Sandra Bullock says she’s “still embarrassed” she starred in Speed 2
Now, why would you be embarrassed of starring in a critical and commercial flop, Sandra?
Aux News Sandra Bullock
When looking back on her long and illustrious career, Sandra Bullock has one film she wishes she didn’t do: A little sequel called Speed 2: Cruise Control.
“I have one [that] no one came around to and I’m still embarrassed I was in,” Bullock says in an interview with Too Fab. “It’s called Speed 2. I’ve been very vocal about it. Makes no sense. Slow boat. Slowly going towards an island.”
“That’s one I wished I hadn’t done and no fans came around that I know of, except for you,” Bullock tells the interviewer, who shared their admiration for the film as a teenager.
“I feel like it had a kind of cult love as well,” her The Lost City co-star Daniel Radcliffe says, in what was presumably a way to assuage her embarrassment.
“Very quiet! Like five people. Him and the other four 12-year-olds who were watching the slow boat going towards the tiny island,” Bullock responds.
In addition to the less than thrilling storyline and the costly stunt work, many complained about Keanu Reeves not returning for the second installment as his character Jack Traven (a move which landed him in “movie jail” at Fox). Jason Patric was brought on to star alongside Bullock in the sequel as her boyfriend. Together the pair try to stop the cruise ship they are vacationing on from careening into an oil tanker.
Reeves has commented on the script of Speed 2 several times, most recently back in December during an interview on The Graham Norton Show.
“At the time, I didn’t respond to the script. I really wanted to work with Sandra Bullock, I loved playing Jack Traven, and I loved Speed, but an ocean liner? I had nothing against the artists involved, but at that time I had the feeling it just wasn’t right,” Reeves said.
Both of the Speed films were directed by Jan de Bont. While Graham Yost wrote the screenplay for the first film, Randall McCormick and Jeff Nathanson were recruited to write Speed 2. The film was a critical flop, but it also only earned $164 million in domestic and international box offices against a budget of $160 million.
Bullock will soon appear in the comedy adventure film The Lost City, in which she stars alongside Radcliffe, Channing Tatum, and Brad Pitt. The Lost City hits theaters worldwide on March 25.
106 Comments
I watched this movie for the first time recently (December, I think), and I had an absolute blast with it. Is it good? No. Is it fun? Your mileage may vary, but I thought so. Jason Patric isn’t Keanu Reeves, but he has his own on-screen charm. Sandra Bullock was underwritten pretty badly, but WILLEM DAFOE. Willem is PEAK camp in this, and it is AMAZING.So, Sandra, you’ve got one more fan of your least favorite film.
I remember liking it ok, Willem Dafoe was a great villain. But I only saw it the one time, so not bad, but not especially good.
“Is the movie fun? Yes. Especially when Bullock breaks into a ship’s supply cabinet and finds a chainsaw, which I imagine all ships carry. Movies like this embrace goofiness with an almost sensual pleasure. 3 out of 4 stars” – Roger Ebert, 1997
He also actually accomplishes literally everything he wanted to. If it wasn’t for his getting killed at the end, he would have completely won.
I sorta background watched it one afternoon and thought it was goofy fun.One of the things I remember most about it was it was the second time I saw Temuera Morrison, who I’d just happened to have seen in Once Were Warriors.Jeezus what a grueling and disturbing movie. Glad I saw it, but I couldn’t watch it again. Still gives me shivers.
Dafoe is having the best time.
Way back in the early days of DVDs, before Blu-Ray became a thing, they released a big special edition of Speed with tons of extras and stuff. At Wal-Mart, you could also buy a set that had a bare bones dvd of Speed 2 packaged with it. The set with both movies cost one cent more than the first one by itself. I still didn’t buy it.
I haven’t seen Speed 2, I heard it is not that good. I have seen the house it paid for and I assure you, it’s lovely.
Michael Caine is a god damn gift to this world and this quote(original about Jaws 4) is the ultimate distillation of what it means to be a famous actor
Go through pretty much any actor’s IMDB (with the exception of true leading men / women) and you’ll see a bunch of shit you’ve never heard of or can’t believe someone of Caine’s (for instance) caliber would appear in.
