Latest / The Kulturecast / Battle: Los Angeles (2011) — "That was some real John Wayne shit, staff sergeant."

Transcript

Battle: Los Angeles (2011) — "That was some real John Wayne shit, staff sergeant." · The Kulturecast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: We'd were June Wednesday morning, ninety four point five Morning,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Sargeant Sargon.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: We now know that meet here is will Land off
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: the coast of different cities. At this point there are
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: really more quite friends than Hafer.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: We are not dying.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: That on Los Angeles for EPG thirteen.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Culture Cast. I am
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: your host, Chris Dash You and I am joined by
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: my good friend. We spend a lot of time talking
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: about films, and I have enjoyed every single minute of it.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: He's a professor over there at Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Your friend of mine, doctor David D. Pro Mutter, put
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: the D in that name, folks.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Chris. Glad to join you again
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: for another excursion at the possible end of the world.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: I know, God, they just they love the end of
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: the world in cinema, and boy, they love aliens causing
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: the end of the world. On this episode of the
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Culture Cast, Doctor pro Mutter and I will be talking
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: about a film that many of you probably forgot existed.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about twenty eleven's Battle Los Angeles.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: The film is directed by Jonathan Leebsman, written by Chris Bertolini,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: stars Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, Ramon Rodriguez, Bridget moynihan, Neo Yes,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: the singer songwriter Nao, and Michael Pana pre becoming famous
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: or popular. Michael Pania. I think when I was watching
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: the film with my friend Lindsay, she goes, Oh, it's
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: that guy. What do I know him from? And I
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: was like, at this point a lot of stuff then
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: not much? Uh, Doctor pro Mutter, I'm very curious two
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: part question, why are we talking about? Why are we
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: talking about Battle for Los Angeles? And also is it
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: rather apropos that we're talking about Battle for Los Angeles?
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Within about a week week and a half of Steven
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Spielberg's return to alien cinema with Disclosure Day, a film
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: also about aliens, maybe not as bloodthirsty, but aliens nonetheless.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: Well, I suggested this film because I felt it was
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: a well done example of a genre that you think
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: can't be well done anymore because we've seen so many
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: variations of it. And let's just take one example. Hear aliens? Right,
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: So I'm old enough I get to say that once
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: for podcasts. I'm old enough to have seen seventies films,
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: eighties films. I read science fiction that was from the
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: thirties and forties. I watched Star Trek, I watched other
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: science fiction television shows. I have probably physically read descriptions
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: of and seen visions of artistic, cinematic painting, whatever, visions
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: of what aliens could look like, creatures from other planets
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: thousands of times if you just count them all. And
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: so you got to come up with something a little
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: bit different, a little something of interest to get me
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: to say.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: Like, oh, that's a little.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: Bit original take on an alien. And then alien invasion again,
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: that was a pretty popular genre in the fifties and sixties.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: You got to come up with something to jar me
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: and go like, Okay, you know, there's some plausibilities, there's
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: some suspension of disbelief, but that's a pretty good invasion
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: as invasions go. And I felt that this film checked
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: boxes of doing some little things right. And I just
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: wanted to give you one example of a little thing
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: where I went like, yes, that was very clever of
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: them to do. That is that part of the conceit
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: of this film, which has brought discussed quite often, is
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: that the aliens don't have tremendous air power. I mean,
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: we live in an era where obviously airpower is very
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: important in warfare, whether it's drone warfare, and this are
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: the very first ones to deal with drones. I thought
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: that was very interesting. It's dakola prescient movie, right.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Very ahead of its time in twenty eleven.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, but they do have fine craft. And the
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: producers sat there, which I don't think was done on
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: a certain other major blockbuster film that you just mentioned.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: But I think the producers of this film, the director
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: of this film, the screenwriter, they sat there to go like,
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: we want to have alien that fly around and engage
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: in the Battle of Los Angeles. We just can't have
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: a Star Trek shovel, we can't have a UFO. We
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: got to have something just different about them. And I
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: felt that they're little puffs, you know, they're little burst
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: spurts where where they weren't just one continuous jet. They
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: were sort of I don't even know them. Of course,
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: it's never explained, which it shouldn't. There should there shouldn't
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: be any scene like, oh, yes, they use this for
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: propulsion or whatever. But I just thought that was a
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: little touch that they'd be go like, oh, those are
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: different than alien space earthbound aerial spacecraft that I've ever
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: seen before in a movie, and I think it just
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: does a number of those. And then the last part
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: is I'm I'm a sucker for a platoon film, for
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: a squad film, for a film which shows war through
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: the eyes of a small unit, a band of brothers,
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: and the original idea of the film and that this
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: is like, you know, I was reading about the conception
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: of the film was that like, we would do an
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: alien invasion, but at the squad level, like just four,
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: five or six guys, ten or twelve men and women
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: in the military and their battle. In the beginning of
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: the film, we do have like news broadcast, but after
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: that there's basically no you know, cut to the Pentagon
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: where people are screaming over gigantic screens, where the president
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: of Serbias is discussing with the president of the Nited States.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: This is just at the ground level. I liked it,
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: which I don't like to showcase as something of relevance
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: or importance, but I liked those little elements and the
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: story that it told wasn't pretentious film. We can learn
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: a lot from it as a genre film.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I saw this in theaters with a friend of mine,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: and he and I sat and I remember watched this movie,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: and I can't exactly remember off the top of my
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: head because a lot has happened and been smoked since then,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: and I just don't necessarily have the capacity to remember
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: how I walked away from twenty eleven's Bottle Los Angeles feeling.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: So all I can comment on and this is, you know,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: pre podcast obviously, this is twenty eleven. So I started
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: the podcast three years later, which is crazy to think
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: about in and of itself, So having only been podcasting
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: for three years at that point, I never returned to
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: this movie. I actually, in a lot of ways sometimes
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: forget that this movie existed, and I think a lot
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: of people have as well. Which is I think to
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: your kind of initial statements and thesis on the movie,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: I think it does do a very good job at
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: something that is not really wasn't really being done at
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: the time then with this genre in a lot of
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: ways still really hasn't been done now with this genre.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: But it where it's successful, it's really successful. Where it
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: is a failure, I think it's an obvious and abject
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: failure and I think a lot of that comes from
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: leaning into tropes like hard, really hard, to the point
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: where we have like a group of characters that's bound
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: to die, the dad who's going to sacrific a lot
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: of the stuff that's just you've and like you said,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: you're you know you you use the term you're like,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: you're a sucker for like a good like squad movie,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Like those are those tropes that they mine. And for
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: me that is probably not like the least successful part,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: but it's the part where I'm like, I'm not a
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: huge war movie guy, because they tend to go and
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: lean into those tropes and here when they do them,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: I'm just like, hey, YOYI movie. We couldn't have done
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: anything else. But I understand that also the intention of
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: every filmmaker is to not is not to make the newest,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: most exciting, most unique, creative thing ever made. Sometimes tropes
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: are used because they are easy to use and they
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: are not expected to be something difficult for you to
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: lean into because everybody else has done them, and everybody
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: else doing them is not necessarily a bad thing. It's
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: not also necessarily a good thing for some people. It's
