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Bullied Nostalgia: Small Soldiers · Bullied Nostalgia

• 0:00
  So. Many of our fans to watch, oh
• 0:04
  look, now they're being. Bashed I guess.
• 0:07
  That's what we should expect on the Bullied Nostalgia Podcast.
• 0:15
  It's that time of the month. You're tuning in for another
• 0:19
  episode of the Bullied Nostalgia Podcast, the show where two Gen.
• 0:23
  ZS bully the childhoods of two millennials after watching the
• 0:28
  slop that they enjoyed as kids. In one corner we have the old
• 0:33
  fogies, Jonathan Nesbitt and myself.
• 0:40
  I'm Timothy Nesbitt and representing the younger
• 0:44
  demographic we have Kylin Nesbitt.
• 0:49
  I don't know if I might pick that up.
• 0:50
  Whatever, we'll stick with that. Nothing and Chance Nesbitt
• 1:03
  Today's episode is all about unfair fights as we tackle
• 1:07
  1998's small soldiers. But before we do, here's a
• 1:12
  friendly reminder that you can find us on all socials by
• 1:15
  searching Bullied Pod. Our e-mail being bullied
• 1:19
  pod@gmail.com and our merch store can be found by searching
• 1:24
  Bullied Pod on redbubble.com. Chance for people who've never
• 1:28
  seen Small Soldiers, What is this movie?
• 1:33
  Small Soldiers is a movie about points that become much smarter
• 1:38
  than so supposed to. In an attempt to finish what
• 1:42
  their characters are designed to do.
• 1:45
  The commando elite who are supposed to kill these bad guy
• 1:49
  aliens go off the rails and start doing whatever they can to
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  kill their opposing aliens, including harming the human
• 1:58
  beings. It's up to the Gorgonites and
• 2:00
  the humans to defend themselves against the 9 inch commando evil
• 2:05
  doers. Chance makes this movie sound a
• 2:08
  lot more succinct than it is. Yeah, it goes all over the
• 2:12
  place. It's safe to say that this movie
• 2:14
  really doesn't know what it wants to be, but we can get into
• 2:19
  that stuff. Essentially, it had a $40
• 2:21
  million budget and made $72 million at the box office.
• 2:26
  So it pretty much broke even once you account for marketing
• 2:30
  and all that other stuff. But the movie was originally
• 2:34
  intended to be for teenagers. When you factor in all of the
• 2:39
  toy and merchandising that went into it.
• 2:42
  In real life though, they really wanted kids to have this movie
• 2:47
  be really accessible. And so this movie got butchered
• 2:51
  in the edit to be super kid friendly.
• 2:53
  Now that paid off massively on the back end.
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  They would say that they made way more money off the real toys
• 3:01
  than this movie made at the box office, but it all leads to a
• 3:07
  kind of messy viewing experience.
• 3:10
  You've referenced in the past Chance when we watched Witches
• 3:15
  asking if it was meant to be a kids horror movie or if it was
• 3:18
  really funny or whatever. This movie shifts in tone and
• 3:22
  audience pretty regularly throughout the film, and it
• 3:25
  doesn't really ever feel like it knows what it wants to be.
• 3:31
  Yeah, about every 20 minutes or so in this movie, somebody gets
• 3:35
  stabbed in the. Yeah, that's I found very
• 3:39
  interesting. You can tell that there is
• 3:42
  something up with the age rating.
• 3:45
  Early on in the movie, 1 of the main kids, Alan gets his hair
• 3:47
  glass rated really bad. I'm like, whoa, he got hit with
• 3:50
  a saw blade. I'm not surprised they did that.
• 3:53
  And then later on somebody shoots spark plugs at him and
• 3:57
  four dig into his quad. Whoa.
• 4:00
  Who's this four? It makes sense when you say that
• 4:02
  because this movie was intended for a different audience.
• 4:05
  Before we get into the meat and the potatoes of it, John, of
• 4:11
  course grew up with this movie. Chance you'd seen it once
• 4:14
  before. This is brand new for Kai.
• 4:17
  Let's start with John. What was it like going back to
• 4:21
  this movie? I think when it came out
• 4:24
  probably felt like it was Toy Story movie.
• 4:27
  What if toys were alive and had sentience?
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  More edgy and grown up and cool. So I do remember thinking this
• 4:36
  movie was pretty cool but I never rewatched it.
• 4:41
  I don't have memories of seeing this movie multiple times.
• 4:43
  We never owned it or anything like that.
• 4:46
  Revisiting it now, I don't have a lot of positive things to say
• 4:52
  about the movie. I felt like there was a lot of
• 4:55
  moments, but I think the movie had a lot of potential.
