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A New Vision… of the Future · Movie Meltdown

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Speaker 1: My name is Ingevild Deila, and you're listening to Movie Meltdown.
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Speaker 2: Movie Meltdown.
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Speaker 3: It's showtime.
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Speaker 4: The following feature has been rated R by the Motion
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Speaker 4: Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences
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Speaker 4: and parental discretion is advised.
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Speaker 5: Our nuclear reactor pumping out one million kilowatts of power.
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Speaker 6: What's up and welcome to Movie Meltdown.
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Speaker 7: I'm Brian, and I'm coming to you from the Oddity Studios,
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Speaker 7: where this week we are going to jump right back
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Speaker 7: into our massive sci-fi conversation that began last week. So
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Speaker 7: if you haven't already, go back and listen to last
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Speaker 7: week's episode, where this epic discussion began, and then you'll
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Speaker 7: know how we got to this point, as we now.
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Speaker 8: Dive right back in with Sterling and myself.
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Speaker 7: But that I mean that is I do love that
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Speaker 7: darkness and I think because it's sort of redeeming because
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Speaker 7: that's the thing I think especially the more I've watched
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Speaker 7: them over the years that I think the prequels if
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Speaker 7: they were necessary and I don't know that they were
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Speaker 7: but if they were what they've done for me is
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Speaker 7: taken all of that coolness and And even like darkness
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Speaker 7: out of what Vader became because he is.
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Speaker 8: So like pathetic. Like what we build up and I'm not, again,
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Speaker 8: I'm not bashing on Hayden or anything.
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Speaker 7: I'm just saying the character as a whole throughout the
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Speaker 7: arc is just, I'm like, even by the time we
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Speaker 7: get to the end, by the time we.
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Speaker 8: Get to Jedi.
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Speaker 7: He failed in the third when he turns to the
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Speaker 7: dark side. He fails in this resistance. Luke, who we've
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Speaker 7: seen is not the badass that he's supposed to be,
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Speaker 7: is a much stronger moral character. And it's just like, no,
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Speaker 7: I will not. He just throws down, I'm not going
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Speaker 7: to do what you did. And he is so much
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Speaker 7: more of.
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Speaker 8: A badass than Anakin ever was.
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Speaker 5: By the beginning of Empire, Luke's already an adult.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 4: Right.
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Speaker 5: And that's part of what you see there. He's an adult.
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Speaker 5: He takes some punches. He gives some punches, but that's,
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Speaker 5: you know, that's it. Uh, there, there's a beauty in
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Speaker 5: that scene where he throws away because there's, again, it,
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Speaker 5: he refuses to participate in the economy of hate. That's
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Speaker 5: what that is, is he's saying, I'm not going to
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Speaker 5: play a role in the, okay, you got him. Now
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Speaker 5: I got it. And then he got me and then
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Speaker 5: I got him. Like, he's not gonna, he's not gonna
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Speaker 5: play that game. If the emperor wants to kill him,
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Speaker 5: he can, but, Because he's a Jedi.
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Speaker 8: Yeah.
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Speaker 5: Like his father before me.
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Speaker 6: Right.
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Speaker 5: Like, and there's a, but Vader, you're right. That's, that
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Speaker 5: is a sad thing about Vader. I, at one point
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Speaker 5: had this whole alternative, like idea for what I wanted
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Speaker 5: Vader to be like, I started working on, like, I
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Speaker 5: think a lot of people like played around with those
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Speaker 5: kinds of ideas in their minds. But what would you
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Speaker 5: have preferred to see with Vader? Personally, I actually, my
4:19
Speaker 5: idea was I would have liked to have seen Vader
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Speaker 5: as a character a lot more like Han Solo.
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Speaker 6: Yeah.
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Speaker 5: Imagine Han Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi as young guys, like,
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Speaker 5: traveling around the galaxy.
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Speaker 8: Pretty much, yeah.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, trying to solve problems. And meanwhile, Obi-Wan's all elevated,
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Speaker 5: forced talk. No, we must trust the Republic. And meanwhile,
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Speaker 5: Han's like, or I could just shoot it.
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Speaker 7: Well, I think it would be cool to get that
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Speaker 7: middle version of Vader that instead of Order 66 being
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Speaker 7: a couple of quick scenes to have that have been
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Speaker 7: the third movie.
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Speaker 8: No, that was nonsense. Watch him just spend the.
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Speaker 7: Entire movie being the badass that we know he can
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Speaker 7: be and just one by one tracking down and killing
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Speaker 7: Jedi throughout the galaxy.
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Speaker 5: Well, once again, I mean, I come back to the
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Speaker 5: Expanded Universe Legends series and there they had a kind
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Speaker 5: of a They weren't allowed to talk about the Clone Wars,
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Speaker 5: but they kind of hinted at some things around the
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Speaker 5: edges and kind of... So the timeline looked very different
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Speaker 5: in that story than it does now, where everything just
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Speaker 5: kind of happens at once. And I like their version
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Speaker 5: a little bit better. The idea is you have the
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Speaker 5: Clone Wars, like whatever those are, right? And then what
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Speaker 5: follows that is... Imagine during the Clone Wars, the government's paralyzed. Eventually...
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Speaker 5: A young politician emerges who wants to strengthen the central government,
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Speaker 5: fight the war, end the war, move on. Well, then
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Speaker 5: the galaxy has been kind of militarized, right? And there's
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Speaker 5: a big struggle over do we demilitarize? Do we continue
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Speaker 5: with these things? And ultimately, eventually the Jedi, there's some
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Speaker 5: scandal and they're made out to be enemies of the state.
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Speaker 5: And there are some Jedi who decide to side with
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Speaker 5: Palpatine and with the government and some who turn against it. And,
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Speaker 5: of course, it eventually turns out that Palpatine is a
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Speaker 5: Dark Lord and all this stuff. But Vader, along with
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Speaker 5: some of his friends, basically hunt down some of their
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Speaker 5: other friends and try to kill as many of the
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Speaker 5: Jedi as they can, believing that they're working for this
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Speaker 5: larger cause. And then eventually, of course, they also turn
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Speaker 5: on each other. Like the Sith seem to do. Yeah,
6:23
Speaker 5: as they're prone to do. Well, but what you see,
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Speaker 5: what I think we were all hoping to see, I mean,
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Speaker 5: all this is just plot stuff that would be cool
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Speaker 5: to see. But I think what we were hoping to see,
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Speaker 5: and this is what you were speaking of before, is
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Speaker 5: we wanted to see a strong Vader person, a strong Anakin,
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Speaker 5: so that His fall to the dark side would be tragic. Again,
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Speaker 5: I pull like actually tragic as opposed to like when
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Speaker 5: you're seeing that kid and you're like, yeah, there's no.
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Speaker 5: way he's not going to fall to the dark side
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Speaker 5: and why the hell does Obi-Wan not see it you
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Speaker 5: know but I think that's.
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Speaker 8: A big shortcoming in the prequels too is how.
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Speaker 5: Obi-Wan's just oblivious to what's going on yeah it's totally
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Speaker 5: chill although again want to give props to Ewan McGregor
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Speaker 5: he's great and pretty much everyone acknowledges and that's one
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Speaker 5: of the reasons why you hear talk of an Obi-Wan
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Speaker 5: movie today.
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Speaker 8: And I think he's still up for it so I
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Speaker 8: don't know why they don't yeah I would have no
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Speaker 8: problem with that And he nailed– he.
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Speaker 5: Actually, I think, talked about this in an interview. They
7:19
Speaker 5: were asking him what he did to prepare for Obi-Wan. Well,
7:22
Speaker 5: Alec Guinness was a comedic actor. He did a lot
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Speaker 5: of comedy. And so everything he does as Obi-Wan, as
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Speaker 5: serious as he gets, he's always got kind of a
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Speaker 5: wink in his eye.
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Speaker 8: He just sat around his house going, hello there.
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Speaker 5: Hello there.
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Speaker 8: Hello there. Yeah.
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Speaker 5: And so if you watch– go back and watch Ewan
7:38
Speaker 5: McGregor's performance as Obi-Wan, all the beats where he just
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Speaker 5: like i love it where he like falls down behind
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Speaker 5: uh grievous and that stupid decision he makes where he
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Speaker 5: just says hello that yeah exactly he's just like everything's
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Speaker 5: kind of a joke to him i mean it's all
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Speaker 5: serious but you know he's holding it lightly he's got
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Speaker 5: it yeah he's got a nice light attitude what's missed
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Speaker 5: there is actually all the scenes that he could have
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Speaker 5: had of making fun of anakin And he's like, Oh,
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Speaker 5: it's a joke. Anakin will get over. Meanwhile, Anakin's over
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Speaker 5: there going.
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Speaker 9: I will one day destroy you.
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Speaker 8: He's just like writing down. And then the other time
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Speaker 8: he's making notes of what a dick he's always been to.
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Speaker 5: But yeah. So again, I pull, I pull us back
8:12
Speaker 5: to X-Men first class and Michael Fassbender's magnificent performances as, uh, uh, Magneto, uh,
8:19
Speaker 5: part of what we see in that character and part
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Speaker 5: of why I think those him and, uh, Guy playing Xavier,
8:26
Speaker 5: who's also an amazing actor, and I'm blanking on his
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Speaker 5: name right now.
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Speaker 8: McAvoy. James McAvoy.
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Speaker 5: James McAvoy, who's amazing in everything. Also, I love James McAvoy.
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Speaker 8: He is pretty great.
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Speaker 5: I really do. But you watch the two of them together,
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Speaker 5: and it's like you get that sense of these two
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Speaker 5: people are just simpatico. They get each other. They're brothers
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Speaker 5: to the end. And so the fact that they wind
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Speaker 5: up on different sides of this issue, it wounds them.
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Speaker 5: It's like, why aren't you there for me? And you
8:52
Speaker 5: can tell because... As much as, I mean, again, they
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Speaker 5: play it very well because Magneto is a very strong personality.
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Speaker 5: He's willing to do things on his own. Whereas when
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Speaker 5: we first meet Xavier, he's using his mutation to pick
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Speaker 5: up chicks, basically.
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Speaker 8: Which is what we would all be doing, really.
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Speaker 5: If we had Xavier's power. If we had magical powers.
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Speaker 5: And I was a dork from Oxford at 28 and
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Speaker 5: really hoping to.
9:15
Speaker 5: Like, yeah, like, but you're watching that and you're thinking,
9:18
Speaker 5: but I get why these two guys like each other's
9:20
Speaker 5: because on the one hand, like, you know, Magneto's got
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Speaker 5: a lot of rough edges. Well, Charles doesn't care and
9:25
Speaker 5: he sees past him anyway and he sees what's going
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Speaker 5: on inside of him.
9:28
Speaker 4: Right.
9:28
Speaker 5: And simultaneously, like Magneto, like I could imagine these guys,
9:32
Speaker 5: like you can imagine those characters absolutely stopping in the
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Speaker 5: middle of a battle and being like, you know what? Let's,
9:38
Speaker 5: let's take a break. Let's have some tea. How are
9:40
Speaker 5: you doing, man? Like, Because, you know, there's a weird
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Speaker 5: thing where you get the sense that fighting and being
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Speaker 5: friends for them are both so deeply entwined, right? And
9:50
Speaker 5: so when we see Fassbender's character change, or not change,
9:55
Speaker 5: but fulfill his destiny as Magneto, we see Eric become Magneto.
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Speaker 5: The tragedy there is that we see him, yes, he
10:03
Speaker 5: is fulfilling things in his character. But that's at the
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Speaker 5: cost of other things in his character that these other
10:09
Speaker 5: characters brought out.
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Speaker 7: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: Right?
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Speaker 5: We didn't get that with Anakin. None of his relationships
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Speaker 5: were that powerful.
10:14
Speaker 6: Well, yeah.
10:14
Speaker 8: We don't have that friendship. That is the one thing
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Speaker 8: that I think is.
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Speaker 7: So well done with the X-Men. At least those first two.
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Speaker 7: Because that's the other thing that I think is amazing.
10:24
Speaker 7: I really love the second one in that little trilogy there.
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Speaker 7: And I'm like, I think because we come back in
10:30
Speaker 7: ten years later.
10:32
Speaker 8: And you see them pick back up. And on the
10:34
Speaker 8: one hand, they don't trust each other anymore. But they're
10:37
Speaker 8: still friends.
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Speaker 7: Like, there's still a kinship that, like, you totally buy that, yes,
10:42
Speaker 7: they're friends still.
10:44
Speaker 3: No, no, no.
10:45
Speaker 5: The scene where, yeah.
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Speaker 8: It won't ever go away.
10:47
Speaker 5: No, the scene where they're in the plane together. And
10:51
Speaker 5: it's one of the most powerful scenes in the trilogy.
10:53
Speaker 5: Because you can tell when they're yelling at each other
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Speaker 5: and they're crying because their entire anger is not at
11:01
Speaker 5: what that one did or what that one did. It
11:03
Speaker 5: is both of them are basically saying, I went out
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Speaker 5: on a limb and you weren't there with me.
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Speaker 8: Here's what we used to be and look what you
11:11
Speaker 8: did to it. And they're both thinking that.
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Speaker 4: Exactly.
11:13
Speaker 5: Look what you did to this. Well, it's not just that.
