Latest / Houselights: A Film Director Podcast / Wendell and Wild (2022) - Henry Selick | Houselights #157

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Wendell and Wild (2022) - Henry Selick | Houselights #157 · Houselights: A Film Director Podcast

• 0:03
  Welcome to the ned party. Hello everybody at home, and welcome to Houselights
• 0:24
  the House of Selec. That's right. We are ending our section on the
• 0:29
  directorial animated works of Henry Selik, the man who was the director of Nightmare
• 0:35
  Before Christmas, and today we are talking about windele and Wild from twenty twenty
• 0:42
  two that debuted on Netflix. My name is Tristan Rudel and with me as
• 0:46
  always is Darren Moser and John Mills. Now, this is going to be
• 0:52
  an interesting podcast because I feel like when we talked about doing this show,
• 0:59
  when we talked about doing the House of Selec, all of us were really
• 1:02
  on board because you know, we all love Nightmare Before Christmas, and we
• 1:07
  all agreed, well, we all you know, said, like those of
• 1:11
  us who had seen it hadn't seen James and the Giant Peach for a long
• 1:12
  time, so you know, let's give it a shot, you know.
• 1:15
  And with Coraline it was, you know, like I hadn't seen it a
• 1:19
  long time. I wanted to give it a fair shake, and none of
• 1:23
  us had seen wind or Wild, so it was like, you know,
• 1:25
  how could this go wrong? How could the House of Sella go wrong?
• 1:29
  When you have such a banger like Nightmare before Christmas. So this I mean
• 1:36
  twenty years before, like twenty years before, and this is a jump from
• 1:41
  nine to twenty two. And maybe there was a bit of a delay with
• 1:44
  COVID, but still like that's a bit of a jump. That's more than
• 1:48
  the production time, that is getting the movie made time. It's he worked
• 1:55
  on some he worked on a series in between. Oh okay, and you
• 2:00
  know it wasn't a feature film obviously, but he did work on a series
• 2:04
  in between. And then Wendel and Wilde started life as a book. I
• 2:07
  think it's unpublished, but it started as a book and then turned into this.
• 2:15
  So everybody can debate for all time as to whether it should have been
• 2:17
  turned into a book first or this was the best choice. Well and a
• 2:23
  book. But it was by by Henry Sellick right, he wrote this story.
• 2:29
  He wrote, leshed it out, he was all ready to go perfect
• 2:34
  story. Yes, this was This was written by Selk and Jordan Peel and
• 2:38
  Clay McLeod Chapman. So Chapman was the one that was co writing the book
• 2:44
  with him. He came on to the screenplay Gotcha and So, and the
• 2:49
  Jordan Peel. His production company Monkey Paw produced it and this was the first
• 2:54
  animated film that they produced. And Jordan Peel, you know, as we
• 2:59
  all know, you know, cinematically is you know, take it off,
• 3:04
  rocket took off? Yeah, exactly that that is took the words right out
• 3:07
  of my mouth, took off like a rocket from get out and with with
• 3:15
  us and nope, and you know, like you know, he's he's become
• 3:19
  a very beloved filmmaker and you know, go clocked huge amounts of cloud and
• 3:25
  so the fact that he chose to produce and also you know, have a
• 3:29
  starring role and this shows a lot of faith in the in the product as
• 3:31
  well as being a writer. And I of course always know him from Key
• 3:38
  and Peel, the sketch comedy show on Comedy Central. And so when I
• 3:42
  found out that this was coming out, I was super excited because I was
• 3:45
  like Henry Selick, Keagan, Michael Key and Jordan Peele like together, like
• 3:52
  how can you lose? That's a recipe for success right there. And that's
• 3:55
  a recipe for success, Like like honestly, how could it go wrong?
• 4:01
  Let's talk about that? How did it go wrong? Folks? Okay,
• 4:09
  you know what. I'll just throw it right out there. I think very
• 4:13
  obviously the movie I'll throw out there gets derailed by the fact that Key and
• 4:18
  Peel are in it. I think that the the opportunity for them to make
• 4:24
  a bigger role than they should have been. Well, I mean, the
• 4:27
  movie's Wendel and Wild, so they're in it, and there's something about the
• 4:33
  focus of it, yes, where it sticks with them. I think you're
• 4:40
  right there, Darren. I think that their role expanded beyond what it should
• 4:44
  have been because it's very obviously supposed to be Kat's story, but you wind
• 4:49
  up staying with Wendel and Wild because you want to be with Wendel and Wild
• 4:56
  because they're the fun side characters. Right. Although the world they come from
• 5:02
  is odd, I don't know that it's fully formed in terms of an imaginary
• 5:09
  place. Yeah, I think that was something that was really confusing to me.
