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Mortal Kombat: Annihilation w/ Edmund Fargher · Everyone's A Critic

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• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, very nice to be here.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Hello.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing today?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing very well, thank you.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very excited to be on this podcast because I'm a big fan.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you like you literally you reached out to me to talk about Mortal Kombat because you're so excited about it.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, okay, there's a new movie.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Who can I talk to about Mortal Kombat?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: I know someone that's going to appreciate a bad movie franchise, or at least appreciate my love of a bad movie franchise.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I got in touch, you know, not even necessarily expecting to be invited on the show.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Of course I'd have you on the show.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you you're a delight.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: But um the um, but yeah, I I mostly just got in touch to say that I was enjoying the show.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: And if you ever wanted to talk about Mortal Kombat, I would be.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I might have backdoor invited myself on, but it's fine.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's fine, yeah.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Of course I would have you on.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like you didn't even have to like it doesn't even matter if you're listening or not.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like um, legit, I enjoy the show.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but you you've come on to talk about well, here's the thing like so Mortal Kombat wasn't suitable for it, and the new one's not suitable for it, so we have to talk about Mortal Kombat annihilation.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: And and truly, it's the most appropriate to talk about this one because it's I think given that the rating system for this podcast is low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, yeah, it's one of the lowest rated Rotten Tomato movies ever.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: It is, it's very low, it's two percent.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and it's generous because it's it is it is two percent from the critics, 25% from the audience, which is surprising as well.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I I think I can only imagine that it's people like me who are just excited that like there is a version of the Mortal Kombat narrative in because that's my background with it, where just I fell in love with the with the mythology of the video games.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I was an automatic ticket for the Mortal Kombat movie if I'm old enough to go to the cinema to go and see it, which I wasn't.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: But you definitely weren't for this one.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: No, um I'm not sure anyone's old enough to go and see it.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it may look like Power Rangers, but it's it's like it's a piece of shit.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Let's be honest.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious how you're gonna defend this though.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I absolutely can.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get me wrong.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um absolutely can.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so what other than like so so I I'm imagining you grew up playing the games then.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: You must have done.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of the I think I think I was thinking about this, and I think it may well have been the first video game that I I I well and truly got hooked on.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um really?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I didn't because I was at that age.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm at that age where people that were making grown-up movies, and in particular grown-up sci-fi, people that were making aliens, predator, terminator, they were marketing those movies when they were coming out to kids.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they were making kids toys.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I was inundated in between episodes of Thundercats and Power Rangers, I was inundated with commercials for Terminator action figures and aliens action figures and all that stuff.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: So when I eventually played uh Mortal Kombat on my next door neighbor's Mega Drive and saw Kano, a character with a metal face and one red eye, just like the Terminator, I was completely entranced.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh man, it's just like the Terminator.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I was a I I wanted to play that game, but my parents wouldn't buy me a games console because they knew I would get hooked on it.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it was this kind of particularly Mortal Kombat was this kind of forbidden fruit that I wouldn't get to have.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I would read games magazines and I would read websites and I would follow Mortal Kombat in any way I could until eventually I could get to the point where I could have a Mortal Kombat game of my own and uh all that jazz.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I have been a fan of the franchise since day one, basically.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you that's a huge um like history with it that uh um that led you kind of led you towards uh these movies.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um do you remember do you remember the first time you saw any of like the movies then themselves?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh vividly, I remember it so well because again, the whole Mortal Kombat thing at that age, I was I guess I would have been about eight or nine when the original Mortal Kombat movie came out.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I was very into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I was very into Power Rangers, and my and my uh parents and my siblings did not approve.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't appreciate the fact I was watching this stuff.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so they it was always it was never really something that was kind of encouraged or embraced in me.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I would I would look when I heard they were making a movie, I was so excited, but I didn't get to see it until I went round my friend's house, who confusingly is also called Ed.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um Ed uh Ed Bunbury, Edward Bunbury, good friend of mine.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and he had rented the video from the local supermarket, and I stayed from the local supermarket that those days as well.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I I'm an old man.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I remember that as well.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Good, good, good.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not too old.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh no, the um we were he we I was staying around his place for uh for the weekend, and I want to say we watched it maybe three times, possibly four during the weekend.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um because we I just we just loved it.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: It was just it was um Power Rangers filmed like an MTV music video, and that was just completely enticing as a young guy.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And like perfect description of it.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: And um the overall and yeah, it was it was something that that I really really enjoyed and didn't see again for years.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um until and then I heard they were making a sequel, but it again it was completely unattainable, and it wasn't even you know, this is back in the 90s where you couldn't go on Amazon and and order something over the internet if it wasn't in the video store, you didn't see it, you didn't buy it, you didn't get it.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, um, in terms of watching this movie, I remembered the the original movie with a degree of of nostalgia, and then when I was at university, I saw it advertised on Amazon in a box set, Mortal Kombat 1 and 2.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I God, I remember oh dear, this is taking me back.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: I remember using the school computer and looking at the website for Mortal Kombat Annihilation and looking at all the different characters from the video game that were gonna be in this movie, like even the least relevant characters like Urbac had a place in this movie.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I was completely enticed by it.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember the it was the early days of websites, like Space Jam era, if you like.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you could go, um they had a game on the website where basically you could collect Mortal Kombat tokens in each of the different web pages, and I collected every one, expecting a reward at the end.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: Did they fuck?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: But the um by the way, am I allowed to swear?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, great, did they fuck?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I remember I studied every single thing I could about the characters, the character profiles, the the the actors playing them, and then I didn't see it until I bought it at university.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: And at university, like I had maybe 10 movies that just went with me from flat to flat as I went through my degree uh as a film student, and it was so funny because they were like classic films like The Bicycle Thieves and Casapania and then Mortal Kombat and Mortal Kombat Annihilation, and so as a result, I've seen this movie, I want to say, like maybe half a dozen times, because it was one of 10 DVDs I owned at the time.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: I now, you know, in the days of Netflix, like I would I would not have even found it, I don't think.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, but now because and but also like I've got the DVD probably in storage somewhere, so hilariously, like I now I now have it on DVD, and now I've also rented it online already.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: So that I guess that's that is how how I've been following this movie for most of my adult life.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's so funny that it's it the the the idea of you having like being a film student having the bicycle thieves and then next to Mortal Kombat Annihilation is so funny to me.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and also like the the amount of the amount of status that that people took from like your DD collection or your DVD collection, the posters you had on your wall.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's why it's so funny, especially film being a film student as well.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like I know I remember what that was like and what everyone would look at and judge you about and everything as well, because film students are so pretentious as well.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like people, people, people making judgments right off the bat, and yeah, I guess they would not have known what the hell to make of me of just and there are even some films that are arguably a bit shaky, like Ong Back is a fantastic martial arts movie, but it is also you know, it is a bit shaky.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: But you can look in that and be like, oh, international cinema.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Mortal Kombat.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, do you want to know?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: I I I'm sure you already know this, but do you know that Tony Ja is in this movie?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Funnily enough, that is how I discovered Mortal Kombat Annihilation was on Amazon because I had watched Ongback and thought, Tony Ja, this guy is amazing.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I ended up looking at his IMDB page and saw Mortal Kombat Annihilation and was like, I remember those movies.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm gonna see if they're available, and then here we are.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Interestingly enough, I also learned that another uh stunt man on this movie was Ray Park.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we're jumping ahead to what happens in the movie, but in the the fight scene between Liu Kang and Baraka, a scene with with no narrative consequence at all, uh no narrative causality, but is it's essentially a fight between Tony Jahr and Ray Park.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's a fight between Ongback and Darth Maul, which uh as a as a martial arts movie fan, it is just a delight to me.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's incredible.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: The idea that they are in this movie is just so wild.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: I know, and the the hilarious thing as well is like the the the actors in this movie, part of the reason why I love this movie is that it's so ambitious with so little.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like director Paul W.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: S.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Hansen is now a super successful movie director, but at the time he'd only made a low-budget um feature film called Shopping, which is uh where a lot of people discovered Sean Bean and Jude Law.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: And the stars in the original movie, and in this movie, what stars?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, there's there's no any of these people.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't know who anyone is in this movie.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Robin Sho was a was a was a stunt was I was a March last actor in Hong Kong.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: He'd been in Jackie Chan movies.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh Christopher Lambert, most people know from Christopher Lambert, most people know him from Highlander.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's it, really.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first movie as well.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the first movie.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then he gets the second movie, and now the stunt men are more famous than the actors.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then on further research for this podcast, I looked up, um, reminded myself of a few things about the animated series, which came out after um after the first movie and before um Mortal Kombat Annihilation.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the cast with that is great.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's got like Clancy Brown, also from Highlander.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's got Ron Perlman, it's got yeah, like it's got a number of great actors.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Hang on, I'm gonna check my notes.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: What's the other guy?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Luke Perry! Luke Perry plays Sub-Zero! Like, what the actual fuck?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so wild.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And the the amazing thing about this movie, which had a no-name director, uh, uh it was a it was a video game movie which had bombed the previous two more uh video game movies, were things like Super Mario Um and Street Fighter.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh loved that episode, by the way.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh um and yeah, and they have no stars in this movie, and yet it was number one in the American box office for three weeks and like made a ton of money though.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: The original you're talking about.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then hilariously, this movie, which is has even less famous people because nobody liked the script and nobody came back, yeah.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, not even the director.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it still got to number one at the box office.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: How I don't I'm so baffled how this movie was number one at the box office when you watch this movie.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, how was this ever a success?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: And not only that, even after this movie, they were gonna make a sequel.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Did you read this?
