number one is that uh it will inspire you you're gonna be like oh i could do that that's all we have time for but you'll just have to find dr game show a maximum fun to find out for yourself

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If you don't care about sponsors but love the flop house, this is the section of the plugs for you.

And it starts right now.

The flop TV season is still going.

That's six one-hour live streaming shows.

Tickets at theflophouse.simpletics.com.

One week from this day that this is being released, we will discuss Highlander 2: The Quickening, an infamous sequel.

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Pacific, 9 Eastern.

If you want to watch it live and chat along with the other viewers, but it will also be available for ticket holders to view on demand until the end of February.

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That is coming up pretty fast, actually, at 7 p.m.

And if you want tickets, go to sfsketchfest.com.

Okay, okay.

Give me another roll, Dan.

We're getting near the end.

That's a four.

A four.

Yep.

Okay.

Our next up is

we're going to be seeing this gentleman on Flop TV soon.

That's right.

Connor McLeod.

He's an immortal.

He's a Highlander.

Wears a kilt.

Connor McLeod.

Okay.

I've only seen Highlander.

I have not seen Highlander 2, Colin the Quickening.

Yes.

Did you see Highlander 3?

What was it?

The Final Illusion?

Final Dimension?

Something like that?

I think so.

With Mario Van Peebles.

Yeah.

I remember seeing that in the theaters.

I did too.

I also remember the trailer.

Yeah.

I remember the trailer where they're like, his name is Kane.

Yeah, and he can make a truck turn invisible.

Fucking cool as hell.

As

someone who, you know, my uncle.

Oh, that's...

Wait a minute.

Highlander.

Oh, Highlander 3 was the sorcerer.

And this was...

Oh, no, did they have two different titles?

Was that it?

Yeah.

And then there's...

Yeah.

Wait a minute.

Oh, so it was two different titles.

That's what it was.

Yeah.

Oh, thank God.

It was we saw it as Highlander the final dimension.

Yep.

What's like the animated lightning in those movies?

Is that part of his powers or does it just imbue him with something?

When he chops somebody's head off and he gets hit with lightning to get strong.

Oh, okay.

Yeah,

I think that's him absorbing their power, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, okay.

So he's got like lightning stuff going on.

And I was going to say, as my uncle would not let us forget growing up, we are of Scottish heritage.

So

got to love a Highlander.

You know, wears a kilt around and such.

He goes to wrestling matches by himself as an adult.

I'm going to give him a seven for radness.

Okay.

All right.

I mean, I love it.

He owns a curiosity shop.

The thing is, I love Scott.

Is it old?

Not old enough.

I love Scottish things.

Scotland, I think, is might be my second favorite country in terms of countries I've spent time in.

I love curiosity shops, but I'm going to have to give him like a four.

I just don't find him very

rad.

Oof.

Okay.

Well, I think he was hoping to clean up in that category.

Let's talk about badness.

How bad is this Highlander?

I mean, there can be only one, which seems like that's pretty bad in and of itself.

It's pretty bad.

But they keep showing up.

They do keep showing up.

Even though there can be only one, there's quite a few of them.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's lousy with them.

I'm also, I'm gonna get, you know, sevens across.

Okay, sevens across.

Elliot, I'll give him a

six.

Okay,

no, you know what?

I'll give him a seven.

Okay, Clancy Brown is like, I only

got beaten by a six.

Um, okay, give me a lucky dip roll for

this Highlando.

Um, oh, we got to loop all the way back around.

Oh, no, there we are.

Oh, no, okay.

On a scale of one being uh unlikely, wait, one being very likely

to 10 being very unlikely.

How likely is Connor McLeod going to vote independent in the United States election?

Oh, boy.

Now, assuming that he is a citizen, because again, he's from Scotland, right?

But maybe he became a naturalized citizen at some point.

Yes, we're going to assume that.

I think it's pretty high, I think, pretty likely that he would vote independent.

So that's a low score.

I'm getting like a sort of a libertarian vibe off of him.

Yeah, me too.

So I don't know.

I'll give him a, what, low is likely.

I'll give him a three.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm going to give him a three also.

Not great.

Okay.

Give me another roll, Dan.

We're getting near the bottom.

The roll is a nine.

It is a nine.

That goes.

Okay, that's right.

This guy has a certain set of skills, and those skills, sometimes they ain't pretty.