• 5:13
  Not to derail your your comment, but the you know, we have
• 5:16
  ving Raims as Buffalo Bells are, and so we have this pseudo amusement park
• 5:24
  on his belly and the dead are you know, like going through this amusement
• 5:28
  park and it's hell, it's it's it's an it's analogous to Hell, and
• 5:32
  I'm like, okay, all right, so he's a demon, you know,
• 5:35
  Hell is an amusement park on his belly. I can get behind that,
• 5:38
  you know, like, you know, you know, Dante talked about
• 5:41
  crazy stuff like that. But then at the end, you know, we
• 5:46
  we find out that, I mean, I actually throughout the picture, we
• 5:47
  find out that Wendell and Wild want to redesign the park, and then they
• 5:51
  finally that that's actually their main motivation. And then at the end they finally
• 5:57
  get to redesign the park, and they let Kat know that they're going to
• 6:01
  redesign it. And so it's going to be cool for their parents to for
• 6:06
  Cat's parents to stay dead because they're going to be at this cool park.
• 6:11
  So is it not Hell anymore? Is it not a formal They did say
• 6:15
  that they'll get them a day pass or something like, they didn't imply that
• 6:17
  they're in Hell. They did it. They implied like, well, this
• 6:21
  world or the one above can come and visit our amazing theme park, which
• 6:28
  which, again at Tristan's point, I'm like, their motivation is screwy.
• 6:31
  It truly is screwy because they don't want to make Wendelin Wild terrible people because
• 6:36
  Key and Peel are playing them, but they are demons in something analogous to
• 6:42
  PG demons. The first time you encounter Buffalo Belzer, you see him eat
• 6:48
  the damned, travel through his insides, through his intestines, and come out
• 6:56
  his butthole. So I don't know how you can be like, yeah,
• 7:00
  but then we'll have a cool amusement park on it and everybody's uh it is
• 7:05
  it is undone. I think to bring it back to my point by the
• 7:09
  fact that Ke and Peel are on it and they don't want to make them
• 7:12
  bad guys per se. They want to have that thing that you're alluding to
• 7:15
  Tristan Worth. At the end, they're like, yeah, but it's just
• 7:17
  an amusement park for the afterlife and it's a fun place to go to.
• 7:21
  It's like, well, no, you've established it. This place is a
• 7:24
  bad place to go to. What nobody wants to go there, like it's
• 7:29
  a punishment. And also, I just want to note that I think that's
• 7:30
  the first time that the word butthole has been used on this podcast, probably,
• 7:34
  so I just want to know. I want to note that for the
• 7:36
  record. Uh yeah, So and even I know we may be going too
• 7:42
  deep into it, but even like say it was the best, you know,
• 7:46
  amusement park in the world, say it was the best six Flags you've
• 7:47
  ever been to. It's Disney World Harry Potter World combined. I don't want
• 7:54
  to spend eternative there. Yeah, that sounds like hell in itself, I
• 8:03
  guess, broad Strokes. The issue I have with this movie is it feels
• 8:09
  like a high schooler wrote it in draft one. Everything is linked together like
• 8:16
  well, and then they like they like, write this down, write this
• 8:20
  down, Bob Okay, so they really want to make an amusic park.
• 8:22
  But then you know, they get this magic hair cream and it well,
• 8:28
  they find out it can bring the dead back to life. So they they
• 8:31
  find this girl and oh but then they get rerouted by these random boulders and
• 8:35
  so they end up over Like it sounds like a string of consciousness plot that
• 8:41
  was written down, and some movies can maybe make that work. But I
• 8:45
  kept like, I was like, when is this movie starting? Because it
• 8:50
  starts with the devils, It starts with Cat, it starts with her flashback,
• 8:54
  and then there's hell over and over and over, and then there's certain
• 8:58
  real rules on what the hell Maidens can do, but we don't define the
• 9:01
  rules and what the hell maidens can do. And then there's a nun that
• 9:03
  can like morph into like liquid, but she's also a held maiden. But
• 9:07
  then there's this dude who doesn't have legs and he can trap demons it sounds
• 9:09
  like, and then there's a blank like that. I felt that sentence inserted
• 9:16
  throughout this entire movie multiple times. It's a mad lib script. It kind
• 9:20
  of is. And you know, I mean we were talking about uh,
• 9:24
  you know about Peel a moment ago, and I know people like to shy
• 9:28
  away from adult animated because everybody thinks kids when you think of stop motion or
• 9:35
  animation. But man, if this had been a rated are like scary sensibilities
• 9:41
  of his caliber, I mean you'd have to completely change the script. But
• 9:46
  like something like that I think would have been interesting. But it it has
• 9:50
  that kind of RoboCop three vibe of we're gonna make a RoboCop movie, but
• 9:54
  it's gonna be PG thirteen And what do you mean that doesn't work? Like
• 9:58
  dares, It doesn't work what you're saying there, I really you're saying,
• 10:01
  because yeah, I think this really feels half half asked with the content.
