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Critically Acclaimed #353 | The Worst and Most Average Movies of 2025! · Critically Acclaimed Network

0:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello everybody and welcome back to critically acclaimed the movie review podcast where Explosion Welcome to the second part of an episode that was not supposed to be a two-parter We're just um, we tend to go on a bit We do we're actually recording later than we expected to because we got in a row over the film Marty super Yeah, we got these really long spoiler debate about Marty's Supreme which we would have recorded But it was like all spoilers was like all the last five minutes of the movie
0:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, we didn't record it.
0:42
[SPEAKER_04]: That's just the way we talk.
0:43
[SPEAKER_04]: We're just having to show this guy.
0:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd encourage me halfway through the conversation.
0:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe we should be recording this, but I was like, it's all spoilers.
0:49
[SPEAKER_00]: The movie just came out.
0:51
[SPEAKER_00]: They're me coming another day.
0:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But now it's not the time.
0:54
[SPEAKER_00]: My name is William Bibbiani.
0:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a film critic.
0:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I write for the rap and everybody calls me bibb.
0:59
[SPEAKER_00]: My name is Whitney Sybel.
1:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I contribute to slash film.
1:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't have a cute nickname.
1:03
[SPEAKER_00]: That's okay.
1:04
[SPEAKER_00]: My nickname is Nathaniefen that cute.
1:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And last time, on critically claimed,
1:11
[SPEAKER_00]: that we were going to be doing in episode with our picks for the best worst and most average films of 2025.
1:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And then our best of list ended up being three hours long.
1:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So we were like, let's take a pause.
1:28
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's rest our throat.
1:30
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, it was like, we decided to cut it short, even if it was an hour and a half, it's like, it's gonna be a long one.
1:41
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll split it into two pieces.
1:44
[SPEAKER_00]: For those who may not have listened to our best of the year, podcast, I'm going to give you a quick rundown of what we picked and you can listen to all of the details, all of the runners up, all of the debates, because what do you think I did in the green on a lot of these, actually?
1:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Whitney's picks for the best movies of 2025.
2:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think this will also help, because when we talk about the worst movies, it helps to know what we liked as well.
2:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's the reason why I think we should do
2:10
[SPEAKER_00]: worst stuff.
2:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Partly is because it's how we learn, you know, I think a lot of people think worst of giving a worst of list is just punching down being mean.
2:20
[SPEAKER_00]: First off, we typically punch up at like really expensive studio films that like they make more money than we'll ever see in our fucking lives and there's so successful in popular and
2:31
[SPEAKER_00]: really, I'm not super worried about that.
2:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And so consider this, but some people say don't don't make fun of a film because they work so hard on it and they made it.
2:39
[SPEAKER_04]: This fact remains, I gave you money.
2:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
2:42
[SPEAKER_04]: I gave you money to see your movie.
2:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm entitled to my end.
2:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
2:46
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm entitled to, so no matter what you say, no matter what, even if it's a little tiny movie, it's still made it to theaters.
2:52
[SPEAKER_04]: It's still something that I can see that I didn't do.
2:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Completely within my rights to say that is a bad thing.
2:58
[SPEAKER_00]: They made that in the host that we would like it before these show A movie to general audiences.
3:02
[SPEAKER_00]: They do test screenings and they want to know if you don't like it.
3:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah It's useful to them and it should be useful after the fact to say like here's what we didn't like and why we're not here to just dunk
3:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Although if a movie hurt us in some way we may but like we're here to talk about what didn't work and what hopefully we can learn from that in the future so that hopefully future filmmakers Hopefully don't do that so much wouldn't that be nice But I also think that if you're going to talk about the best movies of the year, but you don't talk about what you didn't like you're not giving a full sense of context
3:37
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like, I know some people who say you should only talk about movies that you like.
3:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I completely disagree with that.
3:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I think if you want to actually get to know a filmmaker and their taste and what they think about movies, I'm sorry, film critic, a film critic and what filmmaker do would be nice.
3:52
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you want to get to know a film critic and what they really think about things, you need to understand what they like and dislike.
3:59
[SPEAKER_00]: What you cheer means less if we don't know what you boo and vice versa.
4:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you need to sort of a full spectrum of somebody's taste.
4:08
[SPEAKER_04]: If all you're doing is praising things, then I don't trust your critic.
4:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Sounds like a like a thing.
4:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't it?
4:15
[SPEAKER_04]: If you just like everything, I only go to see movies.
4:17
[SPEAKER_04]: I like, well, how do you know?
4:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And it also sounds like you don't really want to engage with things that you don't like, which means that you're not really engaging in the criticism part too hard.
4:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have a problem with that.
4:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But we're...
4:30
[SPEAKER_00]: We're getting in the weeds.
4:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So for the sake of contacts, in the case of us the last episode, if we just want to remind her.
4:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Whitney's Top 10, this is a no-particular order, except the number one is his pick for the best home of the year.
4:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Was Richard Lanklater's, Jean-Luc Gadard Biopic, Newvel Vogue, Christopher Landon's Hitchcockian thriller drop, Dan Tractionberg's Predator sequel, Predator Badlands.
4:57
[SPEAKER_00]: The World War I queer romance history of sound.
5:03
[SPEAKER_00]: The Rungana Nayoni's dark comedy on becoming a guinea fall.
5:09
[SPEAKER_00]: The bird-watching documentary Listers, a glimpse into extreme bird-watching.
5:15
[SPEAKER_00]: The Brazilian political drama The Secret Agent.
5:21
[SPEAKER_00]: The machinima documentary about actors putting on Hamlet in Grand Theft Auto Online called Grand Theft Hamlet.
5:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Rang Kugler's Vampire Horror Drama Centers, and then lastly Joaquim Trier's Family Drama Sentimental Value.
5:37
[SPEAKER_00]: My picks were the dog-centric horror movie Good Boy, which I think was brilliantly edited.
5:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, I picked Dan Tracks and Berks Predator Badlands.
5:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I picked Wakeup Deadman, a Knives Out Mystery, the horror sequel 28 years later.
5:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Avavikters, extremely sardonic look at trauma, sorry baby.
6:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I also picked listers on the glimpsen to extreme bird watching.
6:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Jafar Panahi's fascinatingly toned Iranian drama slash thriller slash comedy.
6:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just an accident.
6:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I really want to see that one.
6:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Monophastival, historical musical, the testament of Anne Lee, the animated musical K-pop demon hunters, and lastly, Grind Johnson's Vampire Musical Centers.
6:28
[SPEAKER_00]: With that being, again, you can hear us talk about all of that in great detail.
6:31
[SPEAKER_00]: We had some disagreements about some of those.
6:33
[SPEAKER_00]: We had a long list of runners up.
6:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are all in the last episode.
6:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It's time to get into our worst.
6:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, even as we say that we defend the idea of worst of lists, provided you're doing them, right?
6:46
[SPEAKER_00]: We also don't feel the need to dwell for three hours on this, so our worst of lists are going to be shorter.
6:50
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to do our five worst films.
6:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, of the year, and then we're going to follow that with just for the sake of being a completionist, the averageist film of the year.
7:04
[SPEAKER_00]: The most, the most mediocre, the platonic idea of a film that is neither good nor bad, it just kind of was.
7:14
[SPEAKER_00]: When we say it's above average, we mean better than this, and when we say below average, we mean worse than this.
7:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Was there a film this year that was just middle of the road and we will save that for last because I think that's fun On that note, Whitney.
7:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, we always when we do our lists start with you and again We remind you our lists are not in order.
7:39
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not ranked except our number one pick is our pick for the very worst film of the year.
7:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes I'm gonna start with a TV movie.
7:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I came out back in January
7:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, that's actually a part of science fiction series that I'm very fond of.
7:57
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to be talking about Star Trek, Section 31.
8:00
[SPEAKER_04]: I forgot about that, actually.
8:04
[SPEAKER_04]: So bad.
8:04
[SPEAKER_04]: It's so bad I did a commentary track for a solo commentary track.
8:08
[SPEAKER_04]: You can listen to it on our Patreon.
8:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I know someone who worked on this movie.
8:14
[SPEAKER_00]: His name isn't even look right.
8:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's any more as work was dramatically rewritten, but your friend worked on it when it was still intended to be a TV series.
8:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
8:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I still consider that to be a close enough connection that I wasn't comfortable criticizing it in any sort of depth.
8:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So if I said to say, I also think it's quite bad.
8:30
[SPEAKER_00]: That's quite bad.
8:31
[SPEAKER_00]: But I will leave it then.
8:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to let you just take one point.
8:34
[SPEAKER_04]: In 20s, I guess we can go back to 2009, and when Star Trek was sort of like, it'd run out.
8:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks to the arc seems to be in my mind, thanks to 9-11.
8:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Star Trek didn't really have a place in the pop culture firm and maintaining more.
8:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Star Trek Enterprise debuted two weeks after 9.11.
9:00
[SPEAKER_04]: And it was trying to sell this notoriously peaceful franchise.
9:06
[SPEAKER_04]: about reaching out to enemies and smoothing over war efforts right in this time when everybody was confused and had a lot of violence on their mind and a lot of a lot of public culture was not gearing toward war protest but war encouragement.
9:20
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, the sort of we'll put a boot in your ass.
9:23
[SPEAKER_04]: right if you're not if you're not pro war right now you're anti-american that's the road test the whole George W. Bush administration start right didn't really have a place in that they could have turned it into a very sharply critical
9:37
[SPEAKER_04]: anti-George debut bush of polimic they didn't really go with that they tried to try to make it more like just regular star trek and it just was falling apart.
9:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Well also they did right after that a year after 9-11 they really star trek Nemesis which I'm sure was in production long before but it does feel like
10:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Action movie version of star track that just felt like they were moving further and further away from the premise in order to try to Get some of those blockbuster movie dollars.
10:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, as opposed to being track some with you on that And then JJ Abrams came along and well, that's had a different take on it.
10:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm a
10:20
[SPEAKER_04]: It's no wonder that when Star Trek came along and was successful, it looked more like Star Wars.
10:26
[SPEAKER_04]: It was a lot more action, there was a lot more passion, there was a lot more violence and a lot less heavy.
10:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, not a lot of philosophy, not a lot of like, it's an alternate timeline, yeah, but what's the concept here?
10:37
[SPEAKER_04]: What are you exploring with this Star Trek mode?
10:39
[SPEAKER_04]: What are you trying to say?
10:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Not a lot really.
10:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And I like that movie, but it's not pretty good.
10:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And I came to that because Alex Kurtzman was one of the screenwriters of the Star Trek movies since 2009.
10:52
[SPEAKER_04]: People say JJ Abrams, the director, was sort of like the mastermind, but Kurtzman was the one who was really kind of carrying the torch for this.
10:58
[SPEAKER_04]: You made Star Trek into Darkness a couple of years later, that's a terrible film.
11:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, it is.
11:03
[SPEAKER_04]: It took a lot of the language and I canography from Star Trek to the wrath of Con, but like her reworked it in that kind of bitter action milieu until it was in like a double revenge movie because Con and another character both wanted revenge.
11:16
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea, the wrath of Khan was like the first like really super popular Star Trek movie and it was a little bit more action oriented but really what it was more is conflict oriented.
11:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
11:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But the conflict was between someone who was motivated by revenge and violence versus Starfleet who were not.
11:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
11:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the riff on it, they did on Star Trek into darkness.
11:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone is motivated by revenge and violence.
11:43
[SPEAKER_00]: There wasn't actually
11:45
[SPEAKER_00]: sort of a moral conf, like to everyone was kind of on the same page as wanting to hurt people because they're angry.
11:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the entire thing just came across as two dimensional and dark for its own sake.
11:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, it was not sophisticated in the least, and you can tell that Alex Kurtzman however, doesn't like Star Trek.
12:06
[SPEAKER_04]: He doesn't like this idea of conflict free future.
12:09
[SPEAKER_04]: He likes the idea.
12:10
[SPEAKER_00]: He would disagree with you about whether or not he liked Star Trek.
12:13
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think he, I think what he likes about it is not what's at the core of it.
12:18
[SPEAKER_04]: No, he's not so fond of those concepts that are in the middle of Star Trek.
12:22
[SPEAKER_04]: I think he likes the, he likes Wrath of Khan.
12:26
[SPEAKER_04]: He likes stories that have Doomsday Machines and Actions Sequences.
12:30
[SPEAKER_00]: To be fair, the original series did have an episode called Doomsday Machine.
12:34
[SPEAKER_00]: This is true.
12:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that wasn't there.
12:37
[SPEAKER_00]: That was in the sixth year, and you were so serious made some missteps that even Jean Roddenberry, backtracked on, and it's like, that's not what I meant.
12:47
[SPEAKER_00]: That was the wrong tone, and they fixed it.
12:49
[SPEAKER_00]: They found itself over time, but by the time it got to Kirk's minute, we knew what Star Trek was at its core, even though one of the best things about it is that it's malleable.
12:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think the point you're trying to reach here is that, well, that
13:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Neo Trek was being leaned into violence a lot more, leaned into a lot of action cliches and you can tell with Section 31, Alex Grossman, who didn't write or direct?
13:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, you can tell, though, that they wanted to make essentially, like, a Kaper movie with Star Trek, I canography and aliens in it.
13:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
13:39
[SPEAKER_04]: So, Star Trek had done before, at least on an episode once in a while.
13:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Once in a while.
13:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
13:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And when it's not, not Star Trek.
13:46
[SPEAKER_04]: And when it's an episodic show, you can do, like, one episode that's a little bit of a Kaper and it's kind of a light-larfe.
13:51
[SPEAKER_04]: That's fine.
13:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
13:52
[SPEAKER_00]: They did it.
13:53
[SPEAKER_00]: They did it.
13:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but it meant something.
13:58
[SPEAKER_04]: They were trying to, no, you don't understand.
13:59
[SPEAKER_04]: They were trying to save deep space nights, patterns out of the buff, the transporter buffers, because they were stuck in there, and they were manifesting on the hollow surface.
14:06
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, I'm not talking about the James Bond episodes.
14:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm talking about the Kruna episode, where we have to save the one holodeck who's a deep consciousness by robbing a casino.
14:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
14:19
[SPEAKER_04]: We have to keep Vick Fontaine alive.
14:21
[SPEAKER_00]: The last episodes of that show, and they made time for that.
14:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, like they're in the middle of a war at that point in the show.
14:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Nope, I don't know, for Casino High's in a holiday.
14:30
[SPEAKER_00]: We're really there should be no doubt that.
14:32
[SPEAKER_04]: So I don't have issues with action being in Star Trek every once in a while.
14:37
[SPEAKER_04]: So long as it's just part of a larger tapestry, with Section 31, that's all they wanted to do.
14:43
[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, that seems like everything Alex Kurtzman wants to do is to turn it into sort of an action franchise.
14:49
[SPEAKER_04]: And so he took this concept from Star Trek, Section 31, which I hate, by the way, the idea that the utopia that we all love in this future that where everything is actually devoted to diplomacy and positivism requires a secret
15:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And the idea that that might briefly have existed and then we realized it was a bad idea and did away with it.
15:18
[SPEAKER_00]: That makes sense as a Star Trek story.
15:21
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea that they've been around for really long time and they're absolutely at the core of how Starfleet and the Federation stays alive as really fun.
15:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
15:32
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, they came up with this premise, section 31, the spy organization, led by a cannibal Hitler essentially.
15:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Cannibal Hitler.
15:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Cannibal Space Hitler.
15:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, who knows martial arts?
15:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Who knows martial arts?
15:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Of course, of course Yeah, she's not all bad.
15:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Who is murdered untold millions of people Teaming up with this rag tag band of misfits.
15:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there's a guy with like a machine exoskeleton This is a cool concept.
16:03
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a micro it's hyper intelligent microorganism Palating a human suit.
16:07
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that was kind of a neat idea.
16:09
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, they don't
16:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Do enough with it, I think, but the premise was There was like the sexy seductress character There was killed immediately, which is a no, I was like I was that because that was a character That was the killing the alien species that persists can bought a play Delta in in Star Trek the motion picture and we've never seen them since so I was like Oh, we're probably gonna get to really hang out with adults and then find out.
16:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, they're done.
16:32
[SPEAKER_04]: No, she gets a vaporized
16:33
[SPEAKER_04]: We also got a Kamaloid, which was the mom's character from Star Trek 6.
16:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's correct.
16:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
16:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Played, played, played character.
16:43
[SPEAKER_04]: And there was one Starfleet officer to make sure it's all Star Trek.
16:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Admittedly, that was a cool idea for what character to put in there.
16:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, it wasn't because now the timeline doesn't really sink up for the lab.
16:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't have to not sink it.
16:57
[SPEAKER_00]: There's an important character from a classic episode of Star Trek the next generation who died heroically, but we never really knew anything else about here and the idea of this prequel series is that if- because I think this is originally intended to be a pilot for at least a back door pilot for a series.
17:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it just did well, we might do more.
17:15
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea of spending time with her before she did that is kind of cool.
17:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I was interested in her as a character, that was kind of neat, but yeah, it didn't work out.
17:25
[SPEAKER_00]: This meant by once really hard to be guarding to the galaxy.
17:27
[SPEAKER_04]: It wants to be guarding to the galaxy.
17:28
[SPEAKER_04]: It wants to be like border lands, which is a weird thing, because Jimmy Lake Curtis isn't both.
17:35
[SPEAKER_04]: She wasn't the protection of 31.
17:37
[SPEAKER_04]: I think she was the narrator and the cheddar clamor.
17:40
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm guessing they brought her in because she was just in everything everywhere all at once with Michelle Yeah, yeah, that makes sense Michelle.
17:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, it's Jamie.
17:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Jamie.
17:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I think they're just handing out page X I will say this.
17:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I will say this.
17:55
[SPEAKER_00]: If you can get Jamie Lee Curtis you get Jamie Lee Curtis And she was even good.
17:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Ella McKay Sock We may or may not be talking about that in a few minutes.
18:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not her fault.
18:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she was great in it
18:09
[SPEAKER_04]: The plot is very boring.
18:11
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a narration at the beginning that says that the film is about Destiny, but it's not about destiny in the least.
18:18
[SPEAKER_04]: None of those themes are actually revisited.
18:20
[SPEAKER_04]: It is about a race to get a doomsday device from somebody who wants revenge, which is the most cliché boring thing.
18:27
[SPEAKER_04]: And you can tell they're trying to save it in editing by the number of weird edits and like
18:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just, the color timing is not very easy to look at.
18:45
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks really rushed.
18:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just watching because I'm about to go on a, as of this recording, I'm about to go on a screen dress podcast about the films of Paul W. It's Anderson.
18:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I was rewatching some of them and I was rewatching a final, sorry, resident evil, the final chapter.
19:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, his earlier resident evil movies were bright and colorful and had like really pretty shots And I mean they're they're they're nonsense, but they're put together well like they're they're good-looking movies And then for the last one he was just like fuck it everything is brown and hard to see I'm gonna shoot everything that's at night as low-level light as possible So you can't tell if the fuck is going on.
19:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, what happened to you, man?
19:25
[SPEAKER_00]: He used to be well, not cool
19:28
[SPEAKER_00]: You used to be used to be able to see what you were doing.
19:31
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, you want something like, uh, event horizon.
19:34
[SPEAKER_04]: I feel my like better than you.
19:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, a lot better than me, guys.
19:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Do not like that.
19:38
[SPEAKER_04]: I do like event horizon.
19:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the connection to sign and I love Sam Neil.
19:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I was going to say, at the very least, we've been agreed that it has some pretty cool production.
19:45
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks cool.
19:47
[SPEAKER_00]: It just, it claims to be about, like, fear.
19:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And it doesn't understand fear at all.
19:52
[SPEAKER_04]: We did a commentary track about that, and we came to the conclusion, it's what you call High-Octane Horror, which is a very niche It's a very nice way of saying it's horror, but it's not scary It's horror with like, it's an action film with like horror clothing It's a horror movie you can watch at a frat house in the middle of a party Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's different, but
20:15
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, section 31.
20:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not gonna go into detail, but I did not particularly care for it either I think that I'd glad you picked it.
20:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, oh, I have, oh god.
20:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought I knew what I was gonna pick on here I am going to go, okay
20:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to pick Elamicae, but that's just because it's a good segue, not because I think it's one of the five words from here.
20:44
[SPEAKER_04]: So if I'm fighting that instinct, you can't just say I thought Elamicae was perhaps among the worst.
20:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it will be on the runner's app list.
20:51
[SPEAKER_00]: That's for sure.
20:52
[SPEAKER_00]: But I want to say, for I also have a sequel.
20:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I also have a sequel on my list, and it is the sequel to an incredibly successful movie
21:08
[SPEAKER_00]: got a bunch of awards and award nominations and a lot of people were really looking forward to it only to find out.
21:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, it was wicked for good.
21:19
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm glad to pick that.
21:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I do not like these wicked movies.
21:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I like the first one.
21:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Fine.
21:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't love it.
21:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was fine.
21:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it worked.
21:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I did it work brilliantly.
21:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Was it one of the best ones of that year?
21:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Hell no.
21:32
[SPEAKER_00]: But the first half of Wicked and again, these are revisionist takes on the Wizard of Oz.
21:38
[SPEAKER_00]: The first half takes place before the Wizard of Oz.
21:41
[SPEAKER_00]: The second half takes place mostly during the Wizard of Oz.
21:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's just stuff we didn't see because we're.
21:46
[SPEAKER_00]: in the wicked for good we're not following Dorothy.
21:50
[SPEAKER_00]: But in the first half we need Elf about the witch before she was allegedly wicked.
21:56
[SPEAKER_00]: We see that she met a new the good witch Blinda in school because of course they went to a Hogwarts type situation.
22:05
[SPEAKER_00]: although I do believe wicked the book predates Harry Potter specifically the book came out 95 so yes that The movie may be evoking this but the original premise now although the idea of a magic school was old even then the worst witch
22:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And we got to, you know what, I think, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are fun performers and I think they're both great singers and all the best great singers and all the best songs are on the first half.
22:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So even if you find the actual push me pull you of the relationship and all of the awkward prequelites setting up stuff that's a board later on, here's why she changed her name from Gullin that to Gullin that.
22:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Who cares?
22:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You made the gullanda thing up.
22:54
[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't even have to do that at all.
22:55
[SPEAKER_00]: You forced that in there.
22:57
[SPEAKER_00]: But whatever, I was able to get with it because there was a pretty strong relationship and the songs were really good.
23:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And that got me through it and I thought it was fine.
23:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the second half, what's a really academic way for saying shit's the bed?
23:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Like just, just shits the bed academically.
23:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, trips in the final race against Atalanta.
23:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
23:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Ah, so this is Boulder just rolls over him.
23:30
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know what I mean?
23:31
[SPEAKER_00]: You can push in the Boulder.
23:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
23:33
[SPEAKER_00]: We can forget as the Boulder rolling down the hill.
23:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we cut to a little while later, and then we get to see Elfaba, the witch, trying to stop the evil wizard doing a piss-poor job of it at every turn.
23:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And then for no good justifiable reason, suddenly tempted to just hang out with him and be his friend For an entire song, yeah, none of that tracks that doesn't make it and I know a lot of this is in the original play The second half of the original play also sucks.
24:07
[SPEAKER_00]: They could have changed it to make it better.
24:08
[SPEAKER_00]: They chose not to
24:12
[SPEAKER_04]: It's so much as rushed in this movie.
24:15
[SPEAKER_04]: There seems where they cycle very well.
24:17
[SPEAKER_04]: It's really long.
24:18
[SPEAKER_04]: It's so quickly.
24:19
[SPEAKER_02]: So much time.
24:20
[SPEAKER_04]: They could have just let the scenes play.
24:23
[SPEAKER_04]: There was a scene in the middle.
24:24
[SPEAKER_04]: The Tim Woodman scene was the one that really got to me.
24:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Because there's a scene where she has to sneak into her sister's office and introduce herself and then be caught and there'd for there to be a misunderstanding and also for her to
24:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Cast a spell on her sister that gets her very happy very briefly and then take it away Which makes her very sad and vengeful all in one scene by the way.
24:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this isn't the plot of the whole movie It's like a five minute sequence and also accidentally the sky that her sister is in love with but hates her It gets his heart removed by a magic spell.
24:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and the only cast of magic spell and Elfaba has to like undo the magic spell by turning her into the
25:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and he leaves as the tinwood me like breaks down the door like in the shining and he's like I'm a homicidal maniac now and I will be back later in the film briefly
25:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Something will happen, I think.
25:21
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time all the Dorothy stuff starts coming in and again, 99% of that is off camera, nothing is tracking.
25:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Like nothing, just on a nuts and bolts level, no 10 women joke intended.
25:34
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like a bit where the scarecrow.
25:37
[SPEAKER_00]: We see how the scarecrow came to be.
25:39
[SPEAKER_00]: it let's be honest there he was always crucified in a cornfield that was always a thing but here we explain why he was specifically crucified fine but we find out that like he was put in that cornfield like an hour after Dorothy pasted on her way to the Emerald city they never would have met these are little things but
25:56
[SPEAKER_00]: You're the one who made it about that minutia.
26:00
[SPEAKER_04]: And so if he's on her way this whole film, so it's like we're speed-wrupped in the background we're speed-running in the boss.
26:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And everything stops tracking in the slightest.
26:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the wizard really wanted Elfabuzz Magic Spellbook.
26:13
[SPEAKER_00]: That was what he wanted her, but she can read it.
26:15
[SPEAKER_00]: But in the failing that, he wants her magic spellbook.
26:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he never even mentions that.
26:19
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, bring me the witch's broom to prove that she's dead.
26:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like,
26:23
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not what you wanted, if you were going off of what happened in Wicked, the organic plot point would be you want the spell bug, but you're just beholden to what happened on the Wizard of Oz, so nothing is tracking here.
26:34
[SPEAKER_00]: The lion, the cowardly lion, has to go to the wizard and ask for his courage.
26:39
[SPEAKER_00]: When according to Wicked, the lion knows damn well that the wizard
26:44
[SPEAKER_00]: hates talking animals and wants them all to Dior be enslaved.
26:50
[SPEAKER_00]: So why would a cowardly lion go to his fucking house?
26:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything starts falling apart and then the things that are supposed to sort of work on a dramatic level just stop working like the the romance between Elfaba and the handsome hunky dude Yeah, by that one handsome hunky dude handsome mcunker handsome mcunker.
27:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's the sexiest man in the world according to people magazine handsome mcunker
27:20
[SPEAKER_00]: they finally have a scene together where they're like a lawn and their love will be consummated and it has like
27:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen hallmark movies with more sexual chemistry like unbridled sexual chemistry.
27:36
[SPEAKER_00]: These people do not look like they want to buy it and I get it.
27:39
[SPEAKER_00]: It really life probably not, it's called acting.
27:43
[SPEAKER_00]: You should have done some of it and it doesn't track nothing, tracks, nothing works.
27:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything feels rushed and everything takes too long.
27:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything is overly thought out and nothing makes sense.
27:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And it bears this really kind of obnoxiously over-polish and over-design that only certain filmmakers can pull it off if they really believe in it.
28:07
[SPEAKER_04]: You look at something like anything by Tim Burton.
28:10
[SPEAKER_04]: He can pull that kind of weird gothic carnival steampunk.
28:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Even in his worst movies.
28:16
[SPEAKER_04]: They usually look good.
28:19
[SPEAKER_04]: It didn't work quite as well, but it works better in poor things than it did in Wicked.
28:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Wicked, they're just trying to make it look like it's a year ago.
28:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a month-long movie.
28:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
28:27
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not Tim Burton.
28:28
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
28:29
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm trying to like other filmmakers that kind of have tried this sort of thing.
28:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And I feel like there have been a lot of big blockbusters that try to over stuff these things.
28:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Some of the leader Harry Potter movie.
28:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Like the fantastic beast movies for dinner.
28:42
[SPEAKER_04]: They're trying to make everything look so ornate that it just starts to wash over you after a while.
28:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Nothing, we can't look at anything long enough to really appreciate it.
28:49
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's just this big, vorkoco mass.
28:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, I agree.
28:53
[SPEAKER_00]: There's bits in wicked that I think look cool.
28:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I like the design of the ten woods.
28:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think he looks neat.
28:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there's, it's not like a total wash. A lot of talented people worked on it.
29:02
[SPEAKER_00]: The songs are sung reasonably well, but the new ones make no impression whatsoever.
29:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And the old ones aren't really the best either.
29:10
[SPEAKER_00]: It just doesn't work.
29:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And it sucks because I feel like,
29:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually when you plan these kinds of motion picture events are going to shoot multiple films at once, there's at least a consistency of quality to them.
29:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I know not everyone loves the Lord of the Whitney doesn't love the Lord of the Rings, but they're consistent, you know, they feel like they're all of a piece.
29:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you get something like, you know, the two wicked movies or it and it's chapter two.
29:37
[SPEAKER_00]: which is just all of a sudden you go from a pretty damn scary children fighting a demon clown horror movie to a truly bizarre, weirdly humorous, awkwardly structured
29:55
[SPEAKER_00]: like adults fighting a demon clown movie and to be fair they're hamstrung by like stuff that happened in the novel because the novel doesn't make any sense at that point but also the added ship that made it worse like you you have an opportunity to fix problems in an adaptation and I understand that there is an mentality especially if something is popular is wicked to just adhere to the material right
30:23
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what, didn't adhere to the material?
30:25
[SPEAKER_00]: The Wizard of Oz, the 1939 movie.
30:29
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason we're here, because we're not doing the book.
30:33
[SPEAKER_00]: No, we're very clearly invoked.
30:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you had to change the color of the slippers for legal reasons, but we're doing the movie.
30:39
[SPEAKER_00]: All the iconography is from the film.
30:41
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea that the,
30:42
[SPEAKER_00]: the witch has green skin is from Margaret Hamilton.
30:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a lot of the stuff that we take for granted about the Wizard of Oz is from the movie because that ended up superseding the book in popularity.
30:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And it did that despite being a pretty damned unfaithful version of that story.
31:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it hit many of the bullet points, but it changed a lot.
31:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So, it's actually not faithful to do a facial adaptation.
31:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think the lesson we can learn here is a, you're gonna make money no matter where we fucking do.
31:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So b, make it good.
31:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Make it good.
31:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Try a little, just, I give you permission to adapt it.
31:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just add to it in the hopes that your new songs will get an Oscar nomination, adapt it.
31:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Make it function, fix a problem.
31:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Have a new idea, fuck it, have fun.
31:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
31:41
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what the Wizard of Oz did.
31:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, that movie is incredibly lucrative and not nearly as good as the original and I know a lot of you will don't even like that.
31:49
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
31:49
[SPEAKER_04]: What's your next pick?
31:51
[SPEAKER_04]: My next pick is a speaking of punching up.
31:53
[SPEAKER_04]: A really expensive movie.
31:55
[SPEAKER_04]: It's another legacy sequel.
31:56
[SPEAKER_04]: It's another big blockbuster.
31:57
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm talking about Tron Aries.
31:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's not very good as it is.
32:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Tron Aries is one of those frustrating science fiction movies that dangles a few interesting notions in front of me and then like,
32:09
[SPEAKER_00]: shoves them up it's nose like it's like hey you want to candy oh here's here's a pez brick oh it's not my favorite candy but sure I'll have oh now it's in your nostril now I definitely don't want it when I was a kid and my brother and I were arguing over like oh who wants to last hmm cupcake or whatever yeah for a long time he would spit on it and say like you want it now and after a while I
32:39
[SPEAKER_00]: that's what we're doing.
32:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow, yeah.
32:41
[SPEAKER_04]: So, yeah, so Disney served up a big cupcake with spit on it, drawn area, and this blew my mind when I looked it up, but drawn areas is further from Tron.
32:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
32:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Come on, 1982.
32:54
[SPEAKER_04]: then the original Tron was from the invention of the very first electronic computers.
32:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
32:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, we come that far and yet the story has become just that much more stultifying.
33:05
[SPEAKER_00]: It's less interesting as a story, like the original Tron, for those of you who may not have seen it, or if it's been a while, it's kind of a staggy film in some ways.
33:14
[SPEAKER_00]: They had to like be really rigid about the way that they filmed it because they had to
33:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, these are very well-fected.
33:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they have the plan, the effects and advance, and they couldn't change them and post the way you can now.
33:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So, whatever you did, you were stuck with.
33:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, the movies, the pacing's weird, but the premise is, we've invented computer programs.
33:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Those computer programs, like in a Pixar movie, are alive, have sentience, but they think of the people who programmed them as gods.
33:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so a human gets digitized and put into the computer and it starts kind of like this Messiah narrative, which unlike a lot of Messiah narratives and stories, it's chosen one crap.
33:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, something to it, like something kind of interesting, you have this kind of Frankenstein mentality to it.
33:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Good ideas not particularly well explored, but good ideas, and it's very interesting looking film.
34:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, Tron Legacy came out nearly 30 years later, and I think you expanded on those ideas and that's a really fucking pretty film.
34:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And it has a great fucking score has a great soundtrack.
34:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I feel like it had some interesting ideas in it That I want it we should have like followed through a little bit more science fiction.
34:20
[SPEAKER_00]: You sort of wait follow those things They're logical extrem right that's what I want to see from a lot of these but what we're talking about with those other two Tron movies are here are films with interesting ideas and interesting visuals that just didn't explore him great and with Tron Aries We have interesting visuals sometimes
34:36
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something, and that's kind of it.
34:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a good score.
34:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's a good score.
34:40
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a good score.
34:41
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's it.
34:42
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have interesting ideas anymore.
34:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Those interesting ideas have been flattened too.
34:45
[SPEAKER_00]: What if we made super soldiers?
34:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
34:48
[SPEAKER_04]: So there's this miracle technology in Tron.
34:52
[SPEAKER_04]: That can...
34:53
[SPEAKER_04]: They can literally manifest like fully powered war machines out of thin air.
34:58
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like a replicator that can create a whole tank and soldiers to go inside of it.
35:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Like these machine soldiers that look like humans.
35:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, if the idea is if you can digitize a human being and put them in a computer, can you do the opposite?
35:10
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the premise of trying it.
35:11
[SPEAKER_00]: You started with something that could be interesting.
35:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And then, but it all becomes a race for a McGuffin because it's all about the plot.
35:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Once these things are out in the real world, they can only live so long before they just start breaking down again, so they need what they call a permanent code.
35:25
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not sure what a code is going to do about the physical materials.
35:28
[SPEAKER_04]: What are they made out of, exactly?
35:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, is Jack.
35:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, is he fucking out of gas?
35:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Is he flushing blood?
35:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Is he like that that blue glop that Sid 6.7 was in the movie Virtuosity?
35:39
[SPEAKER_04]: I love it.
35:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so cool.
35:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Virtuosity is so much fucking better than Tronaries.
35:45
[SPEAKER_04]: It is the better version of Tronaries.
35:46
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not that good.
35:47
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just really fun.
35:49
[SPEAKER_04]: It's it's and you got good actors in it too.
35:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, to me fair
35:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Greta Lee is in this, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she's the actor, she
36:15
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... that we need to make a whole story about to go go go as far as like childhood and go full-art through sea Clark with us now yeah they run out of ideas and make it just about we have the only this for thirty minutes so they keep creating them and sending them after our heroes and i'm just like hey heroes
36:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Drive 30 minutes that way I've never been one minutes out of town You're going to time in the world to solve your problems You need to worry about this shit anymore I've invented this really ridiculous panic that undermines everything because any halfway Intelligent person in the audience is out thinking characters who are literally supposed to be super geniuses and that's not a great starting place
36:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's also the question of motivation, the main character, the Aries character, the one played by Jared Leta was like a security program.
37:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
37:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And well, it stars Jared Leta.
37:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if he's playing him.
37:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Weirdly not I know Jared let us in a great actor.
37:12
[SPEAKER_00]: He's he's been good in a few things in the past and we've been He's been kind of coasting on that for a while, but like he's not fuck if he this is him trying Yeah, I think we're done with Jared let out.
37:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think we need his movies don't make money And he hasn't been good in a while.
37:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
37:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why that is there are theories out there
37:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not touching that with the 10-foot fucking pole right now.
37:38
[SPEAKER_00]: You can look that shit up yourself, but on top of it all, he's not even giving a good performance.
37:43
[SPEAKER_04]: No, he's supposed to be mechanical, but he's mechanical in a way that doesn't make the character appealing.
37:49
[SPEAKER_00]: No, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's
37:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Bruce Botsley there has a personality, and that entire character was like one megabyte of data, at most.
38:08
[SPEAKER_00]: You're telling you this incredibly sophisticated program, the best it can do is Jared Leto, in terms of personality, they had personality before.
38:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Then Tron Legacy, they had personality.
38:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do they stop now?
38:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Because they got Jared Leto.
38:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And everyone had to match that tone.
38:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And that doesn't fucking work.
38:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're doing this Legacy's sequel that is playing into our familiarity with at least passingly with what Tron was before, but you're not doing it.
38:35
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not in the Tron universe or everything looks really fucking cool for more than a quarter of the movie at most.
38:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're stuck in a real world which isn't very interesting, full of characters who aren't very interesting, with a plot that's basically ticking clock but to who gives a shit.
38:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh no, we'll Jared Leto get to be a real boy.
38:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care.
39:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope not.
39:02
[SPEAKER_00]: We're better off without it.
39:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why we need him right now.
39:07
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
39:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really just sloppily put together.
39:10
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not really put together.
39:11
[SPEAKER_04]: The one thing that got to me was the Jared Little character wants to escape the computer and be a real boy in the real world.
39:19
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
39:20
[SPEAKER_04]: It's never, I don't.
39:22
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know what advantage he gets from that because and then when he dies after he Uts, you can only live for 30 minutes in the real world.
39:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, but you're kind of immortal You die and you're just transported back into the mainframe Which is your home turf anyway, and there's an entire world in there Because it's entire city.
39:39
[SPEAKER_04]: What is his motivation to go into the real world?
39:41
[SPEAKER_04]: It doesn't get anything out of it
39:43
[SPEAKER_04]: He even listens to music while he's in the computer.
39:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, okay, he gets to interact with an organic being.
39:48
[SPEAKER_00]: He gets to listen to DePesh mode.
39:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a big plot point about like, how like, why do you like DePesh mode more than, I forget, Beethoven or Mozart or what those guys, and he was like, I don't know, I just do.
39:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And someone else says, and that's how you know your human, because you're not capable of articulating your taste and art.
40:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sitting here, like, you show your showing this to a room full of physics.
40:08
[SPEAKER_00]: We're like literally our job as humans is to figure this out.
40:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can tell you why I like I can tell you why I don't like try and airy Why so I don't like try and airy's but like if you tell me like here's a here's a great high-falutin work of art And here is something that is less appreciated than I'm kind of the patch mode is pretty cool Like I don't think a lot of people saying the patch mode sucks.
40:29
[SPEAKER_04]: I think too much modes of sweet-ass battle.
40:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I like
40:32
[SPEAKER_00]: There's better than Mozart, that's a stretch, but they're really good, but like if you want it to come up with, hey William, why did you like White House down, but not Hammett?
40:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I could explain that to you.
40:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, we're not going to get in the conversation right now because I'll take another three hours, but I could do it.
40:55
[SPEAKER_00]: That insulting to humanity, that we cannot, that the definition of humanity is to be in our ticket.
41:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and reminds me of the end of the emoji movie where the point of the emoji movie is that to a younger generation the idea of communicating anything at all is too much to ask for it Yeah, they need they need the emoji to communicate and they need an emoji that communicates literally everything all at once because they don't know how to talk Yes, and I'm like that's not good man.
41:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I should not be the fucking happy ending goal Yes, I quote sweet sound track though
41:34
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
42:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know, they didn't turn out great or maybe they were like stuck in development hell so long that they kind of lost the thread of what made it work, um, and that's always disappointing.
42:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you see everyone's in a while, a film from a filmmaker who's done a lot of great movies, or at least a lot of competent movies.
42:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And you don't know how it got this bad, like it feels literally incompetent and I have to talk about Barry Levinson's The Elton Knights Oh, I didn't see the Elton.
42:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I had a chance to watch it on an airplane, which seems like the right place to see
42:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, the Alto Nights, directed by Barry Levinson, the director of Rain Man, Diner, uh, good director.
42:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I think he did Bugsie before, another gangster picture of memory serves.
42:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, yeah.
42:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
42:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Good one, but I haven't seen it in many years.
42:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's written by Nicholas Pelleggi, who wrote Goodfellis.
43:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, wow.
43:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
43:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Holy shit.
43:03
[SPEAKER_00]: We're doing real good here, right?
43:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Who does it star?
43:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Robert De Niro.
43:07
[SPEAKER_00]: as a real life gangster, Frank Costello, holy shit, that's pretty fucking cool.
43:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Who is his co-star?
43:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Robert De Niro, as a real life gangster, Vito Gena Faisy, is there a reason for this casting?
43:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Are they like brothers or some of that?
43:24
[SPEAKER_00]: No, they're not.
43:27
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no reason for that.
43:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And I suppose you could argue that the reason is because
43:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never seen Robert De Niro act opposite, Robert De Niro.
43:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose, yeah.
43:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Could we be perhaps, be giving him an opportunity to late in his career if it feels like he's already done everything, do something new and fresh?
43:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Could we be maybe exploring how these two characters are two sides of the same coin?
43:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean we could have done those things.
43:58
[SPEAKER_00]: We chose not to, because Robert De Niro is weirdly inert, especially when he's playing Frank Costello.
44:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So the idea is, these were two gangsters, they were contemporaries.
44:10
[SPEAKER_00]: One of whom ended up being outside the United States when World War II broke out and wasn't able to come back that whole time.
44:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So Franco Stelo rose to prominence and power in that time.
44:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And when Vitho Genevazi came back, he was like, hey, give me half of that.
44:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, I don't want to start a war.
44:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, man, whatever.
44:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Vitho Genevazi is kind of a...
44:34
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of a rabid dog, you know, the Joe Pescian good fellow is kind of character, it's like kind of goes with his god, going to get everyone killed eventually and Frank Hustello is really laid back to the point where I for a while I was worried about Robert De Niro.
44:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, he's so laid back, it looks like Robert De Niro forgot his lines.
44:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
44:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like weird.
44:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And if he wasn't like super into playing Vito Genevase, I would have genuinely been worried.
45:03
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not good as Vito Genevase, but he's at least into it.
45:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So that proves that he's doing the Frank Estella thing on purpose.
45:10
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a bad call.
45:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
45:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Because when they're like playing off of each other, like in the same scene, it's like,
45:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, you know, like sleepy time, Keanu Reeves, sleepy time, Keanu Reeves.
45:25
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, like we're gonna raise this really as just sort of there, man?
45:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, you know?
45:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But, and then he's playing office at like wacko Warner.
45:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're just like, this is not a, this combo doesn't fit.
45:36
[SPEAKER_00]: This doesn't work.
45:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we have this really, the polite words I think to use would be eclectic editing style.
45:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's really...
45:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really just genuinely confusing, and I can watch movies for a living.
45:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen a lot of different editing styles I've seen cutting between different timelines.
45:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen cutting between different planes of existence.
46:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen movies where you don't realize you're looking at different times.
46:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all the very end, and then it all clicks into place.
46:07
[SPEAKER_00]: You can do all kinds of things with the magic of editing.
46:11
[SPEAKER_00]: But in Alto Nights,
46:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It opens with Vito Genevase, sending someone to shoot Robert De Niro, and then we cut back to earlier.
46:21
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we get here?
46:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And about halfway through the movie, I realized we were no longer in a flashback and we hadn't been for a while.
46:31
[SPEAKER_00]: There's just, there's not a lot of clear distinct visual markers here to delineate the passage of time, and when we are before and after key events.
46:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, there really kinda picks up a little bit at the end.
46:44
[SPEAKER_00]: There is this one fascinating, historical tidbit about a time when Frank Costello tried to have, kind of like a family reunion of Mafioso's, it all in one place at one time, and it went really fucking bad in a way that's genuinely funny.
47:03
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're just sort of like, wow, what else could go wrong today?
47:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I right?
47:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, that bit's kind of funny, but getting there, you're dealing with something that's dramatically inert, never really clarifying why these people are significant in American history.
47:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Unless you already knew.
47:17
[SPEAKER_00]: How, why is it called the Alto Knights?
47:19
[SPEAKER_00]: That was like the name of a bar that we see once in a photograph in a flashback.
47:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I doesn't connect to anything.
47:29
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no, that doesn't feel like anything.
47:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't definitely just feel like a mean something.
47:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know what the fuck was supposed to do with that.
47:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very poorly thought out and the people who are in it are not on their game.
47:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And this feels like it's trying to be like a big, oscary, serious gangster picture, like we're really trying to make this something.
47:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And we really are right.
47:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just think, you know, I think you would do well to look at this movie because I believe that when you're trying to learn about movies, whether you want to make them or criticize them or going to any part of the industry,
48:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And for a long time, your top priority is to see what's great.
48:16
[SPEAKER_00]: What's important?
48:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And what's important movies ever made, the best movies ever made, the most influential movies ever made.
48:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And then what you've started getting kind of grounded on that, you have a foundation of like, okay, so I've seen Rashomon.
48:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen Tokyo's story, I've seen rules of the game, I've seen Citizen Kane, I've seen Cleo from five to seven.
48:34
[SPEAKER_00]: You've seen all these big movies.
48:35
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what, what a great movie looks like.
48:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Now watch a piece of shit, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart because when you're watching something good, all you're doing is marveling at what a good job everyone did.
48:48
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're watching something that isn't good, especially when it's made by people with talent, you're asking yourself what went wrong.
48:53
[SPEAKER_00]: You're correcting it in your head.
48:55
[SPEAKER_04]: How would I fix this?
48:57
[SPEAKER_04]: About a bad film is going to be way more educational than a good film.
49:00
[SPEAKER_00]: After a while, like not initially, but after you know what you're talking about, you've done some
49:09
[SPEAKER_04]: we used to say was, if you watch a bunch of thing more Bergman movies, you'll learn how to imitating more Bergman.
49:15
[SPEAKER_04]: You watch a plan 9 for Matters space, you're going to figure out how to make a better movie.
49:19
[SPEAKER_04]: You're going to learn how not to be at what?
49:21
[SPEAKER_04]: How not to be at what?
49:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And to be fair, there are some people out there who I feel like would do well to be as interesting as that would.
49:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, it was interesting, but it's filmmaking is incompetent.
49:32
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
49:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Like the editing is bad.
49:34
[SPEAKER_04]: The acting is poor.
49:35
[SPEAKER_04]: The writing is,
49:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I like the writing, but it is strange when you would understand why Sorry, yeah, how would this scene actually work?
49:41
[SPEAKER_04]: I would love to see a remake of something like plan 9 for Mattersmen.
49:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, like by someone who's got some real narrative talent figured out what that movie was saying and tried to turn it into like a production.
49:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure that would be a more significant film.
49:56
[SPEAKER_00]: No, but it would be an interesting exercise.
49:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
49:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
49:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so anyway, I think we have a lot of notes on that.
50:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Ah, him, him, socks.
50:07
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not particularly good.
50:09
[SPEAKER_04]: No, him is, uh, and I hate to pick on him because I really admire its ambition.
50:16
[SPEAKER_04]: It actually was trying to, uh,
50:19
[SPEAKER_04]: make what it was essentially a horror film out of the world of high stakes a professional football.
50:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Him is a reference to the player wants to be the guy.
50:33
[SPEAKER_04]: He wants to be the winner.
50:35
[SPEAKER_04]: He wants to be him, but one you'll look up to.
50:39
[SPEAKER_04]: The whole movie seems predicated on the pun of being the goat, the brightest of all time.
50:45
[SPEAKER_00]: It was probably the original screenplay title.
50:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It was goat.
50:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I would be surprised if it wasn't.
50:50
[SPEAKER_00]: They say it all the time.
50:51
[SPEAKER_04]: There's an animated film coming out called goat, which is actually about an anthropomorphic goat who wants to be a basketball star.
50:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It might have been a situation where like they had dibs or something.
51:01
[SPEAKER_00]: wouldn't be the first time and my child belongs to the village was originally going to be called the woods and then it turns out there was another lesser known horror movie coming out around the same time that I already called dibs on it so that's what you have.
51:12
[SPEAKER_00]: This is these things happen I don't know.
51:14
[SPEAKER_04]: It the film stars Tyrik Wither's as a football star who is so promising that he's caught the attention of Marlin Wands, who is the like the current Best player of all time is considered the best.
51:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, he's he's like Tom Brady times two and This world takes place not only in a world where football players are paid a lot, and that's the real world.
51:39
[SPEAKER_04]: That's true
51:40
[SPEAKER_04]: But, not only where they get to go to these really hedonistic parties, or they're allowed to get away with crimes, all of that's true.
51:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And also where they're injured, and they're given all their sort of doked up on drugs, so they stay on the field, because they have to work through their injuries, because they're too valuable otherwise.
51:59
[SPEAKER_04]: That's also true.
52:01
[SPEAKER_04]: And if we're just sort of a drama, like Oliver Stone's Ellie, any given Sunday, explore it a lot of this stuff already.
52:07
[SPEAKER_04]: When I was 1999, that would have been a legit football drama, maybe not novel, but it's a fine thing to tell a story about.
52:18
[SPEAKER_04]: They decided to turn it into this semi-serial horror film instead.
52:22
[SPEAKER_04]: So the Tyreeg Wither's character doesn't just train, he goes to this very bizarre
52:29
[SPEAKER_04]: like Matthew Barney designed training facility out in the middle of the desert where everything's like white and gleaming and has only sweeping lines.
52:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a cult compound where everyone there is like so into Marlon Wains they'll do anything for him even like physically destroyed themselves.
52:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
52:44
[SPEAKER_00]: For this training.
52:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so there's one of the training exercises, you have to catch a ball, really quick, like to turn around and catch a ball really quickly to test your timing, but we're going to try to distract you by having another player stand in front of a football launcher that is destroying their fate.
53:01
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so close to the football launcher they get hit by the football and it's you're gonna it's slightly wrong He's got they're gonna hand him the ball and he's gonna turn around and immediately know where the guy is running Oh, that's it and they know it's like turning around and if he doesn't throw the ball right the guy gets his face slammed and So every time he screws up
53:20
[SPEAKER_04]: his teammate is getting like mutilated like you know rent beyond recognition and it's never really quite made clear what all these things are for there's clearly something demonic happening there's like there's like goat imagery around like it's a horror video like we that that's clear from the outset
53:39
[SPEAKER_04]: There's like these weird stalkers who are breaking in and they kill the stalkers and just say that's okay We can murder these people.
53:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's just cover it up.
53:45
[SPEAKER_04]: It's easy.
53:46
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's a little odd And it all comes down to this very vaguely Stretched out or sketched out theme of the Communication of black bodies by wealthy white people, which feels really thrown into the last act on and the very very And I think that should have been more throughout the movie
54:05
[SPEAKER_04]: I appreciate that there was a lot of mayhem at the end, but none of the ideas in this movie gel in any kind of meaningful way.
54:13
[SPEAKER_04]: If there's sort of, even if it's really weird, if there's some kind of sense of mounting tension, that something is inevitable, that something is coming.
54:21
[SPEAKER_04]: If we do this, Satan will be unleashed, and that's sort of the big mystery.
54:26
[SPEAKER_04]: But there's none of that mounting tension.
54:28
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just a big long stream of weird stuff.
54:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, here's the thing.
54:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of those movies where a,
54:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a spiderweb movie, someone's like being lured into a space where something sinister or threatening could happen to them, and we're with them wondering when the other shoe is going to drop.
54:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, what are they going to learn?
54:48
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, they're going to find out.
54:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
54:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks like it's like the Wicker Man or Midsomar, aka the Wicker Man, like these are movies that actually have that rising tension where like for a while, it's like, this is ominous, but also could be explained away.
55:02
[SPEAKER_00]: So the protagonist doesn't look like a complete fool, they don't know where in a horror movie.
55:08
[SPEAKER_00]: In him, everything is so telegraphed as so malevolent.
55:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And they try to attack on this thing where you had a head injury, and maybe he can't trust his interpretation of the events.
55:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But that feels like it's literally only there to justify how completely oblivious this guy is.
55:27
[SPEAKER_00]: That he's in a terrible situation that's really ominous.
55:32
[SPEAKER_00]: when it turns out at the end of the movie after waiting way too long, oh, this was a horror movie.
55:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, we knew that.
55:42
[SPEAKER_00]: We were not handling it very well.
55:45
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very heavy-handed the entire way through.
55:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So instead of the final act, feeling like, oh, all this tension is getting released, it just feels like, and now we finally are just doing what we were literally always doing, but we're explaining slightly more.
55:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's not good tension.
55:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But you're right, I do believe that there is something interesting going on here.
56:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that the idea of telling that kind of narrative in the world of professional sports,
56:06
[SPEAKER_00]: is of interest.
56:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the idea of taking the fact that a lot of the people who are making the most-man-money off-of-sports are rich white dudes, and they're making it off of a pastime that relies on people getting concussed and destroying their bodies.
56:23
[SPEAKER_04]: But mostly black men being concussed.
56:24
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a racial element.
56:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, there's absolutely it.
56:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not entirely, but yes, that is a huge part of it.
56:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And the idea that we should be
56:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Good, yeah, I'm on your side thematically.
56:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the execution that falls apart.
56:40
[SPEAKER_04]: I think a big issue is that everything is just so heightened from the start, that there's not like a real world that we left.
56:50
[SPEAKER_04]: It's okay from the whole movie to be stylized.
56:53
[SPEAKER_04]: But if the point is for us to be outraged at the real world consequences of,
56:59
[SPEAKER_04]: uh football exploitation.
57:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
57:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Then I need something to actually be distressed about.
57:05
[SPEAKER_04]: I need there to be a real world or someplace where everything is kind of peaceful, or I need the world to be so bizarre and corrupt that it feels like reality has been rent a sunder and the filmmakers weren't skilled enough to pull off that second thing.
57:19
[SPEAKER_04]: I've seen a lot of movies like that where everything just sort of falls apart, but that's stuff like
57:23
[SPEAKER_04]: eraser head or tattoo of the Ironman like true like truly surrealist pieces of art.
57:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so um
57:32
[SPEAKER_00]: My next pick is also something that I think broaches some interesting ideas, but finds the most boring possible way to do it.
57:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
57:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're also at a point where I feel like any of my next three might be your number one.
57:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I could be wrong.
57:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I know you don't like them.
57:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
57:49
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't know.
57:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is your number one.
57:51
[SPEAKER_00]: We're skipping ahead of smidge, I guess.
57:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But,
57:57
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what's so bland it's bad like it goes like it's so mediocre it goes to bad Because so much effort So so unremarkable.
58:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's so unremarkable.
58:09
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just I'm saving those movies from my average Yeah, this is one where I thought about making this on my average list, but then I thought about
58:17
[SPEAKER_00]: how much time money and talent went into it?
58:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And I cannot help but think of it as a waste of everyone's time and money.
58:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just the audiences, but everyone involved.
58:28
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the Russo Brothers, the Electric State.
58:31
[SPEAKER_04]: That was on my average list, just because it's unremarkable, the worst thing about it is it's a huge waste of resources, it was made for like $350 million.
58:42
[SPEAKER_04]: It's one of the most expensive movies.
58:43
[SPEAKER_00]: What was expensive movies ever made and there's literally nothing memorable about it.
58:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, literally nothing.
58:49
[SPEAKER_04]: I remember the Anthony Mackie robot and he had a human sidekick played by an actor who I can't play right now.
58:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Chris Pratt.
58:56
[SPEAKER_04]: It was Chris Pratt.
58:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, yeah, that's that's his job now.
59:01
[SPEAKER_04]: He got's the he's the Chris Pratt That's one one of the Chris is it was Pratt.
59:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
59:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the other one number is more more to it.
59:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I think our member is character Shake McSpeed
59:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Hold on, I could tell you the character's name and put it down.
59:21
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't the biggest thing.
59:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember a lot of character's name, but I really just refer to the actor.
59:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't remember much about his character was.
59:30
[SPEAKER_00]: His terrible line, his name is John D. Keith's.
59:36
[SPEAKER_00]: John Kates.
59:37
[SPEAKER_00]: John D. Keith's, so different guy.
59:41
[SPEAKER_00]: There's this, so the idea, the idea, the idea, the idea, the idea of the electric state is that in the mid-20th century, Walt Disney in some of the other big minds came up, not just with animatronics but with useful robots.
59:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like thinking robots, the actual artificial intelligence that could actually like, you know, think on their own and we're incorporated into society.
1:00:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And, um,
1:00:05
[SPEAKER_00]: After a while, they were so smart that they got presented that they resented being mistreated and in a planet of the apes kind of way, rebelled, and there was an actual war.
1:00:14
[SPEAKER_00]: That war was being won by the robots, and here's what this weird line from Chris Pratt is like, yeah, those robots, they're so much, they're so well constructed, they don't even blink.
1:00:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I blink, and it's like,
1:00:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, the fuck does that even mean?
1:00:35
[SPEAKER_00]: What do we say?
1:00:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that a big deal?
1:00:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that, is that, is that human to blank?
1:00:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I know the fuck you're talking about.
1:00:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So already I'm weirded out, but this is not the point, but like, it's just a weird line.
1:00:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Also, I think you're thinking of the wrong movie.
1:00:48
[SPEAKER_04]: No, that's a, that's Chris Pratt, but that's not the electric stage, isn't it?
1:00:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Is it?
1:00:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, I thought that was the other, the tomorrow war.
1:00:59
[SPEAKER_04]: No, wasn't that a line of dialogue from the tomorrow war?
1:01:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I understand you for confusing them.
1:01:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Hold on, hold on.
1:01:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Electric state.
1:01:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I blank.
1:01:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's electric state, dude.
1:01:11
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
1:01:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:01:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, they're the same movie.
1:01:16
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you're not wrong.
1:01:17
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
1:01:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, he's a former soldier.
1:01:22
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a former soldier, the war was lost.
1:01:25
[SPEAKER_00]: The robots lost the war and now they're basically been ghettoized.
1:01:28
[SPEAKER_00]: They're throwing them to like this chunk of America.
1:01:30
[SPEAKER_00]: There's was a stay there.
1:01:32
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a huge chunk by the way.
1:01:33
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the size of the state of Utah.
1:01:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, big, big, big section.
1:01:36
[SPEAKER_00]: So our protagonist is Millie Bobby Brown, her family died in a car accident, but her little brother.
1:01:44
[SPEAKER_00]: a little brother right you can tell even remember what happened here a robot shows up in her house that's supposed to be there and the robot implies that it's either being controlled or possessed by her little brother yeah and the only way to solve this mystery is to follow the robot back to robot town so she needs a tracker they get crisp Pratt for some reason and then they end up going there and then they end up
1:02:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Mister peanut from planters planters peanut the guy now You can see where the Russo is like what they're trying to go for with all of this that the the only thing left of
1:02:28
[SPEAKER_04]: sort of robot culture is sort of these weird commercial images that we foisted upon these intelligent beings, but they are such commercial filmmakers they don't understand or appreciate the irony of that.
1:02:40
[SPEAKER_04]: The fact that these are like living mascots and that's all that their whole life is just a cell product to us.
1:02:46
[SPEAKER_04]: They're like,
1:02:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, cast off so of a non-creative imagination.
1:02:50
[SPEAKER_04]: None of that's explored.
1:02:51
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just, it's all very stint literal.
1:02:53
[SPEAKER_00]: That there's actual stuff to talk about there.
1:02:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And with those, and there's, there were fun movies about a robot uprising before.
1:02:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But the matrix for a black side.
1:03:01
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea that they might be offended that they are a product, that they are branded, that they might have difficulty.
1:03:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what if you're, what if you're identity as a person
1:03:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Huge can of worms.
1:03:18
[SPEAKER_00]: We can talk about a lot of things.
1:03:21
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not going to talk about any of that because we just have to go through these very general motions of Stanley two cheese evil again.
1:03:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have to stop him with our robots through a series of Adventures.
1:03:38
[SPEAKER_04]: They have to rescue somebody from a desperate situation.
1:03:41
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm not going to say anything about that.
1:03:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's actually a plot because there actually is a bit of a plot.
1:03:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I can't remember.
1:03:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I remember what the big twist was at the end.
1:03:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember the twist.
1:03:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's about all there is to it.
1:03:54
[SPEAKER_04]: I remember there was a conceit where human act, and they got a huge cast of, like, no, the actors.
1:04:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Most of them don't have to do anything.
1:04:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, there's this conceit that's
1:04:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Robots are being powered by human brains, and they want to plug yourself into a virtual reality helmet.
1:04:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Half of your brain is being activated by like a virtual reality vacation world.
1:04:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're out to lunch.
1:04:23
[SPEAKER_04]: But while you're in there, you also simultaneously control a robot by remote.
1:04:30
[SPEAKER_00]: That's like doing tasks.
1:04:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Now these are not the main robots.
1:04:33
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea is humanity was losing the ward of the robots until we invented our own robots that were controlled by our own brands.
1:04:40
[SPEAKER_04]: And these robot robots but also rest simultaneously, allowing us to win the war.
1:04:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of the wars over everyone's basically just revered into total sloth and is letting their robot versions of themselves do all the work.
1:04:52
[SPEAKER_00]: This is how you can get someone like Jean-Carlo Esposito to show up.
1:04:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And because the only projected guest face on this thing is
1:04:58
[SPEAKER_00]: We see him sitting at a desk a couple of times, but mostly it's like it's just desk in his house Yeah, and he's just it's a robot and it's just close up of his face on a computer screen and We get all these talented people all these talented like visual effects artists like it.
1:05:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah slick as an e-mail
1:05:22
[SPEAKER_00]: but they about to nothing.
1:05:24
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not saying anything.
1:05:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not even told particularly interestingly.
1:05:29
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like the Rousseau Brothers have like a bunch of really cool ideas for like interesting shots or exciting set pieces that would like only, you could only do in this movie.
1:05:42
[SPEAKER_00]: They're basically just filming the script as if you were like,
1:05:47
[SPEAKER_00]: They've got all the energy of someone who was brought on board a long-running procedural TV series and is just supposed to get the coverage you need to edit it so that we can get this episode in the canon five days.
1:05:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, except we spent $350 million.
1:06:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there's no justification for how bland and uninteresting this ridiculously expensive.
1:06:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And in many respects, narratively and thematically and vicious, movie is, it's nothing.
1:06:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Look, there was an old episode of Dr. Katz.
1:06:28
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... professional therapist where uh... one of the comedians he had on his couch was talking about i was watching this movie and it cost a hundred million dollars and i could skip thinking look how much effort it takes to bore me look how much effort it takes with a bunch of money sent three hundred fifty million dollars to not be interesting for two hours i remember Tom Clancy once gave an interview where he said um...
1:06:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I write books.
1:06:53
[SPEAKER_04]: I have to like bang out of book and like five months.
1:06:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it takes me five months to write a book.
1:06:57
[SPEAKER_00]: He's paid well enough.
1:06:58
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't have a lot of distractions, but still that's a lot.
1:07:00
[SPEAKER_04]: But he sits in the esterite like 500 page books.
1:07:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes a lot more than that because it's going to have to be went out down.
1:07:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:07:06
[SPEAKER_04]: And then he goes into Hollywood and they're spending the exact same five months like doing 60 pages of a script.
1:07:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
1:07:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, first of all, you're adapting my work.
1:07:14
[SPEAKER_04]: It's already there.
1:07:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, do it in a day and he's not making something that's like hard to adapt.
1:07:20
[SPEAKER_04]: He's making thrillers Yeah, like easy to understand thrillers.
1:07:23
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not ambiguous.
1:07:25
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, it's it's absurd.
1:07:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we've found a lot More effort on things that need
1:07:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like this is the kind of movie that like if you took this script and you gave ten million dollars to Albert Pune in 1990.
1:07:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd rather see that movie.
1:07:45
[SPEAKER_00]: That's going to be an interesting movie.
1:07:47
[SPEAKER_00]: It'll probably look cooler.
1:07:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It'll probably have more memorable characters because when you have a lower budget and you can't lean on spectacle,
1:07:55
[SPEAKER_00]: you have to get the audience's attention in other ways.
1:07:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a board of people like through creativity or like through memorable performances or weird tonal shifts or something that sticks in your crowd.
1:08:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I forgot this movie came out this year.
1:08:14
[SPEAKER_00]: This cost $350 million.
1:08:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I forgot it existed until I started working on this list.
1:08:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the alcohol.
1:08:21
[SPEAKER_04]: And my most average is that as well.
1:08:25
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the movie that I saw and forgot about.