That's right.

We have everybody's favorite character, Brian Mills.

What?

Who's that?

Brian.

You don't know Brian Mills?

Brian Mills, right?

Yeah.

Brian Mills from the taken franchise.

And what?

It's Brian Mills.

I didn't even remember from our aborted earlier attempts to do this episode.

We've been over this.

Okay.

Yeah.

So as we, I think we've all agree, we all agree he would score very high if the category was dadness yeah dadness was high for brian mills dadness would be a big category for him but it's not it's radness radness i'm gonna i think it's gonna be pretty low on this i mean i generally like seeing liam neeson in movies but i feel like the whole point of brian meals is that he is you don't suspect that he is going to have this stuff inside of him he doesn't he doesn't project as a cool i feel like he gets an extra point for that speech his like speech about skills that's pretty cool but that's not enough i i don't think it's enough to really put him in the heavy.

No, I'd give him like a three, even with the speech factor, Dan.

For intensity and for tallness, I'm going to give him a five.

Tallness, you know, hey, it's one of the most one of the most sought-after attractive features.

I realize tallness was one of the things.

I guess I'll tell Puck from Alpha Flight that you'll be grading him low, Dan.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, now badness.

How bad is this battler?

He's got a specific particular set of skills, you know?

He's He's pretty bad.

And he maintained being bad even as he aged through several sequels.

And he started such a string chicken.

Even starting out, I feel like Liam Neeson has admitted that he's like shocked that they've been as successful as they were.

He and Nicholas Cage both.

It is a very strange thing for them to suddenly become action stars.

Like Nicholas Cage was this strange kind of like experimental actor in many ways, and then was in Conair and The Rock and all those others.

And it's like, oh, no, no, he's a huge action star.

And Liam Neeson, similarly, I mean, he was Dark Man, but like, you wouldn't know for the rest of his filmography that he would become an action star late in life.

Yeah.

And then be fighting wolves with his bare hands, you know?

Yeah.

Do you think the Liam Neeson now regrets not being Dark Man in the Dark Man sequels?

You'd have to ask him.

It might not come up in his family.

I'll ask him.

I'll text him.

I'll send him a text.

I just want to say for badness, I think he suffers

from the company we have kept so far in these minis.

I'll give him a seven.

Okay.

Hey,

if you lose a daughter, he's going to find that thing.

I'll also

give him a seven.

I feel like he is, again, he cuts through bad guys like a hot knife through butter.

But when you compare him to Conan the barbarian, it's tough.

You know, it's tough.

Or the widow.

You know, it's tough.

Dan, what do you roll?

I assume that this weird thing is the equivalent of a 20.

Yep.

Or the bride.

Okay.

Dan, I think he's going to be pretty good at this one.

On a scale of one being unlikely to 10 being very likely.

How likely is Brian Mills going to give a great wedding speech?

He's so good with speeches.

I feel like he would fucking do that in a taken movie too.

I think for his daughter's wedding.

He's got that gravitas too, you know?

Yeah, I think, I feel like he'd crazy.

He is a dad again.

He is a dad.

Dad again.

That's my favorite movie.

I'm not going to give him top marks because I don't think there's going to be a a lot of humor in that speech.

But in terms of heart, like, I'm going to give him a nine.

Oh, people are going to feel it.

They're going to have a lump in their throat.

I'm also going to give him a nine.

Yeah.

Okay.

Brian Mills.

Good points.

Okay, Dan, give me a roll.

We are down to two heroes left.

That's a two.

Perfect.

You nailed it right on the head.

She has fought queens.

She's fought.

babies.

She is Ellen Ripley.

Hero from the

left out of information about what kind of queens and babies.

Oh, it changes your opinion when I don't say alien in there, right?

She's this

Ellen Ripley is the

hero we're talking about, played by Sigourney Weaver.

This will also, I'll also include the like, what, Ripley alien hybrid type thing from Alien Resurrection?

It's better.

That's so Ripley.

It's so Ripley.

I mean, it's, it depends, you know, whether that's real still Ripley or not is a question for the philosophers, Dan.

But yeah.

Well, Stuart brought up one of my reasons.

Like, look, she's introduced as kind of deliberately unrad.

You know, the idea was you don't know in Alien who the hero is going to be.

Like, she was not a big name.

