Latest / The Kulturecast / Mickey 17 (2025) — "I messed with a lab frog. I just figured this all must be my punishment."

Transcript

Mickey 17 (2025) — "I messed with a lab frog. I just figured this all must be my punishment." · The Kulturecast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Weally we.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Hey, key, looky hey, thank you. I really save dying,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: but that I was expandable.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Every time you die, humanity moves forward. This Nike is.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: He's vee, I'm fine Tomorrow, Nikki seventeen only Theeter's March
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: seven ticket Sancil.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Now, Hello everyone, and welcome to the Culture Cast. I
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: am still your host, Christashue, much to the chagrin of some,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: and I am joined by my two good friends all
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: the way from where, well somewhere out there in radio land,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: uh Korean k pop historian Miranda, and also joining us
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: all the way from well, he's he's all the way
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: out there in God's Country, West Texas. Y'all, Doctor David D.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Pro Mutter the d is important.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: He's here too, Thank you, Chris.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: And I drug both of y'all kicking and screaming into this.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Not kicking, not screaming, but I mean it it. I'm
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: so excited to hear what doctor pearl Mutter has to say,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: just because he kind of buried the lead initially by saying,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I have thoughts. But I'm also I'm actually really excited because, uh, Miranda,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: the connection or you to this and us to this
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: film ostensibly was you had the idea to do Train
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: to Boussan, which then led to me going, oh, I
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: haven't seen Mickey seven, which seventeen based on Mickey seven,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: which is a Bong June Ho film, and he's I
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: would say for most Westerners, he's like, if you know
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: a Korean director, he's probably the only one I would assume,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: just based on the parasite of it all. So this
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: was kind of an idea of mine. So I apologize
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: in advance if neither of y'all liked the film. However,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: on this episode of the Culture Cast, we are talking
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: about Mickey seventeen, a film that came out last year,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: directed by Bong June Hoe and starring well, one of
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: my favorite actors, and I kid you not, I genuinely
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: find Robert Pattinson to be one of the most intriguing
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: actors I think who's working right now. Robert Pattinson plays him,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: I would say, plays himself, but he's kind of always
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: doing a riff on his general being. He plays Mickey
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Barnes and expendable, a man who goes to and essentially
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: dies every day or every couple days, or whenever they
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: need him to because he is inexpendable, which means they
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: can just reprint him. So he goes and does dangerous
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: jobs or becomes a lab rat, and it's the film
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: explores it in a holistic way that I think is
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: very interesting because it's not at all what I was expecting.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: But in a lot of ways that's a very good thing.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: But it is a sci fi comedy. Question Mark, I'm
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: very curious where y'all come in with the thoughts on
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: the film. But Miranda, I will kick it to you first,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: what did you think of Mickey seventeen? And also, because
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I assume we're close in age, thoughts on Robert Pattinson.
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: Well, I you would think it, but I actually was
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: not a huge Twilight fan when I was younger. So
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: my first introduction to him, and this is probably true
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: for most people, was Harry Potter.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Say, I assume a dream Boats. I agree. I just
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: thought it was going to be Harry Potter. I was
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: not alluding to Twilight.
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: I think his most famous role is probably Edward in
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: tri Twilight.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: I think isn't that unfortunate?
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: And he really he should be better known for his
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: perfect performance, has such a degree in the Harry Potter movies,
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: and he has come a long way since then. He's
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: famous now. He's famous enough now that he can take
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: on really any project he wants through name alone. And
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: he's one of those interesting characters that just seems to
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: enjoy being in movies for the sake of being in movies.
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: He doesn't seem to be a cloud o fame chaser.
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: He really enjoys what he does, and that has He's
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: been involved in some really interesting stuff, including Mickey seventeen,
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: which I had mixed feelings about. I obviously thought he
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: was fantastic. He was so solid the whole time, especially
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: with that sort of whiny. It wasn't irritating quite but
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: it was perfect for his character, who's extremely meek and
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: just absolutely trampled over the entire movie by everybody, with
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: the exception mostly of his girlfriend Nasha, including Mickey eighteen
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: the second or eighteenth I guess version of him, who
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: by a mistake a weird era in the system, which
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: I found to be both funny because just like in
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: the comedy part of the of the film, like ugh,
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: I don't know how to say this, but he like
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: a bureaucracy era like that happening feels very realistic, even
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: in sci fi advanced future like this where we want
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: to have the planets.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: I thought that was Terry Gilliam kind of Yeah, that.
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: Was definitely a layered element, very comedic element. But he
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: he's he's again great. Like when you have a character
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: that's playing two different people technically because their characterizations were
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: very different, he was. He was just absolutely melted into
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: each role. You could tell he was this cocky, super erratic,
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: chaotic person versus Mickey seventeen, who just he always had
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: like the hunt shoulders and the quavering voice and eyes
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: that like great animal eyes that were always looking around
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: nervously at the people around him. So yeah, he was
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: just probably the highlight of the home movie for me,
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: all right, Doctor Pearl mutter.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Well sort of similar to the comments I made about
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: The Witch, but maybe more intense.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Oh dear, oh dear. If you want to know what
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: he's talking about, go listen to that episode.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: We watched Robert Edgars The Witch, and I said, what
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: I'm going to say now is that when the screen
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: credits roll for Mickey seventeen, I believe almost everybody there
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: deserves a standing ovation. I was looking at the film
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: and I was going like, the step design is really good.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, the spaceship wasn't some really completely clever new
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: design of a spaceship that I'd never seen before. But
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: it looked like a lived in spaceship. It looked like, Okay,
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: this is what they would Probably it probably should have
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: been bigger if they were actually going to another planet
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: in setting up a colony, but like, it was well done,
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: and the costumes were well done, the weather and the
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: other planet, the creature effects. I mean, it's very, very hard,
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: after thousands of Star Trek episodes and thousands of movies
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: to come up with like an original alien or an
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: alien that actually feels alien in its culture and it's
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: sort of outlook. And I actually thought cgi Alien, whatever
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: they did looked good, and the psychology of the aliens
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: look good. I just one a couple of small things, like,
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: as Branda was pointing out, one of the conceits of
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: the film is that they can three D print a
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: human certain humans. There's a whole subplot about why only
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: certain humans and not others. But when you physically see
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: him being printed the first time out of this sort
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: of cat scan looking machine, I love the little touch
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: they have that he doesn't just come out like a
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: fresh sheet of paper from a laser printer. He comes
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: out like from a dot matrix printer that I'm old
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: enough to remember. Where he comes out just a little bit,
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: and then he has to go back and they have
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: to do a little bit more. I know that's actually
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: like three D printing today, where they have to like
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: go move, move back. But that was just a great
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: little touch, and so everything worked for me except the plot.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: Going back to Robert Pattinson Academy Award, I mean I
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: would have legitimately voted for him. He played two distinctive roles.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: He played.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: The toughest assignment for an actor is to play, for
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: a ninety percent of the movie a really irritating character
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: that you sort of want to feel sorry for, you
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: want to sympathize with and empathize with, but he's just
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: so meek and passive and accepts his fate that you
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: sort of like, go, okay, I guess they're just gonna
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: kill him again. He pulls that off, and then he
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: pulls off, by the way, very good special effects, pulling
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: off his not evil twin but his sort of decisive
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: like every quality we wish a hero had in a
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: movie twin who you know eventually gets revenge on the
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: bad guys.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: So just everything was.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: Great except I felt that this was trying to say
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: something to me that I felt was so simplistic that
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: it that maybe I missed the complicated, complex, nuanced message
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: of this movie because it felt like so much farce
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: and satire. And Tony Collette is one of the great
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: actresses of our lifetime. I am a huge fan of
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Tony Collette. Until this movie, I would have said there
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: is no role Tony Collette cannot pull off with magnificence
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: and glory. She was told to mug gear and she
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: is spending almost the entire movie pretending to be a
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: bad actress mugging in a high school play. I have
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: so many notes for the studio, but I will let
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: you instruct me both.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Thank you. I kind of I think where I come
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: at this movie obviously, is I mean, I'm not gonna
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: pretend like I don't like Robert Pattinson enough to see
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: everything that he's in because I don't like him that much.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: I like him a fair amount, but I unless unless
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: doctor Perlmutter, You're like I'd like to talk about the Odyssey.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: I will be skipping Matt film because it's just not
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: some for me. And so Robert Pattinson is an actor
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: I like a fair amount, But there are some things
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: where I'm like, Okay, I'm just not interested. This was
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: not one of those things. This was something that I
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: just kind of missed because the last two years of
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: my life have been hectic, to say the least, and
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: I haven't had time to just sit and watch movies,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: which has kind of changed in the last six to
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: seven months, so I'm able to just kind of sit
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: and get back into the swing of podcasting and doing things.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: And I had seen the preview for this movie. I