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: gonna work for other people, it's not gonna work. I
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: can understand that I am not in the majority of
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: film watchers sitting here and going, well, you know, this
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: is just like this, and this is just like this,
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: and this is just like this. Not everybody's doing that.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Let's just get that out of the way. I'm doing
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: that because I sit and watch movies all the time,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: one might even say for a living. So if that's
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: what I'm doing, then the expectation is I am watching
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: for the tropes all the time, and I think that
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: film reviewers lose sight of that from time to time.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: You know, all the tropes are in this movie. Yeah,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: And you know what, plenty of people enjoy the tropes,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: either because they don't watch enough films to have been
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: inundated with it constantly, or because those tropes just don't
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: don't bother them, because that's the expectation of the genre,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: and if it's not in the genre, some people are
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: wondering where those things are, as opposed to saying, well,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: here it's, you know, third act, so the dad's got
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: to die. You know. James Bond movies worked because they
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: were formulaic and expectational in a way, and I think
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: that that's a very obvious case study for well, can
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: you make a movie that leans into the tropes and
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: be successful. Yes, James Bond is one of those franchises
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: where it's like, look, it's for like thirty years it
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: did the same thing. It started finally bristling under the tours,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: coming in and making the movies, and all of a
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: sudden it was we don't want to do this anymore.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: And you know what, I agree, some of the things
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: are necessary to no longer exist, but plenty of the
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: things still work. So all of that out of the
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: way to say, I think this movie works better at
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: times than it fails at times. But I will say,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: for someone who's not a war movie guy at all,
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: it does have a lot of those war or war
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: movie tropes. But again in this film's benefit, again for
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: me personally not a fan, but for this film's benefit,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: I think it helps really ground it in at the
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: time a post the nine to eleven current Iraq war timeline,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: post blackhawk Down film timeline, the film blackcok Down, not
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: the event, but the film blackcock Down, because you can
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: see a lot of blackhawk Down in this movie. You
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: can see a lot of nine to eleven imagery in
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: this movie. I mean again, you know, to go to
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Steven Spielberg. War of the Worlds was his nine eleven movie.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: It really was, like, you know, it is a lot
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: of like nine to eleven imagery. You got Tom Cruise
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: running around the streets covered in dust. If that for
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: a certain age of person doesn't evoke a certain kind
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: of imagery, don't know what to tell you. For most
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: people who grew up and were able to see those
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: nine to eleven images, seeing Tom Cruise running around in dust,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: covered in dust in War of the World's is very
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: close approximation to that. We don't have any imagery of
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: American soldiers fighting on the front lines of our country
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: against a foreign invader. That has never happened in our lifetime.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Fingers crossed it never will. This movie, I think, is
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: a very interesting observation on what it would look like
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: if the invaders were not of another country, but of
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: another species exterior to our planet. I think that this
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: is a very interesting kind of take on that. As
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: a genre, I will say having a bunch of cookie
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: cutter characters again in this context works because it's not
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: really about the characters as much as the situation that
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: they've been thrown into and experiencing the horror of the
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: situation through their eyes. So every character is a rather
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: broad beat, as it were, or a broad stroke, and
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: looks something like Odyssey coming out here in a couple weeks,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: I think is once again a good indicator of something
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: like that, where it's complexity of characters doesn't necessarily matter
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: if the situation and the characters are drawn very broadly.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: Complex characters can tend to get lost in this complex
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: structure that some film writers want to go with. This
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: film is aliens are invading and we're following a platoon
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. It doesn't need to be any more
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: than that, and the fact that it's not is not
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: necessarily a bad thing. I think for this film it
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: kind of works. But I understand how, and I include
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: myself in this group. Some people would watch this movie
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: and go, you're not doing enough. I fall into the
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: camp if you're not doing enough, because this is such
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: a novel premise that nobody's really done anything with since that.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: It kind of blows my mind that this is the
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: only one of these movies we have, and that it
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: isn't It wasn't a prototype for someone to do something
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: else with it. This is kind of where that idea
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: stopped and started. And that's shocking for me because this
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: idea seems really ripe for repeat or re examination in
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: a big budget capacity, because again that's the other thing.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: This is a big budget Hollywood movie. There were other
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: movies that came out that ripped this movie off, specifically
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Battle of Los Angeles, which is the asylum film of
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: the more or less identical name, but nobody's even done
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: this since, which that kind of for me kind of
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: makes this movie just a tad more frustrating, because it's like,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: this movie's a lot of wasted potential in a lot
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: of ways for someone who wanted more than just a
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: battle movie in Los Angeles. And if it had inspired
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: someone else to do more with it, I think you'd
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: look back at this movie it's like, well, this is
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: a fun starting point, but it's like a fun starting
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: and stop point, and that's maybe in twenty twenty six,
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: the biggest knock against this movie is that it didn't
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: inspire more things that kind of just exists singularly as
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: its own thing. There's not even a sequel to this movie,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: which is again shocking because the movie made a lot
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: of money, like three times it's budget, which you know,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: looking at something like Mandalorian and Grogu right now barely
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: breaking even like this movie was a success, like a
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: real bona fide success. No, see, it was a success, and.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: I mean I just looked up. I really didn't know
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: until we were going to do this show.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: I looked it up.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: It cost about I think, I think in those dollars
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: it costs about a third of what it eventually made,
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: which is good, right like Halftimes, you have to be there,
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: and it had no I mean, Aaron Heckhart was not
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: and still is not, like he's not Tom Cruise. I mean,
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: I actually think he's a very good actor artter of
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: fact when he was he was born in America but
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: raised in England and his accent. I'm always really impressed
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: by those British actors who can who play and can
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: play somebody and all. We have to look it up
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: to find out that they're British. You can't tell for
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: or that they have you know, they were raised in
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: Britain in his case. But it didn't have any star
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: power in terms of the director, the screenwriter, anyone associated
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: with it to like have a box off this straw.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: I think that that needs to be pointed out. I mean,
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: I have nothing against Steven Spielberg, but obviously when a
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: Steven Spielberg movie opens, there's a pre built in audience.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: And we've discussed now whether there's any stars left. I mean,
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: Tom Cruise can still I think, although I guess one
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: of the Mission Impossible movies was an exception can guarantee
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: a certain amount of people showing up. Is there anyone
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: left in Hollywood besides importing bts from Korea to be
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: in a movie that or doing a movie about Michael Jackson,
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: you know, celebrities of yesteryear who are passed away that
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: can guarantee an opening. So it is interesting how successful
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: the movie was despite not having anything except just the story.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: And we go back to it if I'm going to
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: professor mode for a moment. There are a couple of
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: things here which I like because they brought out some
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: of the issues that whenever I watch a war film
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: or I watch a post apocalyptic film. I think I
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: like them as examples to talk about because they bring
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: out the essentialism of human nature, like like it's life
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: or death it's not where should we go for dinner?
