Latest / Academy Vs Audience / 2022: Every Maverick, Every Avatar, All At Once (w/ Kevin Weir)

Transcript

2022: Every Maverick, Every Avatar, All At Once (w/ Kevin Weir) · Academy Vs Audience

• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Since 1928, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science is dependent on trophies what it considers the best film to be here.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: And all that time and audience is dependent on opinions.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is Academy vs.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Audience.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Already revisit all the best picture winners and the corresponding box of this champions.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Dan Gibbons with News Always is Aaron Weir.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, Aaron.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_05: Hi, Dan.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_05: I need everyone involved in this podcast, not the audience, it'll be too late, but the people who are physically here with me in this virtual room to remind me when we're done recording that I have to start the dishwasher.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Got it.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Important.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Do not go to a flimsyplan.com and leave comments saying, remember to start your dishwasher.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: It would be funny.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Not helpful.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_05: Not helpful.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe potentially helpful.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_05: Who knows?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_05: Who knows what will happen in my future.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_05: But it won't help me tonight.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Also on Dishwasher Reminder Duty is Claire Bolton.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: What's up, Claire?
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, you know, I just realized that my screen in my little zoom box was dark because the brightness on the whole computer was turned down.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_04: It's been like this for a long time, everyone.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_04: A long time.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: We're doing so good.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: And joining us for the year of Yancy Cravat 2022.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: Is he the weird vibes guy?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Is he the tonal mishmash guy?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Or here in the end, is he simply our Pandora guy?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Whichever guy he is, he's one of our favorite guys.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Kevin Weir.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Hi.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for bringing me back in.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm I'm the guy you make watch seven hours of movies.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: At least this time it's spread across three movies.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_05: It was a lot of movie though.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: Three movies and not just the extended edition of Last Emperor.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, exactly.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: So as Sam Reich would tell us, the only way to begin is by beginning.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: So who's gonna tell us all about our best picture winner?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's me.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: I guess.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_04: For those of you listening, Kevin and I just pointed at each other through the air.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: I I asked y'all who was doing it.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: I did my part here.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: So let me ask you a question.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever done your taxes?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_05: No, I have someone else do that for me.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: So this movie is a lot like doing your taxes.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Alright?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: You got W-2s, you got 1099 NECs.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: You probably got a bunch of other numbers that you'll need to fill in.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot like that.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then maybe you didn't do your taxes well.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you gotta go talk to an IRS agent.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: When you go there, the mind of your husband from a different dimension arrives and tells you that the multiverse is in danger, and you need to save the multiverse.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Also, you still do have to do your taxes.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, what do you do in that situation?
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you go into an action movie universe where you must battle against randos from the street who are trying to kill you, though also not kill you.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: It changes a lot as you are doing, once again, your taxes.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot be clear now, you're doing your taxes.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Then, as this progresses, you will, of course, need to shatter your mind across the dimensions in a hope that perhaps you could reach your daughter and finish your taxes.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that will, of course, as you would expect, in the middle of doing your taxes, you will have to then do battle with your extended family, I guess your direct family, and along the way, have what I have written down verbatim here: an Oscar-winning butt plug fight.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And in the end, perhaps, through this mind-bending process, you will find yourself closer with your distant gay daughter and also the rest of your family, and learn to love and learn to live and learn the value of about caring about things.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then also at the end, you gotta finish your taxes, which I think is the most important part.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that is everything everywhere all at once.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Proving that even in a multiversal reality, your taxes are inevitable.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 4:45
  unknown: Yes.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: I really like this movie.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a good movie.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_05: It is such a good movie.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_05: It is such a good movie.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_05: I will say, like, I saw it when it came out, as everyone did, because it was like this weird, scrappy little movie that all of a sudden got all of this Oscar buzz.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_05: So of course we all watched it.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_05: Watching it for the second time, knowing what it is, but it having been so long since I watched it, it was weirder.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_05: Because I thought I remembered all the weird stuff, and then I was like consistently surprised by things I had forgotten.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_04: I did not watch it prior.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_04: This was my first viewing of it, and I thought it was delightful.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: This is my third viewing, having seen it twice in theaters, because I couldn't just tell my friends about the butt plug fight.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: I needed them to witness it happening as blind as I did, and also witness them witness it happening.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, yes.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_05: That is correct.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Michelle Yeo, and I think the guy who couldn't sing even enough for the excessive amount of auto-tune they used on Glee start fighting over a butt plug, and I'm thinking this cannot be a real movie that I'm in.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: In the most delighted tone.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_05: The thing that I'm the butt plug.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_05: Sorry, go ahead, Kevin.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: The thing that I got from watching it again, which I was kind of aware of the first, I think maybe I watched it twice before.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a while since I've seen it though, um, but that I want to keep an eye out for is that it has a surprisingly small cast.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like, because every person arrives multiple times, you just see the same person so many times and in different versions, and they just kind of keep showing up.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And also it takes place mostly in the IRS.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it's a very strange feeling.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because obviously it was um produced by the Russo, so it was like produced by the showers of of Marvel.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: So like it was but it was made by like the Daniels, who did a lot of um YouTube uh special uh what special effects things.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it had so many of these different vibes colliding at once and seemed so aware of it and does such a good job of balancing that.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so much of this movie is purposeful and so well crafted that I remember when it was got nominated, I was like, Well, that's great.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going to win because it's weird, but it is really, really good.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it would be it would be lovely if it did win, but I didn't see it happening because it is so weird, and weird is not always the Academy's flavor.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they have a specific vape flavor of weird that they want things to be.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Fish fucking directed by Guillermo Del Toro, obviously.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, like the thing that I always go to about this movie is that it does the thing that a lot of action films are supposed to do.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if you you you take any the sort of screenwriting course, talk to anyone about screenwriting, read any book on screenwriting, they're always like, hey, it doesn't matter how big your stakes are, you need to make them personal to the character so they feel close.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of action movies kind of, I would say, shortcut this by just being like, yeah, and your wife's there.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Your wife's been kidnapped.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's bad guys, and they're gonna, you know, do bad things.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to start a world war, but also they kidnapped your wife for some reason.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, as much as we all like die hard, there's a reason why that movie has is a strange wife there, and it isn't just like cops find that there's a terrorist thing happening at Nakatomi Plaza.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there are reasons those things exist.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And this one does the same thing, it it it and it does it by having it be the biggest stakes.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's not, it's not the country, it's not the world, it's not the universe, it's the multiverse.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: The entire multiverse is at stake.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then it says, actually, no, it's about the relationship between these people, and then it makes those so incredibly interconnected that their relationship is the thing that will save the multiverse.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And at a certain point, you find yourself almost-I don't know if maybe other people disagree, I'm almost a forgetting that the multiverse is at stake because at a certain point I'm just like, yeah, I want these people to find happiness.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: It does eventually become eclipsed by wanting Evelyn and Wayman to figure things out and wanting Evelyn and her daughter to be able to reconnect.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it just so happens that the fate of the multiverse itself hinges on Evelyn and Joy being able to find a connection between each other.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and and then it kind of even drops like all of that by being like, actually, maybe the universe the multiverse isn't actually going to die.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's just about like Joy having like being like, Well, maybe I'm just gonna destroy myself because I don't want to live in the multiverse anymore.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: But the stakes still feel just as high, even though like technically, technically, they completely remove the stakes, like in the in the sense of like this was the multiverse is in danger, and now they're like, Well, the multiverse isn't in danger anymore.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Not not really, but you s but they you still feel the stake.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's the entire reason why like Gon Gong and the um uh alpha people were then fighting like with the bagel people, because they're all trying to stop Evelyn from stopping Joy.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_04: I love how yes, and that I love how this movie all just culminates in like love, like joy uh not joy, Evelyn's superpower in defeating everybody on the way up the stairs to the bagel is just being really nice to them.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's so great.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: There is this palpable shift from at one point she enters what I consider to be the opposite of the fun montage from any time loop movie where they realize that consequences don't exist, they may as well just live their best life in the specific day they're stuck in.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Hers is nothing really matters, so I may as well just lash out at every universe I'm connected to.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: So she she's mean to Waymond, she exposes Rakakooni, which is the most obvious of the setup payoffs.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: I love.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: I love that Evelyn forgot the name Ratatouille, but then there is a Rakakooni universe.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_04: It's so good.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's infinite universes, everything can exist, which includes the Rakakooni universe.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Just happens to be a Tepanyaki restaurant where Rakakuni is her arch rival.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_05: And it's so cute.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_05: He's so cute when he's crying about using Rakakoonie, and then the running.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like it just it just shows how good the movie is, is that it does like it is stupid things like butt plug fight, like everything that Joy does, the raccoon like Rakakoonie.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: But because it's so well crafted and does such a good job of like everything before that, that is honestly tear-jerking moments.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah, because she flipped hot dog fingers like romance.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_05: When they break up.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Why is it when the hot dog fingers are excited that they spurt ketchup and mustard?
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: That shouldn't be true.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I think maybe that was just an effect in that film they saw.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Could be.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Weymond flips her to being able to tap into what brings all of these people, the the very well-utilized minimal cast of IRS workers and laundromat customers, what brings them joy, and she can just tap in and find that and just makes her way up, and then ending with the big kung fu swirly arm pose ending with offering a hug.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_04: I also I love speaking of kung fu, I love the harkenbacks to like old school kung fu movies.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_04: Like it that's so good.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_04: Fanny pack fight, fanny pack fight is glorious.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: You watch the fanny pack fight, and you can't not think we could have been letting him make movies like this for the last 40 years, and we didn't?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: So waste of time.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Kihoi Kwan, amazing in this movie.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: Loved him so much.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was a it was a comeback well earned.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: He really does anchor it.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: His speech about be kind, especially when you don't know what's going on.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: That speech is everything to me.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_05: Well, and also the speech he does when he's his CEO version of himself, yeah.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_05: Equally impeccably delivered in Mandarin, I think.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_05: The the movie has both Cantonese and Mandarin, and I think that scene is in Mandarin, and it's incredible too.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_04: He's so good.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_04: And he's such the like he's such a good husband.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_04: You know, like the whole time he's just like, no, Evelyn, you're the one.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_04: And like it's just so sweet.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_04: Everything about it is so sweet.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Something to be upset about how like the the movie, uh even when it came out is an important time.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because it came out, it came out in 2022, and it also um came out like more like not even just like world things, but like the state of what film was doing at that time.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because when it starts, it starts so like all like it's weird, it was weird saying that was what when the start is, you know, the they explain verse jumping and the international thing.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: It feels very though almost cliche in the sense of like, yeah, here's action, and you have to fight, and you're just gonna fight like these random like security guards who just like happen to be there, and you're gonna have this really cool like uh set piece fight with uh with a fanny pack, and then you're gonna constantly be hiding behind tables, and he's gonna explain in in like very specific detail this like the law, like the rules of the world.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it feels very, very by the like by the book that when you know when Evelyn starts being like, well, then I'm gonna gain the power of joy, and starts like you know breaking herself by just doing random things and then jumping and then like doing that, just going through different universes.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: The movie has the it goes on almost like a very standard, almost stereotypical path.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: You think the Wayman, the Alpha Wayman is the coolest one, that when it reaches the this false ending it has where it goes to the credits after Evelyn just dies, and then it starts getting like weirder, and everything feels right about like the lessons you're learning.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh yeah, you need to be strong and you need to like embrace the chaos and embrace the nihilism, and then the movie says, No, no.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like the movie constantly says is like making you think things, and then being like, but maybe that's not the right way for you to think about this.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's a different way.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: The amount of like up and down you get during this movie is wild.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe embodying the philosophy of the villain is not the way forward.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: She's been so cool, and it's it is fun how many random skills she's picking up from alternate Evelyns that become useful, like fending off a bunch of Alpaverse people by picking up the sign spinner.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then using the riot shield and finding the lair because of one universe where she's a maid at the IRS.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, may maybe when the villain says kill the past, let it die, it's the villain saying it, so it's not the right thing.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe, maybe.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_04: No, I love the interconnectedness.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_04: There's a lot going on, but I ultimately love the simplicity of it.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_04: Like, like Wiz said, she's finding Joy, which is the name of her daughter, but also Joy in life.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_04: Like she's learning to live again.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_05: I also think there's something really lovely about the overall thesis of this movie being the universe that you are living in.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_05: Like if we except there's a multiverse, the universe that you're living in may not be the best one.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_05: In fact, for most people, you are not in your best universe, but that's okay.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_05: Because you can probably find something wonderful about the life you are living either way.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love that about this movie that Evelyn is not the chosen one because she's the best of all Evelyns, but because there's so many things that she never quite managed.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: There are so many doors that close in her life that she can now access.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just saying doesn't matter if you're not living the best version of what your life could be.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: This version of you still matters and has merit.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_04: I love that speech that you're bad at things.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_04: You're so bad at things, and that like it that's what makes you you.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_04: Like it's so good.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_04: It's such a beautiful, sweet speech to be like, no, you suck at stuff.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_04: And that's okay.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: I also think that it's just it's I think the only way to say this is it's cool to have a well-respected movie, uh you know, one awards, that essentially just says, Hey, your nihilism sucks.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a lot better to care about things.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's really what like Joy is Jobu Tabaki's entire thing is, is she's like, Well, I can do anything, so nothing matters.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: So because nothing matters, I can just like destroy the universe and do all these things.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, like, hey, though it's just the world, right?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: The world, the world is full full of shit, so who so who cares?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have like Wayman who's like, Well, I care.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because the the cause is this, like, you know, tiny, you know, where tiny specs of things, so nothing we do matters.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, well, but it matters to the other specs, like having something where because we it's me talking about the uh the fact like when the movie came out and the kind of things we were seeing, there's a lot of movies out there.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of ones that win a lot of awards that kind of are about like, yeah, the world is terrible, and I guess that's just the way things is.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And this one being like nickel boys, yeah, and this one being like, no.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, it's not.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's bet it's better to care about things.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: So hey, go out there and care about stuff.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: There are those moments of joy and connection, and it is vital that we cling to them.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Two quotes from TV shows that I've loved that I think are applicable to that.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: The final quote of the first season of True Detective is we're looking up at the night sky and it's mostly dark, but Russ says, it used to be all dark.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: If you ask me, the light's winning.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Or the most simplistic line that sounds dumb but yet still has some meaning if you let it sit with you from the T Fee show Angel.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: If nothing we do matters, then the only thing that matters is what we do.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: If there's no great reward, then what we do because it's what we would do is all that matters.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, like the the Grace encapsulation of this movie and like the reason why.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard people criticize as being like it's you know, it's silly, stupid, like why why have those things?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Why are these things happening?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: But then at the end, you have Evelyn saying to Joy about like none of this stuff makes sense.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't like your tattoo.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I still like I don't like your tattoo.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: You got it anyways.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: She's saying all these things, and she's like, so it doesn't make sense that of all those things, I still don't want to be anywhere else but here with you.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Is like the entire point.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: The the reason the movie is it's not accidental, weird goofs as why the movie decided to have a butt plug fight, why Joe Dimbaki beats a guy up with dildos, why um they have to do random things to make like their powers work.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like there, it's it's not those aren't just there because of like, hey, wouldn't it be funny?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: The the lady who uses her dog as a flail, like them being like like those aren't those are like they are, don't get me wrong, they are obviously very ridiculous, funny things, but they fit in because as you said, in all this ridiculousness, things still matter.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like they still want to be there.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Ridiculousness is part of it.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: It still matters that she was willing to fight to reunite Carl with Rakakuni.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: She picks him up and throws him.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: This random version of Carl's connection to the raccoon that manipulated him into being a great Tepan Yaki chef still matters, even if this is one of the weird side realities we aren't spending a lot of time in.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: And Best Life Evelyn, the Hong Kong movie star, the one who's basically living Michelle Yo's life, yeah, still learns that maybe things would have been better with Waymond.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the line everybody gravitates to is what I wanted to call attention to.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Be kind even when nothing makes sense.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: Or especially if nothing is making sense.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone gravitates to in another life I would have loved to do laundry and taxes with you.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Which I pulled on a friend when we were going to Disney World and decided to take one day between our cruise and our Disney trip to utilize the hotel laundry facilities.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Oh, you're an accountant, but you don't do income tax, right?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's a shame.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because another life I would have loved doing laundry and taxes with you.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: And they just yelled at me for a while for making him have emotions.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_04: But it's such a cute line.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_04: And the like whimsy that Wayman brings to the laundromat by putting googly eyes on things, is just so cute.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_04: It's so sweet and so simple.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_04: It's just a simple thing.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hilarious little side note on this is that uh YouTuber Patrick H.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: Willems, after a year of effort, longer than he thought, to produce what was going to be a 20-minute short but turned into his first feature-length movie about a googly-eyed coconut that was threatening to destroy the multiverse.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Just as he is putting the finishing touches on this, out comes the trailer for this movie.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: And what's in it?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: A googly-eyed rock shaped largely like a coconut.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, um, what?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_04: The rock scene.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_04: I love the rock universe.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_04: I love the rock universe.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Rock universe is great.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_04: Just be a rock.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: The return to the rock universe, which is like, no, stop it.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Just be a rock.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_05: Just be a rock.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_05: It's so good.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_05: My favorite Weyman moment is in her montage of memories, where she realizes that he leads with joy.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_05: There's just this like tiny, tiny, tiny clip where they're watching a movie and his face just lights up and he looks at her and he's like, Did you see that?