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: kind of didn't realize it was a comedy. I didn't
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: know what it was just based on the poster and
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: I didn't watch the preview for it until a couple
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: weeks ago, and that's when I was like, Oh, we
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: should you know, talk about this. So I didn't know
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: really what to expect tone wise with the movie going
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: into it. But I think for me and I am
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: in more agreement with you on this film, Doctor Promutter
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: than I think we were in terms of The Witch,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: which is this movie I think creates a really interesting world,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: and it creates a lot of really fun concepts that
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: could be moved further by someone else, or even Bong
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: June Hoe with another film, because Mickey seventeen is based
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: on a book called Mickey seven, which already has a
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: sequel book, and so the sequel book deals with what
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: is it like now for the guy who could just
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: die and come back to life to have to live
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: knowing he can't just die again and come back to life,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: which is interesting. This movie never even touches that, not
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: to the extent that it should, not to the extent
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: that to your point, doctor Pearl Mutter, it could actually
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: give a film that's fun. It could actually give the
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: film some substance, and it could give the film some
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: some punch and some weight. You know, Miranda, when you
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: were talking about kind of the bureaucratical farce of it
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: all with you know, like in Brazil we have the
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: moth getting into the machine, in this we have you know,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: it's just a clerical error. If you're gonna approach that
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: and go down that route, you really need to like
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: lean further into it and don't just have it be
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: the inciting incident because there's so much to I'm here
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: that they kind of just allude to and I honestly
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: don't understand. And this is and again, either one of
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: you step in and tell me he's completely out of
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: line here. The worst part of this movie is everything
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: to do with the aliens on the planet. It's not
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: remotely interesting the concepts that they've introduced in terms of
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: like the cloning and the expendables and what does that mean.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: And then they have this like whole cutaway kind of
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: exposition pause where they're talking about how did they figure
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: out and deal with the clones on Earth? It was
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: because there was a guy who was murdering people and
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: they couldn't figure out how he was doing it. It's
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: because he had created a clone of himself and was alive,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: and so they have now rules and things against multiples.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: That to me was the more interesting idea in this movie.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: And I don't, for the life of me understand why.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, the more interesting part is the
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: dialogue that they're having with the aliens on the planet.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Like that for me was the hitting the nail way
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: too hard on the head moment of the movie where
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: the Mark Ruffalo and the gas the aliens of it
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: all was just like, this is just it's gonna date
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: this movie. If this movie had come out thirty years ago,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: it'd probably be a different person or a different group
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: of people being parodied or you know, farsically taken down.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: But now that we're living in this time, and you
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: can see when this movie came out, parts of this
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: movie are going to date this movie unnecessarily, when the
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: parts of this movie that were interesting could have literally
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: had nothing to do with those characters, because those characters
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: are tied up in that plot more or less entirely.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Mark Ruffalo and Tony Collett are completely tied up in
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: the alien subplot more or less the entire movie. And
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: I found that to be, to your point, doctor Pearl
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Mutter kind of knock great and for me, Tony Collette
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: as an actress is amazing. United States are tara hereditary.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, and those are just two things
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: that are rather well known. I could continue, but there's
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: no point in continuing to list all the movies that
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: she's done that are great, because it's like pretty much
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: all of to your point, doctor pro Mutter, this is
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: the first time I've seen her in something where I'm like,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: I what a waste of a like what a waste
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: of Mark Ruffalo and Tony Collette frankly like, they don't
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: really give either one of them much to do other
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: than be really sloppily done caricatures in a way that
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: even an actor of Mark Ruffalo, who I love and
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite movies, Zodiac, even someone like him
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: and someone like Tony Collette can't elevate any of that. Now,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: all of that said, Robert Pattinson's amazing to your point, Miranda.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: He disappears into both of those roles in a way
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: that is not only impressive, but if you're an actor,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: you would want to watch this film if you're being
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: asked to do something similar to understand how to really
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: bring some nuance to a role like this, because he's
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: playing this two different characters, but there's nothing that differentiates
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: them visually until about the last third of the movie,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: and they get a lot of mileage out of that
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: in some respect, but they really feel like two distinct,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: unique characters, and it's because they are such strong characterizations
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: in both directions. Mickey seventeen is so kind of and
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: the term I would use is squirrely and Mickey eighteen
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: is really, like you said, doctor Promutter, He's kind of
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: everything you would want. He's very machiavellian, is what. It
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: kind of strikes me as like he just, you know,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: he understands what needs to happen and he's willing to
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: do it because that's what needs to happen, and sometimes
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: you need someone like that. And I mean, I think
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: the movie gets there in the end. I'm just not
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: sure that we needed like two and a half hours
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: to get to that point, because the movie's also a
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: litle long in the tooth for not really It's like
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: sitting down to play a board game that by the
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: end of it there's only like two scoring options as
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: opposed to four or five. It's like I spent two
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: and a half hours on a game that's only got
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: two scoring options. I really am disappointed by a movie
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: that spends a lot of time to say nothing or
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: think it says something. And this movie kind of, for me,
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: at its worst, is one of those kinds of movies.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: But at its best, it's really an opportunity for Robert
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Pattinson to flex a muscle that acting is hard. Acting
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: against yourself as another character feels like something that is
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: a task only someone who's either insane or terribly self
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: confident in their ability as an actor would do. Because
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: there I can tell you all of the bad body
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: swap or clone or acting opposite yourself movies that exist
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: out there, and boyd the bad ones outnumber the good
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: ones tenfold. So I think I come in kind of
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: maybe at the point of this movie's okay, But for me,
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Robert Pattinson, I think almost gets lost in the equation
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: by a movie that's kind of unnecessarily loud with a
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: subplot that's not super interesting.
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: I want to go back to something you said the beginning.
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: I have a lot of thoughts about and I mostly
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: agree with everything that you just said, that the creatures
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: being a kind of a necessary element when there was
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: so much more that could have been worked with that
• 16:57
  Speaker 4: was present in the story. I think about this before,
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: but they are. First of all, I hated that scene
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: where they were talking with the creatures. I thought that
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: that was just so I mean, even though it's the
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: future and it's science or whatever, I just was like,
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: I'm taken out of this sci fi story because I
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: don't believe they can just make something up that you
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: can communicate with this completely inhuman animal.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an oxygenian refrigerator. Yeah, I don't know, like
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: we can bree with classes that I can.
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: I can do this because I've got a lab coat.
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: So I hated that so much. I didn't necessarily mind
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: like having the creatures, but there was something about it
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: that bothered me. And then when you were mentioning that,
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: I realized it was because they're kind of a repetitive.
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: First of all, it's like a bunch of creatures and
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: they all represent one character. And it's kind of a
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: repetitive character because we already have a character who's vulnerable
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: and needs protection, which is Mickey seventeen. Like he's already
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: this you know, talked about before. He's just so oppressed
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: by everybody around him that we don't really need him
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: to save something else. He needs to save himself from
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: this system that's just using him without any respect for
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: his autonomy or safety or comfort. And again, it's almost
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: to this movie's detriment that it had Robert Pattinson in
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: it at all, because he's, as you said, she's sort
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: of wasted. I mean, you have somebody who's capable of
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: pulling this off. And while he did a wonderful job.
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: You can see maybe there was sort of some structure
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: that was meant to be in the plot about how
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: the machiavellian Mickey was supposed to teach him to stand
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: up for himself more and you know, teach him to
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: take control of his life. Ultimately, the Mickey seventeen that
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: exists at the beginning of the movie is no different
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: from the one at the end. He just has more
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: friends and they change the laws, and he just has
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: a really great girlfriend who's willing to defend him. But
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: he hasn't grown as a character. He just doesn't have
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: any arc, and they had a wonderful opportunity to do
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: that with a version it literally himself to show him
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: it's entirely possible for you to be stronger, both for
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: yourself and for the people around you. There could have
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: been a moment where like he had to save Nasha's
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: life or somebody else's or maybe you know, the ship
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: was in danger and he had to be the one
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: to do something, and then everyone it makes sense, everyone
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: turns around their opinion of him. But having Makavelian Mickey
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: sacrificed himself in that way, having him get to be
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: the one where he has this like this moment of
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: success and like really stealing what I think should have
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: been like Mickey seventeen's moment of being a hero, which
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: he never got. So I also his sacrifice was totally pointless.