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it just got like it's got like it got like delayed, didn't it?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it got and thing is again, old school Mortal Kombat fan.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: I was watching its development online and being like, are they gonna make a third movie?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: This is interesting.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: But it looks like Christopher Lambert might come back.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: And um, the only thing that stopped it, apparently, they were gonna go ahead in 2005, but they were gonna film in New Orleans, and then Hurricane Katrina happened.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: Oh wow.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: So we almost had a third crappy Mortal Kombat movie that I would have loved, but maybe other people wouldn't have.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um what what do you think of the new one then?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because I still haven't seen the new one, but you I I'm assuming you have by now.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: I saw that like pretty pretty much as soon as it dropped.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um I really liked it.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: I really liked it.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's really there's gonna be a a concurrent theme in that it's really dumb, but it looks great, it feels nostalgic for me, and it's just really fun.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And there are some there are some some surprisingly enjoyable performances out of it.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like the guy that Kano's always been one of my favourite characters.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and the guy that plays Kano is genuinely hilarious, like he provides a much needed dose of humanity to the overall crazy big picture talk of like Earth Realm and Outworld and all of this otherworldly sci-fi.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you need someone who's gonna talk sense, and uh the guy that plays Kano does it, and not only does it, but he does it really, really effectively and is hilarious.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I would recommend it if only just to enjoy the Kano performances.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's got this, and there's a there's a real there's a real similarity between the the recent Mortal Kombat movie and this movie in many ways, in the way that like it is so chock full of characters in a wholly unnecessary way, uh, and takes real narrative leaps.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: So they still didn't learn anything from this movie.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: No, I mean I mean to a certain extent they did because they at least focus on one protagonist.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, but Jesus like the what is Natara doing on there?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there's a Natara is a character from like the fifth or sixth Mortal Kombat video games.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: She's a weird vampire.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: She has she's appeared in one video game, she wasn't very popular as it with with the online community, as far as I can tell.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't one of the games that I played, but she pops up in the new Mortal Kombat movie basically just so they have someone to kill.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's very true of this movie as well.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, basically, Rain is there to get thrown down a well.
• 16:56
  unknown: Yeah.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um and Shiva, I mean, forget about it, poor Shiva.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like yeah, all of these characters, I I so like I I played Mortal Kombat a little bit as a kid.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was never a huge fan of it though.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was more into Street Fighter, so like I guess I and then I remember like the the out the two movies being more into the original Mortal Kombat movie than Street Fighter.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um but then for this one, I um so I don't remember the characters at all, like pretty much.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: I I know a few of the characters offhand, but like all these all these people you're naming, I have no that's just like going straight over my head.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say, I should have said this before we started.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you might have to rein me in with some of this information.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: I can talk about this franchise for days.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's good.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you can because I cannot.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you need any explanation, any character, which frankly, this this movie just has requ it it presumes so much prior knowledge that like I can I was like, oh, I must have missed it in the first from like not seeing the first one in a while because I I have no idea what's going on right now.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Nope, nope, they they don't even explain it in the first one.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: They do a little bit of like this is what happened in the last film right at the start.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: They've got back.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: But then like but then it just like goes out the window because you're like, what is going on?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Who are these people?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: What are they what is that who are they to each other?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that opening fight scene is just so bonkers, like it's so heavy on bad CGI.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that they I wrote the very first thing I wrote down is these special effects are so bad.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Dude, this is two years before the Matrix.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like the there's they should be better.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but and the budget is not the budget was 30 million, I believe.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not exactly competing on a budgetary level with the matrix.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: No, but at the same time, that's not low for them.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like 97 30 million is like a decent amount.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, to make a to make a uh a low budget sci-fi movie, you know, better better movies have been made with less.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: But um the the thing I found myself thinking was like Jesus Christ, this is what fantasy films used to look like when I was a kid.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like in the sort of post-Star Wars pre-Lord of the Rings era, where you've just got you've just got a series of copycats of of other sci-fi and fantasy ideas.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Films like Dragonheart and Krull and Um and all of those movies in between, just like this is what this is what it looked like.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: This is what our sci-fi fans had to deal with for like a decade and a half.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then sci-fi had its day with the matrix and Lord of the Rings and the Star Wars prequels coming out and it's becoming popular again.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: But we had to put up with this shit, man.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad that like the Matrix came along and changed it.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: I know, right?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: And actually proved that it could be it could be profitable and also entertaining and also to a certain extent narratively fulfilling.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: I just I just noticed something that said like there was a tight budget and shooting schedule, uh, so that makes a lot of sense.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um absolutely, and also it sounds like um it sounds like the the the actual schedule for the individuals involved was bonkers because I read that Robin Sho, the man who plays Liu Kang, um he uh was the obviously the star in the original movie, background in Hollywood in in Hong Kong cinema, yeah, but when they were doing reshoots, there's a fantastic article, by the way, uh on from the Hollywood Reporter from 2015, a 15-year retrospective.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and apparently Robin Show uh was came in to also choreograph the reshoots of action scenes in the first movie because Paul W.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: S.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Anderson had never shot action before.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of that's why it looks like a music video rather than fight scenes for some of it.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's two action scenes in the original movie: the fight scene between Johnny Cage and uh Scorpion, where they go to this other realm, and then this fight between Reptile and Liu Kang that have are easily the best fights in the movie, and it's because they look like Hong Kong action fights, and then those are the ones that are choreographed by Robin Show.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: So for this movie, they hired him to choreograph all the fights, but he's not in every fight, so they have two units filming at the same time, and on some of those units, his action scenes that he is starring in, he's not at that set, he's choreographing a fight scene with two other people on another set.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why Tony Jar ends up in the mix because Tony Jar is playing Liu Kang in all those fight scenes, so that Robert Joe can go and choreograph a mud fight between Sonia Blade and Melina.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um what a great fight that was.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: What I mean.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: This is something we'll get to when we get to some of the latter segments in this show where we're talking about like bad films that we like or good films that we don't like.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the number one indicator.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: For me, of just like a really bad film, and and I I can enjoy a really bad film.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: But the number one indicator for me, if I don't like a movie, is if the movie finishes and I feel like my time has been wasted.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: And with that scene in particular, a scene which again has no narrative consequence, no causality, uh, no character development, nothing, nothing but basically women fighting in mud.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I just felt, God, this is such a waste of time.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, sure, it I'm sure it's titillating, but like, come on.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then I remember, again, I'm getting ahead of myself, but I stopped this movie at the one hour mark, which is almost exactly at the the second and third act turning point.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: So they go and meet Shao Kahn and all of his many multicoloured minions at the castle at nighttime, Big Thunder, and I looked at the clock and it was like one hour down, another half hour to go, and I just thought, how is this possible?