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: It's not you know, it's not even a career choice,
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: like you know what WHI should I major in college?
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: This is the extermination of the human race or not right?
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: This is surviving the apocalypse or not right? And post
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: apocalypse films, war films, especially at the squad level. I mean,
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: you could watch what you're watching mand of Brothers or
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: The Pacific or they just did the Masters of the
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: Air series, and you're going like, yes, we know ahead
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: of time. The plot turns out America wins World War Two,
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: but that doesn't mean this squad is going to survive, right,
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: So we are still, unless we've read the book, wondering
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: what's going to happen. And so that that to me
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: is that essential ism of like not knowing. I mean, yes,
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: probably I should be quicker on the uptake. And like
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: a cute kid isn't is rescued with his father. It's
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: not going to be the cute kid that dies at
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: the no sacrificing himself for his father. I did like
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: that they they didn't do other things like, for example,
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: there is no love story, right, There's no there's no
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: like the Life and Kid thankfully that Aaron Heckhart has
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: to prove himself to byars.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Go and save Yeah. Oh yeah, my god. Can you
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: imagine how insufferable that would have been.
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: There's a there's a there's a great, strong, intelligent female
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: character who's a veterinarian, right, and that proves to be
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: interesting the part of the plot of the film that
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: she can you do an autopsy of of of non
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: human animal. But and and there's a moment there why
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: you think, like, Okay, after the movie is over, maybe
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: they'll they'll get together or something like that. But but there's
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: no love story there. There's no like, oh kiss me,
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: it's the end, you know. So like, I approve of
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: that choice. I think that was a very very smart
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: choice to do. And so I yeah, a lot of
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: the tropes were familiar, but they were acceptable within the stream.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: I'll bring up one more thing that I think war
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: films bring up, and it was a little heavy hand
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: at the times. If I were editing this film, I'd
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: like have one less scene of somebody saying what the
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: moral of a moment is. But Aaron Eckhart plays a
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: sergeant and traditionally in the military, probably going back to
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: Roman times the sergeants were the career professionals who were
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: highly experienced, and he and he plays a highly experienced
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: career sergeant. And the lieutenants like the the lieutenant here
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: who Lieutenant William Martinez played second Lieutenant William Martinez. He
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: he plays a new officer fresh out of West Point,
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: you know, fresh out of ROTC. Right, and that is
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: a familiar thing, you know, the grizzled sergeant who sort
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: of has practical knowledge versus the brash new lieutenant who
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: thinks they know everything because they came out of the
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: military academy. I think they do that well and especially
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: with the issue, and I know this is I guess
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: it's a little bit familiar of like, you know, something
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: happened in the previous war and people are mad about it,
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: and right.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: That's a that's a hell of a trope. Like my
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: brother was in that platoon, like an he didn't come
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: back and use it. It's like, oh yeah, yeah, that
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: I might have.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: But it gets to this really good scene, which I
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: think as somebody who spent my time in leadership, I
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: thought a lot about leadership and I read a lot
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: about leadership, and obviously academic leadership or corporate leadership and
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: military leadership are not all the same. However, that moment
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: where the sergeant is explaining to the young lieutenant, you know,
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: you're paid to make a decision. It isn't always necessarily
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: going to be the right decision, go right, go left.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: You're paid to do something and right. It may turn
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: out to be wrong. You may have had all the
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: right reasons and end up doing the wrong thing. But
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: that's an element of leadership. And I thought that was
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: an interesting takeaway, like that was an intelligent takeaway from
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: the plot of a movie that you know, the audience
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: could go like, Okay, I see I see some something
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: emerging from character there that is not just cardboard cutout.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Right, And I would agree. I think that that's one
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: of the scenes in the movie that really resonated with me,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: when they were kind of taking him to task and
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: he starts repeating their names and their tag numbers, like
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: that's look, it's like it's from a million other war
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: movies in some capacity or another, because that we've seen
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: that trope before. It's been used before, but again here
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: it works, and I think it's again, like you know,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: I was looking as we were sitting here I was.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: I was looking and thinking myself like aaronet Kart, huh,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Like what happened? Man? Like not to him as an actor,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: but why did he not? Like, you're in a movie
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: that makes three times its budget, You're the lead actor
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: in this is coming three years after and you know
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: you tell me the most obvious thing you know him from?
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Because for me, while he is in one of my
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: favorite movies, which is Thank You for Smoking, where he
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: plays Nick Naylor, which I think is for me, my
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: favorite thing I've seen him in, obviously he's in the
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Dark Night, which is the thing that I think most
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: people know him for or from because of the Chris
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Nolan of it all. And then it should have been this,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, three years after that film came out. He's
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: the lead in a big budget summer blockbuster. Because this
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: is a summer blockbuster. I saw it over the summer.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: It's a seventy million dollar war movie, but it's a
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: sci fi war movie, so it's meant to have broad crap,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: cross genre appeal to people outside of just the I
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: would not have gone and seen this movie in theaters
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: if it had just been a war movie. Maybe The
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Battle for Los Angeles of it All, the like Alternate
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: History of it All would have been the only way
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: to get me into it. But a war movie broadly
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: is not something I'm into. So when I think about
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Aaron Eckhart, like he's been in two genre films that
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: are not specifically the genre they're made for, because The
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Dark Knight is also not it's not really a superhero movie.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: I can't really stand that movie or the sequel, Like
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: I would say The Dark Knight's better than the sequel
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: than the sequels, just intolerable in a way that's hard
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: to really put into words other than if you want
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: to hear the Projection Booth episode I did with Mike
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: White last year where we talked about it for like
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: two and a half hours and went into every single
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: nuance as to why I can't stand that movie. And
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: I don't say that about a lot of things, but
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Aaron Eckhart, for me, is an actor who looking at
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: his career since Battle Los Angeles. Why has he been
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: treated like a Bruce Willis or Steven Segaal post the Night.