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: He could have just killed Mark Ruffalo. He didn't have
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: to die, So I don't know why I was framed
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: as if he was giving up his life when he
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: was just doing the same thing that he'd done the
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: whole film, which is theoretic, right, So I said.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: They only needed to have one die, but we're just
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: gonna have two die just because anyways, because it because
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: well and I think it's one of those again, it's
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: very problematic of a film that resorts to tired tropes
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: these set you know, I'm in a position of sacrifice.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: Was like Mark Ruffalo is not even a physical threat
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: to Robert Pattinson. That's why they have that kind of
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: climax of the movie and the way that it does
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: where he just blows himself up. Because if they get
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: into a fistfight, it's like all those steven Sagall movies
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: that Doctor Peerlmutter and I love so much that feature
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: steven Sagall punching the final villain in the throat and
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: killing him in one hit. There's no fight, there, there's
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: no physical threat. There's no oh. I I totally believe
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: that this guy is a physical threat to Robert Pattinson,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: not remotely. And it's weird because because they really focus
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: on leaning into the creepers and these creatures on the planet,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: and you kind of alluded to it a little bit, Miranda,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: and I'm sure that this is probably ultimately what they wanted,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: which is this one voice representing the many returns to
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: the idea of Mickey seventeen kind of being a I
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: don't know what you would call it, but a kind
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: of homunculous of every other existence and experience that he's
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: ever had, which is an interesting idea because human beings,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: as if your introspective about yourself and are self aware,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: like we go through phases in our life and are
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: different versions of ourself, which doesn't literally you don't literally die,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: but if you get better in life and are caring
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: about yourself and taking care of yourself with your mental health,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: you can grow as a person and kill that version
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: of yourself as it were. And I think it's an
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: interesting way of looking at it. I don't know if
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: the movie's going for that or not. I'm not sure
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: it even approaches that in any meaningful way, but you
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: can tell that it wants to somewhat have that conversation,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: because at the end of the movie we get a
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: weird dream sequence cut away with Tony Kollett that and
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: I kids you not. When I went and read the
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Wikipedia synopsis just to refresh myself before we started the episode,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: it makes no sense. Even in a Wikipedia synopsis. It's
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: just like, what the hell are we? Why? Okay, when
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: did this become a horror movie all of a sudden?
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: With the fake out ending, It's it's so strange and unearned,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: but it's again, it's I think it's the movie kind
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: of attempting to punch through that wall of like we
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: have something to say here, there's some meaning or point
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: to all of this, and it doesn't get there. And
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: because it doesn't get there, it just it really stumbles
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: in a way that I wasn't expecting from a Bong
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: June Ho film. That's for sure.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: I think you've both made a case that there are,
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: by my account anyway, six or seven interesting movies that
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: have been like a weirdly shaped odd train, you know,
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: linked together, and any one of them might have been
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: something that made narrative sense. And let's just take this
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: one point about bodies, right. So I have seen in
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: the past the least favorite episode of the original Star
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Trek was when Captain Kirk goes to the transporter, and
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: that it's been replicated, I think on every Star Trek
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: series since then. And he split into two halves one
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: one one nature and one and another and there've been
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: versions of this and a lot of science fiction before
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: and after Star Trek. That was a really interesting episode.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: I think it was the New twilight Zone with Bruce
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Willis called shatter Day. Shatter Day, not Saturday, but shatter Day,
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: based on Stephen king short story work.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: You are. I covered that many years ago on an
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: episode of a show, Okay, shock Case, so I would
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: not have any reference for that.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: Otherwise, somebody splits into their themselves, but their character splits
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: in two and one has more tendencies of one thing
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: or another, And so that that was a really interesting
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: thing here is because we're not we're given a couple
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: of rules about the conscious of these mickeys, like, okay,
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: they have they have all these wires, which really looks
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: silly that in the future they can upload brains, but
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: like they don't have Wi Fi, you know, but anyway,
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: they they update people's memories. But I guess it's sort
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: of random. I mean, for sixteen seventeen Minnikkis, he basically
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: has the exact same temperament in character and like outlook
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: on everything, and then suddenly on eighteen he splits off
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: into the like like every deterministic, you know, strong will,
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: you know, refusing to take any terrible thing, all the
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: terrible things you just you know, rebellious streak suddenly appears
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: in eighteen and that's never explained, and it's okay not
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: to explain it.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: But it just again.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: Felt this whole movie felt like it wasn't a movie
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: as much as those marionettes on strings where people were
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: just you know, wiggled over to one spot, did something,
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: and wiggled over to another spot, and that was another.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Part of it.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: But then you said something else, Chris picking up also
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: on Miranda. Is that so with that, we could have
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: had this really interesting movie about you know, different versions
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: of yourself and how do you resolve that and do
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: you jump into some sort of consolation because we all
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: have different natures, you know, within ourselves. Alexander Sultzenitsan once said,
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: you know, if we could just only have evil people
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: and then we would know who the evil people are.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: But there's evil and good in everyone, which I mean, yeah,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: I think in some people there's one hundred and ninety
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: nine point nine percent of evil. But it's essentially true.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: And as you're alluding to, Chris, entire religions are based
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: on the idea of recycle, like you're reborn and you
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: get another chance to get it better, right, to be
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: a better person in the rebirth and the reborn. I
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: think that's an element in without the reincarnation. Part of
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: a lot of religions is you know, you you're supposed
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: to go through life and get better, not not get worse.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: So there's this really interesting world there, and then these
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: other plots the I mean, let's just face it, the
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: entire plot with Mark Ruffalo and Tony Collette didn't need to.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Be in the movie.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: It was another movie, a satire. I guess they thought
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: they were being super clever and making some you know,
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: devastatingly interesting point. The Aliens, although I liked them, as
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: aliens didn't need to be in this film, as Miranda
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: was saying, it's just irrelevant to the plot. It just
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: felt like, man, it's forty five minutes in and we've
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: been repeating ourselves, need a new subplot to be introduced.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Some of the minor characters as well, some of the
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: women on the spaceship, like they're introduced, they say something,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: and then, like a Steven Sagow movie, you never hear
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: from them ever again, except you know, in the coda
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: or something like that.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Just it really.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: Felt so splintered without a unified vision, which you'd think
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: you'd have with an Academy Award winning director getting to
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: write his own film, that you would have that unity
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: of purpose.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Which is a because for the most part with the
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Bong June Hoe films I've seen, they do feel that way.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Even something and I mentioned it when we talked on
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: the last episode the three of us did together on
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: the host. He directed that that movie is wildly interesting
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: as a kaiju movie essentially, but yet it goes interesting places,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: does interesting things, and again written and directed, I mean,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: he didn't write. He's not the only writing credit on it,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: but he's one of three snow Piercer. I would say similarly,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: is an interesting movie. Obviously, Parasite speaks for itself, and
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: I would say, if you've seen Oakja, it's interesting enough.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: I think Oakja is somehow more of an interesting movie
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: than this one is in terms of just not that
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: it's a bad or good movie, but it just kind
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: of sometimes you can go far afield with things and
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: bring it all back at the end. You can authors
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: do it all the time because the written word is
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: seemingly easier to do that in a way, and the
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: people that are really good at it. I guess when
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: you're writing, you're given a lot more space and you
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: can just create as much as you want because writing
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: costs effectively nothing. Creating a film costs a lot of money.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: And so this movie's long enough where to your point,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: doctor pearl Mutter, they could have done anything, and they
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: clearly kind of did. It's almost like they did too
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: much and didn't focus enough on just here are the
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: three ideas. Let's kind of figure out how we can
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: connect them in the center somehow and bring them together
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: as seemingly three disparate ideas that are unified at the end.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Let's see if we can do that, not let's cast
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: a net as wide as we can over like ten
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: different things. And there's Steve Ewan, Like, why is Steve
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Ewen in this movie? Jesus, I couldn't tell you, Like,
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: there's there's so much about this movie that when you
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: take a step back from other than the fact that
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: it has a lot of really good actors in it,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: they're just not given much to do. They And you
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: know Naomi Aki, who I love as well in everything
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: I've seen her, and she's actually for as bad as
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: that last Star Wars movie is that she's in. He's
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: not bad in it. I just again, they don't even
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: give her anything to do. She's just kind of bailing
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: out Mickey at every chance. And it's so odd to
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: me because again, this is essentially a character piece, at
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: least it's supposed to be. When you have an actor
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: playing two roles, I don't know what the expectation is
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: going to be. Otherwise, they have Robert Pattinson showing up,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: but I don't think the script shows up for him.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: And it's such a bummer because I don't know the
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: next time you're gonna get Robert Pattinson and Tony Collett
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: and Mark Ruffalo on the screen together, and the fact
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: that we have this scene with them towards the end
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: of the movie that again, it's interesting, but everybody is
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: just they're all coming in it from coming into it
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: from a different movie tonally, and especially Mark Ruffalo and
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Tony Collette. When they're in scenes with Mark Ruffalo or
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: with Robert Pattinson, it's jarring in a way that I
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: feel like Bong June Hoo is like see see, like
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: I'm keeping the audience on their toes and I'm just like,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: you know, to what end a are you doing that?