• 4:58
  Great idea, not necessarily executed the best.
• 5:02
  I can definitely get behind that.
• 5:04
  They've tried to launch a remake or a new movie of this for a
• 5:08
  while and I completely buy into that.
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  I think this movie is mid to its core, but it is based on a ton
• 5:16
  of great ideas and principles. Will get into the puppets and
• 5:20
  stuff in a little bit here, but I agree, John, I think that this
• 5:23
  movie isn't the sum of its parts.
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  It has the potential to be really good, but it's just
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  really not as good as it should or could have.
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  Been yeah, I had read that the most recent remake was supposed
• 5:35
  to be Toy Mageddon, but when Disney bought Fox they
• 5:39
  cancelled. The project.
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  Chance what did you remember about this movie?
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  I remembered that the movie ended with a big fight.
• 5:48
  I remembered that the commandos were the bad guys, but I guess
• 5:52
  beyond that I didn't really remember much in retrospect.
• 5:56
  OK. There's a lot of wasted time.
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  I think this movie's an hour and 45 minutes.
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  You could easily cut this down to a tight 70 minutes.
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  It would be much. Better an hour and 10 minutes.
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  Think so? Do you really think that there's
• 6:11
  not 30 minutes a waste of time in that movie?
• 6:14
  Sure. I'm just saying I don't know of
• 6:16
  many theatrical releases that are 70 minutes.
• 6:19
  That's pretty short. That's.
• 6:20
  What I'm saying that you could make a movie 70 minutes long.
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  Is it OK if I play out the characters who's in the movie?
• 6:28
  Absolutely. Just let me ask Kai.
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  Before Kai, you'd never seen this movie.
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  Did you have any frame of reference?
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  Did you have any clue what you were walking into this movie?
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  Felt kind of like the first half of Toy Story Three.
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  It was weird. There was a lot of time spent on
• 6:46
  the people related. To the toys.
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  Where it was just such a long period of time where the point
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  of the movie never really started happening.
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  We can talk about the movie's format and stuff when we get
• 6:57
  into it. I was just wondering what your
• 6:59
  first impressions were. Did you know what this movie was
• 7:03
  before watching? No, the end result of this movie
• 7:07
  is that things are now the same as they were before the movie.
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  Except there are. 5 little action figures.
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  Out on a boat somewhere. Yeah, and some families got some
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  money. Let's hop over to John.
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  John, you wanted to tell us a little bit about the characters.
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  Janson Kyer making reference to this company that sells military
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  tech. So we have the CEO who's kind of
• 7:29
  a greedy billionaire who's now trying to buy up this toy
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  company. We have two toy designers that
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  we get to meet. The One Cooler toy designer
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  designs these Commandos. The geekier.
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  Toy designer creates these gorgonites which are like alien
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  creatures. Anyways.
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  Then the company buys this and they put their chips, these toys
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  and like Chance was saying before, the toys have this
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  programmed into them that their enemies with each other.
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  They get to meet our protagonists.
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  When these toys get early delivery to a toy store and this
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  is a young preteen boy. He gets to check out the toys
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  and then the girl he has a crush on comes and finds out about the
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  toys. You get to know each of the
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  action figures on either side of the line.
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  Then main commander of the bad guys is Chip Hazard, and the
• 8:23
  main alien of the good guys, the Gorgonites, is Archer.
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  Like Chance was saying, these commandos are set out to really
• 8:30
  kill these Gorgonite toys, and that means they're willing to
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  kill the humans that are protecting the Gorgonites.
• 8:37
  We vaporize all Gorgonite. That's a pretty good impression.
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  Thank you. Kirsten Dunst is back playing
• 8:45
  the female lead in this movie. We, of course, met her in
• 8:49
  Jumanji. We like to circle back to the
• 8:52
  same actresses and actors as much as possible.
• 8:57
  Gregory Smith, I'm not sure how many things I've seen him in.
• 9:01
  He's the main character, but he was in the movie Patriot.
• 9:06
  He was one of Mel Gibson's sons with Heath Ledger.
• 9:11
  Yeah, there is a full cast here. I think for me, the one who
• 9:15
  steals the show, though, is Phil Hartman.
• 9:17
  He plays Kirsten Dunst's dad. He was a phenomenal comedic
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  actor. He, of course, met a tragic end
• 9:26
  in real life, but just one of the funniest guys in TV and
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  movies. And he steals the show in this
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  movie, too. He's annoying.