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: I know I feel like I've been watching this movie for two hours.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was watching it last night and I paused it 20 minutes in, and I said to And I said to some, I was I was like texting someone else, like, how am I 20 minutes into this movie?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my lord, it's been like how how am I gonna get to the end of this movie?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's it's so like at the same time, nothing has happened, and and like so much has happened as well.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't know what is going on right now.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: So much fluff, just so much badly CGI'd fluff.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's like there's no plot to this movie, like there's it's such a little plot to this movie.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: And like the the first movie at least has some fairly decent character arcs, but it's kind of dealt with within the frame of a tournament, so it's kind of allowed to live in subtext for a lot of the movie.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: There is no subtext to this movie.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, everyone talks exactly on the nose about what they are thinking or death and what the world slash worlds are going through.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: There is just no inner life to this film, things just happen and nothing is discussed at all.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I like this movie.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: This is the stupid thing.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I can I would defend this movie because it was it's again, it's the these colourful characters.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's the only time that I've ever seen Shao Kahn on a s on a movie screen, and for that I love it.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: And same goes for Shiva, Mitaro.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think Baraka looks like a piece of shit, but uh uh Baraka, by the way, if anyone has watched this movie and doesn't know who he is, because they don't never mention him by name at any point, is the dude with knives for hands.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Got you.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, what a what an insane movie this is.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like why also, okay.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: One of the biggest characters of Mortal Kombat, one that I know, Johnny Cage, is killed off almost immediately.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: And like hilariously, he was always meant to be the main character.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: The the original Mortal Kombat video game was originally the inception of that video game, is they wanted to make a Jean-Claude Van Damme video game.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: But Jean-Claude Van Damme backed out, behaved badly, and so they they removed him.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: So he's always meant to be something of a something of a lead role.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: But clearly, um I forget the name of the actor.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Lyndon Ashby, I want to say his name is.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, Lyndon Ashby.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: Lyndon Ashby refused to to take part in the sequel because he didn't like the script.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh likewise I know, right?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: What is he talking about?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, likewise with uh with uh Christopher Lambert and likewise with Bridget Wilson who plays Sonya Blade.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so they appeared to think, oh, well, Johnny Cage, the actor doesn't want to be involved, we'll just kill him off.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: But we won't bother doing that with Raiden or Sonya Blade.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: So the whole thing's confusing.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and like in in such an again, like this that is one of the uh saying that, as strange a decision as it was to kill Johnny Johnny Cage, it is one of the few moments of narrative narrative clarity and consequence where his death causes Sonia to go on her truncated character journey, um, which is not clear at all, but does at least happen.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's some it's something that's happening.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's not it's not just a fight for a fight for the sake of a fight.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: No, exactly.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um just another cyber ninja.
• 26:51
  unknown: Oh god.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, blew my mind as a child.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: When I saw the trailer for Mortal Kombat Annihilation and saw that they had smoke and Cyrax from Mortal Kombat 3 in it, it blew my mind because again, big Terminator fan, big predator fan, they are dreadlocked cyborgs.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I just was so on board for it, and yeah, it's not good.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's not easy.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is this also this movie is directed by a cinematographer.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah by trade.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like the guy is a cinematographer normally, John R.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Leonetti.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: And how is this man a cinematographer and making something that looks like this?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Interestingly, like I found myself thinking that the things actually don't look that bad.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: It looks very 90s, but and it's not aged terribly well.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I I kind of like the way that it looked, in the sense that like the sets look fantastic, the lighting is great, um, and that like uh designed, but what's that?
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: I fully disagree.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think it looks awful.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Considering the time and place, granted, it's only two years before the Matrix.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: I guess to it to a certain extent, I kind of have this earmarked in my head as being made at the same time as Krull, which is not true.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's about 10 years between them.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: In any case, um the thing that makes the thing that I may think makes it clear that it's filmed by a cinematographer, that it's directed by a cinematographer, is that there are choices that make so little sense to a director, but do make sense to a cinematographer.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: For instance, there seems to be an overall attitude in the movie of why walk into frame when you can backflip into frame?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like the background extras, if they're chasing after the bad guys, they're not just running after them.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: They do like a backflip onto frame and pose.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like strong power ranges vibes, the whole thing.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's an awful lot of posing, which again, if you're doing a nice tracking shot, a cinematographer will love.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: Shame about the CGI and the crazy purple uh clouds in the sky and uh the lack of story.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: God the purple clouds like linger over this movie like the entire time, and it looks so bad.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, but the thing is, that was also something that was very that was very common in in 1900 Wi-Fi.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like Omen Pro has the same thing where it's got this rolling reddish sort of Zack Snyder skies.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't hold up at all, though.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: And like that's what's gonna like I think that's gonna happen with Zack Snyder as well.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like it doesn't hold up.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think so too.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: And to be fair, and you know, Matrix does it as well.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: And like the funny thing about when it gets overused is that like the Matrix was such a massive film in 1999 that it got parodied and copied so much by the time the sequels came out that it was a parody of itself by the time Matrix Reloaded came out.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, that's a whole other movie.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I just noticed as well.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: So he's the director of uh photography on Mortal Kombat as well.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: But prior to that, like one year before that, he was the director of photography on the mask.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: This man, like this man was a cinematographer on the mask, right?
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's the second mask connection, actually, because the original I read that the original actress that was gonna play Sonia Blade was of all people Cameron Diaz.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: And she she was gonna be because they sh they had they had filmed the mask and they had said, Oh, this Cameron Diaz woman is gonna be a huge star, you should get her for this movie.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: And she went through all the fight training, and a week before filming started, she broke her wrist and they had to recast her.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we almost had a Cameron Diaz Mortal Kombat movie.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: That would have been so interesting.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like Bridget Wilson doesn't do a whole no, she's I mean, I don't I don't like I don't like being mean about other actors' work, but like she probably could have done a very good job by comparison on either of these movies.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm curious like where what path that would have taken her career as well, if if that had been like because it's not long after this movie that like she gets things like there's something about Mary and Don Malkovich and like her movie, her movie career could have I mean she eventually does a martial arts movie, I guess, with Charlie's Angels, but she couldn't she was a name at that point, yeah, exactly.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: She's already a name.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, that's so interesting.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so let's let's try and go through this movie then.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be very brief, I feel like, but because it's what is there to this?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean the thing is we've we've bounced around already other place.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like this this podcast, much like this film, is already off the rails.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I it's gonna be interesting.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, so alright, do you want to try and give since since you are more familiar with it, do you want to try and give the premise of this movie?