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: And is it successful? For me? It's not successful. Going
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: and looking at the reviews of the film and the
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: kind of critical feedback, the film was rather well received,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: but there were people that felt similarly to myself that
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: the movie's just kind of all over the place because
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: it is. And I also again don't really vibe with
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Mark Ruffalo's character because and you mentioned it, doctor Pearlmutter
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: with twilight Zone, and I'm going to talk about the
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: most recent iteration of the twilight Zone. Most recent iteration
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: of the twilight Zone had and I kid you not
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: an episode where a child Jacob Tremblay. As a it
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: would have been like, maybe mid teens is elected President
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: of the United States. Get it. Get it? Everybody like,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: oh my God, like it. I as someone who grew
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: up on Star Trek and Twilight Zone, the original series
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: of Star Trek and the original Twilight Zone and then
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: the twentyand Twilight Zone, those sci fi kind of I
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: would say franchises or intellectual properties are so important even
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: now because Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry knew how to craft.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: For the most part. I'm not gonna say Rod Serling
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: always knew what he was doing anymore than Roddenberry did.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: But they understood the idea of human nature being timeless,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: and that will carry through a story all the way
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: to the end, because human beings are never gonna change.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Human beings are always going to be greedy and spiteful
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: and mean. But like you said, doctor Perlmutter, are also
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: kind and gracious and amazing and empathetic, and so that dichotomy,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: the back and forth is important to have in any
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: good drama, black comedy. In this film's probably self professed case,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: I just don't think that this film hits the highs
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: that it thinks it's hitting, but it definitely hits the
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: lows that it's trying to avoid.
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: I would definitely say that Bonchinho has a track record
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: of this snow Piercer. I mean, you can kind of
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: see elements of this in like previous movies, Snow Piercer,
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: which was a decent film, definitely better than Nicky seventeen,
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: but still similarly too much analogy and not enough plot,
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: too much open endedness and not enough groundedness. Parasite is
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: obviously the perfect balance of the two and where it's
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: subtle and where it has both like physical and verbal
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: and sort of cues that you can pick up on
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: both in your first watch, and then there are things
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: that you can notice rewatching the film over and over.
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: There's nothing that you could take away from Mackey seventeen
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: that you didn't see the first time, except perhaps more
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: just exhausted at having to watch more fast performance again.
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: And you know, he did a wonderful job, but it
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: was it was very exhausting, So there was just there
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: was absolutely no it felt like there was no restraint
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: from Bong Juneo, which he has had in past, like Mother,
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: which I actually didn't know when I watched it that
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: he directed it. It's a beautifully quiet film, and it
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: proves that he's fully capable of good twins, which I'm
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: not gonna spoil it because that's not the movie that
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: we're talking about, but it's it's very funny to me
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: with the history that he has of both probably indications
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: of his not so great Some of his instincts are
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: obviously very excellent, as proven by some of the past
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: decisions that he's made, but I feel none of none
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: of the ones that made one Oh my god, let
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: me start over.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry for no, no, no, do not apologize it? Yeah?
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Do you want apologize? Nothing to apologize.
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: Ju and Hoe obviously has wonderful instincts for creating subtle
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: allusions to class distinctions or whatever else he's criticizing in
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: the film. It's from what I've seen, he's very critical
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: of wealth disparity, and that's that's element in this movie
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: as well. But I feel for some reason that he
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: just he was uninhibited in this film, possibly because of
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: his past success and none of the subtle tea that
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: made his other movies like Mother or Snow Piercer or
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: Parasite so excellent and well balanced with all the metaphorical
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: stuff made it into this movie, and that's in mostly
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: why it's just such a it's such a difficult watch
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: for two whole hours of this justsconstant barrage of him
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: smacking you in the face.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: It is two and a half hours of a bit much.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let me pick up on something, Chris, just on
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: Miranda's point there about subtlety, and I'm a big fan
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: of that. If you have a message that an old
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: studio mogul made the famous comment like, if if you
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: want a message, call Western Union. I think I need
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: to explain that to people who are half my age.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: That Western Union was a company that sent something called
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: a telegram, which was a way of sending messages on
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: a piece of paper. That the guy with a bicycle
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: would come to your house because you've got a telegram saying,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: you know, you have been drafted into the US Army.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: But if you're going to have a message in a movie,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: that's that's fine. Kasablanca, one of the great films ever made,
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: has a strong message about America, especially nineteen forty two,
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: facing a global crisis and coming together to fight evil.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, it had a message and but it told
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: that message in a clever way, with a beautiful plot
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: that carried you along. Here, I felt really like I
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: was paying more attention than the filmmakers. Let me just
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: give you one example. Okay, so for a good deal
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: of the film, and I didn't clock it, but let's
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: just say for me, for about half of the film,
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: everybody on the entire Space Expedition there, the Colonial Expedition. Everybody,
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: with a few exceptions, I guess Nasha and a couple
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: of the other women characters were despicable. There was a
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: young lab tech woman lab Tech, who was sort of
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: feeling guilty about treating Mickey so badly, and she tried
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: to help a couple of times. But basically, out of
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: a couple hundred people there, including Steven EU and his friend,
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: there treat Mickey horribly. They torture him. These are worse
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: than These are the Nazi doctors. These are the Japanese
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: unit seven eighty one, you know, that performed medical experiments
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: on Chinese prisoners and civilians. I mean it just these
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: are the worst humans in the history of the world
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: equivalent for the first half of the movie, and nobody
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: is stopping this. Nobody is saying huh. You know, Mickey
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: is a human, maybe we shouldn't be torturing him like that.
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: And then the movie ends with like a happy ending
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: out of some like nineteen seventies rom com or something
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: like that, where almost everybody lives, including the faction that
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: was supporting the allegedly you know, horrible leaders still there
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: and they're still voting in the parliament, you know, at
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: the end there, right, So like it would be like
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: a movie like, Okay, we have a spaceship and ninety
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: percent of the people in the spaceship are nineteen forty
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: three Nazis. But then when they get to the other planet,
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: you know, everything sort of works out and let's all
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: live together and forget about the past and move on.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: And I'm going on, wait a minute, you forgot. It's
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: like somebody forgot to remind them the characterization that they
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: had established. And on the new planet, I guess you know,
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: they're just going to have you know, the Fourth Reich
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: or something like that. Whatever. It just showed, and Miranda's
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: word was correct. You said the same thing, Chris, is
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: like a lack of restraint, the lack of any sense
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: of like does this make sense? Should this be in
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: the movie. Was there were there producers who wrote notes
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: and memos.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: I just felt that I was watching seven or eight
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: movies and they just said, Okay, we'll keep it all.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: You know, no editing.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: You mentioned seventies films, and I think it's very funny,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Doctor Perlmutter. Do you remember many moons ago? One might
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: even say in a previous lifetime. One of the films
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: that you and I talked about very early on was
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: Soilent Green. Yes, this movie wishes it was Soilent Green.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: It wishes it had something to say the way Soilent
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Green did about disposable humans in sight and what does
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: that mean in a sci fi world? And that movie,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: for so many people is only remembered for the twist
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: at the end. But there's so much that that movie
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: has to say, so much even now about class disparity,
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: about income inequality, and the way human beings will turn
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: on one another when you know, when push comes to shove.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: This movie again wishes it had the nuance that something
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: like a Soilent Green did. And it's such a bummer
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: for me because, again, Miranda, you mentioned a lot of
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Bong June whole films that are very good that he
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: worked on and directed or wrote and directed. For the
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: most part, up until Parasite and Mickey seventeen, he had
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: released a film every couple years. He waited six years
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: between Parasite and Mickey seventeen, and I know that there
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: was a pandemic in there, But boy, what a lackluster
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: next entry as a director after you win the Academy
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Award to have this be the movie that you release
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: comparatively to Parasite. Obviously, this movie is no Parasite, but
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: even comparatively to something that I think this movie would
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: like to be compared to, like a Soylent Green, this
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: movie is not even In that same conversation, I would say,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: if you want to watch a movie that features action,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: sort of more action than this, with an actor who
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: keeps dying and keeps getting brought back to life, maybe
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: the mechanism through which that happens is not the same.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: But Edge of Tomorrow is a pretty good movie featuring
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: Tom Cruise where he dies and comes back to life
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of times. And that movie's amazing, and
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: it lives up to what this movie in some ways
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: kind of hopes to be which is having something to
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: say about the human condition when the human condition looks
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: nothing like what someone like anyone of us would recognize,
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: but something so drastically different that you have to come
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: to terms with it while it's happening to you. And
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: that's a lot of what this movie kind of should
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: have leaned into, is like you both alluded to what
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: does this actually mean for someone that this is happening to?