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  He's kind of a bad guy, but he's very funny when he's setting up
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  his. You didn't like watching him,
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  Chance. No, I really didn't.
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  I didn't like any of the parents.
• 9:48
  I found most of the characters in this movie frustrating and
• 9:51
  that includes him. Oh yeah, you're allowed to be
• 9:53
  frustrated with him. He's slimy, obnoxious,
• 9:57
  difficult. He's not a good person.
• 10:00
  But. No, but I also think I don't
• 10:02
  know if he fits the plot of this movie.
• 10:05
  Maybe I'm not as upset at his acting.
• 10:08
  I was essentially saying that when he's on screen, your
• 10:11
  attention is on him specifically.
• 10:14
  Tim, you were saying that we like to circle back to certain
• 10:17
  people the dad of the main boy in this movie, The actor's name
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  is Kevin Dunn. I recognize him best as being
• 10:24
  the dad in the Transformers movie but also the owner of
• 10:29
  Missy. Oh my goodness.
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  Beethoven's Second. You're right.
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  Good. For you.
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  I didn't clock that but well noticed.
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  Praise Beethoven. Do you think he ended up happy
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  at the end of that movie? Beethoven's Second.
• 10:47
  Yeah, like. I thought you were going to ask,
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  do you think he ended up happy after doing those movies?
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  Do you think he feels proud of what he's done?
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  Definitely not the Transformers movie.
• 10:59
  So Phil Hartman, in the scene when he's setting up his
• 11:03
  satellite dish, John, he talks about changing the chroma on the
• 11:08
  TV. That was a weird memory to me.
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  I had forgotten that that was a thing.
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  Chance and Kai, back in the day, on old TV's, there was a knob
• 11:20
  you could turn that would change the colors of your TV.
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  If you were bored you could change all your orange and Blues
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  to be pink and green, and sometimes you just watch TV with
• 11:35
  everything pink and green because you could.
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  Yes. I think the trouble is anytime
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  you're watching the live action human and you play with the
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  chromats, now they have either pink skin or orange skin.
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  Sorry that was way off tangent, but.
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  I do appreciate the flashback, I'd also forgotten about that.
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  As John and Chance have both kind of told us, this movie is
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  about toys that have chips implanted in them that they can
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  think for themselves. And when you're buying action
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  figures, those action figures literally start to think that
• 12:15
  they are action figures, kind of think like Buzz Lightyear in the
• 12:19
  original Toy Story. And so they think that their
• 12:22
  purpose is to fight the other toys and they'll they'll
• 12:26
  essentially go on murder sprees and attempt to do that.
• 12:30
  This movie is very much the 90s version of Gremlins.
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  It's about a kid who brings a small thing home and it ends up
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  creating more of them. Essentially try and kill
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  families in the neighborhood and.
• 12:48
  Interesting, Tim. When I was watching it I was
• 12:50
  like, this feels like gremlins and.
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  Then I. Look into it and it's the same
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  director, yeah. In.
• 13:13
  Comparison Chip Hazard looks really bad in some scenes, but I
• 13:16
  think they are very fun as a crew.
• 13:19
  I think the bad guys are a lot more interested.
• 13:21
  I actually appreciated them. Was anybody else kind of
• 13:24
  terrified of that one guy Brick bazooka?
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  He's got like that wide grin that never goes away.
• 13:30
  They are. Horrifying, but I think it adds
• 13:32
  to it. They're good, bad guys.
• 13:33
  I appreciated the Mando team dynamics at the end of the
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  movie. Bad guys find out that they can
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  just go to toy stores and get way more bad guys, and as soon
• 13:44
  as now there's 1000 bad guys, they lose.
• 13:47
  Their personality. Yeah, they lose.
• 13:49
  Yeah, I agree. No significant.
• 13:51
  Everything was disposable. I didn't feel us engaged at
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  that. Point.
• 13:54
  Yeah, yeah. I enjoyed how Duke Bazooka or
• 13:57
  whatever his name was, his legs come off in one scene.
• 14:00
  Instead they perform again on the spot amputation, but later
• 14:04
  there's 100,000 dolls that all have microchips in them and
• 14:07
  you're like OK, so I don't care about any of these dolls.
• 14:10
  And then there's 100,000 Rick Bazookas and nothing matters
• 14:15
  anymore. Yeah, we'll talk about death
• 14:18
  later, but I just wanted to bring up the toys because I
• 14:22
  wanted to talk a little bit about the puppetry.
• 14:25
  All of the puppets were made by Stan Winston, I mean the goat.
