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Are Summer Blockbusters Dying or Thriving? | The Rewind Podcast
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This week on The Rewind, Darren, Jack and Marty discuss the past, present, and future of the Summer Blockbuster.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
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Introduction of Hosts and Theme
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome back to the rewind episode number three for Tuesday, August 6th, 2024. My name is Marty Sleev and I am joined by Darren Mooney, Jack Packard and producer Eric Lurking in the shadows. ah We have an excellent show for you. I'm so excited for this one. A, Jack made a big spreadsheet. It's awesome.
00:00:55
Speaker
It's incredible. We get to talk about summer blockbusters, which is a topic ah near and dear to my heart. See that will revolve around Deadpool Wolverine, which will have some Deadpool Wolverine spoilers. Although if you're on Twitter, apparently just there's no laws anymore with directors and actors being like, yeah, here's a bootleg shot from the
Spoiler Embargoes and Summer Blockbusters
00:01:12
Speaker
movie. We could just share this.
00:01:14
Speaker
The spoiler embargo lifts on Monday. Like this is the thing where i I've had to actually explain this to older Irish film critics. This is a real, I'm in my mid thirties, but I'm still young by the standards of film criticism where like the, one of the critics at the big Irish broadsheets was like, what is a spoiler embargo, Darren? And can you explain it to me? And I had to explain that now all the major studios have quote unquote spoiler embargoes, which is typically after the end of the second weekend,
00:01:38
Speaker
where it is suddenly absolutely fair game to talk about absolutely everything in the movie in the press. So for example, with Deadpool Wolverine, if you go to say the Empire ah magazine website, they this morning or yesterday, because the spoiler, the spoiler embargo pass ran a whole list of basically here's every cameo in the movie. And here's what Ryan Reynolds has to say about it. Here, as you say, are all the clips of these behind the scenes. And you're like, you think maybe the studio could have given them stuff that wasn't camcorder footage from inside a cinema.
00:02:07
Speaker
But like it it it, I believe the first one was like infinity war. Infinity war was the one where the Russo's it was hashtag Thanos demands your silence. I believe was the message that was very politely, um very politely, but firmly um instilled in the critical audience at the critic screening of that. Like the Disney executives, very polite, lovely people, but very clear Thanos does in fact demand your silence. That's one thing. Thanos wants balance in the world. And he wants you to not spoil movies. And he wants you to stay off Twitter. yeah let's stay off stay off twitter
00:02:43
Speaker
the big things Honestly, Thanos might have been right
Evolution of Summer Blockbusters
00:02:46
Speaker
on some of this thing. you should hear that yeah We're going to be talking about the past, present, and future of ah summer blockbusters, our thoughts on them ah growing up from their inception to our childhoods to ah their current ah the current state of them and whether we're hopeful or ah Quite worried about them going forward and then of course talking about stuff. We've been watching I know Darren and I finished House of the Dragons So we'll probably have a kind of a non spoilerish talk about how we feel about season two and the fact that we are officially halfway done with the story Which I think is good. I'm glad they said it's gonna be done after four seasons
00:03:19
Speaker
I mean, it was originally, they were kind of hitting at three, like the not to get into sports. You're watching that finale and you're like, yeah, this is a real sense of like HBO had a request. That request was more episodes. What do we do with our most popular character? Let's put him in a haunted house for eight episodes.
00:03:38
Speaker
no yeah see now you're interested now jack ah watch them man what else What if he has dreams about other parts of the franchise that people recognize? They'll love that, right?
00:03:48
Speaker
you could point at the screen and be like i remember her yeah dragon characters only That back of her head looks familiar because we're not paying that actor to appear.
Personal Injuries and Comedy
00:04:00
Speaker
Before we get deep into it, deep into it, we were chatting before the podcast started and Darren wanted me to share how the reason why I'm here. I'm supposed to be with Nick and with Jesse Schwab in Chicago shooting our animal well documentary right now, which by the way, animal well, one of the very few games I have 100%ed. a game I truly love. I was very, very excited to meet Billy, uh, the solo dev and like talk and shoot this documentary. But I rolled my ankle so hard last week, Wednesday that I ended up in the ER and I'm currently like my ankle right now is, is so bruised and swollen that is unrecognizable as a foot.
00:04:42
Speaker
Uh, so, uh, but in a, in a, in a bit of a fun irony, as far as Darren is concerned, Marty wanted me to share the story to Darren. Uh, so I perform improv comedy, uh, for, you know, for fun. And on the weekends, uh, we had a show last week, Wednesday, and the referee, cause it's two teams of, of improvers, you know, coming together and the referee said, Hey, there was this thing that we used to do.
00:05:04
Speaker
ah back in the 90s to end every show. It's where we all pretend to do the thing that we've all seen on those infomercials, Riverdance. And ah for those of you who don't know, Riverdance, aka Irish dancing, is a very specialized way of dancing in which you do not move your torso or arms, but only your legs flail about all all the time. Yes. It's very popular here in Wisconsin. Thank you. Eric there is a a river dance and he's like, well, we do this, we do this whole thing. And he choreographed a little maneuver. And I want to say it was on my like second leg kick that my ankle fell out beneath me. So I hurt myself river dancing. I apologize to Darren and Ireland in general. So what you're saying is your dancing skill has much room for improvment.
00:05:56
Speaker
yeah I should extend sympathy. I'm sorry. My first response to it. I'm sorry, Jack. i'm ter I'm sorry. That happened to you. I hope you feel better. But it was just it just it was reflexive. I landed Michael Flatley. Am I insane or did you? Was there a Michael Flatley movie that we talked about? Oh, yes. on the and if Like a year or two ago.
00:06:19
Speaker
Yeah. And if Eric can find a picture of this, I'll be very impressed. It's called Blackbird. It's basically him remaking like casino Royale meets Casablanca in which Michael Flatley is like a 60 year old man who operates a like a gambling establishment in the Bahamas. And then somebody, there we go. Look at that poster. Eric Roberts is in it as the villain, just to be sure. And Patrick Bergen as well, like he's in everything.
00:06:45
Speaker
Like it is absolutely, it's, it's the most, like, if you could get a glimpse inside the head of like a 60 year old, like wealthy Irishman, that is what Blackbird would be. There's a moment where like a beautiful 20 something year old woman in lingerie walks into his bedroom and he politely sends her back to her room because it would be improper. And you're like, that is such an Irish that's, that's the perfect Irish Catholic dad fantasy right there. This 20 year old woman does want me.
00:07:12
Speaker
But I think I know what's best for her. She doesn't really. You know what? I have a theory that every podcast has an anchor being and Michael Flatley is ours. We're just putting it out there. I'm just saying, I think the science checks out in Deadpool and Wolverine with anchor being.
00:07:31
Speaker
But yeah, so and in any case, that is why I'm here with you because i I have trouble walking. So luckily, actually, Nick and Jesse are here staying with me so they can go grocery shopping for me, which is great.
Deadpool Wolverine's Box Office Success
00:07:42
Speaker
But ah but well thanks and before I injured myself, I did get to see Deadpool Wolverine. um It is number two, as far as summer blockbusters are concerned, beat out handily by Inside Out 2.
00:07:59
Speaker
it's at least or no so I mean, it's got quite a ways to go, I believe. what What is our box office at right now for Deadpool Wolverine? It's about 850, 900 million. It's going to cross the billion next weekend. It's probably not going to get to 1.6. It'll have to settle for like the second highest grossing movie. Which is tough for an R rated movie to beat up. What Adam inside out to was PG, I think maybe PG 13.
00:08:22
Speaker
Maybe, but in any, you know, family friendly inside out to, you know, but I was I was very excited to see Deadpool Wolverine. And then I came out of it feeling very, very empty. And then I listened to Darren and I was like, oh, good, I'm not the only one. Oh, no, this is going to be one of those. This is going to be one of those episodes where all three of us don't like the thing everyone else likes. Yeah.
00:08:48
Speaker
I feel really bad about not liking it, but I do not like it. Yeah. This is the this the thing. And it's like, I can already see the people being like, don't you guys hate fun? As if we didn't spend two and a half hours raving about Twisters two weeks ago. right dutyy elisis critic All they do is talk about Twisters.
00:09:08
Speaker
Even though we're going to go back to Jack spreadsheet, I'm going to point to so many dumb movies where like, Oh my God, Armageddon. That shit was crazy. Yeah. It's incredible. The commentary in Armageddon where like Ben Affleck talks about like how he's like, why are they sending ah guys who drill up to space? Wouldn't it be easier to trade astronauts had a drill and Michael Bay's response was just shut the fuck up. ath like um
00:09:31
Speaker
Right. and um I mean, and to me, it was it was the exact same thing we talked about when we talked about Flash, even a lot of stuff we talked about when we were talking about Spider-Man No Way Home, where it was just so blatantly um inside baseball ah that I couldn't I couldn't enjoy myself while watching it.
Critiques of Deadpool Wolverine
00:09:50
Speaker
And and here's the thing. The other thing is The first couple of times you stab someone in the crotch. Haha. Very funny joke. The 18th time we are stabbing someone in the crotch. I like with the jokes done at that point.
00:10:03
Speaker
Like this is, this is obviously not like a big deal. This is not a huge criticism of like the movie, but it is one thing that really bugged me. The, one of the big climatic set pieces of this movie without giving any context. So not really spoiler driven, but it's a bunch of people who are immortal fighting a bunch of people who are immortal and all of them, except one of them are dressed in variations of the same red and black costume. And it's a long take and it's a one-er and it's just like, what is the point of this?
00:10:29
Speaker
This does not look visually interesting in any way, shape, or form. For most of the scene, they're like behind a bus. Like it's very clearly you have like an, a way of cheating that shot. Like again it's, it's really frustrating just on a, on a basic craft level. And you mentioned like the stabbing in the crotch, like obviously this is Deadpool and Wolverine. Obviously they're superheroes. They're inevitably going to do the thing where superheroes meet and they have a fight and then they learn to get along. This movie inexplicably does it twice.
00:10:55
Speaker
which is a really odd choice where it's like they have a fight and it's like nerds you're gonna love this Deadpool and Wolverine are finally fighting and then it's like okay they fight and it's it I feel like I'm being very mean to Sean Levy I should point out I loved Real Steel which is the rock'em sock'em robot fighting movie you made with you Jack. Why did you love Real Steel? It's great it's almost great it's like Rocky with robots. You didn't like Real Steel? It's beautiful schlock.
