How is This a Movie?

Good morning Consumers. This is Please Consume, the film newsletter that double butters your popcorn.

This is what we’ve got for today 👇️

• Tom talks about arm wrestling!

• It’s Trailer Time! We have 3 new trailers for you.

• All the news and notes from the last few days.

Let’s get rolling…

With the release of Expend4bles we wanted to look back at the franchise's leading men, talk about their greatest hits, and go around the horn for another mission with our favorite action heroes, past and present!

Over the Top (1987)

Written by Tom Fortner

I’m about to give you what might be a quintessential 80s movie.

It contains cheese, trucks, Kenny Loggins, large and sweaty men, Sylvester Stallone, and…

Arm wrestling. It’s Over the Top

How is This a Movie?

I don’t know how this movie got made, but I’m glad that it did.

The story follows big-rig trucker Lincoln Hawk (Stallone) as he tries to reconnect with his son and win an arm-wrestling championship. Yeah, that’s it.

Look, this movie is exactly what it sounds like. It’s dramatic, corny, and makes you feel damn patriotic.

But it’s also just fascinating to watch.

You’ll see in the clip for today, but there’s something about it that just draws the audience into the drama.

For example, re-watching clips in research for this piece, I was actually getting anxious watching Hawk compete. I saw the sweat and the muscles and the emotion in the sport. I was mesmerized.

What it Could Have Been

Stallone apparently wasn’t pleased with the final cut of the movie and said he would have directed it much differently.

He would have set it in an urban neighborhood, used a score instead of rock songs, made the final competition more ominous, and made it R-rated, which just feels all wrong to me.

That would have taken away its charm, its heart. It would have been laughably bad in a negative way.

It would have been a shallow attempt at unique drama that thought it was better than it was. Instead, it has the appeal of being a dramatic film that took itself seriously while also fully knowing that it wasn’t. That’s where its charm lies.

Today’s Scene

Let’s take a look at this week’s new trailers…

All of Us Strangers

Fingernails

May December

Here are a few things that we found interesting over the last few days…

This is not news, but I did think it was hilarious.