Latest / Intentionally Blank / The Greatest (Bad) Movie of 2024 — Intentionally Blank Ep. 256

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The Greatest (Bad) Movie of 2024 — Intentionally Blank Ep. 256 · Intentionally Blank

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it's too bad there haven't been any food heist lately.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_04: No, nothing has been stolen.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Nope, nothing at all.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: No high profile.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: No thieveries.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, nothing that people would email us about incessantly, including all of the publicity team.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Even those who are not involved in Intentionally Blank.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: So definitely not They also did not get any emails.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: About some giant food high school.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's not surprising in the least because there wasn't anything that happened.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing at all.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Too bad we don't get to talk about one today.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_04: It would be nice.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: But lately everyone's just been buying their food.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of stealing their food.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: For those not benefiting from the video feed, by the way, I am wearing Dan's atrocious cowgirl shirt.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: The I do a thing called what I want.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, baby.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: I put this on and I walked out and Emily's like, she literally face palmed.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: So there you are.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: I told you it's because we're recording on a Friday.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: And we do that when I have my class on Thursdays.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: But my class ends next week.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we will move back to Thursdays after that, theoretically.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh you will get your Friday evenings back.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I know it's nicer for everyone when we don't have to record on Friday evening.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well it works either way.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: So um you haven't seen Project Hail Mary yet.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: I have not seen Project Hail Mary.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because I didn't tell you that I was going to Project Hail Mary, and if I had remembered to do that, you might have seen it.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Nah, sorry.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_04: I have, however, been watching a bunch of the big 2025 movies.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_04: Oh.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_04: Because I never go to theaters.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_04: And so at the end of last year, we were like, oh, I haven't seen any of the movies.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_04: Now I've seen several of them, and they're really good.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_04: We talked about Wake Up Dead Man, right?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_04: All we did was we mentioned that it was the best of the three when we did the trilogies episode.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: That we haven't done an episode on it.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't done an episode about it.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because you and I did a double feature a couple weeks back.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_04: It's been over a month now, I bet.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think it's been uh month and a half, almost two months maybe.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_04: But yeah, we did a double feature of an absolutely perfect gem of a movie, which was Wake Up Dead Man.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_04: Brilliant script, incredibly well made.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_04: And then about 10 minutes later, we started the polar opposite end of the quality scale.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: It was so much fun.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: We watched Madame Webb.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's my fault.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Emily had told me how bad it was, and I felt that I had been cheated that she had seen such a terrible movie without me.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so we watched Madame Webb.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe we should do a double feature episode today where we'll talk about talk about each one in turn.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's do non-spoiler Wake Up Dead Man.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then we're gonna spoil the crap out of Madam Dead.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna watch it anyway.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we'll talk Wake Up Dead.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Let's reverse that.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk Madame Webb first.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then Wake Up Dead Men so that people can leave right at the end if they don't want to get spoiled.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds I found it.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: I found the line.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: So uh Madam Webb.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Madam Webb.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was delightful.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_04: It was such a bad movie.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_04: Uh-huh.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_04: Everything about it was bad.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: It was worse than War of the Worlds.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's because War of the World had these like some people involved who were manifesting their skill on screen.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like the editing was good and some of the the digital manipulation was good and these sorts of things.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Madam Webb, it was a special kind of bad.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_04: It was.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_04: Even in a room full of friends making jokes and making fun of it.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_04: It was still so hard to watch.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: It really was.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Except for the fact that I really believe that Dakota Fanning's performance was eminently watchable because it was surreal.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Normally in these bad movies, you get one of two things.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: You either get the really good Dakota Johnson.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Did you say Dakota Fanning?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Dakota Johnson.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Data Johnson, yeah, good, good correction.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Don Johnson's daughter.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah from Miami Vice.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: So Dakota Johnson's performance, normally you get one of two things.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: You either get somebody like a Tony Weisso, who is just a very bad actor, but in interesting ways.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Or you get something like Cats, where the actors and cats are great.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: They are really good actors, juxtaposed with terrible filmmaking, which is also hilarious.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Judy Dench is amazing, and Judy Dentz as a cat licking her leg is extra amazing, right?