00:11:22
Speaker
it's over the top with robots which is either that's got a good place i ah the only way i could do it it's by fighting robots by and arm wrestling oh yeah and No, I thought that was delightful Schlock, um which by the way, like Twisters, it's like, I am i am here for delightful Schlock. Even the first two Deadpools, like, okay, yeah, we are having fun with the superhero genre. Everyone's having a good time because we concentrating on like that story. Deadpool has a very, in Deadpool one and two, he has a very clear story that he gets to play around with. Here, I feel like they forgot about the meat and it's it's all fixins.
00:12:02
Speaker
Well, I mean, the thing about like the Deadpool one and two, which I also quite enjoyed is that like they are basically eighties action movies. Like the first one is quite literally a plot of this, you know, special forces bounty hunter commando was left for dead by these rogue operatives who are arms dealing around the world. And oh no, they've kidnapped his wife and he's got to get her back. That is a Stallone and Schwarzenegger movie from the eighties.
00:12:23
Speaker
You just layer a bit of self-aware irony on top of it. You make a couple of jokey references. It is a classic action movie template. The second movie is, Oh my God, I've got to keep this kid safe from a killer robot man sent back from the future to kill him. And along the way, we'll form an unlikely family unit. And that's just David leech, who is obviously the director of like atomic blonde and the wolf for the fall guy and a big eighties film fan in general being like, yeah, I want to make Terminator two, but with superheroes and like, it those movies, like they get away with it because they're funny and they're goofy and they call, like they draw attention to what they're doing. So you can have the classic construction without having to like justify it or deflate it or whatever. Right. Whereas I think my big problem with Deadpool and Wolverine is that like, you don't have that like kernel of like actual emotional investment where like, yes, this movie is ostensibly about the idea of Deadpool trying to get back to his family.
00:13:15
Speaker
But, and then this is like absolutely like no spoilers in like the loosest possible sense. First 15 minutes of the movie. It has that kind of problem I have with Picard season three, which is you have spent like two movies now giving me a new cast of characters and asking me to invest in them. Like I've watched the first two Deadpool movies. And so I care about Dopinder. I care about Vanessa. I care about Negasonic teenage warhead. I care about, I will die for you. I like Colossus. Like you've built up a supporting cast around them. I even like, like Brolin as Thanos is great. Zazie beats as Domino is fun as well. And then what this movie does is it immediately jettisons all of them. And it's like, well, I hope you remember those X-Men movies from the early 2000s. I'm like, yeah, I do. I can watch them anytime. I like a Disney plus like, well, I hope you're trapped in the cinema now. And this is what you're going to watch. It's like, it's really strange because I i do like those first two Deadpool movies because there is that sense of
00:14:10
Speaker
Like a supporting cast, the movie has invested in and does honestly ask you to care about. And Deadpool three is like that Wade is trying to get back to those people ostensibly in terms of plot, but the movie itself does not care about any of them. The movie is just like, well, they're a plot point there. They're a wave to get from A to B and a justification for everything that's happening. And the actors maybe had like a day and a half on set if, if at most in order to film all their scenes. The movie and Ryan Reynolds only cares about Hugh Jackman, not Wolverine, but Hugh Jackman.
00:14:39
Speaker
Yeah, a huge chapman and you one man that's our i think i used Jack That's one of the things with Yeah, I was also on like No Way Home left me kind of cold even though I do like all three iterations of those Spider-Man in their own movies. I like Spider-Man one and two I actually really like the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man and I like the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies, but it's it's With that and then with this, it feels like it is trying to make you care about things without putting any of the work in the text. It's trying to make you care about these things by pointing at the past. And to me, and I don't like leveling this this term at at art, it feels lazy. It feels like we're not going to do the work to to have a script or have scenarios that are really going to make you care about these things. But remember that one movie that did? We'll just pull that in here.
00:15:32
Speaker
And that's what yeah they try to do that here with it' with its cameos, which I guess, i you know, I feel like at this point we could probably talk, spoilers about the movie, but it it just, there's something feels craven about pointing at bad movies that people do not like that Fox abandoned and being like, remember Electra? Remember the Fantastic Four with Chris Evans? They're back. And I'm like, what are we supposed to glean from this? Because these were not good movies. yeah Like these were considered failures that were moved on from.
00:16:01
Speaker
Yeah. so Like, what are we supposed to get? Can I level? Can I just like double down on this? Like i feel I feel bad. Maybe I shouldn't be so mean about the movie, but I really did have that like visceral reaction against it while I was watching it. I found it and you you say the word lazy is the word you don't want. Like to use cynical is the word that I found myself thinking a lot because like, like the description that keeps coming to mind is like Scott Mendelsohn's description of this as like watching a serial killer lovingly eulogize their victims.
00:16:27
Speaker
were like, you mentioned the idea of like the Fox movies that were bad. And that like, they're telling us that we loved and they're bringing back all the characters so we can celebrate them. Like what really goals is things like say, and I guess you mentioned Electra. So it's fair game to mention that Channing, Tatum, right? yeah shows up And it was like, I never got the chance to, I don't know. He never got to be a chance in his, he never got a chance to make his own movie. And it's like, hey jokes and I liked where you were going with that. i think i made it early but i like it like Like Disney, I made the decision to cut that hard and fast. um But it's like, ah this movie is like, Oh man, isn't it sad that Channing Tatum, a man who cares so deeply about Gambit. And I believe he does care so deeply about Gambit. Like I take him out his word. I think Levy, the director has said he's never seen an actor happier to be inset and on costume than Tatum was because Tatum had been pushing that uphill since 2011. But it's really weird to have like one of the biggest entertainment conglomerates on the planet be like, man, it's really sad that nobody ever made that
Corporate Nostalgia in Movies
00:17:25
Speaker
gambit movie. Isn't it like it's a real shame that Channing Tatum never got the chance to prove that he could be a good gambit. We're all trying to find the guys who did this. If only there were somebody in this room who could have made that happen and who had like, cause the thing is it wasn't Fox that killed Tatum's movie. It was Disney. Like that's the thing. It's its the reason that this stuff is being discontinued is you know, it's Disney and look, I'm not saying the stuff shouldn't be discontinued. Reboots are a large part of the corporate landscape. You know, like I, these actors aren't going to continue to play the roles forever. They've already rebooted the X-Men ones. I'm not saying I want to see Patrick Stewart playing the role until he's 120 or anything like that. What I am saying is I find disconcerting that like as an act of corporate, like mergers and acquisitions, moving assets so across a spreadsheet from one to another, doing the regular business of operating a film company.
00:18:15
Speaker
and turning that into something that as an audience member, I'm expected to feel sentimental about. Where it's like they they have like the sequence where all these characters are consigned to the wasteland, but you can sign them to the wasteland. Like you don't get to make me feel sad that they're there when you put them there. You just like make me like think about why you put them there and are now asking me to pay to see the purgatory that you have confined them to. It's very true. Sorry. That's and also like it anyone who watched the flash and was upset about the inside baseball nature of Nicholas cage is a Superman because of course, like Nicholas cage appears in Superman because of like the popularized story as told by Kevin Smith on working on the Tim Burton, Superman movie.
00:19:02
Speaker
Which is like so inside baseball that no one can get it. If you were upset at that, you cannot then watch Deadpool and not be upset by chanum Channing Tatum being in this because that's equally as inside baseball.
00:19:17
Speaker
Blade thing that has like levels to it of oh my god and and Ryan ah Ryan Reynolds and Wesley Snipes making little goofs at each other because they famously did not get along and played Trinity and Then later wasn't since being like there's only one blade to make goofs only ever gonna be hurt in purgatory because they somehow can't figure out how to make a Mircea a Mahershala Ali vampire movie work, right? Which seems like that shouldn't be that difficult to make that and like did that get the citizen that right? Because that obviously all went through Disney. Like there's no way that Kevin Feige, like they snuck that line into the movie. Like Kevin Feige saw that and saw like Wesley Sipes. Cause there's only ever going to be one blade and was like, yep, that seems like a good thing to put in this movie.
Studio Politics and Release Strategies
00:20:00
Speaker
And you're imagining like Mahershala Ali, like sitting down. watching like Deadpool versus Wolverine on its opening weekend with a bag of popcorn. and Like at the moment that happens, someone can go fuck this and just walking out of the cinema. Because the, the story is at least according to the Hollywood reporter, a variety is that like it's Mahershala Ali who is pushing this thing forward and it's Marvel that is just not taking action. So it does feel like weirdly passive aggressive again for the studio. That is the problem with this to be like, it's man, it's a real shame. Nobody can make a blade movie. We're really trying to figure out who's at the guy who did this. This is even worse than passive aggressive. This is this is something i I pushed out as a joke on and on Twitter, the blue sky or whatever, which is like when you watch a movie that is ah arguably very bad and they have that line, ah you know, like they get into a car crash, right? And one of the characters says, I thought the car was going to blow up. And the other character says, that only happens in the movies.
00:20:56
Speaker
And then the car blows up anyway. Like as an audience member, you roll your eyes because that is a stupid line. That is like them trying to say, yeah, it's stupid, but we did the stupid and you don't get to have it both ways. and I know this is about games, but I feel the same way in in the last of us.
00:21:14
Speaker
you have to do that like you have to do several puzzles where you either need to get a palette to get Ellie across a body of water because she can't swim or you need to find a ladder to get to a higher ground and at a certain point in the third act of the game a character remarks like oh another another we're gonna need to find another ladder to get out of this room and I'm like if you are acknowledging that we as the player are sick of doing this thing over and over Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this? Right. If, if, if the only reason this works in your movie is so is because Deadpool like makes a joke about it and that makes it okay, maybe just don't do it and write different jokes. Yeah. Ah, okay. But now, now that we've gotten that out of our system, the summer blockbuster, right?
00:22:00
Speaker
Um, this was, this was all an excuse. I love that there was just like a collective sigh of relief. That's, that's, that's all that's out. That's all the time with doomsday and secret wars.
00:22:16
Speaker
um It's, I mean, it is, it is very upsetting to me. Like I never like being on this side of the, of the critical reception. Usually i I kind of align with the general consensus, but this is one of those rare times where it's like, I don't understand. I don't understand why people love this. It's great if you do, it's important to find things that you love in everyday life. I do not understand it, but Um, ah but, uh, what, uh, what does this say about the summer blockbuster? Obviously this is a really rare case of, uh, of an R rated movie making a splash, uh, in the summer. Right. A lot of summer blockbusters are not R rated. Do we know, Darren, I'm going to assume, you know, off the top of your head, what is inception? What is a reception rated?
00:23:08
Speaker
I do not know. I assume PG 13, right? It's not, it's certainly not a horror. Um, it's certainly not. Okay. I think, um, uh, let's see here. The sixth sense. Is that our gladiator? Are these are a total recall? These might be like our closest to our rate.