• 10:07
  Where As I was watching it, I was like, who is this for?
• 10:11
  Right, Like, it's it's too it's too edgy to be for kids,
• 10:16
  it's too kitty to be for adults. So is it for the teenage
• 10:20
  crowd who loves Coraline? You know? Like I, you know, I
• 10:24
  don't. I don't know who this is for. It's it's it's so utterly
• 10:30
  strange, like like if I do want to say a positive about it,
• 10:33
  about the story and and the and the vibe and everything about it is that
• 10:37
  you know, like much like Peel's are the work, this is unapologetically black,
• 10:43
  and you don't see that too often in mainstream films. You're seeing you're
• 10:48
  seeing it more and more. You really don't see it in animated films,
• 10:52
  like you really don't see it. And so that is definitely something interesting,
• 10:58
  and so you you're you're going towards that demographic and to have somebody you know,
• 11:03
  it's it's funny because like when you have Tim Burton, who you know,
• 11:07
  casts no minorities in his movies, we all know, yes, yeah,
• 11:13
  And then you have Henry Selik, who's going in a different direction where
• 11:16
  like this is very much a black film with a with a with a black
• 11:20
  cast, and a and a and and a more minority led cast, you
• 11:22
  know, like produced by Jordan Peele, written by j Jordan Peele and Henry
• 11:26
  Selick, Like that is a very interesting dynamic that it brings to the piece.
• 11:31
  But this story is so poor that the great animation can't make up for
• 11:39
  it. It's so scattered, it's so all over the place. It's like
• 11:41
  Coreline, where Coreline had beautiful animation but just a meandering plot. This has
• 11:48
  a worse plot than Coreline. I don't I don't think it has a plot.
• 11:52
  I honestly would have trouble telling you. I'm like, it's a series
• 11:54
  of events. Sure things happen, but oh look then then there's a picture
• 12:01
  that's been painted on rooftops and there's what like, look, there's got to
• 12:07
  be somebody out there who hates what I'm about to say. But this is
• 12:11
  this is an ungainly mess. And Jordan Peele may have been involved in helping
• 12:16
  write the script and shifted focus or what have you, but I think to
• 12:22
  go back to Coraline, which you just did. It's another example of how
• 12:26
  Selik needs a strong producer sitting there with him and saying no, because let's
• 12:31
  go all the way back to what we were talking about, needle back on
• 12:35
  center. What is the center of this story? I do not know.
• 12:39
  We were all excited because Nightmare before Christmas is great, and we talked about
• 12:43
  the stories again. We talked about this last week too, where Burton was
• 12:48
  there, and Burton cared very deeply and he might not have put the movie
• 12:52
  together, but he was like Selik felt his presence as I'm the producer,
• 12:58
  I expect x Y and then James and the giant Peach. We we trip
• 13:03
  right after a Nightmare Coraline. All of us are like, what what happened?
• 13:09
  You know? The extended The fact that they extended the script so much
• 13:13
  to add stuff is where that seems to have all gone wrong. And then
• 13:18
  this I can only guess that Jordan Peel was probably really excited about participating in
• 13:22
  this, but then too busy working on NOPE to have been as involved as
• 13:26
  he should have been. I think that's a really fair assessment. And it's
• 13:30
  actually a discussion that I was having with my wife. She was the one
• 13:33
  who said and so I got to give her credit where you know, Henry
• 13:37
  Selik may have been resentful for all of the attention that Tim Burton has gotten
• 13:43
  for Nightmare before Christmas, because you know, we've talked about that on that
• 13:46
  episode where you know Selik said like, oh he was you know, he
• 13:50
  was barely there. He was only there for a few days at a time
• 13:52
  over the course of a couple of years. He's like, I was the
• 13:56
  one who was there every single day making the movie. And while that is
• 14:00
  true, and Henry Sellick deserves a lot of credit for Nightmare, I'm not
• 14:03
  trying to take that away whatsoever. He deserves as much credit as he is
• 14:09
  as we can give him for a Nightmare before the artistry that he brought to
• 14:11
  the picture, But it was Tim Burton's vision. Tim Burton knew what he
• 14:18
  wanted style, he knew the character, he created the characters. He knew
• 14:22
  the story, he knew the through line, the center, he knew the
• 14:26
  style. He knew what he wanted, he knew where the story needed to
• 14:30
  go. He had the verve down the music, he knew exactly what it
• 14:33
  was in his head. Henry made that happen. What we have seen over