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: And I like that there's vo in this movie. I
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: like that we get voiceover throughout. I think that saves
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: some of the movies kind of falling even flatter for me,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: because we do get to see inside the mind of
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: Mickey seventeen. But frankly they don't do enough with it. Again,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: there's you know, if you want to talk about movies
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: with cloning or disposable humans, I would say look no
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: further than two thousand and nine's Moon, which features Sam
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: Rockwell on a space station as a lonely worker who
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: is doesn't understand what's going on with him, and he
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: may be a clone or a disposable human. Those movies,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: both of those movies, Edge Tomorrow and Moon are much better,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: more interesting movies, and essentially have the same conversation that
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: this movie's attempting to have, but it almost feels I
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: wouldn't say ADHD, but as someone who has adult ADHD,
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: I think there's no better explanation than just it can't
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: decide on what to focus on, and so instead of
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: focusing on one or two things that focuses on, it
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: splits his focus among five things, and in doing that,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: it doesn't do any of them very well. And look,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: Robert Pattinson's not gonna be this, I don't know, profitable.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: He's been profitable for a very long time, so it
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: might be bad to say like he won't be this
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: profitable forever. But I would love to have seen a
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: better movie with Robert Pattinson in it, because he's not
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: gonna get his prime years every director he's working with it.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know if he's ever gonna work with Bung
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: Juneo again. But this is neither one of their best efforts.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: Even if it's a pretty good effort from Robert Pattinson overall,
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: I still don't think that this is one where I'd
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: be like, you want to hear what I think Robert
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Pattinson's best role is. It would this would not I
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: don't think this would be even in the top five
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: for me for Robert Pattinson's roles. And I I think
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: it's trying to kind of be angled as something worth,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: like you said, doctor Pearl Mutter, really looking at more critically,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: and I think it's I think it's a good performance.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: I just don't think it's one of his best performances
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: because it just a lot of his best performances actually
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: have something to say at the end of it, like
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: he actually gets somewhere. Like you said, Miranda, his character
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: has an arc, and in this movie, his character has
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: no arc. And if you're gonna make me sit for
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: two and a half hours in your movie, please give
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: the character some growth by the end of it, unless
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: that's the point. But even if they were attempting for
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: that to be the point, they didn't earn it in
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: this movie at all.
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: One of the things that they muddeled was couldn't really
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: tell if they were criticizing cruelty towards humans and dismissiveness
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: of human life for advancement or cruelty towards animals. And
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: I think there's evidence for both, but you should really
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: just pick one. And the scene where they're in prison.
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: They look as if they're supposed to be modeled after
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: Kennel's look as if they're they're in dog cages and
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: they're really cramped, and it's such a small area that
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: that just really struck me when I saw that. And
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: then Toni Collette's treatment for of the little alien baby,
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: for her sauces, that was just so callous, but callous
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: in kind of a again in over the Top what
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: you talked about her mugging doctor Palmutter, and she was,
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: especially in those latter scenes, really over emphasizing how little
• 43:29
  Speaker 4: she cared about anything other than her sauces and her
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: her husband's political career. I also want to note that
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: the characters themselves, as you said, doctor Palmuter, they they're
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: not really consistent. I think Mark Ruffalo and Toni Collette
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: are the best examples of that, because in the beginning,
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: it seems as if she's kind of she has the reins,
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: she's sort of guiding him in a certain direction, and
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: he's just kind of an accomplice. But then at the
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: end he becomes this bombastically evil he's basically a super
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: villain because he wants to wipe out an entire species
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: and she's she doesn't really have any part in it.
• 44:05
  Speaker 4: She's just sitting back at the space station, so don't.
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: I'm curious why they had her be so seeming manipulative
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: and in the beginning and telling him what to say
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: and prompting him to act in a certain way, if
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: that was not going to matter at the end, If
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: she I sort of thought they were going to reveal
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: she's the true villain all along, which wouldn't have been
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: super novel. That would have been more interesting than what
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: we ended up with, would have been at least some
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: semblance of some kind of fun twist.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: It's shockingly straightforward, I would say, is the other thing,
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: like to your point, just now, Miranda, like the film
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: that we're talking about, there are no twists. There's not
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: any grand revelation like I was expecting there to be
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: some sort of revelation about what the creepers were in
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: relation to everything that's going on, and there's something else
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: more going on here. It's like no, it's just it's
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: not even explained. It's just like in a kind of
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: laugh out loud moment where they're like, and it turns
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: out the aliens can bluff too, and it's like, okay,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: who cares good? Lord like it? It's not interesting. And
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: again to have aliens that are just kind of I
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: can't help they're standing in for something, or if they're
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: just again, this was in the book, so we have
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: to put it in the movie and make room for it.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: Which look you mentioned Stephen King, Doctor Perlmutter, Stephen King,
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: one of his most famous adaptations is nothing like the book.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: The Shining is nothing like the book. You don't have
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: to make a movie and Hugh directly to the book.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: One of my favorite movies, Annihilation is nothing like the
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: book whatsoever. The book's amazing, the film's amazing. They can
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: both exist simultaneously. It's not a mutually exclusive equation here
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: that I can't like the book Jurassic Park and the
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: movie at the same time, like they're both good for
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: different reason. This I just can't imagine other than it
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: being like, well, this was in the book, and we
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: have to put what's in the book in the movie. No,
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: you don't like you can just go in a different
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: direction completely and take Robert Pattinson's character and go down
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: an interesting lane of a certain kind of conversation you
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: want to have about cloning or human decency or what
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: autonomy does someone have who's looked at as lesser than
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: a human even though they are a human only because
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: of the splitting of the consciousness, Like you could have
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: gone down any of these roads. God, Minority Report does
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: more of this, and that movie's not even about cloning.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: That movie's not even about disposable humans. But it gets
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: to the idea of like what is are as humans
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: kind of responsibility to take care of one another in
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: the kind of grand scheme of things, and using a
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: sci fi kind of trope to answer that question. Everything
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: that they introduced is so much more interesting than the
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: path that they decided to go down. It's almost like
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: you're sitting at a D and D table with a
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: very unprepared DM who's like, I've just had like ten ideas,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: no unified one. Someone's got to throw it all on
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: the table and if you guys fumble your way through it,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: it'll be fine. It's like no, I mean, yeah, I guess,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: and someone will probably be having a good time. But
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: I don't represent the people that had a good time
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: with this, because at the end of the day, like
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: you said, Miranda Bong Juno is such a better director
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: than this, and he's such a better writer than this.
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: And if you're gonna adapt somebody's stuff, go wild. You
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: have free reign unless they somehow have creative control, which
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: for the most part, when a writer sells their script
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: or their book to Hollywood, they often don't get to
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: also adapt it. They're often just cast to the wayside
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: and someone else comes in to do it unless they can,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: unless they can prove that they can do it, And
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: there are plenty of writers that can. But there are
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: also plenty of things that are just adapted by the
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: people directing them, or by the person directing them and
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: the person who wrote it in something like Goodfella's case.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: So again there's no need to like hew close to
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: the source material, cause I don't even think anyone's like, well,
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: I'm going to see Mickey seventeen because I love Mickey seven.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: It's my favorite book. Like I don't know, I just
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: I know what people were there for, and it was
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: for Robert Pattinson. It's a Bong June Hoe film, So
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: make that movie. Don't adapt the book. Make Bong June
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: Hoe sci fi film with Robert Pattinson in it, and
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: have the cloning be the inciting incident and then take
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: it in some interesting direction. Don't make a movie based
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: on a book that clearly the ideas that they introduced
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: in the book are Maybe they work better on the page.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: Maybe this is like a No Country for Old Men
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: situation where the ending of that book works so much
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: better in the book than it ever did in the movie.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: But I can't imagine that that's the case. But it's
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: just one of these things where I struggle with the
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: mainstream critical response to this movie being so overwhelming, because
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: rarely am I directly at odds with mainstream critics, but
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: this is one of those things where I'm like, I
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: looked at the reviews and with like people people praised
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: Mark Ruffalo's performance, I'm like, okay, all right, well I'm
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: at it.
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: No.
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: I first of all, I think we are in the
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: right side of history here. I mean the film, the
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: film flopped. I mean the film made about its budget,
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: which you know, in Hollywood you have to make like
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: two and a half times its budgets at least, And
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: that doesn't necessarily mean anything, but I mean, great.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: That's when Warner Brothers is producing your movie.
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: Great films. There have been very high quality films that
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: didn't find an audience. But this was meant to be
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: a big budget science fiction film and meant to be successful.
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: This was not an art house movie on a budget
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: of you know, one million or something like that. They
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: spent seventy or eighty million.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: It only made.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: About one hundred or something like that. This is where
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: the critical reception is problematic, maybe because the three of
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: us are independent in the sense that like we're not
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: beholden to some you know, vast publishing empire, or we
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: are not invited. I personally have never been invited to
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: a premiere like I was not invited to the premiere
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: of this movie. I don't know anyone in the movie.
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: You know, Mark Ruffalo doesn't invite me over for coffee
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: and not any more any pickleball like he does for you, Chris.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: Well, after hearing this episode, he definitely is not He's
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: definitely not taking you off his list anytime soon, doctor Promnich.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: He's a good actor.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: I just felt he was acting.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: And in any case, let's talk about the villain here,
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: because again I want to make a case that like
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: ninety percent of the people on this spaceship, on this
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: colony ship were villains in different kinds that the lead
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: scientist like the other seventeen scientists, except again for that
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: young woman who showed some sympathy. But you know, having
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: a sympathetic concentration camp doctor who still goes through with
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: all the horrible experiments that I don't think you win
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: extra points in front of the Nuremberg Tribunal for like, well,
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: you know, I felt bad doing that to those people.