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_05: And we all need that man and that energy in our life.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_05: Someone who is like so excited about something he saw in a movie.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_05: And of course, of course she saw it.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_05: They're sitting on the couch together.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_05: But he's just that happy about life.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_04: I love him.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_04: He was so good.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_04: He deserves that Oscar.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_04: He deserves it because he's so good in this movie.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_04: And every version of him in this movie is just spectacular.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_04: And he never loses the spark.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_04: Like each one of his universe personas is he's got that joy for life.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_04: He's got that, like, yeah, I'm just I'm here with looking with for Evelyn.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_04: That's my life.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_04: And I love it.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_04: It's so great.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_04: I must take googly eyes over here.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_04: It's so great.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: I also love that they managed to make the symptoms of multiversal collapse feel extremely relevant.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's another multiverse movie that's gonna be on our top 10 list way, way at the end of this.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: But it's like multiverse's collapse is just here is a big gray screen of collapsing buildings.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: This is just that feeling that everything feels just worse than it used to be.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: That was such a 2022 sentiment in a late capitalism post-Trump world.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a feeling that cream eggs have gotten smaller, that prices keep going up, that shrinkflation and shitification just seem to be ruining everything we took for granted as joys in our life.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's worth mentioning.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Did anybody else the first time they watched it?
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because I immediately cued on that Alpha Wayman was quoting Story of a Girl.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_05: Oh yeah, me too.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_05: And then they play it later.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it plays it when she jumps into the universe when she goes home to do taxes.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's just story of a girl playing.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Your hair never falls in quite the same way.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_05: Your clothes never wears well the next day.
• 25:46
  unknown: It's perfect.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well just be like, wait, hold on.
• 25:50
  unknown: What did you say?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I missed that.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: I got I got lost in the truth and missed the reference.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_05: You never seem to run out of things to say.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: No, I oh no, I was very aware of suddenly quoting lyrics from a song.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because I can't just be normal and like popular things like everyone else, I was busy clicking on on second and third rewatch.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: The setup of all the scenes where Evelyn is battling Jamie Lee Curtis, the weaving of Claire Deleon into the score.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then that paying off with the fact that in the universe where she is in a relationship with Jamie Lee Curtis's Deirdre, but they have hot dog fingers, the fact that she will play Claire DeLoon with her feet.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's like even then she's picking up on that one universe, which would have given her the context to accomplish one of her early impossible feats, which is say I love you to Deirdre and Mean It.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: I do love the shot of the entire Alpha Verse squad all saying, Alright, find your universes, and they all just start doing the weirdest things.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_04: The weird oh god, it's so funny.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_04: I love it.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: Then sets up the butt plug fight in which Evelyn and Carl both simultaneously realize that his launch pad is to get that butt plug-shaped accounting trophy and shove it right up there.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_04: I also love the subtleties of like an accounting trophy for the IRS is a butt plug.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's such a good gag on its own.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: You don't think that it's setting up something.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_04: No, even though it is funny just as it is.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: It is very much Chekhov's butt plugs, as I use.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, and I do love Joy figuring out that they have to do weird things.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_05: Oh my god.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_05: And then Wayman trying to suggest a weird thing for them to do.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: One thing that I quite like about this is that like obviously she tells him the stuff and they laugh because she's trying to also describe uh Ratatouille as Rakakoonie.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, what?
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: But then as soon as things start happening, like when like there's a time where Wayman uh does go back to Alpha Wayman comes back, like, was I raccoon Wayman again?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is she like they do get on the ball pretty quickly?
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: They don't spend forever, because uh and they should immediately, immediately, like the grandfather has a gun and a butt and them they get locked in a room and they get attacked by but like it'd be weird if they if they did not immediately be like, I guess she was telling the truth.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, sure.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: And we're not gonna spend time picking apart her method of explaining it to us.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: We're just gonna accept that we're being raccoonied.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're watching.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_05: We're just gonna go with this, and then they're gonna call it that from then on because they're a family.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so cute.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_04: I love it so much.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like whenever whenever you describe this to people and we're trying to convince them to watch it, I'm like, it feels more complicated than it is.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's at like like even the multiverse jump stuff is act it's actually fairly straightforward.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's just a bunch of different multiverses that have anything happening in them.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, because anything can happen, like there's not a lot to like question things.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that is the source of Joe Buchtupaki's power, as we see in her first fight with security and the cops, is that everywhere in the multiverse, everything is possible.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: So if everything can happen, somewhere everything must happen, and she can just make it happen wherever she is.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: She also has some baller lines.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: Her speech to the first cop about what you mean is I'm not allowed to do this because clearly I physically can do this.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the one I had to write down right is a tiny box invented by people who are afraid.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, good line.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: And she took everything, put it on a bagel.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_04: I love that.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: I love that I had to jot that one down too.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't get the entire thing of all of our hopes, obligations, expectations, sesame, poppy seed, salt.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: Which is when I learned what goes on an everything bagel.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_04: It's also it's so great that it's so simple.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_04: It's an everything bagel.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_04: It has everything on it.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_05: And then they keep referring to the bagel.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_05: Mom.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_05: Oh my god.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_04: Bagel.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_04: Bagel.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: Another setup.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of very significant foreground shots of bagels leading up to that.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_04: And even the circle that how many times like Jamie Lee Curtis circles that one tax receipt, and it's like, circle, circle, circle.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_04: And you're like, ah yes, there it is later.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_04: There's the bagel payoff.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm speaking of like that, that's I love how that's how they kind of they also show to the audience that she has successfully done the Jobu Jubaki, like she split, she has become everything, or she's become everywhere, because after she dies in uh the action universe, then her mind is in the the movie star Evelyn, and then she's like going through, and then she eventually finds her way back to the house.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: And when she has like the receipt in her hand, it does a thing where she looks, she puts it to the left, puts it to the right, and then you see her see the screen crack, and she puts it on both sides.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, oh, so she can see all the different like all the different choices that she can make.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Also, is it very clear?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's no time travel, only multiverse.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: Time is still going the same.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: She can only experience what the Evelyn's in the same moment are doing.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: She can't I mean she gets a download on what their history was, but she is still in that moment.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like the various Evelyns are on stage doing a concert or at their premiere of their new movie or spinning the sign or have gone home to work on their taxes more.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, which is why which is why time still like matters when she's like getting distracted by things in different uh universes.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'll wait with shut it down, shut it down.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Such a funny moment.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh good at just uh I think I wanted a quick shout out just like how well the movie does also with having cinematically the the movie is filmed differently in each reality.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: The action universe has a different has the more like action like aspect ratio, and the um movie the movie star universe is filmed a lot more like a drama.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like uh like uh if you ever watch any like Chinese dramas, like it's very much that with a lot of high speed filming or like low frame rate filming.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's it's cool.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Just cool stuff.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's the actor who plays Carl, who I do believe was the dancer who couldn't sing on Glean.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, that a hundred percent is Harry Shume Jr.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_05: I have like a vested interest in that man.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: He had such a charming and endearing moment in a behind-the-scenes video in this movie I saw.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: Where it's just he's turning to the camera and saying, So I'm about to rehearse a fight scene with Michelle Yo.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up on her movies.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: And just what a cool experience that must be.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_04: That's so cute.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it was probably the butt plug fight.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_04: I would imagine it was a butt plug fight.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's just maddening to me that that scene is a thing that happened.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I could describe this scene to someone, and it is just astounding how little the movie it would give away.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's that it ends with a different man running out of nowhere and jumping butt first onto the camera.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, with like the mosaic blurred, yes.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_04: It's so good.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_04: And I love that that was an intentional blur.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_04: Like that's that's they did that.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's not censorship, that's them being like, it's because they're they're they're in an action movie.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's so good, it's so good.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's funny because if you describe in a contact like, wow, this movie seems stupid.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, no, you gotta understand, it works.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't know.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's gonna be another way that when you reach that point and you're like, yeah.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, you fought in.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_05: It's the only thing that could happen, right?
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Good movie.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Good movie.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: Good movie.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: Dumb joke that I wrote across two notes that I'm just gonna sum up.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: Notes that we have basically covered is that Evelyn does succumb to the Chobu Tupaki's belief that if everything happens, nothing matters.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: So she's just gonna start making the worst possible choice in any moment.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: The same logic that makes someone do a worst ending playthrough of Mass Effect.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Then she finds triumph through love and whimsy.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like someone doing a paragon playthrough of Mass Effect.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: Just saying, I've seen people saying, How many crew members can I kill off over the course of this trilogy?
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it simply could not be me.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what why in a world where you have the ability to do anything you want would you choose to do terrible things?
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: I like the people who respond, like, sorry, my power fantasy is being good and kind.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's great.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like Waymond.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: Lovable Waymond.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, I love him so much.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, it was a sleeper hit, not like a top ten film sleeper hit, but hung in there for months, and they were able to ride that to being nominated for 11 Oscars, of which it won seven.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: Picture director, well, directors for The Daniels, lead actress for Michelle Yo, supporting actor for Hikie Hoikwan, supporting actress for Jamie Lee Curtis, which is the controversial one, original screenplay, and editing.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: But she deserved just for those close-up montages of Evelyn in like 25 different worlds.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: So good.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and also just map match cutting across universes.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like it never felt I never felt confused about eyelines, even when we're like, she's seeing different universes.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I get the eye line.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: The way would someone something would happen to Evelyn in our main universe, and one of the side Evelyns would be affected by it, and it's so seamless.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: Or when Joe Boutipaki is trying to figure out what world this is happening in, and just clicking her head to the side, and it rotates worlds with everyone.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the tuning the tuning universes is pretty cool was pretty cool.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's good.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: The reason Jamie Lee Curtis is the controversial one is that it lost supporting actress for Stephanie Sue, and it is hard to say that Jamie Lee Curtis was even the best supporting actress in this movie for everything Stephanie was doing as Joy.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: And Jobu.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, Jamie Lee Curtis is a national treasure.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: However, Joy that was seen as the second best supporting actress of this movie receiving a career Oscar over the actual best supporting actress of the movie.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was gonna say it feels like it was one of those things where it's like, well, we gotta give her an award.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sucks.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: Also lost score, original song, which fine, especially given what did win, and also my general disdain for giving an Oscar to the song that plays under the credits.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: And costumes.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: It won the critic's choice but lost the globe and the BAFTA.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, this is not a BAFTA movie.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_04: This is not a BAFTA movie.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to cycle back to one note I did take about a flaw this movie does have that I don't like acknowledging but is there, in that I follow when I have the time, a uh Jewish creator on Twitch, and she did comment on how the only Jewish presenting character in the film is referred to as Big Nose, and that's not great.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_05: But Michelle uh Michelle Yo, that's not I mean, I mean the character, Evelyn.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_05: Evelyn.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_05: Evelyn's not great.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean Evelyn's also she's she's also she's bigoted.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she's not yeah, she is bigoted.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, this Evelyn, the Evelyn we first see, not not a nice lady.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_04: This is why Wayman's divorcing her.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: She gets better by the end once she has the perspective of the all of existence.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: But she's she's like she's shitty to her husband, she's shitty to her kids, she's shitty to everyone.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, if if Weyman is divorcing her, she is awful because that man is a gem.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_05: He's not actually divorcing her, though.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_05: He just got the papers because he wanted to have a conversation with her.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_05: I know that isn't the saddest thing.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_05: It took him that.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_04: He had to do that.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_04: She must be terrible.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: Rotten Tomatoes ranking of this is purest heresy.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: They have it at number 31 over the king's speech, but two under an American in Paris, which simply will not do.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely not.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_05: American in Paris is also prejudiced, but not in a way where we're supposed to be like, hey, this person's wrong.