• 14:29
  Each of the characters had at least three puppets, depending
• 14:34
  on what the needs were. So that meant that Stan Winston
• 14:38
  and his team had to makeover 200 puppets in four months.
• 14:44
  Crazy, which is. Wild designs for the toy
• 14:47
  characters were rushed ahead of time so that actual toy
• 14:52
  manufacturers could replicate them to make.
• 14:55
  Oh wait, this is a documentary he actually did.
• 14:59
  But yes, there is some computer graphics in there here and there
• 15:02
  which I think is pretty visible. You can tell when it's computer
• 15:06
  graphics. But the puppetry, as Chance was
• 15:09
  already saying, the toys look really cool.
• 15:12
  They look like they are toys that are given life all of a
• 15:17
  sudden. I'm a huge fan of the special
• 15:20
  effects. These characters just look so
• 15:22
  that I already mentioned Archer, he's the best, which actually
• 15:26
  I'm going to mention that brings up a gripe of mine.
• 15:29
  Some of the Gorgonites look very interesting or very fun, but the
• 15:35
  programming of the Gorgonites is that they will always hide and
• 15:37
  they will always lose. But that also means they're.
• 15:40
  Cowardly. And they try to run away from
• 15:43
  everything. That means for most of the movie
• 15:45
  they're in a trash can, which is just not a good way to sell me
• 15:49
  on these ragtag heroes. 100% agree.
• 15:52
  Chance I felt that to. Me.
• 15:54
  Well, and I think that that is something that I've always found
• 15:58
  to be true about this movie. When they're fighting the big
• 16:01
  battle at the end, we get the song.
• 16:04
  Whoa, yeah. What is it good for?
• 16:08
  And there's a real messaging that this movie is teaching you
• 16:12
  that violence is bad, but all the good guys are lame.
• 16:16
  And Chip Hazard and his crew are way cooler.
• 16:20
  They. Are the best, yeah.
• 16:22
  It's one of these things where it's like, oh, so the lesson
• 16:25
  here is people who think war is bad are lame.
• 16:29
  So. Powers and weaklings, A lot of
• 16:32
  them. Yeah, I mean, that was my take
• 16:34
  away as a kid. When I saw this movie, when it
• 16:36
  first came out, I was like, oh, the good guys are all really
• 16:39
  lame. I know I'm not supposed to chip
• 16:42
  Hazard's really cool. Well, I guess I'll go fight in
• 16:45
  the Afghan war. Yeah, it's really weird.
• 16:48
  Because they threw. Away some pretty cool designs,
• 16:51
  there's this. One guy whose gimmick?
• 16:53
  Is that he got torn apart by the Commando elites.
• 16:56
  So he's all Frankenstein together and I'm like, oh, that
• 16:59
  guy's design is awesome. And that's like all the screen
• 17:02
  time he gets. Yes.
• 17:03
  So that character's name is Navigator, and I always watch
• 17:07
  for it because when they're pitching the toys at the
• 17:11
  beginning, you get to see what Navigator was supposed to look
• 17:15
  like, but almost immediately the toy gets trashed.
• 17:19
  And then Frank, or whatever he calls him, is the toy that
• 17:23
  actually gets some screen time. But that leads really nicely
• 17:27
  into the biggest gripe about this whole movie, and that's
• 17:31
  that there's no consistent rules or laws when it comes to death.
• 17:37
  It's really hard to gauge if a person's dead or not, or if life
• 17:41
  even matters. Navigator is the first person to
• 17:45
  literally get torn limb from limb.
• 17:47
  Sorry toy, not person. Right, the first person to get
• 17:51
  toyed limb from limb. Thank you.
• 17:53
  Yeah. Yeah, that.
• 17:55
  Was good chance so navigator gets torn limb from limb and
• 17:58
  thrown in the garbage but then they just put him back together
• 18:02
  kind of like SIDS toys and Toy Story and all of a sudden he's
• 18:07
  fine and. Fine, he has to go to a
• 18:10
  therapist now. Seems really emotionally broken
• 18:13
  up about it. Yeah, as Kai told us, Bazooka
• 18:18
  gets some pieces hopped off or dislocated and they're able to
• 18:23
  repair him. But then Nick Nitro gets shoved
• 18:27
  in a Garburator and his feet First his feet get broken off,
• 18:32
  but then that is too much for him to survive.
• 18:36
  He dies, but they're able to use his microchip and infuse his
• 18:42
  evil thoughts into Barbie dolls. Dozens of them, in fact.
• 18:48
  I don't think it's his evil thoughts, I think that they are
• 18:50
  naturally. Barbie dolls and then.