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: So this villain here, first of all, just all over
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: the place. I mean, they throw in some white supremacist lines,
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: which I don't think has anything to do with his
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: lust for power. In fact, if he was lusting for power,
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: you'd want to appeal to everybody if he wants to
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: be king of the new planet, you know, especially when
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: you've got a diverse crew. I didn't understand that. Going
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: back to another franchise, The Hunger Games, which I've seen
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: four of whatever twenty movies they've made. But there are
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: empires which act stupidly in science fiction and fantasy, where
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: you go like, you know that empire wouldn't last that long.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: You know that kingdom, that tyranny wouldn't last that long.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: In real life, they're not just very clever about being rulers,
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: and you don't understand how his character there bred fanatical
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: loyalty in these people. You don't understand he says things, which, again,
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: if I were his advisor, his pr advisor, I'd go, no,
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: don't say that. You know it just it seems like
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: it was so ridiculously broadly drawn a villain that it
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: takes away from villainy, right, I mean, okay, let's talk
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: about a famous movie, the Charlie Chaplin The Great Dictator,
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: where he was playing a great dictator and through farce,
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: he wanted to make fun of an evil person who
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: was trying to rule the world at the time he.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: Was making the movie.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: This was wildly ineffective political satire and wildly distracting farce,
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: so that I really just wonder did they have a
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: conversation and say, you know, Mark, I'm going to cut
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: out some lines of your script here. I'm going to
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: rewrite something here. This just isn't working. And I was
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: thinking about the problem of movies as opposed to plays.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: You know, in plays, you have a situation where you
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: write a new play and somebody wants to produce it
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: in Lubbock to try it out. Right, and you do
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: fifty performances in Lubbock and the audience is there and
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: you get a sense of what, like what lines work
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: and what don't work, and then eventually you moved to
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: broad Way, I mean the traditional formula, and you go like, okay, well,
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: at least we've worked out the kinks. And that's what's
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: supposed to happen in movies in the shooting process, especially
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: with digital now, and in the editing process, and it
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: just just feels like they just didn't work out any
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: of the obvious kinks.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: And again, I'm not to the question you pose, I'm
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: not even sure that they are kinks. I think that
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: you know, if you look at what Bung Juneo said
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: about Mark Ruffalo's character, he said it was not not
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: based on any specific individual, but quote a mix of
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: many different politicians and dictators that we have seen throughout history.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: It's going to date this film in a way that
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: only something like this can.
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: I did see Genghis Khan in him.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: Yes, he's absolutely right, right right, his god given name
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: is Chingis Khan. Actually, get it right, doctor Pelboter, Come on,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: But to your point, like it's it's very I think
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: it's very juvenile even in this day and age, to
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: be like it's not based on any one person. It's like, well,
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: if you have Mark Ruffalo playing this character at this
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: point in time, in this area of the world, localized
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: entirely in this movie, he's gonna lean into a specific thing,
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: because that's just that's of the time. You're dating this
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: movie and making it something that will be if it's
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: not successful. Now, which to your point, doctor pearl Mutter,
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: the movie the movie barely made back its budget. I'd
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: like to ask, why do we keep making these really expensive,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: effectively art house movies and then being surprised when they flop?
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: Like The Bride. That movie was awful, really awful. I
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: went and saw it in theaters. I contributed to the
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: twenty four million dollars the film made. That film cost
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: one hundred million dollars. I went and saw Back Rooms
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: two weekends ago. That movie cost ten million dollars and
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: it made like two hundred million. I don't understand why
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: we're wasting our time anymore by backing dump trucks full
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: of money up to people and asking them to try
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: and do something interesting with it. When it's not the
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: money that's the problem. It's the creativity behind it, this
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: whole like I'm scared of AI. AI is scaring us,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: and AI is gonna take our jobs. You know, AI
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: doesn't really mean if you don't use AI, it doesn't
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: mean you're gonna know how to write a script. Even
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: Bong June Hoe stumbled and fumbled through this one, and
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know if he was using AI. Let's say
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: for the sake of argument, he didn't, which I would
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: assume he didn't. This movie's not great. What are we
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: gonna chalk that up to? Whose fault is that? Okay, well,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: it wasn't a very good script. Okay, that has nothing
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: to do with anything other than a not great movie.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: You can't chalk this movie's failure up to anything exterior
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: to it, or men don't like women, like with something
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: like The Bride, where it's like it's a female freaking
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: Stein movie, like I won't go see that, Like, oh Jesus,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: there's none of that even with this movie. This movie
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: just bomb because it's not a great movie. This is
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: not a Blade Runner situation where time will be kind
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: to this film and ten years from now will be
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: having a four hour documentary about Mickey seventeen. No, I
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: think that this would be a movie that maybe fifteen
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: years from now, there'll be someone who looks like someone
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: like me, talking like someone like me, who's like, hey,
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: we're talking about this Robert Pattinson film that no one
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: watched twenty years ago. Like, Okay, that's probably where this
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: movie stays. Because to your point, doctor pearl Mutter, when
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: the movie has so many ideas that it could have
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: gone with, like hey, these people are all Nazis. No,
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: they're all just under the Cruciatis curse. Like that's what
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: the movie ends up going with. At the end, it's like,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: but there's still the good people now, Like no, no, no,
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: we don't get to just whitewash that and ignore it.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: Like that's part of this whole theme of the movie
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: is the complete dehumanization of humanity in Mickey seventeen. I
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: just I'm sorry, Like I'm so disappointed by this movie.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: I almost feel like I have to apologize for the
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: three of us watching it. But then I remember I
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: didn't make it, so it's technically not my fault. But
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: I will vouch for the fact that Robert Pattinson, I think,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: for the most part and Bong Juneoe both have relatively
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: successful enough track records that it's more surprising to me
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: that this movie is not successful than the fact that
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: it's a failure for me. Sidi.
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: Anyways, everything that we talked about so far, all of
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: the problems that we've pointed out are in the plot.
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: It's really incredible how that was really the only consistent
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: issue with the movie. Everything else, as we discussed at
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: the beginning, and doctor pomo To pointed out the cinematography.
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: The music was unimpressive, but technically okay. It certainly wasn't obtrusive.
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: The acting was fantastic within the confines of the script
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: as much as possible. Really, I mean, Tony Colette, she
• 57:28
  Speaker 4: really was struggling at the end, and I don't blame her.
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: I just I don't even think Noel Streep could make
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: do with some of the lines that she had in
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: that strange dream sequence. The sound production was very good.
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: I did notice. I don't know if this was just me,
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: but I noticed some moments in the latter half of
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: the movie where a character would be speaking to another
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: character and you're seeing their reaction and the audio sounds odd,
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: like the voice sounds slightly muffled. Did anybody else notice that?
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was not just you. I was wondering, like what,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it was like a intense choice
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: or just a odd choice. I would say the music
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: in this movie similarly, was kind of an odd choice,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: didn't you? Miranda love K drama music in this sci
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: fi film? There were some like K drama takeaways where
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: I was like, what is what is happening here? Like
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: who's designing the sound? And like the production of the
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: audio for this film? Like what are we doing here?
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: This is so straight?
• 58:22
  Speaker 4: I actually appreciated it kind of as a distraction. It's
• 58:25
  Speaker 4: kind of oh, that's interesting, you know, and I thought
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: less about what's happening in the scene.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: So valid, that's valid.
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I actually I did. I enjoyed the music, and
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: I thought it was it was no K choice, especially
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: if you know they were I didn't really notice any
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: like K drama asque.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: It was towards the edgwar like this very like melancholy
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: stuff towards the end where I was like, this is
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: it's just it was weird because this is it's a
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: Bong June whole film. But if I were to ask
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: you Miranda, Like, if you watch this movie and I
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: would ask you, like, who directed this film, would you
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: say it's Is there's anything about it that's distinctly long
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: June Ho, I don't especially.
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: Compared especially compared to the thing that everybody remembers him
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: for is parasite, right, And then sometimes people bring up
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: snow Piercer with a host or mother, probably more recently
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: oak Jah. I don't know even if, even if you
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: had somebody who was a mega fan of Bonng June Hoe,
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: that they would be able to identify him as the
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: director of this movie. It was just such a departure
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: from everything that I've seen him do before. It's very odd.
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: I thought it, and I'm wondering if this, if this
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: was entirely his brainchild. And maybe that's.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: Why in ways Vanity Peace type things.