• 38:57
  unknown: Yeah.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: Would have been better if one of the Americans in Paris had been a werewolf.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's not often I'm gonna say anything nice about films in which an American werewolf is in Paris.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: I have this one at number four.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: I do not care.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think this one is virtually perfect.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: It slots in between It Happened One Night and Godfather 2, and there are some very vocal film bros on Reddit who disagree, but I do not care.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: They have accepted Joe Buktipakki into their hearts.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's easier to dislike modern things than to accept that sometimes good things are made now.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now I understand that we are at a point of our journey where the other nominees are movies that we did sum up in an Oscars in Review episode some time ago, but I'm still gonna run through them because it has been three years.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: Other nominees, at number 10 by my ranking, is Triangle of Sadness, in which a supermodel being invited on an ill-fated ultra-luxury cruise links three separate arcs examining wealth imbalance, three arcs that don't quite make a hole.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: At number nine, Elvis.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: Baz Lerman's attempt to put his signature style in the life of Elvis Presley, but gets weighed down by the bland biopic formula.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: Number eight, our international box office champ, which we will swing back to in a bit.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: Number seven, the Fablemans, Steven Spielberg's semi-autobiographical story of how his love of film as a teen helped shape his life for good and ill.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: Can I just very quickly say, I thought that one would win because there's nothing the Academy likes more than doing movies about movies and being like, you're right.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're like Spielberg wants to talk about filmmaking.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: Movies?
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, the last time it seemed like a Spielberg movie was a favorite, it was defeated by a movie about the power of the film industry.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I will say that the Fable Mans has one of the best closing shots of recent memory, and it did snag the Golden Globe for best drama.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_04: That makes sense.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: Number six, I have Women Talking, in which the women of a religious cult who have suffered frequent sexual assaults by the men must decide what to do when the perps are bailed out.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: Give in to the men and forgive their assailants, leave their home for good, or stay and fight.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I wish I had had the attention to finish most of these descriptions, so I'm ad-libbing the end of a lot of sentences.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_05: It's okay.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_05: We had an entire episode where we talked you and me and Olav, but no Claire talked about it.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_05: I was not here for this one.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: Just as well, me, Olaf, and Erin are the ones who saw it.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Number five is Tar with Kate Blanchett, as a famed conductor in a world where that's still a thing, whose carefully controlled life begins to unravel when an old affair becomes a huge scandal.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: Number four is All Quiet on the Western Front, a German language, if you watch it right, remake of the classic that still overly works, but adds an armistice negotiation subplot and over-dramatizes the conclusion, trading modern war is an absolute nightmare everyone should avoid for World War I in specific was messed up.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Keith and I dug into it on recovered episode 32, Quiet Western Fronts.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: Number three, our domestic box office champ, which we'll swing back to in a much shorter bit.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, the one the film bros are still the maddest about, the Banshees of Inner Sheeran from Martin McDonough, master of hangout comedies that are simultaneously incredibly funny and incredibly sad, in which a small Irish town is wobbled into chaos when Brendan Gleason decides he doesn't want to be Colin Farrell's best friend anymore, and Colin doesn't know how to deal with that.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: Want the Golden Globe for Best Comedy and the BAFTA for best British film, which um was it was it British though?
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because it feels extremely Irish to me.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_04: You know what?
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_04: The BAFTA's gonna BAFTA.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_05: The BAFTAs will claim Ireland when they wish.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_05: Regardless of what Ireland won.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_04: They did it before, so they're gonna keep doing.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: I absolutely forgot to write it down.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm mostly certain that the BAFTA for best picture overall was all quiet on the Western Front, which I have been saying just long enough to double check.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm right.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: Good job.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yep, A plus playing.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_04: Good job.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: And number one is where I rank Everything Everywhere.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: They called us right.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: Fight me, Ben Sheeple.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_05: Oh man, good movie.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_05: And we talked about this good movie for longer than usual.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_05: Mm-hmm.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_05: Usually a good movie gets us quiet.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_04: It's true, because we go, it was good.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: We did talk about it for a while, and that would probably be a issue if we had two more movies to talk about than a combined five six hours of runtime.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because the battle for the box office this year, or the battle to be the movie that saved the movie.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Movies again, because the movies in the 2020s are a lot like Garrett from Community, they take so much saving.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: Came down to two filmmakers who believe in the power of practical effects, of real speed, real effects, real action, and a filmmaker who says balls to literally all of that.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_04: Mm-hmm.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_04: Mm-hmm.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, Claire, take us on back to the danger zone.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_04: We are on a highway, a 36-year-long highway, and that highway is taking us back to the danger zone.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_04: And Tom Cruise is now a teacher at Top Gun.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_04: Because Canada, question mark, has evil uranium.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_04: And he must teach the Top Gunners how to Star Wars destroy that uranium.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_04: That is Top Gun Maverick.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: That feels accurate.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_05: Man! Boy! Boy, does Miles Teller look like Goose when he has that mustache?
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my god, I the whole time I just kept calling him Baby Goose.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_04: I know his call sign is Rooster, but I ignored that completely and just the whole time called him baby goose and just was like, oh my god, baby goose!
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: I want to say, flashback to a memory that me and Eren have, where we watched a show, a cooking show, and there was a man who was telling a story about his very dear friend who had passed away from brain cancer, and the name of his very dear friend, as he conferred to him as, was Big Worm.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, like that's that name, he liked that name.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think it'd be called Big Worm, but it was a bit weird to constantly have him refer to his um past friend and be like, I think Big Worm's looking down on me.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: I have very similar feelings to when he's having a very intense conversation with his friend about what to do about his like dead Fred's kid and being like, I just feel like Rooster needs someone.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I think you can call him Bradley like right now.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think right now you can call him Bradley.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_05: Right now.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_05: I think that's right.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_05: You don't use my call sign.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think maybe you could like like for right now, just call him Bradley.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_05: The the audience will understand.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we go to the legal name, maybe.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think anybody ever calls him Pete.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_04: No, no, occasionally.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_04: Um, Jennifer Connolly calls him Pete.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_04: His name's Pete?
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_04: I know, right?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_04: His name is Tom Cruise, let's be real.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_04: Well, his name is Tom Cruise.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: Pete Maverick Mitchell.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_04: I forgot that, and when they said Pete, I was like, what?
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: I can absolutely see him pulling a Fox Mulder and saying, I even make my parents call me Maverick.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I mean, they might be able to just do just call him Maverick.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: What uh my favorite thing about this is that looking at the list of the character list is all just name, call sign, last name.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: But all every single name along this line feels like it was written by some like cool name generator.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because even if you like take out their cool names like Phoenix and Payback and Coyote, their names are like Natasha Trace, yes, Solomon Bates, Chester Kane.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_04: No, they really they just put it in.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_04: They're like, okay, we're gonna start at A and we're gonna just see what names happen.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: His name, by the way, Rooster's name is Bradley Bradshaw.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_05: That's unfortunate.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_05: Correct.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: Why would you do that to him?
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: That should be a superhero who grows up to become the Brad.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it does a superhero written by Stanley very specifically.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's it's really Blackagar Boltigan.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_04: I this movie is everything you wanted it to be.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_04: It's sometimes it's a shot-for-shot remake telling of Top Gun.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: Especially the first three minutes.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, yes.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_04: Where it's just planes taking off while Danger Zone plays underneath them, and you're like, I did have to recheck to make sure I was right watching the right one for a moment.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: The exact same opening caption about, but the cadets call it Top Gun.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: Cadets also call it Fighter Town.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: They are aware of what we're doing and why we're playing this.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: So just off the top is the exact same caption, the exact same planes on a carrier montage to the exact same Kenny Loggins song.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: We are back, baby, is the entire point of the first few minutes.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's just such a movie for dads.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my god.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean then non-derogatorily, but it's like such a Because it because it actually, I I kind of was thinking that, like, oh, are there gonna be some weird problematic things?
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: And there's not.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, there's not really.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's actually a lot about emotions, which originally top gun also was about.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_04: This is true.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_04: It captures a perfect amount of nostalgia that you want 36 years later.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_04: You want and you're like, yes, this is what I want.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_04: And we get another gratuitous, shirtless, beach ball playing moment.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_04: This time it's football.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: This time John Hamm shows up to go, what are they doing?
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: Hold on.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody questions why Goose and Maverick are playing volleyball against Iceman, but in jeans.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: This time John Hamm has some questions.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: Hanging with the boys.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I did jot down the note that this is for all the wives and daughters that the dads dragged along with them to this movie.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_05: As was the first one.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_05: They are still wearing jeans.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_05: And very notably, Tom Cruise is not playing the sport because Tom Cruise cannot be shirtless next to Miles Teller and the man who is Hollywood.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_05: He's the only man in Hollywood, Glenn Powell.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_05: Glenn Powell.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: He is shirtless for a while.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: He's there, then he walks out.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: He leaves.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_04: He walks away from the game.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_04: He's like, I did it.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_04: I did my things now.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_04: Now I'm gone.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_04: And now I'm gonna go sit in this chair.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, a year later he did a whole ass fight scene in boxer briefs.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: He's not that awkward about his physique at 60.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about how at the beginning it is the three-minute just doing the opening to top gun again.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_00: However, it is important to note that the beginning that a pair he appears to, he appears to live in an old airplane hangar.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we see him in an old airplane hangar, then he gets on his cool motorcycle and drives to another airplane hangar, and then he gets in a jet, and his friend, let me check right here, Hondo says to him, no, not even to him, just says out loud, just in the room, whether watching, just says, He's the fastest man alive.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't know what prompted him.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's going fast, don't get me wrong.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: He can just fly fast airplanes.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_04: I also I love that the crux of the beginning of the movie is if they don't make it to Mach 10, this whole program that is actually irrelevant, like the program, the Mach 10 is relevant, but the program itself is actually irrelevant to the whole rest of the movie.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_04: Mach 10's also irrelevant.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: Mach 10's just a neat thing to be able to do.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's shut down because he blows up the ship.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: He blows up the plane.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_04: But if he had just stayed at regular Mach 10 and not pushed it, like Hondo warned him, he said, not Mach 10.1, not 10.2.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, is that not Peter Maverick Mitchell all over?
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: He proves his point that we can't get this thing to Mach 10, but then just has to go that little farther and blows everything up.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's very Maverick, especially very Maverick at the beginning of this movie.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he dies.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: So he keeps the program kind of alive because they have to build a new one of those that can do the same thing.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's how he keeps his business.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: The shot of Mach 10 suit Maverick rolling into a diner in a small town some ways down the road from wherever he landed.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: Somewhere in the Midwest.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: Where am I?
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: Earth.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: Love that.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's well.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_05: Great work, kid.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_05: Good job.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's clearly a man in a in a flight suit.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: My first, second, third, and fourth viewings of this movie, theaters, theaters, airplane, right after we watched Top Gun for this podcast.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: I did really focus on how much of this movie hinges on certain relationships from the first movie.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: Goose and Iceman are still dominant figures in his life.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my god.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_04: Talk to me, Goose.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_01: On this, the at least fifth viewing, I did begin to appreciate how some of these other key relationships in his life feel lived in despite the fact they are new characters to us, including Hondo, who having heard Kevin say it out loud, does that feel like a portmanteau of Han and Londo to anybody else?
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: A little bit.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: His other friend is Warlock.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: I had to look that up.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: Warlock's also not in the first movie.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, do you know who else is not in the first movie?
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_00: But it feels like the movie's trying to gaslight you into thinking they are Penny.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I mean correct.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: Penny, okay.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, his romantic loving was the instructor, right?
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: Put a small pin in Penny, because I definitely want to dig very deep into this.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: But then the other two characters who are entirely new but feel like they could have been in the first movie, they feel lifted out of the first movie like they could have been there the whole time, are Ed Harris as yet another disapproving admiral and John Hamm as Cyclone.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yes.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: Especially because we don't see Ed Harris again.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like it feels like a cameo.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: He's like James Tolkien in the first movie.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: He's there at the very beginning and the very end, but he's not there for any purpose other than to disapprove of Maverick shenanigans in two key scenes of the movie.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: Only this time it's John Hamm who gets buzzed.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_04: I love, I love when Ed Harris shows up at the second air hangar as Tom Cruise is taken off, because he's like, well, better get it going then.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_04: And Ed Harris shows up, gets out of the vehicle, which is not safe.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_04: This vehicle is in like flight path danger, and then stands there.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_04: And when the plane flies over him, it takes the roof off of the little like shed, but Ed Harris just takes one step back.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_04: And you're like, perfect.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_04: Perfect Ed Harris, baby.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'm gonna want to circle back to Ed Harris, but we do have to talk about the Penny of it all.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_05: Isn't Penny the daughter of the disapproving admiral from the first movie?
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_05: Or did I elucinate that?
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's explicitly stated in this movie, but the fandom does believe that the running gag from the first movie about how Maverick fooled around with the daughter of an admiral and got in a lot of trouble, the fandom does believe that was Penny, thus making and we taught I just re-listened the episode, so I know we talked about this in the Top Gun episode.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: Making Kelly Lynch, her entire character in the first movie, the rebound girl in one of his off again periods in this apparent epic 30-year on-again-off-again love affair with Penny that we are learning about for the first time but asked to expect has existed.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I do think they kind of sell it.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_04: They do.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: I like how you can ex- you can describe the entire plot of this movie without ever mentioning Penny.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, you can.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: I would argue that you that you can reach the entire premise of this movie beginning to end and never mention the word penny.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well true, but it may be that's where the differences fall between plot and story.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_04: I I will say, speaking of Penny, I also truly enjoy that the moment it's revealed that the reason that Maverick held Rooster back for four years is because his mom, right before she died, just kill Meg Ryan off right there.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_04: She's not coming back.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_01: Meg Ryan was not signing on for this movie.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_04: No, no, just killing her right off.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_04: Just being like, before she died, told me I never want him to fly.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_04: And you're like, okay.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_05: You'd think Meg Ryan could have had a conversation with her son about this at some point, being like, hey babe, I have deep held trauma about how your dad died.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_04: It was a training accident.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_04: A training accident.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_04: That they show us again.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_04: They show it to us.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, she no, she would rather manipulate another person's trauma.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they do need any Gen Z who are joining us for the first time because their dad brought them here to understand the story of Goose.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_04: And I mean, yes, we do need to understand the story of Goose, because Goose is the best.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_04: We talked about this when we talked about Top Gun.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_04: Goose is the best.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I you're saying that you you were surprised that Meg Ryan was there.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: I I thought that there was a decent chance that Iceman, uh Val Kilmer was also just going to be he texts with him at night.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_04: We're Val Kilmer.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_04: We'll talk about that in a sec.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that Iceman they're saying his they don't say the word, but his cancer has come back, and now he can't even talk and has to type on a computer screen to have a conversation with Maverick while in the same room.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's based on what was happening to Val Kilmer at that time.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and he doesn't look well in the movie.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_04: Like he wasn't well.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_04: Like no, he's he was really sick.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_04: He died three years later, actually.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_01: He has one line and it had to be digital effect because Val Kilmer legit couldn't talk.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_05: Couldn't speak.