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the two sorts of things I'm used to from these bad movies.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Dakota Johnson gave us something I had never seen before.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: You described it really well when during, do you remember like how you I can't quite remember.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_04: The thing is, I loved her performance so much.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_04: I like her in a lot of stuff.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_04: She gets a bad rap, I think, for being a bad actor, and I don't think she is.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_04: It was amazing.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_04: And it comes across in her performance so well.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_04: She doesn't want to be there.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_04: She thinks the dialogue is dumb, and every now and then that she has this wonderful line because there's this scene that takes place in a subway where the bad guy's chasing them.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_04: And this guy asks her if he's on the right train.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_04: And she's like, I don't even know what's going on, man.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_04: Like, that's that was just her.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: That was her.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: That might not even have been in the script.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: That was the most authentically delivered line.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: And the rest of the time, she's just like whatever, right?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: People will ask her things, and you know that it was written in the screenplay for some dramatic response.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: And she just delivers it with the ultimate sense of none of this even matters.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and and it's not a phoned-in performance.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's not.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_04: That's it is a hostile performance, which is very different.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_04: It's not like she was just onset bored collecting a paycheck.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_04: She was critiquing the movie in her performance as the star of the movie.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_04: It was fascinating.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that is part of what elevates this to a must-watch bad movie because of that performance.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like you said it was hard to watch.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Every time she was talking, it wasn't hard for me to watch.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was just like, wow, how do you that I it's so fun how she hates her own movie and how you can just tell.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: I've never seen a performance like that in my life.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was fantastic to watch.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_04: And some of that belligerence is already there in the script.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_04: Like there's a scene in the beginning where she's an ambulance driver, EMT.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_04: She saved somebody's life, and she's in the hospital, and this kid comes up and is like, Thank you for saving my uncle.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_04: I drew this picture of you as a hero.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_04: And, you know, in the script, there's clearly she doesn't know what to do with this.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_04: Like, how do I respond?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not good with kids.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know what the original intention of the script was.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure the original intention, I'm sure, is maybe too strong, but there's a fantastic episode of Star Trek where Captain Picard is stuck in an elevator with kids.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: And he is a consummate professional.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: He's used to leading Starfleet.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: He does not know what to do with three children.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it's acted really well.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's really interesting.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's another take on that with Jurassic Park, where Dr.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Grant movie Grant doesn't like kids.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't like kids.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then he's trapped with these kids.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it feels like that's what it was written to be.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: She doesn't know how to deal with kids.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: She's a professional.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: She lives her own life.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, now I'm gonna be stuck with three teenage girls.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: I need to learn to be a parental figure.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not how it goes.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_04: Not how it comes across because this kid hands her the picture and she looks at him like, you jackass.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_04: Why would you give me a picture?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_04: What am I supposed to do with this?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_04: I hate everything and everyone.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_04: It is such a misanthropic performance of a character who's supposed to not necessarily be that way.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: What's the movie where sometimes they pull the clip where there's a character who, you know, obviously, oh, it's Gene Wilder from Willy Wonka, where he's like, oh no, please don't.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, act like she gives that scary performance several times where something terrible's happening, that like in a wreck or something, she's like, oh no.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's again not phoned in, it's that performance, and it's an intentional downplay of the emotions.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, so I mean, Oscar worthy.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: She's really good in this.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_04: I agree.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_04: And I know a lot of people out there are thinking that that is a hyperbolic opinion that we are doing as a bit.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_04: Like the majority of the movie is her trying to take care of these three teenage girls who are idiots.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_04: Because yeah, the bad guy has seen a vision of the future in which these girls try to kill him.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_04: Basically, the bad guy saw a much better movie than we did.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_04: Uh-huh.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_04: And we occasionally get glimpses of that, and then it says, no, you don't get to see that movie.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_04: And so the bad guy's trying to make sure that that better movie never gets made.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_04: And so he's trying to kill these girls.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_04: She is trying to take care of them and keep them safe.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_04: They're absolute morons.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_04: Just so stupid.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_04: And that sense of, oh, I'm stuck here doing a thing I don't want to do that she has as an actor and as a character, oh, it works so well.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like from what I read in the trades, well, not in the trades, in the the gossip mags, she thought she was signing up for the MCU and a major role in the MCU.