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, I'll do that.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: So this movie is is based upon uh the the plot synopsis of Mortal Kombat 3, the video game.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: The basic premise of the of Mortal Kombat, the original Mortal Kombat video game and story and uh movie is that there is a tournament to decide the fate of our of our dimension called Earth Realm.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: And if we lose that tournament called Mortal Kombat, the tournament is called Mortal Kombat with a K.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if we lose that tournament, then Earth gets absorbed into a um imperialistic um extra dimension called Outworld, which has been absorbing other dimensions for centuries.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um the first Mortal Kombat movie ends with Liu Kang winning the tournament um and defeating a lackey by the name of Shang Sung, who has always been operating under the um instruction of an unseen emperor.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the movie ends with Xiao Khan, the Emperor, saying, Your soul is mine, and then everyone strikes a pose, end of the first movie.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um this, and that's where we where we begin with this movie.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got three main protagonists, uh Johnny Cage, Luke Kang, and Sonya Blade, and they have a mentor figure um in the in the case of a white-haired, um uh berobed Obi-Wan Kenobi-esque kind of leader by the name Raiden, god of thunder.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the four characters I know.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, those those are and also those are the four of the eight characters from the original video game as well.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and also I should probably say these they live in a world and the tournament is populated by characters who are continual obstacles for the for our lead characters to overcome, who have special powers and special abilities and come from other dimensions.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um and all of these people are governed by Shao Emperor Shao Kahn.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so when Shao Kahn decides in this movie to what's the word wanna say go around to subjugate no, not subjugate, to supersede the rules of mortal combat and just invade Earth realm.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um he comes with a huge cast of multicolored ninjas, and like there's a there's a red, like the first movie has a red, has a yellow ninja called Scorpion, and a blue ninja called Sub Zero, and then this movie introduces a purple ninja called Rain, a red ninja called Ermac, there's also a green ninja called Reptile, and there are a number of those in this movie.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then there is also a four-armed uh four-armed fighter called Shiva, a um Centaur character called Motaro, um, and all of these characters are essentially on a quest to merge Earth Realm with Outworld in in order to gain its power and dominance.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: They don't really make that clear, even.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: They just know they just want it.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the characters have to are not strong enough to stop Shao Kahn, so they are defeated in the opening, and then they start a quest to become stronger.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's their goal.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's the goal that Raiden says at the beginning of the movie just says, you have to be stronger, go and be stronger, and then come back in the third act, and we'll try and beat you again.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that's basically the structure of this movie.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and also I forgot to mention Raiden in the sequel is played by James Remar, who's a fantastic character actor.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people might know him as um Dexter's father from Dexter.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but he's in a number of movies and is a fantastic actor.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I would say he's not used well in this movie.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: Wasted.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I would say that, but there were definite points when I watched this movie, and I was like, oh James, you can do better than that.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's a shit reading.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he's not great at it.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: No, but at the same time, he's still wasted.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like he he's he he's obviously the most talented person in this movie.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: Right, absolutely.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and funny enough, and then this is the next thing.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: When they go off on their journey, they then Raiden gives up his immortality as the as the god of thunder and lightning and becomes a mortal in order to to try and rest try and rescue the situation.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_01: And along the way, they pick up a colleague of a colleague, um, uh, they they pick up um one of Sonia Blade's um uh friends, and uh she's in the army with him, uh, a guy called Jax.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: They find him uh and bring him along as well.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: So he's introduced as a new character.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: Jax also has uh robot arms for reasons that are not particularly well explained.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: He just kind of says, Yeah, I've got them, they're nice, I like them.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: He just loves them for like some reason.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like I and and they but then also like they're not good, supposedly.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like Ray Raiden says at one point, they're not like you don't need them.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: But that's the that is the line of dialogue that I was thinking of where like where I thought James can do a better reading of this, where um James as if I know him, uh James Remire can do a better reading of this when he's like your arms are not your strength, they're your weakness.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like he was reading, he was doing a table read over the phone, not making a shit.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like the most lifeless performance it really was.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the the funny thing as well is that like I think of all the character journeys in this movie, the one that is most clear and most cathartic is Jax's, because he is constantly fighting with these giant metallic arms, and at the end of the movie, he has to remove them in order to overcome Mitaro.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so hilariously, the most interesting character for me is the one that's introduced with as little flair as possible because he's being added on, and I guess that's why they kill Johnny Cage in the first five minutes, because they have to make room for Raiden's character journey and um uh Jax's character journey, and apparently Shao Kahn's character journey, which really I could not give a fuck.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, we'll get onto that in a minute.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the premise.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: We've five minutes into this recording, and we've just got to the premise.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's fine.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it's just like I don't understand like one one thing that one thing that was not clear to me, I thought Jax had been in the first movie.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: He has a very small role in the first movie.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: He is basically Oh, he is actually in it.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but it's played by a different actor.
• 38:35
  unknown: Okay.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: Apparently they were gonna try and get that actor back.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but unfortunately he had some kind of a I mean it's really tragic, he had a heart condition that came up in between the two movies, and shortly after Annihilation came out, he unfortunately died.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um I cannot remember the name of that actor.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's in my notes somewhere, but um he appears in two scenes in the first movie, basically playing a kind of role of sidekick to Sonia, of just like, hey, you can't get on that boat.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, Sonia.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh as Sonia is hunting Kano, who's a character in the first movie.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: Got you.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to look up his name now.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Gregory McKinney.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's the one.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, yep.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Got you, okay.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, like obviously they introduce Jax.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's not clear like they they they do make it as though he's like, Oh the the impression that you get, if you don't remember any of the first one, sort of, is that he's been around the entire time.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like they're like, oh, here's Jax.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: We know him, don't we guys?
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: They don't give like there's no backstory to any of these characters they introduce, and like what uh the other thing is uh Shiva, is it?
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: No, Cindel.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Fuck.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: So Cindel is Katana's mom?
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, okay, so here is the here is the the canon narrative from the video game.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: Cindel was queen of a realm called Edenia.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I the he the king of Edenia, I want to say, was called Herod.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and when Emperor Shao Kahn invaded and absorbed Edenia, he killed Herod and took Sindel for his own wife.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: Cindel then killed herself and then is resurrected in this movie, uh, but she's evil.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: Got you.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: And they don't explain that in any way, shape, or form in this movie.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: What they do say is that uh the ultimate goal uh for Shao Kahn is to get is Cindel is somehow key to merging Earth Realm, but then again, they don't explain it.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then they also there's a whole other character, there are so many characters in this movie.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: I know, but the love and trust for Liu Kang is this Katana character who uh is Idenian, 10,000 years old, and there is a prophecy that she is the one that can stop the merging of Earth Realm, but that entire thing turns out to be a complete deception for absolutely no reason.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: It is literally just to kill time in order in order to fill an hour and a half.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: There is a another character because Katana herself is a blue ninja.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: There is a pink ninja called Melina, who is the one that was in the aforementioned mud fight for again, no reason.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: And there is also a um trickster betrayer character called Jade.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: Liu Kang goes on a quest to find his animality, um, which is a superhuman ability to turn into a an a another another creature.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like there is a character called Nightwolf, my god, more characters, um, who can transform into a wolf, and he tries to coach Liu Kang into becoming a dragon.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: And along the way, he meets Jade, who first tries to seduce him, then attacks him, and then claims to be his uh a spirit guide, or um, he claims to be his claims to want to help him.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he then tags along for the rest of the journey until eventually they think they're gonna save Sindele and turn her to the light side of the force, I suppose.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's all this there's this big reveal that's that goes, ha ha! I've fooled you, Liu Kang.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: I've led you into this ambush where me and Cindell are here, and then they leave.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and they ambush them to tell them they're in an ambush, and then they leave.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's so awkward and weird, it's so weird.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: But I learned something in the research for this that I think makes a lot of sense.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: The animated show that I mentioned earlier about the amazing cast it had there was an animated Mortal Kombat show in 1996 called Mortal Kombat Defenders of the Realm.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, which I think I saw the first episode of it.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was very sort of very thundercatsy, very um yeah, kid friendly.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: Apparently they took a lot of narratives from the animated show and turned them in and added them to this movie.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, which makes a lot of sense when you think about how these these narratives don't come to it, don't come to anything, and how some of these characters turn up and disappear as if they have as if they have unfinished business that you're gonna witness and you just don't witness it because apparently that's what it feels like.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: This entire movie feels like unfinished business and like and like these characters just have nothing to do.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what can we talk about the can we talk about the The mortal combat.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: No, the can we talk?
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: Can we talk about mortal combat?
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's what we're here for.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, can we talk about for a second the fight between Scorpion and Sub Zero?
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because this is one that's really baffling.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the idea of the narrative structure is that these characters are together as a unit at the end of the first movie, and then at the beginning of the second movie, they split off into their separate journeys, they have separate obstacles and thresholds to cross, and then they come back together again in order to have an all-out brawl at the end of the movie, which results essentially in a four-on-four battle royale between all of these insane characters that we've talked about.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um the point in which they split is when after going down these weird hamster balls into an underworld, again, doesn't really get explained.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a special effect they liked.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um it looks like shit.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, it looks terrible! And the thing is, they look like there was a real fad in the 90s of like going to you go to like um the Trocadero in London.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: And you'd have like one of those things where you have trampolines with bungee design and bunching guy.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: And you'd have these things where they're giant balls where you get you get harnessed in and they spin you on all six axes.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it looks it looks like them.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's like someone looked at those and goes, Oh, those are cool.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: Let's turn them into like a shuttle system through the underworld.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and the weirdest thing, so sorry for shouting.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: The weirdest thing is that the music they play while you're watching these hamster balls um uh going through the underworld is the same music that if you're if you watch American Pie, the first American Pie movie, it's the music that Jim dances to while he's trying like Sig dances to uh and then comes in his pants.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same song while trying to seduce Jan and Elizabeth.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's absolutely bizarre.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's absolutely bizarre.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, that's you know, I'm sorry, I wanted to say my favorite thing about that scene.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: He tells them he tells them the ball will be rolling so fast that it will feel like you're keeping still.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: So and the only reason they say that is so they don't have to animate it rolling.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh god, any more than they have to try and do, which just uh it's such a I feel like that's one of those decisions.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when you did your film when you did your film degree, did you make films at all?