• 18:52
  They have to take them through camps to teach them the
• 18:55
  evilness. They are Barbie dolls.
• 18:57
  They talk about Barbie dolls. And program.
• 19:00
  Them to be that way. Yeah, and then Nick Nitro's
• 19:05
  brain, even though it was dead in him, allows dozens of Barbies
• 19:10
  to come to life. Then they all drive into a ditch
• 19:14
  on a car and all of them die except Chip Hazard.
• 19:19
  And then he goes to the store and gets a bunch more, and they
• 19:22
  all die to tennis balls and stuff.
• 19:24
  So it's really hard to understand what it actually
• 19:30
  takes to kill one of these. I also feel like the stakes are
• 19:33
  changing with how dangerous the commando toys are.
• 19:37
  In some instances, they're shooting literal rockets and
• 19:41
  blowing up trees, and then in other instances, they might be
• 19:44
  throwing a paper clip at you like it, just like these
• 19:47
  commandos really wanted to. They could just have killed
• 19:49
  these kids. Yeah.
• 19:50
  Yeah, it's really a step down from the chainsaws and stuff
• 19:53
  that they add, Yeah. Exactly Speaking of.
• 19:56
  Their Voltron chainsaw car? Awesome.
• 19:58
  Again. The bad guys are the best part
• 20:00
  of this movie. They're really.
• 20:02
  Sends bad messaging. Yeah, I agree.
• 20:04
  If they came out with a new movie, this is wild to say, but
• 20:08
  I wouldn't even want the Gorgonites to be in it.
• 20:11
  I'd just be like, OK, let's go back to Commando Elite.
• 20:14
  Just do gremlins, no good guys. Just do gremlins.
• 20:16
  Exactly. Bad guys.
• 20:17
  Well, there was that one pitch that was like, what if there was
• 20:22
  a new movie of this? Yeah, some people did some
• 20:25
  animation tests and stuff and they look pretty sick.
• 20:29
  They're very cool. Yeah, it just goes to so the
• 20:32
  technology was already solid 20 years ago.
• 20:35
  Now I just imagine how good of a movie people could make with
• 20:39
  this. And in that 1-2 minute clip of
• 20:43
  the Gorgonites in that potential animation test, the Gorgonites
• 20:47
  get more character than they did in the entire movie.
• 20:50
  There's that Gorgonite who pulls a gun towards the commando
• 20:53
  elites and the big boss says no, don't shoot.
• 20:55
  And then they run away and it's like, OK, they're debating
• 20:59
  whether it's worth it to attack. They have a.
• 21:01
  Code yeah. Exactly.
• 21:06
  In this movie, it's kind of like the opposite.
• 21:08
  They won't fight because they're scared, but then they will
• 21:11
  fight. I feel like the Gorgonites,
• 21:14
  other than hiding and trying to survive, it's unclear what they
• 21:18
  value. Because when Archer first comes
• 21:20
  to life in the Boys house, he decides to search the Internet
• 21:24
  to learn all of American history.
• 21:26
  And you're like, oh, I wonder what he'll do with that.
• 21:29
  They start the movie and saying they love to learn.
• 21:33
  And caught on the nerd. Yeah, but he doesn't really do
• 21:35
  anything with that knowledge A. Picture of a park and they think
• 21:38
  of Gorgon listeners at home. Gorgon or Gorgon?
• 21:44
  Is the name of the home territory of the Gorgon.
• 21:46
  Island. So when they see a picture of a
• 21:49
  park, that's all the research they do.
• 21:52
  I don't know, a lot of the stuff Archer was looking at in Encarta
• 21:56
  was war related. I think when they escape, he's
• 21:59
  going to commit a lot of atrocities.
• 22:02
  Also, the Gorgonites were confronted by their makers.
• 22:06
  The two toy sales guys are like, we're your God, we created you.
• 22:11
  You think that the Gorgonites would then be like, oh, this is
• 22:14
  our purpose, but no, we have to go on a little boat at the end
• 22:18
  of the movie. It didn't make sense.
• 22:20
  Speaking of how this movie ends, I was shocked that in the final
• 22:25
  edit of this movie, The last line that is uttered is a
• 22:29
  Titanic joke. What when the toys are in the
• 22:32
  boat, do they see something? That's the last line of the.
• 22:35
  Movie to an iceberg. Like what?
• 22:39
  Who signed off on that crap? Oh, I do.
• 22:43
  Don't leave that with me to think about as the credits roll.
• 22:48
  That's the last line of your movie.
• 22:50
  That's terrible. Terrible.