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: She did not know the distinction between the Sony.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: We're making these to keep the Spider-Man license and the MCU.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And she, yeah.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_04: That's the rumor I've heard.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know if it's true.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: But it makes sense, having watched it.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: The other reason this movie is elevated beyond just regular bad movie is the ADR.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Which, if you're not familiar with the term ADR, a lot of times, this is very common in movies.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: They need to go retake lines.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like something on the onset audio didn't work, or they have to change a line.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: So they call the actor.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they punched up the script after the fact.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: And usually they're really good at hiding it.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: They'll either, you know, they'll make it so that the character's face isn't a focus when they're saying the new words, or they don't change the lines as much, or things like this.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: And rarely do I notice the ADR.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: But in this movie, the ADR is incredible because one entire character, me watching it, I guessed about half.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: I've been told it was like 90%.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's not 90%.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: There are plenty of lines that he is speaking and his mouth matches the words.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: But about half the time, which is an incredible amount, it doesn't.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: And they do try to hide a little.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Every time he turns his back and is speaking, it's ADR.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: But reshoots, revisions, whatever, changed this movie so much that they had to rewrite an entire character.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_04: And that speaks to not just punching up dialogue, but they probably changed significant load-bearing portions of the plot and of how the bad guys' powers work and all kinds of things.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_04: And he's a major character who's in it all the time.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: And his ADR lines are much worse than his onset lines.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: This might not be him, this might be the directing or whatever, but the ADR lines regularly are read really flat, which is a nice contrast to her.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: This is the phoning it in, but I can't say that he was, right?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Just that it they don't land.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so you'll get these lines that are just like, I can barely understand what he's saying, and there's no emotion.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it also doesn't match his lips, and it is beautiful.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and sometimes they have to resort to the dialogue doesn't match the lips.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_04: But the solid, like entire first act, first third of the movie, you virtually never see him speak.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_04: All his dialogue comes when he is facing away from the camera.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Or he's blurry because there's the one shot at the beginning where she's like finding a spider and he's in the back blurry.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if you watch, his mouth doesn't match, but he's blurry enough that you can't tell.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_04: It was so prevalent and just hilarious.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_04: I do want to say, in defense of the three teenage girls, I thought all three actresses were good.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_04: They were charismatic.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, one's Isabella Merced, who's incredible.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_04: Sidney Sweeney, who I think like Dakota Johnson, gets unfairly maligned for her acting.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_04: I think she's very good.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_04: Can't remember the name of the other girl.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_04: She was also excellent.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: But they were written as such stereotypes.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: Just incredible level of stereotypes that you couldn't take them seriously as characters.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then they broke their stereotypes to do stupid things.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like Sidney Sweeney's supposed to be like the smart preppy one, right?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: No, she's not the preppy.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_04: Shy nerd one.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And she gets up on a table and is dancing.
• 13:56
  unknown: Yeah.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: When they've been told to stay out of sight because the bad guy can use any technology in the world and cameras to find them.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: They go to a diner and they dance on the table together for a bunch of boys.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_04: Like, who wrote this?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_04: And this is this is well after their lives have been in danger for so long.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: They are unable to sit for an hour alone.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: They have to go dance for boys.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Teenage girls, I don't think many of you watch this podcast, but if you happen to be doing it, I guess that's what the screenwriters think you just have to do.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: You can't go an hour before getting up on a table.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: They went to the diner because they were hungry.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_04: Again, after like an hour.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_04: They're so starving that they have to risk their safety and their visibility.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_04: And while they're in the diner, they're like, hey, let's go over there and dance on that table with those boys who are being total jerks.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: All fairness to you know the movie and its excellent writing.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think there is a line where Sydney Sweeney's character is like, that one boy looked at me, therefore I'm already attracted to him.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the whole onset of this problem.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: A boy looks at her, and then the other girls are like, you need to loosen up.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Let's dance on the table.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_04: But they had the bookish kid, the kind of streetwise sporty kid.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_04: And then the preppy kid.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and which was Isabella Merced, who was kind of this preppy rich girl kind of thing.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_04: Unless I'm misremembering.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_04: I think you're right.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think you're right.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then to give the other actress her fair share, it's Celesto Connor as the other young kid.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_04: Celesto Connor, who, again, was great.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_04: I actually think she was the rich girl.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, was she?
