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Origins of Horror in "Swamp Thing" (1982) / Superpowered Indie Drama in "Fast Color" (2018) · Meet Your Double Feature | Movie Reviews & Forgotten Films

• 0:09
  Tonight on Meet Your Double feature, a mutated scientist
• 0:13
  returns to wreak havoc on the men that caused his
• 0:16
  transformation in Swamp Thing. Then a woman with dangerous
• 0:22
  superpowers returns home to face the family she abandoned in fast
• 0:26
  color. It's a brooding superhero double
• 0:30
  feature, and it starts right now.
• 0:38
  Hello and welcome to Meet Your Double Feature, a double-blind
• 0:41
  movie review podcast. My name is Thomas, joined as
• 0:44
  always by my brother Frank. Frank, how are you?
• 0:46
  Oh, I'm excited, excited to be here.
• 0:49
  He's excited to be here. He says that every time because
• 0:51
  our show is a bit exciting. A.
• 0:53
  Little bit a little bit exciting.
• 0:56
  Exciting. OK, OK, we have two back-to-back
• 1:01
  movie reviews in store for you tonight.
• 1:03
  Later on in the show, I'm going to be talking about the movie
• 1:05
  Frank asked me to watch, 2018's Fast Color.
• 1:08
  But first up, Frank, we throw things over to you.
• 1:11
  I recommended you to watch 1982's Swamp Thing.
• 1:15
  This, you can't tell from those two titles, is part of our
• 1:18
  ongoing series of forgotten superhero films.
• 1:21
  I would say these two bit of a stretch.
• 1:25
  Bit of a stretch. Like, not really in the sense
• 1:29
  that they clearly are superhero movies, which for, you know,
• 1:32
  we'll get into that, but they don't seem like it on paper as
• 1:35
  much as a lot of the other stuff we've talked about.
• 1:38
  Which I think is good. I feel like that was that was
• 1:40
  the sort of goal I guess we had in mind for this season of
• 1:44
  superhero movies was to find stuff that was different because
• 1:48
  superhero films have become very sanitized and same.
• 1:52
  Y so very samey. Yeah.
• 1:55
  I, I'm trying to remember, I think the reason I asked you to
• 1:59
  watch Swamp Thing, because, again, we recommend each other
• 2:02
  movies that neither of us has ever seen in order to keep
• 2:04
  things, keep things fresh. It's a blind review.
• 2:07
  Swamp Thing. All I knew going in is that it
• 2:09
  was directed by Wes Craven, the famous horror film director, but
• 2:14
  that it predates a lot of his more famous work, like the
• 2:16
  Nightmare on Elm Street series and Scream, etcetera.
• 2:19
  So curious to hear how good Swamp Thing is.
• 2:22
  Yeah, you know, something's fun to to stop on Wes Craven for a
• 2:26
  second. From what I read, this movie
• 2:29
  almost bankrupted him. Oh, OK.
• 2:32
  Yeah, he said the only good thing to come out of making this
• 2:36
  movie was that he came up with the idea for Nightmare on Elm
• 2:39
  Street while they were filming it.
• 2:41
  He was like, this movie production's a nightmare.
• 2:43
  And then he looked up and there's like a street sign.
• 2:46
  That's it. Or no, that's a tweet.
• 2:50
  That would make more sense. No, no, no, it's just the
• 2:52
  street. They're literally on Elm Street.
• 2:54
  They're in a swamp, but it's somehow Elm St.
• 2:58
  So we almost got Nightmare on Swamp Street, but she fixed it.
• 3:04
  OK, well that's good to know. That's an interesting piece of
• 3:06
  of history here. Right, Yeah, yeah, but that
• 3:09
  makes sense. This movie is very stylistic.
• 3:13
  I actually, I guess I'm not super familiar with a lot of Wes
• 3:16
  Craven's movies. I honestly don't think I've seen
• 3:19
  On Elm Street, maybe any of those films.
• 3:23
  Probably same for me. I mean we've we've brought this
• 3:26
  up before, neither of us are big on horror movies specifically.
• 3:29
  Like we love films but we're not super well versed, especially in
• 3:34
  like slasher movies. I don't.
• 3:35
  I don't really have much of an appetite for those usually.
• 3:38
  I'm coming around on horror movies in general 'cause I feel
• 3:41
  like it has been a blind spot, so I'm trying to like, expose
• 3:44
  myself to some more of them. I've gotten really into like the
• 3:48
  Scream franchise recently. Which is also Wes Craven.
• 3:52
  Yeah, and also really funny. Like I was like I was watching
• 3:58
  like one of them was just like on or somebody was watching it
• 4:01
  and I was watching a scene from Scream and it was like the
• 4:03
  killer was like chasing a character around.
• 4:06
  And it was like so slapstick how they kept like falling over that
• 4:10
  I thought for a second that it was one of the Scream parody
• 4:14
  movies like like the the Wayne brothers movies.
• 4:19
  Oh, like Scary Movie? Yeah, I.
• 4:20
  Thought it was scary when I was and I was like Oh no this is
• 4:23
  actually. Scream, right, But that's kind
• 4:26
  of what Scream's legacy is, is that it maintains the like
• 4:31
  horror elements while really satirizing the entire genre up
• 4:35
  to that point. I think Scream even has like an
• 4:38
  in universe film franchise called Stab that is just also
• 4:42
  the Scream movies. So it's very like goofy and was
• 4:46
  very much an evolution on what at that point had been a long
• 4:50
  career of standard horror movies from Wes Craven.
• 4:52
  So you get, I guess you have seen some of the stuff you've
• 4:55
  just seen. The newer ones, that's true.
• 4:57
  That's true. I guess I haven't seen like his
• 4:59
  like 80s stuff except for swamp Thing.
• 5:01
  I saw swamp. Thing, which is what we're
• 5:03
  talking about, in case you can't tell.
• 5:07
  You don't want to talk about. Scream.
• 5:10
  See, he was filming Nightmare on Elm Street and he was like, I'm
• 5:12
  so mad. It makes me want to so I got
• 5:16
  his. Makes you want a swamp thing
• 5:19
  too. The return of swamp.
• 5:25
  Thing, it's funny, there is a Swamp Thing sequel I think.
• 5:27
  I don't think he made it, but if it's called just Swamp Thing to
• 5:31
  return of the Swamp Thing, I don't want it.
• 5:33
  No, it literally is called Return of the Swamp Thing.
• 5:36
  I don't think they. Have the Swamp Thing.
• 5:37
  Funny, but yeah, that's what I liked about it.
• 5:41
  I wanted there to be Swamp Thing too.
• 5:42
  Return of the Swamp Thing, just as I've ever done it.
• 5:44
  That's. Yeah, unfortunately, no, they
• 5:49
  they they didn't do The funny thing.
• 5:51
  But anyway, yeah, Swamp Thing. The first one, Swamp Thing 1982,
• 5:56
  a superhero film? Because I'm pretty sure Swamp
• 5:59
  Thing is ADC comics character, right?
• 6:03
  He he is yeah, and like he's hero ish in this movie.
• 6:09
  He like like kind of saves he does he saves the day in this
• 6:13
  movie. So, so he's he's, you know,
• 6:16
  don't judge him just because he's a, he's an ugly swamp
• 6:18
  monster. He can still be a superhero if
• 6:20
  he wants, OK? So it's really it's about, yeah,
• 6:23
  don't judge a swamp by its thing.
• 6:28
  Gross. Wait, OK, so if he's what is the
• 6:36
  threat in the story? Are we, is it the POV from Swamp
• 6:39
  Thing or is it that there's some other thing going on and he's
• 6:43
  helping give me give me the beats.
• 6:44
  So. Yeah, OK, I will.
• 6:48
  I will. So this movie, it's fun
• 6:54
  actually. I like the setup and I like the
• 6:55
  setting. It is.
• 6:57
  It isn't a swamp. The whole movie is in a swamp.
• 7:01
  Yeah, as you would expect. But it's like a cool.
• 7:03
  Like they did film on location. I believe it was in South
• 7:08
  Carolina. They had this like neat location
• 7:12
  that was like like I have submerged like church and like
• 7:17
  part of a town that like they say in the movie that it like a
• 7:23
  storm came through and and like basically flooded the place.
• 7:28
  And so it's like this really kind of cool backdrop that
• 7:30
  they're in for like the first act of the movie because the
• 7:33
  story is that there are these scientists working in this swamp
• 7:40
  who are working on this like sci-fi formula for something
• 7:48
  that can like grow plants in like any environment, basically.
• 7:53
  And so our lead character, who I, I might mispronounce her the
• 7:59
  actress's name, but it's Adrian Barbeau.
• 8:03
  Well, maybe I think that's right.
• 8:05
  OK. She plays Alice Cable, which is
• 8:09
  a really cool name, especially because throughout the movie
• 8:11
  they just call her Cable, you know?
• 8:14
  And I'm like that. Sounds very comic booky.
• 8:16
  It does. Well, there is there is Cable
• 8:18
  from like, you know, Deadpool and the X-Men and stuff.
• 8:21
  But like, yeah, it's just really neat.
• 8:23
  And she kind of kicks ass throughout this movie too, which
• 8:26
  is fun. You know, she she does kind of
• 8:29
  like play the damsel in distress a bit, but she definitely like
• 8:34
  does a lot of her own ass kicking in this movie.
• 8:36
  And I'm like, yeah, go cable. Cable's cool, like.
• 8:39
  Go cable. Yeah.
• 8:40
  OK, that's interesting because on the on the cover that I saw
• 8:43
  for Swamp Thing, it's like an illustrated cover.
• 8:46
  It seems to really harken to like King Kong imagery almost of
• 8:49
  the Swamp Thing like carrying her away and she's in like a
• 8:52
  dress or something. So I wasn't sure if it would be
• 8:54
  more like that or more like, you know, on a scale between that
• 8:58
  and like Ripley from Aliens, you know, like what the what her
• 9:02
  role would be. But that's a good comparison
• 9:04
  because in my head, Ripley would probably be a more apt
• 9:06
  comparison. But while I was watching it, I
• 9:08
  was like, man, Cable kind of gives me, like, Samus Rand
• 9:10
  vibes, you know, like, yeah. Also good.
• 9:15
  Yeah. But no, the Swamp Thing has to
• 9:16
  help her out after she's already been through a lot.
• 9:19
  Like it's like she needs like she needs like a hot tag
• 9:23
  whenever a Swamp Thing comes in to help because she's already
• 9:26
  been fighting for her life. Well, so she's not Swamp Thing
• 9:30
  is not the threat that there's there's another creature or
• 9:33
  what's up? No.
• 9:34
  OK, So there's the scientists there in the swamp.
• 9:38
  Cable shows up because she's working for the government.
• 9:41
  I'm not really clear on what she was sent there to do other than
• 9:45
  to maybe like help out with this research or just like kind of
• 9:51
  monitor this research and report back to the people that she's
• 9:54
  working for. But basically there is like the
• 9:59
  bad guy group who wants this experiment for themselves.
• 10:05
  So they send in like a kind of like paramilitary organization
• 10:09
  to come in and like kill all these scientists and, and take
• 10:13
  the formula. And that results in the lead
• 10:19
  scientist guy who's played by Ray Wise, who it's kind of like
• 10:24
  a long time character actor type, but this was one of his
• 10:28
  first movies. I think this might have been
• 10:30
  like his second movie ever. But he's playing the lead
• 10:34
  scientist who's working on this and his sister is is working on
• 10:38
  it with him. And she gets killed when these
• 10:42
  like military guys come in and try and steal the thing.
• 10:44
  And in the tussle, the sci-fi goop gets on him and he like
• 10:51
  bursts into flames in this like really fun, like pyrotechnic
• 10:57
  sequence. It's like a stunt guy who's like
• 11:00
  on fire, but he's like running through the set.
• 11:03
  At one point he like, runs like he like jumps off like a, a
• 11:06
  porch and there's like an explosion and it's all done like
• 11:09
  practically. And I'm like, wow, that looks
• 11:11
  really good. That guy's dead.
• 11:12
  I think he he like exploded. That stunt actor is dead.
• 11:18
  He gave his life for Swamp Thing.
• 11:20
  Yeah, worth it. Worth it. 10 out of 10.
• 11:22
  Thank you, stunt guy. But yeah, so like he he kind of
• 11:26
  runs out of there on fire and like jumps into the swamp and
• 11:29
  they're like, all right, well, that guy's gone.
• 11:31
  But then that is what transforms him into the Swamp Thing.
• 11:34
  So Swamp Thing is is definitely good guy superhero in this one.
• 11:39
  OK, that's interesting. Where it goes from there is the
• 11:44
  bad guys that were like because the formula got on him and and
• 11:49
  transformed him and he ran away. They were looking for his like
• 11:52
  notes for this formula and cable, 'cause she was there,
• 11:57
  she's able to like escape with like the notes for the formula.
• 12:01
  So it's like most of the rest of the film is them chasing her
• 12:04
  through the swamps, you know, and her, like, fighting for her
• 12:08
  life. And Swamp Thing has to come
• 12:09
  savor a few times, OK. So this is much more like
• 12:14
  science fiction action sounding to me than a straight up horror
• 12:18
  film. Oh, no, this is not a horror
• 12:20
  film. There's this is.
• 12:22
  There's no. Labeled as one.
• 12:24
  That's wrong. That is incorrect.
• 12:31
  Unless, yeah, unless horror means something different than
• 12:35
  what I understand it too. Like, I would not call this.
• 12:38
  Yeah, no, it's way more like it's like, like Campy Bee Movie.
• 12:43
  Like it's the movie's called Swamp Thing.
• 12:44
  I mean, I like, I don't know what.
• 12:47
  It's terrifying. OK, there's a.
• 12:50
  Thing in that swamp yeah, like, but no, it's very like kind of
• 12:58
  serial comics from like the kind of keeps coming back up but like
• 13:03
  the shadow, you know, it's kind of like feels like of that era,
• 13:07
  you know. That does seem like a lot of
• 13:10
  what was being adapted into movies in the like late 80s and
• 13:14
  through the 90s. And I don't know if that's
• 13:15
  because the people writing the films would have consumed
• 13:19
  stories like that when they were kids or something.
• 13:21
  Like they would have seen like TV serial productions of like
• 13:26
  Green Hornet and whatever. And they kind of based their
• 13:29
  future works on that. But it does seem like that
• 13:31
  really like had a moment in the sun where is now.