00:23:23
Speaker
less oppenheim and oppenheim maria They made a bunch of they made a bunch of sex in a bunch of rooms of that movie had they did a bunch of boobs MPA is org. So gladiator is or Okay. Okay. And then what was the other one you mentioned cuz there was another potential one there as well. I think six six cents I have no a little spooky but not too spooky Does it have boobs in it?
00:23:48
Speaker
Oh, or does it get kicked in the head? It actually gets kicked in the head. I think it might be. It's PG 13. Okay. And if it has more than two sexual, more than two non-sexual folks, I think is the thing as well.
00:24:01
Speaker
Sure. Okay. Well, I guess ah all to say, like an R rated movie anywhere near the top of the summer list is incredibly, incredibly rare. Right. um Jaws is probably not our, what do we think about Jaws? Hold on.
00:24:22
Speaker
Jaws being the thing that helped invent the summer blockbuster. Yeah. The idea of like the wide opening as well. Like, again, this is insane how much of what we think about as like the act of movie going really came to Jaws. PG. Nice little PG.
00:24:38
Speaker
yeah Well, because PG-13 didn't exist back in the day. yeah They in heaven yeah had to invent PG-13 for Spielberg. right That was the thing. It was after it was Raiders, wasn't it? When he was like, I'm going to melt these guys' faces off. And they're like, I don't know if like i don't know if that's PG-13. Raiders and gremlins, I heard. This is what I was always thinking.
00:24:57
Speaker
just Yeah. And like, it's like, so, and then he's like, so this movie is going to have a moment where somebody tears a heart out of beating heart out of somebody's chest. Like, that's what the PhD thirteens for, I think. love it But like, so Joel's invented summer glove busters. Like before that, people just didn't go to the movies in the summer. The idea was that like people were outside where it was sunny. Like the idea of releasing movies in the summer was seen as something people laughed at. Um, it's like psycho people didn't go to the start of movies before psycho you just buy a ticket and you walk into whatever movie he was playing. insane behavior in my mind. yeah you genuinely insane If it was halfway through, you would watch the second half and then you watch the first half and then you'd leave. And it wasn't until psycho that people were like, you know what, we're going to lock the doors. If you don't arrive after the first 10 minutes, and top company I remember talking to my my dad, who was like a huge cinephile growing up in, in like the fifties and sixties in Chicago. And in summer, the only reason they would go to the movies is because their local theater advertised air conditioning.
00:25:54
Speaker
yeah no one No one in the neighborhood had air conditioning. And so it was like during heat waves, they'd be like, well, let's go to the movie. And they're like, what are you going to see? It's like literally doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter when we're just going to go there for eight hours and watch whatever they put in front of us.
00:26:06
Speaker
So yeah, so JAWS is considered the kickoff, ah the the really interesting thing. So I found a wonderful kind of IMDB list of every summer blockbuster from 1975 JAWS to ah to Inside Out to current day. But I went back a few more years so we could actually see the math. And Eric, if you want to show my beautifully organized spreadsheet, you you are allowed to do so. um But like,
00:26:30
Speaker
Uh, so I started from 16, 69 here. So like, uh, biggest movie of the summer was midnight cowboy, right? 44 million, uh, catch 22, 24 million, shaft 7 million, uh, deliverance 46 million. Then we get our very first blip up of American graffiti. George Lucas is, um, yeah Probably but we could probably consider to be his feature directorial debut if we want to count THX. I don't know Mainstream debut mainstream debut, right? We get a little bit of blip and then back down for the longest yard in 1974 then jaws blows the fucker wide open 470 million dollars, right? And then and then we go to 1976 put the poor the omen
00:27:23
Speaker
which is those for you the last dying breath of like the old summer movies. The Omen only gets 60 million. And then after that, it is 200 million or over for your summer blockbuster, uh, star killer. Yeah. Yeah. With star Wars, uh, new hope. So, uh, just like to me, looking at those numbers for those handful of years before Jaws, where it's like, Oh, nothing, nothing, nothing. Oh, what's America? Nevermind.
Nostalgia for Past Blockbusters
00:27:50
Speaker
It's nothing. Oh shit. Jaws. Yeah.
00:27:54
Speaker
yeah the the booms in the eighty shows they first movie to make over $100 million at the box office. Did I hear that recently? I think I read that this morning. Yeah. obviously Not counting inflation, but yeah. None of these prices are adjusted for inflation. Yeah.
00:28:12
Speaker
And when you when you look at, the you know, like you said, once once, especially when Star Wars came out in 77, hitting the ground running in the 80s, launching, you know, these these major, what would become major franchises, you know, with Star Wars sequels and Indiana Jones and Alien and Ghostbusters and Beverly Hills Cop.
00:28:28
Speaker
And that was, the to me, obviously growing up, like I don't remember seeing, I don't know if I saw any movies in the 80s, because I exited the 80s at three years old. But ah in you know the 90s, I just saw a shit ton of movies with my family. yeah And every summer, I remember it being, having almost every year that moment, when we talk about games, we're talking about those moments where we're like, oh, everything's different now. Like Mario 64, he's running around in 3D, everything's different now. Everything's different.
00:28:54
Speaker
every yeah Every summer as a kid, I was like, that man, I don't know why someone took me at four years old to see term Terminator 2, but I was like, that man turned into liquid, everything's new. That man put dinosaurs on the screen, everything's different now. a Twister came out, they pour apart a cow was flying through the air, everything's done. like everything's the They blew up the White House in Independence Day, everything's different. this is like Everything's changed. Oh my God, he brought a camera back in time to the storming of Normandy. Everything's different.
00:29:21
Speaker
Like, it just felt like every summer I was just like, had my breath taken away. um And I want to have my breath taken away again. And very rarely are movies taking my breath away.
00:29:33
Speaker
You know, we got that lovely blip ah last year with Barbenheimer, right? Which is like, oh, these are two phenomenal and very different and, you know, kind of unusual. Barbie won the summer as a comedy. yeah That doesn't happen. Yeah. And on an IP that everyone was like, you're making it. It's like when when it got announced in the trades, it's like, you me really? Got a girl wig? Indie darling coming off. ah little women. yeah this is we doing Really? yeah You're making this movie. And then we're like, Oh, wait, nevermind. My mistake. You, you made the right choice here. Absolutely. Absolutely. Just a shout out there. I think there's a debate in the comments about like movies being omitted. They're talking about not seeing Tim Burton's Batman. If I remember correctly, didn't Burton's Batman top the global box office, but last crusade top the domestic box office for 89. I think these are global. These are, these are
00:30:24
Speaker
ah Batman probably won the year. So ah what the what this chart is, is movies that won the summer, not necessarily the year, but these are the summer blockbusters. And so actually, you can see in my in my notes here. ah Last Crusades 1989, Batman was number two in the summer. Probably Batman had. I mean, Batman had incredible legs at the box office and kept going. But this is just talking about who won the summer.
00:30:52
Speaker
My computer is not on this list.
00:30:56
Speaker
tracecy didn't win trace I really liked Dick Tracy. I really watched it recently. Like it's, it's, and I assume you guys talked about like the weird vanity-ness of like every couple of years, Warren Beatty will do something in character as Dick Tracy, which we retain the rights in character where he's just wearing a fedora. Therefore it's retaining the rights of it. Like there was one where he was like interviewed in a chair. Like it was a talk show kind of like Charlie Rose style in the character as Dick Tracy to retain the rights.
00:31:24
Speaker
He's just going to be like, he films like a 60 second cameo. Yeah. He's photographed with the hat on is the thing like in the street. Like I really do like, um, like Dick Tracy so much. Again, that's one of the way for the post Batman kind of like remember the nineties when they were like, do people like superheroes? It's like, no, they like 1930s pulp heroes. So we're going to do the Phantom. We're going to do the shadow. We're going to make up the rocketeer. Like it's, it's so incredible.
00:31:53
Speaker
By the way, ah the one of the greatest triple features ever. you know Start with the shadow. That's the weakest. go to Go to Phantom. Billy Zane. Oh, my boy. And then and then Rocketeer, right? The Rocketeers.
00:32:05
Speaker
you're so good to to me oh yeah go have that Oh, and I was just going to say like, uh, the, the lovely thing is, you know, what I try, how I tried to organize this list is just by like, what I was looking for was connections, right? And to me, like there were actually far less, um, properties together than I thought, you know, we get five out of the nine star Wars movies on this list.
00:32:30
Speaker
um More surprising, as far as I'm concerned, is four out of the six Jurassic Park universe movies are on the summer blockbuster topping. like
00:32:43
Speaker
i Oh, hello. Oh no, you're back. I think you did a little clip. Yeah, you're back. to I blipped Thanos. yeah It is a numbers game. Like, so do we count like the young franchises where like the first three Indies get on there or the first two Shrek's get on there? Like, do we count like franchises that clearly have the most steam at the start? And then like audiences are like, we like this. We just don't like it as much as we used to. Yeah. Yeah. Beverly Hills cop back to the future. Yeah. Yeah. where there's a point at which like, they they go pretty good. And then like, to be fair, they're still making lots of money. They're just not making all of the money, you know? um Absolutely. But like, you know, the three original Indiana Jones movies, uh, obviously make the cut. And I want to say both of the other Indiana Jones, or at least, you know, crystal skull was number two, uh, second to the dark night. Yeah. Seconds of the dark night. Right. Which is like, okay, obviously the dark night's winning, but you know, like don't make it up there.
00:33:44
Speaker
ah weird It was head-to-head that and dead reckoning part one they were like and locked in So close. um I love that. jack and Obviously, you put a lot of work into ah into this. I love this spreadsheet. Yeah, I feel like we had a bit of a disagreement over what what is summer, which is a weird thing to argue about. But you had a what what was your rule
Changing Movie Release Strategies
00:34:06
Speaker
of like? ways So ah doing some research as far as what the film industry considers summer, it starts at roughly the last week of May.
00:34:18
Speaker
and goes until sometime September ish. Yeah. What if I told you summer is a state of mind? And I think a summer you get summer movies, came like you could be a summer movie on vibes and it doesn't matter when you release.