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Speaker 5: It's like I took a risk. I went out to
11:18
Speaker 5: do this thing. I exposed myself and I suffered and
11:21
Speaker 5: you weren't there. Like that's the real tragedy. It's that
11:26
Speaker 5: both of them are like, it's not that even the
11:28
Speaker 5: failure stings. It's the fact that the other one wasn't
11:30
Speaker 5: supporting them in the middle of it. And this is
11:33
Speaker 5: ship collapsing, but there's still such a strong thread through
11:37
Speaker 5: it all. This is actually something we don't ever see
11:40
Speaker 5: in films anymore. And I, and I wonder if we
11:42
Speaker 5: actually have the power to write, you know, the Greeks
11:45
Speaker 5: talked about multiple kinds of love.
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Speaker 4: Okay.
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Speaker 5: We have Eros, which everyone understands erotic love. That's lust, right?
11:53
Speaker 5: And we have a caritas, which is charity, right? And
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Speaker 5: that is, in Christianity, that's the highest form of love.
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Speaker 5: That is to will the good of the other for
12:01
Speaker 5: the sake of the other, okay? So it's that sort of,
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Speaker 5: I don't want to say disinterested, but that's this very
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Speaker 5: evolved sort of love where you care for the being
12:10
Speaker 5: of the other completely apart from yourself, okay? In the
12:13
Speaker 5: sense of like, that's the love that you can give
12:15
Speaker 5: to your enemy, right? It's where... You hate me. I
12:19
Speaker 5: don't like you, but I can still will the good
12:21
Speaker 5: of you. Anyway, very complicated topic, obviously. But one thing
12:24
Speaker 5: that used to be a feature, go back to old
12:27
Speaker 5: movies and you watch this. Actually, I've got my. My
12:29
Speaker 5: Casablanca cup holder here.
12:32
Speaker 8: That's the kind of thing we have here at the
12:34
Speaker 8: old Oddity Studios.
12:35
Speaker 5: It's beautiful. But there's that great scene in the end
12:38
Speaker 5: where Humphrey Bogart says, you know, Louis, this is the
12:40
Speaker 5: beginning of a beautiful friendship. Because here's a man who–
12:43
Speaker 5: and the weird thing is we've always kind of known
12:45
Speaker 5: that Humphrey Bogart doesn't really take Louis very seriously. Yeah.
12:48
Speaker 5: He kind of looks down on him. And, but, but
12:50
Speaker 5: this moment has kind of knit them together in a
12:53
Speaker 5: way that both of the men know they're never going
12:55
Speaker 5: to not be knit together.
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Speaker 6: Yeah.
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Speaker 7: Like as you, as you watch that story unfold, it's
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Speaker 7: like these two are going to be stuck together forever.
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Speaker 8: No matter what.
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Speaker 5: And, and, and somehow, and somehow we are in fact
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Speaker 5: watching the beginnings of a beautiful friendship. Like this movie
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Speaker 5: feels like we are segwaying into such a bigger story
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Speaker 5: and a more beautiful story. Well, uh, That is what
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Speaker 5: the Greeks called philos. It's the love of the friend.
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Speaker 5: And it's something that, like, we have a hard time
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Speaker 5: not sentimentalizing or sexualizing love.
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Speaker 8: Yeah.
13:25
Speaker 5: Like, that is just a fact of our culture at
13:28
Speaker 5: the moment. What we can't imagine, and this is, I think,
13:31
Speaker 5: a tragedy of where we are. Like, we can imagine now,
13:34
Speaker 5: for instance, imagine how many movies have come out that
13:37
Speaker 5: have been really good about homosexual relationships. And I'm glad
13:40
Speaker 5: for that. I'm grateful for that. I'm glad that that's
13:41
Speaker 5: been developing and continuing to develop. I hope we keep
13:44
Speaker 5: seeing more movies about that. But when was the last
13:47
Speaker 5: time you saw a movie? Like, I mean, actually, the
13:49
Speaker 5: for me, it is the X-Men movies, which showed two
13:52
Speaker 5: men who had love for each other.
13:55
Speaker 4: Right?
13:55
Speaker 5: That kind of love.
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Speaker 7: That level without it becoming a relationship relationship.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, becoming an erotic relationship. Right, or something like that.
14:03
Speaker 5: Where you're watching Xavier and Eric their relationship, they love
14:06
Speaker 5: each other. They love each other the way true friends
14:09
Speaker 5: love each other.
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Speaker 8: Trying to think of anything else at this point. Exactly.
14:13
Speaker 5: And that is what a lot of these movies, like, actually.
14:16
Speaker 8: I mean, you go back to, like, the Han and
14:17
Speaker 8: Luke thing.
14:18
Speaker 9: Exactly.
14:19
Speaker 8: It's totally.
14:19
Speaker 7: I mean, they become brothers so much that they're fighting
14:22
Speaker 7: over this girl in... They really like the brother and
14:25
Speaker 7: sister right there. But they have such a brother relationship.
14:29
Speaker 7: By the time we get to that second movie.
14:32
Speaker 5: Yeah, and Luke, and honestly, you get the impression, and
14:34
Speaker 5: part of this is because there's actually a scene cut
14:36
Speaker 5: out of Empire Strikes Back. But looking back, knowing Luke
14:44
Speaker 5: and Leia are brother and sister, part of what plays
14:47
Speaker 5: in that scene is you do get that sense of,
14:50
Speaker 5: you know what? Luke and Han just enjoy fighting, bickering
14:54
Speaker 5: with each other. Leia's kind of the prize, but she's
14:57
Speaker 5: also kind of enjoying playing into this group friendship dynamic
15:01
Speaker 5: that they have.
15:02
Speaker 8: It's almost the same. Well, again, putting it at that
15:04
Speaker 8: same level.
15:05
Speaker 7: It's the same way that Han and Leia bicker that
15:08
Speaker 7: you know they love each other. It's kind of the
15:10
Speaker 7: same with Luke and Han kind of digging into each
15:12
Speaker 7: other throughout the entire trilogy.
15:14
Speaker 5: Well, and that's why it's possible to believe when Luke,
15:16
Speaker 5: for instance, says she's beautiful and all this stuff. One
15:18
Speaker 5: thing that we never talk about anymore is the mistake
15:21
Speaker 5: of mistaking erotic love for friendly love.
15:25
Speaker 8: Yeah. Right.
15:25
Speaker 5: And that's what Luke does is essentially at first he's like, oh,
15:28
Speaker 5: she's cute. And then later on, he's like. Well, we
15:31
Speaker 5: have this deep bond, and I can't really explain it. But,
15:33
Speaker 5: you know, no, it's not like Han and Leia. They're
15:37
Speaker 5: in love. They're in erotic love with each other. Like,
15:39
Speaker 5: they actually will be partners someday.
15:41
Speaker 8: And you feel it immediately. Like, when you even look
15:44
Speaker 8: back in Star Wars, definitely by Empire, but even in
15:46
Speaker 8: Star Wars, the way that he looks at her, it's
15:48
Speaker 8: just like, yeah, there's something going on there.
15:52
Speaker 5: Excuse me, your worshipness.
15:53
Speaker 8: But even when he watches her walk out of the room,
15:56
Speaker 8: he's looking at Luke, he's going, shoot my batter. And
15:59
Speaker 8: I'm like, oh, yeah.
16:00
Speaker 3: No, no, no.
16:01
Speaker 5: Han has a look that says, she is trouble.
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Speaker 8: And I want that.
16:06
Speaker 5: But that's also, by the way, why I like the
16:08
Speaker 5: idea of the original Anakin being more like a Han
16:12
Speaker 5: Solo character is because... Well, obviously, that's the kind of
16:15
Speaker 5: guy that, you know.
16:18
Speaker 7: And I think that that's the thing that's missing out
16:20
Speaker 7: of that. I think that would have made that turn
16:22
Speaker 7: so much. I hate that we got so religious with
16:26
Speaker 7: the way the Jedi are. I wanted Obi-Wan to me
16:30
Speaker 7: seems like as a young man would have been a player.
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Speaker 8: So I'm like, I kind of wanted him to. Yes,
16:36
Speaker 8: you have sort of the structure of your beliefs. but
16:39
Speaker 8: it's not monk-like. And you can still, if you feel
16:43
Speaker 8: the need to, free love kind of a thing. Obi-Wan
16:47
Speaker 8: back in the day was probably like a freaking ladies' man.
16:51
Speaker 8: So having that be part of the dynamic, because to me,
16:56
Speaker 8: if there's anything that will make someone crazy, It's relationship bullshit.
17:00
Speaker 8: So like if it became a love triangle by the
17:03
Speaker 8: end of that and then Anakin turned, I'm like, nope,
17:06
Speaker 8: that'd do it. That's the one thing. This like, I
17:08
Speaker 8: don't want you to die, Padme thing, a little bit.
17:12
Speaker 7: Not near as much as how much it would piss
17:13
Speaker 7: somebody off if you were messing around with somebody else.
17:15
Speaker 8: Specifically your best friend.
17:17
Speaker 5: Well, someone did put to me, I read this in
17:19
Speaker 5: an article somewhere, that if you rewatch the prequels with
17:22
Speaker 5: the idea that Obi-Wan is in love with Padme, so
17:25
Speaker 5: much makes sense in terms of how, for instance, he
17:28
Speaker 5: doesn't put it together.
17:29
Speaker 10: Why?
17:30
Speaker 5: He doesn't want to believe.
17:31
Speaker 8: And those scenes were there. I don't even know they
17:35
Speaker 8: got the point of fully writing them, but it was...
17:39
Speaker 8: sort of an.
17:39
Speaker 5: Idea i never liked i didn't with i didn't like
17:42
Speaker 5: the idea that the jedi weren't married or couldn't have
17:45
Speaker 5: spouses or have relationships i didn't like that but no
17:48
Speaker 5: i i see what you mean and i will go
17:49
Speaker 5: with that to another like like in my fantasy land
17:52
Speaker 5: version of what those movies might have been like i
17:55
Speaker 5: like to imagine like what if obi-wan what if anakin
17:58
Speaker 5: and obi-wan are actually closer in age because you know
18:01
Speaker 5: that actually what it was supposed to be yeah What
18:03
Speaker 5: if they're actually closer in age? And what if Anakin,
18:06
Speaker 5: Obi-Wan has been trained by Yoda on a planet, you know,
18:09
Speaker 5: on Dagobah, let's say. The rest of the Jedi are
18:11
Speaker 5: busy getting into politics. There's all this nonsense.
18:14
Speaker 8: I don't like that part either.
18:15
Speaker 5: Well, I don't mind it, but I like the notion
18:17
Speaker 5: that like, okay, well, there's this thing going on where
18:19
Speaker 5: a lot of Jedi have just become basically political.
18:22
Speaker 8: Yeah.
18:22
Speaker 5: And some Jedi are still kind of doing the old way. Well,
18:26
Speaker 5: Obi-Wan goes off on his first voyage. What's one of
18:28
Speaker 5: the first guys he meets? This guy, Anakin.
18:30
Speaker 4: Yeah.
18:30
Speaker 5: Who can pilot a freighter and manages to save their
18:32
Speaker 5: butts and seems to have like a preternatural sense for
18:35
Speaker 5: virtually everything.
18:36
Speaker 8: Hey, wait, this almost sounds like the story we heard
18:38
Speaker 8: in Star Wars. Yeah, exactly. Unlike the prequels. Exactly.
18:43
Speaker 5: And then it turns out he realizes, oh, Anakin's force sensitive.
18:47
Speaker 5: But they both got completely different instincts. Imagine like Anakin
18:50
Speaker 5: grew up, you know, he never really knew his dad.
18:52
Speaker 5: He never really knew his like his family. He, I mean,
18:55
Speaker 5: he escaped Tatooine as soon as he possibly could, got
18:58
Speaker 5: on the spice freighter. He's been, you know, getting in
19:01
Speaker 5: all kinds of trouble ever since, but he always manages
19:03
Speaker 5: to get out of it. Obi-Wan grew up in the city.
19:05
Speaker 5: He was tapped to be a Jedi early on. He's
19:07
Speaker 5: been living in the monastery and doing all this stuff
19:09
Speaker 5: all these times. Now he's like trying to be a
19:12
Speaker 5: knight and he's doing all this radical stuff and they
19:14
Speaker 5: have a big crazy adventure. They save each other's lives
19:17
Speaker 5: a few times and ultimately Obi-Wan pulls off this great
19:21
Speaker 5: heist basically to save the day. Well, and then he
19:24
Speaker 5: manages to talk his master into letting him take Anakin
19:27
Speaker 5: on as a student, right? But he says, but look,
19:29
Speaker 5: you're not just my student, like you're my friend, right?
19:33
Speaker 5: And so thus begins this relationship where they're kind of
19:36
Speaker 5: master and student, but they're also kind of friends and
19:39
Speaker 5: also they're kind of the same age. Anakin is way
19:41
Speaker 5: too old to really start the training, but Obi-Wan wants
19:45
Speaker 5: to show him he's got tons of raw natural talent
19:48
Speaker 5: and all this stuff, but they're Yeah.
19:40
Speaker 9: Yeah.
20:05
Speaker 7: That is the one thing that surprisingly, if you're watching
20:09
Speaker 7: for it, stays true throughout it. How much Anakin is
20:12
Speaker 7: still constantly buying into Palpatine's plan.
20:16
Speaker 5: Into the idea of power.
20:17
Speaker 7: And he says these things about the government. And again,
20:21
Speaker 7: re-watching it recently, I'm like... I'm buying that Anakin believes it.
20:26
Speaker 5: Maybe just because Anakin's character doesn't seem really smart, but.