• 13:33
  I don't think there's anything in production that resembles
• 13:36
  this these kind of old style comic strip stories.
• 13:39
  Which would be cool to revisit it now, now that it's even
• 13:42
  further away from that, you know, and kind of see it like.
• 13:45
  Yeah. Adapted like yet again through
• 13:48
  another modern lens, but. Yeah, no, I think so.
• 13:51
  I do take it back because Amazon is making a Spider Man Noir
• 13:57
  series with Nicolas Cage because he was in the Spider verse
• 14:02
  movies, but he's getting like a live action Spider noir and that
• 14:05
  very much is the same kind of homage as a lot of the other
• 14:08
  ones we're talking about. Yeah, that's true that that that
• 14:12
  series actually looks cool. And you can check out our movie
• 14:14
  while you're on Amazon, too. While you.
• 14:15
  While you're on Amazon Prime, Nate and Mariah in Venice 2026
• 14:19
  link in the description just. Plug that in there.
• 14:24
  Or by the way, not being mine, being Franks and his Co producer
• 14:28
  Austin Bulky. Check out his guest episode
• 14:30
  appearance from a couple weeks back.
• 14:32
  Oh yeah, that was, that was fun. That was pretty good.
• 14:34
  We'll we'll have him back on soon too, to to to talk about
• 14:36
  Return of the Swamp Thing too. To talk about Return of the
• 14:38
  Swamp Thing, OK, so I feel like now I understand the premise of
• 14:45
  Swamp Thing, which is fun. I am more interested than if it
• 14:48
  was like a traditional throwback horror film about a swamp guy.
• 14:53
  That. Would have been a little slow
• 14:55
  probably. So I'm on, I'm on board.
• 14:57
  I guess question for me now is, like you said, the production
• 15:01
  elements were interesting. They had some good like
• 15:03
  locations. How did they pad out this like,
• 15:06
  chase portion of the story, 'cause I feel like I can
• 15:09
  envision the beginning and then as soon as it's just we have to
• 15:12
  chase Adrian Barbeau through a swamp, how does that feel what
• 15:16
  must be like an hour of the movie?
• 15:18
  I mean it, it really is a lot of back and forth.
• 15:21
  She does meet another character like a young kid who's like
• 15:27
  running a gas station and. In a swamp.
• 15:31
  Yeah, yeah, 'cause they're like, they're like near civilization
• 15:35
  kind of, you know, it's just that where they're doing their
• 15:38
  research is, is in this this swamp, you know, So she, she
• 15:45
  makes her way there and she meets this kid who like, kind of
• 15:49
  helps her out a bit. And she like, asks him at one
• 15:52
  point she's like, do your parents run this gas station?
• 15:56
  And I don't think he answers that question.
• 15:57
  So they never elaborate on that. You never see the kid with
• 15:59
  anyone else other than her. So I'm like, I guess that's his
• 16:02
  gas station. It's like 12.
• 16:03
  That's fun just running a swamp gas station I guess.
• 16:09
  He's just like, don't get much business around here on account
• 16:12
  of it's a swamp. That's their slogan on account.
• 16:18
  It's a swamp. There's like one car perennially
• 16:22
  parked out front because it's completely submerged, but it's
• 16:25
  like next to the little gas station kiosk and he's like
• 16:29
  filled her up ages ago. Just hanging around.
• 16:37
  So yeah. So she, she meets up with him at
• 16:41
  one point. Like the military guys, like
• 16:45
  they, it's like off screen, but they like presumably killed the
• 16:49
  kid. And I was like, Oh my gosh,
• 16:51
  like, are they going to they killed this kid?
• 16:55
  But then the Swamp Thing finds him and like kind of
• 17:00
  demonstrates that he has like healing swamp powers.
• 17:03
  So he like heals the kid and like brings him back to life.
• 17:08
  I'm not going to do it, but I would love in the video version
• 17:11
  of this episode to have like a a counter in the top of the screen
• 17:14
  for how many times we say swamp in this review?
• 17:19
  No, you could do it. Throw it in there.
• 17:21
  No way am I doing that, That would take forever.
• 17:25
  Imagine, just pretend. Let us know in the comments how
• 17:30
  many times we said swamp. Yeah, take a shot every time we
• 17:32
  say swamp. No, I mean, it's a big part of
• 17:37
  the movie. It is a swamp man thing in a
• 17:40
  swamp and it's where they spend 90% of the film.
• 17:46
  There is there there is one point near the end where they
• 17:48
  are like captured and taken to the main villains, like a state
• 17:54
  where he has like an underground dungeon that like connects to
• 17:58
  the swamp for some reason. And and I should touch on the
• 18:02
  bad guy real quick. His name is Anton Arcane, which
• 18:08
  is a again, a very comic bookie, very arch villain.
• 18:12
  Name Arcane. That's also interesting to me
• 18:15
  because in our last episode we talked about Doctor Mordred,
• 18:18
  which is a Doctor Strange RIP off and his name in that is
• 18:21
  Anton Mordred. And this to me feels like they
• 18:24
  wanted Mordred and they couldn't get him so they were like Anton
• 18:27
  Arcane question mark. Oh, oh, it's like Mordred.
• 18:30
  Wanted Doctor Strange and they couldn't get him, but Swamp
• 18:32
  Thing wanted Mordred because they're like well, we can afford
• 18:34
  doctor Mordred, but then they still couldn't get him.
• 18:36
  They. Still couldn't get him, yeah.
• 18:39
  And then settle. And then there's the sequel to
• 18:41
  Swamp Thing. They can't afford Anton Arcane,
• 18:43
  so they're just like Anton Weirdman.
• 18:46
  Weirdman. Such a weird man.
• 18:51
  He's just. Why is his estate connect to a
• 18:54
  swamp that's bad for the land value.
• 18:57
  I did look into the sequel a little bit.
• 18:59
  The return of the Swamp Thing to the swamp.
• 19:02
  The Swamp Thing. Let's be swamp to Thing, do
• 19:06
  swamp to Thing. Yeah, that's better.
• 19:11
  And and and Arcane is in that one, despite the fact that
• 19:16
  spoiler, he dies at the end of this one, but.
• 19:18
  Oh, OK. Somehow resurrected some.
• 19:21
  Somehow he returned some. Anton Arcane returned.
• 19:28
  Sorry, that was that was a that was a side by me.
• 19:30
  But tell me about Mr. Arcane. Well, the main thing I wanted to
• 19:35
  say is in the beginning of the movie, he's there with the other
• 19:38
  scientists, like posing as one of them.
• 19:41
  And I don't even know why this is necessary.
• 19:45
  But like there's a scene where he's like he reveals like his
• 19:50
  actual identity and he has like one of those Mission Impossible
• 19:53
  like rubber faces on and he like peels it off to reveal like it's
• 19:59
  actually me, Anton Arcane. And I'm like, I that OK, I still
• 20:04
  don't know who you. I didn't know who you were
• 20:05
  before. I don't know who you are now.
• 20:08
  Like I don't know if the other characters even did.
• 20:11
  So I don't know who this was for like.
• 20:13
  Well, it's because it was supposed to be Jeffrey Combs as
• 20:16
  Anton Mordred, and that they just.
• 20:18
  Left it in the script and it was going to be, yeah, it's going to
• 20:22
  be a big like reveal. The audience would have gone
• 20:24
  crazy, like Oh my God, they got Mordred in this.
• 20:26
  Oh my gosh, the guy from that? Not a movie that's 70 minutes
• 20:29
  long. That that is.
• 20:33
  Weird though that they would do the like villain reveal for
• 20:37
  someone the audience has no reason to be surprised by.
• 20:40
  The audience nor the other characters from what I could
• 20:42
  understand, because they were also like OK and I just.
• 20:50
  It's like a comedy beep. Yeah, it kind of is.
• 20:54
  But like, it's, it's also like it was a really well done
• 20:57
  effect. I'm like the way that they did
• 20:58
  it, like there was like a hidden cut in there, but it looks like
• 21:01
  it was all one static shock, static shock, Static shock.
• 21:09
  Yeah, of him pulling his, you know, his face off.
• 21:13
  It honestly looked just as good, if not better than it does in
• 21:16
  like the modern Mission Impossible movies.
• 21:19
  I was like, OK, that's fun. Thanks Arcane.
• 21:22
  Yeah, that does make sense. I mean, horror directors, horror
• 21:25
  production crews often are doing like complicated creature makeup
• 21:30
  and effects. So I I'm guessing that a huge
• 21:33
  part of the allure of this movie overall is just like the
• 21:35
  atmosphere given who is behind it, because the story sounds
• 21:39
  very simple and a little stupid. Yes, exactly.
• 21:43
  But the atmosphere is fun. The atmosphere is like cool Wes
• 21:47
  Craven like definitely has like some stylistic choices in there.
• 21:52
  There's a lot of like interesting, like scene
• 21:55
  transitions that are very Star Wars esque where it's like
• 22:00
  screen wipes and like interesting like fades.
• 22:03
  But it also has like something I I guess stuff that's influenced
• 22:09
  by that. Like I guess it would be like
• 22:11
  40s era B movie films, you know? I like the old sci-fi B movies.
• 22:18
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like those types of like screen
• 22:21
  transitions throughout the movie.
• 22:24
  And that's kind of fun. It helps like feel like things
• 22:28
  are moving along in an interesting way when it goes
• 22:30
  from 1 scene of a person running through a swamp to the next
• 22:33
  scene is still somebody running through a swamp.
• 22:35
  So like it helps feel like things are kind of moving at an
• 22:41
  interesting pace, you know, But yeah, I mean, like he definitely
• 22:45
  like you mentioned too, like the kind of practical effects are a
• 22:52
  little hokey, but you know, they're they're like neat and
• 22:57
  and can't be in their own way too.
• 22:59
  At one point Swamp Thing gets his arm chopped off by a machete
• 23:03
  and that's a silly looking effects but then he has to like
• 23:06
  regrow it like he's Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z and.
• 23:11
  That's exactly where I was going.
• 23:13
  Yeah, yeah, he's green too. You know, he's green And so
• 23:18
  yeah, But like the suits don't look great because the the
• 23:24
  climax of the film is swamping, fighting Arcane, who has also
• 23:30
  taken the formula and transformed into like, honestly
• 23:33
  a weird looking like my gosh, I don't even know.
• 23:38
  He looks like a Power Rangers villain.
• 23:40
  Like he he looks like AI don't even know what animal to compare
• 23:44
  him to. Kind of like a a giant feral,
• 23:47
  like hedgehog or something. Maybe like Sonic?
• 23:54
  Like where Sonic? You remember where where Sonic
• 23:56
  for some reason? Werewolf Sonic.
• 23:58
  Yeah. Very much that is.
• 24:02
  That's an indictment on this character design if he looks
• 24:04
  like a werewolf Sonic hedgehog. Pretty much a hat on a hat type
• 24:09
  idea from Sega for that one. But that's that's what they took
• 24:12
  inspiration from was in. 1982. Yeah.
• 24:18
  OK so we get that. Still falls into the trope that
• 24:21
  we keep talking about where like the superhero character just has
• 24:25
  to fight a clone with the same powers but different.
• 24:29
  I mean, yes and no. Like, he's not fighting another
• 24:32
  Swamp Thing, he's fighting, oh, we're Sonic, so it's a little
• 24:36
  different. One's a big, ugly, disgusting
• 24:41
  creature and the other swamp thing.
• 24:45
  Also like so when he turns into basically the the climax of the
• 24:51
  film is Cable and Swamp Thing are like they're trapped at
• 24:58
  arcanes like evil estates. Arcane is like trying to figure
• 25:02
  out he's trying to get Swamp Thing to tell him the secret of
• 25:05
  this formula and then he just like takes it himself, which I
• 25:08
  was like, that was really stupid.
• 25:10
  Did you not see what it did to this guy?
• 25:12
  Like turned into a swamp monster Like, but like he for some
• 25:17
  reason thought it was just going to like turn him into like a
• 25:20
  super genius or something, but he takes it turns into a wear
• 25:24
  Sonic. And then Cable and Swamp Thing
• 25:28
  are like escaping his estate. And when he's chasing after
• 25:33
  them, he like grabs like a sword off the wall to like chase after
• 25:38
  them with. And like the whole ending fight
• 25:40
  sequence between swamp Thing and Arcane.
• 25:44
  They're like using this sword. And I'm like, I really didn't
• 25:47
  expect this sword to become such a big part of this, but it is.
• 25:52
  And at one point arcane like stabs cable in the chest and she
• 25:58
  like, you know, like that dice but.
• 26:04
  Thanks for elaborating, I was. Confused.
• 26:07
  You know what happens when you get stabbed in the chest?
• 26:09
  You know, you get stabbed in the chest and you're like you.
• 26:14
  Gotta make the sound of fact, girls.
• 26:15
  People won't know what happened. People won't.
• 26:17
  Know this is an audio format? All right, we got to paint the
• 26:20
  picture. Like Swamp Thing, he was like,
• 26:24
  he's like, he heard it, you know?
• 26:25
  He was like, what was that noise?
• 26:26
  But where? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 26:27
  She's dead. She's a goner, yeah.
• 26:30
  She's a goner, but he's able to use his swamp healing hand on
• 26:35
  her so she's. Fine so she's like he uses his
• 26:39
  super powered micro gut Biome to fix her.
• 26:45
  He's like, you tried these, these mushroom coffee.
• 26:47
  It's pretty good so. OK then she gets stabbed but
• 26:53
  swap thing saves her. He saves her and he like he gets
• 26:58
  the sword away from arcane, who's who's a were hog and kills
• 27:03
  him with the sword and I'm like, oh, OK, that didn't feel like, I
• 27:09
  don't know, thematic at all. It just felt like you just had
• 27:12
  this sword and you just kind of like chopped this guy up you.
• 27:15
  Tell me you haven't heard of Swamp Things famous sword.
• 27:18
  I write like, just like, oh, he got his sword at the end.
• 27:24
  I hope they have the scene in it where Swamp Thing grabs his
• 27:26
  famous sword and says it's it's swamping time.
• 27:28
  It's swamping time. Yeah, exactly.
• 27:32
  But yeah, that's that's that's the end.
• 27:34
  That's. That's pretty traditional.
• 27:37
  Yeah, and I mean, the the action sequence is, is is thrilling.
• 27:41
  It's, it's, you know, it's very much two guys in rubber suits
• 27:43
  bouncing into each other. I just like that it's a sword
• 27:46
  fight where there's only one sword involved.