1:08:30
[SPEAKER_04]: The electric state is like the worst offender of where we are right now in terms of post-streaming wars, cinema.
1:08:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
1:08:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Because cinema is fractured.
1:08:40
[SPEAKER_04]: The monocultures are kind of gone.
1:08:43
[SPEAKER_04]: And the idea that, and we've been leaning way too hard on IP for far too long to the point where filmmakers think they can just feed things into AI and have something generated automatically.
1:08:56
[SPEAKER_00]: To be fair, it's mostly I think studio executives who think that.
1:08:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Some filmmakers think that, but I think mostly it's studio executives and it's the people who are in charge of making all the money decisions.
1:09:07
[SPEAKER_04]: And we're at this place where they can release a $350 million film into the public sphere.
1:09:17
[SPEAKER_04]: uh... and put it on to uh... streaming service that costs what eight nine dollars a month to see that's more like fifteen now but that's not enough if okay fifteen it's a price of one movie to how how many people yeah and and they don't necessarily even need to get like new subscribers they're just feeding off of this ordinary in flux of gap you're trying to attract new subscribers would be nice but most of the trying to keep you from unsubscribe they're trying to keep you from unscribing but that's not really why they're making these movies
1:09:47
[SPEAKER_04]: They don't care if you're watching them.
1:09:50
[SPEAKER_04]: If you're subscribed, okay, but if you watched that particular film, doesn't really matter.
1:09:55
[SPEAKER_04]: If a lot of people do, they're gonna talk about it.
1:09:57
[SPEAKER_04]: They're gonna say we got a lot of numbers on this one.
1:09:59
[SPEAKER_04]: They could lie about it.
1:10:00
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no way for them to prove those numbers.
1:10:02
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't share that.
1:10:03
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't share that.
1:10:04
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the most watched ever, okay?
1:10:06
[SPEAKER_04]: I trust you, I guess.
1:10:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:10:08
[SPEAKER_00]: What they have on their homepage is these are the most top 10 most watched movies.
1:10:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Like in the last 24 hours or something.
1:10:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's always hilarious to me to watch that because they'll put out something this giant original blockbuster retipe film like the electric state.
1:10:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember I was checking early this year.
1:10:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was electric state, but it was around the time one of their big nothing burger expensive movies came out and it was like
1:10:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Third behind like reruns of suits was movie so wouldn't have been competing against that, but it was like third behind A family movie that came out five years ago and the straight to video sequel the sniper.
1:10:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I'm like
1:10:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You could have just made a street to video sequels.
1:10:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Sniper.
1:10:53
[SPEAKER_04]: You could have made like a hundred of those for the same bud.
1:10:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:10:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And people would have watched it as much.
1:10:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And you wouldn't have looked like an asshole for wasting everyone's time and money and talent.
1:11:04
[SPEAKER_04]: But what's really going on here though is...
1:11:07
[SPEAKER_04]: We're in a place where people are making movies to increase studio stock value.
1:11:14
[SPEAKER_04]: That's all that's about.
1:11:15
[SPEAKER_04]: If they can look point to a ledger and show a rich shareholders look we put out this expensive movie.
1:11:21
[SPEAKER_04]: It has all these big stars and it doesn't even matter if they're shareholders have seen it.
1:11:24
[SPEAKER_04]: That looks impressive.
1:11:25
[SPEAKER_04]: It's real.
1:11:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Now your company is more valuable.
1:11:30
[SPEAKER_04]: that's the way they're making money.
1:11:31
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not buying game with the public at all and when you come to making gigantic movies with big stars that have a lot of expensive effects and don't engage the audience at all, well those Russo brothers are right up your alley because they'll do that shit.
1:11:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But they're also here's the thing.
1:11:49
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so...
1:11:51
[SPEAKER_00]: workmen like.
1:11:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't necessarily mean this is a bad thing.
1:11:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's neutral.
1:11:55
[SPEAKER_00]: If you give them a good script, it'll probably turn out fine.
1:12:01
[SPEAKER_00]: But when they're not handed one from on high by a studio that is trying really, really, really hard, which Marvel used to do, they don't seem to have good taste.
1:12:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:12:14
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really frustrating.
1:12:15
[SPEAKER_04]: What's your next thing?
1:12:16
[SPEAKER_04]: My next thing, okay, this one's, uh, we can debate whether or not this is one of the worst films of the year because it is, but it's also really interesting.
1:12:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:12:26
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm talking about Lexi Alexander's absolute dominion.
1:12:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, see, I wouldn't call this one of the worst ones.
1:12:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Right, but I do agree it's got problems that are worth talking.
1:12:35
[SPEAKER_04]: It's got a lot, well, because it's based on this really fascinating premise that unfortunately,
1:12:42
[SPEAKER_04]: I feel like it doesn't engage with on an important level.
1:12:46
[SPEAKER_04]: I really feel like it's all backed by its budget.
1:12:47
[SPEAKER_04]: It's very much all backed by its budget.
1:12:50
[SPEAKER_04]: It's about a worldwide fighting tournament.
1:12:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:12:53
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the near future and humanity's been brought to the brink of extinction by religiously motivated wars.
1:13:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, radicalism has taken over across the world across every religion and everyone's killing each other over their religion.
1:13:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And an amusing plot point that suggests the movie is going to be funnier than it is.
1:13:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Pat and Oswald plays like a YouTuber who's like Joe Rogan, like everyone listens to him.
1:13:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And he comes up with the idea, so this is all ridiculous.
1:13:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I propose.
1:13:24
[SPEAKER_00]: we have a fighting tournament.
1:13:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Every religion gets one fighter and whoever wins at the end, like at Mortal Kombat or something, that's the religion we all fall.
1:13:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone needs to now adhere to that religion.
1:13:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And for that somehow, that works.
1:13:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Some people people actually agree with that.
1:13:41
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a great idea.
1:13:43
[SPEAKER_04]: This is some kind of weird new atheist fantasy.
1:13:48
[SPEAKER_04]: cut through all the trickle and get a really good fire, and the main character is fighting for humanism, no religion.
1:13:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that's extremely controversial because some people would rather be forced to worship a god they don't believe in, uh, then to entertain the idea that there is no god.
1:14:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:14:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And they explicitly say, I think the idea behind this movie is fun.
1:14:10
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like the set it up, it's fucking ridiculous.
1:14:13
[SPEAKER_00]: This would never happen.
1:14:14
[SPEAKER_00]: You just can't wave that.
1:14:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, that's the biggest you write at the start though.
1:14:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Is that, okay, let's have a fight in tournament and whoever wins, everybody has to have that religion.
1:14:24
[SPEAKER_04]: If there was some kind of like fantasy element to that, like there's wizard, sword dragons in this world, then maybe it's like, and maybe they're just fewer people in the world.
1:14:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's how I think you fix this problem, because honestly, the first problem is the premises of SERD.
1:14:40
[SPEAKER_00]: We like it, we want to do it, but it's so absurd we do have to justify it.
1:14:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:14:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's not like some alternate reality where we've been doing this for centuries.
1:14:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It's brand new, first time we've ever done it.
1:14:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have to at least get into a little bit why would we do this?
1:14:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And the idea that a YouTuber got way too popular and somehow this took hold,
1:15:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Isn't that far out of the realm of plausibility?
1:15:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they kind of get away with it?
1:15:08
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think what would have helped is not setting in a world of fantasy because once you set in a world of fantasy, I'm sorry, that guy can call down lightning.
1:15:16
[SPEAKER_00]: That religion is real.
1:15:19
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no contest anymore, that's real magic.
1:15:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the trick is, and this is what the movie needed more than anything else.
1:15:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish Paul Barthel were alive.
1:15:30
[SPEAKER_04]: if Paul Barattell had made this, so it would have had like a level of count, and a level of like fun overacting and broad characterization, that would have made it sick.
1:15:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It would have, you would have totally not cared about how the premise got started because it's a little tongue and cheek and you can do a little bit of it.
1:15:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Paul Barattell's a death race 2000.
1:15:50
[SPEAKER_00]: How does that come into, well, it's, we buy it from Paul Barattell.
1:15:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, the world of death race 2000 is a heightened, if you've never seen the original death race 2000, it's a 1975, and it's about a cross-country road race between people who are basically dressed up like wrestlers, big fancy costumes, fun,
1:16:11
[SPEAKER_00]: What's what's so much just alone plays a character like it's like gangster Weo yeah, like machine gun Tommy or something like that and David David Caridine plays Frankenstein Guy in a scary mask
1:16:26
[SPEAKER_04]: because it's like the super champion.
1:16:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, everyone, everyone knows him.
1:16:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's a death race, so all these people are trying to kill each other and because the world is overpopulated in the future of death race, while they're crossing the country, any pedestrian they kill bonus points.
1:16:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, to the extent that people start like wheeling their elderly relatives into the street, hoping that would just be rid of the problem.
1:16:50
[SPEAKER_00]: That's some dark shit, man.
1:16:51
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a,
1:16:53
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a cynical view of society that we can explore.
1:16:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Lexi Alexander who I think is a really good filmmaker, um, I feel like Alexander knows camp.
1:17:03
[SPEAKER_04]: She could have done it because she did, um, Hunter Warzone, which is a campy super violent movie.
1:17:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:17:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I don't, I'm, I'm really confused as to like, where the disconnect happened here because I feel like it's trying to be fun and trying to be serious and I think like, I think the mistake was leaning more towards serious when fun would have gotten you there.
1:17:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Fun would have gotten you there, but I can tell that,
1:17:25
[SPEAKER_04]: This is this is an atheist film.
1:17:27
[SPEAKER_04]: It's selling an atheist philosophy.
1:17:29
[SPEAKER_00]: It is trying to although there is a plot point that suggests otherwise To be fair, there's a plot point that there might be some kind of divine element and all of this as well A divine interest in atheism winning which is intriguing and I wish we'd be able to delve into that But it feels like they're setting it up for a sequel.
1:17:45
[SPEAKER_00]: We're never gonna get
1:17:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and if this movie had been interested in dealing with sort of the ramifications of faith, the day-to-day workings of faith that would have been kind of interesting, the advantages of having in all atheist world is sort of lurking there in the back, but it does come from this very, I hate to say, kind of a stubborn mindset of kind of new atheist thinking, where it's just
1:18:13
[SPEAKER_01]: We're right at all.
1:18:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You people are ridiculous.
1:18:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we're right.
1:18:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Faith is ridiculous and argue with me now.
1:18:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Like it's meant to start arguments.
1:18:22
[SPEAKER_04]: It's kind of a chip on this movie's shoulder a little bit, which I think undermines some of its more interesting ideas.
1:18:27
[SPEAKER_04]: It's trying to bicker with you rather than engage with what it's trying to bring out.
1:18:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It's trying, I really just think it's trying to be too serious.
1:18:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It takes itself too seriously.
1:18:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I also think that there's just a huge problem with it is that, you know, this is supposed to be a fighting tournament that will determine the fate of the world.
1:18:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it will determine what religions become illegal, theoretically.
1:18:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And like, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the
1:19:07
[SPEAKER_00]: But my point is, it's so huge, everything is writing on the line.
1:19:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks like it takes place in someone's school gym.
1:19:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And it probably was.
1:19:18
[SPEAKER_00]: There's not a huge audience.
1:19:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Their fucking should be for something like this.
1:19:23
[SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, there's these glory shots of the exterior of the gym, which are realized through CGI.
1:19:28
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's kind of run a mandatory, but it looks good or not.
1:19:30
[SPEAKER_04]: It's fine.
1:19:31
[SPEAKER_04]: OK, but then they cut to the interior of the yachts, like the YM's.
1:19:33
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just on blue mats, and I'm just
1:19:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say I get it, no one threw money at this.
1:19:41
[SPEAKER_00]: You're making this movie because you're passionate about it.
1:19:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the reason why I wouldn't have put this on my worst of list is because I feel like they're trying really hard.
1:19:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like to raise the main reason why this isn't working is because time and resources.
1:19:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:19:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So for me, I wouldn't put this on my list just because I feel like
1:19:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It's too close to punching down, but, but you're right, it's got a lot of problems and it's frustrating because it should be great.
1:20:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It could not, right?
1:20:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish it were great and there are very distinct problems we can point to that it's just like this wasn't going to work.
1:20:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:20:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's really fucking frustrating.
1:20:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not even near my list for that exact reason.
1:20:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:20:23
[SPEAKER_00]: My next film.
1:20:25
[SPEAKER_00]: is a film where also feels like it was done for, you know, for a song, but it also feels like there attempt to work their way around it was creatively and morally bankrupt.
1:20:41
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the ice cube version of war of the world.
1:20:44
[SPEAKER_00]: This is my number one.
1:20:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:20:45
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, there you go.
1:20:46
[SPEAKER_04]: This is the worst.
1:20:47
[SPEAKER_04]: This is my country mile.
1:20:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a reason why my number one is different, but that's a very good argument because this movie stinks.
1:20:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Now to be fair this movie was produced during the COVID lockdown.
1:20:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So there were limitations on it and the idea is it's one of those What did you call them second screen movies or something something like that?
1:21:06
[SPEAKER_04]: It's told entirely through what appears on a computer screen
1:21:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, and this is a legit way to do it.
1:21:12
[SPEAKER_04]: The movie's searching is good.
1:21:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:21:14
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't see those unfriended movies.
1:21:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, or not unfri- No, it was unfriended, unfriended.
1:21:21
[SPEAKER_00]: The first unfriended is pretty good.
1:21:22
[SPEAKER_00]: The ending doesn't work.
1:21:24
[SPEAKER_00]: The second unfriended is fun, but not good.
1:21:26
[SPEAKER_04]: I like that movie host.
1:21:28
[SPEAKER_04]: It was unfriended, that was a really good one.
1:21:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Host is a great movie.
1:21:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So this, this kid, this we're at can work.
1:21:32
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea is everyone's on their computer screen and we're only seeing what they see or
1:21:38
[SPEAKER_00]: You can do this.
1:21:39
[SPEAKER_00]: This can be a very effective storytelling method.
1:21:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And the idea of telling a big epic story through this format is not the worst idea in the world, especially when you're trying to do it on a budget.
1:21:56
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're creative enough, this can work.
1:21:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to say that right now.
1:21:59
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea itself is not the problem.
1:22:02
[SPEAKER_04]: You can, you can, you can pace it well, you can write it well.
1:22:05
[SPEAKER_04]: It's okay to tell a story in this fact.
1:22:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and again, War of the Worlds is public domain.
1:22:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Back yourself out, honestly, and so the War of the Worlds, if you go to the radio broadcast by the Mercury
1:22:19
[SPEAKER_04]: You're using a medium and only observing the aliens through news reporting is it's already been done I mean they practically invented that.
1:22:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so yeah watching the alien invasion while locked at your home and just seeing on TV screens fine
1:22:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's actually a legit way to tell.
1:22:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Totally legit.
1:22:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It does not work in this movie for a variety of reasons.
1:22:40
[SPEAKER_00]: The premise of War of the Worlds this version is that Ice Cube works for the government.
1:22:47
[SPEAKER_00]: He spends all of his time eavesdropping on random people's phone calls and also stalking his family.
1:22:54
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's seen as like kind of a charming quirk of his.
1:22:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, like he's not seen as like violation of violence.
1:22:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Like he like deletes a recently downloaded video game off of his son's computer because he should be studying.
1:23:06
[SPEAKER_00]: He like hacks his pregnant daughters were refrigerator to see which he's getting in a protein.
1:23:12
[SPEAKER_00]: That's some creepy shit.
1:23:13
[SPEAKER_00]: That's that's not good parenting.
1:23:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And they three that like his kids don't understand him.
1:23:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also worth noting.
1:23:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, the budget is a factor here I understand this.
1:23:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But do you guys want me to tell it?
1:23:25
[SPEAKER_00]: He's the entire government that like office that does this.
1:23:30
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like the only guy responsible for security surveillance in the fucking country, which just comes across as hilarious.
1:23:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Over the course of the day, he starts off, you know, playfully, not playfully, uncomfortably, seriously, thought stalking his kids, trying to track down a super hacker, and then wouldn't you know it, aliens?
1:23:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, aliens show up, and the difference between these aliens and previous war of the world's aliens, which, you know, wanted to destroy our cities and all that jazz, um, these ones, eat data.
1:24:08
[SPEAKER_00]: information.