• 58:35
  SPEAKER_05: That's what I was gonna say.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_05: My understanding was that he could not talk at all.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_05: So I was shocked when they gave him words.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_05: So good the movie you did it.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah pulled my heartstrings.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_01: Val Kilmer was very touched to hear his own voice coming out of him in that scene.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_04: I bet.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's it's not Christopher Reeve in the Flash scenario.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: Val Kilmer got to attend the premiere of this.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's his last film.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: We all agree.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's his last film.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_01: We definitely will not look into any films that say starring Val Kilmer release after this.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_01: It is his last film.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_04: No, this is his last film.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely won't watch anything about Snowman.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_00: I also just uh want to quick shout out with that.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_00: I do like when he arrives at Top Gun Ebb, there is a giant photo of Maverick and Iceman shaking hands.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's big.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's real big.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: Who took that photo?
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: Why was there a cameraman?
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_01: Why was there a cameraman on the carrier after they shot down non-specific and nobody said it was Russian?
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: Can't really say it was Russian.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_00: Such a big photo.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_04: It's so big.
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_04: I okay.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_04: I will say this casting though, the young kid cat they're not kids, they are full adults, but the young human casting is so good.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_04: Like Glenn Powell looks like Val Kilmer did.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: He looks so much like he could be Anthony Edwards' son.
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_01: And he is not the Nepo baby in this movie.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_01: That is Lewis Pullman as Bob.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: One of his top two performances as a flying character named Bob.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_05: I did like him as Bob.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_05: I liked him as Bob.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: No, he's very good.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: He's a Nepo baby I can get on board with.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, I was watching, I'm just like, this is the character you set up to die.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: It does feel that way.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_05: But he's not the one they killed.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: Was it hot hot shots uh where the guy's name is uh Dead Meat and he's gone time with his phone?
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they call me Dead Meat.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm just thinking about my wife all the time.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_00: Boy, I love my wife.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a photo of my newborn baby.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'll fill out this insurance paperwork after the flight.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, by the way, I found some evidence on the Kennedy conspiracy.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: It goes all the way to the top.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's just like this adorable bean guy being like, My name is Bob.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_00: My call sign is Bob.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: Just like that, this guy's not.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: This guy's dead.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_04: He's dead, he's gonna die.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_00: But then they've been with Phoenix, and I'm like, I think maybe not.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_05: They put him with the girl.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_05: Definitely not gonna die.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: There are actually two women pilots in this movie, but it's okay that you forgot about the second.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: You mean Halo?
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote down all their call signs.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_04: She's there.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_04: She's there in playing beach football.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_00: Having Yale and Harvard entered together made me wonder if they were just time of schools everyone went to.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Kevin is absolutely gonna defy my bit where I defend Monica Barbaro in this movie by saying I care way more about Phoenix than I do about Coyote or Payback or Yale or Squidgy or Harvard or Stepladder, and you don't know which of those I've made up.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of my point.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is important for everyone to know, however, that internet's favorite guy right now, Manny Jacinto, is in this movie.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_05: Really?
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_05: Is he?
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_00: He's Fritz.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_05: Ah.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_05: One of the pilots.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_05: He's one of the boys.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: One of the boys.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_01: One of the boys.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_01: He's he's my second favorite Star Wars villain.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_01: After Darth Vader above Kylo Ren.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think Palpatine is pushing forth.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: We talked enough about Star Wars.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_01: But this movie is kind of a little bit.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_04: They have to just shoot the Uranium.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: You do have to fly through a trench to precision shoot two missiles at a tiny target.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: So that's hard to avoid, but no one has made more fun of that than Canada's own Ryan George on pitch meeting, so I wasn't going to spend a lot of time on that.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to spend time making fun of something else, going off the idea of this being a dad movie, the idea the movie's like, hey, Maverick, you're old.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta teach these young kids.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then at the end, inexplicably, they're like, you gotta go up.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're the leader.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that was an option.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my god.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_04: It's so funny.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_04: You're over the hill.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_01: Never mind.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_01: That is also how F1 goes.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, it was, I believe, written by the director of this movie.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_01: So that makes sense.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is the new phase of Tom Cruise's career.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: That time is the fire in which we all burn even Tom Cruise, but maybe not today.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, just the entire movie, he's really good.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's like he's a really good pilot, and he continues to be a really good pilot.
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then what does he do?
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_00: He shows he's a really good pilot.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now he's the lead.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: At no point is he ever a bad pilot.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_04: I love when he's sad because he's none of them can do it, and time's running out.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_04: And it's like, well, you didn't show them that they could fly this.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_04: Like you've shown them it's only impossible.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_04: And he's like, you know what?
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_04: I guess that's time for me.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_04: Me, Tom Cruise, to do the whole thing in under two minutes.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_04: Tom Cruise.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_00: I look at the term.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, he's like, well, he kept saying that was possible.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: We was like, you never showed that it was possible.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, really?
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_00: At no point did anyone like there was no thing of like, yeah, no, you can do this.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like it is impossible.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_04: Like literally we're training for it.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_04: It's a doable thing.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_04: It's not impossible.
• 1:04:22
  SPEAKER_04: And they're like, it's totally impossible.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_04: And Tom Cruise is like, he's not even, he doesn't think of it.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_04: He is told that he has to do this.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_04: And he's like, And then I do.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_01: By who?
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: By Penny.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_01: Suck it.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then right then, then at the end, as he's he's he's going off on this mission, just like how he had his friend Hondo whisper, he's the fastest man alive.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now he's standing there, and Warlock across the ship looks and goes, You're where you belong.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why would these people talk?
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_00: Why do these people talk like beer ads?
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_05: Especially because at no point did Tom Cruise feel like he didn't belong in the sky.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, war Warlock saw him and was like, I know what this man needs.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_00: He needs me to tell him that you're where you belong.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my god.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_04: I also I absolutely love that at no point in time was there actually any danger for Maverick.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_04: Like, we all know, no matter how this movie is going, that a movie starring and produced in part by Tom Cruise is Maverick going to not be the hero sequel.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_05: You know, that is the thing about this movie.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_05: Obviously, it's a joy.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, I loved it.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_05: It is about nothing.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_05: He goes through nothing, he achieves nothing, he changes in no way.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_05: Like, you know, if you think about like man's struggle when we think of like the narrative structure man versus self, man versus nature, man versus god.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_05: Man versus man.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_05: What Tom Cruises versus no one is just there.
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, especially considering how they're they're always just like, they are going to get the uranium.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_00: We have to blow up the depot.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, please just say a direction that this is the country's in.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_01: This is not a franchise to ever identify what country they are currently in an air battle with.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_01: We know this from the last time.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_01: And friend of the podcast, nemesis of one of the hosts, that being me, Olaf Rockney, has stated that due to the terrain and the specific trees lining it, he feels that Maverick invades Canada.
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_01: I just feel that they made it snowy and mountainous right off the coast.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_01: So we wouldn't immediately say it's Iran.
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 1:06:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's Iran?
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_00: They purposely did like avoid when they just kept saying kept saying canyon, canyon, canyon.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was expecting like, oh, they're gonna go vague Middle East.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_00: They kind of did.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think they're going more like Russia was the idea.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 1:07:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but Russia has so much enriched uranium, but everybody still has full face visors that are entirely black, so we don't even need to know what continent we're currently at war with.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's important, it's important to know that also we we might just want to like accept the idea that Top Gun does take place in a fantasy universe.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's not we we know it takes place in the USA because it's called Fighter Town USA.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_05: You know, you make a great point, Kevin.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe this is a fantasy universe.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:07:31
  SPEAKER_05: And Top Gun exists.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_04: Like that is a real thing in our world, the US military.
• 1:07:38
  SPEAKER_00: Also, maybe that world as well.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's Boravia.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_01: They're invading Boravia, the nation that was declaring an unjust war against Jarinpur in 25 Superman.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_01: I solved it for all of us.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think the Mavericks arc is learning to find a new place.
• 1:08:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because we have that speech at the beginning about this is like Ed Harris's giant contribution to the movie.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_01: You should be a two S star admiral by now, or a senator, which was seen by some as a commentary on Tom Cruise's career, like saying you should have two Oscars and be taking it easy, playing a mob boss in the Batman or hiring somebody to kill Tony Stark at this point.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_01: But you're still doing Top Gun and Mission Impossible, like you're still 35.
• 1:08:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then in the end, his place is to stop running from conflict to conflict, from crisis to crisis, and just embrace a home which is in the same on you abandoned hangar somewhere, and be with Penny.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but Penny's there.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's the same abandoned hangar.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_04: I think the plane he was working on that we briefly saw at the very beginning is the propeller plane that him and Penny fly off into the sunset in at the end.
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_01: But we do get that moment of this is the last time I go out your window, implying that she was the admiral's daughter.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_01: And this time I'm coming back and I'm never leaving you again.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_01: Especially because I don't think any disapproving admiral in either movie has ever cut him to the core like a withering stare from Penny's daughter Amelia and a statement of just don't break her heart again.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like he can get chewed out by James Tolkien, Ed Harris, Tom Scarrett, who John Hamm, whoever, but that little girl stares directly into his soul and says, Don't hurt my mom again.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_04: Again, again.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_01: She's lived through at least one Maverick breakup.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_01: Although she is declared to be somebody else's daughter, so we don't think that Maverick's a deadbeat dad.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_01: Can't be having with that now, can't we?
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 1:09:58
  SPEAKER_04: Her real dad is deadbeat, and he's in Hawaii with his wife.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_00: They know who her dad is, just not here.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:10:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's just not in the sleepy.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_01: He might send child support.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_00: He might be real and loving.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_05: He's not Tom Cruise.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Where's where's your dad?
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_00: He's in Hawaii.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_00: He's in Hawaii with his with his wife, who love they love each other very much.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was a very cordial and uh and amicable divorce.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he sends regular, regular child payments and visits me on holidays.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_00: We have a great relationship.
• 1:10:32
  SPEAKER_01: That relationship just didn't work because Penny was meant to be with Maverick, as we were being informed.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't have a call sign, and that and she didn't know what to call him.
• 1:10:43
  SPEAKER_04: He was not in the Navy, okay?
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_01: She does feel very navy, child, which just adds to the she's the Admiral's daughter theory.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_00: So her call sign is Penny.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Her real name's Penelope.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_04: This movie was great.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_04: It's everything you want it to be.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_04: It makes no It has no pretensions of being anything else.
• 1:11:09
  SPEAKER_01: I also like that Penny has an internality and her own life.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_01: I love Maverick being, forgive the metaphor, out to sea when he volunteers to help sail her ship into the mechanic.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_04: It's glorious.
• 1:11:23
  SPEAKER_04: When she's like, Aren't you in the navy?
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_04: And he's like, I don't do boats.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_00: I land on them, I don't sail.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_00: She does do these, I'll stand behind you and help you learn how to do this thing.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_01: And when he comes back from the big mission, he's like, I'm here to reunite with Penny like I promised I would.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Penny here?
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Nah, she's out with her daughter.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Did she say when she'd be back?
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Not really.
• 1:11:46
  SPEAKER_04: I also like how Jimmy's just been there the whole time.
• 1:11:49
  SPEAKER_04: Jimmy also works at this bar.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Feels like Jimmy was meant to be a cameo of some sort.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like if he hadn't passed away, that would have been Tony Scott in that role.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Do I have any other parting notes?
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because I wrote a lot of notes, but we have just been on pure vibes for both movies.
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_04: So I haven't Because that's what this movie is.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Throwing them in where I can, then.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_04: And then Lady Gaga does the end song.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Which is also a part of the score, especially in any scene with Penny, which is why she is one of the three credited artists of the score.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think Han Zimmer, they were just reusing some stuff he did for the first time.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_01: They have the same curtain call order and credit cast list.
• 1:12:32
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 1:12:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I took zero notes during the entire climax, except man loves to buzz a tower.
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_01: And John Hamm has perfect annoyance at it happening.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_05: Mm-hmm.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_05: As he should.
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_01: The one sex scene is very Gen Z appropriate.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_01: It is way more about the emotional connection than watching two 50-somethings try to figure out how to still mash each other.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_04: And the kiss didn't upset me.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_04: It wasn't weird this time.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Not so much tongue action.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_01: At the time, Tom Cruise was 59, Jennifer Connolly was 51, they still both look great.
• 1:13:07
  SPEAKER_05: Age appropriate.
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_01: And oh yeah, my big thing on Glenn Powell, who I know is in everything, but is also almost always the right choice.
• 1:13:17
  SPEAKER_01: He looks like Iceman.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_01: But he's Maverick.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:13:23
  SPEAKER_01: He's first movie Maverick.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_01: And we are seeing that first movie Maverick is not necessarily the best thing to be.
• 1:13:31
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it lets actual Maverick look at him go.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Awww.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh dang it.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't hire me.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is looking in a mirror the worst way.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_01: To the point where he gets the same role that Maverick had in the first movie.
• 1:13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like he was the backup called in when Iceman was overwhelmed by the enemy Migs from a country we won't name.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:13:52
  SPEAKER_01: Latviria.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_01: It could have been Latviria.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Doom would have taken so much vengeance on Maverick by now.
• 1:14:00
  SPEAKER_04: I do also love how Glenn Powell sees the picture that has been on the wall for a long time of Maverick and the whole group, and is like, wait a second.
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_04: The back there.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_04: That looks just like Rooster.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe an older version of Rooster?
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_04: And you're like, dudes, it's obvious.
• 1:14:26
  SPEAKER_04: It's so obvious.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_01: He probably never thought about it up until this point.
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know that Rooster and Hangman were in Top Gun at the same time, especially since Rooster's career got delayed by four years by Maverick, so almost certainly was behind everybody else in a very now they have beef.
• 1:14:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh we will have a hotmail doctor from Hugh Scrubs.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, no, that's how he becomes Hangman.
• 1:14:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_04: It's evident they set it up very clearly in his first flying sequence.
• 1:14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Hangman's always gonna leave you to dry.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's why he's called that.
• 1:15:02
  SPEAKER_01: I also like that they do establish just enough history between Phoenix and Rooster.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_01: But don't dwell on it.