• 14:39
  the course of twenty years, twenty plus years is Henry Selick without Tim Burton,
• 14:45
  without that guiding hand, and this is what we've gotten. We've gotten
• 14:48
  fantastic animation, stellar animation. Like he is basically what George Lucas is to
• 14:56
  digital production, Henry Selick is to Star motion animation. Yes, and he's
• 15:01
  even said now he feels that stop motion is practically indistinguishable from CG animotion animation
• 15:11
  at this point, like it's so smooth that I think he actually purposely underanimated
• 15:16
  some parts of this movie to kind of give it that vibe, because yeah,
• 15:20
  I remember or are also like the deciding to keep the seam lines around
• 15:26
  the eyes of the head friggin hate I hate that with a fiery passion,
• 15:31
  saying it's it is bullshit, It is lazy, it is distracting, It
• 15:37
  takes me out of the picture. When isolt, I want to punch it
• 15:41
  in the face, which is where the scene are. So that works out,
• 15:46
  It works out, I think. But yeah, I mean you do
• 15:50
  have like you have that kind of sequence where she's combating her memories and that's
• 15:56
  done. I read that it was kind of inspired by some of the flatter
• 16:02
  animation you had from Deathly Hollows Part one with the Tale of the Three Brothers
• 16:08
  and things like that kind of shadow play of beautiful, beautiful, beautily animated.
• 16:15
  And even the demons at the very beginning, which I kind of picked
• 16:18
  up on it about like I couldn't tell what I was seeing, is they're
• 16:21
  very flat, like there's very much a left side right side of each of
• 16:26
  their faces. And then when they come up to the above world, they're
• 16:29
  way more rounded and three dimensional, which again is a very interesting style choice,
• 16:33
  Like I like that choice in the in the demon world. But they
• 16:37
  just they just kept introducing new characters. They're like, and these are the
• 16:41
  girls that go to the school, and this is the you know, custodian
• 16:47
  with no feet, and this is the oh, there's the evil rich people
• 16:52
  that wanted to build a prison, and there's this other you know none that's
• 16:56
  a hell made and it's just every ten minute, it's we got a new
• 17:00
  character, and it just it. Again, thinking back to Nightmare, even
• 17:03
  with a big cast, Nightmare's story was simple, you could explain it in
• 17:08
  a sentence. And the characters in Nightmare, everybody is basically introduced in the
• 17:15
  opening number, even mister Ogie Boogie. They basically have the whole cast come
• 17:21
  out and to your point where it's like we keep we keep introducing new people,
• 17:25
  and it's like, what the hell is the point of this character With
• 17:27
  Nightmare Before Christmas, it's like, yeah, I have your little four minute
• 17:30
  number. I know everybody, and even if I don't know everybody, everybody,
• 17:36
  I got the big brushstrokes of who the players are going to be in
• 17:38
  this. I mean we get introduced fairly early on to the I don't even
• 17:44
  know her role, but she's like the one casting holding the vote for whether
• 17:48
  or not they're going to build that prison, and I feel like they give
• 17:49
  a good chunk of time to her, Like we see her house and she's
• 17:53
  like, no, we can vote it down, and then she's gone for
• 17:57
  like eighty percent of the movie until scene comes back, and then we're introduced
• 18:02
  to these six brought back to life people that were like the previous board members,
• 18:10
  and I'm like, yay, more new characters, like at the eleventh
• 18:15
  hour. So I want to Okay, I want to talk about that.
• 18:17
  I want to talk about that that aspect, particularly if you want to be
• 18:21
  fantastical, be fantastical, Okay, if you want to be otherworldly. Be
• 18:26
  otherworldly, but don't mix it with real world politics. Yeah, I know
• 18:32
  what you're saying. What you're gonna say, real world rules. Oh,
• 18:34
  the rules say that they even though there were once alive. Like I'm like,
• 18:38
  and we're kind of looking at like really like really really like you're gonna
• 18:44
  just hold that up. This is the logic that you're applying to your own
• 18:48
  movie, Like, well, they're zombies and it's clearly a skeleton, but
• 18:52
  those are thems, are the rules. It doesn't say anything about not being
• 18:56
  brought back from the dead. I guess we can. We shouldn't have to
• 19:00
  because that's kind of a given. But I mean that's the thing, Like
• 19:04
  the fact that we're even saying this is insane, Like, yes, you
• 19:08
  can't bring those two together and expect the audience to go along with it.