00:34:36
Speaker
Oh, this is your James Cameron always makes a summer movie, I think was your every James Cameron movie is a summer blockbuster, even though never releases just before Christmas just before Christmas. ah The Super Mario Brothers movie is a summer blockbuster, even though it released on April 5th. You know what? I'm going to go out. Ryan Coogler makes summer blockbuster. I know Black Panther released at the beginning of February, and his next vampire movie is releasing in February. That feels like February is summertime early because of global warming. So thanks. Well, more to the point, though, I will argue that this is the theaters and that the studios are trying to push summer. like it is a conscious There's a conscious attempt to roll back summer. So I would argue that things like like Jack mentioned the end of May. I think it is at the very least at the start of May, like the start of May is only seen as the starting pistol going back to Iron Man and like Marvel traditionally would mark out the first weekend in May as a release. Now, obviously that worked out very well for them last year with like quantum mania. That was just a slam dunk. But generally speaking, it's like the start of May is like the start of the corridor. Um, and you will also have attempts like
00:35:37
Speaker
everybody always goes, why did Warner and brothers spend so much time with Zack Snyder? Uh, which is great. I love invoking Zack Snyder in the podcast. Everybody's perfectly rational. Everybody. I love that you sounded like a Zack Snyder character saying that by the way, Jack, I appreciate that. Um, but like,
00:35:55
Speaker
Setting aside any personal feelings about Snyder and without getting into arguments about it, people are like, why did Warner spend so much time and effort, like trying to get Snyder to release movies that we're going to have mass appeal? And the reason is because he opened 300 in March and there was this big argument at whether like, whether Snyder could like take the flag of summer and push it back into March. That is what the Warner brothers Zack Snyder project was.
00:36:19
Speaker
We're going to keep giving this guy money because if he keeps releasing movies in March that play well, we can then begin colonizing April. And then if that happens, because obviously the thing is you, you want these big tent poles, you want movies with big opening weekends. You can't got gamble on a Barbenheimer. You generally don't, we want your own weekend if you're releasing a big tent pole. And there are only so many weekends, obviously between the start of May and as you said, like early September.
00:36:45
Speaker
But it is like if we can push those back one direction or the other. And I do think like August is interesting. because August is kind of like the dying days of summer. August is like where summer goes to die, right? where because that's You're getting ready to go back to school, but it's like if a studio has no faith in a movie, they will typically like dump it in August. August is like the dumping month. like you know halloween we talk about board i You know a Halloween movie is bad when they open it in August. like that's That's how bad August is. You legally have to release a knockover. Yeah. bus Like if they're like, it's just that bad, we can't legally release it in October. It's like yeah into August, it goes. So next 20, 25, in theory, April 4th, I'm imagining one of these will move. But ah the next Fast and the Furious movie, which I'm not sure if it's fast 11 or fast 10 part two ah and the Minecraft movie.
00:37:40
Speaker
both of those Minecraft movie, I think you have to describe it as. And like Charlie Day, I think, or one of the, I think maybe one of the, some of you guys. Yeah. Like those feel like summer blockbusters at heart, even though they may not. And I'd say that August, September, we get away from summer. I think in October, we get back into summer. Cause I think we're getting venom movies. We're getting Joker movies. We're getting folks excited that new experiences. Cause we're really, we're releasing the dangerous summer blockbuster. I was about to say, you have to, you have to separate the venom for bullets. But like the Joker thing is like October is like pre-prestige. It's like the summer of Oscar season is where like October is. It's if you have a movie that you think is coming, going to qualify for awards, but you think he's going to play well at the box office. He put it in October. So it can play basically through the awards season. Obviously that same argument applies to venom because everybody's like Tom Hardy is taking home all of the Oscars. But yeah, he, he, he, he, he's a horse.
00:38:38
Speaker
um is a horse guy And then he like, he like Ang the hulks like across the desert and Ang Lee hulks. ah perfect gas is all got to have yeah im having a Blood clot related stroke right now at that sentence, Marty, that venom Ang Lee's a hulk horse is, is not a sentence. and was a a whole worth The image that those words put into your mind is the image in the trailer. Like it's it's a perfectly accurate description of what happens.
00:39:07
Speaker
but like Yeah, as as Marty said, that is the dangerous release where it's like this is not a summer movie, but also it could be a summer movie. Well, you and not exist like there is definitely like, and we, we talked about this when we talked about ah Die Hard, whether or not it's a Christmas movie, obviously Die Hard released in the summer planning for a Christmas home video release a Titanic very famously, you know, a Christmas movie, but Cameron knew that the home video release would be perfect for summer. And so like there was a little bit of that, but now we are in this age in which, oh, things come to streaming so fast is
00:39:46
Speaker
You know, Pete, but we still need that box office to make the obscene amount of money back. So where where did the summer blockbuster is a little wibbly wobbly ever since home video?
00:40:01
Speaker
and it is it is But again, like it it's generally been okay. The problem is that you get into a situation where it's that one weekend thing. It's that idea of like movies that cost so much that you can only afford to release one of them a weekend because yeah like it absolutely needs to dominate. You can't have it like you can't have two movies taking the auction out and killing each other, which is a problem. like You look at about three or four weeks ago, there was For the first time in two or three years, you had like three movies make over $20 million at the box office, like inside out to long legs. And I can't remember what the other one was. And I feel really twisted. Oh, maybe twisters or maybe a quiet place. I can't remember one of those two. Oh yeah. I think a quiet place did very well. Yeah. Well, so I just read long legs, uh, box office surpassed Furiosa, which is just weird. If you would have said that a year ago, I'd have been like, why, what are the legs and why are they long? I guess it, I guess it had really long legs at the box office.
00:40:52
Speaker
Ah, beautiful. What a beautiful movie that was. Also, just a small aside, we still get wonderful movies like Long Lakes and Twisters. Absolutely. This has been a pretty good summer, to be fair. Honestly, this has been great. A quiet place. You've had Twisters. I liked Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. I don't think it's a masterpiece. This is the best of the Apes movie.
00:41:14
Speaker
yeah yeah But it's like it's still an apes movie. There's a token apes. They're talking apes and they do stuff like yeah they play. They cosplay Gladiator. Like I just know the Proxima was really excited for the Gladiator 2 trailer. And I'm so happy for him. um But yeah, like you had like Furiosa. Yeah. But Dune 2 is a March release. That doesn't count as a summer hour. Listen, the Dune movies are summer blockbusters regardless of the first release in November.
00:41:41
Speaker
You got that much sand in your movie. So it's a beach movie. lovely It's so beachy. We forgot the water. It's like it's all beach. yeah Oh, absolutely. Oh, go ahead, Marty. No, I was just going to. No, no, no, because my thing's kind of taking us in a slightly different direction.
00:41:59
Speaker
Oh, no. And not that's what I was hoping for. Cause I was just going to button up the, the box office thing, which is that like, they've always been playing ah with the summer box office draw, whether or not they're planning for, you know, home video release or not. Like they've always been trying to, I believe what Darren said is colonizing April. Um,
00:42:19
Speaker
um which I think is beautiful. They have always been trying to stretch out the hype season, right? Which has now stretched out the hype to a point in which there isn't a lot of hype left. Thanks, Hollywood. Well, I mean, you look at like Christmas where Christmas is like generally been like where you release a Prestige fair or some family fair and it's now Star Wars. It was briefly like star up until the pandemic. It was Star Wars Island.
00:42:43
Speaker
Disney were just like, can we release a Star Wars movie on Christmas and have it be like the biggest movie of the year? And twice, twice they're like, yes, yes, we can, which is insane. And I mean, I think also to be fair, even Rogue One did fairly well in the Christmas thought as well.
00:42:59
Speaker
yeah see what I'm saying it was a mistake to move solo to me. That was obviously the only problem with that movie um oh god you thank you was but thatla bookie ah good man out but the closest thing First of all, that's chunky crunchy Chewbacca's son and he's about to watch his grandfather watch pornography. All right and he leave that you leave that the door porn If I remember correctly, right was It was ah like a Diana Ross music video. biography yeah Yeah, but it was like it was a virtual reality. I think as well it makes it even weirder. We're like grab us about to get freaky. like
00:43:37
Speaker
You're not gonna know what grandpa's reacting to, but grandpa's gonna be reacting to it. um That was the first, was that the first reaction video? Like pre-dated YouTube, chunky, reacting to grandpa's porn? What a weird sentence. That's a weirder sentence than venom venom horse, angley, hulks. Those also sound like Manchurian candidate, like things you say in an active way, like a sleeper cell. A sleeper cell. A boxcar, a rubber band.
00:44:06
Speaker
ah Are there are there any summer blockbusters from either you know? 80s 90s thoughts or anything that like you look back on like really fondly as having good memories of like seeing this in theaters Maybe seeing it multiple times. I have like obviously all their problems that that arose afterwards I really like the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy like I saw each of those movies in theaters several times I really like adventure movies and And I feel like we just don't get a lot of movies that feel like adventure movies, like kind of like, you know, Princess Bridey, like Indiana Jones. um And and ah those were movies that I just kind of loved and associated with their summers because they were things I'd be like, oh, this is really great. I'll go and see it with my parents and then I'll go see it with my friends. And like by the end of the summer, I'd seen them like three or four times. And I was like, man, Corfor Binsky, what are you doing? You're directing really good movies. Yeah.
00:44:56
Speaker
I would argue that the problem with like adventure movies is that like we started moving towards green screens. It's no coincidence that like the pirates come out on the cusp of green screens. They're the last movies that you will make in a tank like that unless you are James Cameron, you know? And everyone points to the Stellan Sarsgaard character of being like, oh my god, look at the like the like the prosthetics on that, and Davy Jones, and being like, oh my god, look at how great that looks.
00:45:17
Speaker
the And the thing is that if you you look at those movies, that's the last time I think you could have got away with that because now a studio looks at that and goes, yeah, before half the budget, we can just film it in front of a green screen and it will look like, you know, Barbados. It will look like the Bahamas. It will look like, you know, the Caribbean. um And nobody will know the difference, but there is a difference. I think you can like just instinctively tell the difference between what is real and what is fake. And more than that, even if you can't, you know that it's so easy to make that stuff fake that even when you do see it, you don't necessarily trust it.
00:45:46
Speaker
I do think maybe that's the reason why we have seen such a push away from adventure movies. Because even something like, say, you mentioned Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, obviously the Crystal Skull is a great example of that, because that's a movie that looks like it takes place entirely inside a computer compared to the actual locations.
00:46:02
Speaker
yeah you know at least Raiders and last crusade. I know that like temple of doom is mostly on sound stages, but you know, last crusade and Raiders used real locations and they filmed on there, but you look at say crystal skull and you look at say dial of destiny. And I know dial of destiny did do a lot of location shooting, but it's also digitally graded and computer aided that it may as well have been shot in a green screen. So it doesn't, as you said, it doesn't have that same like adventure feeling to it. It doesn't have the texture of the tactility to it. Although maybe I'm willing to accept I'm just an old man who's out of touch shaking my fist at the sky, Marty.
