Least Important Things

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A Case for Ocean's Twelve

May 05, 2026 • Least Important Things • Season 4 • Episode 32

0:00 | 12:11

What happens when you give an auteur director and the biggest movie stars in the world an all-expenses-paid trip to Europe to create a bombastic sequel?

The often misunderstood Ocean’s Twelve.

In this essay episode, Luke Ferris makes a case for Ocean’s Twelve and the brilliance behind this often derided sequel.

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

What happens when you give an autour director and the biggest movie stars in the world in all expenses paid trip to Europe to make a bombastic sequel? The often misunderstood Oceans 12. Yes, today I'm making a case for Oceans 12 and the brilliance of this often derided sequel.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

What are we stealing?

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Welcome to a podcast called Least Important Things. I'm your host, Luke Ferris. This show is about movies, friendship, and finding meaning in the most important of the least important things. If this is your first time, welcome. This is a special episode. This is a fun, special episode because last week on the show we covered Oceans 11 in one of our rewatch episodes. I promised my colleagues Mike and Andy that we wouldn't do a full rewatch series of Oceans 11, Oceans 12, Oceans 13, Oceans 8, and the original Oceans. But something happened. Last week, as I was winding up the chords and transferring our files of our really fun Oceans 11 rewatch episode, which you should go listen to right now if you haven't, it was a delightful episode. But when I was packaging up the microphones and closing my laptop, I had this almost animalistic instinct to immediately pour a sniff of whiskey and fire up Ocean's 12. My instinct is to re-watch the entire series, but really after Oceans 11, I want to go right into Ocean's 12. I've been talking a lot about the Ocean series with my friends, friends of the show, you the listeners. And often, sadly, Ocean's 12 is looked upon as the worst of the series, even for fans of this quote-unquote franchise. But it really hurts deep down because I unapologetically love this movie. Honestly, I feel like the director Steven Soderbergh and I are the only ones who really understand the vision of this film. And I'm going to try to explain that to you. How does that happen? Well, some European thief called the Night Fox gives them up and sets up this cat and mouse game where they essentially have to prove their value in Europe head to head against the Night Fox. And the time is running now because Benedict only gives them two weeks until, well, he's gonna knock them off. Now, this plot may seem pretty standard for a sequel. We're just shifting these good-looking, amazing movie stars into a European setting, setting up a new foil with the Night Fox, but it goes deeper than that. And that's where I want to start with the complexity of this movie: doubling down on conning the audience. Now in Oceans 11, the audience is con to not really know what's going on with the final heist of the casinos. Oceans 12 ramps that up. More than half of the movie is our Oceans 11 conning not only the people that are involved, the Night Fox, but us. We're getting conned because we think our heroes, our heist heroes, to quote Basher, are in deep shit. However, spoiler alert, if you haven't watched Oceans 12, go watch it. What really is happening is that our Oceans 11 are trying to con the Night Fox because they have already solved the problem that they're in. They went straight to the source of who mentored the Night Fox and worked it out with him. Lamarck, the super thief, the bit the best thief in the world, who doesn't correct a US businessman when he says that Ocean's 11, the Bellagio jobs were the best jobs he's ever seen, the best thieves in the world. That started this whole thing out. But as an audience member, we don't know. We think things are going really bad for our team. Now, if you watch this movie once, you're probably very confused when they do the wrap-up. You're kind of like, I think I know what's going on, but typically people are confused. And that's why I think this movie's really fun to rewatch because it takes almost five, seven, eight, nine, ten rewatches to fully get what's happening. Every time I rewatch it, I find some new quirk because it's really just fun to watch our characters con most of the time. They're acting out of performance for the Night Fox because they don't want the Night Fox to know that they figured it all out. Are you following me?

SPEAKER_02 5:02

Okay, I don't even understand what happened in there. What did I say?

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Alright, let's move on to another aspect of this movie and why I think it's really special. It's an ode to European cinema. Director Steven Soderberg never makes the same movie twice. Look at his IMDB, look at his letterbox, you'll see a wide variety of movies. I mean, the closest comp to the Ocean's 11 series that he's made is probably Magic Mike, or most recently Black Bag. Because of this, it is obvious to me that Steven Soderberg took this sequel and said, I want to make an ode to Italian and French cinema, making something kind of wild, crazy, hard to follow. If you watch movies in the 70s from France or Italy, they're they're clunky to say the least. And I think there's intention in this movie, both from the style, the black and white, to the editing to the cinematography, it's all meant to capture the spirit of European cinema, new wave cinema. And if you don't have that context, I understand where some of the jarring moments in the movie, which we'll talk about later, are kind of confusing. But when you look at it from a lens, or if you've seen European movies from the 60s and 70s, you'll really understand and appreciate what Soderberg is doing. Besides that, obviously, when you have a sequel, you gotta ramp it up. So you gotta bring in new stars. And instead of bringing a big American star into this movie, Soderberg decided to bring in two amazing European stars with Vincent Cassel, one of the biggest French actors in the world of all time, and the great Catherine Zeta Jones, the Welsh superstar, who was a very important person in young Luke's life, The Mask of Zorro specifically. And speaking of stars, another aspect of this movie that I think pushes people away from it is the commentary on Hollywood stardom and the sequel. Now, the biggest black eye in this movie is the moment where Tess, character played by Julia Robert, comes to save the team by acting as Julia Roberts. There's a bit through the whole movie where Linus keeps saying, You ever notice that Tess looks like a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 7:10