• 19:14
  And little there's little subplots everywhere. There's the subplot of the daughter of the
• 19:19
  bad guys who turns out like oh they cram a whole subplot of her thinking
• 19:26
  that her parents' prisons are good and then realizing they're not, and then telling
• 19:29
  them off and then standing with her friends in front of the bulldozers like that's
• 19:33
  a whole movie right there, and they jam it into this one character like
• 19:38
  it's it's insane. Yeah, I honestly, look, I I know,
• 19:45
  Tristan, you said, oh, well, you know, if there was
• 19:47
  one. I agree with the positive stuff that you said about Peel's involvement and
• 19:52
  the casting and all of those sorts of things. But that is literally the
• 19:56
  only good thing that I could possibly come at this movie with. I considered
• 20:00
  this entire thing. Hey, spoilers for my rating. I considered this whole
• 20:06
  thing torturous to go through. It was. It was not pleasant. Like
• 20:10
  It's one of those things where while I was watching this, I was thinking
• 20:14
  to myself, was I too harsh on coreline? Right? It wasn't,
• 20:18
  but I was thinking that during this where I was like, is a problem
• 20:22
  me? But I don't think the problem is me. I don't think so
• 20:26
  this makes Coraline look like Nightmare. Yes, it's it's insane. I had
• 20:32
  the same exact thought John while I was watching this, like if Wendel to
• 20:36
  Nightmare, Coraline is definitely closer to Nightmare. Yeah. Yeah. I gave
• 20:41
  Coraline a two point five, and I'm like, man, maybe I should
• 20:44
  have given it a higher rating. Like if I knew I was going to
• 20:47
  be watching this, And on top of that, like it's it felt like
• 20:52
  the voice acting. You have Jordan Peele and Keith and Michael Key, who
• 20:56
  are fantastic actors, comedic actors. You have the legendary James Hung and Ving
• 21:03
  Raims and Angela Bassett. These are all really good people, but the voice
• 21:08
  acting was so flat through the entire picture. I mean, like you have
• 21:15
  you have the I guess you could call her the lead with Kat like lyric
• 21:18
  Ross, she did a very lackluster job. Don't even get me started on
• 21:23
  Raoul. Good lord, let me offer this again. Going back to Nightmare,
• 21:30
  I know it feels like it's our crutch, this whole thing. Yeah,
• 21:34
  it's a musical. Selik probably did less voice direction in that than any
• 21:40
  of the other films that we've watched, because whoever was I doubt that he
• 21:45
  was sitting there saying no, no, no, no, let's go for
• 21:48
  a c sharp here. That was Elfman and everybody else sitting there, and
• 21:52
  so there was less room for error in those characterizations. And when you have
• 22:00
  a character like mister Ogie Bogie, that one is just like the only direction
• 22:03
  you have to give is have fun with this. Yeah, you're the demons.
• 22:07
  Have fun. Somebody can slide it and be like, oh, I
• 22:10
  got this. Don't worry even just the title, like like we've talked about
• 22:15
  protagonist confusion of like is this wendeln Wild's movie? Is this Cat's movie?
• 22:21
  Honestly, I was really engaged in the intro and the story of the parents
• 22:26
  and building the brewery, and I'm like, oh yeah, and then nope,
• 22:30
  that's not the story we're going to tell you. So there goes.
• 22:33
  But I feel like because I didn't watch this at all when it came out,
• 22:38
  I didn't even I think I saw it like on a screen on Netflix,
• 22:41
  like hey, Wendell and Wild coming out whenever. I didn't even watch
• 22:45
  the trailer Wendell and Wild. As far as like what I knew going into
• 22:51
  it, which I know, like usually we talk about that first, But
• 22:52
  I feel the same as like when Despicable Me came out. When Despicable Me
• 22:57
  trailer dropped, I was like, why do I feel like I'm supposed to
• 23:02
  know what this is? But I have no idea what this? Like was
• 23:06
  this a thing in the seventies that everybody knew and it's back and I should
• 23:08
  be excited. I felt the same thing with just the term Wendell and Wild.
• 23:12
  It's like, hey, guys, Wendell and Wild's coming out. I'm
• 23:15
  like, what what what? What? What is that? What? What?