• 27:48
  Exactly. That's that's kind of funny.
• 27:50
  Like it's not a sword duel, it's just A1 singular prop that they
• 27:54
  have to trade. Right, right.
• 27:58
  Yeah, yeah, but Swamp think it's really mad when when Cable gets
• 28:01
  gets black bed and then he has to get the sword back and kill
• 28:05
  Arcane with it. But Arcane's in the sequel, so
• 28:08
  you don't know. Well, I mean.
• 28:10
  That makes more sense now because he's got swamp DNA.
• 28:13
  Swamp. DNA.
• 28:14
  That's true, yeah, Yeah. So he could come back I guess.
• 28:17
  New question, given the King Kong style imagery on the cover
• 28:22
  and that ending, is there supposed to be like a romantic
• 28:25
  element between Adrian Barbeau and Swamp Thing?
• 28:28
  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Like in the beginning when she
• 28:31
  first gets there, she like this is all her first crazy first day
• 28:35
  on the job for her 'cause this all happens in the same day.
• 28:40
  But when she first gets there, she's she's talking to Ray Wise,
• 28:45
  who who he's playing the the scientist character when he's a
• 28:47
  human. I think it's they just found a
• 28:49
  much bigger man to be in the Swamp Thing outfit.
• 28:52
  So Ray Wise is really kind of only in the beginning of the
• 28:54
  movie. He might be doing, I don't know
• 28:57
  if he's doing the voice either actually, for when he's actually
• 29:00
  the Swamp Thing. He maybe is.
• 29:02
  Does one thing, Does one thing speak words?
• 29:05
  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For for a while he's just kind
• 29:08
  of like like guttural yelling, but like, and he's there's a
• 29:13
  couple scenes where he's trying to like communicate with Cable
• 29:18
  that he is the scientist character, but she's just like,
• 29:21
  there's literally a scene where she's just like shoot shoe, go
• 29:25
  away shoe because he's like she like recognizes at this point
• 29:32
  that he's like helped her out a couple times, but she's just
• 29:34
  like, you're gross. I don't want to talk to you.
• 29:39
  I mean, maybe if you had a sword, we could do things that.
• 29:41
  'D be different but pretty sweet, but not, you know, come
• 29:45
  back when you have the sword, then we'll talk.
• 29:46
  Come. Back with the sword, Yeah.
• 29:48
  OK, so it's like the same kind of trope, almost of like the
• 29:53
  beauty and the beast thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally,
• 29:56
  totally. And like, the movie ends where
• 30:00
  she, after he she's healed and he defeated Arcane, he's like,
• 30:05
  all right, I must go into the swamps now.
• 30:07
  And she's like, well, I mean, let me stay here with you.
• 30:11
  And he was like, no, no, like, no.
• 30:18
  He's just kind of like he's, I think he tells her like, you got
• 30:20
  to go and tell our story, Like tell them what happened here or
• 30:24
  something. And then he just starts going
• 30:28
  shoe. Shoe he shoes her away.
• 30:30
  Yeah. I was hoping we would get an
• 30:35
  inversion where you assume that to be together she has to live
• 30:38
  in the swamp, but then we cut to like 6 months later and he just
• 30:41
  lives in her New York City apt. I think that would be my
• 30:44
  preferred ending where she's just like swampy, you've
• 30:49
  destroyed the living room, it's just like shucks.
• 30:54
  Or whatever his catch phrase is. It's like a swamping time.
• 30:58
  Swamping time. No, it's not swamping time all
• 31:00
  the time. Swamp Thing.
• 31:01
  We got to talk about this. We got to sit.
• 31:02
  Swamp Boundaries Swamp time is from 9:00 to 5:00 and it's
• 31:07
  person time. It's like that could have been
• 31:11
  the sequel is is like swamp in the city and like swamp in.
• 31:17
  The city. Go on now you're just being
• 31:22
  ridiculous. Now, now we're being silly.
• 31:26
  No, that would have been great. That would have been awesome.
• 31:28
  No, I don't think her character comes back.
• 31:30
  He has like a different romantic interest in the sequel.
• 31:34
  And I think from what I read, it's the daughter of bad guy
• 31:39
  Arcane. Like she comes to the swamp and
• 31:43
  like she falls in love with Swamp Thing, I think.
• 31:46
  So yeah, cables, cables out. She's doing her own swamp in the
• 31:49
  city. Yeah, dude, Swamp thing.
• 31:53
  He's got a lot of rizz, I guess. I mean.
• 31:56
  Dude, yeah, he's. Confident.
• 31:58
  OK, You know, he makes good eye contact.
• 32:02
  He's got a sword. He's.
• 32:03
  Got he's got that sweet sword. I think he did leave it behind.
• 32:06
  He should have kept that with him, but I guess he doesn't need
• 32:09
  it. I mean, I feel like I get it.
• 32:12
  I feel like I get both what Swamp Thing is and what it
• 32:15
  should have been instead. What?
• 32:17
  What should it have been? What I mean what?
• 32:19
  Swamp in the city. Just told you.
• 32:25
  She's been over this. It's a white couch.
• 32:27
  She's all green and swampy. A ROM com where her friends are
• 32:31
  just like, I don't know, there's something off about your new
• 32:33
  boyfriend and she's just like, what is it his anger?
• 32:35
  And then they're like, no, it's he's a 6 foot tall SWAT monster.
• 32:39
  And she's like, you have to get over your prejudices.
• 32:42
  Like, yeah. And then in the whole time in
• 32:46
  the background, there's a scene of him just like hurling police
• 32:48
  cars into building. That is one of his favorite
• 32:51
  moves. When he's fighting these like
• 32:54
  military guys, he just loves tossing them around.
• 32:58
  That's like all he really knows how to do is to just pick them
• 33:00
  up and throw them over there. There's a couple like.
• 33:03
  Funny scenes too actually, which I think is worth pointing out.
• 33:07
  Like at one point, like the first scene where like Swamp
• 33:11
  Thing is there and like fighting the military guys, they're kind
• 33:14
  of like running around scared and they have like these machine
• 33:16
  guns. And at one point it's like 2
• 33:18
  guys and they like hear something behind them and one of
• 33:21
  the guys like turns around and starts shooting and he like
• 33:24
  accidentally shoots one of their own guys.
• 33:26
  And like, the dialogue around it is really funny.
• 33:29
  And like the guy's reaction, he just like puts his like hands on
• 33:33
  his head like, Oh no, I shot that.
• 33:37
  Like, and like later, like two other characters meet up and one
• 33:41
  of them he's like, he's like, where's that guy?
• 33:43
  He's like, where's Billy or whatever?
• 33:45
  And he's like, oh, well, Dave shot Billy.
• 33:47
  So we got to go like, it's just like, it's just like funny.
• 33:51
  I'm like, that's, that's fun. I I like this.
• 33:54
  There's also some like, dialogue that I thought was interesting
• 33:57
  and like a Swamp Thing has some kind of fire bars.
• 34:00
  Honestly, like that's maybe like, you know, maybe that's how
• 34:03
  he's picking up all these chicks, but like.
• 34:07
  Or a farming over here swamp. Thing Yeah, seriously.
• 34:11
  Like he he has like the first time he's like the first time
• 34:16
  that cable doesn't chew him away and they actually are able to
• 34:18
  have a conversation after he's turned into the Swamp Thing.
• 34:23
  Can't remember what she says to him to set this up, but he like
• 34:26
  she's oh, she's saying like she's saying like, am I
• 34:30
  dreaming? She's like this all feels like a
• 34:33
  dream or something like that. And he says to her, like,
• 34:36
  everything's a dream when you're alone.
• 34:38
  And like, they kind of have this like romantic scene there.
• 34:40
  I'm like, oh, wow, that's actually a really good line.
• 34:43
  And then that is good later, like one of the cards that's
• 34:49
  like leading them into their cell when they're like trapped
• 34:53
  at at the villains estate near the end, he says, oh, 'cause one
• 34:58
  of their own guides the, the bad guy, he tested the serum before
• 35:02
  he did it on himself. He tested it on one of the
• 35:06
  military guys and it kind of turned him into sort of a
• 35:08
  deformed creature. And that guy was saying to one
• 35:12
  of the other military guys, like, you know, thanks for
• 35:15
  betraying me basically, and like putting me in this cell with
• 35:18
  these guys. And that guy says to him, he
• 35:21
  says every man for himself and God against all.
• 35:25
  And I was like, whoa, why are you just dropping these like
• 35:28
  cold ass lines out of nowhere? But I.
• 35:31
  But then when I was looking up the movie, I guess part of Wes
• 35:35
  Craven's inspiration when he was writing this movie was a
• 35:39
  different film that wound up changing the title.
• 35:43
  But that was the original title of the film that he was inspired
• 35:47
  by. Was Every Man for Himself and
• 35:50
  God against All. And so he put that.
• 35:52
  Like a reference. To the movie yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 35:55
  yeah. So I was like, wow, there's
• 35:57
  there's just those like for something that overall was very
• 36:01
  basic and formulaic, had those those nice little touches
• 36:06
  throughout, you know, it's like some good dialogue and like some
• 36:08
  little funny comedy beats and like some campy action sequences
• 36:13
  and and like I said, like Cable especially like she really was
• 36:17
  fighting for her life out there. She she was carrying her weight
• 36:19
  in this team like like fighting these bad guys off.
• 36:24
  She like punch combos, a guy at one point, like she just like
• 36:27
  machine guns a guy. I'm like, she did not hesitate
• 36:30
  at all. Like, good for her.
• 36:32
  So this I feel like I'm picturing sort of a, you know
• 36:36
  how often times movies will get advertised as being like X movie
• 36:39
  meets Y movie. This to me sounds like 1930s
• 36:44
  Universal monster horror meets like 70s and 80s sci-fi horror.
• 36:50
  You know what I mean? Like because he's such a classic
• 36:52
  little Black Lagoon monster guy, but the tone almost seems
• 36:56
  inspired by stuff like Alien a little bit.
• 36:59
  I would. I would say so, yeah, yeah,
• 37:01
  totally. Especially because it's like,
• 37:02
  yeah, it's like early 80s, you know, 82.
• 37:05
  So like visually has a very kind of like 70s aesthetic too,
• 37:09
  which, yeah. So I think it's, it's definitely
• 37:11
  a blend of those genres. And I, and I feel like that's
• 37:15
  what Russ Craven was going for stylistically.
• 37:20
  And, and I guess it's worth noting too, that this like there
• 37:24
  was an actual sequel. There was a live action
• 37:27
  television series that came from this too, where I think a couple
• 37:31
  of the actors reprised their roles in that TV.
• 37:34
  Swamp Thing. TV swamp thing dude.
• 37:37
  And it had like 70 episodes or something too.
• 37:39
  Like it was kind of was like it lasted for at least a couple
• 37:42
  seasons. That's crazy, how do you get
• 37:45
  episodic storytelling out of Swamp Monster?
• 37:47
  Unless they did do our Sex and the City spin off.
• 37:51
  Swamp in the city. Caroline was mean to me.
• 37:58
  I like that that's what you assume the dialogue in Sex and
• 38:00
  the City is. She was mean to me.
• 38:07
  That's how she was a little. Rude.
• 38:12
  Yeah, well, and I mean, I guess, you know, he's ADC character, so
• 38:15
  it's like he's like appeared in other things.
• 38:18
  But I think this sequel and like TV series were like, and there
• 38:22
  was even an animated series that was very brief.
• 38:26
  But I think all of those were like directly related to this
• 38:30
  particular movie. And then like other versions of
• 38:33
  the character were just different adaptations, 'cause I
• 38:36
  was going to point out too that in like, I think it was around
• 38:39
  like 2019, there was a, a short lived live action Swamp Thing
• 38:46
  show that like got cancelled midway through its first season.
• 38:50
  But it was like, technically part of the like, Arrowverse,
• 38:54
  like CW shows, and Adrian Barbeau had like a guest
• 39:00
  appearance in that show, So that's cool.
• 39:03
  So it was successful enough to have like nostalgia baiting 25
• 39:07
  years later. That's that's a nice bar to
• 39:09
  clear for a superhero story. Yeah, and it kind of reminds me
• 39:13
  when we talk about Supergirl, how like, she appeared in, I
• 39:16
  think it was Smallville. I think she she appeared in an
• 39:18
  episode of Smallville. Interesting.
• 39:22
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of, like, related media
• 39:25
  to Swamp Thing. Like it.
• 39:28
  It definitely kind of left an impression of sorts, you know,
• 39:32
  like the character's been around for a while at least.
• 39:36
  And this is a fun movie. It's a fun movie.
• 39:38
  Fun movie. I mean, I like it.
• 39:40
  I might go watch it. Yeah, I don't, I don't think
• 39:43
  you'd be disappointed at all actually.
• 39:44
  Like swamp Things, like actually neat it.
• 39:47
  It's like far from perfect and like can be kind of dull because
• 39:52
  there's really not much narrative.
• 39:55
  It's it's kind of front loaded with narrative.
• 39:56
  The the first act is actually really well paced and while
• 40:00
  watching it, I'm like, you know, with a worse movie like this
• 40:04
  would have been much clunkier. This setup or just not really
• 40:07
  happened at all and they just would have gotten right into
• 40:09
  like the stupid stuff. So definitely the first act is
• 40:13
  worth appreciating and then the rest is like entertaining
• 40:15
  enough. Like I said, it does enough like
• 40:17
  little things to kind of keep it going throughout.
• 40:20
  OK, all right, I'm sold. I'm in on Swamp Thing.
• 40:24
  I think obviously at the end of the episode we'll do our scores,
• 40:26
  but this definitely sounds like 1 where we haven't given away
• 40:29
  enough to ruin the experience of watching it for the audience.
• 40:32
  So I think anybody listening, check out 1982.
• 40:35
  Swamp Thing I think is the conclusion.
• 40:38
  Check it out. Swamp in the city?
• 40:39
  Check. It out swamp in the city, so
• 40:41
  Caroline said earlier when we were at lunch, she said you're a
• 40:45
  disgusting freak. And I was like, first of all,
• 40:49
  no. I, I, I know I swamped thing.
• 40:55
  I was there. I was there.
• 40:58
  That injury, Marbo, yeah. Yeah, I was there.
• 41:06
  You don't have to tell me swamp there, I just want to say it out
• 41:08
  loud. I don't have to repeat it.
• 41:09
  I feel better over this. It's not swamp in time.
• 41:13
  They have a lot of problems in their relationship.