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: Were you just uh Yes, yeah, yeah.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those things that you'll understand as two two filmmakers right now.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um a decision that is like it's a good idea, but we don't want to have to bother with going 100% on it, but we want to keep we've kind of backed this idea for long enough that we kind of want to keep it in the movie.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the result is that it's completely half-baked.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: It feels very much like uh like one of those things.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh boy, and like I began this entire tangent being like, can we talk about more can we talk about Mortal Kombat?
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then pivoting back to can we talk about Sub Zero and Scorpion?
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: And we haven't even got there yet.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um so Sub Zero and Scorpion, Sub Zero, no, god damn it, Scorpion attacks.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, goddammit.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: This movie is insane, smoke attacks, okay, and that's when you get to see it's actually a pretty decent fight scene.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: You get to tell that you can kind of tell that Tony Jar is the guy doing it because there's an awful lot of flips.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: Apparently, if you look online, they say there are 54 flips in this movie.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's insane.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um so smoke attacks, that's pretty bad.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: Then Sub Zero comes and saves the day, but then Scorpion attacks and takes Katana away for no real reason again.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing is, those two fight each other like it's an absolute all-out brawl, like it's Godzilla versus King Kong, like it's Thanos versus Captain Marvel, like it's something you've been waiting for, and they don't establish their rivalry in any way, shape, or form.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: And also, Scorpion is killed at the end of the first movie, and they do not explain why he is back.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: It is the sloppy storytelling, and apparently this is something that was taken directly from the animated series.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I think a lot of the a lot of just, and this is the thing, it's a 90-minute movie, and it has got so much in it, it could only be the cacophony that it is.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to say something, it's not even 90 minutes, it's it's uh it's an hour 20 with 11 minutes of credits.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_01: And on the one 11 minutes of credits, 11 minutes to actually register what that meant.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, so many people made this movie, so many people were in this movie, so many characters were in this movie.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: I had to scroll through, I was like at the end, and I was like, oh, is there like an after credit scene or something?
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_00: Why is this so long?
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: And part of me thinks like, well, if they'd used those 11 minutes, maybe those storylines would have had more room to breathe, they could have developed something, but I don't want to watch more of this movie.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think 83 minutes or whatever this movie is is more than enough.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: You had your shot and it did not work.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I appreciate it for the fact they tried.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, shit.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: I was so excited to see this movie when I was a kid.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: I was absolutely chomping at the bit.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: I like I want to talk about also like the we're talking about bad line line readings earlier.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about uh Sindel's line reading at the beginning.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is how this movie is kind of famous, right?
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's famous like three memeable things.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's terrible rotten tomato rating, um, like the I mean the amazing music and uh and this terrible, terrible line reading.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, yeah, so uh basically like this is when she f so Katana finds out that Cindel is still alive at the start of the movie, and she's like, Mother, you're alive?
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: And she goes, she looks at her and she points to goes, Too bad you will die.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: Dude, the fire you've been throwing down Zoom right now, I think you would have been a better Cindell than this.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, you know what?
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm being mean.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that actress did too bad a job because I think this actress, who is um, it should be said, is all of four years older than the woman playing her daughter.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: This actress, um she knows what movie she's in.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like she is camping it up and going crazy, but that that delivery in particular is like oh, it's bad.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, who and like again, it's one of those things where just like any director would have watched that performance and gone, can we try another one?
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: Can we try another one where you're not like going full Rocky horror?
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the thing part of me loves this movie for the sheer Rocky horror delight in like this the not even the science fiction double feature, but like the the video game.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: This was the this was the moment where it felt like video games were starting to like jump into a mainstream frame.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, was when they were making things like Super Mario and Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it was entirely crushing to hear that people didn't like them because as a kid I loved them.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but um, yeah, so I appreciate um that actress at least giving it all guns blazing, knowing full well, or at least presuming presumably knowing full well that um that it's a piece of shit.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: Not a piece of shit, that but that it is camp.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the other thing as well.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: This is a lot of the actress's name is Museta Vander, by the way.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the other thing about Mortal Kombat is that it was kind of built the video game, original video game was built as a kind of reflection upon the movies that were good that were playing at the time, and also video games.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a ripoff of Street Fighter, or at least in terms of the concept.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: The characters are based on, or at least inspired by characters from The Terminator.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: Raiden is based upon a character from Big Trouble in Little China.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's an awful lot of ninja turtle stuff going on with the colourful ninjas, or just ninjas were very popular at the time, anyway.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and ultimately, this movie again feels very Power Rangers, it feels very MTV, so it's all reflecting that stuff as well.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's important to remember that like superhero movies weren't a thing yet.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: X-Men doesn't come out until for another two years.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Blade, I think, came out a year after this movie.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Blade was a year after this.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but Blade is a year after this movie.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, of course, there was the original Superman films, and of course, there were the original four Batman films.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it's very interesting that, like, speaking of actors that didn't want to come back for this movie, not even the stunt man playing Scorpion wanted to come back for this movie.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: He instead went and made Batman and Robin, and that is the movie that I think really tells you the time and place of this movie.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: It is a Batman and Robin era of like these characters that are colourful and based upon comic books and video games, these characters are camp cartoons, and we are gonna make a human cartoon.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it took a long time for us to to break out of that cycle, I think.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it took a long time for everyone to realize like that's not what works necessarily, or there's like there's ways of doing it that you don't that uh I don't know, like this this way that they approach it has never worked and continues to not do so.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: I I I don't know, like I think it took maybe the dark night and like that that sort of era for like to change, or maybe like even the Marvel movies, like the original Marvel movies or even like when you say original Marvel movies, I think Blade is really the one that that is a turning point because that was Blade Blade's definitely a turning point, yeah.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's the original Marvel Studios movie, yeah.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's this you know, Blade has forever been changed by that movie.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: The original Blade concept was essentially a vampire hunting shaft.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: So um, you know, a movie that takes a character like Blade seriously is the one like closely followed by X-Men, closely followed by you know all the rest of them.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: But um I but yeah, like M Mortal Kombat was trying to follow along with those ideas as well.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: So shortly after the Dark Knight, there was a a mini, there was a a sizzle reel to try and get another movie made called Mortal Kombat Rebirth.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, which was a very dark night take.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_01: You can watch it on YouTube, it's fantastic.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um it really is like they they could have made that movie, and then what they did make on the back of that was a mini-series or like a web series called Mortal Kombat Legacy, which is a number of web shorts reimagining characters in a dark night frame.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um and really the most recent Mortal Kombat film has done exactly the same thing, where it is very much a Mortal Kombat movie in the within the frame of like a Marvel MCU movie, it's like a superhero origin story in the style of like a Guardians of the Galaxy.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um and just like every other iteration of Mortal Kombat, it's trying to be these things, but it doesn't reach that pinnacle.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's really interesting.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I need to go and watch it now.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: I need to see like the difference and like the changes of like this one to that.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm it's gonna be fascinating, I think.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, like jumping from this to the most recent Mortal Kombat, yeah, it's definitely an improvement.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: How could it be but yeah, like it's not it's not hard, it's really not.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, well, so yeah, like you said, we talked, we we you were talking about the music earlier.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: The music is so interesting in this movie, it's it's so like 90s Europop.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh uh it's a banger.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like, don't get me wrong, I've I've never really been a huge fan of EDM, but I think the needle drop in the third act where jumping forward in the plot, I don't know if we'll even I think at this point.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: The best bit in the movie for me is right at the very end where Xiao Kahn and Liu Kang they have their final confrontation, they engage their animalities, which results in the most ropey CGI battle between a dragon and a hydro.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it looks so bad.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's the worst at CGI out of the whole movie.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's so awful.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's so awful.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but then you could I think I could make that right now myself.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, absolutely, but like you could make that on your iPhone.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's that's partly an indication of the of the way that time and technology has aged.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but not by much, it's crap.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, um but anyway, once they've had that big animality battle, Shao Kahn realizes he is now mortal.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then the elder gods, which we haven't even touched upon, the elder gods show up and say they are going to make Shao Kahn mortal and stop his meddling father figure, who's also an elder god from from causing all this chaos, and that this battle will be decided as it was always meant to be in mortal combat.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: And when he says mortal combat, that is when the mortal combat track from the immortals plays, and you've probably heard I got so excited.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's the one bit that needleboard was amazing, and the thing is they overdo it in the first movie so much, they play that track about six times.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: They play at the beginning and at the end, and it is a banger.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I again, it's just something really infectious about it.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's all the best Cynthia mik mik mik mik mik mik mik mik mik mik mic and then it's so over the top.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and interesting fact, it was the first EDM track in the US to go platinum.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's insane.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_00: I I did not know that.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_01: I did my research.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you've done you've really done your research on this movie.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I mean, I mean, really, like the the this article from the Hollywood uh reporter, um Aaron Couch, 2015.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's uh it's very interesting and it breaks down the whole history of it.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'll put it in the notes.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, it's great, man.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, like I I was gonna say though, it got got so excited and it it plays for like three seconds and then cuts out, and I'm like, wait, no, keep going.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: Come back, come back.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it goes back to this like truncated synth.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no, no, we're here for the music.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: The music is the one good thing about this movie.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then eventually it does come back in, but like just keep it, just leave just have it playing.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_01: Don't don't you don't need to stop it in the middle of like the fight, totally, and then really it it makes all the difference to the tone of the movie, and like it does, it m it got me so excited.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Finally, this is what I've been waiting to see, and it looks it it looks like it's gonna be a good fight, and yeah, I don't know.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_00: What's one thing I wanted to ask you about?
