Fire up the afterburners, because The Final Countdown is the Greatest Movie EVER!
Click on the DVD cover or the title above to download our review of the film, featuring Celebrity Translator Neil Nadelman.
Review in a Nutshell: A military documentary masquerading as a time travel film, The Final Countdown has some amazing visuals of modern technology in action. Don’t expect a deep exploration of alternative histories or time paradoxes, though.
The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast 
Hi, I would like to correct Neil about Don Taylor. He was in “Father of the Bride”, but he played Elizabeth Taylor’s fiance. The titular character was played by Spencer Tracy. And speaking of which, James Farentino died just last January. I guess you guys chose that as a tribute to him?
I remember reading Lloyd Kaufman’s “All I Need to Know about Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger” where he mentioned that he and Kirk Douglas had a verbal tussle during production where Douglas uttered to Kaufman ‘You can’t be Jewish, you’re too stupid.’ Thought that was a funny little aside.
Similar to the Final Countdown is the Anime Series Zipang, that would be a good one to checkout for your viewers.
You can ignore my last comment, I was not at the point of the podcast that you mentioned Zipang. Well played Gooberzilla, well played. I think you should do Steve McQueen’s Bullitt from 1968 some time!
Hence, the dangers of posting before listening to the entire podcast. Let this be a lesson to us all.
Bullit is an excellent film. I’m sure Sean would like to talk about it some time.
Greetings. Huzzah for another entertaining podcast. To the point that Owens/Tideman did nothing to improve history and used his knowledge only for personal gain, would we ever know what changes that may have been made? In the previous timeline, the Cold War may have sparked into nuclear devastation and Owens’ could have been the person to somehow avert that. He would be writing the future by his present actions and reality would instantly conform without notice. We could have a time traveler mucking with existence at this moment and no matter what he/she did, the history of the past would remain a constant to a person in the future no matter how often it was changed. Ooww! I think I just gave myself an embolism thinking too much about a minor 35 year old movie. Your podcast should come with a health disclaimer.
Great job, as always! I also had the pleasure of rewatching this a dozen times in my youth, as it was on HBO almost every day. Fond memories and not entirely painful to revisit. As to the reason there was no Carrier Group: when the vortex showed up on the radar, then on the horizon, they thought they would pass through it fairly quickly. But because they still had a plane to recover, they had to stay in the wind for it to make a landing. The Captain said for the Carrier Group to head back to Pearl, followed by something like, “There’s no need for THEM to go through this.” That’s how they became isolated in 1941.
I didn’t hear you mention Soon Tek Oh as the Japanese soldier :<
And seriously, you won't pay like $10 for a DVD? You are fired from the nerd club. Gawd
The Final Countdown is a Blue Underground release, and those are more expensive. The asking price is between $19.95 and $29.95 retail for the DVD releases, depending on whether you want the regular or the two-disc special edition. So, yes, that is too much for me to spend on a DVD I’ve never seen and am not sure I’m going to like.
Pfft.
I got it for $14.99 at a Newbury Comics. Clearly you don’t know how to bargain hunt.
You need to watch Arrested Development, Jesus.
No. You can’t make me.
I think a great idea for a time travel movie is a guy who goes back in time to stop horrible things from happening, only to discover he’s really terrible when it comes to remembering historical facts. Like…he remembers the date Lincoln was shot, but not really where, so he just wanders around until he’s far too late. Or he forgets that cars and airplanes aren’t around, so a trip across the country takes several days. Or he arrives in time, only to discover that he’s really bad at fighting, so John Wilkes Booth kicks his ass.
I’ll add Arrested Development, and Community to the list that I will enjoy while also quietly weeping at Paul’s foolishness
“History is plastic enough . . .” said Paul.
I just finished reading Stephen King’s 11/22/63, which is about a time traveler’s attempt to stop the Kennedy assassination (great book, btw, much more interesting than I thought it would be). The great lesson of that book, repeated over and again is, “The past is obdurate,” It does not want to be changed.
Just sayin’.
There’s another movie with a very similar plot, but replacing the American carrier with Japanese soldiers travelling back in time to the feudal Japan, and it’s way more funnier than The final countdown: Sengoku jieitai.
I remember seeing this in the theater in 1980 and loved it.. Last year i watched the remastered dvd and still loved it but yeah…it’s best not really good movie i’ve ever seen. The military stuff alone pus this movie in a class in it’s self.