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_04: And Isabella Merced's parents were undocumented, which is why she couldn't go to the cops or something like that.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_04: Something like that.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_04: I can't remember.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_04: Anyway.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: But it was bafflingly like these characters were written so poorly.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: There was no interesting bad or camaraderie between them.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: There's like every line is the cliche.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_04: One good line that any of the three girls had was, Are we being kidnapped?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_04: And Dakota Johnson says, No, I'm saving you.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_04: And then she says, It feels like we're being kidnapped.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_04: That got genuine laughs.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_04: That did.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_04: But yeah, the rest of it, it just doesn't work.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: So But it's it's fantastic.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: You should watch it if you like bad movies.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't like bad movies, you'll be miserable.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: But if you know how to watch a good, bad movie with some friends, this is definitely a keeper.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_04: I have a question for you because I've been thinking a lot about this since watching it.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_04: There's a scene where Dakota Johnson gets pulled into a baby shower for Peter Parker's parents.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_04: Because this takes place in the past.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_04: And they're playing the little baby shower game where you try to suggest names for the baby.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_04: And they make a big deal out of it, but nobody ever says Peter at any point.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_04: Is that the joke?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Or did they just like edit that part out?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think if you see the screenplay, at the end there is a we're naming him Peter.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: And there was some sort of plot cycle with that.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: But then somebody smart said we cannot besmirch the name of Spider-Man with this film.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: You have to cut any reference to his name.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: We can't cut Ben Parker, Uncle Ben out, but we can cut Peter's name from this travesty.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I think must have happened because it was an obvious setup for, you know, meet Peter.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then at the end, like again, it the script is giving Dakota Johnson all this to work with because at the end, you know, Uncle Ben's like, I think I'm gonna like being an uncle.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: And she's like, Oh, you will.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, wait, your power is seeing the future.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know he's going to die.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you're making a joke.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know Peter's parents are doomed and going to die.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: And Ben is gonna die, and you're making a joke about it.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you sure will.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then they use the line with great power comes great responsibility, which is so amazing, right?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: But someone, somewhere is like, you can't use the actual line.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so they rewrite it.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_04: And it was like with Great Responsibility comes great power.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_04: Look it up for us.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it is.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_04: I can't remember exactly how it was, but I do remember all of us in there.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_04: They said the first half, yeah, and everyone in the theater said, Are they gonna do it?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_04: And then they did it and we screamed for like a minute.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: The exact line is when you take on the responsibility, great power will come.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's so bad.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's the metaphor for this film.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like you take something really brilliant, like the Uncle Ben Peter interaction and that really pithy line, and you just make it so much worse.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: And you have Madam Webb.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: I cannot believe that someone didn't look at that line and say, Are we really doing this?