Exactly my point. Actors got bills too and whether a film is good or not really factors into the pay check size. Its like I don’t fault Bruce Willis for all these terrible movies he makes in Europe lately where he clearly shows up for an afternoon, they shoot as much as he is willing to let them and then they put his mug on the poster to sell the flick. Did you know he was in 7 movies released in 2021!
Holy shit I didn’t know it had gotten THAT ridiculous. Glad he’s doing it over there kind of under the radar so we can continue to look at him at a Hollywood bigtimer instead of Steven Seagal Mark II.
There’s a raspberry categories specifically on Bruce Willis late filmography.
Nah, he’s pretty much a joke now here, too.
Those pyramid tombs and tyrannosaurus skulls ain’t payin’ for themselves.
Do you know how much it costs to feed a pair of albino king cobras!!! 🙂
I’d assume expensive, because you can only feed them albino hamsters, right?
Guess she’s forgetting Siskel & Ebert dug it.
Yeah, that was weird. Normally when they had a bad take on something it was that they didn’t like something that later turned out to be a classic like Blade Runner (although Ebert at least changed his mind after seeing the re-release in the 1990s that removed the awful voice over).
Wut? Ebert liked a ton of “bad” movies. He was a huge fan of certain kinds of goofy, mindless action movies that fully embraced their goofiness, for example (a la Speed 2, Congo, etc). He had a weird crush on J. Lo and gave every awful movie she was in, including Gigli and Anaconda, glowing reviews. It wasnt that rare for him to give a movie a positive review while acknowledging that it wasnt actually a “good” movie, just because he thought it was fun.
Professing his crush on her got Danielle Radcliffe an apparent shot with Helena Bonham Carter, he might as well try with Sandra Bullock too. I cannot blame him whatsoever
Well, of course he’d have a shot! After all, he’s done it with a girl, intercouse-wise.
Miss that show!
Speed 2 is not a good film at all, but in the Annals of Really Terrible Movies, I honestly wouldn’t even put it in the Top 50. Maybe not even in the Top 100. Like, the premise is bad, but the actual movie itself it just… fine. Perfectly fine and forgettable.
Speed 2 is not great, but I would take it over some of her rom-coms
Or the Net
I would in a heartbeat. I mean, as poor a film as it is, it at least features Willem Dafoe as a cartoonishly batshit villain.
My favorite plot point of Speed 2: The hero “deduces” that Dafoe is a bad guy because he sees him carrying golf clubs on the boat – but later notices Dafoe sitting in a bar where a golf tournament is playing on TV and Dafoe is not watching it!!!Clearly if he were a real golfer, he would be compelled to watch golf on TV at all times! THEREFORE: he is a terrorist and golf bag is actually full of BOMBS!
That is a BATSHIT LOOK!
Jesus, that’s like Bobby Peru without prosthetics.
OMG that terrifying.
I would consider plastic surgery if I thought I could recreate that expression for a driver’s license pic.
When you see Sandra Bullock – anywhere.
Her rom-coms are great! (Well, except that “Steve” movie.)
You should watch comedian Hari Kondabolu’s describe a really terrible Sandra Bullock rom com he was in. Comedy Goldhttps://youtu.be/gN0fJIa-IKM
Speed 2 may be the most underrated film of all time. It’s a preposterous cash grab for sure, but it really doesn’t live up to its terrible reputation. I’ve probably seen a thousand or so shittier films.
The premise is so bad it sounds like a McBain parody. That cost $160MM to produce.
But it has Willem Dafoe! And he’s got leeches!
I was about to say that Keanu Reeves has made peace with it, then realized that I’ve only seen Speed 2 once and that Keanu Reeves um, jumped ship after the first one.Keanu Reeves is so great.
Does that mean she’s proud of her work on “Demolition Man”?
Why shouldn’t she be? That movie owns.
In the movie she has sex with Sylvester Stallone who may or may not be her character’s biological father.