• 41:15
  A lot of, I mean, that's it, right?
• 41:20
  That's the end. Just move on from that.
• 41:33
  All right, coming back now from the other side of the break,
• 41:36
  frankly, turn things over to the movie that you asked me to
• 41:38
  watch, 2018's Fast Color. Sorry, 2019.
• 41:43
  Did I get this wrong? Double checking.
• 41:46
  Looks like 18 to me. OK, I had it right.
• 41:48
  That was a near miss 2018's Fast Color.
• 41:52
  We joked last time I said, is there anything you want to tell
• 41:55
  me about Fast Color? And you just said no.
• 42:01
  So our our audience hasn't heard a word about this.
• 42:04
  Is there anything that you would like to say now perhaps?
• 42:09
  No, still no, no. This movie, like when I was
• 42:13
  looking for movies that fit the theme of the season, I came
• 42:18
  across this one and I was like, I'm like this, This just looks
• 42:22
  like a real movie, like a like a drama, like something that's
• 42:27
  actually like a critically acclaimed film, which felt very
• 42:32
  much like a standout for like a superhero movie and very
• 42:35
  different from everything else we've talked about.
• 42:37
  So it just seems like an interesting pick to throw into
• 42:41
  the mix. I actually did not look too much
• 42:44
  into the plot of it beyond that, so I don't really know that much
• 42:48
  about it, so you'll have to tell me.
• 42:51
  Well, you're spot on. It's an independent drama.
• 42:54
  Interestingly, the acclaim that you're mentioning, the Run
• 42:58
  Tomato score from critics is right now at an 83%, but the
• 43:02
  audience score is at a 58, which is a distinction you do not
• 43:06
  often see. I think the opposite happens
• 43:08
  where audiences will like a movie and critics think it's
• 43:10
  like boring or you know, just not anything new.
• 43:14
  But to see something that critics preferred over audiences
• 43:17
  was very interesting to me. I think kind of gives a good
• 43:19
  impression right away that this is a somewhat like message heavy
• 43:24
  low budget indie drama if that paints a picture.
• 43:29
  So it's a low budget film, but from what I understand there are
• 43:33
  super hero or superpower characters in it at least.
• 43:37
  Yeah, and by low budget I don't mean it looks bad, it looks
• 43:40
  nice. It just is very small in scope.
• 43:43
  There are only like 6 actors that have any significant screen
• 43:49
  time. There's a couple of bit parts,
• 43:53
  really only like two or three locations.
• 43:55
  So it's very stripped down storytelling, huge emphasis on
• 44:00
  dialogue and character. But there are a couple of key
• 44:03
  moments where you have VFX sequences that actually look
• 44:07
  very nice. So I think it is a limited scope
• 44:10
  film, but it used its budget appropriately and still kind of
• 44:14
  captured what it wanted to show. That's cool.
• 44:17
  I like that, you know, I like an indie film like kind of
• 44:20
  understanding its limitations and putting its limited
• 44:23
  resources towards what it needed to, you know, 'cause it's like,
• 44:27
  if you're telling this like compelling drama and then the,
• 44:30
  the VFX looked terrible, that would really kind of like throw
• 44:34
  the whole film off balance, I think.
• 44:36
  It absolutely would, especially because those sequences are so
• 44:40
  core to the narrative and they build up to especially this one
• 44:43
  at the end for quite a long time.
• 44:46
  Plot wise. Again, fairly simple.
• 44:49
  But as you mentioned, it is, you know, maybe not a superhero
• 44:52
  story, but a super powers story. The premise here is that it's
• 44:57
  like near future science fiction in that at some indeterminate
• 45:03
  point, either America or the entire world goes through this
• 45:06
  like endless drought. I think the film opens with a
• 45:10
  monologue from the main character's mother, who mentions
• 45:15
  that there has not been any rain in like 8 years or something.
• 45:18
  And so the entire world has kind of started to collapse because
• 45:22
  obviously that affects food production and just everything.
• 45:25
  And so the people are living on these severe, expensive water
• 45:29
  rations. And that's like, the main
• 45:31
  problem going on in the world they inhabit.
• 45:34
  But then beyond that, these main characters in the story, this,
• 45:39
  like, these three generations of women all happen to have some
• 45:42
  kind of supernatural power that puts them in the sights of like,
• 45:47
  the federal government who thinks that they can maybe use
• 45:49
  that power to somehow like, you know, theoretically, maybe try
• 45:53
  to bring back water or just do something to like, save the
• 45:56
  world. That's an interesting set up.
• 45:58
  I mean, do they explain where these characters got these
• 46:01
  powers from or is it irrelevant? It's explained in this, but not
• 46:06
  right away. The first act of the film is
• 46:08
  played very much as like a mystery.
• 46:12
  And it's probably my favorite part of the movie because it's
• 46:15
  where they, in an effort to entice the viewer, I think use a
• 46:18
  lot more of a variety of like locations and characters.
• 46:23
  And they really try to create a momentum so that when you get
• 46:25
  towards the middle, when everything slows down, you're
• 46:28
  already invested a little bit more.
• 46:31
  And I really appreciate all of the like show don't tell style
• 46:37
  storytelling in the opening act because after we hear that
• 46:41
  narration at the beginning, it's from the main character.
• 46:43
  Her name is Ruth, but this narration is from her mother
• 46:46
  who's seemingly reading from like a diary entry or something.
• 46:48
  And she explains the lore. The world doesn't have any
• 46:51
  water. And she just kind of has this
• 46:53
  flowery prose that, among other things, iterates one of the
• 46:57
  movies core themes where she says, like, if something's
• 46:59
  broken, it stays broken. And that's like a core message
• 47:03
  that is repeated throughout. And then we fade out from that
• 47:07
  to Ruth, the main character, who is seemingly like on the run
• 47:11
  from something, we're not sure what.
• 47:14
  She steals a car. We see that she has these, like,
• 47:16
  rope bonds around her wrists. And then she has to run off to
• 47:20
  like, a really crummy motel. And that's how the story opens.
• 47:24
  Which is she has what on her wrist?
• 47:27
  Ropes like she was tied up. Bonds.
• 47:30
  I thought you said bombs. She does.
• 47:32
  Not have bombs on her. Wrist explosives on her wrist.
• 47:35
  I was like, that's cool. That's superpower.
• 47:37
  They call me explosive floaty wrist.
• 47:42
  I used my power once, I ain't got wrist no more.
• 47:45
  Really it works. Sorry, yes, She had ropes around
• 47:49
  her hands, which implied that she was tied up somewhere.
• 47:52
  And we're not exactly sure why, but there's a nice shot of her
• 47:55
  with her hands on the wheel of this car and you see that
• 47:57
  they've been like recently, you know, tethered.
• 48:00
  Like she kind of like cut them with a knife, but they're still
• 48:02
  there. OK, OK, cool, cool.
• 48:05
  So it's a it's a mystery. It's like is the world is this
• 48:09
  like so it's like near future no rain.
• 48:12
  Is it looking kind of post apocalyptic?
• 48:14
  It looks real dirty and real sad.
• 48:18
  They they're going sad like swap thing.
• 48:25
  They go out of their way to show the effects of the water
• 48:28
  rationing, like everywhere that they go in order to get water to
• 48:31
  do anything. You know, like, like when she
• 48:33
  first escapes, she's trying to get water from the person
• 48:37
  running the hotel so that in part so she can like, clean
• 48:39
  herself up because she's like bleeding and just needs to, you
• 48:42
  know, take care of her body. And the person gives her this
• 48:45
  like, really dirty, like half full jug of water.
• 48:48
  And it's like, that'll be like $30.00.
• 48:50
  So they're trying to sell that water's not completely gone or
• 48:53
  inaccessible because everyone would be dead in that case.
• 48:56
  But it's just increasingly expensive and hard to come by.
• 48:59
  Yeah, I mean, that could never happen in the real world.
• 49:02
  That's. No, no, no science.
• 49:04
  Fiction. Science fiction.
• 49:06
  It says that that means it's never going to happen.
• 49:08
  Never not. Real.
• 49:11
  Too spooky? And yeah, they they really give
• 49:15
  a strong impression of how far that's gone.
• 49:17
  Like the house that a lot of the movie takes place in her mom's
• 49:21
  house. They occasionally do flashbacks
• 49:23
  where you see that she has all these, like, plants in the front
• 49:25
  yard. And then anytime we're in the
• 49:26
  present, they're all gone. And the most she has is a couple
• 49:29
  little plants, like hanging in her kitchen window, even in the
• 49:34
  motel room. When Ruth gets into it, after
• 49:36
  she first goes inside, you see that she has to pour water out
• 49:39
  into the sink to clean up her hands.
• 49:41
  But there's no taps. There's no like, faucet anymore.
• 49:44
  Like they've all been removed, which is kind of funny because
• 49:46
  it's like you don't actually, you don't need to take those
• 49:48
  off. But it it's just to remind the
• 49:50
  audience like there's nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 49:54
  That's fair. That's visual language.
• 49:55
  I get it. Yes, there's a lot of visual
• 49:57
  language. The movie does a good job of not
• 50:01
  making the main character just talk out loud to communicate
• 50:04
  what she's thinking, even though she's by herself.
• 50:07
  You know, that's a problem, not a problem, but that's like a
• 50:09
  tool that a lot of stories use. You'll have like your John
• 50:12
  Mcclane in Die Hard, where he just kind of has to say out loud
• 50:14
  what he's thinking all the time. This isn't.
• 50:17
  This isn't a second screen experience.
• 50:20
  No, you do have to watch the movie actually to understand it.
• 50:24
  She's not walking around saying my wrists explode.
• 50:26
  Also, I'm pretty thirsty. Pretty thirsty every few
• 50:32
  seconds. Still thirsty?
• 50:35
  Not a lot of water. Not a lot, but yeah, this
• 50:39
  opening too, like visually it looks nice.
• 50:43
  It's kind of that classic, like 2010's indie drama lighting
• 50:47
  where it's very dark and like high contrast.
• 50:50
  I would say like color palette wise, you're looking at a lot of
• 50:52
  like dark blue and gold is kind of like the main things that
• 50:57
  they try to evoke. So it looks nice and the score
• 50:59
  is really nice. It kind of has like a almost
• 51:02
  like a cyberpunk sound to it. Oh, that's fun.
• 51:07
  I like that. Yeah, like it's very heavy on
• 51:09
  synths and at times almost sounds like it's riffing on like
• 51:12
  the Stranger Things soundtrack as well, which would make sense
• 51:14
  for when it was made. So there's a bit of a variety,
• 51:18
  but overall it has this very heavy like, like this wouldn't
• 51:20
  sound out of place in Blade Runner or something.
• 51:24
  And so it has a very strong sense of atmosphere as it gets
• 51:26
  going because the main character, Ruth, is on the run
• 51:28
  from something we don't know what.
• 51:30
  You're immediately thrust into how like unwelcoming and
• 51:34
  horrible this world is now. And then the music is really
• 51:36
  under. The music is really emphasizing,
• 51:39
  like, just how tense she is about needing to get wherever it
• 51:43
  is she's trying to go. Well, that's great.
• 51:46
  That's great. Like strong score pushing the
• 51:49
  narrative forward too. This all sounded really good so
• 51:52
  far. This I'm.
• 51:53
  It's it's a strong opening. I think the the opening really
• 51:55
  had me hooked. For trivia, the person who did
• 51:59
  the soundtrack, I don't remember the name off the top of my head,
• 52:02
  but they have done a lot of recent films.
• 52:05
  I think they even scored Deadpool and Wolverine like
• 52:08
  they've worked on bigger productions too.
• 52:10
  All right, still superhero themed, sticking with the theme
• 52:13
  for the. Superheroes.
• 52:14
  That's a good point. He's like, I only throw heroes,
• 52:17
  OK, they got to have powers or I'm not doing the music.
• 52:21
  It just wouldn't make sense, you know?
• 52:22
  There's no super powers, there's no music.
• 52:25
  No music. That's what makes music.
• 52:29
  Weird guy, weird composer. That's our fun character for
• 52:32
  this review. Composer, man, composer.
• 52:36
  He is a superhero. That's it.
• 52:40
  So anyway, I just wanted to mention that because I thought
• 52:42
  it was interesting that the composer is one of the strong
• 52:45
  points of fast color, but also has gone on to do a lot of
• 52:48
  bigger projects too. Yeah.
• 52:50
  Yeah, that's neat. I like that.
• 52:52
  Yeah. So the other piece of
• 52:54
  information that you get at the beginning of the story, in the
• 52:56
  same scene at the hotel, Ruth goes in, she talks to this very
• 53:00
  thirsty looking person behind the desk who is like has a young
• 53:04
  child, thirsty. For water not thirsty for.
• 53:06
  Water. Not, no, not like Swamp Thing.
• 53:09
  I'm talking thirsty for water. Swamp Thing's very thirsty.
• 53:14
  Yeah, this very sad looking woman behind the counter who has
• 53:17
  like her young daughter and while looking at the young
• 53:21
  daughter, Ruth has some sort of bizarre like memory flash across
• 53:25
  her screen and you're not her screen, her face, my screen, so.
• 53:30
  You everybody's in their screens.
• 53:32
  Man, he's in their screens. Nobody talks anymore.
• 53:37
  She has a there's a flash on screen and you're not sure as
• 53:40
  the viewer if it's like a memory or like a premonition or
• 53:43
  something. But she has a reaction to seeing
• 53:45
  the small child. And then when she goes inside
• 53:49
  and is in the motel room, all of a sudden one of her hand starts
• 53:52
  like shaking. Like her whole arm starts to
• 53:54
  shake in this very kind of unnatural way.
• 53:57
  And she's clearly aware that something is about to happen and
• 53:59
  has probably happened to her before.
• 54:02
  And so once again, you know, show, don't tell.
• 54:04
  She starts like taking everything in the hotel room and
• 54:07
  like putting it on the ground, like trying to stop things from
• 54:10
  falling over. Theoretically.
• 54:11
  She like puts things down on their side.
• 54:13
  She puts the TV on the ground. And then she remembers that
• 54:16
  little girl that she saw at the front desk.
• 54:18
  And so she even calls the front desk and tells the woman, like,
• 54:21
  you need to get your daughter out of here right now.
• 54:22
  Like just go take cover somewhere.
• 54:24
  So there's this big build up. And like, you see that she's
• 54:26
  shaking more and more. And then she ends up actually
• 54:28
  tying herself to the bed, which helps kind of answer the
• 54:32
  question of why she had her hands tied before.