• 1:15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Phoenix is never relegated to Rooster's potential girlfriend.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:15:16
  SPEAKER_04: No, she's got her own thing.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_04: She's doing her own flights, and it's great.
• 1:15:19
  SPEAKER_04: Bob!
• 1:15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Bob! Good old Bob.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Bob.
• 1:15:23
  SPEAKER_01: He makes his laser work, goddammit.
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Not like whoever was in the second plane with what's his name.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's fanboy.
• 1:15:30
  SPEAKER_01: It could be.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_01: I care so little about anybody who isn't Maverick or Hangman or Rooster or Phoenix.
• 1:15:37
  SPEAKER_04: Because that's who we're supposed to care about.
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_04: The others just have funny names.
• 1:15:42
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, one of them dies, guys.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_04: One of them doesn't have to be.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_04: No, don't.
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_04: No, that he doesn't die.
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_04: He he gets Coyote blacks out and then that he could have died.
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Coyote blacks out, but Maverick saves him and he pulls up and he survives, and we all breathe a sigh of relief.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_01: But then Phoenix gets bird struck.
• 1:16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Phoenix and Bob get bird struck.
• 1:16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then they say they're in the hospital, then they're just fine.
• 1:16:08
  SPEAKER_01: They went to the hospital for observation, but they punched out.
• 1:16:11
  SPEAKER_01: They were okay.
• 1:16:12
  SPEAKER_01: They probably just got taken to the hospital as a precautionary measure, just to be sure.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_01: But then they're back the next day.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's fine.
• 1:16:20
  SPEAKER_04: Everybody's fine.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_04: Nobody dies in this one.
• 1:16:24
  SPEAKER_04: Except for Iceman.
• 1:16:26
  SPEAKER_04: Well, yes.
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_04: But that was inevitable.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_04: We knew that was coming.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_04: That wasn't a surprise death.
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_01: It was the horrors of cancer and mortality and not the fifth gen fighters we were so warned about.
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_05: My last note is that Tom Cruise looks great in this movie, except for when he has to put on his flight helmet and then his little puppy faces of his age.
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_05: And he still looks good.
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_01: He looks excellent for his age, but he looked his age the most in that thank you for seeing this on the big screen short that they put before the movie.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_01: My final note is that Lady Gaga was the right choice for the score/slash end credit song, but she wasn't the first, which led to the headline Lady Gaga replaces 21 pilots on Top Gun Maverick, and the Twitter responds, damn, she must be one hell of a pilot.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_00: My final note is you're the fastest man alive.
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_01: He got Mach 9, socket admiral.
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, this film was nominated for six Oscars.
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_01: It only won Best Sound.
• 1:17:33
  SPEAKER_01: It lost picture adapted screenplay to women talking, which fine.
• 1:17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Correct?
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:17:40
  SPEAKER_01: It also lost Best Song, which fine correct.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Editing and Visual Effects, which fine correct.
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_01: I have no notes on the five Oscars that it lost.
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, that's been great.
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Covered two movies that I do love dearly, that I cried tears of joy revisiting by the end.
• 1:18:00
  SPEAKER_01: How special.
• 1:18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Someone tell us about the second avatar.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, sure.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_00: So 13 years after the end of the Hundred Year War, Avatar Aang and his friends continue on their mission to rebuild the world by establishing a Republic City as home for all people of all nations.
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_00: A group of non-bending outlaws searching for a relic tied to the mysterious Avatar Sonem.
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then Avatar Aang will learn of an ancient power to save his culture from extinction.
• 1:18:35
  SPEAKER_00: With the help of his friends, he embarks on a global quest to find it before it falls in the wrong hands.
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was really just waiting for Katara to show up, but instead there was just Jake Sully and the return of everyone's favorite crazy army man, Koric.
• 1:18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then also they have to go join the water people for very thin reasoning.
• 1:19:06
  SPEAKER_01: I have heard zero mentions of Piacon the Space Whale, and I will be challenging you to a duel later over this.
• 1:19:14
  SPEAKER_04: Piacon was my favorite part of this movie.
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_04: He's everybody's favorite part of this movie.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_01: He's objectively the best thing in this movie.
• 1:19:22
  SPEAKER_05: He is a good thing.
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_00: This movie, which is Avatar The Way of Water, in case anyone didn't get that, which involves Didn't understand the joke.
• 1:19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, which is about.
• 1:19:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the thing is, like, the movie's so long, you think it'll be about a lot more.
• 1:19:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's not.
• 1:19:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's just about Corge wants to kill Jake Sully, and Jake Sully does not want to get killed.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then three hours of that happen.
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And like, there's other plot lines, I would almost argue too many other plot lines.
• 1:19:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Did he think he was making a TV series?
• 1:19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so this is how I understand things occurred.
• 1:20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is that originally James Cameron wanted to make a trilogy of Avatar movies?
• 1:20:10
  SPEAKER_01: That eventually became five movies he wanted to make.
• 1:20:14
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason for that is that part two kind of got away from him, and he had to split it into two movies: Way of Water, which we were discussing today, and Fire and Ash, which I believe I'm the only one of us that has seen it.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_00: I have not seen it.
• 1:20:32
  SPEAKER_04: I considered watching it, but I didn't.
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_04: It's three and a half hours.
• 1:20:37
  SPEAKER_04: This one was three hours of nonsense.
• 1:20:40
  SPEAKER_01: I watched it in a theater because that is the only legitimate way to watch an avatar, and I was like, I'm just gonna do it.
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just gonna I'm just gonna do it.
• 1:20:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just gonna see it as it's meant to be seen, and if it doesn't get nominated for best picture, which it looks like it won't, and it didn't, then whatever.
• 1:20:56
  SPEAKER_01: But there are ways you can tell that he split one movie into two, and where Way of Water is concerned, it's because there are at least three characters, four characters, whose arc gets punted into fire and ash.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_00: So the some of the things that happen in this film is there's blue Jesus.
• 1:21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's just a thing.
• 1:21:25
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, hey, also in the in the opening monologue, they're like, also, here's Kiri.
• 1:21:31
  SPEAKER_00: She's was born from the doctor's body.
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know why.
• 1:21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Sigourney Weaver playing a teenager and absolutely crushing it.
• 1:21:43
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, she yeah.
• 1:21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would also I would argue that she does have an adult woman voice coming out of a teenager body.
• 1:21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, but why do you expect?
• 1:21:52
  SPEAKER_04: I do love how she wasn't she was born out of the avatar of Sigourney Weaver's game.
• 1:21:59
  SPEAKER_04: You're like, what?
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_04: And they're like, it's a miracle.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_04: And you're like, I don't know.
• 1:22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what why does this movie have Blue Jesus in it?
• 1:22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Why'd you macular conception?
• 1:22:07
  SPEAKER_05: I forgot.
• 1:22:08
  SPEAKER_05: Did Sigurdia Weaver die for TV?
• 1:22:11
  SPEAKER_00: She tried to connect to the tree, but it didn't because that was that's what saved Jake.
• 1:22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Is that they they tried to download her into her avatar body and it didn't work, creating some stakes that it might not work for Jake either.
• 1:22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but apparently, maybe doing that because she might be a child made from like this world's world tree.
• 1:22:31
  SPEAKER_00: But then also there's a guy named Spider who is Quaritch's son, who is there and he's got stuff going on.
• 1:22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then also has four children.
• 1:22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Kiri and Spider are not part of the four other children that are also Jake and Tyri's children.
• 1:22:49
  SPEAKER_01: No, Kiri's one of them because they have three biological children.
• 1:22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Do they first one low act?
• 1:22:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, alright.
• 1:22:57
  SPEAKER_01: So Kiri is a little girl.
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_04: And then Spider.
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, Tuke's a little girl.
• 1:23:01
  SPEAKER_01: They adopted Kiri, and Spider is also present.
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_04: Just also there.
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:23:05
  SPEAKER_01: Growing up around a family he considers his own, led by a mother who would like him to be dead.
• 1:23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 1:23:12
  SPEAKER_01: And does want her husband to murder him for the sake of her people in the next movie.
• 1:23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Spider and Kiri also get hardcore punted into the third movie.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the scientists are also still around.
• 1:23:24
  SPEAKER_01: At least one person does the one thing I wanted, and speculate that the Joel David Moore scientist got into his avatar body and rubbed Uglies with the inert form of Grace's Avatar body, and that's where Kiri comes from.
• 1:23:40
  SPEAKER_01: At least someone is at least suggesting it.
• 1:23:43
  SPEAKER_04: I yes.
• 1:23:45
  SPEAKER_04: They're like, because he's never there.
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_04: True.
• 1:23:47
  SPEAKER_04: Or always there.
• 1:23:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then the corporation military comes back, but what they did is two hours before that final fight in Avatar, they all like shipped their memories, but not even those memories.
• 1:24:02
  SPEAKER_00: They they shipped like their different memories.
• 1:24:05
  SPEAKER_04: Other memories.
• 1:24:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:24:12
  SPEAKER_00: And shipped that back to Earth.
• 1:24:14
  SPEAKER_01: They downloaded their memories right before the much more successful invasion of the home tree.
• 1:24:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then on Earth, they were growing new avatar bodies to match Koric and the asshole bald guy from the first movie and a bunch of other soldiers I don't care about.
• 1:24:32
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to either, because most of them die.
• 1:24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Great use of money and resources, RDA.
• 1:24:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're great at your jobs.
• 1:24:38
  SPEAKER_00: But they also like the there's it's also clear that he doesn't have the memories of the Koritch that's the two hours.
• 1:24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because he like he doesn't seem to know who Jake Sully is, other than the things from that Yes, and that he hates Jake Sully.
• 1:24:52
  SPEAKER_04: That's his main reason is I hate Jake Sully.
• 1:24:55
  SPEAKER_04: And you're like, oh my god.
• 1:24:57
  SPEAKER_00: The entire corporation seems to hate Jake Sully.
• 1:24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like the entire thing is they're like, we gotta kill the leader of specifically, as we learned, just the forest Navi.
• 1:25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Just the forest Navi.
• 1:25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Which I guess their tribe is the top tribe of all of it, or are they just one tribe of the forest Navi?
• 1:25:16
  SPEAKER_00: But because why does killing Jake Stully matter?
• 1:25:19
  SPEAKER_04: It doesn't.
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_04: It doesn't.
• 1:25:21
  SPEAKER_04: They just hate him so much.
• 1:25:22
  SPEAKER_05: They explicitly say in this movie that they have to come back to Pandora because they have to move there.
• 1:25:28
  SPEAKER_05: They have to live on this planet.
• 1:25:31
  SPEAKER_05: So naturally, what they should be doing is destroying all of the natural resources.
• 1:25:36
  SPEAKER_05: I I realize they're bad guys.
• 1:25:38
  SPEAKER_00: But it's so bad at everything.
• 1:25:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's so bad at every day.
• 1:25:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same thing as Avatar One, where they're where like they're so evil that they can't do things that make sense.
• 1:25:48
  SPEAKER_00: They can only do evil.
• 1:25:50
  SPEAKER_04: Evil.
• 1:25:51
  SPEAKER_00: One year.
• 1:25:53
  SPEAKER_01: One year after returning to the planet, they brought back whaling?
• 1:25:57
  SPEAKER_01: And you can't tell me that they knew that the space whales contained a hormone that froze human aging.
• 1:26:06
  SPEAKER_01: They found that out after they decided, hey, what if we like murdered some whales and cut them up and just saw for funsies if there was anything usable in there?
• 1:26:21
  SPEAKER_01: And now the space whales are the new on obtaining, but you couldn't have just known that.
• 1:26:27
  SPEAKER_04: Well they have to go full inside.
• 1:26:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's so they had so many like choices where they could have made something.
• 1:26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what's it if they had Quarich his memories were actually the memories from the two hours before the fight, then it makes sense why he might have a very passionate hate for Jake Sully, but he is backed up by the corporate and constantly.
• 1:26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Even when I thought that they maybe went a little bit rogue when they're like going off, and he was like, when he had to train the dragon, and he was and uh Spider was like, Jake's Jake Sully trained this dragon in a cave with a box of scraps.
• 1:27:01
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, I can do that too.
• 1:27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I uh like you could do that, but he's still backed up by the corp.
• 1:27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like he went back and they were like, Yeah, we're still doing this.
• 1:27:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, but he's Jake Sully's not even the leader of them anymore.
• 1:27:14
  SPEAKER_04: No, he's gone.
• 1:27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you don't know that, I guess.
• 1:27:18
  SPEAKER_05: But they figure it out pretty quickly.
• 1:27:20
  SPEAKER_04: So fast.
• 1:27:21
  SPEAKER_04: Well, okay, here's the Jake Sully makes a huge mistake because Jake Sully s brings over the scientists in a clearly trackable plane.
• 1:27:33
  SPEAKER_04: He brings the thing that the enemy is looking for to his new family.
• 1:27:39
  SPEAKER_01: In fairness, his adopted daughter did just have a massive seizure, and flying her on a dragon thing probably felt like it was gonna take too long.
• 1:27:49
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas Joel David Moore Avatar could be here in um like an hour or two.
• 1:27:54
  SPEAKER_01: But that did give away his look.
• 1:27:57
  SPEAKER_04: They kick him right out.
• 1:27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Joel David Moore accomplishes.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
• 1:28:00
  SPEAKER_01: The scientists roll up and again try to apply earth science to Navi issues.
• 1:28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:28:08
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, well, she had a she's epileptic, and connecting to the home coral affects her too badly.
• 1:28:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the resolution for that gets punted to the third movie.
• 1:28:20
  SPEAKER_01: Kiri, Spider, Korich, and Jermaine Clement all have their arcs punted to the third movie.
• 1:28:28
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, I didn't know.
• 1:28:29
  SPEAKER_00: You mean accentless Jane Jermaine Clement?
• 1:28:32
  SPEAKER_05: I will say, in defense of Jake Sully, I think he was gonna listen to the Earth medicine.
• 1:28:38
  SPEAKER_05: The women really do have him whipped.
• 1:28:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:28:41
  SPEAKER_01: And they Terry and Kate Winslit have to step in and say, shut the hell up.
• 1:28:45
  SPEAKER_01: Let us deal with our own thing.
• 1:28:47
  SPEAKER_04: Let us do this.
• 1:28:49
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my god.
• 1:28:50
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, the two redeeming things of this movie are Whale Rev Revenge, Love Me Some Space Whale Revenge, and Mom Rage.
• 1:29:04
  SPEAKER_04: Unfiltered, unadulterated mom rage.