Maybe it's the alien.

Yeah, it could be the alien.

I mean, the alien walks away looking pretty good in that movie.

Yeah, probably not Ian Holm.

You're probably pretty sure he's not going to be the hero.

So she starts from a place of deliberate unradness, but by the end of that movie, she's

killing an alien in her underwear.

By the end of the series, she is a hybrid alien who's been rebirthed.

So overall, I think I'm going to give her a seven.

She's pretty red.

I'm going to give her an eight for radness.

I agree.

She is not coded as cool necessarily, but once again, I'm giving her strong woman in a man's world points.

And also, her jumpsuit looks cool.

I love that 80s style.

You know, it's 79, but it feels more 80s at times than 79.

And also, like, she pulls off the bald head look very well.

Pulls it off great.

Yeah, and she has this really cool arc.

She's cool.

Okay, let's talk about badness.

How bad is

now, she might not stack up against some of these other non-stop killing machines, but she does fight like the ultimate living weapon and win regularly.

Yes.

Yeah.

She's she, well, Dan, you say what you're going to say.

It sounds like you have a lot of arguments against.

It's a mixed decision, I think.

You know, she does die at least once and

her life is

true.

You were the one who said that the other one was, the one after she died was her.

No, no, well, I'm saying like out of like the four times she's encountered an alien she lost once arguably uh that was a draw that would i would not a draw she she she threw herself into a vat of fire and lava to kill an alien that was coming out of her

seems like a victory i mean the fact that she's willing to do that though i'll give her uh a nine I'm going to give her a nine as well.

I feel like she,

more because of her, how quickly she learns.

She is not trained as a soldier, as far as we can can tell, but she picks up fighting with a flamethrower really fast.

She can control the power loader.

She has sex with an alien in the fourth one.

She's willing to jump into a vat of lava.

Like, she's, it's pretty, it's all pretty badass.

She'll do whatever it takes to get that alien.

So fucking rocks.

That's a nine.

She's one of the great characters in all of action film.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dan, give me a lucky dip roll.

That's a four.

Okay.

Okay.

This was good.

The, there were kind of two options here, and one of them, she was not going to do well.

this category is mourning her daughter

she's great at that okay so uh on a scale of one being unlikely ten being very likely how likely is she going to get approval for a small business loan uh sorry which one's very likely and which one's okay one is unlikely

um

well she has a long She has a long employment history.

There's a big gap in the middle where she was in cryogenic sleep for years.

She does pick up skills quickly, as Elliot says.

She has, you know, like the load power loader.

She's good as that.

True.

But I do think that the fact that her life is

entwined with the aliens now forever.

It's probably going to harm her.

So I'm going to give her a five.

I'm going to split the difference.

I'm going to give her a seven.

I feel like she dots her.

I's and crosses her T's.

You know, she does things by protocol, by the books.

So whatever hoop she's got to jump through to get that loan, she'll do it.

I think there is a high probability that an alien will appear during the loan approval process, which might make it more difficult unless the bank manager is super impressed by what he sees when

she kills that alien.

So I'm going to say a seven, but it's always possible that they'll say you're too big a risk.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Or they will say your credit history has a huge, has a huge gap.

You didn't borrow or use a credit card for 50 years.

We don't need anywhere to roll anymore.

We don't need to roll at all.

We are down to one final action hero.

That's right.

That's Frank Martin.

Who's this?

I know Frank Martin saved them.

Jason saved them from the transporter film.

He has a simple rule.

No women, no kids.

Yeah.

I think there's a, I mean, there's a fairly high level.

He has a million other rules, actually.

He is the opposite of Lone Wolf in that Lone Wolf only

transports kids.

Yes.

That's true.

Yeah.

A fairly high level of radness.

Like he's, you know, he's got the suit.

He transports things.

He's drives.

He's really driving.

Have you seen his amps?

They're crazy.

You know, the sheer statham-ness of this character.

He really missed out on not getting the Olympics one because wasn't he like an Olympic diver?

I don't know whether he actually ever made it that high, but he was definitely like, yeah, he was a

statham or the transporter.

Statham.

No, transporter is just a man of many skills.

Yeah.

One of them is driving.

a competitive diver.

I don't know exactly how high he went.

So how red is he, though?

I'm going to give him an eight for red.

Okay.