1:24:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:24:10
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what they do.
1:24:10
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what they eat for food is information.
1:24:13
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that mean?
1:24:15
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't know.
1:24:16
[SPEAKER_00]: You're looking at my springer, aren't you?
1:24:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Remember that, uh, it's a really weird area.
1:24:24
[SPEAKER_04]: We are reference to a future ram a movie.
1:24:26
[SPEAKER_04]: There's this species of aliens and they they need to invent this weird thing where they look for information of this like
1:24:32
[SPEAKER_04]: inflating organ on the necks since like what is that in your net look at my sprunger architect gorgeous in the the presence of
1:24:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Information.
1:24:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so they start the hit, but it's a comedy cartoon, but it works though.
1:24:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that they start eating the internet so like ice cube is like staring at a screen going, no, no No, no, my stations are on Facebook, but then later on, he's able to use YouTube and his emails and it looks yeah, so Brand loyalty, I guess they just like was we got threat, so we haven't got the Twitter yet
1:25:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, very vitally, they can't get to Amazon.
1:25:14
[SPEAKER_00]: These movies were released on Amazon Prime and the plot hinges on Amazon multiple times.
1:25:23
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a part in the movie where in order to save the day,
1:25:27
[SPEAKER_00]: They need like a fire wire drive and in order to get that to ice cube He has to buy it off of Amazon so that his future son-in-law can pilot a Druze and Amazon employee can pilot a drone and get it to him.
1:25:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Which leads to a admitted like a briefly exciting moment Where he's like flying this drone like between the legs of these like tripods and that's like a fun materially visually interesting, but then it gets knocked over
1:25:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And oh no, if we don't get this thing right set up, we can't save the world by delivering this Amazon package and then like this, on how this guy shows up and is like, what the hell was this?
1:26:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And they say like, hey, listen man, it's a little speaker on it, they're talking to this guy.
1:26:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And then like, hey, listen man, if you like, turn this thing upside down, well, like, I don't know, we'll give you money or whatever they're like, ah, I don't want money.
1:26:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, how about a Amazon gift card?
1:26:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's like, well, okay, then.
1:26:16
[SPEAKER_04]: The $500 Amazon gift card, here you go.
1:26:18
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah, thank goodness, we have Amazon gift card.
1:26:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks God for Amazon.
1:26:23
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a movie with an irresponsible stance, yes, because it approves of hacking and government surveillance and foster your personal data because Amazon will have a safe
1:26:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, from evil outside or aliens who want it for evil reasons.
1:26:43
[SPEAKER_04]: You have to trust in the corporation.
1:26:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:26:45
[SPEAKER_04]: They'll take care of you.
1:26:47
[SPEAKER_04]: A very silly fucking hate that.
1:26:49
[SPEAKER_00]: A very telling thing at the end of the movie is when all turns out well and we're all celebrating Ice Cube, one of the big like, ah ha.
1:26:55
[SPEAKER_00]: He did it.
1:26:55
[SPEAKER_00]: He got the recognition he deserved is he got a tweet, but from Joe Rogan.
1:27:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:27:01
[SPEAKER_00]: That was actually like, Joe Rogan approves.
1:27:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like,
1:27:07
[SPEAKER_04]: So it approves of government surveillance.
1:27:09
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a commercial for Amazon on top of all of us.
1:27:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's boring.
1:27:14
[SPEAKER_04]: And again, the filmmaking and like ice cube looks like he's reading the script for the first time.
1:27:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
1:27:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Off of the screen as he's looking into the camera.
1:27:22
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the movies.
1:27:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Just him going, oh no.
1:27:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:27:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I can't believe that's happening.
1:27:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, what's up ice cube?
1:27:28
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not the greatest actor we've ever had.
1:27:30
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know what he has been?
1:27:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Good.
1:27:32
[SPEAKER_04]: He can put him in a certain kind of ice-cubish role, but he can be good.
1:27:37
[SPEAKER_00]: He can be good, and getting a plausible reaction shot out of him.
1:27:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it's something you can't do.
1:27:45
[SPEAKER_00]: He really isn't trying.
1:27:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like Adolf, and you've got people like Clark Greg and Avalon Gorilla, like recognizable actors in this thing, who are clearly doing it because they had nothing else to do.
1:27:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Fine, Clark Greg is trying, I'll give him that.
1:28:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Avalon Gorilla, 50 percent, but she's not not trying, but she's also not really trying.
1:28:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Ice Cube is our window into this world, and
1:28:17
[SPEAKER_04]: No, no, he's not there yet.
1:28:19
[SPEAKER_04]: No, it's not very good.
1:28:21
[SPEAKER_04]: It's quite, not only is it boring to watch, it's just so horrendously bankrupt that it quite easily the worst film of the year.
1:28:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:28:32
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason why it's not my number one is because there are a few other movies that are bad, like just badly made in a variety of ways, that
1:28:45
[SPEAKER_00]: made me angrier than this because this is just this is a sellout cheapo sci-fi move.
1:28:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I do not approve I don't think it's good, and I think it's worth pointing out that it's really really bad I think it's also morally bankrupt.
1:29:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know and I really fair enough, but like I can only get so mad at it because they just got dumped on to a thing and nobody cared about it Yeah, so my number one
1:29:10
[SPEAKER_00]: is a tie between Captain America Brave New World, Snow White, Tron Eris, Eleo, and Avatar, almost everything Disney did this year.
1:29:22
[SPEAKER_00]: A few exceptions.
1:29:23
[SPEAKER_00]: It's underbultimentastic for him, okay?
1:29:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying they're everything they did suck this year.
1:29:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't see Zootopia, too.
1:29:30
[SPEAKER_00]: But,
1:29:32
[SPEAKER_00]: These are really bad movies, and they're bad for very specific reasons that mostly come across, especially when it comes to Captain America, Snow White and ELEO, and to a lesser extent avatar, the reason they piss me off is because they're cowardly.
1:29:52
[SPEAKER_04]: What that litany of films that you just list.
1:29:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and we talked about Toronto areas already.
1:29:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And I've been seen ALEO, so I can't speak to this one.
1:29:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
1:30:01
[SPEAKER_04]: I said this when we reviewed Avatar, something is struggling to be born right now, something is trying to break through.
1:30:14
[SPEAKER_04]: And Avatar is the fat ass sitting on it, preventing it from happening, because movies like Avatar, movies like Captain America, are these specifically the most recent Captain America, are these films that have so much money and resources,
1:30:32
[SPEAKER_04]: from the biggest companies, like backing them, in service of all really old-fashioned, uninteresting, uncreative stories that they're just trying to repeat over and over again, hoping to make money off of something that's the same.
1:30:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Remember about a decade ago when I said the MCU was kind of same, you should have listened to me.
1:30:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Fuckers, well, you were, you were high, but I think there was an argument to be made at the time that it wasn't so much samey as it was consistent.
1:31:04
[SPEAKER_00]: They were telling one consistent narrative over a course of sort of a sprawling interconnected.
1:31:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you, there was an argument, especially because for a while there, for a while there, although some were better than others.
1:31:15
[SPEAKER_00]: The average doubt, okay, like the typical Marvel movie was like a three-star satisfying mad name.
1:31:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't debate that point.
1:31:23
[SPEAKER_04]: I think these are satisfying entertainments and they caught the public attention.
1:31:28
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all I'm saying is that that's the defense.
1:31:31
[SPEAKER_04]: In sticking to that alternative, they were prevented from doing something that was truly daring.
1:31:39
[SPEAKER_04]: they couldn't kill a man character for it.
1:31:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
1:31:41
[SPEAKER_04]: They couldn't do a story so big and wild that it changed the fundamental nature of superheroes.
1:31:48
[SPEAKER_04]: They had to stick to something very, very limited.
1:31:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And now we're finally seeing the end result of that.
1:31:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, after 15 years of it.
1:31:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I was thinking of when I was watching this because, like, you realize that like,
1:31:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Captain America's the Winter Soldier, which a lot of people, not everyone, but a lot of people agree is one of the better Marvel movies that came out.
1:32:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I happened to agree with it.
1:32:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So over 10 years old now, it's an old movie by any reasonable regular measure.
1:32:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was a movie, and you pulled this out for being cowardly at the time, but comparison to everything else that happened and feels pretty daring, that was a movie that said America had been taken over by white supremacists.
1:32:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Secret Nazis were a, a cabal of secret Nazis, which ended up being pretty accurate except for the secret part.
1:32:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:32:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So, so fair play.
1:32:37
[SPEAKER_04]: All out of open.
1:32:38
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a little different.
1:32:39
[SPEAKER_00]: So, like fair play and like the, the, the, the, the hydro in the MCU, they're just not saying the Nazi word.
1:32:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And that, that's somehow getting away with it and being okay.
1:32:59
[SPEAKER_00]: At the very least, some kind of point of view was being had here.
1:33:03
[SPEAKER_00]: The American government is bad, and has been bad.
1:33:06
[SPEAKER_00]: They're bad things about it, and they've been there for a long time.
1:33:10
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not a particularly
1:33:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Exciting or renegade message, but it was a message, and then you get something like Captain America brave new world Which has some things going for it.
1:33:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I think Anthony Mackie is really good.
1:33:24
[SPEAKER_00]: He's making him Captain America was a good idea Giving him a bad movie was not especially considering it's not his film He's not the protagonist of the film.
1:33:32
[SPEAKER_00]: He's the main character and there's a difference a Protagonist goes on a journey in changes a main character is just an every scene
1:33:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's Harrison Ford's movie.
1:33:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's a character, here's a movie about a black superhero, taking on a mantle from a relatively Aryan-looking air to the World War II legacy.
1:33:58
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm trying to get to a world where that's one blue eye.
1:34:02
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm trying to get to a world where, as we saw in the TV series Falcon on the Winter Soldier,
1:34:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, and then we make a movie about how we really just don't understand our conservative white president enough.
1:34:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And even when he turns into a bright red rage monster who tries to kill a black man on life television, ultimately, it's about his feelings.
1:34:28
[SPEAKER_00]: What are we fucking doing?
1:34:31
[SPEAKER_04]: And even more outrageous, yeah.
1:34:34
[SPEAKER_04]: I hate that, that it's not about Captain Amar.
1:34:36
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, he's barely affecting the action in the story.
1:34:39
[SPEAKER_04]: He's discovering information.
1:34:41
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so we can see it.
1:34:43
[SPEAKER_00]: All he does at the end is talk him down a little, which honestly, would have made more sense of Loof Tyler did it.
1:34:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And if this is Daughter and we set that up a lot.
1:34:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh God.
1:34:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Carl Lumbly is in this film.
1:34:58
[SPEAKER_04]: It's great.
1:34:58
[SPEAKER_04]: And what Carl Lumbly is a very good actor.
1:35:00
[SPEAKER_04]: I like Carl Lumbly a lot.
1:35:01
[SPEAKER_04]: And he even has superhero experience because he was mantis.
1:35:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, he was.
1:35:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, he plays a character who was the subject of government experiments back in the 1940s as well.
1:35:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Or is the 20th century?
1:35:14
[SPEAKER_04]: It was a mid-20th century.
1:35:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, mid-20th century.
1:35:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And he was given the same medicine that Captain America was given.
1:35:21
[SPEAKER_04]: So he has super strength and he's very long-lived.
1:35:23
[SPEAKER_04]: and said he got railroaded in it because because because he was involved in this and it was an illegal experiment and because he's a black man they say very specifically they threw him in prison and he lived there for many many years and they let him out and now he's working for the government that's suspicious already
1:35:40
[SPEAKER_00]: He's working for the government.
1:35:42
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like invited to a government party by Captain America He's not he's typically working with a government.
1:35:47
[SPEAKER_04]: He's like working with the superheroes So we're a government agent.
1:35:50
[SPEAKER_00]: That's he's working with a character The other way around.
1:35:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Who is named Captain America?
1:35:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just saying the way you praise it was a bit of a mischaracterization now.
1:35:57
[SPEAKER_00]: You're accurate.
1:35:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:35:58
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay He is invited to this fancy dress ball.
1:36:03
[SPEAKER_04]: He is
1:36:04
[SPEAKER_04]: mind-wifed into committing a potential assassination, and he's thrown back in prison, and that's going to kill him.
1:36:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so this character has now been the victim of injustice his whole life.
1:36:20
[SPEAKER_04]: He's an old man now, and even now he's being scapegoated for an assassination that he could have committed, and it was prevented, but he actually could have committed the actual murder.
1:36:30
[SPEAKER_04]: the revelation that he was mind-wight through for a loop a little bit because this guy has no reason not to assassinate the president on his own locomotion he has every motivation to actually and it's actually just because he suffered and grievous and just I don't know about it and the government is ignoring him I don't know if I go so far to say that it's
1:36:52
[SPEAKER_04]: But they're standable in the character motivation, just I think is the mischaracterization, but yeah, it wouldn't Now much more interesting moving Yeah, I know enough Captain America has to work to free him from prison Yeah, if Captain America if he had done this on his own it was his own decision and Captain America had said The just thing to do is to let but this guy go yeah
1:37:16
[SPEAKER_04]: Because A, he wasn't successful and B, he's right to be angry at the system that's fucked him his whole life.
1:37:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Then maybe that would have been an interesting twist on superhero dumb, wouldn't it?
1:37:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm freeing the presidential assassin.
1:37:30
[SPEAKER_04]: That would have been kind of an interesting story.
1:37:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Why is Captain America trying to free a presidential assassin?
1:37:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Because it's...
1:37:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Going to bring the attention to the reason to the way these people have been exploited though even just imagine yourself is just a character in the marbles They're just a regular guy and the marbles in a madaguniverse and we never see this perspective in the movie But imagine the person who is now cats in America is Defending a Presidential assassin and people saw it like on camera.
1:37:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know about the brain thing, but like
1:38:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems pretty clear that he did it or was working with people who did it and then Captain America is the one in that guy that should be controversial and that should have been a plot point in the movie There's so many things that are brought up by this movie that the movie has zero interest in exploring because to explore them
1:38:15
[SPEAKER_00]: would involve taking a political stance and Disney's terrified of this, and I've read which is especially galling and I felt called Captain America's American, but then you look at the other movies, I don't want to get stuck on this because there are other movies as well, but you look at the other movies that I put on here, you mentioned Elio earlier, Elio is maybe the most infuriating movie of the year for me because it's like queer texts they deleted, right?
1:38:38
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea of Eleo, the original idea for the story, is that Eleo is an orphan kid, little kid, and he's living with his aunt, and that he was queer, and he didn't feel understood, and his fantasy, because now that his parents were dead and his aunt doesn't understand,
1:38:57
[SPEAKER_00]: hit him.
1:39:00
[SPEAKER_00]: He fantasizes about being, being abducted by aliens and taking, taking away somewhere where people will appreciate him for who he is.
1:39:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And then who can't relate to them?
1:39:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And it works.
1:39:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he ends up going into space and they think he's like the official emissary from earth.
1:39:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're going to treat him great.
1:39:16
[SPEAKER_00]: The Spanylands up there.
1:39:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's like a sequined cape, and he gets to drink mocktails, and everything's fucking great.
1:39:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And then turns out that there's a big ol' asshole in space who wants to kill every old like the peaceful people, and he ends up teaming up with that guy's son, who is also misunderstood by his father, and healing everything through the power of understanding.
1:39:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, that's sort of sort of, they took that sounds like a fine kid fell.
1:39:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Disney decided after working on it to take out the part where Elio was queer.
1:39:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So now it's a movie about a kid who's vaguely eccentric, who dreams about leaving the world because no one understands people who are vaguely eccentric.
1:40:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, this kid is interested in aliens.
1:40:03
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of kids are.
1:40:06
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not even weird.
1:40:08
[SPEAKER_00]: This is my issue with the Mitchell's versus the machine.
1:40:10
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like my family's so weird.
1:40:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, but here's, but here's the other one.
1:40:14
[SPEAKER_04]: He's a little rather like dinosaur.
1:40:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Fair enough.
1:40:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I understand everyone thinks their family is weird, so I'm gonna give a free pass on that.
1:40:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But in LAO, he's so weird and so ostracized and so bullied that he wants to leave the planet.
1:40:28
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
1:40:29
[SPEAKER_00]: You could argue that it's almost a suicide intervention story in an allegorical form, but you remove any real-world context drama and just make it like, hey, there's a vaguely weird kid.