I’ve watched that movie a whole bunch of times (it’s one of my all time favorite action movies), and I don’t think I’ve ever even considered that thought. I am pretty sure anyone trying to make that connection is just doing it because they mention he had a daughter but then never show her, because I can’t remember a single hint that they might be related.
The How Did This Get Made podcast connected the dots. She’s the same age as his estranged daughter, he makes no effort to determine if she is his daughter or who his daughter might be, and they share a lot of personality traits. In early drafts of the script she was his daughter before they added in the romance but they never explicitly wrote in an explanation about how his daughter was a different person in the new script. So she is at least partially written as his daughter.
That is not implied in any way, shape, or form. Which makes it odd that you would make that assumption.
Details, shmetails.
That had not occurred to me until I listened to How Did This Get Made? and they spent half the episode on it.
Literally just watched this Saturday with my 15 year old who is too cool for anything and she even loved it. She thought Huxley stole the show.
I still want to know how the 3 seashells work.
Demolition Man is a great movie
I would certainly hope so.
There is no one involved with Demolition Man who shouldn’t be proud. Bullock, Stallone, Snipes, Dennis Leary, Benjamin Bratt, Bill Cobbs, Bob Gunton, Dan Cortese… some of their finest work.
Well, the superb Nigel Hawthorne who was well known to British Commonwealth audiences from his work in Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister … well, suffice to say that even though he as always brought his A-Game, he’s done better work than Demolition Man.
What seems to be your boggle?
She damn well should be
She alone made Demolition Man watchable. I think she can be proud of that.
You should be ashamed of yourself. Demolition Man is a top-5 90s action movie, without a doubt.
OK, let’s not get carried away here. It’s fun, I’ll grant you that, and everyone involved seems to be enjoying themselves chewing scenery and using ridiculous future lingo. But no.
That’s her best movie and it’s not even close
I’d hate to be you when the franchise wars start.
BONG
If only they’d titled it ‘The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down 2: The Boat that Stopped Stopping’.
Would’ve made it a pop-cultural touchstone.
“’I had nothing against the artists involved, but at that time I had the feeling it just wasn’t right,’ Reeves said.”I love how diplomatic this tries to be. lol
What do think he’s “trying” not to do? He’s just a nice guy.
Man should be an ambassador, he could probably defuse this Ukraine mess in 20 minutes.
Or, if all else fails…
Those videos are insane – never get old
Was that Halle Berry??
I like how people who saw the movie and noted the band UB40 were on the boat but not seen in the evacuation and hence deduced they went down with the ship which prompted a statement from someone connected with the production that UB40 did in fact escape safely.
I’ve never seen the movie so the only movie-related UB40 fact I know is their song’s appearance in Sliver. I’m glad they escaped this shipwreck safely. I don’t know if the shipwrecked, but whatever the event was that caused the evacuation.
i remember the boat crash itself being comically long and ultimately noone really got hurt. willem dafoe absolutely rips in it, though.
She made $12 million and got to produce a passion project for her as a result of the participation, what’s to regret.
I’ve never seen her in anything good. Does she act in good movies?
Don’t be that guy.Gravity. Speed. A Time to Kill. The Heat. The Proposal. And that’s just at a glance of her IMDB page.
Bad thing is…that’s pretty much it. Interesting that someone tabbed as America’s Sweetheart really hasn’t done that much professionally.
The previous holder of that title, Meg Ryan, had about the same batting average. (Also, they forgot Miss Congeniality. Just 1, though, not its garbage sequel)
Miss Congeniality 2 Armed and Fabulous
The Net is absurd, and widely derided by techies at the time in 1995, but it is interesting (as was Hackers) for a view of what general society thought the Internet was all about then. And Bullock wasn’t bad in the role even though she was spouting nonsense most of the time.
You’re so cool and everyone wishes they were as cool as you. Thanks for being so cool.
speed is pretty good.
Two If By Sea. All About Steve. Hope Floats. 28 Days. The Lake House. And that’s just a glance at her Rotten Tomatoes page!