I'm going to give him.

You know what?

I'm going to be a little tougher on him.

I'm going to give him a six.

The Transporter has always felt a little secondhand to me.

Like he is trading on the style and fumes of other previous action characters.

Yeah.

But what about badness?

I mean, this is another one where it's like he's tough.

He can definitely like fight his way through a room, even though he's slipping on some oil.

That is like an all-timer action sequence.

It's a great sequence.

What about that bit in part two where he flips his car upside down so a hook knocks the bomb that's strapped to the bottom of his car off?

Yeah.

I mean, he can do some amazing things with cars, just like our fast and furious friends.

And then there's the third one where he is like transporting that like Russian girl who's been kidnapped, and it turns into this weird, like, sub-dom, like, kink relationship.

It's pretty pretty great uh yeah these are all good points i don't know i guess that doesn't affect his body i feel i don't know i still feel like i'm influenced a little bit by elliot about how threadbare some of this is even though i do enjoy it okay i'll give it a seven seven for badness okay i'll give him a seven as well He can handle himself.

He's got a lot of great moves.

He does cool things.

I feel even if they don't always cohere into

a hole for me.

He might actually do okay on this.

How likely on a scale of one being unlikely,

10 being very likely?

How likely is this to transport something?

How likely is he to comfortably retire as an old man?

Oh,

maybe of everyone on this list, maybe except for John McClain, maybe,

I would give him a high mark on this.

I feel like he's going to do well.

Yeah, he's got all these rules and stuff.

He's very professional.

I would give him a trip.

He's ready to walk away.

I feel like he could walk away from this at a moment's notice, and he does not, his job gets him into trouble.

Once he stops doing that job, I feel like

he could just go be a beekeeper.

This was, yeah,

this was the category I was worried Ripley was going to pull because there's no way she's comfortably retiring.

She's fighting aliens until the very end.

Yeah.

They're in a death spiral.

Just because there's a chance that he just might transport one too many things before and get knocked off, I'm going to dock him a point, but I'll give him a nine.

I could see that.

I could see that.

But I think as opposed to, I feel like, especially in comparison to the other characters, he is maybe the most likely.

Yeah.

The bad boys I could see retiring at some point.

Yeah, someday.

Okay, so that has been.

I'm going to tally up the scores.

Hey, so this is your game master, Stuart Wellington, chiming in with the final tally for our rankings of action movie heroes, official rankings for the Flophouse.

Now, I've tallied up all the scores, and we have our top three contestants.

Now, coming in third, we actually have an even tie.

That's right.

James Bond and Indiana Jones both tie at 71 points.

Not bad out of a possible 90, that is pretty good.

And they both struggled a little bit when it came to the lucky dip, but that is often the case.

Moving on to our second place,

this is a big deal.

But before actually I get there,

let's take a little pause.

Let's look at our lowest scoring hero.

And I think this is a little bit of a surprise for fans of the flophouse.

That's right, Cameron Poe coming in dead last.

Unfortunately, his easy, forest Gumpian, Jesus-like charm just did not put him on the scoreboard.

So let's get back to the real scores.

Let's talk at number two.

This is our number two action movie hero.

And that's right, coming in big.

We got the Sumerian himself, a king by his own hand, Conan the Barbarian with a whopping 78 points out of 90.

That is huge.

And honestly, he might have managed to take number one if he hadn't had a weak radness score from Mr.

Dan McCoy.

Dan McCoy coming in as the spoiler this time.

That means there can be only one.

That's right.

The Black Mamba, Beatrix Kiddo, aka the Bride.

She killed Bill and she killed our hearts.

She comes in with 80 points, just beating out Conan the Barbarian.

So that's it.

There you have it, folks.

The official rankings of action movie heroes here at the Flophouse.

Back to you guys.

Whoa, that was a shocker.

So thank you so much for participating in this.

This has been the official rankings of 2024.

Can't wait to revisit them in 2025.

Okay, so for the Flophouse, this has been a Flophouse Mini.

We are part of the Maximum Fun podcast network.

We are produced by Alexander Smith.

He is known as Howell Daughty on the internet.

He's a musician.

He's a podcast producer.

He's great.

For the Flophouse, I've been Stuart Wellington.

I've been Dan McCoy.

I've been Elliot Kalen.

Can't believe those results.

Bye.

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