Recap / Film Reroll: Speed

A daring but mostly successful rescue. ^note  Picture by Quirderph.

We play through Speed! Pitr saves some lives. Jon goes to the bathroom to wet his shirt. Jocelyn waits for a bus.

Episode 8 of Film Reroll. Based on the 1994 movie.

Two police officers — Jack and Harry — have been sent on a mission to stop a terrorist who has trapped twelve hostages in an elevator and rigged it to explode. Can our heroes stop him without letting him blow them up or get away? And how will Annie — a seemingly normal woman who's just waiting for her bus — get involved in all of this?^note As it turns out, not at all.

Starring Kara Strait^note  credited as “Pitr Strait” as "Keanu Reeves," Jon Miller as "Jeff Daniels," Jocelyn "Joz" Vammer as "Sandra Bullock" and Paulo Quiros as the Dungeon Master.

Followed by Jaws.

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Tropes:

• Action Prologue: Discussed and somewhat Deconstructed in the players' post-campaign talk, where it's brought up how dangerous these can be for the plot when you don't have an author deciding how they turn out and instead rely purely on chance.
• Adapted Out:
  • Despite being a major character in the film, Annie never shows up, because Howard Payne is now defeated before her introduction. Lampshaded when, at the very end of the podcast, Jocelyn asks if she can roll to see if she gets on the bus or not.
  • Really, this happens to every character originally introduced after the prologue.
  • For some reason, Payne has now only taken 12 people hostage, not 13.^note This gets indirectly explained in the next episode: Paulo admits he has a personal DM house rule in that he rolls for critical plot events prior to the start of a campaign to see if they are different in any respect before the players get involved; the difference in the number of hostages here implies such a roll occured.
• Advertised Extra: Jocelyn Vammer is credited as being part of the main cast, even though "Sandra Bullock" never actually appears in the campaign. She still makes some comments out of character, though.
• Ash Face: Payne gets this after the smoke bomb blows up in his face. As pointed out by Paulo Quiros, this unfortunately doesn't stop him from looking like a mechanic.
• Bittersweet Ending: The day has been saved, but the actions of our protagonists accidentally led to the deaths of five innocent people, and they might get fired from their jobs for disobeying orders. Though it's also possible that they get to keep their jobs after all, since their actions led to Payne being stopped and arrested.
• Blatant Lies: In an attempt at not causing too much panic, Jack tries to pass himself off as an elevator technician to the prisoners... while wearing a police uniform and referring to "our best officers."
• Call-Back: When Kara Strait's character starts beating up Payne, the other players tell her that she is channeling Sallah.
• Chromosome Casting: An unintentional side effect of ending the story early. The only explicitly female character in the campaign is the unnamed lady who almost dies by falling through the elevator floor.
• Death by Adaptation: In the movie, Jack and Harry were able to save all of the hostages from the elevator. Here, five of them don't make it out in time and end up falling to their death.
• The Determinator: After the incident with the elevator, Paulo states that Jack and Harry are being told to leave the building, implicitly implying they are now fired. Kara, desperately wanting to salvage the campaign, doubles down on finding Howard, and heads for the basement.
• Gone Horribly Right: Mentioned by name after the campaign, where it's pointed out that this was the first time the plot was completely destroyed, but everything still turned out better for almost everyone involved.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Our protagonists use a Smoke Bomb to take out Mad Bomber Howard Payne.
• I Am Not Leonard Nimoy: Averted in the podcast itself, but its description — as shown above — lists the players as portraying Keanu Reeves, Jeff Daniels and Sandra Bullock, not Jack, Harry and Annie. (Granted, they ''do'' try to make impressions of the original actors.)
• Janitor Impersonation Infiltration: As in the real movie, Payne disguises himself as a mechanic to get into the building.
• Justified Title: While the title's original meaning no longer applies as the whole bus part never happens, it still fits the campaign due to its short length. It's not even an hour long — which is far less than the actual film — and that includes the pre-game introduction and the post-game discussion.
• Mr. Fanservice: Kara Strait mentions several times that her character should, by all accounts, be ripped, being played by Keanu Reeves and all.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Jack and Harry decide to disobey their orders and get the prisoners out of the elevator, even though Payne had threatened to blow up the bomb if anyone tried to do that. He is true to his word, and five of the twelve prisoners end up dying because of our protagonists' actions.
• Off the Rails: This is arguably the best example of Film Reroll doing this, as this campaign only covers the Action Prologue due to Kara derailing the entire scene by going into the elevator.
• Poe's Law: Jocelyn mentions that the first time she watched Speed, she thought Keanu Reeves did a great job parodying the classic Action Hero with his choice of voice for the role. Only later did she realise that no parody was intended on his part.
• Prolonged Prologue: Exaggerated Trope. The prologue is long enough to fill a whole episode, and it ends with the villain being captured, making it pointless to continue the story.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: After Jon Miller does a Jeff Goldblum impression, the other players point out how both of them laugh like a robot that has been taught to laugh in binary code. Jon then points out that he, Jon Miller 1.27, is most definitely a human that enjoys human jokes. (According to the other players, he still has some bugs left, but at least he is better than Jon Miller 1.26, who killed many homeless people. They don't talk about him.)
  • Ironically, Jon Miller would go on to play the Tin Man in their Wizard Of Oz campaign.
• Sequel Hook: Sort of. The group have said that in five years or so, they might make Speed 2 using the rest of the film's plot. Whether the actual Speed 2 will become Speed 3 is unclear.
• Shout-Out: "Harry. What do you see with your elven eyes?"
• Shoot the Hostage: Our heroes pretend that they are going to do this in order to distract Payne. It works.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Everyone Payne killed after the prologue, including Harry. Invoked by Jon Miller, who made it his mission to live through the campaign.
  • Payne himself is simply knocked out and arrested, unlike the movie where he was decapitated.
• Take a Third Option: At one point, our heroes come to the conclusion that Payne must be hiding in the basement, before changing their minds and deciding that he is probably in an elevator. Turns out that he's hiding in an elevator... currently located on the basement floor.
• That Came Out Wrong: When Jon crafts a low-powered concussion explosive out of a fire extinguisher as Harry and Jack are about to get the drop on Payne, Kara brings up the potential necessity for masks. Jon then proposes that they just use their shirts as masks... but then proceeds to word it differently in-character:
  Harry: Hey, Jack, let's go into the bathroom, wet our shirts-
  (Paulo and Joz begin laughing violently)
  Kara: "Hey, Jack, let's go into the bathroom, suck each other's dicks real quick, just to release the tension..."
• Too Dumb to Live: The whole campaign gets irreparably derailed when Kara gets impatient with how long the situation with the elevator is taking and impulsively decides to enter despite both Paulo and Jon telling her to not do that. The second she does? The explosives are set off.
• We Will Meet Again: Not outright quoted, but it is said that Payne might return in a future campaign to get revenge on Jack.

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