• 1:29:09
  SPEAKER_01: Then I have good news about Fire and Ash.
• 1:29:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because those are two dominant themes.
• 1:29:15
  SPEAKER_04: Good.
• 1:29:16
  SPEAKER_04: I might like that one.
• 1:29:17
  SPEAKER_04: No, I probably won't.
• 1:29:18
  SPEAKER_01: But No, definitely you won't.
• 1:29:20
  SPEAKER_01: But Natiri is very anti-human, and she needs to learn to work through that because maybe killing Spider is wrong, even if he does become the third unobtainium.
• 1:29:33
  SPEAKER_01: I did speculate in a fast episode if the third movie was gonna have a new untanium, and it does, and it's spider.
• 1:29:40
  SPEAKER_04: Of course it does.
• 1:29:42
  SPEAKER_04: This movie had a new untanium, and it was whales.
• 1:29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Whale juice.
• 1:29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Whale oils.
• 1:29:47
  SPEAKER_04: It's ambergris.
• 1:29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Ambergris.
• 1:29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Ambergris.
• 1:29:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's on it's unobtamogris.
• 1:29:58
  SPEAKER_05: I do appreciate her cognitive dissonance with like I know Jake Sully now lives in Avatar Body because it allows him to walk.
• 1:30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:30:04
  SPEAKER_05: And he can stay on the planet, but like she's married to a human.
• 1:30:08
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 1:30:09
  SPEAKER_00: I I think of stuff it was always funny whenever Jake Sully doing his voiceover, I go not when he's talking to other people, but when he's doing his voiceover, still calling the them the sky people.
• 1:30:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, okay.
• 1:30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's why they're all out to get him.
• 1:30:23
  SPEAKER_01: He went full native and became the greatest Navi that's ever been.
• 1:30:26
  SPEAKER_00: But but he'll he'll still hit his frustrations with a solid Jesus.
• 1:30:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like what are these like, Jesus kids?
• 1:30:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, what do what do they think that means?
• 1:30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody's speaking earth vernacular, no matter what Navi they're supposed to be speaking.
• 1:30:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it is kind of an elegant transition where he says that it now just sounds like English to me, and they stop subtitling everybody, the switching to speaking English, which means you will get to hear the two main Sully sons call each other bro about six times a minute for the next two and a half hours.
• 1:31:01
  SPEAKER_04: It's their one word that they have for each other, and then Spider gets in on it.
• 1:31:06
  SPEAKER_04: The worst part of the bro bit is when they're evading the sinking ship, because you know, James Cameron was like, oh no, I've gone too long without sinking a boat, and they're like, Bro, he's hurt, bro.
• 1:31:18
  SPEAKER_04: Bro, come over here, bro.
• 1:31:20
  SPEAKER_04: And you're like, stop, just we need like 12 less bros in this moment.
• 1:31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because I had just been watching a recent season, a time recording of Amazing Race Canada, and been asking, why do people still say bro all the time?
• 1:31:33
  SPEAKER_01: Unironically, do they not know it flags them as one of the worst people you're gonna talk to?
• 1:31:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but you might forget their brothers.
• 1:31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:31:39
  SPEAKER_05: Because I'm not gonna lie, sometimes it's really hard for me to tell which Navi is which Navi because they're all computer generated.
• 1:31:46
  SPEAKER_04: And Jake also makes that mistake, and I know that's like a thing that they were trying to do, but when he's almost drowned death and his youngest son rescues him because his oldest son is dead, and he's like net N name that I can't remember.
• 1:32:05
  SPEAKER_01: Natam?
• 1:32:06
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:32:07
  SPEAKER_01: He's the Sully son whose name I could not be bothered to learn.
• 1:32:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and he's like, no, it's the L one.
• 1:32:13
  SPEAKER_01: Look.
• 1:32:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:32:15
  SPEAKER_04: I only learned toque.
• 1:32:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's the only Look I learned because uh his middle child syndrome is the defining arc of two whole ass three in a plus hour movies.
• 1:32:27
  SPEAKER_01: And Tuke I learned because I wrote the note about what I need from Tuke if he's gonna make more of these, and that she is emblematic of the fact that the Sully children are all family loyalty, zero survival instinct.
• 1:32:41
  SPEAKER_00: I just I didn't think a lot about um how um Nateam and Natiri both have very similar names.
• 1:32:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, does it just make me think a little bit about what's like is Natayam like the male, like like their like male version of Natiri?
• 1:32:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like how we have, you know, sometimes names.
• 1:32:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, that's I don't know.
• 1:33:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot because like they're very similar.
• 1:33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like Denise and Denphew.
• 1:33:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:33:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that only happened in Discworld, but I can never not think of it.
• 1:33:10
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know, maybe I'm sure that James Cameron, who's obsessed with the world he made up, has Pandorian naming conventions.
• 1:33:19
  SPEAKER_05: And maybe the oldest son does need to be named after the mother.
• 1:33:22
  SPEAKER_05: It traps.
• 1:33:23
  SPEAKER_01: I could see him having that written in a notebook somewhere.
• 1:33:26
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 1:33:27
  SPEAKER_01: And part of the hour of footage he had to cut out of this movie.
• 1:33:30
  SPEAKER_04: An hour?
• 1:33:31
  SPEAKER_04: He cut a whole hour?
• 1:33:33
  SPEAKER_01: Either this one or the next one.
• 1:33:35
  SPEAKER_01: He cut a lot of stuff out, and this is after splitting the second movie into two parts.
• 1:33:41
  SPEAKER_04: And yet he kept Edie Falco sipping coffee in her mechanical suit thing.
• 1:33:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, she's important.
• 1:33:50
  SPEAKER_01: She is also going to be the villain in the next movie in a in a way that doesn't matter.
• 1:33:54
  SPEAKER_04: Oh.
• 1:33:56
  SPEAKER_01: She's gonna be the person yelling at the villain that he's a loose cannon trapped in a world he never made.
• 1:34:03
  SPEAKER_01: But without, and this is important, a heart of gold.
• 1:34:05
  SPEAKER_01: I also regret to inform the ladies, the Kevin, the listeners, and all ships at sea that Giovanna Rabisi did not get fired or demoted for the home tree debacle in the first movie.
• 1:34:17
  SPEAKER_01: We have to assume he is also present for all events of this movie, just slightly out of frame doing paperwork.
• 1:34:26
  SPEAKER_05: He's like the the son of the company owner, right?
• 1:34:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think the third movie does establish that his father is chairman of RDA.
• 1:34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because he's back for the third movie and he's the band from corporate yelling at the general played by Edie Falco, who is in turn yelling at the avatar built out of Colonel Quarich, who is in turn banging one of the evil fire nation because James Cameron is just fucking with Last Airbender fandom in the third movie.
• 1:34:55
  SPEAKER_00: I do wonder if the other ones they're going they are going to somehow hit air hit air and earth.
• 1:35:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, air tribe shows up in the third movie, and they could not be less interesting to me.
• 1:35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:35:08
  SPEAKER_01: I uh uh Because they are very much of the philosophy when it comes to the struggles of the of the Navi versus the Sky people.
• 1:35:16
  SPEAKER_01: The Air Tribe's opinion is my name is Paul, and that is Tween Yall.
• 1:35:24
  SPEAKER_05: One compliment I'll give this movie is I think they made the Navi less upsettingly thin.
• 1:35:31
  SPEAKER_05: However, I do not like it when I see them and their little chubby babies who are blue.
• 1:35:37
  SPEAKER_05: Weirds me out, don't like it.
• 1:35:40
  SPEAKER_05: Those little babies.
• 1:35:41
  SPEAKER_05: Oh my gosh, the little water baby.
• 1:35:43
  SPEAKER_05: Oh.
• 1:35:44
  SPEAKER_01: Kate Winslit isn't thin because she's pregnant the entire movie.
• 1:35:47
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, she's barely pregnant.
• 1:35:49
  SPEAKER_05: It took me until she told me she was pregnant.
• 1:35:51
  SPEAKER_05: I was just like, ah, look, one of them's a little bit curvy.
• 1:35:54
  SPEAKER_04: I also had that same thought.
• 1:35:55
  SPEAKER_04: I was like, oh.
• 1:35:56
  SPEAKER_04: And then she's like, I have a baby.
• 1:35:57
  SPEAKER_00: She just got a big belly.
• 1:35:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's only sticking with me because she does give birth part way through the climax of Fire and Ash.
• 1:36:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if she mentioned, I think she says the exact words pregnant in.
• 1:36:09
  SPEAKER_04: She says the baby, because when she's talking with the whales, she's like, yeah.
• 1:36:15
  SPEAKER_05: She says that her baby's very strong.
• 1:36:17
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of things happen in the second hour, but it does bear mentioning that the second hour of this movie is basically pure vibes.
• 1:36:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:36:27
  SPEAKER_04: It's just them swimming around.
• 1:36:29
  SPEAKER_01: They flee the forest to escape the wrath of Colonel Quarich, thinking that he won't hunt them to a new tribe if they're no longer actively leading the rebellion.
• 1:36:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think specifically he's like, they'll hunt us, but like we'll leave so that they don't, when they hunt us, they don't hunt you.
• 1:36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, they'll hunt the other people.
• 1:36:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:36:47
  SPEAKER_05: It seems to think no one will be able to find them.
• 1:36:50
  SPEAKER_05: You know.
• 1:36:50
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 1:36:51
  SPEAKER_05: I think that's exactly what they don't stand out at all.
• 1:36:54
  SPEAKER_05: Here's the thing Jake Sully is not smart.
• 1:36:56
  SPEAKER_04: This is no He's dumb like sand.
• 1:36:59
  SPEAKER_04: It's he says that his main thing is I'm just a jarhead.
• 1:37:03
  SPEAKER_04: It's what I do.
• 1:37:05
  SPEAKER_04: It took me a long time to learn things, and you're like, okay.
• 1:37:08
  SPEAKER_01: He does spend most of the movie thinking if I just remove myself and my family from the immediate conflict, my entire family will be safe forever.
• 1:37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Which there is some logic in that his children are absolutely unwilling to separate themselves from danger, and that they seem to find every opportunity they can to put themselves into the middle of the Navi Skype conflict, even if it's not currently happening.
• 1:37:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that, like, he I mean, I understand that he's right that Guarz just wants to kill Jake, like, just wants to kill him, but the RDA has other things that they're doing, so like I don't the this movie has so much, so many of the things there was like, well, why do they do this?
• 1:38:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because the plot needs to happen.
• 1:38:03
  SPEAKER_00: Why do they need to go to the water people so that they could be of the water people?
• 1:38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's cool.
• 1:38:10
  SPEAKER_00: We haven't done a whole lot of water sims in Avatar yet.
• 1:38:14
  SPEAKER_01: We have to go full James Cameron in this movie, and that means underwater stuff and Navi stuff and a climax set on a sinking ship involving Star Cross lovers, and unfortunately, he did not fit in a time-traveling robot.
• 1:38:32
  SPEAKER_01: That is an act of cowardice.
• 1:38:34
  SPEAKER_01: Give me a cyborg Navi from the future trying to change the events of the present.
• 1:38:40
  SPEAKER_05: That's that's the fourth movie, Dan.
• 1:38:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm putting that in my list of things I need for the fourth and fifth movies.
• 1:38:47
  SPEAKER_00: The RDA has already been doing stuff.
• 1:38:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that's why they have that whole train like thing at the beginning where they still have the weapons of them.
• 1:38:55
  SPEAKER_00: The RDA is already doing things.
• 1:38:57
  SPEAKER_00: Why would Quarrent arriving be like, and now the RDA will stop doing the other stuff that they were also doing?
• 1:39:04
  SPEAKER_00: Are they still trying to get the unobtanium under the tree?
• 1:39:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think they care about unoptanium anymore.
• 1:39:10
  SPEAKER_05: No, I think they abandoned unobtanium.
• 1:39:12
  SPEAKER_01: What are they doing?
• 1:39:14
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
• 1:39:14
  SPEAKER_05: Like they're hunting Jake Sully.
• 1:39:17
  SPEAKER_05: Like they're hunting Jake Sully.
• 1:39:19
  SPEAKER_01: They're establishing a permanent colony and harvesting Ambergrist.
• 1:39:24
  SPEAKER_04: Why does killing Jake Sully helped them do that?
• 1:39:28
  SPEAKER_04: It's what needs to happen.
• 1:39:30
  SPEAKER_01: He is a symbol to both sides.
• 1:39:33
  SPEAKER_01: He is Draxhish Chikari.
• 1:39:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't understand, I don't remember what his official hero name was.
• 1:39:41
  SPEAKER_00: The fish people hate him.
• 1:39:43
  SPEAKER_01: The fish people hate him.
• 1:39:44
  SPEAKER_01: The forest people revere him somehow.
• 1:39:47
  SPEAKER_00: They say he is demon blood.
• 1:39:50
  SPEAKER_04: But he will adapt.
• 1:39:52
  SPEAKER_04: Let's never forget, he will adapt to having demon blood.
• 1:39:58
  SPEAKER_01: He's Benedict Cumber, he's Benedict Arnold, not Cumberbatch.
• 1:40:02
  SPEAKER_01: Arnold.
• 1:40:03
  SPEAKER_01: He's the Quislings.
• 1:40:04
  SPEAKER_01: He is a symbol of humanity's failure.
• 1:40:07
  SPEAKER_01: He is, they have spent the last 17 years hyping up Jake Sully as the reason they had to briefly abandon Pandora, sail back, get a lot more troops, grow some avatars out of Ike Clancy from Tombstone.
• 1:40:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why would they do that?
• 1:40:25
  SPEAKER_00: Why would they be like, hey, by the way, why do we leave Avatar?
• 1:40:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because this real cool guy killed.
• 1:40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Why do they do propaganda?
• 1:40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Why are they so bad at being evil?
• 1:40:35
  SPEAKER_05: Guys, I hate to tell you this, but the evil people are racist.
• 1:40:40
  SPEAKER_05: They think that the only reason the Pandorans can fight back is because they have a human leading them.
• 1:40:45
  SPEAKER_05: Ergo, if you killed a human, the Pandorans will never be able to fight back.
• 1:40:49
  SPEAKER_00: The issue is Aaron is that unfortunately, in the context of the film, they're right.
• 1:40:57
  SPEAKER_04: It does seem that I mean, I will say, and that is actually why this move this one specifically pissed off a huge sector of um indigenous people because they were like, whoa.
• 1:41:11
  SPEAKER_04: Why is Jake Sully suddenly the suddenly the leader?