20:29
Speaker 8: That's the way politics are built.
20:33
Speaker 5: The closest thing that Luke ever... The closest thing to
20:35
Speaker 5: an answer in the original trilogy as to why Anakin
20:38
Speaker 5: turned to the dark side that we ever get from
20:39
Speaker 5: Darth Vader is, I think it's in the third film,
20:42
Speaker 5: and he says, you don't know the power of the
20:44
Speaker 5: dark side. That's all he says, is you do not
20:47
Speaker 5: know the power of the dark side. And what that
20:50
Speaker 5: means to me is that part of Anakin's fall was
20:54
Speaker 5: this belief in power. It was this belief in fundamentally
20:58
Speaker 5: the dark side is where the power is. That's where
21:00
Speaker 5: the change can happen. That's where we can bring about
21:03
Speaker 5: the things we want to happen.
21:05
Speaker 9: Right.
21:05
Speaker 5: And Padme or, you know, whoever and, and his relationship
21:09
Speaker 5: and all that stuff, we can say, I even love
21:12
Speaker 5: the idea of essentially Obi-Wan. Let's say there's some story where, yeah,
21:17
Speaker 5: he falls in love and blah, blah, blah. And Obi-Wan is,
21:20
Speaker 5: Let's say through inaction or pulling him away or something
21:22
Speaker 5: basically allows her to die, quote, for the greater good.
21:26
Speaker 5: Let's say they've got some other priority or something like that.
21:28
Speaker 5: He blames him, you know, like, in other words, it's
21:31
Speaker 5: easy to see how two different personalities can. simultaneously be
21:35
Speaker 5: attracted to each other, be friends with each other, but
21:38
Speaker 5: also produce irreconcilable differences that drive them apart from each other.
21:42
Speaker 3: Right.
21:42
Speaker 8: Have like a, a good bonding time period. Yep.
21:46
Speaker 7: But as with most things in, I mean, there are
21:48
Speaker 7: so many people that just even basic friends, you just,
21:51
Speaker 7: your lives takes you in different areas, but these are
21:53
Speaker 7: so intensified in what they're doing that it forces them
21:57
Speaker 7: to go in different directions.
21:58
Speaker 5: Well, because part of the, again, part of, for me, the,
22:01
Speaker 5: the deep meaning in, in star Wars is the, that
22:04
Speaker 5: power is not the point, right? Like, again, adventure, excitement,
22:09
Speaker 5: a Jedi craves not these things. Great warrior wars don't
22:13
Speaker 5: make one great. Like, there's this whole refutation that's constantly
22:16
Speaker 5: going on in those movies about where actual power is
22:20
Speaker 5: and about what actual, like, I love the fact that
22:24
Speaker 5: when Obi-Wan says, strike me down and I shall become
22:26
Speaker 5: more powerful than you can possibly imagine. For me, what
22:30
Speaker 5: that has always meant is if you kill me, then
22:34
Speaker 5: you will never reconcile the things about me that you
22:37
Speaker 5: are fighting within yourself.
22:38
Speaker 6: Yeah.
22:39
Speaker 5: Like that conflict will go forever unresolved in you. I
22:42
Speaker 5: will dominate you forever.
22:44
Speaker 4: Right.
22:45
Speaker 5: And there are people, we've seen those relationships and tragic
22:47
Speaker 5: people in our own lives. And that ultimately, I mean, I, Again,
22:51
Speaker 5: I don't want to call out people for not having
22:53
Speaker 5: great writing. Because, you know, great writing, we're lucky when
22:56
Speaker 5: it happens, right? It's not something that you can be like, listen, man,
22:58
Speaker 5: this script wasn't Casablanca, all right? Like, you're grateful when
23:01
Speaker 5: you do get a Casablanca. But that's one of the
23:05
Speaker 5: things that I think is sad in the new Star
23:08
Speaker 5: Wars movies. I think fundamentally they do believe in power.
23:11
Speaker 5: I think that they attempt to create a kind of a.
23:17
Speaker 5: Like, oh, they use power, but they use power too.
23:20
Speaker 5: Who do you support? Moral ambiguity. And it's like, no,
23:23
Speaker 5: that's lazy moral ambiguity. There isn't actually any ambiguity here
23:28
Speaker 5: as to what's going on. But so long as your
23:31
Speaker 5: conversation is simply about who has the power, right, and
23:34
Speaker 5: who's using the power correctly, well, you're wrong. You're already
23:39
Speaker 5: straying away from the whole theme of the original film,
23:42
Speaker 5: which is, there comes a point not where you're, you're,
23:46
Speaker 5: you're siding with the bad guy to fight with your lightsabers,
23:49
Speaker 5: all the other people.
23:49
Speaker 8: And Oh, cool.
23:50
Speaker 5: Like light and dark have come together and they balanced
23:53
Speaker 5: each other out and blah, blah. No, the way light
23:56
Speaker 5: and dark balance each other out is throwing them the
23:57
Speaker 5: lightsaber away. That's what that is.
24:01
Speaker 7: Well, I feel like even, and you want to push
24:04
Speaker 7: it definitely on what's going on in the new movies.
24:06
Speaker 7: I feel like Lucas even turned his back on that
24:08
Speaker 7: because it's so, I mean, by the, by the prequels,
24:12
Speaker 7: it's like you, all of these cool concepts, he just
24:15
Speaker 7: went with the most conventional generic way of just like,
24:18
Speaker 7: but the fact that like Yoda has a lightsaber, I'm
24:22
Speaker 7: like in those original one, like everything he says, you know, the,
24:26
Speaker 7: the wars don't make one great. And like all of
24:28
Speaker 7: these things, it's like, he should be so like.
24:31
Speaker 8: Above all of that. I don't know.
24:34
Speaker 12: I don't know.
24:35
Speaker 5: I don't actually dislike that because I feel like, I
24:39
Speaker 5: want to bring some context in here. It's one thing
24:41
Speaker 5: for Yoda to pull out a lightsaber to defend people
24:45
Speaker 5: and to do what he needs to do in the films.
24:47
Speaker 5: I actually love Yoda having a lightsaber. But what he's
24:50
Speaker 5: criticizing in Luke is Luke thinking that the point of
24:53
Speaker 5: him coming to see Yoda is to be better at fighting.
24:57
Speaker 5: He's like, no, I'm telling you. It's like Yoda is
25:00
Speaker 5: saying if Yoda were to bring the full context crashing
25:03
Speaker 5: home to Luke. I taught a guy who's great at fighting.
25:05
Speaker 5: He's the guy you're going to try to fight. All right.
25:07
Speaker 5: The problem isn't that you might fight him and lose.
25:10
Speaker 5: The problem is you might fight him and become like him.
25:13
Speaker 7: I still feel like he just goes so conventional with
25:16
Speaker 7: even the Emperor having a lightsaber.
25:18
Speaker 8: I feel like both of them should be above that,
25:23
Speaker 8: and they can fight each other.
25:24
Speaker 7: Again, there can be good and bad fighting each other,
25:27
Speaker 7: but it just becomes such a generic back to the normal, like, oh, this,
25:32
Speaker 7: I don't know, people like seeing lightsaber battles, so.
25:34
Speaker 8: We gotta have some of those.
25:35
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
25:35
Speaker 7: It just seemed like a lazy move on somebody who
25:38
Speaker 7: had a bigger concept when he was a kid, and
25:41
Speaker 7: then later it was like, whatever, go stand in front
25:43
Speaker 7: of that green screen.
25:43
Speaker 5: I can side with you on that, at least as
25:46
Speaker 5: far as the Emperor goes.
25:46
Speaker 8: A little bit. I don't hate some of those scenes.
25:50
Speaker 5: I will say that I think it's unfortunate that the
25:53
Speaker 5: only reason why Yoda flees is because he's basically beaten
25:57
Speaker 5: by the Emperor in a battle. I think that that
26:00
Speaker 5: is actually kind of a missed opportunity, because there should be...
26:03
Speaker 5: I feel like there should be something a little deeper
26:04
Speaker 5: there than, well, can't take this guy on. All right, later.
26:07
Speaker 8: And flips like a switch. He's just like, whoop.
26:10
Speaker 7: And immediately he's just like, not even like, let's go
26:13
Speaker 7: over here, regroup, and then go. He's like, nope, got
26:15
Speaker 7: to go in the hiding.
26:16
Speaker 8: I mean, the bigger we get on this story, the
26:20
Speaker 8: more and more I dislike the Jedi. I'm just like,
26:23
Speaker 8: all they ever do is run and hide.
26:25
Speaker 13: All they ever do and make deep mistakes about who
26:27
Speaker 13: to trust they first and foremost screw everything up and
26:30
Speaker 13: then their only way of dealing with it every time
26:33
Speaker 13: is to run and hide from obi-wan to yoda to
26:35
Speaker 13: luke like that's all they do that's.
26:37
Speaker 5: Another thing that i didn't like about the last jedi
26:39
Speaker 5: yeah it seemed.
26:40
Speaker 7: Like luke learned nothing from what the other downfall was well.
26:44
Speaker 5: And my belief was my theory was going into the
26:47
Speaker 5: film what i believed was that he had gone to
26:49
Speaker 5: the island in order to come up with This is
26:51
Speaker 5: what I thought was going to be the great BS
26:53
Speaker 5: of the film was that he was going to come
26:54
Speaker 5: up with like the gray Jedi way or something like that. Like, okay,
26:58
Speaker 5: the cycle of light and dark can't be broken. Let
27:00
Speaker 5: me try to figure out a middle way.
27:02
Speaker 8: Which is kind of where we thought he was in Jedi.
27:04
Speaker 14: Right.
27:04
Speaker 8: In Jedi, he comes back in the black.
27:06
Speaker 2: Right, right.
27:06
Speaker 8: But he's not fully dark sized.
27:09
Speaker 5: But pulling back from that, I definitely thought that if
27:12
Speaker 5: he was on the island, he must be meditating on
27:14
Speaker 5: a plan. But instead, he was basically just wrestling with
27:17
Speaker 5: his conscience. But again, we don't know actually anything about
27:20
Speaker 5: his conscience because we don't know anything about his relationship
27:22
Speaker 5: with Kylo Ren except for one split second.
27:24
Speaker 8: He was drinking a lot of milk.
27:28
Speaker 5: I will say this though. I will say this though. I'm, I'm, uh, being,
27:31
Speaker 5: being a bit of a, of a nerd in many ways.
27:34
Speaker 8: I'm, uh, yeah.
27:36
Speaker 5: Uh, so, uh, chronic Michael, uh, where the, the, or, uh,
27:41
Speaker 5: free what the Island is called. I think it's Michael. Um, it's,
27:44
Speaker 5: the island where they filmed all those scenes was, uh,
27:48
Speaker 5: it's an actual island off the coast of Ireland and
27:51
Speaker 5: it's where a lot of early Christian saints went when
27:53
Speaker 5: they went to evangelize, uh, the country. And part of
27:56
Speaker 5: what I love is the idea that, uh, that, uh, like,
28:00
Speaker 5: you know, that's also the landscape that the original Jedi
28:03
Speaker 5: popped up in. But the interesting thing about, uh, the
28:05
Speaker 5: reason I bring that up is, uh, there's, so going
28:09
Speaker 5: back to those tales of the Jedi stories that I
28:10
Speaker 5: talked about, there's a great, bit where Nomi Sunrider, great
28:15
Speaker 5: Star Wars name. By the way, that's what I'm really
28:19
Speaker 5: pissed off at, Disney. Where's my fucking Nomi Sunrider movie?
28:22
Speaker 5: I would watch the shit out of that movie. Her husband,
28:25
Speaker 5: get this, she's got a kid and her husband, who's
28:28
Speaker 5: a Jedi, dies, right? He's murdered in an airport by
28:34
Speaker 5: some two-bit thugs after she's believed her whole life that
28:37
Speaker 5: he was awesome and could protect her. And he's caught
28:40
Speaker 5: off his guard and killed.
28:41
Speaker 9: Like a bitch.
28:42
Speaker 5: Then second thing happens. He hears, she hears his like
28:46
Speaker 5: force ghost telling him her, okay, Nomi, you're at the
28:48
Speaker 5: pickup lights. They were in defend our daughter. You've got
28:51
Speaker 5: some force powers in you use it. And she does
28:53
Speaker 5: cuts one of them to pieces. Then goes off to
28:56
Speaker 5: find the master that he was going to go study under.
28:58
Speaker 5: It turns out it's a beast. It's like this creature
29:01
Speaker 5: that lives in a desert. And she can't understand a
29:03
Speaker 5: word it says. It looks like a giant lizard dog.
29:06
Speaker 9: Yeah.
29:07
Speaker 5: And she mistakes, like, the dude riding it. She thinks, oh,
29:10
Speaker 5: he's the master.
29:11
Speaker 4: Nope.
29:11
Speaker 5: Turns out the creature he's riding is the master. That's
29:14
Speaker 5: his pet.
29:15
Speaker 8: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
29:16
Speaker 5: That's his student, actually, is, like, the kid riding on
29:19
Speaker 5: top of him. And Master Thawne, who's living there, turns
29:23
Speaker 5: out living there, Ambria, the world that they're on, he says,
29:27
Speaker 5: this is explained at one point, Ambria is a dark
29:29
Speaker 5: side world, right? And Master Thawne, by being on this world,
29:34
Speaker 5: is actually driving all the dark side energy into this
29:37
Speaker 5: one area, this lake, right, where where all the dark
29:39
Speaker 5: side energy lives and he puts his his hut right
29:42
Speaker 5: next to that lake right so that he can constantly
29:45
Speaker 5: be not just on guard against the dark side but
29:47
Speaker 5: constantly be in conflict.