1:40:39
[SPEAKER_00]: The story has no power.
1:40:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Story has no real-world significance.
1:40:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I watched it, all I could think of, well, this is not a subtle gay allegory.
1:40:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it turned out like the next week it was revealed that it was supposed to be a gay kid and Disney put the ax on that.
1:40:55
[SPEAKER_00]: because they chickened out because buzz fucking light year didn't make money because there was a gay kiss in it that's not the reason that movie didn't make money it made money because the premise was fucking confusing and it wasn't good so not so you didn't even get word of mouth like there um what was that um
1:41:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Elemental that movie that came out which was you know got kind of a box standard rom-com about Fire person and I don't want a person.
1:41:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how could there love be and it was a not very well-veiled Allegory for the immigrants fans and that movie came out and it didn't look particularly good And yet it had legs because ultimately it's a really good movie
1:41:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's not amazing, but it's a really good movie and I ended up making money and I ended up doing really well.
1:41:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Buzz Lightyear didn't have good word of mouth because it wasn't particularly good.
1:41:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Wasn't because there was a gay kiss for a fraction of a fucking second.
1:41:53
[SPEAKER_00]: So they chicked out and so Leo went from something that could have been really interesting and powerful to something that sucks.
1:41:59
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no white remake.
1:42:02
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no white remake.
1:42:08
[SPEAKER_00]: She's not good.
1:42:10
[SPEAKER_00]: She's not good.
1:42:10
[SPEAKER_04]: She's not good.
1:42:12
[SPEAKER_04]: There are like three or four things I can point you in this movie that I like.
1:42:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
1:42:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Rachel Ziegler.
1:42:18
[SPEAKER_04]: She's right.
1:42:20
[SPEAKER_00]: She's right.
1:42:21
[SPEAKER_04]: She's bringing her all to this role.
1:42:22
[SPEAKER_04]: She's doing her job.
1:42:23
[SPEAKER_00]: She's brought to life.
1:42:24
[SPEAKER_00]: She understood the assignment.
1:42:25
[SPEAKER_00]: She's perfect casting.
1:42:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:42:26
[SPEAKER_04]: She is really, really good.
1:42:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
1:42:29
[SPEAKER_04]: And her very brief, frustratingly brief scenes with the Prince
1:42:38
[SPEAKER_04]: but I like this okay.
1:42:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you like this more than I did.
1:42:41
[SPEAKER_04]: They sing a song together.
1:42:42
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it sort of enhanced their chemistry.
1:42:44
[SPEAKER_04]: It actually moved the story along in a way that none of the other songs did.
1:42:47
[SPEAKER_04]: I like that bit a little bit.
1:42:50
[SPEAKER_04]: Didn't make it a good movie?
1:42:52
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
1:42:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Our relationship.
1:42:53
[SPEAKER_04]: At least it's something you liked.
1:42:54
[SPEAKER_04]: But it stood out.
1:42:56
[SPEAKER_04]: And I like that Alfredi Newman is getting work.
1:42:58
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that's great.
1:43:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:43:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Alfredi Newman was the, he was the narrator.
1:43:06
[SPEAKER_04]: He played a character named Dopey, and the dwarfs in this movie are these, but Mad Magazine could sue.
1:43:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
1:43:13
[SPEAKER_00]: There's these weird CG abominations that make no sense whatsoever, and they decided to make a, they decided to make Dopey look like Alfred E. Newman from Mad Magazine, and B, they decided that the reason why Dopey doesn't talk is because...
1:43:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess disability is a lie.
1:43:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a, your reason why you're disabled is because you're not trying hard enough.
1:43:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's no way to help some try harder, which is fucked.
1:43:36
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not sure if I saw this disability.
1:43:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just not an interesting story.
1:43:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I did.
1:43:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you have the people did as well.
1:43:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Not everyone took that away, but I think it's on there.
1:43:43
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's the thing that, again, this hypocrisy, this cowardice that comes through.
1:43:48
[SPEAKER_00]: the in order to turn Snow White into a longer movie because let's be honest here's there's not a lot to Snow White It's an animated class.
1:43:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, it's an anime classic, but it's also very short So they decided to beef it up a bit.
1:44:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I get it One of the things that decided to do was to try to make the idea of
1:44:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the story of Snow White, she's a princess, she's her stepmother is ruling the kingdom and she's evil and she's oppressing people.
1:44:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so here's the story about a young person who realizes that they need to become politically active.
1:44:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, and speak out against injustice in order to save the day that the literal plot of the movie.
1:44:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So far so good, so far so good.
1:44:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Then Disney said the reason the movie bombed was because Rachel Zegler,
1:44:33
[SPEAKER_00]: decided to be politically active and speaker-mind and stand-up for what she believed in so you don't believe in that That is real.
1:44:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, about yeah about she was defending for the palestinian people So you don't believe in that
1:44:49
[SPEAKER_00]: that's what that means.
1:44:50
[SPEAKER_04]: There's fucking cowardly.
1:44:52
[SPEAKER_04]: There's nothing in these movies.
1:44:54
[SPEAKER_04]: The only reason a lot of these Disney remakes have been made was to address very specific types of criticism, not made by critics at the time, but made by the internet.
1:45:08
[SPEAKER_04]: The idea that
1:45:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Bell, for instance, for Beauty in the Beast, is actually suffering Stockholm syndrome, is something that came up many years after the fact.
1:45:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm joking at the time.
1:45:21
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, jokes about it at the time, but a generation fast forwarded, and all of a sudden it's like a legit concern in people are saying they don't like the story anymore for that reason.
1:45:31
[SPEAKER_04]: And they don't want to watch the movie for it.
1:45:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so that is changed.
1:45:34
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's why the movie is done.
1:45:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Here's why they're remaking it.
1:45:36
[SPEAKER_04]: They're giving her a lot more agency.
1:45:38
[SPEAKER_04]: They're making her a lot more intelligent.
1:45:40
[SPEAKER_04]: They're making all these characters really sympathetic.
1:45:42
[SPEAKER_04]: They're flattening it all out, however.
1:45:44
[SPEAKER_02]: That's true.
1:45:44
[SPEAKER_04]: They're taking out any sort of interesting theme or story beats or character moments to address these concerns and make it as inoffensive as possible.
1:45:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, uh, We're in because it wasn't terribly offensive to begin with.
1:45:57
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
1:45:57
[SPEAKER_00]: They were trying really really hard to be an offensive to start and I'll grant it sometimes There's no fail to that.
1:46:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they're the south is a mixed bag That that's putting it mildly like it was well intention, but also racist.
1:46:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the um,
1:46:12
[SPEAKER_04]: they had they remade a ladden because most of the middle eastern characters were played by white actors found the mic and they remade it with middle eastern actors and then they added new roles for white people.
1:46:25
[SPEAKER_00]: and the editor who wrote for white people and when it came out they said hey well make a spinoff about the white guy yeah what's mercifully they haven't done but they end outstit and then and then the guy who played a laden and maybe the night over a billion dollars couldn't get an audition in this game his name is made of a suit he's really charming in that movie he's really good that movie he's just okay he's really good and he's got movie star quality yeah
1:46:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like he should be a big star.
1:46:50
[SPEAKER_04]: What the fuck?
1:46:51
[SPEAKER_04]: He proved it.
1:46:52
[SPEAKER_04]: And of course, because they're redoing it, they feel like they have to up the action of it.
1:46:56
[SPEAKER_04]: So everything is the same kind of action climb.
1:46:58
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's the same thing about the animated films.
1:47:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:47:02
[SPEAKER_04]: If that was the biggest problem that had, it would be a good movie.
1:47:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:47:06
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
1:47:06
[SPEAKER_04]: And I feel like when it comes to Snow White, one of the things that they were trying, what they're trying to do is just sort of address all of these outsider internet criticisms about a film from 1937 rather than find a new way to tell this story.
1:47:21
[SPEAKER_04]: And when you start to think about, why are they just trying to re-up these stories?
1:47:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Why can't they tell new stories?
1:47:27
[SPEAKER_04]: It's because they want to hang on to a very specific branding.
1:47:31
[SPEAKER_04]: These are corporate exercises.
1:47:33
[SPEAKER_04]: about keeping certain characters, certain versions of characters, and the public consciousness.
1:47:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, these are public domain characters, by the way.
1:47:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, not all of them.
1:47:41
[SPEAKER_04]: But Disney really wants to claim it.
1:47:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the one status in public domain.
1:47:45
[SPEAKER_04]: No, but the little mermaid, you'd be in the beast, salad, and these are all ancient stories that have been in the public domain for centuries.
1:47:51
[SPEAKER_04]: In some cases.
1:47:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, and...
1:47:53
[SPEAKER_04]: But Disney has laid claim to a lot of them.
1:47:56
[SPEAKER_04]: When you think of Cinderella, Disney wants you to think of their Cinderella.
1:48:01
[SPEAKER_00]: That's true for the Universal Frankenstein.
1:48:03
[SPEAKER_00]: That's true for the way to survive.
1:48:05
[SPEAKER_04]: I suppose so in Universal does this as well, but it's less frequent and it's way less shameless when Universal does that.
1:48:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, it's shameless when you're in a rehearsal, but we just like that movie better, I think.
1:48:19
[SPEAKER_04]: We like the movie, but the fact that it's less frequent, I think, sits better with me.
1:48:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they, they, they wait.
1:48:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't feel like that's the only thing that they care about him because, and there's these pretty much flat-out comments that when they remotely low-institch, stitch merchandise flew off the shelves.
1:48:35
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what they care about.
1:48:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:48:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're just trying to get their bad.
1:48:38
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just trying to take something that they've already done and spin more gold out of goals.
1:48:44
[SPEAKER_04]: So when they try to like re-op these films, they're trying to get
1:48:49
[SPEAKER_04]: So they're not trying, they're not even trying to do what they say they're doing, which is trying to make these things a little bit more palatable for a modern audience.
1:48:58
[SPEAKER_04]: The reason they had CGI magical dwarfs in this movie was because there was concern that that's exploitation of little people actors.
1:49:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, which is where we put down all the others.
1:49:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Which was a complicated conversation because some people said that yeah, that's these are characters that have been, you know, as demeaning often over the years to little people.
1:49:17
[SPEAKER_00]: On the other hand, it's like you're denying work to little people actors.
1:49:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so they made these CGI versions.
1:49:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Some of them are done in MoCAP, some of them are played by a little person actor.
1:49:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And they add a little person character to the cast.
1:49:29
[SPEAKER_04]: And, but then in order to highlight that these are non-human characters, they actually had human,
1:49:35
[SPEAKER_04]: a little person actors playing opposite these weird CGM on Strasse deez which is down just and so yeah now you've you've taken the curse off of but you've created this whole new weird problem there's a new curse yeah yeah so and in so doing you haven't made it up you haven't updated it for modern audience you've just tried to make it palatable enough to sell another time you're just throwing your band aids on you're pouring more vanilla extract into your vomit bucket it's not working
1:50:05
[SPEAKER_04]: I hate it too.
1:50:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the other one on the list was Avatar, but we just reviewed it.
1:50:10
[SPEAKER_00]: We just reviewed it.
1:50:11
[SPEAKER_00]: We just reviewed Avatar length.
1:50:12
[SPEAKER_00]: We should move on because we're not we're already hearing two hours.
1:50:15
[SPEAKER_00]: But you can hear us on our not last episode, but last episode before that, giving a big long review of Avatar and why we think it is.
1:50:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't work and why we think it is annoyingly hypocritical to boot.
1:50:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So.
1:50:29
[SPEAKER_00]: are a list of the worst movies of 2005, and then we'll talk about a runner's up for a minute and then we'll move on to Averageist.
1:50:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Whitney's list, Star Trek Section 31, Tron Aries, him absolute dominion and War of the Worlds, in his number one spot.
1:50:50
[SPEAKER_00]: My picks were wicked for good.
1:50:52
[SPEAKER_00]: The Alto Knights, the electric state,
1:50:57
[SPEAKER_00]: war of the world, and in my number one spot, most of what Disney did this year, specifically Captain America Brave New World Snow White, Tron Ares, Elyo, and Avatar, and a few films are blameless, I think Fantastic Four and Thunderbolts are fine, Leila Winstonch was inoffensive.
1:51:17
[SPEAKER_00]: like it was fine.
1:51:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't great or anything.
1:51:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't necessarily speak well to their creative output, but it's not an offender, but these movies are an infuriating pattern of creative bankruptcy and frankly cowardice.
1:51:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I do not care for it.
1:51:34
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, winning.
1:51:34
[SPEAKER_00]: What does it mean to run us up?
1:51:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, let's see, until Dom was a flasher movie that I really hated until Dom, it's the idea is the character of Dana Horn movie.
1:51:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the characters die and then they are resurrected and have to live through like a different kind of slasher every night, but
1:51:51
[SPEAKER_04]: The premise isn't really followed through with the horror elements, so really scattered, it's just incredibly poorly written and the characters are all really boring.
1:51:59
[SPEAKER_04]: There's ways to make that creative.
1:52:00
[SPEAKER_00]: What's safe for me is that some of the horror movies that they live through are really briefly fun, and so I was able to be entertained enough to let it slide.
1:52:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I wish if each night, if they committed to the bit, and each night really was like a different kind of slasher movie, it would have been a lot more fun.
1:52:17
[SPEAKER_04]: but it gets really convoluted really quick.
1:52:19
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
1:52:19
[SPEAKER_04]: That's fair enough.
1:52:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:52:22
[SPEAKER_04]: I wanted the like honey don't a lot but it ended up being so badly conceived and it's a badly written story.
1:52:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Five minutes at Freddy's 2 is just terrible.
1:52:31
[SPEAKER_04]: It kept in America Brave New World was on my list.
1:52:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, a big bold, beautiful journey is like drinking a big mug of maple syrup.
1:52:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, it's that you can't throw up because it's so thick.
1:52:42
[SPEAKER_04]: It's so fucking twey.
1:52:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:52:45
[SPEAKER_00]: An undeservingly cell.
1:52:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I get never irons.
1:52:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It's huge emotional catharsis that it wants you to have.
1:52:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like not so triad.
1:52:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Really hurts my soul.
1:52:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:52:58
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, I had another one on here, but I'm not going to mention it because it is punching down.
1:53:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's a little bit of a tiny movie on the part of that.
1:53:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hard enough, yeah.
1:53:04
[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't need it.
1:53:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's see here.
1:53:06
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, and sorry.
1:53:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Shelby Oaks was also on.
1:53:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's when I thought was small enough, not to mention but fair enough.
1:53:12
[SPEAKER_00]: We disagree.
1:53:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I had LMK, it's a pretty much a disaster, but there are other movies that infuriated me more.
1:53:19
[SPEAKER_00]: The Apple Original Fountain of Use, which is
1:53:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the most annoying Indiana Jones knockoff we've had in a really long time, let's see F1, the movie, which is like, is it a great one?
1:53:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Is it a great one?
1:53:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Is it a great one?
1:53:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Is it a great one?
1:53:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one?
1:53:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it a great one
1:53:53
[SPEAKER_00]: and everything else can't really save that, um, and then I had a big bowl of beautiful journey as well, and I think that's it for my worst of the worst.
1:54:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no way, bright heart.
1:54:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I didn't see bright heart.
1:54:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Bright heart is really incompetent, but it doesn't...
1:54:11
[SPEAKER_00]: anger me.
1:54:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, but it's very badly made.
1:54:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but that's, that's legit.
1:54:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just, it's just
1:54:41
[SPEAKER_00]: or what was, like, alto nights.
1:54:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you can't just rest on getting talented people to do it.
1:54:48
[SPEAKER_00]: You actually have to make sure that the thing works.
1:54:51
[SPEAKER_00]: You actually have to, like, you know, write it good.
1:54:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I know you're Nicolas Polagie, but you can do better, my friend.
1:54:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Or like, we could go, we could forget.
1:55:00
[SPEAKER_00]: The lesson is just because it's popular, doesn't mean it can't be improved.
1:55:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
1:55:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And that if Fielty is not in and of itself a good thing, if being faithful makes your movie worse.
1:55:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not saying that for years, man.
1:55:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're right.
1:55:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So I feel like the lesson with Brightheart is make a better movie.
1:55:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Just make it funnier and, you know,
1:55:31
[SPEAKER_00]: choreograph it better like it's just really nuts and bolts stuff.