• 22:52
  This was mentioned earlier, but the big greasy billionaire,
• 22:56
  you'd expect him to be put behind bars or there to be some
• 22:59
  like outcome or consequence of his thousands of toys trying to
• 23:03
  kill people. But the final scene before the
• 23:07
  Gorgonites go off on the boat is he just comes and writes.
• 23:09
  Everyone checks. And then he makes a bunch of
• 23:11
  money selling it to anti terrorism.
• 23:14
  That's what I'm saying for an anti war movie.
• 23:17
  Nobody gets their comeuppance. Everybody somehow gets a happy
• 23:21
  ending, even Chip Hazard. It's like you get to go kill
• 23:25
  terrorists now. I think this movie would do so
• 23:30
  much better if it came at it from the cynical angle.
• 23:34
  Imagine this whole movie, but instead it's had the tone of
• 23:37
  Starship Troopers. Who here has seen Starship
• 23:40
  Troopers? Oh yeah.
• 23:42
  OK, Kai hasn't. What's wild is, and I don't know
• 23:47
  if I've told you this before, chance when Starship Troopers
• 23:50
  came out, it wasn't wildly understood that that was satire.
• 23:55
  So. Did not do well.
• 23:56
  It did not do well. I saw that movie in theaters and
• 24:00
  I was like, oh, that's not a very good movie.
• 24:03
  It seems disingenuous. Yeah, it turns out that's the
• 24:08
  whole point. That's the movie.
• 24:10
  Disingenuous. A lot of this movie is on the
• 24:13
  kick of Starship Troopers, where they tell the joke and then you
• 24:17
  realize, oh, wait, you actually believe that you're not being
• 24:20
  sarcastic. Wait, you're not joking.
• 24:22
  And that's how the tone of this movie feels to me.
• 24:25
  I hope we don't hit an iceberg. Are you trying to steal my bit?
• 24:30
  What's going on here? I'm the voices guy.
• 24:33
  Going back to. Our talk about programming.
• 24:35
  Yeah, the. Gorgonites programmed to be
• 24:37
  pacifists. Why?
• 24:39
  Well, they think their programming.
• 24:40
  Is to. Hide and run away.
• 24:42
  I actually understand that concept.
• 24:45
  The bad guys, their whole thing is hide and run away.
• 24:48
  I think there are villains in media who are portrayed like
• 24:51
  that. They've gone into hiding and
• 24:54
  think of all the evil they could do, you know?
• 24:55
  So we have to find and stop them kind of deal.
• 24:58
  But I find that. Kind of dumb because half of the
• 25:02
  aliens are designed to kill. Things.
• 25:05
  One of them's a slingshot, one of them has a big gun in his
• 25:08
  arm, the other one has a big rock for a hand.
• 25:12
  Just when? His name is.
• 25:13
  Dude, Archer is one of. The bone arrows, yeah.
• 25:17
  I don't think it makes sense. My other thing to say is at the
• 25:21
  end of the movie The way that they get rid of all of the
• 25:25
  commando elite is by creating an EMP the power pole.
• 25:29
  I've done some onion peas and there is like a 0.1% chance
• 25:36
  that. This would.
• 25:37
  Work the way it did in the movie, in the real.
• 25:40
  World. So you're.
• 25:41
  Saying there's a chance. All right, let's hop over to
• 25:45
  closing Kai. What's your verdict on this
• 25:48
  movie? I have a lot of issues with it,
• 25:53
  but I don't know what the first course of action is.
• 25:57
  Having a horde of bad guys was never the play.
• 26:00
  There's only one set of bad guy toys, and then you can get
• 26:04
  attached to the bad guys and be more afraid of them.
• 26:08
  This is Brick Bazooka, and Brick Bazooka has had his legs come
• 26:12
  off and yet he's still coming after us, so he must be a
• 26:15
  strong. The other thing is the
• 26:18
  Gorgonites should not have been pathetic.
• 26:20
  If you're keeping the Gorgonites, they should have a
• 26:22
  code, as we talked about earlier.
• 26:24
  Well, they don't want to kill, but they still have defensive
• 26:28
  instincts. There's also the statement of
• 26:30
  every time Gorgon's get into a fight we lose and I'm like OK
• 26:33
  that's interesting. You have a 5 foot tall giant.
• 26:38
  I feel like you can make the statement that they always lose,
• 26:40
  but that doesn't mean they can't fight back and the situation is.
• 26:43
  Different. I guess.
• 26:45
  It would have been a lot nicer if their moral code wasn't we're
• 26:48
  too afraid to do anything and their moral code was we don't
• 26:52
  want to hurt anybody or we don't want to kill.