• 23:17
  Why? Why? Why should I watch watch that that? Just as
• 23:21
  the vibe I had from the beginning, I think that's fair. I mean,
• 23:23
  obviously I didn't bother watching it when it came out. Even though this
• 23:26
  got this, this got a fair amount of accolades. This got nominated for
• 23:30
  the Anti Award for Best Animated Feature. It didn't win any awards. It
• 23:36
  got nominated for a lot, but but anything. It lost the Annie to
• 23:40
  uh del Toro's Pinocchio. I mean, I mean, there's no way it
• 23:47
  was gonna beat del Toro's Pinocchio. The yeah that I'm gonna I'm gonna shift
• 23:56
  yours just a little bit. So. One thing that I think made me
• 24:00
  roll my eyes with this movie was how damned literal it was. Where Kat
• 24:08
  is literally fighting her demons in order for her character to grow. The Old
• 24:15
  Guard is literally the Old Guard, like they are people who are reanimated corpses,
• 24:22
  voting for things that aren't going to affect them in their lives, Like
• 24:30
  I get it, Okay, I get what you're saying. What you did
• 24:32
  there, I see, Yeah you literally named it that, so yeah,
• 24:37
  I think that's That's the thing is that, like this movie is filled with
• 24:40
  that where it's you know, the definition of irony is when the figure of
• 24:45
  becomes literal. This is the most ironic film that I've ever seen. And
• 24:48
  I say that ironically this is it's so lazy in it's in its literal aspect
• 24:56
  where it's like what if you know, like what if a girl had to
• 25:00
  fight her demons? What if you know, like the reigning, reanimated corpses
• 25:03
  of the old white people were ruining the lives of of everybody else. It's
• 25:08
  there were so many times when I was like, hey, I want I
• 25:12
  want no, I want no misinterpretation of what I'm about to say. I
• 25:18
  one hundred percent against private prisons. One hundred percent against private prisons. But
• 25:25
  when they went but towards the end, when they said we can finally we'll
• 25:29
  be able to save russ Bank, and I'm like, how it's gone.
• 25:33
  No one's there, it's dead, like you are not Like they went too
• 25:38
  far with it, like if if the if the plant like if the brewery
• 25:45
  just went out and like people were starting to leave, or like it's just
• 25:49
  like it was a ghost town. There was there was a dude in a
• 25:53
  food truck. That was it. That's the literally ghost with literal ghosts.
• 25:59
  Every ghosts. And once again it's don't mix real world stuff with fantastical stuff
• 26:07
  and expect me to have a logical explanation, like, don't make me do
• 26:11
  the logical leap. You have to do the logical leap. I mean,
• 26:15
  I think it's it's just a further indication about how that was actually unnecessary.
• 26:21
  If the movie's going to be about a girl fighting her demons, just let
• 26:23
  it be about her fighting her demons, and then maybe bring in the janitor
• 26:27
  and the nun. And that's the intrigue aspect that you have to it because
• 26:32
  you find out that there's some sort of curse, blah blah blah, whatever
• 26:34
  you want to do to lean it up and just focus, that's your movie.
• 26:38
  That is your movie, cat fighting her demons, and that's the movie.
• 26:44
  That is what I expected, And that is why the viewing experience was
• 26:48
  so awful. Was It's one thing to subvert expectations, gentlemen, but it's
• 26:55
  another thing to go there and just abs absolutely deliver something that had nothing to
• 27:03
  do with the promise of the story you were going to tell, and it
• 27:06
  it just was such an absolute misfire. I'll cop to it. I was
• 27:11
  falling asleep during this movie because I was just bored, senseless, because I
• 27:15
  didn't know why I was supposed to care about anything. I had to cut
• 27:18
  it up into two nights because I did. I did fall asleep. Yeah,
• 27:21
  I when I got to the cemetery. Yep. I think you nailed
• 27:23
  it, John, when you said about the promise. You know, I've
• 27:29
  seen a lot of videos talking about YouTube and short form and how often you
• 27:34
  tell someone what to expect and then you deliver on that, like that's filmmaking
• 27:41
  one o one. So that kind of ties into like what I was saying
• 27:44
  earlier about I was really interested or more interested in the brewery story and the
• 27:48
  parents and like they already had like it looked like they were fighting against land
• 27:55
  managers and other stuff. Like I'm like, oh, this is kind of
• 27:56
  interesting. That was the weather intentional or not the promise I was given in
• 28:02
  the very beginning of the movie, and then literally the rug gets pulled out
• 28:06
  and it's like, nope, that's the trauma that starts Cat's spiral into Juvie.