1:55:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, seven.
1:55:34
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, and now finally, and we're going to do one for these.
1:55:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It's our pick for the most average movie of the year, a movie that is baseline competent, but not good, and is baseline competent, but also not bad.
1:55:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just
1:55:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he made that movie.
1:55:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm.
1:55:56
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I'm very curious what you picked.
1:55:58
[SPEAKER_04]: I... You've already mentioned it, so I'm just going to have to say it right away, fountain of youth.
1:56:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Really?
1:56:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Really?
1:56:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Because it is a really slickly made film, it has everything going for it on paper.
1:56:11
[SPEAKER_04]: It has charming leads.
1:56:13
[SPEAKER_04]: The actors are ostensibly charming characters.
1:56:17
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a Natalie Portman and John Christensky.
1:56:21
[SPEAKER_00]: John Christensky.
1:56:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're brother and sister.
1:56:23
[SPEAKER_00]: They wanted to say Chris Pratt, but he's doing Chris.
1:56:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, he's doing run Reynolds as what he's doing.
1:56:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and they have this kind of bickerson relationship.
1:56:31
[SPEAKER_04]: They're coming at art from different angles.
1:56:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're siblings with romantic chemistry.
1:56:35
[SPEAKER_04]: There's things to talk about.
1:56:36
[SPEAKER_04]: They have scenes together where they
1:56:38
[SPEAKER_04]: ostensibly banter kind of well.
1:56:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Those scenes are definitely written into the script and they're on this journey to find the literal Fountain of Youth the most generic McGuffin they got possibly going to head and got to it yet fair game and they have to do really outlandish things like use balloons to raise the Bismarck off of the ocean floor and find things in its hold
1:57:00
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm doing that sounds exciting and that sounds exciting and they pull the money they needed into the special effects all of these things function and that's all they do
1:57:11
[SPEAKER_04]: There's nothing to raise the pulse.
1:57:14
[SPEAKER_04]: There's nothing to get angry about.
1:57:15
[SPEAKER_04]: There's nothing so exciting that you'll remember it.
1:57:18
[SPEAKER_04]: There's nothing so offensive that you'll remember it.
1:57:20
[SPEAKER_04]: I had to remind myself that I even saw this movie, which I think is a good indicator that it's pretty damn average.
1:57:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
1:57:26
[SPEAKER_04]: It's right in the middle of all the film that I saw.
1:57:29
[SPEAKER_04]: I have nothing to recommend it.
1:57:31
[SPEAKER_04]: I have nothing to scare you off it.
1:57:33
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's so bland that you're not gonna get a lot from it.
1:57:37
[SPEAKER_04]: You can say that being bland and non-memorable is worse than being bad, but I think I've rather seen that.
1:57:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Nothing that's bad.
1:57:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I would rather see something bad, unless it's like, you know, horrifically racist or something like that.
1:57:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
1:57:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I find a choice.
1:57:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to say if I had choice between seeing bright heart and this, I'd rather watch bright heart because bright heart is going to at least get that, like, oh, how it affects this guy.
1:58:00
[SPEAKER_00]: From front of you, it's just like, yeah, but the reason why this isn't my, because all your points are all well, so I get it.
1:58:07
[SPEAKER_00]: But the reason why this wasn't a contender for me is that there is something I find infuriating about it.
1:58:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a combination of the writing and the actor.
1:58:16
[SPEAKER_00]: John Presinsky is nails on chalkboard to me in this.
1:58:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I just need his character.
1:58:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I hate his character.
1:58:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, there's a lot of annoying creepy heroes.
1:58:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not going to defend him.
1:58:30
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to say that he does that annoying creepy hero thing.
1:58:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
1:58:34
[SPEAKER_04]: and which is so common, but I didn't think he did it any better or worse than so many of these games.
1:58:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll tell you what the difference is because like again in my head I was like was that Ryan Reynolds in this because he's doing Ryan Reynolds.
1:58:48
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just snarking about everything.
1:58:50
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not emotionally engaging with anything.
1:58:52
[SPEAKER_00]: He always says something quippy and something vaguely intelligent to say but actually isn't intelligent.
1:58:58
[SPEAKER_00]: He's doing a bit.
1:59:00
[SPEAKER_00]: a lot of actors do a bit.
1:59:02
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what we ask for in a lot of our paper movies nowadays.
1:59:05
[SPEAKER_00]: That is not the end of the world and some actors can get away with it.
1:59:09
[SPEAKER_00]: What sends it over the edge is the way he treats his sister.
1:59:14
[SPEAKER_00]: He walks up to his, and his sister is a single mom going through a divorce and her husband has decided to betray her because they said they would share custody and now he says, no, I want full custody.
1:59:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And so she's dealing with that.
1:59:27
[SPEAKER_00]: She has a wonderful job as like a curator of an important art museum, or history museum, or whatever, a museum.
1:59:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and he walks into her life saying, yeah, everything you like is stupid.
1:59:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, your job is terrible and even if you like it, you shouldn't like it.
1:59:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to get you fired from that because I would rather take control of your life and have and drag you along with me in an adventure.
1:59:53
[SPEAKER_00]: You'd rather not go on because you're a mother and you have responsibilities.
1:59:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to take your kid along with us too.
1:59:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm going to get him totally kidnapped because fuck you.
2:00:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I do not care about your agency.
2:00:03
[SPEAKER_00]: or your career or your family.
2:00:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm more important than you.
2:00:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the lesson she learns.
2:00:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And that pissed me off.
2:00:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not, I can want.
2:00:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Like Ryan Reynolds do that shit or like uh, or if you look at some like Sahara another Famous in Anna Jones knockoff that didn't do well.
2:00:27
[SPEAKER_00]: It really bummed.
2:00:28
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a bad movie.
2:00:29
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fine.
2:00:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Matthew McConaughey plays that kind of like would be handsome guy.
2:00:33
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, but he's harmless.
2:00:37
[SPEAKER_00]: This guy does harm And that's why he pisses me off.
2:00:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so this one and not quite bad enough to make
2:00:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I bought him five, but because the rest of the movie is adequate.
2:00:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
2:00:48
[SPEAKER_00]: He pissed me off, so that's why it's not my number one.
2:00:50
[SPEAKER_04]: I can't get mad at him for ruining Natalie Portman's life, though, because I don't care about her either.
2:00:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I care about her more than him.
2:00:59
[SPEAKER_00]: She has real things going on.
2:01:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And now, like, the very least things they've heard.
2:01:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, no, this cardboard character lost her boring job that I've never seen before.
2:01:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, it does.
2:01:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know if I was just her job, I'd be like fine.
2:01:11
[SPEAKER_00]: He impingers her ability to take care of and see her son.
2:01:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Like he implicates her in like a major felony right when she's trying to get custody of her son from a husband and my next husband who's trying to take him away.
2:01:25
[SPEAKER_00]: But the selfishness of that just goes beyond the fucking end.
2:01:29
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a movie, it'll be all right.
2:01:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I course it's a movie, but you know, you don't you don't put an element of the story to make us like care sympathize with your characters like she's a single mom who's trying to retain custody.
2:01:39
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't want us to care about them.
2:01:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
2:01:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So I do, and then you make the actual protagonist of your movie, someone who doesn't give a shit about that, and I'm dangerous that you'll lost to me.
2:01:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You, you, you, you undermind your own plan.
2:01:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, my most average movie of the year.
2:01:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I, I, I really, really, really, really, really had to like sift through.
2:02:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm.
2:02:06
[SPEAKER_00]: the movies I watched this year.
2:02:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I even went through like my medic critic scores like what's like the most average average them all out mathematically.
2:02:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, or the conclusion I came to is that there was a movie that came out this year.
2:02:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a remake.
2:02:23
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a remake by the same director that told the story almost the exact same way, but not quite
2:02:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So it may just well not exist.
2:02:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's how to train your dragon.
2:02:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and this was one of the biggest hits of the year.
2:02:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, man, ton of money.
2:02:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a really mediocre.
2:02:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Haven't seen it.
2:02:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the deal.
2:02:44
[SPEAKER_00]: It's animated how to train your dragon didn't exist.
2:02:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I would be a lot more enamored of this because it's the same story the almost the exact same way a lot of the shots of the same It's an animated dragon looks almost identical It's an entire resolution, but yeah, looks the same it's the same design Yeah, yeah, yeah, which honestly if it ain't broke, I'm fine with that little stitch looks the same.
2:03:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't fix stitch.
2:03:07
[SPEAKER_00]: He looks fine
2:03:08
[SPEAKER_00]: You could, he looks great, I don't care, he's an alien, he doesn't even think he could look like anything.
2:03:14
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like, you know, whatever, my point is I like such a design, I like toothless as design, they're well designed fantasy creatures, fine.
2:03:23
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a story of young boy, living in a village at the upper most edge of the world, where
2:03:38
[SPEAKER_00]: which they never explained in the cartoon.
2:03:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like you mentioned that like, a lot of these animated movies get a remake, just to address one quibble people had.
2:03:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes it's more than a quibble, sometimes it's a real, like the Latin casting.
2:03:51
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a real complaint.
2:03:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Here, the only thing that they change, literally the only thing I clot.
2:03:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've seen the original multiple times.
2:04:02
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, is they explained why they're Scottish?
2:04:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they move from Scotland.
2:04:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they have as they're not all Scottish.
2:04:09
[SPEAKER_00]: They actually made it a book, the island.
2:04:12
[SPEAKER_00]: They made a multicultural Viking city.
2:04:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And the idea is, it's only one line, but it does explain it.
2:04:22
[SPEAKER_00]: People from all over the world, like close to smell over the world, send like a few warriors there to protect the rest of the world from dragons, so that the dragons won't come further south.
2:04:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
2:04:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Fine, if I didn't get what that does assure you that does explain it.
2:04:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I will let it slide You didn't need a whole fucking movie to do that Really fucking didn't you could have added an ADR line and a special edition of the film.
2:04:47
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like oh, what by the way?
2:04:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I would have been fine No need it But yeah, it's the same fucking movie it works.
2:04:55
[SPEAKER_00]: You know stories okay, hmm But it does nothing different it has no new take
2:05:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It really does feel like the studio was gonna do this anyway, so they got the original, so the original filmmaker is like, I'm not letting anyone else fuck this up, I did it right the first time, so I'm gonna do it again, and it worked, people paid to see it, but it's like,
2:05:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, I'm imagining kids seeing this movie who maybe haven't seen the original yet.
2:05:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the end of the movie, they be like, oh, why don't what happens next?
2:05:31
[SPEAKER_00]: We can literally watch what happens next right now.
2:05:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because it's the same fucking movie.
2:05:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So we can watch the next two movies and the TV show right now.
2:05:39
[SPEAKER_00]: It's completely redundant.
2:05:41
[SPEAKER_00]: She's this thing, they don't, 636 million us men.
2:05:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you know what?
2:05:46
[SPEAKER_00]: There were some movies that made more money this year.
2:05:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Fine.
2:05:50
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just completely unnecessary.
2:05:53
[SPEAKER_00]: It adds nothing.
2:05:54
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no new take.
2:05:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'll see.
2:05:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just that one line of dialogue, and that's it.
2:05:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
2:05:59
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll say this, that there's something interesting happening with a Liloat section, how to train your dragon.
2:06:05
[SPEAKER_04]: I've long been waiting for the moment when something would have be rebooted that was initially conceived of after the inception of the internet.
2:06:15
[SPEAKER_04]: because it hasn't happened a lot and Lilo and Stitch and had her turn to drag in our prime examples of this happening, maybe not for the first time, but one of the earlier times that this has actually happened.
2:06:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, certainly more prominently.
2:06:28
[SPEAKER_04]: I think of all of the remakes or reboots and they're all remakes and reboots of a previous generations entertainment.
2:06:34
[SPEAKER_04]: Mostly something old in the consciousness.
2:06:36
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what all the Disney remakes are about.
2:06:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we're just trying to keep that IP alive so it still has value.
2:06:41
[SPEAKER_04]: And the reason filmmakers have been doing that is because the internet kind of fractured the mass consciousness.
2:06:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
2:06:48
[SPEAKER_04]: I added this kind of blurring effect to pop culture, where there was just so much to sift through, that we can only focus on the things we remember from the earlier days before the explosion of the internet.
2:06:58
[SPEAKER_04]: So we could kind of lean on these really familiar IP and it's really notable and really telling that it's not just about a generational nostalgia thing now, it's about how we're trying to find the things that actually survived that explosion and how few and far between those things are.
2:07:19
[SPEAKER_04]: So I think from a cultural standpoint, something interesting has happened with the success of Lilo and Stitch and how to turn your dragon.
2:07:27
[SPEAKER_04]: but I didn't see either of those movies and from the sound of it, we didn't need either of those movies.
2:07:31
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I don't argue that Leelo and Stitch has...
2:07:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It makes some really arbitrary changes that don't make any sense.
2:07:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it splits the character of Cobra bubbles up into two characters so that neither character
2:07:45
[SPEAKER_00]: has as much to do or is as interesting.
2:07:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But on the upside, now there's a role for Tia Carrera.
2:07:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, please, I mean, that's fine.
2:07:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Or you could've just made her cobra bubbles.
2:07:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I would've been fine with that.
2:08:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a lot of superficial changes like in the original animated movie when the aliens come to earth to like track down stitch they put on like not very convincing human costumes and people just sort of buy it Yeah, because that made it animation you the whole world is a little exaggerated you hit away with that and in live action movie it's that strange crudility more so they have like holograms that make them look like the famous actors playing them which is
2:08:25
[SPEAKER_00]: not as fun but does make more sense in the context, let it go, and they do change the ending, which some people thought actually was controversial and didn't work, and to the filmmaker's credit, they were said that we actually felt that the original ending.
2:08:41
[SPEAKER_00]: uh, wasn't very in keeping with Hawaiian culture and that it would make more sense for these close-knit communities to share the responsibility for raising a child's parents died rather than throwing it all on one young person.
2:08:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And so honestly, fair enough.
2:09:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, I think that's a reasonable argument.
2:09:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I certainly don't think it's a big problem.
2:09:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
2:09:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So like they had some thoughts, but still basically the same film.
2:09:10
[SPEAKER_00]: But how do you know Dragon is like literally the same film.
2:09:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It's completely redundant as an experience.
2:09:16
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like the only reason to make it is to make more money off of the exact same thing we already had.
2:09:23
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't even change the design.
2:09:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can sell with different toys.
2:09:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for a day, let's sell.
2:09:29
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my most average movie of the year.
2:09:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And Whitney's of course was the Founder of Youth, which point tankin' on that note.
2:09:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you everybody for joining us.
2:09:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for everybody for listening to us throughout 2025.
2:09:41
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're new, thank you for listening to us right now.
2:09:45
[SPEAKER_00]: we're happy to have you here.
2:09:47
[SPEAKER_00]: You can head on over to our Patreon page patreon.com slash critically claimed network where we release our episodes add free and we have a lot of exclusive bonus material.
2:09:56
[SPEAKER_00]: You can vote on future episodes of the Iron List with our Star Trek podcast.
2:10:00
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to hear both me and Whitney, talk about Star Trek, the most Whitney this time.
2:10:05
[SPEAKER_00]: We review every episode of Star Trek in order.
2:10:08
[SPEAKER_00]: we are preparing to get back on one of our favorite projects, which is a Patreon exclusive podcast where we review every movie, every nominated for Best Picture, we're open to get any episode in the can of that within a week.
2:10:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, and you can contact us as well, or email addresses letters.
2:10:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It critically claimed.net.
2:10:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you agree with something that we said?
2:10:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you hate us?
2:10:30
[SPEAKER_00]: For saying something in this podcast you that you disagree with we'd love to hear from you We'd love to hear your best of worst of most average lists of the year would be happy to share them with people and talk about your picks On an upcoming episode of We've Got Mail our email address is letters at critically claimed.net Whitney what is our PO mouse send us a physical letter postcard whatever you like so they critically claimed network PO box six four one five six five Los Angeles California nine double zero six four
2:10:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you very, very much.
2:10:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And for social media, I'm Matt Williams-Bianne.
2:11:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, Whitney Cybel.
2:11:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is it for the year.
2:11:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening.
2:11:07
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll see you in 2026.
2:11:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Never forget, everyone is a critic.
2:11:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing to do with you.
2:11:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to go to the Midnight Show.
2:11:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry I wet.