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Are we really taking that?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_04: No, because somebody looked at that line and was like, Yeah.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Someone thought they were writing the best screen.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we can do it.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_04: Where there is responsibility, great power must come.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_04: We we can't not at least mention the action scenes because across the board they are ridiculous.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_04: All right, we're gonna just have to keep talking about this film.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_04: We'll do Wake Up Dead Men next week.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, oh we've got nine minutes.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_04: I thought it was counting down.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we'll have to do Wake Up Dead Men as a separate episode.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_04: The entire final section where she's like, you know how we can be safe from the bad guy?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_04: We'll light a bunch of torches in a firework factory and then climb on the roof.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: The factory that earlier we set up is a death trap if you're inside.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: So set up and payoff.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's a death trap if you light these all off inside.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: We'll go inside and light them all off.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I can see kind of in the future, so I can maybe protect you from the fireworks shooting at your heads.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_04: And so much of that final sequence feels like they had to rewrite it last minute.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_04: Because she can see the future, so she calls her EMT buddies or whatever, and she's like, I need a rescue helicopter at this address at this specific time.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_04: And so they get there and they, you know, almost die to the firework factory, and then they climb on the roof, and they're like, We're gonna get picked up, and the helicopter shows up right on time, and then it gets blown up instantly.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_04: And then they still, after it's blown up, keep trying to climb as high as they can on the sign for like 15 more minutes.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: And like she has her Goku moment, right?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: She becomes Super Saiyan.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: She has the moment where she all of her powers align and she understands them.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: She uses them to grab one of the girls as they're about to fall and then never uses her powers again.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't defeat the villain, doesn't it?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Doesn't defeat the villain, doesn't, you know, go super cool goku, like I said, she uses them one time.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Then he like whacks her and the telekinetic arm she's in manifest as like they built to this moment, right?
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's everything's turning on it, go away, and then we just keep climbing.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then eventually the fireworks go off and they just fall in the water.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and her and the bad guy fall in the water.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_04: Let's be clear.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_04: When you say everything's building to this moment, the entire movie is you can see the future, everything's connected.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_04: Once you accept your powers, everything will be super cool.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_04: I don't remember anything in there about you'll also have telekinetic powers.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_04: So like the writers did not know what to do with a seer character who can see the future.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_04: You have to have a big action scene.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_04: The hero moment is not her seeing the future, it is sudden telekinesis syndrome that appears and then goes away.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_04: That's Said, as much as we talk about the ending, my very favorite piece of the action.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_04: My very favorite action scene in the entire thing is the bad guy is chasing the car with all the girls in it to try to kill him.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_04: And Dakota Johnson is coming from somewhere else.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_04: And so she's zooming through the streets and doing everything she can to try to get there as fast.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_04: And she's driving through alleys and she's blowing through red lights.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_04: And then she comes out of a wall on like the second or third story.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_04: Uh-huh.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_04: And somehow.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_04: I don't remember any explanation of how I assume it must have been a parking garage.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And how she got the momentum driving in a parking garage in circles to go through a wall?
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Also, her car is not that strong.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a Camry.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_04: She's driving like a roller skate and punches it through a wall and lands it on the guy.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_04: And you know, that is a I can see the future hero moment.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_04: Because I know where he'll be and I know which wall to burst through.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_04: But how did she get three stories up?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: And oh my gosh.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: I want to watch this movie again.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you just remind me how much fun this was when they win with a Pepsi logo.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Pepsi's the actual hero of the movie.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: They drop a giant Pepsi logo on the bad guy, and it has one of my favorite hated tropes in science fiction and fantasy.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: One that is is hard to not do yourself, which is why it's one of my favorite slash hated, is the you give a character a disability and then a superpower that negates the disability.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: She at the end, spoiler, is blind and paralyzed.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: But she has powers that let her see and move.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: And use, you know, telekinetic arms.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: So she basically, you know.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and that's coming from the comics.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: We can't lay that at the feet of the case.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: I can't lay that, but it is very much a comic thing.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: But we all kind of do it.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be really aware of this as a writer because having a character who has a disability or some sort of limitation, you're going to want to find a way that they can, you know, overcome that.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a difference between a mobility aid and just, oh, now you have powers that make it.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: And in the hands of the really good writers, it's like Daredevil, where it's like he can see, but he can't.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: His disability still hits him times because he can't see color and these things.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: He uses this extra sense.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then it becomes really interesting.