00:46:33
Speaker
Maybe their kids were like, dial of destiny. Man, that is a thrilling adventure movie. It reminds me of like getting on an airplane with my grandpa. um I think it's just like, yeah, we got a crap we airplane with
Real Stunts vs CGI in Modern Films
00:46:46
Speaker
grandpa. Exactly. Yeah. The it's something we talked about when we were talking about like Tom Cruise and his mission of possible movies and how basically half of the production budget goes to Tom Cruise's insurance payments. So he can say, I almost murdered myself for this movie.
00:47:02
Speaker
And like part of that is what leads to the excitement of those movies, knowing that Tom Cruise broke his ankle, jumping, actually jumping from building to building does add a, a sense of, moment I don't know if momentum is the right word, but like, uh, tactility, perhaps texture and ability.
00:47:23
Speaker
Oh, tangibility into which you where you are watching these movies, it has that palpable excitement. And guess what? We all I don't think anyone cares that it's green screen, but we all know it's green screen and it lowers the hype. It lowers the excitement.
00:47:39
Speaker
There's also just, I feel like there are certain people who like, I don't think we're saying like CG is bad, but it's just like there's, it's an art that I feel like a lot of people use as a shortcut as opposed to using it as like, oh, this is one of the one of the brushes I have in my bag. um And and it's it's the it's when you watch a movie where you're like, oh,
00:48:03
Speaker
and That's why a lot of the modern MCU movies are just like, Oh, okay. Clearly you filmed this in Atlanta. These two actors probably weren't there at the same time. You stitched them together. This is, this is reshoots like yeah seeing the, uh, seeing the, the captain America four trailer. I'm just like, Oh, none of this looks, this none of this looks real. Like there's a fight in a cherry blossom or, uh, like yeah think it start start like at the DC on like the, yeah. Yeah. where yeah like at the end and it really does look like it's there hiding like that it takes place in the Pentagon or something like it yeah does look like like zoom background level quality CGI and I accept to be clear we're not blaming the CGI artists like it's a it's a you know it's an art form that is like an as you said like any other I think for Yosa earlier in the year you CGI absolutely wonderful you mentioned you mentioned like Davy Jones's tentacles which are one of the great CGI effects and those are from 2003 you know and like VFX artists are incredibly put upon by directors and executives who don't necessarily know what they want. They aren't clear about what they want. There's production crunch. There's what's called pixel. Fucking um is the term that's used in the industry. Like it is not the VFX artists fault, but yes, like I'm watching that and I'm thinking,
00:49:08
Speaker
either they are so like so doubt that that is exactly the shot I'm thinking of. And there's quite a few of them like that. It looks exactly like either the like VFX artists haven't had the time they need to get that done or the producers are worried that like this fight actually takes place in the Pentagon and they want to throw off suspicion.
00:49:25
Speaker
or they shot on a green screen because they haven't decided where the fight's going to take place. Like there's a great example of that from like Thor Ragnarok, which is again, a movie I really like. oh yeah I really, really love Thor Ragnarok, but there's the sequence where like hella breaks the, um, the hammer. Yeah. Yeah. That took place. That was shot, I believe in an alleyway, or at least it was meant to take place in alleyway. At least you can see in the trailers. And then yes, thank you, Eric. They did that to it in post. Cause they were like, that doesn't seem suitably Epic. And it looks just so uncanny when you watch it in like movement, because you're like, you could tell that that this wasn't shot in a field and there are plenty of fields in Atlanta. Like Atlanta has lots of grass.
00:50:01
Speaker
You could find a field that if you wanted to shoot that on grass, you could shoot it on grass, but you you didn't make the decision when you were filming it and decided to fix it in post. It's like, it's the use of CG. It's not CGI. As you said, it's a brush. It's a tool like any other. It can be used absolutely beautifully. But I think when it is used as a very easy way to avoid making decisions early in the process, you end up with results that are disconcerting. The Galaxy movies use a lot of CG, but it's very cool. Like James Gunn clearly has a vision for what his movies are going to be from the get go. And so like,
00:50:31
Speaker
By the end, you don't get the feeling that it's like, oh, none of these people are in a room together and they're kind of stitching everything in at the last moment. You get, oh, like he's using it again. A tool and is it is ah in his box. And that's like, I'm really looking forward to Superman. next I'm not even the big, I'm not a huge Superman fan.
00:50:47
Speaker
at all, but I'm really looking forward to his take on Superman because I feel like him take him bringing his ah his storytelling chops and his ah his visual aesthetic, which in my opinion has gotten stronger and stronger you know over the course of the past decade or so, has me really excited for it.
00:51:02
Speaker
But crucially, like that movie is releasing the same day as Fantastic Four, and it wrapped a day after Fantastic Four began filming. started yeah yeah And I believe the rumor is, and again, this is just a rumor I need to put my hands up, Fantastic Four does not have a finished script yet, like that's which is insane.
00:51:18
Speaker
finishing wait a minute yeah Insane. That's insane. Let's make sure you have lots of shots at the back of the actors heads so we can just dub in whatever we need via ADR. Want to do the Madam Web thing where we just have them like cover their mouths while they're talking and we can just dub in anything over it. It's completely ADR the villain. So you're like, what? Shoot him from the nose up. Yeah. That's the key. That's the key.
00:51:43
Speaker
What is something I'd like to bring up? Looking at all of the past summer blockbusters, something that ah one of something I did not know and something that is a clear outlier, obviously, like we're we're talking about a lot of big movies, a lot of action movies, a lot of adventure movies, a lot of fantasy and sci fi. Most of the sci fi, though, is Star Wars. But like, you know, big movies, right? Like you're in the theater. You want big spectacle movies. ah One outlier that is ah part of a genre that no no other film is part of a genre of is 1990s ghost.
00:52:19
Speaker
Have you rewatched Ghost recently? I have not rewatched Ghost recently. it is it is a great It is so much movie. It is like all, every kind of movie just smushed together. It's like you think it's a romance movie and it is a romance movie. You think it might be a movie as movie about moving on. It kind of is. You might think it's kind of like a PG, like young audience friendly horror and it kind of is as well. You may think it's a movie about the end of the eighties and yuppies and it kind of is as well. You may think that there's an extended subplot of the star of the movie about like swindling and embezzlement at a Wall Street firm.
00:52:49
Speaker
And it absolutely is that too. You may think it's also a movie about a hustler who is like pretending to be a psychic, but turns out weight actually is a psychic. And it's that too. It is all kinds of movies smushed into a hundred minute runtime. You know, it is, it is funny. It is thrilling. It has action beats. It has suspense beats. It has romance. It's like, it's incredible because they literally do not make movies like that anymore because the studio executive would like spray you with a bottle of water and hit you with a like a newspaper. If you tried, if you came into the studio and were like, I got a pitch, it's like, get off my desk. No, it's a beautiful movie, but like it is the, it is the one thing that does not fit and in, in like all with all of, you know, like amongst your Jurassic parks or lion Kings, even diehard three, ah even let's, what's another weird one, you know, even Barbie, which is a very weird summer blockbuster kind of fits in with all of these other things goes to the clear outlier. And by the way, this is something I did not know directed by Jerry Zucker. Yep. One, one third of the Zaz a Zucker brother. no delete Yep. This got a best picture nominations as he did not get a ah best director nomination.
Unexpected Blockbuster Successes
00:54:01
Speaker
There was scandal. Let me tell you, it's his green book.
00:54:04
Speaker
It is his green book. He did Peter. properly What I do like is I am kind of like going through all of the second place winners um in 19. What what is this in 1980? In 1980, Empire Strikes Back beat out the summer to the Zucker brothers airplane. Yeah. And so Jerry Zucker got his chance to come back 10 years later. I'll show. I'll show.
00:54:33
Speaker
but ghost is incredible. Like it is, I believe it the writer has described as a movie that began with like an acid trip in like the late sixties and then ended up being a movie released in 1990, which is exactly what you want to hear. Uh, no. And, and you know, like took over the cultural zeitgeist with a unchanged melody with, you know, pottery in general. It's sexy. Now people, erotic pottery.
00:54:57
Speaker
like And then Naked God does a parody, which I love as well, because that's the other brother. The other Zucker brother does like the parody of like the pottery scene from Ghost. That's kind of genius to be like, you make the serious one, I'll goof on it.
00:55:13
Speaker
like i I do. Again, and it's worth putting this context. Ghost is basically like the equivalent of something like, say, Inception or like, you know, ah Joker or like Black Panther, where it's the blockbuster that is not only so financially successful, but so like beloved by the public that there's no choice but to give it a Best Picture nomination.
00:55:37
Speaker
Oh, yeah, just huge. But ah like there is ah there i'm I'm hard to find another movie on that list that even has a romantic subplot is I guess what I'm saying. And so it is just so far out there. It's like big ups to Patrick Swayze for carrying, you know, this movie to the the start of that. Hey, now oh Eric is showing Shrek.
00:56:03
Speaker
And Shrek 2, which I believe played in competition at Cannes, which is one of my favorite facts about Shrek 2. Like it it was in competition at Cannes. Maybe. I'll give you that maybe.
00:56:17
Speaker
I'll give you Shrek maybe. I don't know. I just i think it's it's an inch with Shrek. I'll give you an interest Shrek and Shrek 2 for a romance subplot.
Anticipation for Future Blockbusters
00:56:27
Speaker
um So we do like, how do we feel going forward? Do we feel like the summer blockbusters? Like we said this year has had some, some you know. pretty fun times at the at the movie theater, both big budget and small budget. um Like, do do we feel do we feel confident in the fact that, you know, next year we're getting our our best Nefurias and Minecrafts and more Jurassic and Superman and and and Fantastic Four? Yeah, we're getting more karate kid, more dirty dancing. Yeah, we're not getting played when we get out of here.
00:57:02
Speaker
Um, like, do we, do we feel, do we feel good about that? Do we feel, and obviously like the summer afterwards is supposedly going to be the big one cause that I think Batman's coming back and Toy Story and in theory, the Mandalorian and yeah,
00:57:18
Speaker
yeah I'm excited that in two years we're getting this in May 15th slot is the Spielberg untitled UFO, like him being like, I got one more alien to be left with. Close encounters of the fourth kind. yeah i got I got one more in me. I'm like, OK, I'm down for this. Yeah. i To me, like this is what I love going to the movies. I still love going to the movies. I am. I think people in general love going to the movies. But if we keep seeing movie ticket prices the way they are and home theater setups getting nicer and dicer,
00:57:54
Speaker
i I see us circling this intellectual property drain that we are a little bit in right now. Top gun, Jurassic world, Despicable Me 3, Captain America, Jurassic world, yeah Transformers, Iron Man Avengers, Harry Potter, Toy Story, Harry Potter. Like we've been circling this IP drain for a long, long time. mean to bring it back to like dead zo ah no Do we think a ah people are going to use it as a effective blueprint, or do we think that is a right right place, right time, right right person kind of thing? Right. Yeah. That means you know that is either that is either like ah the start of the next data point, or that is the longest yard in the Omen from the last data point. That's going to be 30 years from now, people are going, open hybrid just came up.