Oh, don't ever ask that, ever. Seriously. Not to anyone, especially not to her. Wait, why not? Look. It's not in my nature to be mysterious. But I can't talk about it, and I can't talk about it why.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Ooh. I get it. It's weird. It's a out-of-body, ironic moment in the movie that can take you out of it. Seriously, especially when Bruce Willis shows up.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

Who am I supposed to be?

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Well. But if you look closely at this movie, they're commenting on this idea of stardom, both in the lines, the comedic moments. For example, when our team is on the train platform headed to Paris to do the real actual heist of this movie, getting the coronation egg. There's a lot of fun banter, but the one that always stands out to me, and what is really funny and what shows the irony that Soderberg is playing with is when they're commenting on George Clooney, aka Danny's age.

SPEAKER_02 8:18

Let me ask you. Let me ask you something. How old do you think I am?

SPEAKER_01 8:23

48.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

I think I'm 48 years old.

SPEAKER_00 8:30

52? All these moments really show to me that Soderberg is commenting on this idea that he was given the sequel. He has all these movie stars, but they're not going to take it seriously. I mentioned in our Oceans 11 episode that there was a lot of fun happening offset. This one, notoriously, people were hanging out at George's house on Lake Como, which is actually filmed in the movie. Uh the scenes with the Night Fox, that's George's house. People came over, people hung out. And I think everyone kind of viewed this with an irony, a healthy irony for movie stars to make fun of themselves and not take themselves too seriously, especially Julia Roberts to not take herself too seriously. I get why people don't like that part of the movie, but I love that there's a Hollywood movie like this that is so self-aware, almost like a scream movie or a comedy movie from the 70s, that they're willing to go there and willing to take a chance in a sequel. All these things wrapped up to me make this movie a lot of fun. But it's the lore that they create with the characters that continues on. And it's not just Rusty eating every time. It's not just the banter of the Malloy twins or Linus's mom coming to save the day. It's just these little tiny moments with the characters, improv or not, that I really love and what keeps me coming back. One of my favorite parts of the movie is when all of them get caught by Benedict. Essentially, it's the inverse of the recruitment scene in the first movie where Benedict goes around and gets everybody to say, Hey, you owe me my money. The group's together, and what's the first thing that they're doing? They're not worried about their lives, they're not worried about how much money they have to pay back Benedict. They're complaining because he uses the term Ocean's 11.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

I'm a private contractor. It was a collaboration that moniker is insulting.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Yeah, I mean, Danny, it was one job that we did together, so I don't know where this whole like proprietary stance comes from. It seems a little possessive.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

One could make the argument that because it was in fact Danny's idea, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

No, hang on a minute. We all had our own areas of expertise. I mean, without us, it don't leave your red, mate. It just hurts, you know, because it seemed like we all agreed to call it the Benedict Job. I mean, that's what we called it when we were doing it. If you wanted to call it something else all along, then when you have a problem, who do you go to? Russia.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

But it goes to show that these are all unique characters, they all stand alone, they all have moments, and this movie lets you go deep. It almost feels like a novelization. We get to understand more backstory and development of each of these characters. Now, all these reasons may seem like I'm stretching to defend a movie that came out almost 20 years ago, but I think it's really worth diving deep to re-watch this movie. I really think you're gonna get a lot out of it if you're a fan of the franchise or just a fan of movies. But when it comes down to it, I think what Steven Soderberg is doing here is that sometimes a movie objectively can just be beautiful. This movie looks beautiful, the people are beautiful, it's funny, it's in Europe. It is truly a fun, beautiful movie to watch. And sometimes beauty matters more than understanding the plot.patreon.com slash least important things. Social links, join us, comment, tell me why you do or don't like Oceans 12. I promise this will take a pause on the ocean stuff. Uh, but next week, more to come, and we'll talk to you soon on least important things.