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: But at the end, we just have Madame Webb being like, I'm sorry that all this went through, but now we'll go be superheroes.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: And she and that is the most insanely glorious part of the movie.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_04: Is the very final shot is this almost like dream sequence thing where you see the three teenagers who at this point still have zero powers of any kind.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_04: They don't have suits, they don't have anything.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_04: You see them in their costumes.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_04: And you see Madame Webb kind of hovering behind them in her costume.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_04: Which is the most blatant blunt force this will be continued in part two kind of ending to your movie.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_04: Uh-huh.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_04: The fact that anyone involved with this thought there was going to be a part two is honestly kind of joyful to me.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_04: They made this movie and they were like, this, you know, as cool as our movie is, it's just the setup for an even cooler movie later.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that nobody who was working on this said, hey, three superpowered spider girls doing cool things.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good movie, or at least a, you know, we've got room for action.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: We've got room for drama.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: Should we make that movie?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: You do not understand those who have not seen this movie.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: These three teenage girls are projected to be cool and he sees glimpses of them.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: We don't get to see that in our movie.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you made an entire movie about Peter Parker's origin story, but he gets bit by the spider at the end, and the whole movie is him getting dunked on by Flash Thompson.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, even worse than that, it's like if Sam Raimi with the first Spider-Man movie said, Okay, I've got Spider-Man.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_04: First movie's all about Uncle Ben.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_04: We're gonna do like 30s Uncle Ben, and he's in his other job, and it has nothing to do with Spider-Man in any way.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_04: That's vital backstory.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's even better than that.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna one up you because someone read Madam Webb, who is like an old grandma, D-list Spider-Man villain, who I don't know of.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there's some Madame Webb fans out there, but I don't know of anyone who's a Madam Webb fan.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: And they read this and said, What if she were young and hot?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: And hang out with three even younger, also hot women.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_04: And what if let's make that movie just like Yeah There's so many possible thought processes that went from we have all these cool spider women, what's the best movie we could make using them?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and then ended up with the weirdest, dumbest idea in the worst execution with a jaw-droppingly amazing acting performance in the heart of it.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: I am more sad because they had two minutes of that movie of the three girls being well done, and they're like, cool, we'll throw that in the first act, and then we get nothing from it.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the trailer.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: That was the trailer.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: They knew they only had a little bit of money to make, maybe, and that's what it is.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: Their budget allowed them to make two minutes of the good movie.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so they made those two minutes and then made a trailer using those so that they could maybe sucker people into going, This this didn't do as poorly at the box office as you might imagine.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it did poorly, right?
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: But what was the box office?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: I seem to remember reading.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I've got it right here.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Box office, so budget to make it there, was 100 million gross.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Box office, 100.5 million.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: It made back its budget.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Granted, it didn't really, because part of that goes to marketing.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, not just marketing, part of it goes to the the theaters and things like that.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Even without marketing, which I doubt they spent the extra 100 million on marketing for this, that is standard.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: But it made a hundred million dollars.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_04: Right?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_04: Well, and what little they did spend on marketing was like the only thing that I knew about Madam Webb before it came out was I'd seen a trailer and I'd seen several images of Sydney Sweeney in a spider suit.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that was their entire marketing campaign.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: How much did the Fall Guy make in theaters?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Stand by.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: This might not be an accurate comparison because I think Fall Guy still hit the tail end of the COVID thing, but so box office was 181 million.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: So somehow Madam Webb made more than half of the Fall Guy.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: What about the DD movie?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Probably about the same, right?
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was probably like 170 million as well.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: I heard in box office it was only fine.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was considered by thought.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, so box office, because budget for DD was 150 million.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Box office was 2 million.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: 200 million?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: 200 million, sorry.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_04: So again, where this movie, this is why Hollywood is why people make properties you already know.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: It made$100 million.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: And these two other legitimately fantastic movies.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Both of them, like if you have not seen Fall Guy, please go watch Fall Guy.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: Just so good.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: And the DD movie, so good.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, they made more.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: But this is Madam Webb we're talking about.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: That said, you should see Madam Webb.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Just go see Fall Guy and go see DD first.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_04: Don't see Madam Webb alone.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_04: It is dangerous to go alone.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_04: Bring a friend with you.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Particularly if you can take Dan.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: He's very funny.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was a very good time with Dan.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Alright.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: So next week we'll talk about a good movie.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we will.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: How's that, Ben?