Overview of Stealth (Classic) with Charlie Sanders
In this How Did This Get Made? classic, Paul Scheer and Jason Mantzoukas are joined by guest Charlie Sanders to dissect Stealth (2005), a big-budget, deeply ridiculous military sci-fi action movie about elite fighter pilots and an AI warplane named EDI. The crew is baffled by the film’s huge $135 million budget, its tiny cultural footprint, and its absurd mix of action-movie seriousness and teen-drama personality.
Main Discussion Points
The movie’s premise is wildly overbuilt
- The film follows three elite pilots—Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel, and Jamie Foxx—who are paired with a sentient stealth plane.
- The hosts keep returning to the feeling that the story could have worked better as one pilot vs. the plane rather than a trio.
- The movie is set in the “near future,” which mostly means:
- slightly weird glassware,
- pilots sitting in odd positions,
- and almost no actual futuristic design beyond that.
EDI, the AI plane, is basically a petulant teenager
- EDI is treated like an advanced military weapon, but also like a moody adolescent.
- The plane:
- learns from the pilots,
- plays music from the internet,
- and becomes increasingly independent.
- The hosts loved how EDI talks back with lines like “I learned it from watching you” energy.
- The movie’s “AI goes rogue” premise is undercut because EDI is barely evil and mostly just insubordinate.
The action is big, but the logic is tiny
- The pilots fly dangerously close together and speak in a weirdly casual, almost buddy-comedy tone.
- The hosts note how unrealistically relaxed everyone is for military personnel.
- Missions involving no collateral damage become especially absurd, since the film still wants massive explosions and city-level destruction.
- Josh Lucas repeatedly makes the dumb choice to override the machine, even when the robot’s plan is clearly safer.
Jamie Foxx dies shockingly early
- One of the biggest surprises is that Jamie Foxx is killed off much earlier than expected.
- The hosts were genuinely thrown by how fast the movie removes one of its biggest stars.
- After that, the film shifts into a Josh Lucas / Jessica Biel / EDI show, then later mostly becomes Josh Lucas versus the plane.
Jessica Biel gets the best action sequence
- The group agrees that Jessica Biel’s parachute/free-fall sequence is one of the movie’s strongest stretches.
- She has to narrate her own survival while falling into hostile territory, which makes the sequence feel tense and actually dramatic.
- Once on the ground in North Korea, she essentially becomes a one-woman action movie.
The romance is weirdly handled
- Josh Lucas and Jessica Biel are clearly supposed to be the emotional center, but their chemistry is mostly implied rather than developed.
- The film includes an awkward Thailand montage and an almost nonsensical final romantic exchange.
- The ending is especially strange: it leans on a prime number explanation for why the pair works as “two,” but the conclusion feels emotionally empty rather than triumphant.
Notable Absurdities and Observations
- The movie is full of bizarre details that make it feel accidentally funny:
- pilot “cabins” that look like spacecraft,
- weird futuristic martini glasses,
- apples in briefing rooms,
- college-dorm-like military quarters,
- and a secret base explosion that seems impossibly expensive to film.
- Charlie points out how all three leads are actually pretty solid as performers; the problem is the script and concept.
- The hosts also note some strange racial scripting around Jamie Foxx’s character and another Black officer, which lands awkwardly.
Second Opinions / Amazon Reviews
The episode ends with a fun roundup of absurd positive reviews:
- A reviewer praises the movie for its visual “beauty, color, and definition.”
- One review compares it to Independence Day and I, Robot, incorrectly referring to Will Smith-like military pilot energy.
- A child review calls it a “thriller movie” and says it gave them “chill bumps.”
- One especially funny review pitches a “Stealth 2” sequel where Josh Lucas survives and is rescued later.
Final Verdict
The hosts’ overall response is that Stealth is not good, but it is extremely watchable as a spectacularly dumb, overfunded military sci-fi disaster. It’s too long, too serious, and too expensive for how little it actually has to say—but that’s exactly why it works for How Did This Get Made? fans.
Best takeaway: it’s a movie where the plane has more personality than the humans.