Today, I finished re-listening to the TV Crimes Podcast (come back to us one day, you glorious bastards), and needed a new distraction on my drive around town. I ended up on a Magnum P.I. re-watch podcast, and this gave me an idea. Re-watch podcasts are a thing, and I’m all about trying new things. I also like watching movies, and as the progenitor of the Liam Neeson Peril Meter, I kinda feel I owe it to the world to present my findings.
First things first: this is not the announcement of a podcast. I’m still working on technical things, like having a good enough microphone, and having the time to watch these movies with other people so we can have podcast banter. This is just an exploration of what the podcast could be, and what the LNPM is. Hopefully, the podcast will follow soon.
Second: a re-watch podcast is a podcast (internet talk radio-ish) where each episode of the podcast is a discussion of one episode in a show, or one movie in a chronology. For example, there are re-watch podcasts of Magnum P.I., every Star Trek series, and multiple different podcasts named Countdown to Infinity re-watching all the Marvel movies before Avengers: Infinity War.
Now that that’s out of the way, what the heck is the Liam Neeson Peril Meter, or the LNPM?
Liam Neeson is a prolific actor. His first credited role on IMDB is in the leading role of Pilgrim’s Progress, a classic Christian tale, in 1978. Up through the 80’s, he had a variety of roles, but in the 90’s, he found his true calling: action. Not the kind of action that Vin Diesel or Sylvester Stallone would be in; you won’t see Neeson in The Expendables 4. Liam Neeson excels in movies where violence feels like the last resort, even though violence is exactly where we’re headed. Some of his best roles aren’t in action movies (Schindler’s List, The Lego Movie), but he’s got the range for it.
Because of his many roles in dramatic action movies, I started to wonder: how much trouble does Liam Neeson get into in these movies? How does he handle this trouble? To that end, I devised the Liam Neeson Peril Meter to categorize, from 1 to 10, the amount of peril that Liam Neeson is in, per movie, taking into account how he handles that peril. For some examples: in Star Wars: Episode 1, Liam Neeson is in a fair amount of peril, but he handles it so well that I would probably rate it a 3 at most. In Taken, Neeson is in about as much peril, but guns his way through all of it, making the peril seem much greater, so probably a 7 or 8.
I have a Google Sheet of 71 films, guest appearances on TV shows, and one video game. If this podcast actually happens, I don’t know how many of those get watched, but I’m hoping for all of them.
Which movie do you think will rate the highest? The lowest? Does anyone else remember Sam Raimi’s early attempt at superheroes Darkman?
That's Pretty NEET 