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: What is the situation with like the little dragon thing that comes out of everyone's back when they die?
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_01: That is so confusing, even for me.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_01: That has no bearing in the in the mythology of Mortal Kombat at all.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: It it again, it's another one of those things where it just it doesn't have any consequence, and it doesn't have any point, it just it's so confusing, and I can only presume that it's something that was maybe like maybe maybe from the cartoon, maybe it was um uh a first draft thing that was some sort of important MacGuffin that just doesn't result that that that didn't carry over to the final draft, presuming there was more than one draft.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um it it makes it makes no sense because I was like, Well, are they supposed to represent something?
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: Are they supposed to lead you?
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: Is that supposed to be like once everyone dies?
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_00: Are you still there?
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, yeah, I'm still there.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, you were very still.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was watching, I would think as we were you were talking, and I was thinking so hard about like, is there something I've forgotten?
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_01: Is there a reason why those dragon tattoos are there?
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: They they do not make it clear.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like every time someone dies, the the the these dragons fly out, and it looks like it looks like they are being like these there's like a number of them to be defeated or something.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but no, it doesn't make it clear.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder if that was if they kept that in there because they do they make an effort.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_01: Part of the problem with this movie is they try and do character development arcs for every character, every good guy.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: If you consider that's Liu Kang, Sonia, Raiden, Jax, um, and then there's also a kind of truncated character arc for Shao Kahn, the villain.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's they attempt to squeeze three act character developments into five characters in the space of 83 minutes, yeah um, plus fight scenes.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so when it comes to the the reason why those are there, the the big reveal with those, because you witness a couple of them spinning off, and they're justified by them essentially being they're essentially they're essentially extra-dimensional oyster cards.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you have a if you have a dragon tattoo, you can travel between universes.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um but then Raiden says, Oh, it's my family crest.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, what?
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_01: What kind of family crest is that?
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's revealed that Shao Kahn also has that family crest, as does Shinnok the Elder God, and that A, Raiden is the son of an elder god, B, Shao Kahn is also a son of a Raider god, of an elder god, c that they're brothers, yeah, and that I guess is supposed to bring this kind of narrative arc for Raiden where he's supposed to be overcoming his evil family history, or he's supposed to be subverting his destiny for the greater good.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or it's supposed to just create tension so that when Raiden shows up to confront Shao Kahn, that there's something to fight for.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it doesn't happen though, because Raiden shows up and just gets killed.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_01: So what's the fucking point of turning immortal?
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_01: The only point of turning immortal is so you can fight a number of green-colored ninjas, presumably meant to be versions of reptile.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_01: And again, that has no point except for Raiden to engage in a fight.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_01: And for that, he doesn't need to be immortal.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: So again, what's the point?
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's more tension in the scene if he does if he's not immortal when he's fighting the reptiles.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like that would be a battle amongst gods.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, then if it's a I'd much rather see I would have so much rather have seen a human Raiden fighting a human Shao Kahn.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_01: I say human, the human actors, yeah, mortal Raiden fighting immortal Shao Kahn for the fate of EarthRalm instead of those um animated animalities.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_01: Any day.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_00: When you get to the final fight, and like the mortal literally the mortal combat, it's it's the best fight out of all of them, I think.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's the because they're just like fighting in they're just having martial art like a martial arts fight, and it's so much more interesting than two dragons fighting.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_01: But that and that's exactly the thing.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how many fights in this movie genuinely come down to mono imano and not like mono a cyborg?
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like there's I think it's just that one fight basically, and also I will give the movie this credit.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_01: They do build to a point where that one fight, that one mono imano battle has a degree of catharsis, and just like at last, it's just down to these two people.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it's I always I've always enjoyed that in movies, like everything from like take a movie like Lethal Weapon, which is just you know, guns blazing, shooting up pole dancing clubs and rescuing daughters and getting electrified in the shower, and then it just comes down to one Gary Bucy versus Mel Gibson on the lawn in front of uh uh Danny Glover's house.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, so that makes Mel Gibson, Lu Kang, Gary Bucy, Shao Kahn, and Danny Glover is I guess Shinnok anyway.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_01: Shinnok character that we haven't spoken about either.
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_01: So do you want to explain Shinnok?
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh Jesus.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_01: Shinnok is a character from Mortal Kombat 4.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_01: Mortal Kombat 3, they defeat Shao Kahn, so they have to develop a new ultimate villain.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_01: So they create this character called Shinnok, who is a who is a former elder god who is now the leader of the Mortal Kombat version of Hell called the Nether Realm, um, which is where Scorpion is from.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um but in this movie, he is an elder god.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_01: And he is the father of Shao Khan and the father of Raiden, but he is manipulating the events of Mortal Kombat and the invasion of Earth Realm.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: To his own ends or to his to his emperor son's ends until the rest of the elder gods intervene so that they can fight out in Mortal Kombat! Um and that that's that's as much as we get of Shinnok, really.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he's also appeared in later video games and given more of a story arc, but not by much.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like yeah, he's he he's literally like has no purp well he's very loosely in this movie.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um I get the feeling that he's kind of meant to be like a Star Wars Emperor Palpatine figure.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, probably.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_01: But without any of that, again, like the the Emperor Palpatine figure is there for Darth Vader to overcome him and redeem himself.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_01: There is no such purpose to this Emperor figure at all, or to this Shannot character at all.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's that that's one of the biggest letdowns of this movie is that like there's no uh justification for a lot of it.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think that's the biggest problem with it, is like they don't they like we've kind of talked about the whole thing, like I mean what else is there after Mortal Kombat?
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_00: They uh Raiden gets revived, he live he ends up living.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um He uh gets he gets given Shinock's position, basically.