29:49
Speaker 8: With it right just holding it at bay well and.
29:52
Speaker 5: Also engaged with it right in some sense to be
29:55
Speaker 5: present with the demons right Well, similarly, Yoda is near
29:59
Speaker 5: the cave, right?
30:00
Speaker 9: The tree.
30:02
Speaker 5: Exactly, exactly. So to my mind, and the reason I
30:06
Speaker 5: bring all this up, in early Christian tradition, the desert
30:09
Speaker 5: fathers and the early Christian monastics, there was this idea
30:12
Speaker 5: that the desert is where the demons live. They've been
30:15
Speaker 5: driven out of the civilized area by the work of,
30:18
Speaker 5: you know, religion, right? Religion kind of everyone blessing everybody
30:21
Speaker 5: and everything like that. The demons don't like living around
30:23
Speaker 5: those areas. So they wander into the desert. Well, so
30:26
Speaker 5: the monk goes for the desert, the deserted places, the
30:29
Speaker 5: wild places, because that's where they're going to encounter all
30:34
Speaker 5: the evil that human society mitigates and keeps at bay.
30:38
Speaker 5: And you can look at that in a psychological sense, too.
30:40
Speaker 5: You can't escape yourself, right? This is just the.
30:42
Speaker 8: Jesus in the desert story.
30:44
Speaker 5: Right, exactly. You're going exactly there.
30:45
Speaker 8: Exactly, yeah.
30:46
Speaker 5: So they're copying him. Well, they did the same thing
30:49
Speaker 5: everywhere else they went, right? So they did the same
30:51
Speaker 5: thing in Britain, right? Except here, they went to the islands.
30:54
Speaker 5: They went to the islands on the edge of the
30:57
Speaker 5: bigger islands, right? And they went to these deserted, windswept
31:01
Speaker 5: locations where they could do nothing but pray and engage
31:04
Speaker 5: with their own demons, right? And of course, on this island, right,
31:08
Speaker 5: where Luke is, there's similarly a dark side well right there, right?
31:14
Speaker 5: So again, we come back to this place of Being
31:17
Speaker 5: a Jedi Master, being in seclusion, and I hate this
31:20
Speaker 5: about the new movie because they don't play with this enough.
31:22
Speaker 8: They don't move this.
31:23
Speaker 5: And this is, I think, another profound element of this
31:25
Speaker 5: Jedi mythology they built up. Because, again, it's playing on
31:28
Speaker 5: all these roots in our other historical background.
31:31
Speaker 8: Yeah, which is what Lucas always did. Yeah, which is
31:34
Speaker 8: what Lucas.
31:35
Speaker 5: And what we all do when we write stories, we
31:36
Speaker 5: play on the things we don't know are present in
31:39
Speaker 5: our own experience, right? And so, in other words, you're
31:42
Speaker 5: not just living on an island. You're also... constantly engaging
31:47
Speaker 5: in this dialectic between you and the dark side, right?
31:51
Speaker 5: You're constantly in other, it's, it's classical understanding of what
31:55
Speaker 5: penance is, you know, this engagement with the darkness, not
31:59
Speaker 5: just keeping it at bay, not just forcing it away,
32:02
Speaker 5: but being interrogated in some sense. Like, am I free
32:07
Speaker 5: of this anger? Am I free of this hate?
32:10
Speaker 3: Right?
32:10
Speaker 5: Cause that's the only way you banish the hate. That's
32:12
Speaker 5: the only way you banish the fear. is by letting
32:15
Speaker 5: go of it. So, never losing that practice element. But
32:19
Speaker 5: if you look at Rey and her journey, if you
32:21
Speaker 5: look at The Last Jedi, if you look at the
32:23
Speaker 5: way the Force has been treated in these stories, that element, like,
32:28
Speaker 5: when has Rey had to let go of her fear?
32:30
Speaker 5: When has she had to let go of her hate?
32:32
Speaker 5: When has she had to struggle within herself? Like, That's
32:35
Speaker 5: what the Jedi is at the source of the story
32:37
Speaker 5: is the spiritual struggle between that light and that dark.
32:40
Speaker 8: Yeah.
32:40
Speaker 5: The film wants to make some sort of equivocal statement
32:43
Speaker 5: about them. And I think that's ultimately summed up in
32:45
Speaker 5: the two of them, that great. dance like fight scene
32:48
Speaker 5: that they have where they fighting all the imperial guards i.
32:51
Speaker 8: Mean it is amazing oh yeah it is the reason
32:54
Speaker 8: for that movie to exist.
32:55
Speaker 5: Yeah right uh and and and all of them have
32:58
Speaker 5: different weapons and stuff because you know what man we
33:00
Speaker 5: fought jedi before now we know what the stories.
33:02
Speaker 8: Are different laser magic weapons yep yep uh well well
33:07
Speaker 8: and so we have all these different things but But
33:09
Speaker 8: I think the image they want to portray is light and.
33:11
Speaker 5: Dark balancing each other, light and dark being– and they
33:14
Speaker 5: say strong light, strong darkness, things like that. This is
33:17
Speaker 5: a completely different metaphysics than the original movies had. This
33:22
Speaker 5: is a completely different view of the force than the
33:24
Speaker 5: original ones had. And to my mind, this is in
33:27
Speaker 5: some sense– again, I've been going down this rabbit hole
33:30
Speaker 5: long enough. I'll stop, I promise. But to my mind,
33:33
Speaker 5: this is a kind of a symbol for what's at
33:36
Speaker 5: the root of problems with the characters problems with the
33:39
Speaker 5: story problem with a lot of things in the new
33:40
Speaker 5: trilogy basically boils down to similarly you're not understanding what
33:44
Speaker 5: the real conflicts are in the originals nor are you
33:47
Speaker 5: really understanding what real characters are but you're putting them
33:51
Speaker 5: into situations where like superficially you think you're saying something
33:55
Speaker 5: deep about like you know light and dark for instance
33:57
Speaker 5: balancing combating together being unified something like that um Similarly,
34:03
Speaker 5: you think you're putting forward a big character moment, right?
34:06
Speaker 5: When Finn and Rose go on their voyage and Rose
34:10
Speaker 5: gives you this long speech, which has nothing to do
34:12
Speaker 5: with anything except the situation they're in, which ultimately doesn't
34:15
Speaker 5: play into any development for either of them, right? These
34:18
Speaker 5: things have the semblance of this, but ultimately none of
34:21
Speaker 5: them really actually get anywhere. They're ultimately very superficial. And
34:26
Speaker 5: I think that's one of the struggles with me in
34:28
Speaker 5: this movie is that I think for some people, they
34:30
Speaker 5: see these superficial things, they hook them into it, and
34:33
Speaker 5: they immediately fill them with all the stuff that they
34:36
Speaker 5: hope that these things reflect. And you can do that
34:38
Speaker 5: with a story. But I think for those of us
34:41
Speaker 5: who are dissatisfied, maybe our hooks just didn't get into them.
34:45
Speaker 5: Maybe we already saw how superficial they were, but we
34:48
Speaker 5: immediately pulled back. And we felt like we had been
34:53
Speaker 5: given banana nut oatmeal and discovered it was grits. I
34:58
Speaker 5: love grits. I just say that. You need more sugar.
35:02
Speaker 5: Terrible analogy.
35:08
Speaker 3: Honey, honey.
35:13
Speaker 6: You are my candy girl.
35:17
Speaker 5: You got me wanting you.
35:35
Speaker 4: When Chuck Cooper goes north, he's learned not to bother
35:38
Speaker 4: to ask for grits or to try to explain what
35:40
Speaker 4: they are. Instead, Chuck asks for one half cup of
35:43
Speaker 4: hot water and takes out his package of Quaker instant
35:47
Speaker 4: grits products. The same delicious Quaker grits he's used to
35:51
Speaker 4: at home, but ready instantly. Quaker instant grits for a
35:56
Speaker 4: great southern meal even in the north. Portion pack or
35:59
Speaker 4: family pack with porcelain.
36:01
Speaker 3: That's good. You've taken your first step into a larger world.
36:05
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36:06
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36:09
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36:12
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36:14
Speaker 8: Sounds like a plan. I need more coffee. You need
36:17
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36:17
Speaker 12: Why?
36:18
Speaker 8: Where would you go to get more coffee? Why?
36:21
Speaker 9: Heine Brothers?
36:22
Speaker 16: Do you need more coffee?
36:23
Speaker 8: I do! Where would I get some? Perhaps from our
36:26
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36:30
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37:33
Speaker 3: Dressed in black from head to toe, his face eternally hidden,
37:38
Speaker 3: he was the most evil being in the universe. commander
37:42
Speaker 3: of the Death Star, the Dark Lord of the Sith,
37:45
Speaker 3: whose very name brought fear to the bravest of men,
37:48
Speaker 3: Darth Vader. Darth Vader is back. Star Wars is back.
37:55
Speaker 3: Star Wars. Rated PG. Parental guidance suggested.
37:59
Speaker 8: Here's what I want you to do.
38:05
Speaker 5: Just loan me two dollars.
38:08
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38:10
Speaker 16: Until the next time I see you But these last
38:17
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38:18
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38:22
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38:26
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38:31
Speaker 17: Other one for the jukebox To.
38:33
Speaker 8: Hear me some blues Tell anyone I'm coming to your city. Exactly.
38:40
Speaker 5: All the cities.
38:41
Speaker 9: All the cities. Then we can go to all the shows.
38:44
Speaker 5: Not all the shows because some of them are just
38:45
Speaker 5: too far away.
38:46
Speaker 10: Well, they're going to get us a Learjet.
38:47
Speaker 9: Some of the shows.
38:48
Speaker 8: They're going to get us a Learjet.
38:50
Speaker 10: The Meltdown machine.
38:52
Speaker 8: We've got the band version, so now we're going to
38:56
Speaker 8: branch out into the Rockstar Learjet version.
38:59
Speaker 9: That's happening.
39:00
Speaker 8: You just wait.
39:01
Speaker 6: Yeah, okay. I'm waiting.
39:03
Speaker 8: Send in your $ 2 now, people. by the way is
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Speaker 8: that too much to ask two dollars you're killing us
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39:12
Speaker 14: I don't even ask 350 all i gotta do is
39:19
Speaker 14: give me two dollars and then they can.
39:21
Speaker 10: Have exclusive episodes.
39:24
Speaker 14: And they can go back and listen to all the
39:25
Speaker 14: other exclusive episodes they can get the future you're part
39:28
Speaker 14: of the club for god sakes we take care of
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Speaker 14: our club members we might even give you a t-shirt
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Speaker 14: you might have to kick in a couple extra bucks
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Speaker 14: but new fancy t-shirts.
39:38
Speaker 10: It really would be nice if people would support the
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Speaker 10: show cause I can't do this going in the hole
39:44
Speaker 10: people somebody's gotta keep this going I need a show
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Speaker 10: of faith I need you Go to patreon.com.
39:53
Speaker 3: Just go to the link.
39:54
Speaker 8: Right on the movie meltdown.com.
39:56
Speaker 9: Web page. Kick in some cash.
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Speaker 8: Keep the show rolling. Damn the man. Save the meltdown.
40:03
Speaker 6: Fuckin' A.
40:05
Speaker 16: But these last two dollars I'm not gonna lose These
40:12
Speaker 16: last two dollars I'm not gonna lose.
40:21
Speaker 9: Hey everybody, my name is Jonathan Frakes and you're listening
40:28
Speaker 9: to Movie Meltdown.
40:31
Speaker 2: Music It's part of your problem, you know. You haven't
40:52
Speaker 2: seen enough movies.
40:54
Speaker 4: All of life's riddles are answered in the movies.
40:57
Speaker 5: And now, on with the show.
41:06
Speaker 6: We're not alone We share no stories Just something.
41:13
Speaker 2: In your eyes Don't be afraid The.
41:20
Speaker 8: Shadows know me Let's leave.
41:23
Speaker 2: The world behind.
41:28
Speaker 6: Take me through the lake, fall into the dark side.
41:33
Speaker 6: We don't need the lake, we'll live on the dark side.
41:38
Speaker 6: I see it, let's feel it, while we're still young
41:44
Speaker 6: and fearless. Let go of the lake, fall into the
41:49
Speaker 6: dark side. Fall into the dark side.
42:13
Speaker 7: My question is, do you feel Luke really struggled with
42:17
Speaker 7: the dark side in the original trilogy?
42:19
Speaker 8: I think he was tempted slightly. He saw it, but
42:23
Speaker 8: to me, again, the more I look at him as
42:25
Speaker 8: the time, that's why I think he's such an amazing
42:28
Speaker 8: character is that he doesn't really, he's never really teetering
42:33
Speaker 8: on the edge. He's always just like, Nope. He's just like,
42:36
Speaker 8: I see it.
42:38
Speaker 7: I know what could be gained by turning to it,
42:40
Speaker 7: but that's not who I am at my essence.
42:43
Speaker 8: That's not what I want. That's not how I want
42:45
Speaker 8: to get to where I'm going.
42:47
Speaker 7: So, I mean, like, I do feel like Ray really
42:49
Speaker 7: doesn't struggle, but I feel like she's kind of that
42:52
Speaker 7: mirror image of Luke and, who kind of knew he
42:55
Speaker 7: didn't want to from the get go as well.