• 54:35
  Because what eventually happens is she has a full body seizure
• 54:39
  and it causes like a full scale earthquake.
• 54:42
  How does she tie herself to the bed?
• 54:45
  And then how? Does she never show that?
• 54:48
  They never show that. It doesn't make any sense.
• 54:50
  But they depict it as her somehow tying both of her hands
• 54:54
  and and feet, even I or maybe just hands to a bedpost.
• 54:58
  And I'm like, that's impossible. But continue.
• 55:00
  Yeah. That's a superpower in and of
• 55:02
  itself. So anyway, that is very silly.
• 55:07
  They do just kind of skip over that part, but the implication
• 55:11
  being there's this is the Super powered side of this main
• 55:14
  character. There is something about her
• 55:15
  that she has these uncontrollable seizures that are
• 55:18
  so powerful that they legitimately cause like
• 55:20
  measurable earthquakes. OK, well that's cool.
• 55:24
  That kind of reminds me of what I'm thinking of.
• 55:26
  Like, is it Terra from Teen Titans?
• 55:29
  Isn't that like her thing? She was an earthquake person,
• 55:32
  yeah. Earthquake person.
• 55:35
  Yeah, category of earthquake, People earthquake.
• 55:38
  People swamp Thing, you know, Yes.
• 55:42
  So in this case, it is completely outside of her
• 55:44
  control. It's sort of like a curse more
• 55:46
  so than a superpower. But that also kind of helps
• 55:50
  explain to the viewer why she's constantly moving and is on the
• 55:53
  run as because as you can imagine, this attracts a lot of
• 55:56
  attention. Yeah, earthquakes happening
• 55:59
  where they shouldn't be happening.
• 56:01
  Exactly. And so the front desk woman who
• 56:04
  did get her daughter to safety calls, like the police and his
• 56:07
  cleanup crew arrives, who clearly knows that they're
• 56:09
  looking for Ruth already, like, there's some government
• 56:12
  organization here trying to track her down.
• 56:14
  And then once again, they go into the room that you've been
• 56:17
  staying in, and they're, like you said, it came from in here.
• 56:19
  And then they go inside, and Ruth's not there, but they cut
• 56:23
  to the bathroom. And you can see that, like, the
• 56:24
  tiny bathroom window above the shower is open and like, there's
• 56:28
  like a little curtain blowing in the wind.
• 56:30
  And it's like, oh, she got away. Which is really really simple,
• 56:34
  but nice. Yeah, yeah, a lot of visual
• 56:37
  storytelling happening here. Like you have to be paying
• 56:40
  attention and watching. You have to watch the movie to
• 56:43
  see the movie. Also wait a minute though they
• 56:47
  were like so you say that earthquake came from this room
• 56:50
  like how does that? Happen.
• 56:51
  Well, not the earthquake, the the the phone call.
• 56:56
  Trace the earthquake going back to room 7B.
• 57:00
  Somebody tripped and fell and it cost us 6.3.
• 57:04
  So yeah, no, they traced back the phone call because that's
• 57:07
  ultimately like Ruth gives herself away by warning the
• 57:11
  woman to keep her child safe. Got it, got it.
• 57:14
  OK, very heroic thing to do. Heroic thing to do.
• 57:18
  She's got an earthquake curse. She's moving on to the next
• 57:20
  town. We've also already.
• 57:23
  Yeah, We've also already seen visually that she pulled up a
• 57:27
  map and pointed where she was and then traced her hand to
• 57:30
  where she was trying to go, which was a town called
• 57:32
  Garrison. I don't know in what state.
• 57:34
  I think this is like the South or the Pacific Northwest or
• 57:37
  something. Middle.
• 57:40
  Middle of the country. Middle.
• 57:42
  Yeah. So she's on her way to Garrison
• 57:44
  and then the next morning she goes into a diner and once
• 57:48
  again, visual storytelling, She has her back to the door and
• 57:51
  she's trying to eat this like terrible low quality food
• 57:54
  because it's all the diner has. And every time the door opens,
• 57:57
  the little bell rings. She like whips her head around
• 57:59
  to see who's coming inside and then tries to kind of like play
• 58:01
  it off like she wasn't doing that.
• 58:03
  And it's like, oh, she nervous. I get it because I'm watching
• 58:06
  the movie. She's scared, She shake.
• 58:11
  She tie herself to the bed. She tie herself to the bed
• 58:14
  somehow. And so again, we're just telling
• 58:17
  this very basic story, but with like easy to follow beats and a
• 58:21
  little bit of a mystery with good music.
• 58:22
  So right away, first act, very, very nice.
• 58:25
  More than I expected out of this movie when I turned it on.
• 58:28
  Oh OK, came in with low. Expectations No, I just came in
• 58:32
  with like nothing. And you know, I, I thought it
• 58:33
  would be just jump right into whatever it's main story was,
• 58:36
  but they don't really get into the meat of the premise until
• 58:40
  almost like 2530 minutes in. The whole first act is just this
• 58:43
  journey from wherever she started to Garrison, and what we
• 58:47
  eventually find out is her mom's house.
• 58:50
  Oh, that's where she's, that's where she's going.
• 58:52
  Yep, on the way we have what is probably the best scene in the
• 58:55
  movie actually is at that diner, this guy, this white man.
• 59:00
  There's also the three women in this movie are all black women.
• 59:04
  And there's a lot in the themes of the story that are about
• 59:06
  like, cycles of maternal trauma passed on from mothers to
• 59:11
  daughters, all of which I am woefully unqualified to talk
• 59:13
  about. And I'm just going to put that
• 59:15
  out there right now is could you do not listen to two white men
• 59:19
  tell you about this movie? And if you want to really get
• 59:24
  it, sure. Sure.
• 59:26
  Like I'm going to tell you what happens in it.
• 59:28
  I'm going to talk about production elements, but the
• 59:30
  themes are the the core audience for this movie is not me, and I
• 59:36
  know that. Sure, but you engaged with it
• 59:38
  though. You engaged with it and like
• 59:40
  like recognized the themes of the film.
• 59:43
  And I'm going to do my best to explain it as I understood it,
• 59:46
  but just wanted to throw that out there.
• 59:48
  Frank, you've given me a tough assignment.
• 59:49
  Once again, this is heavy art film stuff.
• 59:53
  Yeah. I like doing that to you, yeah.
• 59:56
  Yeah, making me look foolish. I'm like, hey, this guy, Swamp
• 1:00:00
  Thing. And you're like, Oh, yeah.
• 1:00:04
  Gotcha. So anyway, that's the reason I
• 1:00:06
  specify that there's this kind of like, nice white guy who
• 1:00:10
  talks to Ruth at the diner and keeps trying to be nice to her,
• 1:00:15
  but is also clearly asking these oddly probing questions.
• 1:00:19
  And Ruth is so on edge that she's giving like, especially
• 1:00:23
  like, curt answers. And it leads to this very tense
• 1:00:26
  bit of dialogue where he's acting very jovial towards her
• 1:00:29
  just being like, so like, where you going?
• 1:00:32
  You know where? And she just has no answer.
• 1:00:34
  She's just like, I'm just going. She can't even come up with a
• 1:00:37
  lie because she's just not ready for it.
• 1:00:39
  And even like, again, good dialogue, good dialogue.
• 1:00:41
  In this first act, he's complaining to her that the
• 1:00:44
  coffee sucks because it's made with probably some terrible
• 1:00:48
  replacement and they don't have any water.
• 1:00:49
  So like, it just is probably made with something that tastes
• 1:00:51
  gross. And he's like, wow, this is
• 1:00:53
  awful. But then he orders her a cup of
• 1:00:54
  coffee, and she drinks it like it's the best thing she's ever
• 1:00:57
  had because she's clearly been on the run and doesn't have
• 1:00:59
  access to anything. And so right away, it's like
• 1:01:01
  she's giving herself away even further.
• 1:01:05
  Just a good scene, Just a good, very tense scene.
• 1:01:08
  And then as soon as that ends, he says he's leaving.
• 1:01:11
  But then when she goes back outside, she finds that the car
• 1:01:14
  that she stole to get here, there's like a cop out in front
• 1:01:17
  of it. And so she's like, oh, no, you
• 1:01:19
  know, they've got me again. But then that nice white man
• 1:01:22
  plays it off like, that's his wife.
• 1:01:24
  And he's like, hey, honey, like, come with me.
• 1:01:25
  We'll get going now. And so you're this whole time
• 1:01:28
  you're like, who is this guy? Is he actually just like a nice
• 1:01:30
  white dude who thinks this person needs help or what's you
• 1:01:34
  know, what's the deal? Good basic dialogue driven
• 1:01:37
  tension. I'm tense.
• 1:01:39
  I don't know where this is going to go.
• 1:01:41
  Yeah. And so they have that whole
• 1:01:43
  scene, and then they're in his car driving, you know, roughly
• 1:01:45
  in the direction of where she asked him to go.
• 1:01:47
  And he's just trying to make conversation again.
• 1:01:49
  But then over the course of the drive, now that she's stuck in
• 1:01:52
  the car with him, we eventually kind of like turn all the way
• 1:01:56
  over into him being like, hey, who do you think called that cop
• 1:01:59
  just now? And then he says that he knows
• 1:02:01
  her name. And he reveals that he's like a
• 1:02:03
  scientist as who is part of some sort of federal government
• 1:02:07
  operation that had previously captured Ruth and that she
• 1:02:10
  escaped from. Damn.
• 1:02:15
  Very upsetting, very upsetting scene because the car is moving
• 1:02:18
  and she can't get out. The door is locked.
• 1:02:20
  And then he's trying to still play nice, convince her to come
• 1:02:23
  back with him because he just keeps saying like, you have
• 1:02:27
  abilities that we need to study, we need your help, we just need
• 1:02:31
  to run these tests on you, which is obviously not.
• 1:02:34
  It's not a nice thing that he's asking her to do.
• 1:02:36
  And then we find out because we saw earlier visually that she
• 1:02:40
  has a gun in reverse. Oh wait, did we see that?
• 1:02:43
  I don't remember a gun. Well, I didn't mention it.
• 1:02:45
  I forgot. Shut up.
• 1:02:48
  Why don't you you watch the movie?
• 1:02:52
  You would have seen that. She had a gun.
• 1:02:53
  You had a gun in a map. OK, So she pulls the gun and she
• 1:02:58
  gets into a fight with this guy in his car after they pull off
• 1:03:01
  to the side of the road and she manages to like, shoot his
• 1:03:04
  fingers off or something and then runs away.
• 1:03:06
  Shoot. His fingers off.
• 1:03:08
  That's well. She shoots him in the hand.
• 1:03:11
  OK, OK. All right, cool.
• 1:03:14
  Very, very tense scene. Again, like the music's
• 1:03:16
  pounding. We've had a sequence of new
• 1:03:18
  locations in every scene. She runs away from here.
• 1:03:20
  She ends up at this like really cruddy looking gas station where
• 1:03:24
  she has to buy more expensive water.
• 1:03:26
  She almost has a seizure. Again, very, very tense stuff.
• 1:03:29
  Very like almost punching above its weight in terms of the scope
• 1:03:32
  and budget of the rest of the movie.
• 1:03:33
  They really give their all in the first act to be like there's
• 1:03:36
  a lot happening just to almost earn the right to slow things
• 1:03:40
  down once she makes it to her mom's house.
• 1:03:43
  Nice. Yeah, that's a good way to put
• 1:03:44
  that. They're really like this.
• 1:03:46
  This seems like a smartly written script and a smartly
• 1:03:50
  executed production. It's very, very well written in
• 1:03:54
  the first act. All right, here's the turn.
• 1:03:58
  Here's the Here's why I got to criticize this movie written by
• 1:04:05
  and for women, about the cycles of violence and grief that women
• 1:04:09
  suffer. And I'm here to say it sucks.
• 1:04:12
  Yeah, tell us your problems with.
• 1:04:13
  Tell us why you think that's wrong.
• 1:04:15
  Here's why this didn't do anything for me.
• 1:04:18
  So no, the movie is not ever bad, but it peaks massively in
• 1:04:22
  this first act and never again recaptures that.
• 1:04:25
  Like really tense atmosphere in favor of mostly just having kind
• 1:04:30
  of like thoughtful emotional dialogue.
• 1:04:34
  It just it never really regains that sense of like cat and mouse
• 1:04:37
  tension that it opens with. Does it like feel like like
• 1:04:42
  watching a play in terms of just like heavy dialogue driven
• 1:04:48
  scenes or is it like overly dramatic?
• 1:04:51
  What is the I, I guess appeal of of where it goes from there?
• 1:04:55
  It's interesting. I would say this is a movie of
• 1:04:58
  three acts because they're all very distinct and have, like
• 1:05:00
  different tones. The first one, peak tension,
• 1:05:04
  peak cyberpunk energy, just on the run.
• 1:05:08
  Eventually she makes it to Garrison, which this is my last
• 1:05:10
  thing I'm going to spotlight as visual storytelling.
• 1:05:13
  After Ruth runs away from the guy, she goes to the gas
• 1:05:16
  station, she goes to the bathroom.
• 1:05:17
  She's cleaning off her hands again because now she has blood
• 1:05:19
  on her face from getting into a fight with this dude.
• 1:05:21
  And she like, is looking at herself in the mirror trying to
• 1:05:25
  calm down. And then we rack focus to this,
• 1:05:27
  like, sticker that somebody had stuck on the mirror because it's
• 1:05:30
  all covered in graffiti and stuff.
• 1:05:32
  And it's a sticker for the local high school team, the Garrison
• 1:05:35
  Tigers. And so that's how we let the
• 1:05:37
  viewer know like, oh, she made it like they got all the way to
• 1:05:40
  where she was going. Great.
• 1:05:42
  Love that smart visual. Like directing some photography.
• 1:05:48
  Yeah. Yes, really looks nice, well
• 1:05:51
  directed. Big fan of all those little
• 1:05:52
  touches. Most of them are in the first
• 1:05:55
  act because it's where you need to do that much lifting because
• 1:05:57
  Ruth doesn't have anybody to talk to.
• 1:05:59
  Once you get past this, it's not as relevant.
• 1:06:01
  There's a lot more, just character dialogue, but I really
• 1:06:03
  want to spot like that. I at this point in my notes was
• 1:06:05
  just like check, check. Very nice, very nice.
• 1:06:08
  OK. Throw that again.