• 26:54
  But that's not what we got. Yeah.
• 26:56
  So those are the two changes. I would make think that there is
• 26:58
  a lot you could do with like the runtime.
• 27:00
  And I'm sure that this was a completely different movie, but
• 27:03
  having the Gorgonites be useless was not the play.
• 27:06
  OK. Chance where does this movie
• 27:09
  fall in your grading scale? There's a lot of this movie I do
• 27:12
  not like, but if I sat down with a bunch of my college buddies
• 27:16
  this could easily be a 3 or 4. Negative.
• 27:18
  Oh, that's a good question. Is this a negative or not?
• 27:21
  Generally this is probably a two or three on my scale, but if
• 27:25
  you're with the right guys this could easily be a -4.
• 27:28
  I think you should rank a movie in both the positive and
• 27:31
  negative aspect at the same time.
• 27:33
  Are we going back to the well guys of joking about how much?
• 27:36
  Work. No.
• 27:37
  You said that this movie is either A3 or a -4.
• 27:41
  That's understandable. I think the way I'm going to do
• 27:44
  it is if something scales more in a negative or a positive,
• 27:47
  I'll probably just go with that. If the movie is a -5 but a +2,
• 27:52
  I'm just going to mention that's a -5.
• 27:54
  I guess to be fair, we don't really get movies that are high.
• 27:56
  In both regards. Yeah, it seems unnecessary.
• 27:59
  Just so I'm just going to say it's a -4.
• 28:01
  I love some of the puppetry. I love.
• 28:03
  Chip Hazard and those guys watching this movie, There's a
• 28:06
  part of it is like these guys should win.
• 28:08
  If you like Starship Troopers, you'll like Chip Hazard and his
• 28:11
  dudes. I did.
• 28:12
  But if you're watching this by yourself, probably not gonna
• 28:14
  have a good. Time, Jonathan.
• 28:16
  Talk to us about the nostalgia that this movie brought back.
• 28:20
  Yeah, it's a movie of its time. It made sense in 1998 to be
• 28:26
  really cool and the kind of thing that someone who was 9 or
• 28:29
  10 like me would love. But watching it now just makes
• 28:33
  me more nostalgic for better movies because this was really
• 28:37
  like, what if Gremlins and Toy Story had a baby?
• 28:40
  And Gremlins and Toy Story are just way better movies.
• 28:44
  Is this the first? Movie that you've had nostalgia
• 28:46
  for that you didn't. Like.
• 28:49
  I don't know, I think must be the mood I'm in tonight.
• 28:53
  I don't want to play devil's advocate.
• 28:55
  I guess I think because I only had seen this movie a handful of
• 28:59
  times as a kid, it wasn't a movie we owned.
• 29:02
  If it's a movie we owned, I can't not like it.
• 29:04
  I've watched it so many times. So this one's more susceptible
• 29:08
  to my criticism, but I'm glad I rewatched it.
• 29:11
  But I don't think I'll ever watch it again.
• 29:14
  And we've been making some comments about, oh, it's
• 29:16
  actually the bad guys are cooler.
• 29:18
  It's interesting when you look at all the marketing chip
• 29:23
  hazard, the commando is way more front and center than virture
• 29:27
  the your dog rabbit warrior. He's kind of a cat.
• 29:32
  Was looking at the different movie posters.
• 29:34
  One has all the commandos on it, another one has Chip front and
• 29:38
  center with Archer in the background in the name is
• 29:41
  Soldiers. And so I really do think that
• 29:45
  totally in how the movie was filmed.
• 29:47
  But I think even how it was designed for people to consume
• 29:50
  it, like it's supposed to be about the bad guys and these
• 29:54
  cool army toys. It's interesting.
• 29:57
  It's funny that you say that we didn't own this movie because I
• 30:01
  was kind of under the impression that we did.
• 30:03
  So it must have been maybe Michael Martin that owned it
• 30:08
  because I definitely remember this VHS.
• 30:11
  I've seen this movie a lot of times, I don't know how many but
• 30:15
  quite a few over the years. So just by that metric I cannot
• 30:20
  say I will never watch this movie again.
• 30:23
  If history has taught me anything, I will see it again.
• 30:26
  That said, it is mid mid mid mid.
• 30:30
  Like there's nothing special about it.
• 30:33
  Chance giving it a four is a minor heart attack to me.
• 30:37
  That's a. Lot this is a 2.
• 30:40
  We watched a lot of MST3K growing up.
• 30:44
  I could easily see this big very fun time to make fun.
• 30:47
  But I guess. A real.
• 30:48
  Question, Dad. Go ahead.