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I wanted them, Sorry to interrupt, but like I
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: realize when we were going to be doing this, they're like, gosh,
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: I don't haven't seen that many air and Eckhart movies.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: So I looked up his filmography and I had not
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: heard of almost every single movie he'd done since this movie.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: It's wild, right, I mean, please please don't call and
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: yell at me if you're Aaron Eckhart's agent. But I
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: was thinking, like the week after I mean this opened
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: pretty well. I mean it said opening weekend when I
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: was looking this up, of forty million dollars in two
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: thousand and eleven, which is probably I don't know, one
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: hundred million, eighty million today.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: It's to be like somewhere in the ballberg, like fifty
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: is sixty today. I would assume, yeah, yeah.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Which is you know, again, for a movie that didn't
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: cost the equivalent of three hundred million or's four hundred
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: million or a billion dollars or whatever. So so I
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: I think that is an interesting question. That's where a
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: panel of people would say, like, why is it? There's
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: some people who are because in every movie I've ever
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: seen him, every television show, he's an excellent actor. He's
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: not like a genre actor or a hero heroic actor
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: who can only appear as a star like he's played
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: minor parts and done or walk on parts and done
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: very well on them. So that is an interesting mystery
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: in this film for people who haven't seen it yet.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: One of my distinguishers of an actor is, as we've
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: talked about before, is there I believe that there are
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: facial actors. They're torso actors, and they're full body actors.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: There are some people who can look at the camera
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: and they can speak, and they can act well with
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: their voice and their eyes.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: There's some people who like above the chests, they can
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: with their hands, they can do something interesting. But then
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: there are people and I think Aaron Hackerter is one
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: of those people who, like you see him sitting right, like,
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: I was watching a couple of the scenes here where
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: he's just sitting and he's putting ammunition in his rifle
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: or he's making an offhand comment, and I was thinking,
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: his knees are acting, right, his boots are acting. He's
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: just his stance is a good acting stance. And so
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: I just I was remembering, Gosh, I'm so impressed with him.
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: I don't think I said at the time, twenty level
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: like a star is born because he does he doesn't have.
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: I don't want to say he doesn't have charisma, but
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: he doesn't have that kind of thing, like he's not
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: a classical leading man facially or in body typing.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: You don't think you don't think he looks facially like
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: a classic leader. I think it's me, it's I think.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: Right, yeah, I mean if if you I don't think
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: he's classic, he's one hundred percent classic. You know, pretty boy, handsome,
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: you know again, the where you see them on a
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: beach in Malibu and like cast them in a movie
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: or something like that.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: I don't have any explanation except he's a very good actor.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: He really is.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: But but you look at his filmography and like three
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: years of three years go by and he's not in anything,
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: and and then maybe maybe a personal choice. I don't
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: know his biography. Aaron, please call me, let's talk, you know,
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: if you want to. But in this movie, he is
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: totally credible as this sort of getting physically beat up,
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: tired sergeant that you know he's given his life for
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: his country. In terms of like he doesn't have again,
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: there's no there's no backstory of guy. I was thinking
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: of all the Roland emmeriic films where the lead character
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: is a divorced guy and his wife is now with a.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: You're just describing, like all the disaster movies, what was
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: the Rock story versus what was Will Smith's story? And
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: independence stuff.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, just I appreciate where this film didn't go as
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: well as where it went. And this is something again
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: we talk about a lot about, like you got to
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: give credit for the decisions that are made not to
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: do something as well as right decisions to do something
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: in a film.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: It gets to the action of the aliens in thirteen
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: minutes into the movie fit less than it's around the
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: fifteen minute mark in a two hour movie that we
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: get the alien. And I think that to your point,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: that's really smart because if the advertising is look at
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: the aliens invading Los Angeles, I don't need a half
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: an hour of the of the matriculations and gestations and
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: all the nonsense that's going on between all the people here.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: I don't care if someone's getting promoted. I don't care
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: if somebody's not part of the crew anymore. I don't
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: need any of that. I mean, frankly, if you had
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: started the film with you know that shot that they
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: showed in the trailer for the first Star Wars sequel,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: where it's like the light flashing on everybody's faces as
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: they're coming into, you know, from Camp Pendleton or wherever
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: on a helicopter in and you have to see like
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: the lights flashing of the shots that are being shot
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: at the helicopter at night, something like that. Even just
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: having the movie open and media res I don't need.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I even need as much characterization
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: as they give us for some of the characters, because
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: if you want this to be a we're just following grunts.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: I don't know how much characterization I really need other
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: than like quips or pithy pithy dialogue or something a
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: minor characterization. But to your point, like sometimes the characterization,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: the over characterization gets in the way because some of
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: these characters, Like, don't give me a characterization of a
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: character that's is gonna get blown up on a helicopter,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: because like I just you as a movie clearly don't care.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: I as the audience also shouldn't care. Some of the
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: characters we know are just gonna be there to die
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: to raise the stakes of the movie. I think they
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: place the importance properly where it needs to be. I don't.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I will ever vibe with the
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: acting stylings of one Nao because again, like him being
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: in the movie is more of a distraction because I
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: know him more as a singer songwriter, not as a actor,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: and I don't think the world knows him as an actor.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: But he's in this movie. I know that much.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: I think every disaster film has to have one hip
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: hop or K pop star. We're going to do battleship
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: at some point, right.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Good nine good. I would say you could literally do
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: the film that he that Neo was in next year.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw it in theaters, but
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: I did. I went and saw Red Tales in theaters.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: Which just no, I did not know, but I saw
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: that there there so one thing you're you're mentioning, which
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: I think is interesting. So I'll tell a little secondhand
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: war story. So my father was in the Navy, and
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: he was a lieutenant junior grade engineering officer on a
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: Fletcher class destroyer World War two destroyer, and he didn't,
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: like a lot of people from his generation, he did
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: not tell a lot of war stories like I have
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: like none. But he he did pass on some things
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: that he learned and observed, and he told the story
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: of how his first day on the ship and he
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: and the other officers of lower rank were meeting with
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: the captain, and there were two or three young officers,
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: including my father, who were just their first day of
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: the ship, and the captain said, this is a US
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: naval ship. We must operate, unquestionably as a team. No
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: one gets to be a freethinker or independent. We must
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: operate as a team. That's the only the ship. Ship
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: is built to do that. However, never let me catch
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: any of you forgetting that every single sailor on this ship,
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: everybody who salutes to has a family that cares about
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: them and wants to see them come home. That doesn't
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: mean that we might not have to sacrifice them. That
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: doesn't mean that we, wait, I need to sacrifice our
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: entire ship. Because of course, my father was in the
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: Atlantic escorting convoys and hunting U boats. But like you know,
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: destroyers were supposed to take the first hits. They were
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: supposed to protect capital ships, especially if he'd been transferred
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: to the Pacific, which I think I told this story.