00:58:49
Speaker
That is the scene where they had sex to the Bhagavad Gita.
00:58:54
Speaker
like yeah um It's a is a suspense thriller. There's a 10 minute sequence where they have five meetings about one meeting, man. It's incredible. I love the assumption that Josh Hartnett will be the guy from trap to future generations. likem assuming it's the big movie person I don't know. yeah yeah They didn't show for critics. So I i don't know yet. I know it's not opening until this weekend in Ireland.
00:59:19
Speaker
But like, to the point about like Oppenheimer, I think that are there directors who could do that anymore? When is the new Jordan Peele movie opening? Because he did mark the date. It got moved to October. It was coming out, I believe. It was going to be like a Christmas Day movie. And then it got moved, I think October 2026. Okay. Always will. Yeah. He is kind of moving out of summer. Because Nope was a great summer movie. And if I remember correctly,
00:59:44
Speaker
And like us was an early summer movie. And obviously I think like, uh, get out was a February movie because people were like, yeah we don't know if this is going to be good. Um, and then it ends up grossing nearly half a billion dollars. But like, it does feel like you need the directors to make those movies. Like if you Marty had that like wonderful monologue earlier on when he was talking about like going to the cinema in the nineties and being blown away and just naming Spielberg movies.
01:00:06
Speaker
I just being like, I went and I went to soil Spielberg movie and it blew my mind every time he was doing something different that I'd never seen before. And it's very telling that like in that case, what was drawing you to the cinema, whether consciously or not, to be clear, you may, I i imagine you may not have been conscious feel like you made us been like, Oh, dinosaurs. Cool. o norman yeah Cool. yeah Man fedora. Cool. Um, like, but i I, you know, you have this idea of directors being able to mark out spaces and do things in the summer that are cool. Like Nolan Nolan has marked the like July 27th weekend as the Nolan weekend. The last weekend of July is traditionally the Christopher Nolan weekend, where I think every movie of his last date with the exception of a interstellar has released in that window because he just, he likes being a summer guy. He believes his movies are summer movies. And like, you can tell that like, when they were releasing Oppenheimer, there was a real bit of like,
01:00:54
Speaker
this really feels like it's more of a fall movie this is a movie it's a three-hour movie about the guy who built the atomic bomb and there aren't really any car chases in it and it's like no if you put it in summer it'll if it's good enough it will attract audiences and audience will go and see it and fall in love with it and that that is the thing that is that is the problem for me is that you have this kind of flood of IP in the zone and it's just like you're conditioning people to just go and see things they already know and things they already recognize.
Impact of Intellectual Property on Cinema
01:01:22
Speaker
And you wonder why when you release new movies they don't go and see those new movies. It's because the movies that you have told them and conditioned them to think are important are the ones that are franchise brand extensions
01:01:33
Speaker
And the problem is that you can only keep returning to the well so often before it runs dry. We saw that with, you know, arguably with mission impossible, arguably with like Indiana Jones, the dial-up destiny last year, we saw it with like the flash trying to bring back Michael Keaton and you can see it even in what Disney you're doing with Deadpool and Wolverine to circle back to the discussion that we all kind of were very happy to get away from earlier on. I know I'm just pulling us back in there.
01:01:56
Speaker
Yeah, but they're the nostalgia like it isn't like remember this movie that you saw three years ago that you like like it isn't like remember you like the Guardians movies that you saw three years ago. Remember you like the John Wick movies that you saw three years ago. This one's like, okay, well, we've exhausted all of the franchises that you can remember from three years ago.
01:02:12
Speaker
We've kind of worn out all the goodwill by just pumping them out film after film after film after film and sending them straight to streaming. You don't want to see Benedict Cumberbatch's face again as Dr. Strange for another five years. So how do we possibly find a way to make money? And it's like, okay, well, what if we go back to like movies that we didn't make ourselves movies that we acquired through the purchase of another studio and Oh, they haven't done this, like IP fracking that we're doing. So this is just ripe. We've done, we've expanded out. We've like pushed our borders forward and we can extract maximum value from that. And it's like, do you not see where this is going? Do you not? Like there are only so many properties that you can continue to exploit before you exhaust the resources that you have. And like,
01:02:55
Speaker
Pixar are a great example of this, where, like, after Disney bought Pixar, they made a rake of sequels to the classic Pixar films. And those made all of the money. And it was great. They had money fights in Pixar. The only problem is they conditioned people to think that Pixar just makes sequels to beloved Pixar movies. And eventually those sequels stopped making money, like Lightyear, for example. And people stopped going to see regular, like, new exciting Pixar movies because they just wanted to see the old ones rehashed. And so that meant that, you know, the only way that you could make money off the Pixar brand this year was releasing Inside Out 2,
01:03:25
Speaker
Because Inside Out was the only Pixar original film released between like 2010 and 2020 that, you know, was in a position where you could exploit nostalgia to that level for it. You're not going to make the better dinosaur and get one point six billion dollars. The only like ah critical and commercial hit that you have that is an original film in that decade long window is Inside Out 2. And now that you've done that, now that you've gone and you've milked that, you've got the one point six billion dollars, you've doubled the gross, the original film.
01:03:55
Speaker
What do Pixar do next that that has equivalent value? They release Toy Story 5, but is Toy Story 5 going to make as much money as Toy Story 4 did? Did Toy Story 4 make as much money as Toy Story 3 did? And I know that we're talking like over a billion dollars to the question, you know, it's not it's like, it's a really kind of like, eh, who really cares if they don't make as much money? But like, it's very telling you, look at your sheet. We talked about it earlier, Jack's wonderful spreadsheet, one of the great works of art of the 21st century. When you scroll down the franchises,
01:04:23
Speaker
You typically see the first three entries in a franchise will enter and then they'll just kind of drop off. So the biggest, you know, the, the most successful pirates movies are pirates two and pirates three. The most successful in Indiana Jones movies are and one, two, and three. The most successful Jurassic world movies are but okay. Well, those are an exception because they're the rebooted franchise, but like Shrek, the most successful Shrek movies are Shrek and Shrek two, you know, that sort of thing.
01:04:47
Speaker
Like, you need to generate new content in order to like exploit it in the future, as cynical as that sounds. You need to invest in new things so that you can later on exploit the nostalgia for them. what do You need something Like if, you if you're going to exploit nostalgia, you need something to provide a basis of the nostalgia that you're going to exploit. Sorry. This was my long winded rant. I apologize. No, Darren, like IP fracking, because, uh, what, you know, what we know of actual fracking is it causes the surface of the earth to collapse.
01:05:20
Speaker
Right like too much digging underneath the causes unstable ah ground and this is ah like a bell that has been that at least those of us who are passionate about movies have been ringing for a long time is What are like what are my kids my kids who are teenagers? What are they nostalgic for?
01:05:40
Speaker
I'll tell you what they're nostalgic for. No, not even, minya they are nostalgic for YouTubers they watched 10 years ago. like Because they didn't have their own movies. They only had the movies that I was nostalgic for. ah the We have gone so long without creating new things that we are going to be in a weird place in a and a handful of years. Yeah, yeah.
01:06:03
Speaker
Michael Bay's making a skippity movie. You kids like skippity? Skippity toilets? Skippity toilet movie? Who's gonna be nostalgic for that meme, right? Wait, literally Michael Bay's making a movie. That's what happens when you let ambulance fail. As a culture, we failed Michael Bay, which is not a sentence I ever thought I'd say. We did fail ambulance. Yeah, but it was just so good.
01:06:23
Speaker
He was like, is this too much drone? He's like, no, this is not enough drone. need more program You mean I can do this and I don't have to pay several hundred million dollars to hire at a jet? I will say there's a few things. I'm looking forward to looking at the the ah current slate, obviously subject change next year, 2025, summer, 2025 and 26.
01:06:44
Speaker
Obviously, a lot of franchises, which we already talked about. However, a couple of things I noticed that I'm excited about. Next May, the new movie from David Robert Mitchell, the guy who did It Follows and Under the Silver Lake, which I adore, but it felt like one of those movies where they're like, much like Richard Kelly in Southland Tales, like, you're never making a movie again. Like, give me the one box movie and then you get nothing else. I'm about to say, like, the thing with Richard Kelly is he got another shot. He just also whipped that other shot.
01:07:12
Speaker
uh stars Anna Hathaway and Ewan McGregor and the logline there's nothing we know about the movie except the loglines a family in the 80s starts to notice some bizarre happenings in their neighborhood hell yeah i'm in real the box energy from that pitch like i love a bizarre happening but i'm like you're giving an original movie to ah a to of someone with a great vision uh in 2026 Uh, we have, uh, March 20th, uh, which again, early, early summer project hail Mary, which is a book, uh, another, another space book from the guy who did, uh, Andy Weir, the guy who wrote the Martian, uh, directed by Lord and Miller. So a live action movie by Lord Miller, the Lego and spider verse guys jump street guys. Yeah. Yeah. Written by Drew Grodded, who I love. And then starring, uh, uh, Ryan Gosling, uh, Sandra Holler, who was nominated for anatomy the fall last year. Um,
01:08:00
Speaker
Brian Gossing in Space, not knowing what's going on. That sounds great. Put that man in space. Ronan has a movie, an untitled movie yeah set next summer. I'm assuming like a a cool so cool spooky movie by one of the great Irish directors currently out there. And and and then the Daniels have their follow up.
01:08:16
Speaker
Um, yeah he's everywhere, all that once in June again. So I'm like, I'm hopeful. Where's the Paul Thomas Anderson, Leonardo DiCaprio, LA heist movie. Oh yeah the bing imax movie yeah. Yeah. Like the one that that is like, it's, it could, it sounds like heat, but directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
01:08:32
Speaker
<unk>s make come out soon like teams i like that's happy nice year i'm assuming Yeah, but they've been shooting on location Red Los Angeles earlier this year. So that has to be a kind of a kind of maybe Vineland right like his take on the pension book. Yeah But like, I do love the idea of like Adderson being like, no, no, no, we need two years of post-production for all the CGI. I've decided it's going to, the inartic opera is going to have a talking raccoon sidekick. That's the big pitch here. Yeah. was made twenty or since po ah The end of summer 2019. Wasn't that once upon a time in Hollywood? I think that was like, yeah, August, that was August. guess Yeah. Yeah. So that was, that was an exciting. Yeah. We just need more. I'm hope. Yeah. I know that's probably going to come back and bite me in the ass, but I'm hopeful.