• 1:06:14
  Very nice second act. She finally makes it home to her
• 1:06:18
  mom who is named Beau, and there's also a little girl in
• 1:06:22
  the house named Lila. This isn't really a spoiler
• 1:06:25
  because it comes out pretty early on.
• 1:06:26
  At the beginning it's not clear if this girl is maybe Ruth's
• 1:06:29
  little sister, but we soon find out that that's actually Ruth's
• 1:06:32
  daughter. So it's 3 generations of women
• 1:06:35
  in the house and the entire second act is Ruth returning
• 1:06:39
  home to a place where she had to run away from and trying to
• 1:06:43
  reconnect with her mom and also her daughter at the same time.
• 1:06:47
  That's that sounds heavy. Very heavy pick this.
• 1:06:52
  I didn't know. Also, it's a good movie.
• 1:06:55
  All right. Sorry that I made you watch a
• 1:06:57
  good dramatic movie. I think swap thing OK so I I
• 1:07:04
  don't want to spend too much time just like recounting every
• 1:07:06
  scene but I there's a lot of plot to set up to get to this
• 1:07:09
  point. Everything past this mostly
• 1:07:12
  focuses on some lore around this family of women, all of whom
• 1:07:17
  actually have a history of some kind of like supernatural
• 1:07:20
  powers. Most of them are nothing like
• 1:07:23
  Ruth's though. Ruth has these seizures that are
• 1:07:25
  causing earthquakes, but the power that her daughter and her
• 1:07:29
  mom and like every woman in her family before her has had is
• 1:07:32
  different. They can essentially like take
• 1:07:37
  objects and break them apart into like 1,000,000 little
• 1:07:40
  shards in the air and almost into this like cloud of like
• 1:07:45
  colors and light and then restore it back to what it
• 1:07:49
  started as. It's almost just like a little
• 1:07:50
  parlor trick they call it. Like that's what the rest of
• 1:07:53
  them could do. Oh.
• 1:07:55
  So they can all do the same thing, but hers is earthquakes.
• 1:07:59
  Hers is earthquakes, but you learn that Ruth originally could
• 1:08:03
  do the same thing they could, but around the time she had her
• 1:08:06
  daughter, she lost the ability to do the normal thing and in
• 1:08:09
  exchange ended up with this horrible curse of earthquake
• 1:08:13
  seizures. Interesting.
• 1:08:15
  OK. So like thematically, their
• 1:08:17
  powers are representative of their traumas in life and that's
• 1:08:23
  what changes them. It's complicated because there's
• 1:08:27
  a lot to it. They also, this is important, it
• 1:08:30
  relates to the title of the movie, The daughter.
• 1:08:32
  Lila explains essentially to the viewer that every time one of
• 1:08:36
  them uses their powers the normal way where they like break
• 1:08:38
  an object apart and kind of like spin it around and put it back,
• 1:08:41
  the after image of that is this like sea of beautiful colors in
• 1:08:46
  the sky that only the person who did it can see.
• 1:08:49
  So the little girl when she does it, she like takes apart a bowl
• 1:08:52
  and puts it back together. And then you just see her kind
• 1:08:55
  of like looking up because she's taking in all this like crazy
• 1:08:58
  like tie dye color effect in this in the air.
• 1:09:01
  Ruth used to be able to do this too, but she kind of phrases it.
• 1:09:04
  It's like I can't see the colors anymore.
• 1:09:07
  Oh, wait, so everyone can see the thing get broken apart and
• 1:09:10
  put back together, but they can't see the colors, only the
• 1:09:13
  person who did it? OK, Yeah.
• 1:09:15
  And these things are, are specific and nuanced, but that's
• 1:09:18
  it. That's not, that's basically it.
• 1:09:20
  Now, Bo the, the, you know, the grandma in this case has the
• 1:09:23
  power too. Lila has the power.
• 1:09:25
  Ruth used to have it. Now she does it.
• 1:09:27
  And you essentially figure out that historically, every woman
• 1:09:31
  in this family has gone through this very similar cycle.
• 1:09:35
  They've all lived in the same house.
• 1:09:37
  They all had a strained relationship with their mother
• 1:09:41
  because whenever they kind of came of age and wanted to leave
• 1:09:43
  home to go see the world, their mothers always end up being
• 1:09:47
  overprotective of them and trying to essentially shield
• 1:09:51
  them from like the horrors of the outside world.
• 1:09:54
  But then in doing so, they strained the relationship so
• 1:09:56
  much that the daughters often run away from home.
• 1:09:59
  And in almost, in several cases at least, Bo and Ruth both
• 1:10:03
  quickly got pregnant with some by some man who like didn't stay
• 1:10:07
  with them and then ended up just repeating the cycle again with
• 1:10:10
  their own daughter. So it's like maternal mother
• 1:10:13
  daughter traumas repeated over and over again and then
• 1:10:17
  reinforced by this imagery about their superpowers.
• 1:10:21
  That's I mean, that's really neat.
• 1:10:24
  Like, it's interesting like on paper, but it sounds like you
• 1:10:29
  were saying this is the part where like visually and
• 1:10:32
  narratively the the movie just kind of slows to a halt almost.
• 1:10:36
  It slows down a lot and feels much more so like it's padding
• 1:10:39
  for time because the dialogue in the second act is still quite
• 1:10:43
  strong and the performances from these three women are all very
• 1:10:45
  good. But we spend so much time in
• 1:10:48
  this one location with just not enough to cut away to.
• 1:10:53
  Like, you would think we would spend more time with this guy
• 1:10:56
  who was chasing Bruce at the beginning, the white guy, the
• 1:10:59
  fake helpful guy, and he's still in the story.
• 1:11:02
  But whenever we cut to him, he doesn't really do anything.
• 1:11:04
  We'll just cut to him, kind of remind you that he's there and
• 1:11:07
  then nothing really happens. And then he doesn't really play
• 1:11:09
  much of A role until closer to the end.
• 1:11:12
  Oh yeah. Like in some ways this almost
• 1:11:15
  feels like a short film or short story that had to get stretched.
• 1:11:19
  That's yes, like if you just gave me the first act, like the
• 1:11:22
  1st 20 or so minutes as a story. That's a really nice short film.
• 1:11:25
  It leaves a lot unanswered, but that almost makes it better. 10
• 1:11:28
  out of 10, if you gave me the second act as a play, I'd be
• 1:11:33
  fairly engaged with it still, although I would be lamenting
• 1:11:36
  that we don't have enough visual variety outside of this house
• 1:11:39
  that they film in. And then the third act, to me,
• 1:11:45
  the big emotional, rousing conclusion to this story just
• 1:11:49
  straight up doesn't work, and I think it really, really tanks
• 1:11:53
  what would otherwise still be. Overall, a pretty great film.
• 1:11:56
  Tell me more, why does it not work for you?
• 1:11:58
  It's so hard to explain, like I was watching this one with my
• 1:12:02
  wife because I was like you woman, you maybe understand
• 1:12:05
  better. Woman.
• 1:12:08
  You woman me Swamp. But we both had the same feeling
• 1:12:13
  at the end. We're like, ultimately, the
• 1:12:16
  government people catch up with Ruth and find out where she is.
• 1:12:20
  And it leads to this climax where at first Ruth tries to run
• 1:12:24
  away again, like leaving her mother and her daughter behind
• 1:12:27
  to kind of just get away. But then in doing so, because
• 1:12:32
  she has spent time with them both, she kind of confronts her
• 1:12:36
  past trauma and gets her original powers back.
• 1:12:40
  She loses the earthquake powers. She she manages to voluntarily
• 1:12:44
  stop one of the seizures. And what you learn is the first
• 1:12:48
  time she ever had one, she was in a bed with her newborn
• 1:12:52
  daughter and had a seizure that she couldn't control.
• 1:12:56
  And it caused like a water main to leak and like the room they
• 1:13:00
  were in flooded. And her daughter almost died,
• 1:13:02
  like she almost drowned. And so that moment where Ruth,
• 1:13:06
  you know, imagery wise, we're almost thinking like the water
• 1:13:09
  breaking, like having her own child created this dynamic where
• 1:13:14
  like all of a sudden she had these side effects she couldn't
• 1:13:16
  control. And she almost hurt her daughter
• 1:13:18
  in the process. And it traumatized her so much
• 1:13:20
  that she essentially ran away from home and like, left the
• 1:13:22
  daughter behind. So this kind of reminded me, it
• 1:13:25
  sounded kind of like X-Men style storytelling where it's like the
• 1:13:29
  characters powers are almost like allegorical or like
• 1:13:33
  metaphorical for their like struggles and adversities in
• 1:13:38
  life, you know, which is cool. I think that's a cool way to use
• 1:13:41
  superpowers in storytelling. That's a great shout.
• 1:13:45
  That is very reminiscent of a lot of good X-Men storytelling.
• 1:13:48
  Because I think in the X-Men, it's Canon that you get your
• 1:13:52
  superpowers when you go through puberty.
• 1:13:54
  Yeah. Like, you don't have them as a
• 1:13:56
  child usually, but you unlock them.
• 1:13:57
  And it's akin to just like, your body's changing and you can't
• 1:14:00
  handle like the, you know, all of the pain and the things that
• 1:14:04
  you don't know how to control. And this is kind of similar to
• 1:14:06
  that, especially with that angle that she had this trauma about
• 1:14:09
  accidentally hurting her daughter, which plays into the
• 1:14:11
  larger theme. Plot wise.
• 1:14:15
  Ruth is like out in the middle of a field when this happens.
• 1:14:17
  And she gets up and we have the big VFX moment of the movie
• 1:14:21
  where after like silencing the seizure, she stands up and sees
• 1:14:25
  this massive cloud of colors in the sky.
• 1:14:28
  Like she could see the colors again.
• 1:14:30
  And more importantly, in doing so, she somehow like made a rain
• 1:14:34
  cloud too. So her power is even greater
• 1:14:37
  than the others in that she can somehow like the way they phrase
• 1:14:40
  it. It's like tear open the sky and
• 1:14:43
  like in doing so, bring back the water that has been missing.
• 1:14:46
  Oh wow, that's OK. Cool.
• 1:14:49
  This is heavy metaphorical stuff, and it's all still
• 1:14:54
  engaging up to this point. But then there's an ending.
• 1:14:57
  I guess I'll just explain the ending.
• 1:14:59
  Like, overall, I'd still say the movie's interesting, and if
• 1:15:02
  you've been engaged by everything up to this point,
• 1:15:04
  maybe just skip to our next chapter and then go watch the
• 1:15:07
  end of the movie yourself. But if you don't want to do
• 1:15:10
  that, or you just want to hear the ending spoiler warning, I
• 1:15:12
  guess. Sure, sure.
• 1:15:15
  So the end to end of the movie is that Ruth with her powers
• 1:15:18
  returned, goes back home only to find that the feds did show up
• 1:15:22
  while she was gone and actually left with her daughter because
• 1:15:24
  they realized the daughter had powers too.
• 1:15:26
  And they just want to study these super powered women for
• 1:15:30
  for spooky science reasons. And so Beau, the grandma and
• 1:15:36
  Ruth go to get her back. The other character who's there,
• 1:15:39
  who I haven't really talked about is Beau's Ruth's father,
• 1:15:44
  who is another white man who lived in the town who had a
• 1:15:48
  relationship with her mother Beau, but they didn't like stay
• 1:15:50
  together after Ruth was born. So she's just like, that's my
• 1:15:53
  dad. He lives in town.
• 1:15:54
  He's a cop. He said he's a helpful guy.
• 1:15:57
  He stayed away kind of to keep them safe.
• 1:15:59
  It's it's a whole Side Story that like he's not a bad person,
• 1:16:02
  but he also was like, like everyone else, the men always
• 1:16:05
  leave, like the women are always left to raise the daughter by
• 1:16:08
  themselves. So those three, the dad, Beau
• 1:16:13
  and Ruth going to town to get the daughter back.
• 1:16:16
  And everything after this point to me is very muddy and
• 1:16:19
  confusing, both in terms of literally what's happening, how
• 1:16:24
  it impacts the core metaphor and like resolves the core metaphor
• 1:16:27
  of the story. And also the blocking in the
• 1:16:30
  scene is ridiculous. Like oh OK.
• 1:16:34
  It's so weird because again, the movie's low budget, low scale.
• 1:16:38
  They clearly were able to go film on like a like a small town
• 1:16:42
  St. set. Like it's outside, but it looks
• 1:16:46
  like a fake town that just is like 1 Main St. with businesses
• 1:16:51
  on either side. Kind of looks like the town from
• 1:16:53
  the TV show Northern Exposure. Oh, all right, I got it.
• 1:16:57
  I'm with. It that now yeah, that helps
• 1:16:59
  Frank. Probably nobody else, but so
• 1:17:02
  they're there. Ruth pulls up in her truck.
• 1:17:05
  She, in order to get everybody's attention, I guess, summons A
• 1:17:08
  rainstorm, which is a huge deal because there's been no rain on
• 1:17:11
  Earth, I guess, for like a decade.
• 1:17:13
  And so the feds come out and they're like, what on earth?
• 1:17:15
  But then they pull guns on her because they're scared and still
• 1:17:19
  want to capture her. At the same time, Bo and Dean, I
• 1:17:24
  think is the dad's name, show up.
• 1:17:26
  And the resolution we get is all driven by Bo, the grandma, who
• 1:17:31
  is the one who essentially did not break this cycle of trauma
• 1:17:36
  inflicted upon their daughters. Like Ruth is the main character,
• 1:17:38
  so she ultimately breaks the cycle with her daughter.
• 1:17:41
  But Beau kind of failed to do that and it's what led to Ruth's
• 1:17:43
  feeling neglected and running away on her own.
• 1:17:46
  So she resolves this conflict. First off, she dissolves all of
• 1:17:51
  the guns in the hands of the feds because that's the power
• 1:17:55
  they can break things into pieces.
• 1:17:56
  So she gets rid of all their guns and essentially implies
• 1:17:59
  like, don't come at me, you can't hurt us.
• 1:18:03
  Like we're more powerful than you.
• 1:18:05
  Because so much of the story of the movie is like women's
• 1:18:11
  inherent power and how their mothers often force them to
• 1:18:17
  downplay their abilities in order to like, fit into a man's
• 1:18:21
  world better and not be singled out too much.
• 1:18:24
  Like don't stand out. Don't, don't show your strength.
• 1:18:27
  Just blend in because there's a line even where both says
• 1:18:32
  something like, I'm not afraid that I can't stop those men.
