Summary
Overview
In this live episode from Los Angeles's Largo, the How Did This Get Made crew tackles the 2005 sci-fi disaster 'A Sound of Thunder,' a film about time travel safari gone wrong. With an $80 million budget slashed to $30 million and unfinished special effects, the movie features Ed Burns sleepwalking through his performance while CGI dinosaurs and catfish people destroy any semblance of coherent storytelling. The team dissects the illogical time waves, Ben Kingsley's committed performance, and why stepping on a butterfly causes inexplicable evolutionary chaos.
Introduction and Movie Setup
The hosts introduce 'A Sound of Thunder,' a 2005 film about a time travel company that offers safari trips to kill a T-Rex in the prehistoric era. When someone steps on a butterfly during an expedition, catastrophic time waves begin altering reality in increasingly bizarre ways. The premise sounds interesting, but the execution is baffling, with terrible CGI and Ed Burns delivering one of the most emotionless performances ever captured on film.
- Time Safari is a brick-and-mortar store that looks like a Bed Bath & Beyond, offering only one adventure: killing a T-Rex
- The movie was made in 2005, 12 years after Jurassic Park, but has significantly worse CGI
- Someone steps on a butterfly during a time travel expedition, triggering catastrophic changes to the future
" We are on, literally on a time bomb when we start to time travel. And let me tell you something, people. This movie is going to tell us how to prevent it. and it will be confusing, and I'm not even sure if they know how time travel works in the movie. "
" 2005. this is like a uh this is a game that you would play on like a game boy yeah this whole movie is cut scenes from a sega cd game "
Ed Burns' Bizarrely Calm Performance
Throughout the film, Ed Burns delivers lines with the emotional intensity of someone ordering coffee, even when the world is ending around him. The hosts are baffled by his complete lack of reaction to catastrophic events, including watching people he loves die. His performance is so detached it seems like he's perpetually on hold or reading from cue cards with mild interest.
- Ed Burns reacts to the apocalypse as if he received slightly less butter than expected
- He watches every person he loves die in the third act with an 'eh' reaction
- When trapped underwater and telling people to hold their breath and swim up, he delivers the line like ordering a latte
" He reacts as if, you know, you just gave him like a slightly smaller piece of butter than he was expecting. He's like, I'm sorry, I ordered it. I ordered a Diet Coke? "
" He watches his friend sacrifice his life, and it looks like he's just trying to hear what he's saying. He's like, what is he saying? What is he saying? And I was like, can you throw a rock over there? Run! Run! He's biding time! Run! "
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