• 1:07:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_01: He take he becomes one of the elder gods.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I'm I'm imagining they would have taken that into the third movie, and like that would have been like the so he would have been kind of like the like the palpatine character that back into like a mentor figure.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_01: Mentor sort of yeah, maybe maybe the I do know that there was gonna be a character.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um this is how much of a Mortal Kombat fan I was.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_01: For a time, there was a Mortal Kombat TV series that in the same way that like these movies reflect things like the Marvel movies and Dark Knight and uh Street Fighter and all this stuff.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_01: This is very much a Buffy the Vampire Slayer ripoff where Monster of the Week TV show, week by week, with these people in an ancient realm, ancient earth realm, and uh one of the characters that appeared regularly in that is a character from the video games called Quan Chi.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_01: Quan Chi um the actor playing him was due to come back for the sequel.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_01: So and Quan Chi is from the Nether Realm, so presumably Shinnok and all of that stuff would have come into the third movie.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, presumably.
• 1:08:25
  SPEAKER_00: But who there's a lot of presumptuous we have to presume a lot of stuff about these because we do we don't know, and that honestly they could have done nothing.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_01: From minute one.
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but yeah, like that that basically the end of the movie.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there's I don't know what else that we can talk about with it.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's so it's just a wild movie, and and I don't know.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_00: I truly don't understand how it did well.
• 1:08:55
  SPEAKER_00: Or like reasonably well at the time.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think like it just comes down to people underestimating the value of video game IPs.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like, video games are a bigger industry than the video game industry out financially speaking, the video game industry s outstretches Hollywood by billions and billions and billions.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's true, yeah.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_01: Huge business.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_01: And even back then, it was a big it was becoming a big deal.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_01: And not only that, Mortal Kombat was was extremely well known because it was in port a lot.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they were trying to shut it down because it's so grotesquely violent, yeah.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, with fatalities and blood and gore and bones and organs and all of that stuff, none of which is in these movies.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_01: Not at all.
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_01: You don't get any of that.
• 1:09:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that's one of the joys of the most recent film in that it's full blood and gore and it's just glorious.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's like what you want out of these movies.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's like sort of Friday the 13th or something or something.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_01: You're not there to find out what Freddie, what Freddie, not Freddie, what's his name?
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_01: Jason.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_01: Jason, thank you.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_01: Jason's backstory is too much.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want to dwell on that too much.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, the what the hell are we talking about?
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_01: This movie has completely boiled my brain.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we were saying, like, uh what were we talking about?
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_01: We were talking about oh no shit.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_01: What else are talking about?
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, there's one thing I wanted to mention, which is just as well as plot holes, there are just entire holes of logic, and a lot of that comes down to these characters that are in for conversations and then get killed off for no apparent reason.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh storylines and story threads that get dropped, um, reveals that have no consequence.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but also just in terms of clearly they need to hurry along.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, for instance, there's a there's this fight, which again happens for no apparent reason, except obviously Sonya Blade and a woman in a pink ninja outfit fight in mud.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah um it ends with a demon coming out of the rocks and roaring at them, and this demon then gets uh then gets defeated and thrown back into the rocks as a consequence of Jack's showing up and punching the shit out of its hip.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_01: And really what a roll of the dice that must have been for Jack.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, Achilles has his heel, who would have known this demon apparently had weak hips because he lays into these hips and the CGI creature kind of buckles to one side as it's getting punched, and then sure he punches this this demon in the head, but what what what logistical does that what logistical sense does that make for the viewer?
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_01: It makes no sense.
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_01: And there's I mean, it's this movie is rife with that stuff.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think it's just that he was like punching, obviously, like because it's CGI or whatever, he was just punching and they're like, oh god, where are we even gonna place this like this body part?
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's gotta be his hip.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think I honestly think they spent the whole day filming that that muds that mud fight, and then they were like, Oh shit, we haven't filmed Jack's uh defeating the demon yet.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna lose the light.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Shit.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, can someone just lit hold up this heavy bag?
• 1:12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Buddy, come over here and just just uh fuck, what's his name?
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Lynn, get over here and just punch the shit out of this heavy bag, and then we'll put the demon on top of it.
• 1:12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's what it looks like.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_01: It looks like a boxer laying into a heavy bag.
• 1:12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I honestly think they just they just painted it in after the fact because they needed the location for for that time.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um Jesus Christ.
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Another fascinating thing is this most of this was filmed in London.
• 1:12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, London, London, and uh some of it wasn't filmed in Thailand, yeah.
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, like a lot of that that quarry stuff that happens with the mudfight and everything filmed in Wales.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_01: They filmed it, like they filmed it on the same sets that David Tennant would get would film half of his like Doctor Who stuff in.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_01: That makes sense, yeah.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_01: So there's an awful lot of rocky quarries.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um at the same time, because they do so much with the CGI of this, you cannot tell it's London, like you cannot tell it's England at all or like the UK.
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_01: No, and I I do think that like the sets are pretty good.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like I think the sets are colourful and interesting, and yeah, they look like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but you know There's there's one scene where that that's very reminiscent reminiscent of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where um I believe it's uh what's it I believe it's Gitana in the cage, and uh they sw basically they swing in to s uh is it Lu Kang that swings in to Saver or is it Jax?
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_00: It must be Lu Kang.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's Lu Kang, it must be, I think.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then there's like a a monster that comes out and it's all like um prosthetics and everything.
• 1:13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Baraka, yeah.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's Baraka.
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's the thing when I was watching that scene, I was like, this is so buffy like this scene.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's 100% buffy.
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like the rubber masks and the weird limbs, and that is the fight, that's the fight that is Tony Ja versus Ray Park.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you go yeah, and one of the benefits of like something else we haven't talked about, Robin Sh Robin Show, the actor that plays Liu Kang, has the most luscious mullet in the world, and it's perfect for that stuff because you cannot tell it's Tony Ja because just that mullet is just getting in the way of the camera at all points.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can tell it's Tony Ja only in terms of like how he like his movement and everything, and like the way he like falls down and like flips back up again, and like that's very reminiscent of him.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like anyone that's seen sort of like Ongback or Warrior King or like Fast and Furious 7 or whichever one he's in, like he has got he himself has superhuman abilities.
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh, and you can absolutely tell this the stunts that he's done because it's just like, oh, that's defying gravity.
• 1:14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um also fun fact the original Mortal Kombat movie, by the way, one of the first Hollywood movies to use Wire Fu, to use wire-based uh martial arts choreography.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow, yeah.
• 1:15:02
  SPEAKER_01: They were doing it in Hong Kong, but they uh Mortal Kombat was one of the first ones to do it in in Hollywood.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, awesome.
• 1:15:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's uh that's actually a nice thing to bring into them in into the Hollywood cinema.
• 1:15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what an ignoble beginning.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um okay, so I think we've covered mostly everything.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is there anything you want that to anything you've we've missed that you want to talk about though specifically?
• 1:15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the one thing, and I even remember it from the first what viewing was just that weird thing of punching that monster's hip.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like I just remember thinking like that, and again, it's one of those things that as a filmmaker, I I saw it, even as a young filmmaker, and just thought, that looks like a last-minute decision to cover a lack of coverage.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um definitely.
• 1:15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_01: But but like we've covered everything.
• 1:15:46
  SPEAKER_01: There are so many characters in this movie, there's so many, there's so much in this one 90-minute thing that it was just destined to fail.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_01: But what was funny is that like this new movie has a ton of characters, but somehow they managed to make it work.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be very interested to see what you think when you when you uh I'm gonna watch it.
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to see it.
• 1:16:03
  SPEAKER_00: I I gotta I've gotta know like how different it is, and how much they kept like took from these as well.
• 1:16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um okay, so let's move on to the final segment then, which is the reverse of this.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um and do you have a movie that's uh well reviewed and loved by critics and fans that you think is a bad movie?
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um the the number one thing that I think of when I think of this category, again, it's that thing of like and it must be a thing with age, but I cannot stand a movie that just wastes my time.
• 1:16:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, I agree.
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I will happily watch, like I will happily watch total shallow garbage.
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_01: But for some reason, being asked to watch The Irishman, all three and a half hours of it, of just I mean, frankly, old white men just burbling at each other repeatedly.