42:57
Speaker 8: So I, I don't know.
42:57
Speaker 5: Well, I'm going to present, I think there are three
43:00
Speaker 5: major moments where Luke struggles with the dark side. And,
43:04
Speaker 5: and what I regret again is that this story wasn't expanded,
43:06
Speaker 5: but Luke is about the confrontation with potential.
43:09
Speaker 13: Okay.
43:10
Speaker 5: And that's one of the reasons why his story is
43:12
Speaker 5: primal is because what we're looking at with Luke is
43:16
Speaker 5: the young man or the young person who is confronted
43:19
Speaker 5: with the potential of what they could become. And they're
43:21
Speaker 5: seeing alternatives, right? Vader is an alternative of what he
43:25
Speaker 5: could be.
43:26
Speaker 6: Yeah.
43:26
Speaker 4: Right?
43:26
Speaker 5: And so his confrontation with the dark side is not
43:30
Speaker 5: a struggle with his– and by the way, I want
43:32
Speaker 5: to– before I go any further, I will say I'm
43:34
Speaker 5: sympathetic to this criticism too of the– like, well, why
43:37
Speaker 5: should Rey have to struggle with the dark side? Luke
43:39
Speaker 5: didn't really have to struggle with the dark side.
43:41
Speaker 9: Fair.
43:42
Speaker 5: But Luke is about what he's becoming. Rey has become.
43:46
Speaker 14: Yeah.
43:47
Speaker 6: Right?
43:47
Speaker 5: That's what makes that different. So Luke, for instance, I
43:51
Speaker 5: would argue, faces the dark side three major times in
43:54
Speaker 5: the films. The first one that we all obviously recognize
43:58
Speaker 5: is when he's beating the crap out of Darth Vader
44:00
Speaker 5: and cuts off his hand, right? And the Emperor says, great,
44:04
Speaker 5: you know, you're ready to take your place by my side.
44:07
Speaker 5: Because in other words, the second you kill this jag...
44:11
Speaker 5: You're going to be in exactly the place you need
44:14
Speaker 5: to be for me to show you all the great stuff.
44:16
Speaker 8: I've been planning this for 20 years. Go ahead.
44:18
Speaker 5: By the way, one line that is totally amplified by
44:23
Speaker 5: the prequels is where he says, Everything so far has
44:26
Speaker 5: transpired according to my design.
44:28
Speaker 18: You're like, whoa it is like that is the one
44:32
Speaker 18: takeaway from the prequels is like how well the emperor's
44:35
Speaker 18: plan is actually mapped out i mean we can almost
44:38
Speaker 18: to a ridiculous level well.
44:40
Speaker 5: And we can talk about why it's ridiculous but but
44:42
Speaker 5: and it is but but either way pulling back um
44:46
Speaker 5: so that's that's one time another time is well two
44:49
Speaker 5: times really in the empire strikes back one's in the
44:51
Speaker 5: cave yeah right and then the other honestly is when
44:54
Speaker 5: he's in uh facing darth vader Because there he's facing,
44:58
Speaker 5: I mean, it's an external dark side, but he's facing
45:00
Speaker 5: the dark side in his quest, in his fight with
45:02
Speaker 5: Darth Vader, right? And again, all three of these look
45:05
Speaker 5: very much the same. He's confronting Darth Vader. He thinks
45:08
Speaker 5: he's the enemy. Turns out he's his father, right? That's
45:10
Speaker 5: a confrontation with the dark side. Confronts Darth Vader in
45:13
Speaker 5: the cave. Turns out it's him in the mask, right?
45:16
Speaker 5: He confronts Darth Vader, beats him up in the third film.
45:19
Speaker 5: And then the Emperor says, great, you're ready to take
45:21
Speaker 5: your father's place. Again, every time, He's being presented with
45:25
Speaker 5: an option of himself, who he could be, right? And
45:28
Speaker 5: I would actually present one more point where I actually
45:31
Speaker 5: think this is never talked about, but I believe this
45:34
Speaker 5: is a confrontation with the dark side. When in the
45:37
Speaker 5: first film, when Vader kills Obi-Wan and Luke immediately murders
45:43
Speaker 5: like 12 stormtroopers in a row. Every one of them
45:46
Speaker 5: is boom, boom, boom, kills them all.
45:48
Speaker 8: It's the first time of him sort of dealing with that.
45:51
Speaker 5: Yeah.
45:52
Speaker 7: And having this weird attachment to Obi-Wan, who really, like,
45:56
Speaker 7: he's way more upset about Obi-Wan dying than the people
45:59
Speaker 7: who raised him earlier.
46:00
Speaker 8: Yeah.
46:01
Speaker 7: He's a little sad, but not near as upset as
46:04
Speaker 7: we see him on the ship when Obi-Wan's gone, who
46:06
Speaker 7: he met, I don't know, that day.
46:07
Speaker 8: You can never tell time in Star Wars, so who knows?
46:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, right.
46:10
Speaker 7: But still, a much shorter time than the, you know,
46:13
Speaker 7: Uncle Ho and an Emperor, who were like Parents, essentially, too.
46:16
Speaker 5: Well, they weren't great parents.
46:18
Speaker 8: They weren't, but.
46:19
Speaker 5: All they did was serve him blue milk and get
46:21
Speaker 5: on about going to Tosche Station to pick up some
46:24
Speaker 5: power converters.
46:25
Speaker 8: I need power converters, damn it! Come on! How am
46:27
Speaker 8: I going to run my jam box?
46:29
Speaker 5: Is that what you kids call drugs these days?
46:31
Speaker 8: No, I want to put them in my space jam
46:33
Speaker 8: box and walk around with it so all the girls
46:36
Speaker 8: won't think I'm wormy!
46:37
Speaker 6: Damn!
46:38
Speaker 1: Oh, man, but.
46:40
Speaker 5: But no, granted, but yeah, no, I always thought that
46:43
Speaker 5: was like one moment that we never talk about that
46:45
Speaker 5: I think is a dark side moment for him is
46:48
Speaker 5: when he confronts that. Well, so again, in each one
46:52
Speaker 5: of these, we see there's power to be had, but
46:55
Speaker 5: there's sacrifice to be made. So Luke is in the
46:58
Speaker 5: films always confronting the shadow of the potential of his
47:01
Speaker 5: own becoming. Yes, there is great power in adulthood. Yes,
47:05
Speaker 5: there is also great potential for evil.
47:07
Speaker 8: He also seems like he's learning every time.
47:09
Speaker 6: Exactly.
47:10
Speaker 7: That I don't think we get, you know, certainly not
47:12
Speaker 7: from Anakin.
47:12
Speaker 5: And again, and again, we don't really get that from
47:14
Speaker 5: Anakin or Rey, really.
47:16
Speaker 8: Again, Rey rarely seems like she's confronted with it. She's just,
47:21
Speaker 8: she fights.
47:23
Speaker 15: With.
47:25
Speaker 7: Again it's mostly just with this person it's almost not
47:27
Speaker 7: really gotten to a light and dark yet certainly not
47:30
Speaker 7: the first one because she doesn't understand any of that
47:32
Speaker 7: but yeah she's just fighting with this guy who she
47:35
Speaker 7: assumes is evil and.
47:37
Speaker 5: Well again i point to its superficiality and say that
47:39
Speaker 5: i think that they believe that when you see kylo
47:41
Speaker 5: and her team up against the guards who are fighting
47:44
Speaker 5: them for some reason as opposed to just like all
47:45
Speaker 5: right we'll clock out i guess our job's done yeah
47:48
Speaker 5: you'd think at that point they would have gone like
47:50
Speaker 5: the way of wizard of oz and be like right
47:51
Speaker 5: you've killed him Thank you.
47:55
Speaker 8: What can we do to help you?
47:56
Speaker 5: He was a terrible boss.
47:57
Speaker 8: He's been a bastard to us. I hated Papa Gollum.
48:01
Speaker 8: I hated that face.
48:03
Speaker 5: Papa Gollum was terrible. But anyway, I'm going to coin
48:05
Speaker 5: that if it's the last thing I do. But in
48:09
Speaker 5: any event, though, I think the film thinks that that's
48:12
Speaker 5: a deep statement about light and dark. Like, oh, look,
48:15
Speaker 5: there's the balance between the great light and the great
48:18
Speaker 5: dark or whatever they think the Force does now. But
48:22
Speaker 5: for me, though, in each one of those instances, yeah,
48:24
Speaker 5: Rey doesn't really learn anything. She's not actually confronted. Like,
48:29
Speaker 5: Kylo Ren doesn't actually mean anything to her about potential
48:34
Speaker 5: or anything like that.
48:35
Speaker 8: I think it's all just interpersonal.
48:37
Speaker 7: And that's what I've liked about them, especially that second movie.
48:40
Speaker 8: I do buy into their relationship.
48:43
Speaker 5: Well, and I certainly don't mind the idea of telling
48:46
Speaker 5: a story about a Jedi and a Sith Who have
48:49
Speaker 5: a relationship with each other. And a connection they don't
48:52
Speaker 5: even fully understand. It's not really about them becoming one
48:55
Speaker 5: thing or another. They just have multiple layers. But again,
48:58
Speaker 5: I confess I don't think that the film has those layers.
49:01
Speaker 5: They just kind of, again, kind of gesture at it.
49:03
Speaker 8: It starts with it, yeah.
49:04
Speaker 5: Sort of say that they're there, but then they kind
49:06
Speaker 5: of just don't have it. But to my mind, these films...
49:10
Speaker 5: Part of the reason why, I think, is because the
49:12
Speaker 5: filmmakers are bringing... A lot of unspoken baggage to the
49:16
Speaker 5: film in terms of what they want the film to
49:17
Speaker 5: be talking about. And I think for some people, this
49:20
Speaker 5: baggage resonates. They know what the film is talking about. Right.
49:24
Speaker 5: Conspiracy theory time. Like, so Ray, Ray is a star
49:28
Speaker 5: Wars fan. She wears the helmet. She lives in an
49:31
Speaker 5: 80 80 and at, at Walker.
49:33
Speaker 7: Again in that first movie, he's, real world shoving into
49:38
Speaker 7: the star wars universe right right ray is the conduit
49:40
Speaker 7: for all of us right we all want to sit
49:43
Speaker 7: in that we all want to put that helmet on
49:45
Speaker 7: so she is our entry point yeah and finn you
49:47
Speaker 7: imagine is some kid who's learning how to be a
49:50
Speaker 7: troll on the message boards who then suddenly wakes up
49:52
Speaker 7: and realizes oh my god what am i doing and
49:54
Speaker 7: kylo ren and so they're the new star wars fans
49:56
Speaker 7: right and kylo ren is a fan of the old
49:59
Speaker 7: trilogy and whose love of it has poisoned him up
50:03
Speaker 7: to the point where in the second movie he's saying,
50:05
Speaker 7: we actually.
50:05
Speaker 5: Need to destroy the past. We don't need to embrace
50:08
Speaker 5: it or move forward at all. We need to destroy
50:10
Speaker 5: the past in order to move forward because he's so
50:13
Speaker 5: chained to it.
50:14
Speaker 8: Which it is kind of what Last Jedi's doing. Well, yeah.
50:17
Speaker 8: It's destroying everything up to that point, really.
50:19
Speaker 5: But I would say that The Last Jedi thinks it's
50:22
Speaker 5: trying to make a statement about positive versus negative relationships
50:26
Speaker 5: to canon and to past, right?
50:28
Speaker 8: Because.
50:29
Speaker 5: On the one hand, this is one of my favorite
50:31
Speaker 5: nonsensical reversals. Because if you notice, everything in that movie
50:34
Speaker 5: five minutes later is overturned by the next thing that happens.
50:37
Speaker 5: So Luke is going to go destroy the Jedi records, right?
50:42
Speaker 5: The Jedi books. He's got his flame torch. He's running
50:45
Speaker 5: up there. And he's like, I'm going to destroy it, right?
50:48
Speaker 5: And he's being Kylo Ren in that moment. I'm going
50:49
Speaker 5: to destroy the past because I'm chained to it and
50:51
Speaker 5: it's tormenting me, right? Uh, and he runs up there
50:54
Speaker 5: and then Yoda's like, don't do that. And there's that
50:56
Speaker 5: great little scene with Yoda, uh, which again, real puppet Yoda,
50:59
Speaker 5: real puppet Yoda. We love real puppet. Well, and Yoda
51:02
Speaker 5: talks to him a little while and then Yoda just
51:04
Speaker 5: waves his hand and now he can create lightning, I guess.
51:06
Speaker 5: And lightning comes and destroys the tree. And Luke is horrified, right?
51:10
Speaker 5: Which is again, flips from five minutes ago where he
51:12
Speaker 5: wants to destroy it. But in a sense, it makes
51:14
Speaker 5: kind of sense because, okay, he wants to destroy it,
51:16
Speaker 5: but he's bound to it.
51:17
Speaker 9: Right.
51:18
Speaker 5: But Yoda shows him how to let go of it.
51:20
Speaker 5: Doesn't matter. Of course, because it turns out that all
51:23
Speaker 5: that stuff is, of course, is very Zen moment where
51:26
Speaker 5: it's like, it turns out none of that stuff matters
51:27
Speaker 5: really just moving past it. The force is already there,
51:29
Speaker 5: except they don't really say any of that. They say
51:31
Speaker 5: Ray doesn't need to know any of that stuff. She
51:32
Speaker 5: knows everything she needs to know because she always does.