• 1:41:14
  SPEAKER_00: Why isn't why isn't his wife the leader?
• 1:41:16
  SPEAKER_00: She was the she was the child of the And maybe, I don't know.
• 1:41:21
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe the forest people continue to quietly rebel and we just don't hear about it for two whole movies of a total runtime of seven hours.
• 1:41:30
  SPEAKER_01: But we we keen we just can't know that.
• 1:41:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because Jake is just about, I need to keep my children safe, and I can't do that if we're anywhere near a conflict because they're dumb as rocks and will hurl themselves into the first danger they see.
• 1:41:43
  SPEAKER_01: And my youngest daughter, who is not qualified to be in combat, will get taken hostage twice within 20 minutes because after being freed, she will immediately throw herself back into danger.
• 1:41:54
  SPEAKER_04: I love, I love that scene though, where they re-handcuff her to the like chain, and she's like, Aw, why am I tied up again?
• 1:42:03
  SPEAKER_04: And I was like, Yep, correct.
• 1:42:05
  SPEAKER_04: Correct.
• 1:42:05
  SPEAKER_01: I believe I wrote a note about that at some point saying, Yeah, I'm confused why you're being tied up again, too, took.
• 1:42:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I also can't believe you're tied up again.
• 1:42:15
  SPEAKER_01: Learn some survival skills, girl.
• 1:42:18
  SPEAKER_05: Go home! You're a child.
• 1:42:20
  SPEAKER_05: You're like six.
• 1:42:21
  SPEAKER_01: They just rotate which Sully children are being held hostage for like 45 minutes.
• 1:42:27
  SPEAKER_04: They do say though that the Sully's greatest weakness is that they always stick together.
• 1:42:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's such a positive sentiment to also be their kryptonite.
• 1:42:39
  SPEAKER_04: I feel like it's also our greatest strength, and you're like, you started it with your weakness, though.
• 1:42:43
  SPEAKER_04: You started this whole sentence with we suck as a team, but also we're a team.
• 1:42:49
  SPEAKER_01: My note on the fact that everyone keeps going back to the sinking ship to save someone, get taken hostage while saving them, and then end up a hostage so that other people need to save them.
• 1:42:59
  SPEAKER_01: Comes from another sci-fi classic we discussed recently, not with Kevin.
• 1:43:04
  SPEAKER_02: Why does everyone want to go back to Jacku?
• 1:43:11
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody get off the ship!
• 1:43:14
  SPEAKER_04: We just love going back.
• 1:43:16
  SPEAKER_04: No matter what being you are, you're just you want to go back to that sinking ship.
• 1:43:21
  SPEAKER_00: You wanna I think my final thought on Avatar is that I feel like the more upset I get by being like, What is why why is the RA doing this?
• 1:43:29
  SPEAKER_00: Why is anyone doing anything?
• 1:43:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be someone who's gonna be like, Well, you see, if you go to Avatar Land in Universal Studios, you can learn the extended lore.
• 1:43:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I don't want to, I'm not doing that.
• 1:43:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not reading the extended lore Avatar.
• 1:43:43
  SPEAKER_00: If it's on the movie, I don't care.
• 1:43:44
  SPEAKER_04: I've been there.
• 1:43:45
  SPEAKER_04: I've been to Pandora in Disney's Animal Kingdom.
• 1:43:49
  SPEAKER_04: You don't learn stuff.
• 1:43:50
  SPEAKER_01: The lore is that a benevolent company that rejects the ways of RDA has moved in to promote tourism.
• 1:43:57
  SPEAKER_01: And don't worry about the fact that you will never ever see a na'vi as long as you're here.
• 1:44:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's not because we genocided them at all.
• 1:44:06
  SPEAKER_01: Don't even think about it.
• 1:44:08
  SPEAKER_01: Look, you you just you saw them all when you jumped into an avatar body to do this sacred rite of passage that is now an activity for cruise ship visitors.
• 1:44:18
  SPEAKER_01: But that's picking on Disney.
• 1:44:20
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway.
• 1:44:23
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, I think a lot of the flaws of this movie can be summed up that RDA is the personification of late-stage capitalism.
• 1:44:31
  SPEAKER_01: They are the British East India Company reborn for the 24th century.
• 1:44:36
  SPEAKER_01: Why are they trying to build a colony on a planet where the atmosphere is toxic to humanity?
• 1:44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because there are abundant resources, and how are humans supposed to live here is a secondary at best question.
• 1:44:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think they're it's like they're a satire of late-stage capitalism written by somebody who ultimately kind of agrees with capitalism.
• 1:44:57
  SPEAKER_01: A little bit, because he does keep making some of the highest-crossing movies of all time, except Fire and Ash.
• 1:45:03
  SPEAKER_01: So uh the ways you can really tell that these were split into two movies are in this case, the plot arcs that are set up but not resolved, those being Kiri's connection to Awa and Mysterious Parentage.
• 1:45:19
  SPEAKER_01: She is just AWA Jesus.
• 1:45:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's no, and then we find out which avatar stripped that inert body.
• 1:45:29
  SPEAKER_04: Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.
• 1:45:31
  SPEAKER_01: Spider's father issues and ultimately becoming unobtanium number three, in that Kiri does a thing and mutates Spider so that he can breathe the Pandora atmosphere and begins to grow a connect to things ponytail.
• 1:45:51
  SPEAKER_01: And the second, the very second RDA figures out how to reverse engineer that, it's fucking over for the Navi.
• 1:45:59
  SPEAKER_04: Ugh, I hate all of that.
• 1:46:01
  SPEAKER_01: Jermaine Clement being a scientist who thinks that the space whales are beautiful, but his research is being funded by whaling.
• 1:46:09
  SPEAKER_01: His act of rebellion is punted to fire and ash.
• 1:46:12
  SPEAKER_01: And Quarch beginning to really examine how his new Avatar body might work.
• 1:46:18
  SPEAKER_01: Punted to Fire and Ash.
• 1:46:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:46:20
  SPEAKER_01: The way you can tell from Fire and Ash that these two movies were originally one movie is that James Cameron forgot to write a new third act.
• 1:46:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because the third act of Fire and Ash is exactly the same as the climax for this one, including the same villain, the chief whaler guy, lost an arm to Piacon, went back to base, got a new arm, got a new whaling ship, and picked right back up inside of a week.
• 1:46:54
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do it again.
• 1:46:55
  SPEAKER_04: That guy's not dead?
• 1:46:56
  SPEAKER_01: That guy's not dead.
• 1:46:58
  SPEAKER_01: He's back, and I'm like, you've got to be fucking kidding me.
• 1:47:02
  SPEAKER_01: This guy is still in this franchise.
• 1:47:05
  SPEAKER_01: Don't worry, Piacon absolutely finishes the job this time.
• 1:47:09
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 1:47:09
  SPEAKER_01: Drags him to crush depth of the Pandoran Oceans.
• 1:47:13
  SPEAKER_05: Good.
• 1:47:14
  SPEAKER_05: That's why you should kill sometimes whales.
• 1:47:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:47:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same.
• 1:47:18
  SPEAKER_01: We're just gonna kill a bunch of space whales, stakes, only slightly raised, and then this is like the space whale's Lollapalooza or some nonsense happening during a specific eclipse.
• 1:47:30
  SPEAKER_01: It causes a specific magnetic phenomenon.
• 1:47:33
  SPEAKER_04: It's a diff different eclipse?
• 1:47:36
  SPEAKER_01: Something like that.
• 1:47:37
  SPEAKER_01: But also the Navir start getting their butts kicked by the combined forces of the RDA and the evil fire nation.
• 1:47:45
  SPEAKER_04: Oh no.
• 1:47:45
  SPEAKER_01: So Kiri, with the help of Took and Spider and Loak, and maybe more, has to convince Awa to join the fight and cause an entire ecosystem to rage against the RDA, which you may remember is also how the first one ended.
• 1:48:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, James, we did this.
• 1:48:08
  SPEAKER_01: We did all of this.
• 1:48:12
  SPEAKER_05: Maybe someone should introduce James Cameron to the idea of fanfiction.
• 1:48:15
  SPEAKER_05: And he can write fanfiction about his own intellectual property.
• 1:48:19
  SPEAKER_04: I I think that James Cameron just nobody can say no to him.
• 1:48:24
  SPEAKER_04: Like within the room, he lays it all out, and then somebody's like, I have a question, and he's like, get out.
• 1:48:33
  SPEAKER_01: That was the case for Avatars 1 and 2.
• 1:48:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because uh people made a lot of hay out of the fact that this was the first time James Cameron had worked with Kate Winslett since Titanic, but it's also his second narrative film since Titanic, so that's not that special.
• 1:48:52
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, when you're coming off two movies that were each the highest grossing film of all time, not factoring in inflation, in which case it's still gone with the wind, then yeah, you get a lot of blank checks thrown at you for whatever you're doing.
• 1:49:06
  SPEAKER_01: But Fire and Ash was not.
• 1:49:07
  SPEAKER_01: So now he's rethinking, is like, okay, we have to figure out a way to make four and five for less money.
• 1:49:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, babes, cut it by an hour.
• 1:49:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, nobody wants this.
• 1:49:20
  SPEAKER_04: Nobody wants three and a half hours.
• 1:49:23
  SPEAKER_01: The digital effects are amazing, but I have to believe that having an hour and twenty fewer visual effects would bring the cost down.
• 1:49:32
  SPEAKER_01: But this is my my final statement on the avatars is that I did jot down that far be it for me, an obscure playwright and creator of a web series with literally tens of fans to tell James Cameron how to make movies.
• 1:49:47
  SPEAKER_01: But here are the things that I feel need to happen if he's actually gonna make two more of these movies.
• 1:49:54
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, Took needs something to do.
• 1:49:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, she has spent two.
• 1:50:00
  SPEAKER_01: Two movies being a tiny hostage.
• 1:50:03
  SPEAKER_01: Stubbornly refusing to stay somewhere safe and immediately getting hostage cannot be her entire personality.
• 1:50:10
  SPEAKER_00: Justice for Tuke.
• 1:50:12
  SPEAKER_01: She is not more useful than the third one, let me tell you.
• 1:50:15
  SPEAKER_01: She's just getting taken hostage by the Fire Nation now.
• 1:50:19
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, someone at RDA need to get on board with the fact that the planet is sentient and hates them.
• 1:50:26
  SPEAKER_01: This is twice that they have suffered a major loss.
• 1:50:28
  SPEAKER_01: Three times not twice.
• 1:50:30
  SPEAKER_01: I only count it twice because the climax of this is just uh the appetizer for the climax of fire and ash.
• 1:50:36
  SPEAKER_01: Twice that they've suffered a major loss because an entire ecosystem turned on them.
• 1:50:40
  SPEAKER_01: Even if it's Selfridge learning just enough about AWA to use performative vokeness to wear down the locals, I need something.
• 1:50:50
  SPEAKER_01: Someone to learn that maybe instead of hand waving away native beliefs about the planet that actively hates them, they need to work within those beliefs to accomplish their goals.
• 1:50:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean the that was the the general did describe having them be um the recumbents is because then they they're not attacked by the immune system of the planet.
• 1:51:10
  SPEAKER_00: So seem aware of that at least.
• 1:51:12
  SPEAKER_01: They've at least learned that much that the native environment fights back against human incursions in a specific area.
• 1:51:18
  SPEAKER_01: Let's take that a step further and stop saying they're just whales, it's just a tree.
• 1:51:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't understand why everyone's so upset about this.
• 1:51:26
  SPEAKER_01: All we did was 9-11, their capital, why are they fighting back so hard?
• 1:51:30
  SPEAKER_01: Number three, in fact, let's have Jermaine Clemens start an underground Jake Was Right movement.
• 1:51:35
  SPEAKER_01: A growing group of human influencers pushing the idea that violently pillaging Pandora is actively harming any attempt to colonize it.
• 1:51:44
  SPEAKER_01: Number four, Koric, if he survived Fire and Ash, which seems improbable, but if they do make four and five feels inevitable because James Cameron is convinced that Ike Clanton is his Darth Vader, should be trying to become Dark Taruk Maktoe.
• 1:51:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I did write it down.
• 1:52:00
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, look at you! Hey.
• 1:52:04
  SPEAKER_01: Trying to outdo Jake as best of the Navi, the Paul Trates to Jake's dances with wolves, trying to usurp that position.
• 1:52:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your new Taruk Mato, but I like capitalism.
• 1:52:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
• 1:52:20
  SPEAKER_05: That is a good bad guy story.
• 1:52:22
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 1:52:23
  SPEAKER_01: Number five, combine my points two and four, and you can make avatars four and five a philosophical struggle, because trying to coerce the Navi out of fighting back has failed epically twice, so instead, get them buying your blue jeans and listening to your pop music.
• 1:52:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's a struggle between Kiri as Awa Messiah and Selfridge and Quarich's cultural conquest of Pandora.
• 1:52:46
  SPEAKER_01: Aided by the Fire Tribe, who do have the point of because the origin of the Fire Tribe is that they were living peacefully amongst the planet just like everybody else.
• 1:52:55
  SPEAKER_01: Then a volcano erupted and destroyed their entire homeland.
• 1:52:58
  SPEAKER_05: That's unpleasant.
• 1:53:00
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe Awa is a bitch and we don't like her anymore.
• 1:53:04
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, nobody likes to be pompeyed.
• 1:53:06
  SPEAKER_04: Nobody likes that.
• 1:53:08
  SPEAKER_01: She's up there with Selfridge and Quarridge saying, hey, y'all think AWA is great, but AWA also might burn your home to the ground for no reason.
• 1:53:17
  SPEAKER_01: And number six, time traveling robot.
• 1:53:20
  SPEAKER_01: Put a time traveling robot in this movie.
• 1:53:22
  SPEAKER_05: You coward.
• 1:53:23
  SPEAKER_05: Mm-hmm.
• 1:53:24
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, all good points.
• 1:53:26
  SPEAKER_00: The last thing was they sort of added onto this just because I wanted to look at some stuff.
• 1:53:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is a note from the future of Avatar.
• 1:53:33
  SPEAKER_00: It says that Cameron said he would consider making a sixth and seventh films if there was demand for them.
• 1:53:41
  SPEAKER_00: However, he said that due to his age, he would have to train a successor to direct them.
• 1:53:47
  SPEAKER_03: What?
• 1:53:50
  SPEAKER_01: Give it to the Daniels.
• 1:53:55
  SPEAKER_01: They will take this franchise to weird places.
• 1:53:59
  SPEAKER_00: I need to clarify.