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: But the point was that I do like stories where
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: we get enough characterization to care right, right. And I
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: know I've never made a war film myself, but like
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: I know, there must be a balance, because you can't
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: have two hours of exposition to learn the life story
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: of everybody, right, and then there's a battle for five
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: minutes at the end. People aren't going to watch that film.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: And you don't need it.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: You don't need it. But I felt that we had
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: enough to Okay, there's these conflicts, these drama boom, the
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: war begins, they have to work together or it's all over.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: And I'm I'm with you. I think if the film
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: or TV show or what have you is willing to
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: go along with the idea that, like you said, like
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: sometimes I don't need any more than just they are
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: human beings. That's it. Like, I don't know if I
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: need more than that. Frankly, if the movie had leaned
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: more into the realism of it all, I mean, that's
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: the other thing. And I wanted to kind of ask
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: you about this because you know, you have a rather
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: well known book about you know, war and how film
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: and media portrays war and perceives war. I almost feel
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: like the film would have benefited more from being a
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: little bit I would say more realistic, but again like
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: not requiring it be r rated. But I think you
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: kind of maybe get what I'm getting at where it's
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: like I maybe wanted the film to lean into the
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: black hawk down of it a little bit. And again,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: maybe that's the wrong sentiment here, maybe I'm coming from
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: the wrong place, But for me, I feel like it's
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: just if we're gonna go with as little characterization as possible,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: and we're gonna have again just like aliens, literal aliens,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: not like not a representation of aliens, but a literal
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: alien running around or aliens running around. Maybe have the
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: dichotomy between the two be even starker and have it
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: be like this super realistic, hard hitting, like really black
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: hawk down people being not a viscerated, but again like
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: the state are really ratcheted up. It does feel in
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: a way like the stakes in this movie don't match
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: kind of what they want from it, which is this
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: to be like a somewhat serious adjacent war film, or
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: at least like taking it seriously, because against it taking
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: it seriously, Like we said, there's not a whole lot
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: of fun in this movie. There's a part where they're
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: effectively torturing an alien with knives and like poking it
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: while they're doing like an autopsy on it, which is
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: this movie's black Hawk down like leg surgery moment. I
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: get it, but I just I kind of weird if
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: I want it more.
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: That was an interesting decision. They decided not to have
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: a character say we'll wait a minute, you know, we're
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: not obeying a Geneva convention in terms of prisoner or
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: wait a minute, you know, these are these people have
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: feelings too that there's no That was an interesting decision
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: that they They didn't do that trope right of having
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: the moralistic argument these aliens are here, they're here to
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: apparently exterminate us no rules.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: Right, which I think is very smart. Right, Like, I
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: think that gives you an idea of what the tension
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: or the expectations should be. But I do think, like again,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: I just wish there had been a little bit more
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: of a sense of not again like realism, but a
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: sense of realistic stakes. And I think the movie just
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily get there. And I will also say probably,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: and this is maybe the biggest knock against this movie,
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: did we need this to be like you've already mentioned
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: Independence Day at the end, where all of a sudden
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: they know how to fix the entire invasion. Like that,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: for me is what probably draws me out of this
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: the most. And it's again leans back into like in
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: black Hawk Down, these are just like this. The point
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: of this story was the black hawk Down event was
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: only these soldiers in this It's like this didn't have
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: to be a bunch of these dudes effectively white saviors
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: at some point, you know, because again we do have
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: aaronet Cacart being one of the people that survive somehow
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: being able to stop the entire invasion is what the
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: implication is. And I don't know if it's meant to
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: be just a platoon of dudes taking on alien threats
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: that are incoming. The implication should have been, and I
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: think Cloverfield does it better than this movie does, which
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: is making it feel like you are but a blip
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: on the map of a greater conflict. This takes away
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: from that in a way by having it be well,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: they know how to you know, the information you figured
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: out has been transmitted across the globe and we're gonna
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: figure out how to take them on, Like don't do yeah,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: like the movie's about to end, don't do that.
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: There are parts and that's one of them that if
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: I were doing edit, I would say is that necessary? Right?
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: And it's interesting to me because you've said this independent
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: of me being on your show, But like you've talked
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: about the second act problem and the third act problem,
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: Like it seems to be there's a much higher likelihood
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: you're watching a movie and you're going, like I thought
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: was a great first act, Like you know, that was
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: a great start to the movie, like, oh wow, what's
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: an interesting plot, and then nothing happens in the second act,
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: and then there's a big action resolution in the third act.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: And I think I've described unfortunately, a lot of big
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: so called blockbuster you know superhero or you know sci
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: fi blockbuster films where they just like rattle around for
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: the middle third of the film and then there's a
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: big climax that they spent half the budget on there.
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: This is a first of all, this is the US Army.
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: It took a long time for them to do this, like,
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: you know, hundreds of years, but like the US Army
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: was one of the first institutions in America to integrate
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: It's it's an interesting history there that the US Army
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: mostly integrated long before America did. And this this is
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: a diverse, you know, multicultural, multi racial, multi ethnic group.
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: I think that's important. Alms just a little bit almost
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: like adjacent to the movie Glory about like people coming
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: together for an external threat, you know, that to all
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: of humanity, not just in any individual group, with all
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: the divisions that we have. I do think that they
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: try to have some things like like let's go back
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: to the alien autopsy, you know, uh they discover and
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: again I do not I've read a lot of science
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: fiction and I'm getting old, maybe I've forgetten something, but
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: that thing where the alien weapons are fused to their body,
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: and I was going to myself like, I don't think
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: I've seen that before or read that before. And I've
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: really read a heck of a lot of science fiction.
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: It's a little bit silly as in like really like
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: what if they need to upgrade, you know, like, hey, hey, bad,
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: I think got some good news and some bad news.
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: We invented a new laser rifle. We're gonna have to
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: chop your arms off so that we can you know, install,
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: but you know, it was an attempt to do something interesting.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: And I love Eric, the character probably by Erhart, to
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: talk about commitment to cause. That was very interesting, you
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: know about like the these are marines and they and
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: they're from a particular unit, and they tell this little
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: backstory about you know, retreat hell, we just got here
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: that from World War One. It's the true story. But
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: then they confront these alien soldiers who are like.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: All the.