51:34
Speaker 5: But later on, it turns out Ray already took the books, right?
51:39
Speaker 5: So she's open to learning from the past. Well, but
51:42
Speaker 5: which is a reversal of what we just learned. And
51:44
Speaker 5: so it turns out Yoda's gesture was meaningless, which it
51:46
Speaker 5: turns out that He was actually simply preventing Luke from
51:49
Speaker 5: knowing that Rey had taken the books. And, you know, dot, dot, dot.
51:53
Speaker 5: It's one of those things where it's like, I'm sure
51:54
Speaker 5: that every one of these twists they thought was very profound.
51:56
Speaker 5: But when you string them all together like that, you're like,
51:58
Speaker 5: but wait, this actually is just gibberish. But again, that reversal, though, again,
52:04
Speaker 5: I love it because it's nonsensical. But those series of reversals, though,
52:07
Speaker 5: are illustrating different attitudes about the past. Being bound by
52:10
Speaker 5: the past, freely letting go of the past, and then
52:13
Speaker 5: being open to the past. There are those stages that
52:17
Speaker 5: I think they're trying to talk about or trying to show.
52:19
Speaker 5: Or maybe I'm dumping too much into Rian Johnson's writing.
52:23
Speaker 5: But it seems to me that this movie is very
52:26
Speaker 5: much about positive versus negative relationships to the past. And
52:29
Speaker 5: it's trying... Well, I should say it's trying to be
52:31
Speaker 5: about that. It doesn't know how to develop themes or
52:34
Speaker 5: how to show them or how to make characters real.
52:36
Speaker 5: So that kind of doesn't matter. But I bring that
52:41
Speaker 5: up because... These movies in an arch way want to
52:45
Speaker 5: be meta movies about Star Wars as such.
52:47
Speaker 9: Yeah.
52:48
Speaker 8: And that's part of what I think falls. Both of
52:49
Speaker 8: them kind of are in different ways. Yeah.
52:51
Speaker 5: And if you connect with the message they're trying to
52:53
Speaker 5: tell about Star Wars as a whole, wow, this is
52:56
Speaker 5: a great movie. There's so much depth to it. There's
52:57
Speaker 5: so much going on because you're already filling in the
52:59
Speaker 5: gaps with what the movie already wants you to hear
53:02
Speaker 5: from it. But you're simpatico with the movie. You're not
53:04
Speaker 5: actually learning that from the movie. You're bringing that to
53:06
Speaker 5: the movie and the creators brought that to the movie.
53:08
Speaker 5: That's not actually in the movie. If you go and
53:11
Speaker 5: you watch the movie and you don't have that baggage,
53:14
Speaker 5: you don't have that attitude, that meta attitude that they're
53:17
Speaker 5: trying to talk about with Star Wars. then you're basically
53:20
Speaker 5: confronted with a series of plot holes and threads that
53:23
Speaker 5: don't really come together.
53:24
Speaker 7: Which was the same thing with the prequels. There's so
53:26
Speaker 7: much of the prequels that don't make sense if you
53:29
Speaker 7: watch them in numerical order. All of this weight that's
53:32
Speaker 7: given to these things is only for those of us
53:35
Speaker 7: who grew up watching 4, 5, and 6, and we're like, oh,
53:37
Speaker 7: that's the thing. And yeah, that means that this is
53:39
Speaker 7: going to... But if you're a kid and you're watching, okay, well,
53:42
Speaker 7: let's watch 1, 2, 3.
53:43
Speaker 8: You're like, why is... Why do we care about this?
53:47
Speaker 8: None of it makes any sense.
53:49
Speaker 5: I heard a guy explain to me one time, this
53:51
Speaker 5: was years ago, back when it was an open question. Like, oh,
53:56
Speaker 5: I'm going to have kids someday. How am I going
53:58
Speaker 5: to show them the prequels? Like, is that a thing?
53:59
Speaker 8: That became such a game.
54:01
Speaker 5: Yeah, right?
54:01
Speaker 8: How do we do this?
54:02
Speaker 5: Yeah, and actually, my favorite version of that, I'm sure
54:05
Speaker 5: you've heard plenty of them on your podcast before.
54:07
Speaker 7: We've discussed Machete Order many, many times. But is this
54:13
Speaker 7: a variation from that?
54:15
Speaker 5: I forget what the machete order is.
54:17
Speaker 7: Again, as I said earlier, one really doesn't matter because
54:21
Speaker 7: it doesn't come into play. So you basically just start
54:23
Speaker 7: with two and three.
54:26
Speaker 4: Wait, no.
54:28
Speaker 8: One still doesn't matter. No, basically it's the start with four, five,
54:32
Speaker 8: and six, essentially.
54:34
Speaker 7: But when you get to the end of five, when
54:37
Speaker 7: you get to Empire, I am your father, it then
54:40
Speaker 7: becomes a flashback. You go back, you don't bother with
54:43
Speaker 7: one because nobody cares about one. You watch two and three,
54:45
Speaker 7: you see the upbringing and then fall of Anakin and
54:49
Speaker 7: how he became Darth. Then you go back into Jedi
54:52
Speaker 7: and it picks up where, okay, now we understand what
54:55
Speaker 7: the past was and we finish out the story. And
54:58
Speaker 7: it ends on an up note instead of the grim
55:00
Speaker 7: episode three.
55:01
Speaker 5: Yeah, no. That's similar to the version I heard. The
55:05
Speaker 5: only difference is that this guy proposed putting episode one
55:08
Speaker 5: at the very beginning.
55:10
Speaker 8: And basically.
55:11
Speaker 5: So you watch episode one, you meet Anakin and then afterward.
55:16
Speaker 5: And so then when the next episode you watch is
55:18
Speaker 5: episode four. And so as a result, they're like, oh no,
55:21
Speaker 5: Anakin's dead?
55:22
Speaker 8: That's a.
55:23
Speaker 5: What happened to him?
55:24
Speaker 8: What happened to that little kid? Yeah, exactly.
55:26
Speaker 5: So for little kids, like, that makes a kind of sense.
55:29
Speaker 5: It's like, now I want to know, like, how that
55:31
Speaker 5: all worked out. And then, oh no, he's Luke's... He's Anakin?
55:34
Speaker 5: He's Luke's dad?
55:35
Speaker 8: He's... Whoa! And then you go back and... And then
55:37
Speaker 8: you flash back and.
55:38
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and also, it opens up a
55:42
Speaker 5: question of, like, wait a minute. If the past was
55:44
Speaker 5: so futuristic, how did we get to here? And then, like,
55:46
Speaker 5: you know.
55:47
Speaker 8: But anyway, still a lot of weirdness going on there.
55:49
Speaker 5: But yeah. Um, anyway, uh, keeping this conversation about sort
55:54
Speaker 5: of the, the, the theme and philosophy going, that's also
55:56
Speaker 5: something I think is, is problematic in, uh, discovery, uh,
56:00
Speaker 5: and in some of the new Star Trek that they're
56:02
Speaker 5: putting forward. Cause Alex Kurtzman, who's not as good a
56:05
Speaker 5: producer as JJ Abrams, um, and a very poor writer
56:09
Speaker 5: in general. Uh, he, uh, and, and I say this
56:12
Speaker 5: with no hate. It's just, I, I, I, I, I
56:15
Speaker 5: legit critiquing, just critiquing. I legitimately think he's not a
56:18
Speaker 5: very good writer, but with that said, there are plenty
56:21
Speaker 5: of not great writers like George Lucas who know how
56:23
Speaker 5: to get people who can write onto their staff to
56:26
Speaker 5: write good stuff. And he's got Michael Chabon and he's, uh,
56:29
Speaker 5: and he's brought in some other people who I think
56:31
Speaker 5: are pretty sensible. So we'll see. Uh, but, Discovery doesn't
56:36
Speaker 5: really understand Star Trek either in a lot of ways.
56:40
Speaker 5: In fact, and to be fair, Enterprise didn't really understand
56:42
Speaker 5: Star Trek and to a degree Voyager didn't really understand
56:45
Speaker 5: Star Trek. It just kind of coasted on the coattails
56:47
Speaker 5: of TNG and DS9. All those shows don't really grasp
56:53
Speaker 5: wonder very well. The sheer wonder of the human experience
56:58
Speaker 5: looking out into the future. Discovery wants to, and Enterprise
57:02
Speaker 5: and Discovery both want to kind of bury themselves in
57:04
Speaker 5: the weirdly despite the fact that discovery is throwing out
57:07
Speaker 5: so much of the canon like they're redesigning and redeveloping
57:10
Speaker 5: the klingons they're redoing all this other stuff now they
57:12
Speaker 5: have tardigrades that teleport them across the galaxy and no
57:16
Speaker 5: seriously it's like a whole thing and so there's all
57:19
Speaker 5: this stuff so they clearly don't care so much to
57:22
Speaker 5: reproduce star trek they're not trying to but they want
57:25
Speaker 5: to tie it in to all the threads of star
57:27
Speaker 5: trek that really don't matter like At the end of
57:31
Speaker 5: the day, where you fit in the Star Trek timeline
57:35
Speaker 5: and whether the Klingons used phasers or disruptors, that stuff
57:39
Speaker 5: isn't actually that important.
57:41
Speaker 8: They're focusing on the minutiae of it and missing the
57:44
Speaker 8: grand scheme of things, which is what good Star Trek
57:47
Speaker 8: was always about. Well, and in a way, yeah.
57:50
Speaker 5: And in a way, I mean, the strange thing is
57:51
Speaker 5: they're still getting a lot of the minutiae just wrong
57:54
Speaker 5: or they're reinventing it. In other words, they're clearly, there
57:56
Speaker 5: was a great article that came out a little while
57:58
Speaker 5: about how they took a lot of the writers to
58:00
Speaker 5: canon boot camp.
58:01
Speaker 8: Yeah.
58:01
Speaker 5: And someone who I've never heard of before was educating everybody's.
58:04
Speaker 9: To house start.
58:05
Speaker 5: And they, and this image came out of, of the,
58:08
Speaker 5: this person at this meeting drew a graph of like,
58:11
Speaker 5: here's the galaxy and where, here's where all the races are.
58:13
Speaker 5: And it was like, this is incredibly crude, like, you know,
58:16
Speaker 5: thing that had very little, like it, it was like
58:19
Speaker 5: written on a napkin or something like that. And of course,
58:22
Speaker 5: the best ideas come, right. But, but the first thing
58:24
Speaker 5: that occurs to you is, you know, if you're a
58:26
Speaker 5: Trekkie like me is like, wait a minute, like guys, they're,
58:29
Speaker 5: full color maps with like incredible detail that have been
58:33
Speaker 5: like produced for years. Like they're encyclopedias online of this stuff.
58:37
Speaker 5: They're not absorbent like this cool napkin.
58:39
Speaker 6: Yeah.
58:39
Speaker 3: Right.
58:40
Speaker 5: Uh, but, but, but to my mind, that was the
58:42
Speaker 5: reason that leapt to mind is, is that I think
58:44
Speaker 5: even in the details of minutia, like for them, it
58:47
Speaker 5: seems very obvious that many of the people coming to
58:50
Speaker 5: Star Trek to work on that show are alien to
58:53
Speaker 5: the franchise. I don't really understand it. And that can
58:55
Speaker 5: be fine. Again, uh, the guy they brought in Nicholas, uh,
59:00
Speaker 5: Forgetting his name. But the guy who was on Rathacon
59:02
Speaker 5: and did Undiscovered Country, two of the best Star Trek movies.
59:05
Speaker 5: He didn't know anything about Star Trek prior to. He
59:07
Speaker 5: walked into it. He watched the series. and he came
59:11
Speaker 5: away with, okay, Khan's a great character. I think we
59:13
Speaker 5: can work with that. Likewise, the dude who directed Rogue One,
59:15
Speaker 5: who really directed Rogue One, who went in for most
59:17
Speaker 5: of the reshoots and reshot apparently a good chunk of
59:20
Speaker 5: the film, he wasn't really a Star Wars guy. But
59:23
Speaker 5: he watched the series. He's like, okay, I think this
59:25
Speaker 5: is kind of what a Star Wars– I.
59:26
Speaker 8: See what I can take from it.
59:28
Speaker 3: Right.
59:29
Speaker 5: I have no problem with people who are not like
59:32
Speaker 5: ostensibly fans of a show or whatever coming in and
59:35
Speaker 5: working with a show. That means nothing. You can absolutely
59:37
Speaker 5: tell a great story.
59:38
Speaker 7: Sometimes you need that breath of fresh air and a
59:41
Speaker 7: new perspective and maybe not feeding upon yourself. Like, some
59:45
Speaker 7: things start to do after they've been going on for years.
59:47
Speaker 5: And years and years. Yeah, but that's the hope, though,
59:50
Speaker 5: with any new Star Trek show. And that's one thing
59:53
Speaker 5: that saddened me about Discovery when it was a show
59:55
Speaker 5: about war. A show about war with Klingons and... It
59:58
Speaker 5: clearly had things it wanted to say about the political
1:00:02
Speaker 5: situation and the rise of nationalism versus diversity and inclusion-driven republicanism,
1:00:10
Speaker 5: you could say, or something like that. But I definitely
1:00:13
Speaker 5: think the show had things it wanted to say about
1:00:16
Speaker 5: that stuff. Again, though, it doesn't really know how to
1:00:19
Speaker 5: handle themes.
1:00:20
Speaker 8: That's kind of what Battlestar was doing. We already have
1:00:23
Speaker 8: shows doing that.