• 1:18:36
  I'm afraid that I can. And so there's just this angle
• 1:18:39
  here about like, women's power and in a way, like black women's
• 1:18:41
  power specifically because there's kind of this approach
• 1:18:43
  of, like, some of it feels like a cultural context to like the
• 1:18:47
  pressure on black women in America to like, downplay things
• 1:18:51
  that are specific to their, like, cultural roots.
• 1:18:54
  Do you see how I'm not qualified to talk about this?
• 1:18:57
  I think you're you. At the very least you
• 1:18:59
  interpreted the film. You have a good read on it like
• 1:19:02
  this is, Yeah, like I said, maybe not the most qualified
• 1:19:06
  person to speak on it, but you at least are like receiving the
• 1:19:10
  message of the film. Which is good, getting the
• 1:19:12
  message. My problem here is after the
• 1:19:14
  guns get dissolved, the feds don't have anything.
• 1:19:17
  They're just standing there. But Lila the daughter is still
• 1:19:21
  trapped inside the building and nobody moves to go get her until
• 1:19:24
  Bo is done. Having a monologue like Ruth is
• 1:19:26
  like half a street back because she just got out of her car like
• 1:19:29
  further down the road. And even during this whole
• 1:19:31
  conversation she just like stays where she is for no clear
• 1:19:35
  reason. Like theoretically she'd be like
• 1:19:37
  running up to go rescue her daughter or at least go stand by
• 1:19:40
  her parents. But she just like camps out in
• 1:19:43
  the back because they're like, well, your next line isn't until
• 1:19:46
  like 4 script pages from now. She.
• 1:19:48
  Was in her trailer, she's waiting.
• 1:19:50
  She's just waiting to the point where even when the daughter
• 1:19:53
  runs out of the building because she's freed, Bo is like, go to
• 1:19:57
  your mother. And the daughter's like, mom
• 1:19:58
  came back for me. And it's like, is that why we
• 1:20:01
  had her stand over there? And so we could have that line
• 1:20:04
  where we can be like, yeah, she came back for you, but it's
• 1:20:06
  like, you clearly would have seen her.
• 1:20:08
  There's six people out here. She's right over there.
• 1:20:10
  Yeah, it was presumably for that line of dialogue that they
• 1:20:13
  blocked it that way. Very awkward, very static,
• 1:20:16
  everybody like assumes a position and just doesn't move
• 1:20:19
  for the next like 5 minutes and it's very clunky.
• 1:20:22
  Also pure plot level. Bo's solution is the feds can
• 1:20:27
  take me and in turn let my daughter and granddaughter go
• 1:20:31
  like, I'm breaking the cycle. I'm going to let you guys go out
• 1:20:35
  into the world and find other people like you, like us.
• 1:20:39
  I'm going to like make the sacrifice here that I didn't
• 1:20:41
  make before. And it's like, OK, you can break
• 1:20:46
  guns apart. Ruth just showed she can make
• 1:20:49
  water. That is the most crucial thing
• 1:20:52
  that these people could want. There's no way on earth they
• 1:20:55
  would be like, you can go. Yeah, of course.
• 1:20:58
  That's why I was thinking the same thing, like, yeah, we're
• 1:20:59
  going to take you and you and you, like you're all.
• 1:21:02
  Three of you. Yeah.
• 1:21:04
  Like it doesn't track and her bodes dialogue at the end where
• 1:21:10
  she's trying to kind of like resolve.
• 1:21:11
  The whole metaphor is just really confusing to me where I'm
• 1:21:15
  like what does you going with the evil white man do to finish
• 1:21:20
  out this thought about like mothers who are too
• 1:21:23
  overprotective of their daughters and don't let them
• 1:21:26
  like express themselves or go out into the world because
• 1:21:29
  they're afraid. Like the daughters leaving at
• 1:21:32
  the end makes sense. Like Lila and Ruth going off on
• 1:21:35
  their own and like trying to find more like people like them.
• 1:21:39
  But what does Bo going with the government do for that?
• 1:21:45
  Yeah, it kind of seems like narratively the plot doesn't
• 1:21:49
  congeal with their thematic resolution that they wanted to
• 1:21:53
  achieve. Yes, it's confusing.
• 1:21:56
  And I honestly feel like the movie felt that the federal
• 1:21:59
  government angle was like a nuisance by the end that they
• 1:22:02
  had to wrap up because ultimately the main story they
• 1:22:05
  wanted to tell was just between the three women, like that
• 1:22:08
  second act portion. And then they were like, Oh,
• 1:22:10
  yeah, we had this crazy, like, sci-fi cyberpunk intro.
• 1:22:13
  We have to do something with that.
• 1:22:15
  And then they just had like the worst, most confusing resolution
• 1:22:20
  to that. And it looked bad.
• 1:22:21
  It was like all of the strengths of the earlier parts of the
• 1:22:24
  movie just evaporate and no, no pun intended, water.
• 1:22:28
  But. Water.
• 1:22:29
  H2O. H2O.
• 1:22:33
  So yeah, just really, really strange.
• 1:22:35
  And that is kind of it. Like Ruth and her daughter drive
• 1:22:38
  away at the end. And then I think she opens a
• 1:22:41
  note from Bo that just says, like, there are others like you,
• 1:22:45
  like, go find them. Go tear apart this guy.
• 1:22:48
  I'm like, again, the government would be on her ass so much more
• 1:22:52
  than before. Yeah, totally.
• 1:22:55
  She used to make, She used to make earthquakes.
• 1:22:57
  Now she makes water. That's way better.
• 1:23:01
  That's way better. Especially because they don't
• 1:23:03
  have water. They.
• 1:23:04
  Don't have water? We need water, even plot wise.
• 1:23:09
  Ruth's responsibility now should be to go make water like for a
• 1:23:13
  living. For a Yeah, right.
• 1:23:15
  Exactly. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:23:16
  Like help people, I guess. Like help the world.
• 1:23:21
  Very very strange this movie Fast Color is 3 movies and the
• 1:23:25
  first one's awesome and the second one's interesting and the
• 1:23:27
  third one sucks it. Really does seem very
• 1:23:30
  disjointed. Like, like to your point
• 1:23:33
  earlier, it's like that first act felt like, you know, a way
• 1:23:37
  for you to buy into this, but it seems like it was telling or
• 1:23:40
  like showing you a completely different movie than what the
• 1:23:43
  rest of the movie was going to be.
• 1:23:46
  Yeah, They just wanted to draw up engagement, and they did.
• 1:23:49
  I really liked the first act, and I would have had no problem
• 1:23:52
  if it slowed down into the second.
• 1:23:53
  But we had an interesting, meaningful conclusion to that
• 1:23:57
  narrative that we just, not only did we not get a good one, we
• 1:23:59
  got like an expressly bad finale to the story, which really tanks
• 1:24:05
  the like, overall enjoyment I had of it 'cause I just left
• 1:24:07
  feeling frustrated. I was like what?
• 1:24:09
  What, what? Yeah, I'm kind of understanding
• 1:24:13
  now that the discrepancy between the critics reception and
• 1:24:17
  audience, because I feel like the critics appreciate what
• 1:24:20
  sounds like a lot of strong filmmaking.
• 1:24:22
  Sounds like there was a lot of strong filmmaking throughout the
• 1:24:25
  whole thing, but as like 1 consistent narrative, which like
• 1:24:33
  I think is what general audiences are more interested
• 1:24:37
  in. They're like not as invested in
• 1:24:39
  the filmmaking components, but just like being told a good
• 1:24:43
  story that it didn't really land for people that way.
• 1:24:48
  Yeah. I mean, I'm looking at it
• 1:24:51
  through both lenses and I feel like maybe the critical
• 1:24:56
  reception was we're going to give credit to the strengths of
• 1:25:00
  the 1st 2/3 of the movie. But for me, as a conclusive
• 1:25:06
  opinion, I kind of take into account all of it and it kind of
• 1:25:08
  just averages towards the middle.
• 1:25:10
  Because if you start high, you coast through the middle and you
• 1:25:12
  end low, you've just kind of been in the middle the whole
• 1:25:15
  time. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:18
  That's like, would you even call this a superhero movie?
• 1:25:23
  I mean, well, it's. A theme.
• 1:25:26
  It does. It's a super powers movie.
• 1:25:29
  I think it's just women's collective power and the
• 1:25:32
  strength of coming together and recognizing that they should not
• 1:25:35
  be that not allow themselves to be held down either by their own
• 1:25:39
  family who are afraid of them expressing themselves or by the
• 1:25:42
  world that they know is dangerous but they still need to
• 1:25:44
  exist in. It's kind of broad in the end,
• 1:25:47
  like this, the message, but it's still a superhero movie.
• 1:25:51
  It just a very atypical 1. No, I actually, yeah, I want, I
• 1:25:55
  want to, I retract that because like I was comparing it to like
• 1:25:58
  X-Men before and, and I feel like this is actually like one
• 1:26:02
  of the best ways to use superpowers in a story is to
• 1:26:09
  enhance those thematic and narrative elements because
• 1:26:11
  otherwise it is just people punching each other mostly like.
• 1:26:16
  Yeah, so like, this is not really related in terms of what
• 1:26:20
  it's discussing, but one of my favorite little X-Men stories
• 1:26:24
  that kind of has a similar tone for me is I think it's just a
• 1:26:27
  story from one of the comics. And it's like a short piece
• 1:26:30
  where this teenage boy wakes up one day and thinks that
• 1:26:35
  everybody in his town has been, like, raptured because they're
• 1:26:38
  all missing and their clothes were left behind.
• 1:26:40
  And they all just, he can't find anybody at home or in his whole
• 1:26:43
  town or anywhere he goes. And then after like a long while
• 1:26:47
  of holding on, this Wolverine shows up and has to explain to
• 1:26:51
  the kid he's like, hey, your mutant power is activated and
• 1:26:53
  they're killing everyone in a certain radius of you.
• 1:26:57
  And I can only be here because of my Wolverine powers.
• 1:27:00
  Like, otherwise I'd be dead too. And this is like a teenager, and
• 1:27:03
  Wolverine's just there to kill him.
• 1:27:05
  I remember this, yeah. He's just like, you can't, we
• 1:27:09
  can't allow this. Like, you have an uncontrolled
• 1:27:11
  violent power that is just evaporating everybody within a
• 1:27:15
  square mile of you, like, and they just have a short little
• 1:27:18
  conversation. And then we cut away and
• 1:27:19
  Wolverine presumably kills this boy.
• 1:27:21
  And it's like, that's messed up. But again, it's a very
• 1:27:25
  interesting way to integrate superpowers into narrative
• 1:27:27
  storytelling in a more like sincerely dramatic way.
• 1:27:32
  Yeah, because, like, the great thing, I mean, now we're kind of
• 1:27:36
  really jumping into X-Men, but that is what this is reminding
• 1:27:39
  me the most of. But like, the great thing about
• 1:27:41
  like those characters and the way they tell those kinds of
• 1:27:43
  stories, which I think is different from a lot of other
• 1:27:45
  superhero media, is that like the X-Men, and this definitely
• 1:27:50
  ties into this movie too. Like they've, they've always
• 1:27:53
  been able to use those characters to like represent
• 1:27:56
  different minorities and like marginalized groups too.
• 1:28:00
  Like, cause another one I was thinking of is like, I was
• 1:28:03
  thinking of that scene in X-Men 2 where like Ice Man has to like
• 1:28:08
  come out to his parents about being a mutant basically and.
• 1:28:13
  Like. They have like a line of
• 1:28:15
  dialogue where like his mom is just like, have you tried not
• 1:28:18
  being a mutant? Like, you know, it's so sad.
• 1:28:22
  It's just on the nose. But like, you know, it, it's
• 1:28:26
  like I said before, it's it's like one of the best ways to
• 1:28:30
  tell an interesting story using these sort of fantastical
• 1:28:36
  elements and place it in like our real world, which it seems
• 1:28:39
  like that's what this movie was doing or trying to do.
• 1:28:42
  Yes, and I do commend it for that.
• 1:28:44
  I will not. I'm not ignoring that.
• 1:28:46
  I really enjoyed a lot of aspects of the movie.
• 1:28:48
  I was just like at the roller coaster ride of watching it left
• 1:28:51
  me disappointed because I was like really with it.
• 1:28:53
  And then to end on a low note, I was disappointed.
• 1:28:55
  But it's still interesting. I mean, anything else we could
• 1:28:59
  pick for a forgotten superhero movie?
• 1:29:00
  I don't think anything would resemble fast Color.
• 1:29:03
  It's very unique. Which is good and that's why I
• 1:29:06
  picked it. I didn't explain that last.
• 1:29:07
  Time why I picked it? Said no.
• 1:29:11
  And he knew that. He definitely didn't just pick
• 1:29:13
  it out of a hat and be like, I don't know, a superhero.
• 1:29:16
  Yeah, yeah. What do you think?
• 1:29:18
  What do you think about that? OK.
• 1:29:25
  Well that does it for my review of Fast Color.
• 1:29:28
  Frank, we turn things over now to final scores and wrap up.
• 1:29:31
  We're going to give each movie a score out of 10 to see who's
• 1:29:34
  blind movie pick for the day was better.
• 1:29:38
  I guess. Let's start with you.
• 1:29:39
  You talked about Swamp Thing first.
• 1:29:40
  Final Final opinions about 1982 Swamp in the city.
• 1:29:47
  Well, it's what I try and do with these scores is I when I'm
• 1:29:51
  done with the movie, I'm like, OK, what's my initial score?
• 1:29:54
  I just give it like that first reaction, you know, and then
• 1:29:58
  sometimes it changes when we talk about it.
• 1:30:00
  Sometimes I'm like, oh, absolutely, yeah.
• 1:30:02
  That I feel a bit differently about it now.
• 1:30:05
  But this one I think I'm going to stick with.
• 1:30:07
  I'm going to give us one thing, a 5 out of 10.
• 1:30:08
  I think it's right right there in the middle because like, you
• 1:30:14
  know, on the one hand, it kind of sucked like.
• 1:30:21
  It's just, oh man, that could be the whole, that could be that
• 1:30:24
  whole half of the show, on the one hand kind of sucked and then
• 1:30:27
  we just started the next one. Kind of not much going on for
• 1:30:31
  the most of the movie, really basic, really straightforward,
• 1:30:35
  but it had those just kind of like quirks to it that I really
• 1:30:41
  enjoyed. Like just those little things
• 1:30:43
  along the way that that made it like appeal to me specifically.