01:09:17
Speaker
ah so can be yeah and There will always be like, again, ah the joy and the excitement of the success of like, Marvin Heimer last year, where I was just kind of sitting in dread, kind of like waiting for that that to have the worst possible outcome. Now, of course, the worst possible outcome is that the studios have learned absolutely nothing. I've just been, what if we release two movies at the same time? Is that a thing? And it's a they like, that is the thing about Hollywood when movies succeed. And when good movies succeed, you're like, the lesson from this is so obvious, yeah so obvious and studios movies. Yeah. And studios are like, hold on. What if it's all patrol? Um, yeah it's like, I feel like you're, you missed, you missed the point. This is so close. they were so close and that Very far away is like give just directors the ability to produce good movies. That's like, that's the only lesson you need to learn.
01:10:08
Speaker
you Get out of their way. get out What? Two movies. Yeah. I mean, we also there was I guess Furiosa was the other one as well. Oh, I feel like that's our intern. I'm shocked that it didn't work.
01:10:25
Speaker
Yeah. The Garfield prison movie. Um, like, have you seen? gar No, you have not seen Garfield. Garfield is such a strange movie. It is such a strange movie. It's about his relationship. See Garfield. Okay. All right. did We didn't see Garfield. Yeah. We have more of those standards than that.
01:10:44
Speaker
It's one of those movies where I have never looked at Garfield and been like, I feel like the key to this character is his relationship to his absent father voice by Samuel L. Jackson. But the movie's like, you know what? I think the key to this character is relationship to his absent father voice by Samuel L. Jackson. It's like Chris Pratt voices Garfield and Samuel L. Jackson. is And he's swell. See if Eric can find a picture of Garfield's dad from Garfield. I just think audiences need to see this because it is something that is it from from this year's Garfield. um It's an image of Samuel Jackson's Garfield's dad. I don't know what he's called. So I'm going to throw that out to Eric. There we go. Oh, there is. He's a chungus baby. Yeah. Big, big chungus Garfield. I do not like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's the entire movie. Um, I guess, uh, doing, doing like a little, little pivot into the others. Oh, I guess, do you guys have final blockbuster thoughts before I, can I have a segue that makes sense into what we've been watching and everything?
The Magic of Theater Experiences
01:11:41
Speaker
Ah, like big movies, like when things explode.
01:11:45
Speaker
Yeah. i hor good Popcorn good. Uh, like, you know, my, the, the final wrap up thing for me is I love seeing movies in movie theaters. Uh, and you know, so like, I know already I'm kind of an outlier where, um, you know, before you had to buy seats ahead of time, I would just go to the movie theater and buy a ticket for whatever movie was playing next, no matter what it was. Um, so I'm an outlier as far as general audiences are concerned, but it was always more exciting when that zeitgeist was altogether and you get to watch, you know, even
01:12:20
Speaker
Uh, okay. Something like I was about to make a polarizing example, yeah a less polarizing example of, uh, of Avengers, uh, end game, right? And captain America summons Mjolnir. The fucking crowd reaction for that was worth the price of admission. Who? I don't care what the movie is. Being a part of that electricity was worth the price of admission. And so I just, I hope people keep going to see movies in general. Cause I like it. Yeah.
01:12:47
Speaker
I mean like the quiet place movies are just great movies to see with the crowd because the crowd is kind of like in on the action. like And i I know obviously experiences differ and I've talked to people that said they see it with terrible audiences. ah Whenever I've seen it with audiences, they're like, they're dead quiet. And like, there's the person, like when anybody's grabbing popcorn, you can hear like the individual crinkle, which is so good. Cause it's like, you can hear the guilt of like, am I going to like, like, is that monster going to eat Lupita Nyong'o? Because I just had to have a popcorn now because I had to have a minstrel. like Yeah. yeah
01:13:20
Speaker
um So my my ah my little my little pivot is that another thing but for a lot of the aughts I would, this wasn't obviously a summer blockbuster thing, but in terms of entertainment, I would associate, there was always kind of a big summer show to kick off the summer and that was usually Thrones, right?
TV Shows vs Film Trends
01:13:40
Speaker
So Thrones generally aired in in May and kind of wrapped up in the first half of June. And especially when Game of Thrones was was beloved and sort of was a like pop culture, you know, monolith like a real show. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. um It felt like one of those things where it was like every Sunday we're tuning back and we're all watching in our houses, but it's the equivalent of it all felt like we were at the same screening because everyone was like, you got to watch it when it airs. Otherwise you're going to wake up Monday morning and someone's going to post a spoiler.
01:14:09
Speaker
um Yeah, and you know but in the real world as well, like that that's that's the marker of like true pop cultures I will you go into the office on Monday morning and the person next to you is like, did you watch Game of Thrones last night? Yeah which doest happen Yeah, it's like those were like, i you know ah for For as much as i I think I enjoyed a majority of this season of of House of the Dragon and stuff um I don't feel like it matched that yeah like that zeitgeist of thrones and i just maybe we we're in a different place than we were five ten years ago um so just maybe i don't know if a show can do that anymore um you know it has the week to week thing but like even the bear you know that the bear dropped uh a month or two it ago all at once and it just feels like everyone talked about it people got angry for a little bit and now no one is talking about it until the next season comes out yeah it's uh
01:15:00
Speaker
It's it's it's a little strange. I feel like the same way like Umbrella Academy I think comes out this weekend and that's gonna be the same thing where it drops Some people are gonna talk about it and then it's gonna just fade away, you know stranger things I don't know how they're gonna handle that release. I imagine they're gonna kind of think of a more Can we chop this last season up as much as we can? Two episodes in monthly drops. We're not going weekly. It's still the Netflix model. Very different. It's a very different thing. We're not doing weekly. We're doing monthly. Quarterly episodes of Stranger Things. There you go. Perfect. Because they're all 90 minutes. Isn't that the thing? The final season episodes are all 90 minutes long. This is actually whatever six, the full movie. It's like, what are you doing?
01:15:39
Speaker
um ah Which I guess is my my way of getting into, ah Darren, you you ah wrote a piece, ah one of one of your columns this week was on House of the Dragon on and season two and and your thoughts on it with with it wrapping up. I guess we don't need to go into full spoilers on this because I know some people were waiting for the final season and Jack has watched it ah for for the final episode and everything, but where were what were your sort of thoughts on ah on House of the Dragons?
01:16:02
Speaker
Well, I think just to go back, cause I think like to, to make that connection that you're talking about a bit stronger, like, I think there is something very interesting in the idea of like television always staggering behind movies. And when movies like move in a particular direction, television is always like ready to catch whatever falls off the edge of the plate. So there's a while where like movies stop being like adult dramas with movie stars in them. And like, they stop making movies about like Kate Winslet is having an affair with Patrick Wilson. And then HPA was like, ah, we'll take that for six episodes, please. Um, like there's, it's like, Can we make these, like, can we have all these Oscar winning actors appearing on television? Can we like suddenly Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep are TV stars now because they've stopped making movies that star Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman. And like the same thing seems to be happening with like blockbusters where Game of Thrones, you point to Game of Thrones as this huge moment, like this huge moment in the evolution of television as an art form, because
01:16:52
Speaker
I didn't know television could look like that shot on, you know, three continents simultaneously, um having this huge sense of scale and scope, this blockbuster budget, these spectacular effects, like the final season, you know, whatever narrative shortcomings that season has, every episode of that looks like a blockbuster summer release that you would play in theaters. Arguably, that would be the best way to watch the long night, because at least then the projector would be properly configured. But like yeah you but you do have this idea of like,
01:17:20
Speaker
are summer blockbusters moving to television. It's like, and now these big event shows, which are ridiculously expensive, have movie stars. And interestingly, like you see that IP drip coming to television as well, where like the biggest shows of the year are now largely IP derived. You know, HBO used to be the home of the Sopranos. It used to be the home of like the wire and dead wood. Now it's the home of like the last of us, those like 10 different game of throw and spinoff and penguin. Yeah. We got a fucking penguin show.
01:17:48
Speaker
Coming to Prestige television. The successor to the Sopratos is going to be like the Colin Farrell like playing his 40s gangster thing. The Danny DeVito. I'm going to say look sick as hell and Colin Farrell's Penguin absolutely could have been in Dick Tracy. Honorary Dick Tracy villain. I like, I am, I'm very excited for it as well. Like I'm really looking forward to it. Christine, the Lotties in there as well. Michael Kelly's in there. Like I'm actually honestly excited about it, but you could see television shifting towards that model of okay. Things you recognize where it's like, okay. Like HBO's biggest show of the past couple of years was the last of us. Their biggest show of the next couple of years is going to be their Harry Potter reboot. Like it's no longer new franchises. It's no longer new ideas.
01:18:34
Speaker
You're retrofitting new ideas to fit in existing franchises, like ISA Lopez's pitch for Night Country becomes True Detective season four because the True Detective brand has value. And you mentioned like the fact that House of the Dragon doesn't feel the same way as Game of Thrones. And I agree with that entirely. I think it is a massive success for HBO. As you said, like yourself, I broadly like it. I don't think it's incredible.
01:18:55
Speaker
I weirdly really like the first season and ah the second season a bit more so so on. I like the first season because it felt like the crown but with dragons which is an itch that I didn't know that I had until the show started scratching and I'm like oh yeah that feels good. um But like I think that the issue with House of the Dragon is we've already had Game of Thrones and this is inevitably going to feel like derivative of Game of Thrones, write down the fact it doesn't have its own theme song. I am like mildly irritated that they could not come up with a unique theme song for House of the Dragon. They're just like, you know, the opening music of Game of Thrones, let's use that instead. And I say that as somebody who likes the show, but like without getting into spoilers, like we've talked about how much of the show is rooted in
01:19:38
Speaker
Daenerys Targaryen, a character who logically will never appear in the show because it is set several hundred years before her birth. Wink, wink. um but But it's also like defined entirely in relationship to her, where the opening you know text is 174 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen. Like it is a show that feels inherently derivative and not its own thing and more of Game of Thrones. And it's like, I liked Game of Thrones. I'm perfectly happy to have more of Game of Thrones, but it doesn't feel like exciting and fresh and interesting in the way that those early seasons of Game of Thrones did because there had never been anything on television like that before.
01:20:20
Speaker
And it's like, that's what the next game of Thrones is going to be. It's going to be something that feels the way the game of Thrones did, which is there's never been anything like this on television. Whereas I watch House of the Dragon, i'm like, yeah, this is just like that thing that was on television for the better part of a decade. Yeah. yeah Yeah, and i in in terms of the actual critiques, I do share some of yours that are very much this seasoned field. Because if if you if you read the Fire and Blood book and everything, um very much it's pointing to like this is a family civil war between two sides and neither of them are really good.