• 28:14
  And but man, they did a really good job pitching me on that
• 28:17
  story because but then they was gone. And then there was some weird turn
• 28:23
  where Buffalo Bells are supposed to be this uber demon who has hell on his
• 28:27
  belly, and then like all of a sudden, he's a good guy at
• 28:30
  the end and he think gives his sons and because his other demons got delivered
• 28:34
  back to him, well, if he's fighting, if she's fighting her demons,
• 28:40
  but she never fights. Wendell and Wild. They are literally just the
• 28:42
  comic relief the entire movie. Yes, and they are not there. He
• 28:47
  is called Windle and Wild. They did they think they were going to franchise
• 28:51
  it? Is that why they called it Windle and Wild? Like maybe like
• 28:53
  the next movie was gonna be another Windle and Wild adventure? Like what why
• 28:59
  is it cold? James and the Giant Peach was about James And guess what,
• 29:03
  guys, there was this really big peach there too, Coraline, it's
• 29:07
  a single word. Guess what the movie's about. Man movie could have been
• 29:11
  called hell Maiden. Well, it's an animated movie, so they're not gonna
• 29:17
  call it, And I mean, I agree with you, it should have
• 29:18
  been called that. But Netflix making an animated movie is not going to call
• 29:22
  something hell Maiden. I think it gets back to what Tristan was saying earlier
• 29:27
  about the split between which audience are you going for. Wendeln wild is a
• 29:34
  title that you have for a young adult to kid friendly movie US, but
• 29:41
  but hell Maiden is target. It's like, hey, adults, this is
• 29:45
  animated, but it's for you. Wendeln Wilde is hey, but maybe the
• 29:49
  whole family can watch this. I would have been horrified to watch this with
• 29:52
  my kids in a lot of ways, and mainly because, like I mean
• 29:59
  this, you know, to get back to a Burton thing calling it Wendell
• 30:03
  and Wild. In a sense, it is almost like those stories you hear
• 30:06
  about moms taking their kids to Batman Returns and be like, what the hell
• 30:11
  just happened? Right? That would have been my reaction while I was watching
• 30:15
  this with my kids and be like, what did you just trick me into
• 30:17
  watching here? That's not fair? Oh man. I remember. I know
• 30:22
  this is a total attention, but I remember when my parents went to go
• 30:25
  see Batman returns in the theater and they came out and they came home,
• 30:29
  and I was like, how was it? Was it amazing? It was
• 30:32
  a Batman film. And they're like, oh my god, yeah, yeah,
• 30:37
  yeah, the Penguin was a little intense. Oh my god. They
• 30:41
  said they always walked out. But I honestly, I know we're only at
• 30:45
  thirty one minutes. I can't talk about this movie any longer. I don't
• 30:48
  think. I don't think people want to lit. I don't think people want
• 30:51
  to listen to us jump up and down on this movie. I don't think
• 30:53
  I can do it. I really don't think this is Oh my gosh.
• 30:57
  When I My wife is so nice. She'll watch like eighty five percent of
• 31:03
  the movies that we review with me, and you know, I'm gonna give
• 31:08
  a little preview of what we're doing next. She's like, what are we
• 31:11
  doing next? And I'm like, oh, we're doing a select of movies
• 31:14
  of Alfonso Kurn. She's like, oh, thank god. She was so
• 31:19
  ready to be done. And we like trying to jump into animation, like
• 31:22
  we we definitely understand that we don't see those movies as often, and we
• 31:29
  have a couple of things on the on the potential slate for next year.
• 31:33
  But yeah, this one was a rolling of the Ogi Boogie dice and they
• 31:38
  definitely came up. I mean, I'm just looking at the numbers, guys,
• 31:41
  and it started at a five and it was just kind of a downhill
• 31:45
  slope since then. The law of diminishing returns is a thing. It is
• 31:52
  a thing. All right, John, I'm gonna start with you one.
• 31:56
  Okay, all right, there we go. Okay, let's just send this.
• 32:00
  I'm I'm I'm McCoy's dad laying in the bed saying, son, stop
• 32:06
  the pain. One and I'm out now. And also I want to say,
• 32:09
  John, you really got to stop smoking. Okay, like this,
• 32:14
  you know, I'm going to bring it back. It fell out of favor,
• 32:17
  but I am going to single handedly walk around handing them out to kids
• 32:22
  because we need to plan for a new generation. Trisk, I can't I
• 32:24
  can't even see you through the webcam because the smoke is filling your basement.
• 32:29
  You know, it's really And the fact that I have a basement is a
• 32:31
  technological marvel, to be honest with where I live. So you know that's
• 32:36
  how dedicated I am. All Right, Darren, how many buffalo bills are
• 32:40
  boogers are you giving this film? Don't put a literation, man, I
• 32:45
  just don't even care anymore. I love iteration, except for in this movie.
• 32:49
  Yeah. I mean, I'm obviously giving a one as well. I
• 32:52
  look, you know we were talking about the diminishing returns. I look at
• 32:55
  the last time we gave all ones, which I know we're not one hundred
• 32:59
  percent there yet, but in about thirty seconds we will be God George.
• 33:02
  But George Miller, like for mad Max, Mad Max, we all gave
• 33:07
  ones too. Yeah, and then but he pulled it out. It's like
• 33:12
  it's kind of the same thing. It's like movie movie movie kind of doing.