1:00:24
Speaker 5: And honestly, it had a lot of elements that struck
1:00:27
Speaker 5: me as Battlestar-lite. And there were characters that... And again,
1:00:32
Speaker 5: I don't want to attack Sonequa Martin-Green. There are moments
1:00:35
Speaker 5: where I'm like, she must be a really great actress.
1:00:38
Speaker 5: But unfortunately, this character they gave her makes no sense.
1:00:41
Speaker 5: Bouncing from scene to scene as a completely different person.
1:00:45
Speaker 5: Sometimes she's mature adult and capable of handling command decisions
1:00:49
Speaker 5: then next thing you know she's trying to commit mutiny
1:00:52
Speaker 5: uh next thing you know she's next thing you know
1:00:55
Speaker 5: she's feeling awkward at a party because she was raised
1:00:59
Speaker 5: with logic and apparently that makes her incapable of handling
1:01:01
Speaker 5: her own emotions.
1:01:02
Speaker 8: I feel like this isn't far from her last character
1:01:05
Speaker 8: and maybe the only two people know her as but
1:01:07
Speaker 8: i feel like she never had a There was never
1:01:09
Speaker 8: a good handle on what her character was as the...
1:01:13
Speaker 8: I mean, she spent many seasons on The Walking Dead.
1:01:15
Speaker 7: And I'm like, I never really got... Especially by the end.
1:01:19
Speaker 7: I was just like, I don't even know why you're
1:01:20
Speaker 7: still around. By the time she.
1:01:22
Speaker 8: I was like, oh, she signed on to go do
1:01:24
Speaker 8: Star Trek. No wonder she's leaving.
1:01:25
Speaker 5: Yeah, I never watched that.
1:01:26
Speaker 8: But I was just like, I don't even know what
1:01:27
Speaker 8: you've been doing the last year and a half.
1:01:30
Speaker 5: Yeah, see, I was never a fan of The Walking Dead.
1:01:31
Speaker 5: I never really watched it. And by the way, that's
1:01:33
Speaker 5: not me... criticizing the show. I feel like everyone's on
1:01:36
Speaker 5: that train now, so it's fine. No one's defending it anymore. Well, yeah. Well,
1:01:41
Speaker 5: in any event, I... Yeah, no. So I... She's got presence,
1:01:45
Speaker 5: and I certainly don't want to hate on her as
1:01:47
Speaker 5: an actress. But yeah, the character, though, is... They don't
1:01:51
Speaker 5: seem to know... Again, they've made her an adult, yet
1:01:55
Speaker 5: she's an adolescent. They made her a number of different things,
1:01:58
Speaker 5: none of which seem to really gel from scene to scene.
1:02:01
Speaker 5: She's got presence, but ultimately... Ultimately, Star Trek is about hope.
1:02:07
Speaker 5: It's about believing in a bigger future. It's about believing
1:02:11
Speaker 5: in people. And Gene Roddenberry, that story that Jonathan Frakes tells, right?
1:02:18
Speaker 5: He might have told it on your podcast. I don't know.
1:02:20
Speaker 5: I haven't listened to that episode yet, actually. But he
1:02:24
Speaker 5: talks about when he was auditioning for Riker. Did I
1:02:27
Speaker 5: tell you this story? Did we talk about this? I
1:02:29
Speaker 5: think I might have.
1:02:29
Speaker 10: Maybe last time.
1:02:30
Speaker 9: Okay.
1:02:31
Speaker 5: Well, I love that story. So I keep coming back,
1:02:34
Speaker 5: but yeah, it's about when Gene Roddenberry looks and he says, yeah,
1:02:36
Speaker 5: in the future there will be no hunger, no greed,
1:02:38
Speaker 5: no war.
1:02:39
Speaker 3: Right.
1:02:40
Speaker 5: Uh, and that's just the way it's going to be like, and, and,
1:02:43
Speaker 5: you know, after a while, Frakes is like, yeah, I
1:02:45
Speaker 5: believe this is absolutely true. Um, discovery doesn't make me
1:02:48
Speaker 5: believe in that future.
1:02:49
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:02:50
Speaker 5: Um, discovery, the characters don't act like there's a great
1:02:54
Speaker 5: episode of, of the next generation where, uh, Troy or sorry,
1:02:58
Speaker 5: Beverly Crusher starts experiencing people vanishing all around the ship
1:03:01
Speaker 5: and no one else seems to remember them leaving or
1:03:04
Speaker 5: be even existing in the first place. And so she
1:03:06
Speaker 5: goes up to the captain, everybody else and says, listen,
1:03:08
Speaker 5: this is a thing I'm experiencing. And they all just
1:03:10
Speaker 5: basically turn around and say, okay, let's presume that everything
1:03:13
Speaker 5: she's saying is absolutely true. Uh, and try to come
1:03:16
Speaker 5: up with explanations as to how it could be happening. Also, doctor,
1:03:19
Speaker 5: I do want someone to do an evaluation of you,
1:03:21
Speaker 5: but we will proceed as though you're telling us 100%
1:03:24
Speaker 5: the truth.
1:03:24
Speaker 11: Why?
1:03:24
Speaker 5: Because they're adults, right? They're adults working a job out
1:03:27
Speaker 5: in the middle of space. Weird shit happens. And you
1:03:29
Speaker 5: know what?
1:03:30
Speaker 8: Every week weird shit happens.
1:03:31
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:03:32
Speaker 8: You think they learned something. And they do. And they do.
1:03:35
Speaker 5: You know what? When someone comes up and says, hey,
1:03:36
Speaker 5: weird shit's happened to me and no one else can
1:03:38
Speaker 5: see it. Well, okay, let's talk about why that's happening.
1:03:40
Speaker 5: Let's figure this out. Instead of this profound sense of
1:03:45
Speaker 5: distrust and alienation that seems to pervade this show and
1:03:48
Speaker 5: inability of people to communicate with each other on such
1:03:52
Speaker 5: basic levels about so much. Yeah, so that tells me
1:03:57
Speaker 5: that this show wants to give me a lot of
1:04:00
Speaker 5: flashbang and not a whole lot of substance. And that's
1:04:03
Speaker 5: a common criticism of it. But the sad thing is,
1:04:08
Speaker 5: with both Star Wars and Star Trek and a bunch
1:04:09
Speaker 5: of other franchises that we've seen people try to reboot
1:04:12
Speaker 5: and bring back about, I think we're at a point
1:04:15
Speaker 5: now where a lot of the franchises that guided us
1:04:20
Speaker 5: and inspired us when we were kids are going to die.
1:04:24
Speaker 5: And I mean that like, or need to die. And
1:04:27
Speaker 5: I don't mean that in the sense that I want
1:04:30
Speaker 5: Star Trek to go away or I want Star Wars
1:04:32
Speaker 5: to go away. But what I mean is, I think
1:04:35
Speaker 5: that it's become clear that whatever we were getting out
1:04:37
Speaker 5: of those shows is not going to be provided by
1:04:40
Speaker 5: whoever's helming them now. It probably won't be for the
1:04:42
Speaker 5: foreseeable future.
1:04:43
Speaker 8: And shouldn't be.
1:04:44
Speaker 6: Yeah.
1:04:44
Speaker 7: Because from an artistic perspective, it's like these are different people.
1:04:49
Speaker 8: They're doing a different thing.
1:04:50
Speaker 6: Right, right, right.
1:04:50
Speaker 8: You kind of don't want the exact same thing from everyone.
1:04:53
Speaker 8: We need a different perspective, good or bad, but at
1:04:56
Speaker 8: least we can't have the same thing from new people
1:04:59
Speaker 8: doing something totally different, essentially, in the same universe.
1:05:02
Speaker 5: What we really need, what we're really starved for more
1:05:05
Speaker 5: than anything else right now is a new vision.
1:05:07
Speaker 8: Yeah.
1:05:08
Speaker 5: That's actually the hunger that we're feeling. And I think
1:05:11
Speaker 5: that we're only beginning to see it and articulate it
1:05:14
Speaker 5: in our culture. The Avengers movies have been great. But,
1:05:17
Speaker 5: you know, they've been great partly because they are solid
1:05:21
Speaker 5: action films with great fantastical storylines. But they don't possess,
1:05:25
Speaker 5: in my vision, in my view, they don't possess genuine
1:05:28
Speaker 5: vision between them.
1:05:30
Speaker 8: No pun intended. I saw it. He was in a
1:05:32
Speaker 8: couple of movies.
1:05:33
Speaker 13: Yeah.
1:05:34
Speaker 8: He's got this cool thing in his head. Flies around.
1:05:37
Speaker 5: It's played by Paul Bettany. God knows I love him.
1:05:40
Speaker 8: We all love Paul Bettany.
1:05:42
Speaker 5: Believe me, I do. I've told you about Priest. Me
1:05:45
Speaker 5: and a friend of mine being the only two people
1:05:47
Speaker 5: who ever saw that movie. Wait, you were the third
1:05:50
Speaker 5: one miles away. But anyway, yeah, so I think that
1:05:55
Speaker 5: right now we're really craving a new vision. And that's
1:05:58
Speaker 5: kind of where we are in the quest for the
1:06:03
Speaker 5: future of fantastical fiction on the screen. Right now, we're
1:06:07
Speaker 5: starving for a new vision. And we're frustrated because none
1:06:12
Speaker 5: of the franchises that we had, they've all passed in
1:06:15
Speaker 5: the hands of these corporate entities. They're no longer in
1:06:17
Speaker 5: the hands of the visionaries who created them. And that
1:06:20
Speaker 5: can be good. That's not necessarily a terrible thing. And
1:06:23
Speaker 5: Hopefully something good will still yet come out of them.
1:06:25
Speaker 7: I think the Marvel has shown us that. There are
1:06:27
Speaker 7: great things that can happen in that situation.
1:06:30
Speaker 5: Absolutely. And Pixar.
1:06:32
Speaker 8: It is what it is.
1:06:33
Speaker 5: Pixar is actually a great example. So there's nothing against
1:06:37
Speaker 5: having loads and loads of corporate cash, right? But, and
1:06:41
Speaker 5: this isn't a rant against corporations, but it's rather that
1:06:46
Speaker 5: I think that people have, because we have seen how
1:06:50
Speaker 5: people have confused the form of Star Trek or Star
1:06:53
Speaker 5: Wars with the substance that's at the heart. That's one
1:06:55
Speaker 5: of the reasons why I feel like the Orville has
1:06:57
Speaker 5: really taken off, despite the fact that in almost every
1:07:01
Speaker 5: measurable sense, the Orville is inferior to Star Trek discovery.
1:07:05
Speaker 5: It's special effects are dinky. It's almost everything.
1:07:08
Speaker 8: It almost embraces that.
1:07:09
Speaker 5: Yeah, it really does.
1:07:10
Speaker 8: Like it knows it and is like, yeah, but this
1:07:12
Speaker 8: is what we're doing. And we, we've, we're leaning into it.
1:07:16
Speaker 5: And, and also, uh, I will say, as I said before,
1:07:18
Speaker 5: Seth MacFarlane, you know, can't write a social issue script
1:07:22
Speaker 5: to save his life. Uh, But with that said, it
1:07:27
Speaker 5: still has something in its heart. It's got a heart.
1:07:30
Speaker 5: It's a show that wants to have a heart. And
1:07:32
Speaker 5: so I think we're all hoping for something that's going
1:07:34
Speaker 5: to come along and entrance us with a new vision
1:07:36
Speaker 5: of the future. Our last one, I think, probably was
1:07:39
Speaker 5: Battlestar Galactica. That was our last big vision. But that
1:07:43
Speaker 5: was also a contentious, conflicted vision. It left us in
1:07:48
Speaker 5: a kind of a limbo in a lot of ways.
1:07:50
Speaker 5: And I think in the end... and I love the
1:07:53
Speaker 5: religious angle of it and everything, it gave us a
1:07:55
Speaker 5: sense of biblical finality, which we could not carry.
1:07:58
Speaker 9: Forward, right?
1:08:00
Speaker 7: I think where it's changing is, not that it's totally
1:08:04
Speaker 7: getting away from these huge corporations because one of them
1:08:06
Speaker 7: is backing half the stuff that's getting made now, but
1:08:09
Speaker 7: I think it's getting handed off to smaller operations and
1:08:12
Speaker 7: lesser known because we've almost.
1:08:14
Speaker 8: Beat to death all of the big franchises.
1:08:17
Speaker 7: So it's like now there's weird little things that are
1:08:20
Speaker 7: popping up on Netflix series, not that they're on a
1:08:23
Speaker 7: massive corporation that's now running everything, but the first few
1:08:26
Speaker 7: that made it through and now we're starting to see
1:08:28
Speaker 7: people that are, again, like there's such a massive operation
1:08:32
Speaker 7: that you don't even know what's on there. Like they're
1:08:34
Speaker 7: backing things and not even fully advertising their own products
1:08:38
Speaker 7: sometimes because there's so much stuff they're throwing out there
1:08:41
Speaker 7: on their own server. But that aside, like if you
1:08:44
Speaker 7: pick and choose, you can go, oh wait, this is
1:08:46
Speaker 7: actually really cool.
1:08:48
Speaker 8: And kind of the same thing in the film world.
1:08:49
Speaker 7: I think there's weird little indie films that are popping
1:08:52
Speaker 7: up that aren't massively funded, that aren't part of a franchise,
1:08:55
Speaker 7: that are their own little offshoot vision of their original concept.