• 1:54:01
  SPEAKER_00: Having something just written down where it says the director would consider making more if people wanted them.
• 1:54:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like a film.
• 1:54:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a that's nothing.
• 1:54:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's how movie made work.
• 1:54:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:54:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's also every Godilla Cove movie.
• 1:54:16
  SPEAKER_00: He would think about making more if people wanted more.
• 1:54:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's just kind of like what people.
• 1:54:23
  SPEAKER_05: The most milk-toked comment ever.
• 1:54:25
  SPEAKER_05: Oh my god.
• 1:54:28
  SPEAKER_01: I admit that the continued existence of Marvel Studios does imply a philosophy of we'll continue making more and we'll just hope people show up for them.
• 1:54:37
  SPEAKER_01: We're not checking if there's demand or not.
• 1:54:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is kind of our only thing.
• 1:54:41
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have a fallback plan.
• 1:54:44
  SPEAKER_01: Marvel Studios is not gonna start making rom-coms.
• 1:54:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited that Avatars in general exists because Cameron, because Cameron didn't care if there was demand to make more.
• 1:54:54
  SPEAKER_00: He made demand to make more.
• 1:54:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, he just likes the thing he made.
• 1:54:59
  SPEAKER_04: He does.
• 1:55:00
  SPEAKER_04: He loves it.
• 1:55:01
  SPEAKER_04: And what happened is people were bamboozled by the first avatar, and now it's a sequel, and they went, oh yeah, I want to see that sequel.
• 1:55:09
  SPEAKER_04: And then they were trapped.
• 1:55:11
  SPEAKER_04: They were trapped for three hours, but they'd already spent the money.
• 1:55:16
  SPEAKER_04: So that's how this bumped up.
• 1:55:19
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people still want to see Avatar 3.
• 1:55:22
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of creators that I really like love these movies.
• 1:55:26
  SPEAKER_01: Patrick Willems, Nando V movies, and the Blank Check podcast had the most gushing review of Fire and Ash I could conceive of.
• 1:55:36
  SPEAKER_01: Beyond that, Griffin Griffin, he has a last name.
• 1:55:39
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we'll do.
• 1:55:40
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, I like just Griffin.
• 1:55:41
  SPEAKER_01: It is Griffin Newman.
• 1:55:43
  SPEAKER_01: I convinced myself that it wasn't, but it is Griffin Newman.
• 1:55:45
  SPEAKER_01: He loves these movies so much and has very complicated feelings about the lady from the fire tribe.
• 1:55:51
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 1:55:52
  SPEAKER_01: He would respectfully like to be stepped on, I think.
• 1:55:55
  SPEAKER_05: But look, I also like bad movies.
• 1:55:57
  SPEAKER_05: It's fine.
• 1:55:58
  SPEAKER_05: People are allowed to like what they like.
• 1:56:00
  SPEAKER_01: The fact is that, like the Mission Impossibles, these movies have started to get balls ridiculously expensive.
• 1:56:06
  SPEAKER_01: So there will come a point where he's like, uh, I can't keep making these if people don't show up to see them.
• 1:56:12
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact that for the first time since True Lies, he did not make the highest-grossing film of the year slash all time made him kind of pause on his approach.
• 1:56:25
  SPEAKER_05: Well, he's sad.
• 1:56:26
  SPEAKER_01: That said, he has already started filming part four because he has said there's going to be a time jump after the first act, so he needed to start filming part four while all the actors who played the Sully Kids are still that age.
• 1:56:39
  SPEAKER_02: After the first act?
• 1:56:41
  SPEAKER_04: What?
• 1:56:43
  SPEAKER_04: How long is this?
• 1:56:44
  SPEAKER_04: What?
• 1:56:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be six and a half hours.
• 1:56:48
  SPEAKER_05: No.
• 1:56:49
  SPEAKER_05: But James Cameron, they're all CGI, and you're making Zigorney Weaver play a teenager.
• 1:56:54
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's okay.
• 1:56:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I guess maybe spider.
• 1:56:58
  SPEAKER_00: I guess probably spider's the problem.
• 1:57:01
  SPEAKER_04: But CGI that we need that- That's been done before.
• 1:57:10
  SPEAKER_00: In a world where you have Sigorney Weaver playing a 13-year-old.
• 1:57:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's the wildest thing I've ever heard.
• 1:57:22
  SPEAKER_01: You would think after that, all things are possible in this the most computer generated world.
• 1:57:28
  SPEAKER_04: Oh boy.
• 1:57:30
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my god, is the fifth one just going to be AI?
• 1:57:33
  SPEAKER_04: Is that what he's going to do with it?
• 1:57:35
  SPEAKER_04: He's just gonna AI the whole thing?
• 1:57:37
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't I can't swear I've heard where James Cameron comes down on it, but after Martin Scorsese of all goddamn people said AI might be useful, it's hard to definitively state he wouldn't do that.
• 1:57:51
  SPEAKER_01: That said, Way of Water was nominated for four Oscars.
• 1:57:55
  SPEAKER_01: It won Visual Effects, no surprise there.
• 1:57:58
  SPEAKER_01: It lost pictures, sound, and production design, and was not nominated for original song for the song that played under the credits, I don't believe.
• 1:58:06
  SPEAKER_01: And no one was taking that away from Natu Natu from RRR.
• 1:58:11
  SPEAKER_01: It is a bitch.
• 1:58:13
  SPEAKER_01: And deserved it for being an inherently key part of the movie.
• 1:58:17
  SPEAKER_01: Our top ten.
• 1:58:19
  SPEAKER_01: Domestically, Top God Maverick was number one overway of water.
• 1:58:22
  SPEAKER_01: Number three, a kingdom mourns its hero and monarch while the MCU tries to move on from the loss of Chadwick Bozeman as the people of Wakanda face a rival hidden kingdom in Black Panther Wakanda Forever.
• 1:58:34
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 1:58:35
  SPEAKER_01: Mostly holds up.
• 1:58:36
  SPEAKER_01: Great some great scenes.
• 1:58:38
  SPEAKER_01: Ryan Kugler knows how to make a movie.
• 1:58:40
  SPEAKER_01: Does have a slight oops all supporting characters feel to it.
• 1:58:44
  SPEAKER_05: For obvious reasons.
• 1:58:46
  SPEAKER_05: Mm-hmm.
• 1:58:46
  SPEAKER_05: Mm-hmm.
• 1:58:47
  SPEAKER_01: Number four, Steven Strange must bounce between realities to keep a gifted teen girl safe while learning the dangers of his need to be the smartest person in any room in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.
• 1:58:59
  SPEAKER_01: This movie is rad as hell, and I am taking no questions.
• 1:59:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:59:04
  SPEAKER_05: But it is the worst multiverse movie.
• 1:59:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, of this everything everywhere all at once, and Knight of the Coconut, yes, fine, sure.
• 1:59:17
  SPEAKER_01: But it's still rad as hell.
• 1:59:20
  SPEAKER_01: Number five, Alan Grant, Lori Stadler, and Ian Malcolm, names I somehow was able to write from memory, unite with whoever Chris Pratt and Jessica Chastain play for Jurassic World Dominion, the ultimate showdown of Man and Dinosaur.
• 1:59:35
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 1:59:35
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean the movie's about giant locusts?
• 1:59:39
  SPEAKER_01: Where did that come from?
• 1:59:42
  SPEAKER_01: At number six, a tribe of yellow blob monsters find a potential new home with a kid who dreams of epic villainy in Minions The Rise of Gru.
• 1:59:51
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, Minions.
• 1:59:52
  SPEAKER_01: Unforgivably down at number seven, a Dark Knight must ask if his city can truly be saved through vengeance when the Riddler goes to war with the corruption at its core in the Batman.
• 2:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: One of the top three Batman movies, y'all know which recovered.
• 2:00:08
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about that.
• 2:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: Number eight, Thor must reunite with his lost loves, scientist Jane Foster, and his old hammer Mjolnir, to stop Gore the God Butcher in Thor Love and Thunder, which tries to do too many epic Thor comic arcs in one movie and perhaps not with the right tone.
• 2:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: Number nine, a hedgehog must battle in Echidna and team up for a greater good or something like that.
• 2:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 2:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: In Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
• 2:00:37
  SPEAKER_01: I was a Nintendo kid.
• 2:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: The amount of fucks I have to give about Sonic the Hedgehog are not big.
• 2:00:44
  SPEAKER_01: I might eventually watch them.
• 2:00:46
  SPEAKER_01: Number 10.
• 2:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: A legendary swordsman must find a way to beat his ultimate adversary, Mortality, in Puss in Boots The Last Wish.
• 2:00:56
  SPEAKER_04: Amazing.
• 2:00:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 2:00:57
  SPEAKER_04: Good.
• 2:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 2:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: I have heard nothing but glowing things about that movie.
• 2:01:02
  SPEAKER_01: Internationally, Sonic the Hedgehog can't crack the top ten, but everything else mostly just shuffles.
• 2:01:08
  SPEAKER_01: Avatar takes number one.
• 2:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: Top Gun Maverick still holds number two.
• 2:01:13
  SPEAKER_01: Jurassic World number three.
• 2:01:14
  SPEAKER_01: Doctor Strange at number four.
• 2:01:16
  SPEAKER_01: Minions down to number five.
• 2:01:17
  SPEAKER_01: Black Panther all the way down to number six because I guess Hollywood's right.
• 2:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: Black films don't travel.
• 2:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: Batman still at number seven.
• 2:01:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thor Eleven Thunder hanging on at number eight.
• 2:01:28
  SPEAKER_01: Number nine, the Battle at Lake Chang Jin 2, a Chinese war flick about fighting the Americans in Korea.
• 2:01:36
  SPEAKER_01: And Puss and Boots, still at number 10.
• 2:01:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:01:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:01:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Puss and Boots.
• 2:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: At number.
• 2:01:43
  SPEAKER_01: Not at number anything.
• 2:01:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm done with that part.
• 2:01:49
  SPEAKER_01: Varying-wise, when you really think about it, some version of us is always drinking any drink you can name.
• 2:01:55
  SPEAKER_01: So it doesn't matter.
• 2:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: Also, Shiraz.
• 2:02:00
  SPEAKER_04: I decided more to go Top Gun with this and drink beer.
• 2:02:05
  SPEAKER_04: Just, you know, the beer that you get when you order a beer at the Top Gun bar.
• 2:02:11
  SPEAKER_01: And Tom Cruise has to pay for it because he'll have his cell phone at the bar, and Penny is feeling spiteful.
• 2:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think his card was actually declined.
• 2:02:19
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 2:02:20
  SPEAKER_04: No, absolutely not.
• 2:02:21
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 2:02:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the expression on her face when she realizes that Goose's son is playing the piano in her bar and he feels bad about it shows that she's like, oh, this is something a lot less funny than I thought it was going to be.
• 2:02:34
  SPEAKER_04: I thought we were bantering and now things are sale.
• 2:02:37
  SPEAKER_04: And now it's sad because Great Balls of Fire is being played.
• 2:02:40
  SPEAKER_05: I don't think there's any beverages in Avatar, so I guess water with salt?
• 2:02:44
  SPEAKER_05: Like an ocean?
• 2:02:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's basically it.
• 2:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:02:47
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:02:48
  SPEAKER_00: I would say it doesn't matter what you drink, because in one of these universes you've already had the perfect drink.
• 2:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: Kevin and I found the same exam answer.
• 2:02:58
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of Academy versus audience, I love Top Gun Maverick as much as anyone.
• 2:03:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's possibly my second favorite Tom Cruise movie that isn't a Mission Impossible, but there's just nothing like Everything Everywhere All At Once.
• 2:03:10
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I mean I didn't like Top Gun Maverick as much as the overall group in part because I only watched the first one when we had to watch over the podcast.
• 2:03:19
  SPEAKER_05: So I have no nostalgia.
• 2:03:21
  SPEAKER_05: So I'm also Everything Everywhere All At Once.
• 2:03:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:03:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Top Gun Maverick does aim to me because demographically I could be a dad if I weren't unlovable, but it You just said not.
• 2:03:32
  SPEAKER_00: You just said not one.
• 2:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: I would also say that uh we learn from everything everywhere all at once.
• 2:03:39
  SPEAKER_00: No one's unlovable.
• 2:03:40
  SPEAKER_05: Exactly.
• 2:03:41
  SPEAKER_05: Which is why it's the best one.
• 2:03:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:03:43
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:03:43
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:03:44
  SPEAKER_05: Even in a weird universe where we have hot dog fingers, love is there.
• 2:03:49
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 2:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, all three of these were nominated for Best Picture, and I said that Everything Everywhere All At Once was my number one nominee of the year.
• 2:03:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that kind of gave away where I was going to fall on this question.
• 2:04:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:04:04
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 2:04:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 2:04:06
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of questions we failed to answer last week, uh, you put Godzilla in Top Gun Maverick.
• 2:04:11
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:04:12
  SPEAKER_05: Because you know what?
• 2:04:13
  SPEAKER_05: Someone's just gonna try to steal his blood if we put him in in uh Avatar.
• 2:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: It would just make too much it make too much sense in everything everywhere all at once.
• 2:04:20
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 2:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: He'd fit right in.
• 2:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it made me make more sense.
• 2:04:24
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yeah.
• 2:04:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: Next time, it'll be time to explore Hollywood's greatest put your chocolate in my peanut butter moment, as two visionary directors released their biggest movies on the same day, and we as a society said Porque no la dos as we tackle the phenomenon of Barbenheimer.
• 2:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 2:04:49
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 2:04:50
  SPEAKER_01: But until then, we are running Therapy Productions.com.
• 2:04:52
  SPEAKER_01: You can find all of our episodes there, plus other projects.
• 2:04:56
  SPEAKER_01: We are Oscar V audience on Threads, Instagram, and Blue Sky.
• 2:05:00
  SPEAKER_01: Follow us there and tell us why you think Banshees of Inasharon did not deserve to be shut out completely.
• 2:05:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I will tolerate your responses.
• 2:05:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Dana Forth at all of those places, plus Letterboxd, where you can see how I rank Top Gun Maverick and Way of Water as box office champions.
• 2:05:18
  SPEAKER_05: Aaron, you can find me over at flimsyclan.com and you can get to all of my other stuff also from there.
• 2:05:23
  SPEAKER_04: I'm Claire, and you can find me by following Dan or Aaron.
• 2:05:28
  SPEAKER_00: You find me Kevin Weir Author, most places at uh The Matter, Threads, Instagram, and my website where you can get my books are KevinWeirbooks.com.
• 2:05:38
  SPEAKER_01: And until next time, see you at the same time.