• 33:16
  And then Fury Road was like four and a half's and fives, and
• 33:20
  it's like, so it's definitely possible to take a decade or two off and
• 33:24
  come out with something amazing. It just was not meant to be. For
• 33:30
  for Henry Selleck, Miller's Miller's uh travels as a director directly inverted. Yeah.
• 33:37
  He starts low and climbs up the ladder where Selick came out top of
• 33:40
  the pops the top. It boom, yeah, yeah done. It's like
• 33:45
  orson, wells uh okay with me normally, Like normally, in this situation,
• 33:51
  i'd be like, I'll be damned if I'm going to be the one
• 33:54
  that rates this movie higher than you guys. But the fact that you brought
• 33:59
  up Mad Max like Mad Max made me want to punch a baby. Like
• 34:04
  that's how angry I was with Mad Max. I didn't get that angry with
• 34:08
  Wendell and Wild I was more disappointed. I was like, man, you
• 34:12
  let me down. You let me down. So I'm going to give this
• 34:16
  a one point five. So I'm only giving this point five more than you
• 34:21
  guys because I cannot rate this the same as Mad Max. Like that's my
• 34:27
  like, that's my that's my bottom. I remember when I've rated things before
• 34:30
  and you've given me an earful about comparing it to previous or leaving room to
• 34:36
  go out. Darren, Why yes, Darren, I recall such instances as
• 34:40
  well. I believe we recorded of that. You don't. I have no
• 34:45
  recollection where I had to wade in and defend my friend Darren from you.
• 34:49
  No, I don't. Let's look at the list of one point five's that
• 34:54
  Tristan has given James and the Giant Peach. He has no love of child
• 35:00
  Monty Python on the Holy Grail. We almost stopped the podcast because of that
• 35:04
  one. And then rolling. Yeah, Howling was one point five, yeah,
• 35:09
  Mad Howling was one point five. Yeah, so you like this as
• 35:13
  much as Howling that Howling should be less. We all gave Fourteen Conquests Paradise.
• 35:20
  God, that movie was so bad. But it's interesting. I mean
• 35:24
  not to revel around into ones, but like I would say, they're all
• 35:29
  bad in different ways, like this is this was just a like you said,
• 35:32
  Tristan, this was just a disappointment. We we I wanted this to
• 35:37
  be his Mad Max moment, his Fury Road moment of like an original story
• 35:42
  by Selic that he wrote and Jordan Peel and boom, and we just didn't
• 35:50
  get that. No, we didn't. And I to your point, Darren,
• 35:53
  it is fair to look at something you might have hated Mad Max passionately,
• 35:59
  but you can still be equally disappointed about watching something without without that passion.
• 36:07
  It's sort of like the Emperor is passionately evil in episode three, but
• 36:13
  more of a zen All Grays sort of evil in episode six. He's equally
• 36:19
  evil in both. It's just a different expression. So this being one importantly
• 36:23
  down John no no over my deadbot. Oh uh oh no, oh no,
• 36:31
  all right, I've been undone. Thank you guys so much for listening.
• 36:37
  We really do appreciate it, and we have noticed an uptick in communication
• 36:40
  with us so that we have been striking a chord with our latest picks.
• 36:45
  And we do listen to every single Facebook message, Instagram post, and Twitter
• 36:51
  Twitter message and email that you guys give us. We you know, I
• 36:54
  really do like, we really do try to get back to you as soon
• 36:58
  as we can. I do. I do want to say to the listeners
• 37:01
  there's a few of you out there who have been very loyal to us on
• 37:05
  Facebook, and I have been neglecting you on Facebook. And I do apologize.
• 37:10
  I do. I do not have a Facebook and I need to be
• 37:14
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• 37:16
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• 37:20
  Please reach out to us. And if you if for some reason we're
• 37:23
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• 37:27
  to go, please like send us an email. Go to the nerd party
• 37:30
  dot com slash contacts like house Lights, send us an email or you know,
• 37:34
  like if you find us on Twitter, we'll reach out to you there.
• 37:37
  We really do love it when you guys give us advice and recommendations.
• 37:44
  And we have a lot of this plot out for a long time. So
• 37:46
  even if you give us a recommendation and you feel like we're not listening to
• 37:50
  you, we are, you may us not hear it for another six months.
• 37:53
  So yes, so you know, Darien, can you tell us what
• 37:59
  we're going to do next week? Well, as we close the house of
• 38:02
  Henry Selick never to return again, we are going to be jumping over to
• 38:08
  as you alluded to, a created set of works by Alfonso Corione with great
• 38:15
  expectations from nineteen ninety eight. Join the Revolution, Join the ned Party,