1:09:00
Speaker 7: and those are kind of genius and they may not
1:09:03
Speaker 7: ever get the funding to be a massive series but
1:09:06
Speaker 7: we're seeing like little bits and pieces and I think
1:09:09
Speaker 7: that's where it's falling now is it's got to go
1:09:11
Speaker 7: the other direction and go to something smaller.
1:09:13
Speaker 5: And more intimate my big hope is the next great
1:09:16
Speaker 5: science fiction or fantasy series will begin on YouTube Yeah,
1:09:19
Speaker 5: I mean... And I'm 100% serious about that. I think
1:09:24
Speaker 5: that YouTube and streaming services like it, you know, free,
1:09:28
Speaker 5: completely open-ended, hey, if you like us, drop us a
1:09:30
Speaker 5: buck on Patreon. I believe that that will one day yield.
1:09:35
Speaker 5: And we talked about webisodes and web shows and things
1:09:37
Speaker 5: like that, and obviously there's already... Good content out there
1:09:40
Speaker 5: if you can go find.
1:09:41
Speaker 8: They're definitely... Yeah. Yeah.
1:09:42
Speaker 7: I mean, there's a lot of stuff I don't care about,
1:09:44
Speaker 7: but I'll find things that I'm like, this person's talented.
1:09:47
Speaker 8: But at some point... I want to see what they're doing. Yeah.
1:09:49
Speaker 5: At some point, I think that we will see a
1:09:51
Speaker 5: rise and a really profound new independent movement arising. I
1:09:56
Speaker 5: think that one of the reasons, though, and this is
1:09:59
Speaker 5: maybe dicey territory for this podcast, but... I suspect that
1:10:03
Speaker 5: part of the reason for our inarticulateness and our lack
1:10:07
Speaker 5: of a vision is partly because of our political situation.
1:10:10
Speaker 5: And I'm not talking about the despair of living in
1:10:12
Speaker 5: Trump America or anything like that. I mean the fact
1:10:16
Speaker 5: that we are having such a hard time collectively articulating
1:10:20
Speaker 5: our collective situation. And a big part of that is
1:10:24
Speaker 5: political and the fact that we now think in such
1:10:27
Speaker 5: radically different categories about things. Alternative facts. What like what
1:10:32
Speaker 5: that really means is not simply that you're wrong and
1:10:35
Speaker 5: I'm right. What it translates to is, no, I've actually
1:10:38
Speaker 5: got a completely different strand of logic coming from different
1:10:42
Speaker 5: sets of facts that you have not heard that are
1:10:44
Speaker 5: tying into a completely different worldview as to what this means.
1:10:48
Speaker 8: I think that is maybe where we've come to.
1:10:51
Speaker 7: We're actually living in a form of science fiction at
1:10:53
Speaker 7: this point.
1:10:54
Speaker 8: That people are living in parallel universes in the same place.
1:10:58
Speaker 5: So you hear a story from a conservative about the
1:11:00
Speaker 5: way the world's working and people react to it and say,
1:11:04
Speaker 5: That is absurd. And that is not at all what's
1:11:06
Speaker 5: going on. What you need to do is accept that
1:11:08
Speaker 5: what I have seen is the truth. Is the truth. Yeah,
1:11:12
Speaker 5: that's the truth.
1:11:12
Speaker 8: And everyone thinks that about themselves.
1:11:14
Speaker 5: Everyone absolutely is thinking that.
1:11:16
Speaker 8: I mean, it is.
1:11:16
Speaker 7: Like, I think that really is what's going on at
1:11:18
Speaker 7: this point. And I don't, that's the part that I'm like,
1:11:21
Speaker 7: I don't know that we can escape from. Like, again,
1:11:24
Speaker 7: it is like a massively important. huge sci-fi premise that
1:11:28
Speaker 7: like in the 70s we would have made a really
1:11:30
Speaker 7: great movie out of but now we're immersed in it.
1:11:32
Speaker 5: And it's kind of scary yeah or uh there's a
1:11:35
Speaker 5: china medieval novel called the city in the city about
1:11:38
Speaker 5: uh inhabitants of a city of a city who do
1:11:42
Speaker 5: not uh communicate with the other half of the inhabitants
1:11:44
Speaker 5: of the city and they all go about their lives
1:11:46
Speaker 5: at the same time anyway uh Yeah, I think that
1:11:50
Speaker 5: something like that is going on. I think that there
1:11:54
Speaker 5: are a lot of reasons for it. I fear that
1:11:57
Speaker 5: as we continue to pathologize as a society, both the
1:12:01
Speaker 5: left and the right, because you can't. It's an action-reaction thing.
1:12:04
Speaker 5: You can't have one without the other. It's the light
1:12:06
Speaker 5: and the dark side.
1:12:08
Speaker 10: Yeah, it is.
1:12:09
Speaker 5: But as both of them continue to pathologize and become
1:12:12
Speaker 5: unrecognizable to each other, and as more and more people
1:12:15
Speaker 5: are unwilling to even bridge the gap and communicate in
1:12:17
Speaker 5: the language of the other. And by the way, we
1:12:20
Speaker 5: know that this can be done when, I think it's
1:12:23
Speaker 5: like 10 or 15% of Bernie Sanders supporters voted for
1:12:26
Speaker 5: Donald Trump.
1:12:26
Speaker 8: Right?
1:12:27
Speaker 4: Right.
1:12:27
Speaker 5: Which tells me, wow, there is someone who speaks both languages.
1:12:31
Speaker 5: Or we don't know what.
1:12:33
Speaker 8: The hell we're doing. On both ends. None of it
1:12:36
Speaker 8: makes any sense.
1:12:37
Speaker 5: That's always a safe bet. Taking that into account, I
1:12:41
Speaker 5: think we can say that as we continue to pathologize,
1:12:46
Speaker 5: the danger ultimately is not just that we will become incomprehensible,
1:12:50
Speaker 5: but that the threat of the other will grow and grow.
1:12:54
Speaker 5: In the end, how we will snap back, you know, how,
1:12:58
Speaker 5: I mean, this is all, I mean, again, not to
1:13:00
Speaker 5: get too political, but charging down the road towards a
1:13:04
Speaker 5: crisis of legitimacy where at some point, basically one half
1:13:07
Speaker 5: of the country goes, you know what? Everything that you
1:13:10
Speaker 5: people do while you're in charge is just BS.
1:13:13
Speaker 4: Right?
1:13:13
Speaker 5: It's just not real.
1:13:15
Speaker 8: I mean, that's kind of what everybody says as soon
1:13:17
Speaker 8: as the other one gets in power. We really don't
1:13:20
Speaker 8: accomplish anything.
1:13:21
Speaker 5: Well, and I predict that it will only accelerate, especially
1:13:23
Speaker 5: since the tools. Like, for instance, the executive order. God,
1:13:26
Speaker 5: what a catastrophe.
1:13:27
Speaker 13: Now that.
1:13:27
Speaker 5: Now what's going to happen when the Democrats are in office,
1:13:30
Speaker 5: which is going to be like the next election? Well,
1:13:32
Speaker 5: they're going to reverse everything with executive orders and put
1:13:34
Speaker 5: in a bunch of new executive orders. We never accomplish anything.
1:13:37
Speaker 5: And the road to never accomplishing anything will get shorter
1:13:39
Speaker 5: and shorter and shorter and shorter. But yeah, so what
1:13:42
Speaker 5: we're seeing there then is a question of how do
1:13:48
Speaker 5: we– and this is actually one of the bigger questions
1:13:51
Speaker 5: that we can ask everyone in the audience and in
1:13:54
Speaker 5: the wider science fiction and fantasy community and everything else.
1:13:57
Speaker 5: What is the vision that can tie us together? What
1:14:00
Speaker 5: is the vision can see past that? I believe we're
1:14:02
Speaker 5: locked in a dead conflict. I think that's what party
1:14:05
Speaker 5: politics do. Party politics say that your options are A
1:14:08
Speaker 5: or B. Party A controls A. Party B controls B, right?
1:14:12
Speaker 5: And so your choices are always going to be defined
1:14:16
Speaker 5: by these two parties and their conflict. And what is
1:14:19
Speaker 5: the point of the conflict? Well, the conflict is going
1:14:20
Speaker 5: to generate more conflict because neither party will ever fully
1:14:23
Speaker 5: supersede the other or erase the other, right? But what
1:14:27
Speaker 5: we're trying to do in our political imagination, and you
1:14:30
Speaker 5: see this in so many decisions, right, is not find
1:14:34
Speaker 5: an option between A and B. It's to create a
1:14:36
Speaker 5: new option that's going to supersede both. Where now we've
1:14:40
Speaker 5: changed the conversation and created something new that is going
1:14:43
Speaker 5: to guide us out of this fight and into a
1:14:46
Speaker 5: future that both sides can at least to some degree embrace.
1:14:50
Speaker 5: So that's a quest for our imagination. And imagination is
1:14:54
Speaker 5: one of the critical things that we need in culture.
1:14:56
Speaker 5: We need it in politics. We need it in religion.
1:14:58
Speaker 5: We need it in everything. It is one of the
1:14:59
Speaker 5: foundational elements of the human person as such. You're not
1:15:03
Speaker 5: a person if you don't imagine. That's not a thing, right?
1:15:07
Speaker 5: So as far as I'm concerned, that's the quest. That's
1:15:10
Speaker 5: the call that you can put out. to fantastical literary figures,
1:15:14
Speaker 5: to fantastical science fiction and fantasy writers on TV, and
1:15:19
Speaker 5: people who want to do these things. What is the
1:15:21
Speaker 5: vision that's going to bring us out of the dead
1:15:24
Speaker 5: conflict and bring us into a living future? That's what
1:15:28
Speaker 5: we're looking to do, and that's the source of our frustration.
1:15:30
Speaker 5: We know we're in a dead place. We know we're
1:15:32
Speaker 5: passing the buck back and forth between two people who
1:15:34
Speaker 5: will never stop. And I'm not talking about abolishing what's
1:15:37
Speaker 5: going on right now. I'm talking about moving forward.
1:15:41
Speaker 8: Changing it into something better.
1:15:44
Speaker 5: Changing into something new changing it into something yeah what.
1:15:47
Speaker 8: Is that going to look like i think that we're
1:15:49
Speaker 8: we're back to the through line through all of this
1:15:51
Speaker 8: through all of our universes kept coming back to hope
1:15:54
Speaker 8: so hopefully that's.
1:15:56
Speaker 10: Where we're headed and i think that's where we need
1:15:59
Speaker 10: to leave.
1:15:59
Speaker 8: You in a hopeful place as you use your imagination
1:16:05
Speaker 8: to get us the hell out of this situation right so.
1:16:08
Speaker 5: So we can stop talking about the last jedi and
1:16:10
Speaker 5: i'll stop telling the same stories every time.
1:16:13
Speaker 8: We will return in a few weeks but but that's
1:16:16
Speaker 8: then the theme of this multi-week story we've been telling
1:16:20
Speaker 8: and hopefully you've taken something from it yeah hope hope
1:16:25
Speaker 8: otherwise that about does it we will return next time
1:16:27
Speaker 8: same geek feed thanks for listening I.
1:16:29
Speaker 15: Would have walked through fire to kiss your lips Do
1:16:34
Speaker 15: you still think about it, of what you did? Still
1:16:38
Speaker 15: see your old apartment like a bad trip Wish I
1:16:43
Speaker 15: could forget all the places.
1:16:46
Speaker 1: We've been Hard and heavy whiskey goodbyes Boy, you know
1:16:52
Speaker 1: how to make a girl cry Was sleeping in a
1:16:57
Speaker 1: bed full of lies And now that I'm older I
1:17:02
Speaker 1: can see why You made me feel high Cause you
1:17:07
Speaker 1: had me so low, low, low You only seemed tall
1:17:11
Speaker 1: Cause you stunted my growth, growth, growth I only wanted
1:17:16
Speaker 1: you cause I couldn't have you now that I know
1:17:19
Speaker 1: That wasn't love, that wasn't love, that was just.
1:17:24
Speaker 12: Hope is another bender I lose control I thought I'd
1:17:48
Speaker 12: get it back when you came back home to me
1:17:51
Speaker 12: darling but I never had it did I your heart's
1:17:54
Speaker 12: a dream and all that magic we felt was just
1:17:59
Speaker 12: a hit hard and heavy whiskey.
1:18:02
Speaker 1: Goodbyes boy you know how to make a girl cry.
1:18:09
Speaker 11: We're sleeping in a bed full of lies Make me
1:18:18
Speaker 11: feel high, cause you had me so low, low, low.
1:18:22
Speaker 11: You only seemed tall, cause you stunted my growth, growth, growth.
1:18:27
Speaker 11: I only wanted you cause I couldn't have you now
1:18:32
Speaker 11: that I know.
1:18:33
Speaker 15: That wasn't love, that wasn't love, that was.
1:18:36
Speaker 5: Just which who knew yeah right it's just i remember
1:19:17
Speaker 5: i remember we both looked at each other had this
1:19:18
Speaker 5: look like.
1:19:19
Speaker 9: This episode is a production of movie meltdown produced and
1:19:22
Speaker 9: edited by The Oddity Studios, with opening music performed by
1:19:26
Speaker 9: The Empires. For more on how to sponsor or support
1:19:28
Speaker 9: the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com.
1:19:31
Speaker 17: Talk hard!
1:19:38
Speaker 8: This program is a proud member of the Battleship Pretension Fleet.