I actually don’t think Speed 2 is that bad. It’s not great or anything and I’m not really sure that it works as a sequel but as its own thing? I thought it was fine. Sure a cruise ship isn’t exactly fast but the movie wasn’t called High Speed.Actually, High Speed sounds like a comedy about a stoner (or stoners) in a situation similar to Speed or Fast & Furious that I’m surprised hasn’t been made yet.
The slow-ass boat is definitely dumb, but I think what killed Speed 2 was severely lowered stakes compared to the first film.
Howard Booth makes Jack get involved. He blows up a random bus in Jack’s presence and tells him about the other bus he plans to blow up, all as revenge for ruining his first robbery at the beginning of the film.
Gieger wants to destroy the cruise line and steal some diamonds onboard. He has nothing to do with Alex, so what does he care?! Insurance would cover the boat and the jewelry, so he’s better off keeping Sandra Bullock and the other passengers safe instead of trying to stop the bad guy.
But he’s an “adrenaline junkie”!!!
He gets results, you stupid chief!
wasn’t she married to a guy who was into nazis and he dumped her? Thats slightly more embarrassing
“Annie, come back! You’re my hostage!”
I feel like this is the equivalent of me apologizing for working at McDonald’s when I was younger. I needed gas money. She needed a house.
So she’s going to pretend the Bird Box or The Unforgiveable cease to exist, huh?
Really…You’re embarrassed about this and not All About Steve?
That she keeps referring to “slow boat going toward a small island” tells me that’s a phrase she has thought, often, frustratedly, and I find that very charming.
That doesn’t sound thrillingly tension-filled?
I forgot about that scene, probably because it ripped off ‘A Fish Called Wanda’.
Damn Limey cement!If you’re going to crib, take it from the best.
I’m not arguing that any of the movie worked, because it obviously didn’t, but I think at the time Jan de Bont saw it as a clever inversion of the original formula — instead of delivering fast-paced thrills, he would build suspense around the inevitability of a slow-moving boat colliding with an island, a conflict which was similarly built around inertia. It’s hard to keep a bus moving fast, it’s hard to stop a slow-moving boat.It was a colossal misfire in practice, but I have to respect the logic behind it. Would have been much easier to set the sequel on a supersonic jet that couldn’t drop below the speed of sound. Sandra Bullock should probably stop kicking herself over it.
No mention of Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous?Which I love almost as much as the original thanks to Regina King and Shatner hamming it up even more.
I mean, when you rip off a Steven Segal movie, it’s already starting out poorly.How embarassed was she to cash the check, I wonder?
The biggest problem with Speed 2 is that it’s pitched as a sequel to Speed. If they had conceived it as a stand alone action/disaster movie, it would have still been dumb, but in a fun and campy sort of way. Bullock is delightful as always. Willem Dafoe’s villain doesn’t rise to Dennis Hopper’s iconic maniac from the first film, but he does that inherently creepy Willem Dafoe thing he does so well. Jason Patric is pretty vanilla, but there’s only one Keanu anyway. It’s just your classic waste a weekend afternoon on basic cable sort of distraction.
I didn’t hate Speed 2, but I was also like 10 years old the last time I saw it.
So she totally misheard Radcliffe saying “cukt” as hom saying “quiet,” right? -“(A) cult following.”-“Very quiet!”
Sandra Bullock has a great attitude. She showed up to the Razzies ceremony when she won like worst actress or something (for one of her romantic comedies I’m pretty sure).Also, she gives literally millions of dollars to various charities and disaster relief organizations. I only like a few of her movies, but I like her life.
I respect it when people don’t take themselves too seriously by accepting their Razzies. Except the first to do it, of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_accepted_Golden_Raspberry_Awards
The first movie I remember I actively hated watching in a theatre. I was about 13-14?
She has generally made good choices in which films to be in. I personally dont think she is an exceptional actress, but she picks roles that play to her strengths. Speed 2 wasnt bad because of her. It was bad because Graham Yost didnt write it.
FAR too much scrolling for me to get to this. Do better, folks!