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_01: And really, I do understand the appeal of it because it's an incredible thing to have a movie that has all of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Kartel.
• 1:17:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a real all-star game of a movie.
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_01: But it was so long, and I just found it so boring.
• 1:17:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it was an Oscar contender in a year where the the the other Oscar contenders were so colourful and interesting.
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Films like JoJo Rabbit and Knives Out and uh Parasite, and I just thought it brought absolutely nothing to me.
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't bring me joy, it didn't bring me outrage, it didn't stimulate me, it didn't titillate me, it didn't entertain me, it didn't uh cause me to think about any social issues.
• 1:17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um I didn't even find it funny.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_01: I can watch a absolute dog shit movie if I find it funny.
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I found the Irishman did absolutely nothing for me.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I mean it's come up on this podcast before, like people have picked it before.
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And um I can't remember who picked it, but uh I remember the the debate I had was did you see it uh did you see it in cinemas or did you see it at home?
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_01: I saw it on Netflix.
• 1:18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because I saw it in cinemas, and everyone at the cinema had a very different reaction to everyone that saw it at home.
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_01: That is fascinating.
• 1:18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know why I don't know if it's just that you get engrossed in it in the cinema or not.
• 1:18:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think that must play a huge factor in it because like it's one thing to be a cat and also like I don't think I watched it in one go either.
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's the other thing.
• 1:18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh also like but it's like I I I understand why people don't like it.
• 1:18:59
  SPEAKER_00: I do get that, and everything you said about that does make sense, and it's totally valid as well.
• 1:19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like there's like it makes sense that you're not can there's nothing you're connected with in the movie.
• 1:19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've I I find it an interesting movie.
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it I don't think it's one of his I don't think it's one of the very best of his movies by any stretch, but I do like I to me I liked the idea of seeing these people at the end of their uh end of their lives like working like uh enjoying not enjoying, right looking back on their like their past and and regretting it and saying like and showing that what this because for the longest time with all these other moot gangster movies that he's done or like other people have done, it's always like showcasing it in like this uh glamorous way, whereas like this one is like the opposite of that where it doesn't show it, it shows it to be awful, and it shows it to be and and it shows they understand it's awful finally.
• 1:20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I do get why people might not like that.
• 1:20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess there's a degree of like mundanity about it that's yes, um, that like a lot of Scorsese films have a bit more sheen to it.
• 1:20:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm probably I think there's also we've kind of been spoiled with with like gangster narratives, just we have so many of them.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and in terms of like wanting to explain the mundanity of of crime, um, I mean, uh for me, I would always choose the Sopranos over uh over um over the Irishman, or I'd even go for taking bad.
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, then again, that's not terribly mundane because it's got this twist around chemistry.
• 1:20:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um but um I think that's a really good argument in favor of that movie.
• 1:20:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I I absolutely agree that like watching a movie in the cinema when you're a captive audience makes all the difference in the world.
• 1:20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and yeah, I think like there's a I was just way more interested in the actors than I were in the was in the characters as well.
• 1:21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Just being a film and and dying to see you know, just being like this seeing the two of them together for the first time is well, not the first time, but like the the a real proper time.
• 1:21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, one of the one of the few times, yeah.
• 1:21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Another thing, like another thing as well, and this is this is just me being spoiled, a completely spoiled child.
• 1:21:21
  SPEAKER_01: When Pacino and De Niro um were in heat, yeah, was the one time they shared a screen together, and it perfect.
• 1:21:31
  SPEAKER_01: That scene holds up as one of the greatest scenes in movies, in my opinion.
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think it is wonderful, wonderful filmmaking, wonderful acting.
• 1:21:40
  SPEAKER_01: The pace finds that scene at just the right time, and the narrative and the plot all work in concert to build to this point where you have a coffee, just a cup of coffee, between Robert De Niro's character and Albert Chino's, and it's beautiful.
• 1:21:52
  SPEAKER_01: And anytime they've been in a scene since has just shat on that legacy.
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that film, Righteous Kill.
• 1:21:59
  SPEAKER_01: Righteous Kill is so bad.
• 1:22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's that's a bad movie.
• 1:22:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I would love to talk about the movie, but I do not like it enough to possibly go and to possibly talk about it on a podcast like this.
• 1:22:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the um Righteous Kill is terrible.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't believe quite lives up to it either, just because there's I mean, I mean, there's enough said about the Irishman at this point.
• 1:22:20
  SPEAKER_01: The other movie as well that comes to mind is um uh one that I I've definitely heard you speak about in this podcast before, which is La La Land, which I thought was so overhyped.
• 1:22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um really outrageous that people would say it was a better film than Moonlight.
• 1:22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh oh I know, I cannot believe people thought it was better than Moonlight.
• 1:22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Moonlight was such a wonderful film, yeah, and La La Land just did not again.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_01: That was another movie where I felt like my time was wasted.
• 1:22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I that's another movie that I saw in the cinema and really enjoyed.
• 1:22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then every time I've seen it, I've seen it a couple of times since, and it does not hold up.
• 1:22:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I'd also like another movie which I saw in DVD.
• 1:22:57
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe it's like the magic of the cinema, maybe it makes a big difference to movies like that.
• 1:23:02
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing though, I've I've just realized another thing I'm realising as well, both the Irishman and Lala Land, I saw at the London Film Festival, and I'm wondering if we if I got caught up in that as well.
• 1:23:13
  SPEAKER_01: That makes a big difference.
• 1:23:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like the stuff that I've seen in film festivals, like where I've come away being like, oh, this should get a national nationwide release, and then I've watched the DVD at home and be like, oh no, this film's got no production value, this would never work.
• 1:23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Anytime I've been to a film festival, I've I've exactly it's very easy to get caught up in that in that aura of like the underdog, for instance, like for me.
• 1:23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or you know, any of that stuff.
• 1:23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've guessed.
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Especially when especially when like the people show up.
• 1:23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like nobody showed up for both of those, either of those films, but like of imagining if they like actually did show up and everything, you really get into it then.
• 1:23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow, they're all here.
• 1:23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I can see absolutely, absolutely.
• 1:23:59
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, this is uh this been great.
• 1:24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for doing this.
• 1:24:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um thank you for letting me invite myself on.
• 1:24:06
  SPEAKER_01: I really enjoyed it.
• 1:24:07
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, anytime.
• 1:24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like it's great having you on.
• 1:24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And like honestly, like I I'm so glad someone did choose this movie because it's so wild and funny and insane.
• 1:24:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if only for the mean content after the fact, you know.
• 1:24:22
  SPEAKER_01: You too will die.
• 1:24:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's well worth it.
• 1:24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Even that was better.
• 1:24:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to do it badly.
• 1:24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, but that's the part that's part of the reason why I think that might have been that has to have been a conscious choice.
• 1:24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like don't you don't lean into it with that much emphasis unless you unless you think that's the right move.
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh boy.
• 1:24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but yeah, like okay, so like how can we find you online?
• 1:24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And do you have anything you'd like to promote at the moment?
• 1:24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, um, you can find me online.
• 1:24:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've just relaunched my website, which is edmundfarga.com.
• 1:24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm on social media at edmundfarga on Twitter, at edfarga on um Instagram.
• 1:25:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, um, I'm also part of the Maydays.
• 1:25:08
  SPEAKER_01: We are uh an improv group that performs and teaches around the world.
• 1:25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they are at themaydays.co.uk.
• 1:25:18
  SPEAKER_01: And we also have a podcast, um, which is called Hang Out with the Maydays.
• 1:25:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you can find that on your local podcast provider or by entering into your web browser, podfollow.com forward slash Maydays.
• 1:25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And probably anything you use to listen to this, I'd imagine exactly.
• 1:25:36
  SPEAKER_01: If you if you're listening to this podcast right now, you can find it for sure.
• 1:25:40
  SPEAKER_01: Hang out with the Maydays.
• 1:25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for coming on, Ed.
• 1:25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Dude, it's been a blast, thank you.
• 1:25:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the podcast.
• 1:25:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed it, please leave us a review and let us like and subscribe and make it more episode.
• 1:25:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll see you next week for more moving critics.