• 1:30:49
  And so it landed in a very middle space and, you know, not
• 1:30:53
  bad, not a bad score. No, fives are good.
• 1:30:56
  Yeah, I stress that every time. We are not.
• 1:30:59
  This is not a middle school English paper.
• 1:31:02
  You don't need to get an 80% to be good. 5 out of 10 is like
• 1:31:05
  media movie, pretty good. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:31:08
  I'd still recommend it. I'd still, you know, I think if
• 1:31:10
  you went to watch it, you'd, you'd appreciate.
• 1:31:12
  Swamp, I think I would like it. And I think we established like,
• 1:31:15
  if you like this, you'd like Swamp Thing.
• 1:31:17
  So if you like Alien or The Thing or Sex in the City or HB
• 1:31:24
  OS and just like that, you'd probably like swapping is is.
• 1:31:28
  That the sequel is that the. Sex.
• 1:31:29
  That's the sequel one. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:31:31
  Good, that's good. I agree.
• 1:31:34
  OK, watch that first and then watch.
• 1:31:36
  Watch that first or else you'll be confused because it'll be
• 1:31:39
  like, what did Caroline say that made him upset?
• 1:31:41
  Samantha. I assume that's one of the
• 1:31:43
  characters names. Just three syllable names.
• 1:31:50
  OK, 5 out of 10 for Swamp Thing. Fast Color just got done talking
• 1:31:55
  about in quite a lot of depth. I would say that because of how
• 1:31:59
  much I liked the first act and how engaged I was with the
• 1:32:03
  thematic content throughout, Fast Color still lands as a 7
• 1:32:08
  out of 10 for me. I think.
• 1:32:10
  To your point, Frank, what's that?
• 1:32:13
  I was just to say that's higher than I thought.
• 1:32:15
  It's higher than I thought because when I was done watching
• 1:32:18
  it, same thing. I wrote down like a kind of
• 1:32:21
  instinctual review. I gave it a six out of 10
• 1:32:23
  because I was like, yeah, it's, it's down the middle.
• 1:32:25
  The ending is really bad and like undercuts some of the
• 1:32:29
  messaging. And it's just there's none of
• 1:32:31
  the filmmaking prowess on display here that we saw in the
• 1:32:34
  rest of the film in the ending, which is the worst place to
• 1:32:37
  fumble at the end of the story. But after talking about it and
• 1:32:43
  even being only a couple of days removed from watching it now,
• 1:32:46
  I'm thinking about like, what kind of impression did it leave
• 1:32:48
  on me, Which is also important. And I think that my impression
• 1:32:51
  of it is positive. And I think the connection you
• 1:32:53
  made to X-Men and that type of superhero storytelling actually
• 1:32:58
  works for me. And it made me think more highly
• 1:33:01
  of Fast Color in that way because I like that kind of
• 1:33:03
  thing. And I think it's something we
• 1:33:04
  need more of in the space. We've talked about a lot of
• 1:33:07
  silly superhero stuff the past 5 episodes and I like the angle
• 1:33:11
  that this one took. Yeah, I can see that one landing
• 1:33:14
  pretty high if like even if the middle was kind of a drag, if
• 1:33:19
  they just had the ending in a way that kind of felt more like
• 1:33:24
  a good conclusion. I I could see that one like
• 1:33:28
  being like really good, something you would have
• 1:33:30
  appreciated a lot. First of all, the whole thing
• 1:33:34
  should have ended more conclusively as soon as Ruth
• 1:33:37
  summons a thunderstorm like that's so crucial to the the
• 1:33:41
  world building of that story that it should have been more
• 1:33:44
  akin to. This is maybe a random show, but
• 1:33:47
  if you've ever seen Children of Men, I.
• 1:33:50
  Don't think I have actually OK. Children of Men is a sci-fi
• 1:33:54
  dystopia movie where for some reason no one on earth is able
• 1:33:58
  to have children anymore. And we're like 20 years into
• 1:34:00
  that crisis and it's just everything's awful.
• 1:34:02
  And towards the end of the story, this woman does have a
• 1:34:05
  baby for the first time. And they're in this very like
• 1:34:08
  inescapable situation, but they literally walk out with the
• 1:34:11
  baby. And all of these people who were
• 1:34:13
  fighting like stopping their tracks and kind of just, it's
• 1:34:17
  like a Jesus moment. They're like, Oh my God, a
• 1:34:19
  child. And they forget what they were
• 1:34:22
  fighting about. And everybody is just shocked to
• 1:34:24
  the point where like they can actually change something
• 1:34:28
  shocked to their senses. And I feel like Ruth summoning a
• 1:34:32
  a rainstorm should have been the baby from Children of Men thing.
• 1:34:36
  Like it should have just stunned everybody.
• 1:34:39
  But the fact that instead they're like, whoa, rain.
• 1:34:41
  Anyway, put your hands on your head.
• 1:34:43
  Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like it really
• 1:34:44
  had almost no impact on the story at all.
• 1:34:48
  It was almost like it didn't matter.
• 1:34:51
  So that was dumb, and I think that focusing on that as the
• 1:34:53
  actual climactic beat instead of Beau's weird monologue would
• 1:34:57
  have been a little better. So overall, 7 out of 10 could
• 1:35:00
  have been better. Could have been a heck of a lot
• 1:35:01
  worse. It could have been, could have
• 1:35:04
  been, Yeah. I feel like, you know, the most
• 1:35:08
  movie movie we've talked about this season.
• 1:35:10
  Maybe that wasn't kind of silly. Yep, Yep Yep.
• 1:35:14
  Not really silly at all. Struggled to make comedy out of
• 1:35:17
  that one Anyway. Frank, you've won the episode.
• 1:35:22
  The movie you picked for me was better than the one I gave for
• 1:35:25
  you. You've you've won.
• 1:35:27
  Good, good. That is important for two
• 1:35:34
  reasons. First of all, you've closed the
• 1:35:36
  gap in our superhero season standings.
• 1:35:39
  If you look at all of our cumulative point totals for the
• 1:35:41
  movies we've each selected, it's within like 3 or 4 points
• 1:35:44
  difference. And we do have one more
• 1:35:46
  superhero double feature left to go.
• 1:35:48
  And because you won the episode, you get to make the first pick
• 1:35:51
  for next time. Oh man this is tough.
• 1:35:54
  I I literally have multiple tabs open on my computer right now of
• 1:36:00
  options. For.
• 1:36:03
  This last film to give you and I, I got to be honest, I don't
• 1:36:06
  think any of them are good so. Turns out there's maybe 10
• 1:36:11
  forgotten superhero movies that are worth the time.
• 1:36:15
  I'm, I'm oh gosh, I think I'm going to go with 1990 fives
• 1:36:24
  because we can't get away from the 90s.
• 1:36:26
  Nineteen 90 fives Tank Girl. Tank Girl.
• 1:36:32
  I'm thinking Tank Girl, what do you think?
• 1:36:38
  What do you think? I don't have an opinion because
• 1:36:41
  I just do what I'm told so I will watch tank.
• 1:36:43
  Girl got iced tea in it. Is that?
• 1:36:47
  How does that does that do for you?
• 1:36:49
  Oh, I was feeling pretty thirsty after fast colors, so that seems
• 1:36:52
  refreshing. I think, I think this movie also
• 1:36:56
  centers around a drought. So you know what?
• 1:37:02
  So you know. The real season 2 drought
• 1:37:05
  movies. It's not a lot of that.
• 1:37:09
  Tank Girl 95. I've heard of Tank Girl.
• 1:37:12
  I know it's like science fiction, like you know, in the
• 1:37:15
  future type stuff. I think people historically
• 1:37:18
  don't like it, but I think it's also extremely 90s and I got
• 1:37:23
  it's. Either or you go ahead, you go
• 1:37:26
  ahead. No, no, no, you go ahead.
• 1:37:27
  That's fine. I was.
• 1:37:28
  Just going to say, it was either that or I had one of these was
• 1:37:32
  was a Russian movie that I think you and I saw like a little bit
• 1:37:35
  of on TV once called Guardians. Oh Guardians looks awful.
• 1:37:41
  One of them. We watched all of Guardians.
• 1:37:44
  Did we see the whole thing? We saw the whole thing.
• 1:37:46
  It's like a weird Russian superhero team movie that was
• 1:37:49
  clearly supposed to be Guardians of the Galaxy.
• 1:37:52
  Like they just based it off that title but it's horrendous.
• 1:37:56
  Oh, it's awful. Yeah.
• 1:37:57
  Yeah. I didn't remember that.
• 1:37:58
  We saw the whole thing. I maybe didn't.
• 1:37:59
  Don't. I don't pick that one.
• 1:38:02
  There was also a 2020 Vin Diesel film that I had queued up for
• 1:38:06
  you, so that one was tempting. But no, we're going to go with
• 1:38:10
  Tank. Girl no Tank Girl.
• 1:38:13
  OK OK. I mean, I'll admit I don't have
• 1:38:16
  a good idea either. I'm glad we made this a six
• 1:38:20
  episode season and not 12 because then I think we would
• 1:38:22
  just be like crying in the corner by the time we got to the
• 1:38:24
  end. OK, going up against Tank Girl
• 1:38:28
  for next time, let's think this through.
• 1:38:33
  Right. It's a tough decision.
• 1:38:34
  Last last pick of this little season here.
• 1:38:39
  OK, so I've tried to come up with different angles for each
• 1:38:42
  of my picks, like different types of superhero films.
• 1:38:46
  We started with a straightforward 1, and then I
• 1:38:48
  gave you, like, a pulp action story and then a, you know,
• 1:38:51
  tokasatsu film. This one I don't think really
• 1:38:54
  covers new ground, but I just genuinely need someone to watch
• 1:38:57
  it and tell me what it is. So your film is 1990s Dick
• 1:39:02
  Tracy? Dick.
• 1:39:04
  Tracy. OK, He's the guy who wears the
• 1:39:08
  yellow trench coat, and that's all I have.
• 1:39:15
  Yeah, still in that like pulp. I like we're we're back to the
• 1:39:18
  shadow. We've come all the way back
• 1:39:20
  around to the. Shadow back to the shadow and
• 1:39:22
  like, listen, episode 6 of the season.
• 1:39:24
  We're just cleaning up loose ends, All right, I want to know
• 1:39:26
  what's going on with Dick Tracy. You're curious about Tank Girl?
• 1:39:29
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.
• 1:39:32
  Who's in that? Who?
• 1:39:32
  Who's playing the lead in that? Dick Tracy is played by Warren
• 1:39:35
  Beatty who did a lot of popular stuff in like the 70s and 80s,
• 1:39:40
  but I don't know what modern audiences would recognize him
• 1:39:43
  from. Honestly, maybe this.
• 1:39:45
  From Dick Tracy, yeah. Dick Tracy.
• 1:39:47
  I also know that Warren Beatty owns the rights to the Dick
• 1:39:50
  Tracy comics character and doesn't want to give them up and
• 1:39:55
  periodically makes like little short films as Dick Tracy's just
• 1:39:59
  so that he can maintain the copyright.
• 1:40:03
  That's that's hilarious and kind of petty.
• 1:40:05
  I think I'm going to have to watch one of these short films
• 1:40:08
  after watching. The movies, yeah, or something.
• 1:40:10
  He makes some kind of content where he plays Dick Tracy just
• 1:40:13
  so he can be like, no, I own it, nobody else can have it.
• 1:40:17
  I hope it's just like him dressed as Dick Tracy, but just
• 1:40:20
  like reading, like his grocery list.
• 1:40:21
  And he's just like, Yep, that's me, good old Dick Tracy.
• 1:40:26
  That's you're wondering how I got here?
• 1:40:29
  Yeah. OK, so that'll be our forgotten
• 1:40:33
  superhero season finale. Very exciting.
• 1:40:37
  Frank, you could still win the season.
• 1:40:39
  I think I have to crunch the numbers, but you're within like
• 1:40:42
  4 points cumulatively for all six episodes.
• 1:40:45
  So if Tank Girl is amazing and Dick Tracy stinks, you could win
• 1:40:49
  the whole thing. I I will win the whole thing.
• 1:40:52
  And he's going to win the whole thing.
• 1:40:53
  He's manifesting it right now. Yeah, yeah, stay tuned.
• 1:40:58
  I mean spoiler I guess, but. Spoiler Tank Girl 10 out of 10
• 1:41:03
  she turns into a tank probably. Who knows?
• 1:41:07
  Sounds cool. OK, well, that'll bring us to
• 1:41:12
  the end of tonight's episode of Meet Your Double Feature.
• 1:41:14
  Frank, thank you for joining me and thanks everyone for
• 1:41:16
  listening. If you'd like tonight's episode,
• 1:41:19
  please give us a rating or a review.
• 1:41:21
  Follow us on our social media channels, which are LinkedIn,
• 1:41:24
  the description for this episode.
• 1:41:25
  Or if you want to find everything, meet your double
• 1:41:27
  feature, you can go to our website,
• 1:41:29
  meetyourdoublefeature.com. Appreciate the support, helps us
• 1:41:32
  keep the show going. But thank you so much again for
• 1:41:34
  that, Frank. I'm going to do the same plug
• 1:41:37
  that we kind of just keep doing now.
• 1:41:39
  Frank made a movie. It's available to watch.
• 1:41:43
  Yeah, it's Nate Morion, Venice, available on Amazon Prime Video,
• 1:41:48
  coming soon to other streaming platforms near you.
• 1:41:54
  Fantastic. That's an independent drama akin
• 1:41:56
  to Fast Color. Same category.
• 1:42:00
  Yeah, it's basically like like if you've seen Guardians, like
• 1:42:03
  the Russian 2017 film, kind of just like that, you know?
• 1:42:07
  Not really. Just like that.
• 1:42:09
  Yeah. I thought it was weird that you
• 1:42:10
  filmed everything in Russian. I was like, oh, you guys don't
• 1:42:12
  speak Russian? You.
• 1:42:13
  Just kind of guess. It's really easy actually.
• 1:42:15
  Don't have to try that hard. How many Russian words do we
• 1:42:18
  got? Is Russian the 1:00 where
• 1:42:20
  they're like duh or is that Germany?
• 1:42:29
  That's the end. That's anyway, yeah.
• 1:42:31
  See you later. Coming up next, it's Tank Girl,
• 1:42:48
  followed by Dick Tracy on Meet Your Double feature.