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: I want to say positive but like all the like
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: useful for the job traits of a soldier, but none
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: of the humanity, none, none of the the nuance of
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: like having a human beings because you want you don't
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: want automatons. I mean, I really don't want AI controlling
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: missile hits and things like that. I want some accountable
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: human and some somebody to make a decision. So I
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: thought it try again. Neither of us are claiming this
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: is like the perfect movie. I just felt some of
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: the decisions of what not to do and some of
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: the decisions to do worked. For the general It's a
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: squad level alien invasion movie.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: I think. And you know, you mentioned the design of
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: the alien, so I would say that maybe the closest
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: thing that we get or have at the time is
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: a more kind of senobite ish like humans fused with
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: mechanical from like Hell Raiser or even I mean again
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: to go to like hr Giger and the Zenomar from Alien.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: You know, the Xenomar from Alien was somewhat biomechanical, and
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: here it's like biomechanical, but in a way that's like
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: you said, like military adjacent. So they have like guns
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: and other things fused into their body, and I really
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: I like the creativity behind it. It's very quake for
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: the In that game, there's the strog and they're kind
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: of these human mechanical amalgamations, and it's similar to this.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, you have a chain gun on your right
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: arm where your arm used to be like that, Like
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: you said, the resolve of someone to go to that
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: length to become a mutant monster like that is just
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: to understand what their civilization is. I mean, we don't
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: need any characterization of the Alien. We literally don't need
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: to know them as anything other than the invading force
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: who is here to take the resources. That's it. We
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: don't need to see them as anything else. And I
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: think it's smart that the film doesn't offer us any
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: nuance in that regard, because in a situation like this,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: where like you said, there's no Geneva convention with these aliens,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: the expectation is they're an invading force and we are
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: fighting for our lives the end. That's it. There's the
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: expectation is kill or be killed. That seems to be
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: the expectation. There are no rules of engagement. No one
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: is saying, you know, you go quiet, now go hot.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: There's none of that, sorry none.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: I was thinking of the bad tropes they could have done.
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: Like I was when I first watched this movie. I
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: had some expectations of mistakes. It would things I would
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: disagree with, and one of them was they did not
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: have I really expected this to happen. I was shocked
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: it didn't happen. I was happy it didn't happen. They
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: didn't kill an alien and find a picture of a
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: wife alien and a baby alien on it, like three
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: D hologram from Star Wars or something like that. They
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: go like, oh man, these aliens are just like us.
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: They've got you know, wife and kids at home, and
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: they think they're fighting. I mean, that has been indescribably
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: squeamish and then that's not the right word, like indescribably
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: like oh my god, really, Hollywood, please don't do that.
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: And they didn't, you know, god right.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: And I'm glad they didn't because again, like we we
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: don't even really get that from the human beings either,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: which is also good, like we don't. It's not needed
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: what we And again like I want to ask you
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: about this because again to think about the post nine
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: to eleven of this, all right, and that the post
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: that landscape in American cinematic history, in American media, in
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: American culture. This film is in a lot of ways,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: like a response to the Iraq War and the images
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: people were seeing on the TV every day. And while
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: we never saw that in the comunity of Los Angeles,
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: there were people that were seeing that in their literal
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: backyards on their television in Iraq. Anyone who could see
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: something like that would have seen those images of American
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: soldiers in their country. We were seeing it in another country,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: American soldier. So it's interesting to have that kind of
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: put here into our country. I just don't know if
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: they do anything with that or have anything to say,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: and I'm not sure that the intention is to make
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: something with something to say. But I'm just curious, like
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: if you're going to do this movie and no one
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: else has really done this movie since with the at
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: least just like straight up. I mean, I guess maybe
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: the closest is that Edge of Tomorrow film with Tom Cruise.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: But again, like there's a different hook there, Like the
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: hook of that movie.
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: Is time to story Paris there not, you know, right.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: So like I guess, like it's I just don't know so.
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: Many films, right when in so many films, let's just
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: say the role in emeric films right where? And you've
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: talked about this again independently of me, but I think
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: you and I have talked about this before too, like
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: the role in Emeric World destruction montage where you go
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: to you see Paris, and of course everybody in Paris
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: wears a striped mime shirt and has a beret and
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: has a baguette under their arm, and then you go
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: to Hong Kong. It's like a scene from a nineteen
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: thirties film in Color of Hong Kong where everybody had
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: you know, everybody's eating noodles out of a bowl and
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: with their chopsticks, and you know they look like extras
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: from a nineteen thirties movie.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: Every Beddy Griffin have a dog in any of this?
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Oh no, that was Armageddon. Never mind, that was Armageddon.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: I forgot.
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I mean and then and then you know,
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: Paris is destroyed, in Hong Kong is destroyed, and this
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: movie a city is destroyed. But I think speaking to
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: what you were talking about, really, since World War Two,
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: the American public had not seen I mean, this did
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: happen in Korea, like there were city fights in Korea,
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: but really, since World War Two, most of American conflicts,
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: with the exception of a couple of things like in
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: the tet Offensive the Battle of Hue and that was
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: made into the Stanley Kubrick film, you know, Full Metal Jacket,
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: and everybody actually said, wowow, it was such an innovative
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: film because it was about urban combat. Right, So we
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: went many many decades in America and didn't participate in
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: or see modern urban combat. I mean, we would see
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: other countries do it, but like until Iraq, that just
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: wasn't the theater.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: Of war of the United States.
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: And so I think, yeah, it did bring up this
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: thing to watch Los Angeles, not just like Independence Day
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: where just a bomb explodes and you see this huge
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: you know, screen shot of the vista right of Los
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: Angeles blanking out under a massive or buildings tumbling over
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: or something like that. But like you see and by
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: the way, this was shot in Louisiana at to save money.
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: They got a fifteen million dollar tax credit. So my
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: I was at LSU for ten years. I did not
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: recognize Baton Rouge in this movie.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: I did not know.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: When I went to see the movie, I did not know.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: I feel the same way when I watched RoboCop. I'm like,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: this was supposed to be Dallas in the eighties. How
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: did you get away with that? Or total recall in
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: was Mexico City. It's like the same thing, Like why
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: don't see any of this like at all? It is
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: funny how on.
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: TV shows, you know, the films in Canada, ones were like,
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: oh my gosh, the alien planet is Vancouver.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: I have to say, The X Files is all of that,
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: like more or less exclusively.
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: God bless Stargate, but like so many alien planets had
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: a beautiful you know, redwood and plane tree forests and
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: that thing. But so yeah, I don't remember being exactly
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: shocked by this film, but like again, it tried to
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: do something from the Giganto shot of like la Is
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: destroyed with a huge alien bomb to like you're fighting
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: over post Office is in Santa Monica.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Which I loved that, right, like that's I like that,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: and that's and that, you know, I really want to
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: talk about the ending of the movie. I was probably
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: most irritated by the ending of the movie than anything
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: else because it look, the movie never got a sequel,
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: and it stinks that it didn't get a sequel because
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: this movie was successful enough financially to deserve a sequel.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: And there are so many movies that come out that
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: are more successful than this movie that equally don't get sequels.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: But there are films that are less successful than this
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: movie that has gotten sequels or a lot more time
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: and effort spent on it. And if you're gonna have
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: this ending where it's like, well, they're gonna go back
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: out into the fight, like man, that's I hate when
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: movies call their shot like that and then it goes nowhere,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: because as an audience, I'm like, man, was there another
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: idea here that you were gonna get to? Was there something?