• 30:50
  As a. Kid, did you like this?
• 30:52
  You mentioned you've seen it a lot, and that might just be like
• 30:55
  it was one of the movies we had. I guess.
• 30:57
  Before you realize this was a bad movie, did you have fond?
• 31:01
  Feelings for it? I think I always found this
• 31:04
  movie to be mid. This movie would have come out
• 31:06
  when I was in junior high and I talk about the first movie that
• 31:11
  I can remember that I knew was bad.
• 31:14
  I went to see Batman and Robin in the theaters.
• 31:18
  I was in junior high at the time as well, and there were other
• 31:22
  girls in my class who also went to the movie at the same time.
• 31:27
  And I remember feeling embarrassed that they knew that
• 31:31
  I was at that movie, which is funny because they were also at
• 31:35
  that movie, so they should have felt the same things.
• 31:39
  I would ask them about it now as adults, but there's no way they
• 31:42
  remember this core memory like I do.
• 31:45
  Small Soldiers never gave me that same feeling.
• 31:47
  It would have come out around the same time.
• 31:49
  I would have been around the same age.
• 31:51
  But I never came out of this movie thinking, Oh my goodness,
• 31:55
  that was amazing. I think I had the same feeling
• 31:59
  as everyone. And that was, I don't really
• 32:04
  think that that movie was for me.
• 32:06
  Don't think this movie is for anyone as we kind of talked
• 32:10
  about was mutilated in the edit and it's made into this very kid
• 32:15
  friendly movie that is not for kids.
• 32:18
  It was just an Ave. by which to sell toys.
• 32:22
  And when we're done our call tonight I will send you guys a
• 32:26
  link to the video that Kai was referencing.
• 32:30
  People tried to pitch a small soldiers movie and they made the
• 32:34
  two-minute little demo reel and it is so cool.
• 32:38
  It makes me want that movie. And so whenever I watch this
• 32:43
  movie, I think, oh, I wish I was watching something else.
• 32:46
  I wish I was watching a better version of this.
• 32:49
  I love gremlins. I love gremlins too because it's
• 32:53
  insane. This is in that same family.
• 32:55
  This is the natural evolution of gremlins to the point where the
• 33:00
  gremlins in this movie are actually the most interesting,
• 33:03
  likable characters. I would love to see a better
• 33:07
  version of this. I have no intention of watching
• 33:11
  it again, but I'm sure I will at some point.
• 33:15
  Let's wrap it up then. This is our 49th episode, which
• 33:20
  means that our next episode will be our 50th episode celebration
• 33:27
  where we will be talking about shows that we watched that are
• 33:33
  new, but we'll also be looking back at the 49 episodes leading
• 33:39
  up to that. Does anybody have anything they
• 33:41
  want to add? Kids, do you want to do like a
• 33:43
  line from each one of the toys in this movie?
• 33:47
  Ocula doesn't say anything, he just makes.
• 33:49
  Really weird. Gestures, you know.
• 33:51
  His. Name.
• 33:52
  I know his name. His name is Ocula.
• 33:55
  I think he's the first toy they say or whatever.
• 33:58
  I couldn't tell you the rest of them.
• 33:59
  Did any of the Gorgonites look like dinosaurs to you guys?
• 34:05
  Are you just trying to get this in every episode of the season?
• 34:08
  I appreciate you, John. You're welcome.
• 34:12
  I can't believe, Dad, you were trying to make a joke about
• 34:16
  dinosaurs and Inigo Montoya's line.
• 34:19
  My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father, prepared
• 34:22
  to die. And he was sitting there
• 34:24
  prepared to hmm. And he couldn't come up with a
• 34:27
  joke? It's right there.
• 34:28
  It's dinosaur. I think that might be my
• 34:31
  favorite line in this movie is when every character says Gorgon
• 34:34
  at at least 75. Times all right with that, we'll
• 34:38
  see our listeners on the other side of the 50 and look out for
• 34:43
  weirdos. Beethoven.
• 34:46
  Sorry, say your thing. Grandma, it's Tim every time
• 34:54
  it's. My favorite one.
• 34:56
  It's so dumb. Don't forget to bleed in and
• 35:01
  out. Grandma.
• 35:04
  Adventure, Jamie, Adventure. It has to be the last thing that
• 35:09
  we say. So if there's anything else you
• 35:11
  guys want to say it say it now. Grandma, I hope we don't hit an
• 35:16
  iceberg. That's why you wanted us to not
• 35:22
  say anything else, because you had to end it like that.
• 35:24
  Yeah, yeah. Terrible.