• 59:33
  Speaker 4: Yes, he you know, it's this is his prequel Star
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: Wars prequel series. He's George Lucas and nobody can say
• 59:40
  Speaker 4: no to him because he was successful in his previous projects.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: And three, it rhymes, it's like poetry at rhymes. That's
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: what he said. That's what George Lucas said. He said
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: after it's like poetry at rhyme, don't throw I think
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: that those prequel movies are better than this movie. I
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: would say that, but the prequel movies are somehow better
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: than this movilm definite.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: I'm a better score.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no kidding, Listen. I think when you have someone
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: like Bong Juno, who is, like you said, Miranda, known
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: for Parasite, a film that won Oscars, and it was
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: a foreign language film that won the Best Picture in
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: the United States by a overwhelmingly English speaking Academy gave
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: it the Best Picture in twenty nineteen before the world
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: effectively continued to go further sideways than it has now.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: And I think Parasite in a lot of ways is
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: worth revisiting because I think the film is even more
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: important now than it was when it came out seven
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: years ago, which is just the worst thing I've said
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: all day. I can't imagine that he will be remembered
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: for this movie as anything other than, like you said, Miranda,
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: maybe a vanity project. This seems a little Doctor Pearlmutter
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: like Bonfire of the Vanities, as it were, a little
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna kind of do my own thing and
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: just throw everything into this because Bonfire the vanity is
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: also aanity project. Toys, Barry Levinson's Toys also a vanity project.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: Movies that are just kind of a mess and the
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: meander and unwieldy, I think is a nice way of
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: putting it. And either you vibe with them or you don't.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that there are people that watch this movie
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: that were like, man, you just don't get it. Man,
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: it's so humanization. It's like, you know what, Okay, cool,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna yuck. You're young. It ain't for me.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: Because I love Barry Levinson's Toys. That movie with Robin
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: Williams is completely out of its mind. I love that movie,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: but I that movie's poorly reviewed because it's not a
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: good movie. I'm not gonna sit and say it's a
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: good movie. I like it, but it's a vanity project.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: Vanity projects tend to be like this, bloated meandering with
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: big actors who just want to work with a director.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, if if someone comes to you and says, hey,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: I've got the Oscar winning director of Parasite here and
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: he'd like to work with you, if you're an actor
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: half your sult, would you say no, I don't want
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: to work with him. No, you say, yeah, I do
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: want to work with and that's this movie.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure the studio you're you're gonna say, Okay,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: let's give them eighty million. He'll do a science fiction
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: film based on a best I assume best selling novel.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: You know, it really brings up this question. I want
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: to go back to income disparity. You brought this up,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: christ I guess this is an audio podcast, so people
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: can't see me shaking Mike Caine here at the clouds
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: in the sky. But it really bothers me. How much
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: money is spent on movies that are making a point
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: about income disparity which could have been made for a
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: much lower amount of mine, and a lot of it
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: seems wasted. I mean, how many Hollywood streaming series movies
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: has there been this excess on the screen where hundred
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: eighty million dollars I think was the budget for this one,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: but like other area of other movies, two million, two
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: hundred and fifty million, And what do we have to
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: show for it?
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: Did it really show us something that was different than
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: Cleopatra in nineteen sixty three, you know where they supposedly
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: the most expensive movie ever made. But my gosh, you
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: watch all three hours plus of that and you see
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: every dollar on the screen and you go like, Okay,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: well they needed six thousand extras and they needed the
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: Golden Barge because that's what they were trying to achieve.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: I really think Hollywood sometimes just needs to look into
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: a mirror and say, if we are going to make points,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: like we should spend the appropriate amount of money to
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: make those perfins and not the budget of a poor
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: third world nation for healthcare on essentially a waste. And
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: you brought up the Bride, But I think that probably
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: we could name about fifty other movies and a lot
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: of TV shows where yeah, you could have done that show,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: you just didn't need to spend one hundred million dollars
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: to do it, plus of course to the publicity. Now
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: I want to go back to something just reclaiming, because
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: we've said something really important, I think, which is that
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: there's a line in The Sopranos where you know, the
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: character of Chris Maltasante has this dream of being a screenwriter, right,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: and he goes to Hollywood and he's trying to sell
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: this this horror film, the slasher horror film, to Ben
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: Kingsley to be the star in it right. And Ben
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: Kingsley hears him give this just ridiculous pitch and he says, well,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: in the end, it's the script right. And I thought
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: that about summed it up. It is like you can
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: have you can spend money in Hollywood today and you
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: can have you can have great costume design. In fact
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: that I'm trying to think of the last Hollywood movie
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: I saw that had horrible costume design. And Miranda's right,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: there were some audio issues in this film, but generally
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: you can find really good people to do your audio.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: You can find really good people to do the stunts,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: you know, the dog wrangling, what I mean you do.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: There's a scene with raccoons in the movie. You can
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: find in Hollywood to rent raccoons. You know, We've watched
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: some TV series movies with great raccoons. But man, no
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: matter what, you can spend a billion dollars and just
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: not have a good screenplay. It's the one thing. And
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: I actually feel good about that because I do not
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: think that Ai is going to write an excellent screenplay
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: where people are blown away. And the winner for Best
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: Screenplay twenty twenty nine is Grock.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: Oh God, it ain't gonna be Grock unless you're winning
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: an award maybe at the KKKKLAN Awards. Because I mean that,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: I mean that, but I mean like, That's the problem
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: with something like AI is the human input and the
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: human output is not ever going to be any better
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: than what the human can put in. If you can't
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: write a good script, AI is not gonna magically make
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: one for you. AI is not gonna punch up your
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: script that you failed to write well, because it can
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: only do as well as what you've given it. And
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: if you stink it writing, you stink it writing. And
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: that's like you said, doctor Perlmutter, there's no way around that.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: There's no magical button you can press, like in this
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: movie to make something happen, to become a good writer.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: And what's crazy is they don't pay the writers enough.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: They pay everybody else a lot of money, and the
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: writers have to go on strike to get any sort
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: of representation in any capacity. As someone who is friends
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: with several writers, including Richard HadAM who's been on this
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: show countless times, they don't get paid enough, and yet
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: without them there's literally nothing, and they would have to
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: go get AI to write the scripts. That's the problem.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: The people that are worried about the AI stealing their
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: scripts should be the ones going bring it on. AI
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: can't do that. The people that should be worried about
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: AI doing the scripts of the people who can't do
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: the scripts without the writer. Everybody else should be worried
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: because there's no amount of good writing that can be
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: replaced by AI. But boy, bad writing and AI are synonymous.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: And guess what, you don't have to use AI to
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: write poorly. Case in point, this film, case in point
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: The Bride, case in point frankly the Mandalorian and Grogu,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: a film that, like you said, Doctor Perlmutter, costs like
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty million dollars and lost to two
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: Bozo gen Z horror movies that have more to say
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: with like one sixteenth of the budget, and I say
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: boso horror movies because neither one of them ten years
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: ago would have ever gotten made if not for the
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: fact that the mainstream is now finally looking at places
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: where democratization of videos have existed, like YouTube and saying, oh,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: you mean ten million people on YouTube might actually show
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: up in person to watch the movie based on the
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: thing from YouTube. Uh yeah, uh yeah they did. But
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: guess what if people weren't showing up to watch Mandalorian
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: and Grogu on Disney Plus, guess what they're not gonna do.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: Go see it in the theater, no matter how much
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: money you throw at it, no matter how many times
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: Pedro Pascal goes and eats wings on Hot One, I
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: don't care. You can't create interest in something that people
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: have deemed one interesting because the right isn't living up
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: to the expectation. And this movie, I think, like you said,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: doctor Perlmutter, it's mighty wide of you movie to say, Hey,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: by the way, income inequality, let's spend one hundred million
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: dollars on this goofy movie. Like, come on, guys, we're
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: really missing the point here by a mile. But hey,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: you know what, to be fair, don't cry too hard
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: for the studios. Most of these movies that bomb, they're
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: just a rounding error at the end of the day. Anyways.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: So AI is good for adding two and two together
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: really quickly, because two plus two is always four. But
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: if you need someone to make a decision about a
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: script that's a creative idea, AI can't do that, And
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: I'm confident in that when people are worried about AI
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: taking their jobs, the people that should be worried about
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: AI taking their jobs are the people who do jobs
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: that AI could do for them in two seconds, because
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: that's what AI is good for, is manually optimizing things
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: that have been done manually before, not making creative decisions.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: Because if you're outsourcing AI to make creative decisions for you,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: Dear God, I pray for you, because if you get
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: caught doing it, like the Duffer Brothers did with Stranger Things,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: they'll roast you over a fire until there's nothing left,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: even if you didn't use it and it was just
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: open on your screen and somebody caught it in the
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: documentary that they released. Bad screenwriting doesn't the author of
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: bad screenwriting AI or not is always bad. And that's yeah,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: Like you said, doctor Promutter, it's such a shame because
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: I really I had high hopes for this movie, higher
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: hopes than I normally have for a lot of things
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: I sit down to watch, and by the end of it,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: I was excited to rewatch other Robert Pattinson things that
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: he's much better in, like the drama which came out
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: this year, and I think costs like five dollars to make.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: I don't even know. They probably paid Zendaiya and Robert
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: Pattinson sag minimum and that was about it. But it's
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: a much more engaging and interesting film and a much
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: more human story that speaks to the times now than