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: Was this the primer for something more interesting and kind
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: of novel in the next film, because we've seen that before,
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: We've seen where it's like the first film is just
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: kind of a warm up for the second film because
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: you got to get some people through the door in
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: that first film, and then the second film you can
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: really rock them with the second punch this movie. Who
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: knows what the second film would have been. It's a shame,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: but man, I really detested the ending of this movie
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: for the singular reason of, well, these guys have somehow
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: managed to figure out the alien threat completely, and now
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: they're gonna go back in and help everybody push them out.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: Like I don't know if this story would be more
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: interesting if the humans were able to push the aliens
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: back at all. I don't even know if I care
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: about what would happen post to that, because it seems
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: like the human beings are so outmatched in this movie
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: that I couldn't believe they're able to push the aliens
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: back other than with you know, human ingenuity, you know,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: you know, there's so much of that in Independence Day.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: It's almost like I don't even want that in twenty eleven.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: I would prefer to see a film where we have
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: the aliens win ostensibly quote unquote or take over humanity
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: quote unquote. Again, we're watching a movie about a squad
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: of guys fighting a global threat and force. I just
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: I have no ability to believe they're going to be
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: able to stop the threat completely because of Independence Day,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: being the president of the United States and the kind
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: of bomb bast given to that kind of almost Shakespearean
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: in the way that it presents the events. I can
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: believe that because, like you said, in Independence State, it's
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: just there aren't a whole lot of people left from
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: the cities that are being blown up because everybody's being torched.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: So I can believe the threat there. And you know,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: we have the nuke not blowing up the aliens in
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: that film. The threat even in that film, the threat
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: is parody at the level with the importance of the
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: characters in this. It's like these characters should have no
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: importance given to what they're doing because what they're doing
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: is effectively nothing in terms of the actual invading force.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know, and you correct me if I'm wrong.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Maybe their story will be sung in the annals of
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: human history. As you know, the three hundred of Thermopylis
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: something like that. But if you're gonna do that at
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: this story, they don't even get to that point with
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: the story unfortunately.
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: I oh, yeah, you really have to have a sound
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: effect for when I go into professor mode, you.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: Know, and nails nails on the chalkboard, like like Quint
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: from Jaws, stopping everyone in their the audience.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, nails on the chalkbod. I remember what reading science
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: fiction stories that played with an important question which will
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: come up if we're ever invaded by aliens, which is
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: that the assumption is that their levels of technology would
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: be equivalent across everything. Right, So the the the assumption
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: of a lot of the alien invasions, I'm thinking the
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: day the Earth did still, right, So these aliens they
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: crossed the cosmos billions and billions of what light years
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: or whatever, and they and they have some sort of
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: magnificent robot technology. They also have a magnificent like you know,
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: technology that could destroy the whole world if they want.
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: So everything is sort of equivalent. But there've been some
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: science fiction stories over the years, and I'm blanking on
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: some of the exact detail, but like I remember one
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: of them, Like, you know, aliens invade, but all they
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: have is gunpowder as weapons. Like they they invented. They
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: were really good at inventing like anti grav drive and
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: like time dilation, but they just didn't have wars, so
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: they didn't really advance their their military. Now we have
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: sort of kept like civilian and military technology have sort
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: of kept up with each other right in our in
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: our universe. So I did like it. The aliens didn't
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: just show up with like one technology that wiped out humans.
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: That they they may have variable technologies. Now you're talking
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: about the ending. To me, they were three endings, and
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: two of them could have been kept. The third they
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: should have gotten rid of. The three endings were they
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: defeat this alien mother communication ship, like they knock it out,
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: and that their command and control ship for the area
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: for like Santa Monica.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: There is preface. I was fine with that part of it.
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so that that that could have been an ending,
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: like we won the Battle of Santa Monica and this
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: platoon was determinative of winning the Battle of Santa Monk,
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: and that would have been roll credit, you know, like hey,
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: high five and like thank you everybody, and okay, that
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: there could have been a sequel to that okay. So
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: that was one ending. The other ending was they decided
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: to go back into the battle because the Battle of
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: Santa Monica is one, but there's other battles in like,
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: you know, Santa Ana and a thousand. I'm sorry, I'm
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: losing my Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and you know, the
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: Battle of Beverly Hills and saw. Okay, so that would
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: have been that's okay, But the one where and we've
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: notified everybody in the world that they and now everybody
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: knows how to destroy that was way to roll in
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: em recry and that could have been cut if in
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: my edit, my non directors edit, I would have eliminated
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: one or two of the endings, and that would have
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: given them room for a sequel. By the way, so
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: if they do do a sequel based on that, I'm
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: expecting some both of us should get some you know,
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: subsidiary rights or something like that. Chris, I can't hear you.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: I guess I don't understand if you're not gonna make
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: something like a sequel or something sequel adjacent, why you
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: would even tease something like that. And again, maybe the
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: expectation was that they were gonna make a sequel, I
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: don't know. Again, it seems like they were even working
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: on a sequel as soon as twenty twelve, the year
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: after this film came out, but nothing ever coalesced, And
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: so I think, yeah, it's if I were making just
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: the minorst fan edit of this movie, I would just
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: probably have it cut to credits, with them returning back
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: to the base and then going back out, but no
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: mention of like, oh, they can transmit this to everybody
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: like again, like I guess, I guess, can you have
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: one without the other? Can you have them blowing up
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: that spaceship without them then being like, we're gonna share
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: this information with everybody else? I guess. I guess that's
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: what I wonder, because I.
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: Didn't understand what the clever like inside was. I'm imagining,
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: you know, the Serbian army fighting in Sari in Belgrade, right,
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: and I think they would have already figured out, oh,
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: you know, there's one ship or one alien construction that's
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: bigger than the others. That might be the command and control.
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: I didn't think necessarily we needed to tell anybody that.
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: So it wasn't like.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: It was because it was interrupting the radio signal. Remember,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: they're flying over and it's.
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: Like, like, you know, we know about radio signals, like
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: we interrupted, you know, we tried to jam German radio
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: signals and World War Two. It wasn't like it was
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: some secret radio nobody knew about radio, you know, or something.
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: They should have gone there.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: It just did to Jeff Bullbloom in Independence Day.
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, that would have been the show.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: Rodriguez.
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: Uh. I like her character very much because she is
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: a technician and she this is confidence porn, okay, like
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: in some ways, like these people are good at their job.
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: And I like that they had this communications technician who
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: didn't pretend that she was, you know, a super ninja warrior.
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: She was really good at communications technology and helped in
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: communications technology, and it helped engineer the problem, as they
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: say in engineering and the military. So like again, we'll
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: send our notes to the studio. I hope they take them.