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: a movie where they spent a billion dollars on it
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: and missed the point by not only a mile, but
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: like four or five mile.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: I think it's really interesting how that's also true, this
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 4: idea that you can spend a bunch of money on
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: something and have it just be absolute garbage because you
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: are either not talented or because you are misinformed and
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 4: you're not having people, the people around you correct decisions
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 4: you're making. And obviously streaming platforms like Netflix are really
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: guilty of doing this, just churning out as much as
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 4: possible so that they have content on the platform, and
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 4: a lot of it's really cookie cutter and not really interesting.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 4: And there's definitely it's true in every form of art,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 4: in every creative endeavor, in architecture, in music, in movie making,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 4: that if you can't make something great with a limited
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: budget and limited resources, then if you can only if
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: you can only make great art with unlimited resources, with
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: a large amount of money, a large amount of power
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: and control. But you can't make it make the same
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: quality media or art or whatever with limited resources. I
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 4: don't think you're a good artist because you.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: And I agree. I was going to say, like I have,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: and I think it's something that we should normalize. If
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: people are going to have the conversation about AI and
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have the idea that like AI is gonna
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: take everybody's creative job and it's gonna run rampant, let's
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: have the conversation about people being bad at creative things
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: on their own, and let's just have that conversation out
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: in the open, because I hate to break this to
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: some creative types, but you can, like Miranda just said,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: suck at what you're doing, and I don't have to
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: applaud you just because you made something. Because especially in
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: this day and age, where we're spending money on things
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: to buy them or enjoy them, or you're spending time,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: which is more important than money on things, we shouldn't
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: just be okay with mediocrity. We shouldn't be okay with
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: the second screen experience. Everybody that is such a lazy
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: existence that we have found ourselves in. I always say
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: it's that this is we I would wish for a
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: dystopia like Mickey seventeen because the one that we're in
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: now is so unbelievably boring. All the contents the same,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: All the stuff on Netflix is the same, and all
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: of the movies are terrible for the most part, other
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: than like a handful of things, because they're all overproduced,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: over overly expensive, kind of unnecessary for the most part.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: And the things that are good the drama I looked at.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: The budget is twenty eight million dollars and I guarantee
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: you a lot of that it's probably just to pay
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: Robert Pattinson and zendayas like you know, cost as actors.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: And that movie is written and directed by the same
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: person just like this movie is, and it's so much
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: more successful at telling an interesting human story with Robert Pattinson,
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: and it's a third of the budget in this movie,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: and it's a movie that I think actually has some
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: staying power and has something to say. This movie has
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: none of that. And it's such a shame because you
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: can't blame AI for this. You can't blame Ai for
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: this being a bad movie all you have to do.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: And that's the thing, Like, I don't know how this
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: conversation progresses anymore in the AI is going to take
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: the creative jobs away sphere when a bad movie has
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: existed long before AI ever came into the picture, Doctor Peerlmutter,
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, Miranda. This
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: this may not be something you're familiar with, but the
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: term Alan Smithy has been around for a long time
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: so that people could, if they felt like they were
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: no longer in control of the project, back away from
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: it and attribute it to someone else, a fake human
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: being in Hollywood who does not exist, but has movies
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: attributed to him, because people like David Fincher with Alien
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: three said, you know what, I can't, in good conscience
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: put my name on this thing, So I'm going to
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: take a step back. Alan Smithy directed it. That's that's
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: not AI that created that. That's been around since time immemoriam,
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: since one person said I don't like what you're doing.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: I think what I'm doing is better. That has been
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: a thing that could happen that has nothing to do
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: with AI. And this movie, like for me, is just
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: another example, like you said, doctor promoter, of spending a
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: lot of money on something that doesn't yield anything other
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: than what's an inequality movie. But you spent a lot
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: of money on it and it made no money. Okay,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: I just it's weird in this day and age to
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: have that. And this movie came out in twenty twenty five.
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: This isn't like, well, this movie came out in twenty
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: nineteen before all the wild stuff'sm happening. He's like, no,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: this movie came out like last year. Sure, it was
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: probab in, it was in the incubator during the pandemic.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: I'm sure. But what an out of touch message for
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: this movie to have on top of everything else. I mean, look,
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: a lot of things feel out of touch now, and
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: to speak about it circularly without speaking on it specifically,
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: I will say, as my personal final point on this movie,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: I don't go to movies to be reminded about how
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: terrible things are out in the real world. I actually
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: go to movies to escape and enjoy myself for an
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: hour and a half to two and a half hours.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: I don't go see movies to be reminded that oh
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: out in the real world. Things are not great, and
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: people are doing things that they shouldn't be doing under
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: the auspices of things that we have become accustomed to,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: to the point where you can put it in a
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: movie now and everybody goes, oh, that's that thing. It's like, man,
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: why is that a thing that we all have to
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: share now?
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 4: Like?
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: Why is that a shared trauma in media that people
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: can exploit? I don't know, but there's gonna be a
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: lot of media from about let's call it twenty years
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: right now that's all gonna have similar themes to it.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: And I'm not saying I'm not down with those themes.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: It's just if you're going to do it, it's got
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: to be a lot more nuanced than this, because this
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: is about as Nuances being clocked over the head by
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: Gallagher's sledgehammer really really hard.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 4: Well, I guess my final point would be that I
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 4: don't regret seeing this movie. I wouldn't recommend it to
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 4: anybody ever again, and I would never watch it again.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 4: But it's just such a perfect representation of many many
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 4: issues that we have with specifically modern Hollywood, that I
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: feel it can be a good reference point whenever I
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 4: bring up these issues in the future, just in conversation.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: It's just it does a really good job of exemplifying
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 4: so much that disgusts me about contemporary movies.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I like to think of myself as a historian,
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: and I do urge people to look back at the
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: history of when we've had actual situations on planet Earth.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: And this was true in Nazi Germany, this was true
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: in Imperial Japan. I said, Unit seven eight one, But
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: this is actually that seven to three to one. A
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: lot of people know about that, don't know about that,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: but they were a unit of the Japanese army that
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: experimented on people with diseases. In fact, a couple of
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: the scenes of Robert Pattison here just seemed to me
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: direct references to that, And I feel you really need
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: to respect that kind of history. It can't be just
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: be tossed into a farce and be part of a
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: plot without some historical grounding. And I think that's the
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: lesson too, is that when you're going if that quote
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: you had from him, the director there is if I
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: were having a conversation with him, and I actually I
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: see a text message from him right now, I've got
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: to go and discuss the film my notes, But it
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: really is important to respect the history that you're referencing
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: when you're making a movie and to sort of understand
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: its context and just the way the plot went in
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: this I would have respected it, and I would have
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: seen the historical illusions as manifest to some really deep
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: important point if it had been better thought through. And
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: I guess that's my coda for a lot of Hollywood
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: movies is they just don't feel like somebody ork your
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: committee of somebodies, because that a lot of you know,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: for fifty years in Hollywood, movies were made by committee.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: A committee of people sat through it and at least
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: thought through everything. So I'm not telling anybody not to
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: watch this movie.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: Entertaining and interesting maybe in the theater there were more
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: of those, but ultimately didn't work.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: No, Yeah, I'm with y'all. It did not work. And
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: I look forward to the next time the three of
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: us get to talk about something good because I think
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: Trained to Boossan for me, for even the failures that
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: that movie had, the successes are so much stronger than
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: even like the minor success that this movie may have.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: That movie set such a higher water mark. And I
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: mean even again Bung Junhoe's other work. So I think
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: to your point, your points, I would not suggest this
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: to anyone, even someone who's a Robert Pattinson fan, I
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: would not suggest it to them. But what a bummer.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: So if you want to hear the three of us
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: talking about something that's not this to allude back to
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: Train to Booston, you can find that episode on the
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: RSS feed for this for this show, which is over
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: at weirdingwaymedia dot com, where this show and all the
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: other shows I work on can be found, other than
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: the one that I do on Patreon, which is a
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: James Bond show that's ending soon because well we've run
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: out of James Bond movies and they're not making anymore
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: because now blofeld owns James Bond in real life, so
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: that's fun. So yeah, so we're covering James Bond and
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: by the end of July we'll be done with James Bond,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: moving on to something else that we will be talking
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: about later in the fall, but it will be on
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: its own RSS feed. But if you want to kick
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: a couple dollars my way, Patreon is still the place
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: to do it, and if you do it later in
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: the year, you'll get access to that new show a
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: month early and ad free, because hey, got to make
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: money somehow, and if I'm not making money on the ads,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: I'm making mone money on you listening to the show.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: Thank you both so much for joining me. It was fun.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: I feel like this was a test. Maybe we'll see
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: if you guys both come back, because this was not
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: only a long movie, but it was a long kind
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: of not great movie. So those are the best kind
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: of movies, the long ones that aren't great. Yeah, and
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: as always, we'll catch you on the next episode.