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: But the film made more good decisions than bad decisions,
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: I would say.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: And I would agree, I, you know, going back and
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: reading the kind of critical response to the film at
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: the time, a lot of the kind of flak that
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: the film gets is from the tropes and the trope
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: heaviness of it. But you know, sitting here as an
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: observer in twenty twenty six, fifteen years, which is just
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: insane and of its own right that this film has
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: been out. We've seen a lot of war films since
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: we've seen Edge of Tomorrow, We've seen The Tomorrow War. Hell,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: you know, we didn't even talk about this. We've seen
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: a really terrible Independence Day sequel, like just mind numbingly terrible,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: and again another movie that by the end of it
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: calls its own shot of like, well, we're gonna go
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: to the alien planet now, no, no finance our third movie.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: When this movie made no money, they made an independenced
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: Ay sequel in twenty sixteen, a decade I believe removed
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: from the original film coming out. And yet they couldn't
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: make a sequel to this film in the five years
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: in between Independence Day coming out and this film coming out.
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: For real, I believe I may be wrong that Cowboys
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: and Aliens. I think Cowboys and Aliens came out around
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: the same time as this movie, if not the same
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: year as this movie. Hell it was the same year
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: as this movie. What was the deal with twenty eleven
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: alien movies? Either? You know? And that's the crazy thing.
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: The budget for Cowboys and Aliens is one hundred and
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: sixty three millillion dollars. That movie has so many people
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: in it, and it is directed by Jon Favreau. It
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: might be like the one of two not great things
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: that Jon Favreau has done that end Zathura. Uh. But
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: this movie had a third half of the budget and
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: made three times as much money, And it made twice
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: as much money as Cowboys and Aliens did. I just
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: don't understand what happened to this movie as like a thing,
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: like you could have just taken this idea and just
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: run with it and recast the entire movie. You don't
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: even have to have You could do this right now.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: There's nothing stopping you. You don't need Aaron Eckhart. I mean,
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know if he's really doing anything, so he
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: might be easy to go and hire. I don't know.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: I genuinely don't know what Aaron Eckhart's doing. He thing's
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: making a movie with a dog muzzle two streets of
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: fury or rage or so. I'm not even joking. There's
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: a movie called Muzzle starring Aaron Kurt That's what we
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: watched next. I'm no, I'm joking. I don't know, it's
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: just very weird. Like for me, I just I don't
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: feel like this movie is as bad as the critics
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: in twenty eleven. Else it would be, And I think
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: if they revisited this movie now, they might actually have
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: a more nuanced take other than that the war tropes
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: are overwhelming, Like yeah, but you know, there's not a
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: whole lot of movies like this one, and it's kind
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: of a shame that there isn't because this movie, ultimately,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: even if it doesn't succeed all the way, it does
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: have more to say than your average war, big blockbuster
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: war movie does.
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: I'd say that if I were like grading the film,
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: I would probably yeah, it had one too many, but
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: it should get credit for the tropes that it didn't use,
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: which films which get better, much better ratings and have
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: much more, bigger budget and you know, bigger, bigger star
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: box office stars and things like that shamelessly youth and
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: nobody says anything and even get credit for them. Where
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: it's painful to watch, right, this is not a painful
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: to watch movie. I think it's the special effects have
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: stood up. You can look at this film and go like, yeah,
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: that was two thousand and eleven. It's better than these
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: alien combats, are better than a lot of three hundred
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: million dollars movies I'm or TV shows that I'm forced
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: to watch now.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: Well, And I would say the other thing that definitely
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: works in the film's favor is it is not over
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: edited either, which is the other thing that now you know,
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: you can't you can't help but watch a movie and
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: there's like thirty cuts in one scene and it's you know,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: whiplash where you're watching it trying to figure out what's
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: going on as much as what you're seeing because the
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: director is you know, hopped up on Riddlin or something.
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: It's like, it's just this movie exists in a time
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: and a place where they weren't doing that as commonplace,
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: you know, like this is the way things are. We're
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: still right before that. I mean, this is just before
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: that becomes kind of like the thing that everybody does,
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: at least in big budget action movies, and this movie
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: doesn't have any of that. Like, I think this is
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: a big budget action war movie of a different era
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: and time, and I do it because to your point,
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: like it still holds up as a big budget sci
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: fi blockbuster movie. And the special effects look good, the
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: practical effects look good. It's a well made, well shot,
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: well edited movie. Does it lean into some tropes that
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: I wish it didn't? Sure? But you know what, there's
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: not a whole lot of other Aaron Eckhart fighting aliens
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: on the Street of La movies to go and watch.
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: So I guess if I want to watch when it's
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: gonna be this one. And I don't know. For some reason,
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: this movie does kind of exist in this weird liminal
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: space in my mind of like, this is a movie
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: I saw in theaters at a very weird time in
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: my life that I just remember and now I've watched
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: it again, and yeah, it's there's better, there's worse. But
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: I think this occupies the upper average area. I would
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: give this like a B minus. And you know what,
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: the ability to mesh the two genres together is probably
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: where you're getting most of the grade from. But I'm
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: not gonna tell you that. So Hey, sometimes it's the effort, right,
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the effort is impressive alone, and the effort here
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: I think is impressive. Do they land the finish? No?
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: But rarely does every movie need to be a ten
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: for God's sakes, Come on, you can enjoy at eight
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: or A seven. You know it's not going to change
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: your life, but not every movie has. If you want
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: to see Doctor or here, Doctor Pearlmutter and I talk
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: about cinema that is, you know, different than this one.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: I won't say better or worse. Head on over to
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: weirdingwaymedia dot com, where subjectivity is less important than objectivity. Now,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: I'm just kidding that's not the case. Well, it depends
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: on what we're talking. And when doctor Pearlmutter and I
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: are talking, we're often talking about cinema that is worth
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: watching or possibly even required viewing, which when he and
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: I start talking in the future about loftier films, possibly
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: that those films may be under a subheading on the
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: RSS feed for all of you looking to find those
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: films specifically, because hey, I'm not saying Mickey seventeen or
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: Battle Los Angeles aren't conquering the human experience in some way,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: but I get the distinct feeling a lot of the
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: other films we're going to talk about may speak to
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: head of your tones than blowing up aliens in the
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: in the streets of Los Angeles. So keep an eye
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: out for that, but for everything else, like rate and
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: review this wherever you're getting it. If it's on iTunes,
• 1:01:11
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• 1:01:14
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• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: leave a star rating. Those all things help us out,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: so do them on the respective platforms. Doctor Pearl Mutter,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me as always and
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: bringing this film back into my personal consciousness. I always
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: appreciate the candor and the conversation and the picks you know,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: even if it's bad, which none of these have been bad, So.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Chris, and I appreciate your commitment to call and.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: As always below we'll catch you on the next episode.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: Steps from the Books, from the Books, From the Books,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: From from the Books, from bos