Character Portrayals in House of the Dragon
01:20:55
Speaker
They're all kind of filled with bad people who do increasingly bad things and get caught in this downward spiral until an entire family lineage is
01:21:03
Speaker
wiped out save for like, you know, Benares's lineage, which is half a world away. um Whereas in this day, they very much felt like we we need a good side and a bad side. And we need to pick the good side and we need to soften the good side and we need to sharpen the bad side. yeah um And and that that became pretty crystal clear in how it handled, especially like Damon's arc throughout the two seasons of this was a guy who does terrible things, but everyone loves him. And I think you call them the internet's boyfriend, right? Or they call them the internet's boyfriend. They call them the internet's boyfriend. Yeah. So it was like, well, we can't have the internet's boyfriend be like, hey, you chop off a baby's head. But you can't have the internet's boyfriend say that.
01:21:44
Speaker
like Like that's the thing, the thing that is so interesting about that is like the relationship between like what Damien has to do to move the plot forward. And so let's just talk in the first season in the first season, in the first episode, Damien has to be exiled by his brother Viserys. And in order to do that, Viserys has to believe that like Damien made a joke about his or Damon made a joke about like his dead baby about Viserys dead son. But the episode makes a point of not showing you Damon doing that because you seeing the character do this as one of their establishing character beats would make you think that guy's not a nice guy underneath it all. And then later on you have like the moment where he takes his, again, like it keeps, what's fascinating is it keeps walking up to the line and then like shaking its head and going,
01:22:28
Speaker
Can't, can't cross it. Like the first season he takes his niece, um, Renira to the, to a brothel and like they get undressed. And it's like, is he going to have sex with his niece while she's under age? Is he going to take her virginity? Cause that would be really creepy and like make him a really disgusting character. And then he just kind of stops and walks out of the scene. He's like, no, not too far. There's a moment later on where like,
01:22:52
Speaker
Renira is married to Lenore, who's a gay man. And in the books, obviously they need to get rid of Lenore in order for like Damon to be able to marry his niece, Renira. And how you do that is you kill Lenore, right? You arranged for Lenore to be killed.
01:23:07
Speaker
Except the show goes out of its way going, no, no, no. What if heroes out here, Damon didn't have him killed, but had him and his boyfriend getting a boat and sail off to a distant planet where they all lived happily ever after, but we don't ever need to see them again. And it was functionally like he was dead, but also Damon didn't do a hate crime. It is so fast. He faked his death by killing an innocent guard and putting his head in the fire and being like, probably his body. And what are you going to do? Check dental records? Like there's the moment where like, Like Damon, in this early second season, without being too specific, orders an assassination that goes terribly wrong and ends in like the death of like a really sympathetic character. And like in the books, it's like Damon ordered this assassination and he was all behind it. And in the show, the show's defense is now look.
01:23:51
Speaker
Damon is a bit of a klutz. He maybe hired some people who weren't very good at their jobs, and they maybe took some liberties that they shouldn't have taken. and And there's a moment where he quite literally says, and the show is very clearly on his side, Hey, I was very clear in my instructions that they weren't supposed to do that thing. You can't blame me for it. I'm going to go fuck off. Like it's, a it is incredible. Like how how hard the show works to make sure that the audience at least has like the veil of deniability where they can be like, look, he may be a fuck up.
01:24:21
Speaker
Look, he may be guilty of incest, but he is not, I repeat he is not, a guy who assassinates characters who we like.
01:24:31
Speaker
and Anyways, now we've shipped them off to a haunted house for six episodes. Where he can't have any interaction with the rest of the plot. Like it's a really great way to maintain maintain the boyfriendness of it. What if he doesn't have to interact with any of the other characters we like? This just sounds so incredibly toothless. Like, like, like they are sucking any sort of fun out of the show. ah Yeah. No, no, no, go ahead.
01:24:58
Speaker
i like I do enjoy it. like I think it's is's very lavishly produced. like The performances are very good. I think like yeah it is getting at so it has some big ideas and some interesting like ideas and concepts that it's playing with, but it does cause the fear like it tiptoes up to the light of saying something really interesting and it's like, but if we do, the internet will be very mad at us.
01:25:16
Speaker
where like as as it i go ahead there yeah Oh, no, I just want to echo that I do I do enjoy watching it week to week. I think it is, you know, by and large, like in the moment, well written with well written dialogue. I really like the cast. I really like the additions to the cast. I was feeling like I was like, we need a couple like wildcards in the show, especially if Damon's going to be in his haunted house all season. Like we need to add some wildcards. And I feel like the back half of the season introduced some interesting elements so that when a bunch of like stuffy generals and everything are around a meeting table, you now have interesting people at that table, which Game of Thrones was always great about.
01:25:48
Speaker
of having like weird people like Therian and Bronn and Jamie and like people that were like a a little bit strange, this sort of ah buck up against the the more buttoned up folks. So yeah, I am enjoying it by and large, but I do completely agree with those but those critiques.
01:26:09
Speaker
Um, and we're getting that new. Yeah. They already said that they show in that little HBO, uh, before the last episode, HBO aired like a big sizzle reel of here's all the shows we have coming up in the next year or two. And it was like, you know, a white Lotus is coming back and then sex in the city is coming back. And here's a little bit of the last of us part two. And here's, here's the penguin. Uh, and then they say here's part two. Isn't she? Yeah. Yeah. As an original character, she's not.
01:26:31
Speaker
whatever she is, she's not a character from the game. And then, yeah, Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which is the Dunk and Egg Show, which takes place between, it's like, whatever, 75 years after House of the Dragon, but before ah Game of Thrones. And this is part of, you know, George RR Martin has said that there are seven uh, series currently in some form of development. Obviously all of those will not get made. Like the Jon Snow show seemed to have, uh, sort of lost its footing. There are shows that had pilots filmed that never got made. So, um, there was the witches one during the first stage or something like that with Jake Goldman.
01:27:06
Speaker
Yeah. right jane gold i was showrun oh yeah pilot yeah yeah um So ah yeah, just it very much feels like, again, I'm enjoying it, but I'm like, I have my eye on you because I know what happens when you stretch a franchise too thin. Like I've seen it with things I love. I know what happens when you do this. So I'm keeping but keeping one eye open
Storytelling Within Franchise Confines
01:27:24
Speaker
for you. Also like just the very hard edge that they have as well, where it's like, none of the shows take place past the end of game of thrones. I mean, presumably the Jon Snow show would have But it's all like we're going to like fill in the gaps that you already know and go backwards. It's kind of like the problem, right? That's where everything has to. Yeah, everything had all roads have to lead back to the the the 50 years of the Skywalker family. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Even, you know, the acolyte for all of its for warts and all eventually has to be like, oh, no, no, I know it's like a little bit before, but don't worry. This is connected. We're going to show you this is connected to the Star Wars. You know.
01:27:58
Speaker
oh How about that? man Can I do that? Great. That's the problem with continuity is it makes the universe smaller. Like instead, like the thing I used to love about franchises, like say Star Trek or whatever was that they used to, everyone made the universe bigger. Where it was like Picard to go off and he'd be doing his own thing and he'd meet new aliens that Kirk had never met. And I'd be like, wow, the Star Trek universe is so big and D say sign. I'd be like, Oh, let's delve into the politics. Like, Oh, this universe is so deep. And then no, Eric, that is not the show I'm referencing. Um, but also
01:28:29
Speaker
ah But now, sorry, that was, that was I apologize, Eric. um but But like you constantly have like, everything has to be something you've seen before. And you could put back up the image now, Eric, where it has to be things that you recognize and things that you are familiar with. And it has to take place within the established confines and boundaries of this fictional universe as already defined, which like just makes everything smaller and more like appropriate enough for the show. We're talking about incestuous.
01:28:54
Speaker
and we're like Like the thing in like House of the Dragon is that they're that like it's driven by and this is a new addition to Like the show that it was not in the source material driven by a prophecy. That's just like hey there's a really cool thing that's going to happen in a couple of hundred years, like a game of like Royal seats. And you want to be sure that like everything that you're doing now with this um home of fire breathing creatures is going to lead to that. um You know, ah
01:29:25
Speaker
board game of yeah seats. <unk>s Like it's so like, even something that is already tied to game of thrones by taking place in the universe using like replicas of the same sets, 3d printed kind of models of the props, like everything that is clearly within the world of game of thrones still has to be like, but you guys remember game of thrones. They're like, it was five years ago. like yeah
01:29:52
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess it' so. it's So it's that's still that same problem that we've been talking about. It's just, we're just circling IP fracking. I don't know if that is your coinage, Darren, or if that is just general consensus, but that is the word I will be using from now on.
01:30:08
Speaker
I think cultural fracking I think has been used a bit. I've i've seen it once or twice in the wild. So yeah, I love it. I will say there's not like one of my favorite shows this year. It's not the best, but a thing I really enjoyed week to week was presumed innocent on Apple TV plus, which is based off. Yeah, exactly. And it's based off. There's the the book that got turned into a 1990 movie ah by Alan. Yeah.
01:30:31
Speaker
Yeah, Pecula that Harrison Ford was the star of and great Brian Dennehy performance. Let me let me see. danah He pops up in your movie. I'm there for it. Yeah, Danny. ah But this this series was, you know, it took the the two hour movie and turned it into ah eight episode eight, you know, 45 minute episodes of ah Jake Gyllenhaal playing like a top prosecutor in Chicago who his colleague gets Brutally murdered and it turns out that everyone's like I think I've been you who did it dude Okay, you're having a fair with her and you were there that night and you're kind of a weird dude so you're gonna go on trial for this murder and every episode does it doesn't like a really great job of well a it's got just like a stellar cast across the like across the board like you have you have Peter Sarsgaard as like the the rival attorney the photo there Oh my god, Bill Camp is so good. He plays the Denny. He can't. He's even better than Denny. Even better than Denny. Bill Camp, a modern day Denny. I don't know when he played God in the leftovers. He was like, that's good casting.
Apple's Unique Series Strategy
01:31:35
Speaker
God is a very hard role to cast, but Bill Camp is like, yeah, I got it. I got a read on the boat with the lion. I got a read on this character. And it's like, really? It's like, yeah.
01:31:47
Speaker
Um, but I love that every episode by the end of it, it's like, it it feels like a summer page turner to where every episode has a twist at the end. We're like, Oh, Hey, I got to watch the next episode and be, I think I know who did it. Now it's someone else that does a great job of every, every hour in the eight hours, you're pointing a finger at someone else and before it lands the plane with like ah a cool twist. And I was like, Oh, this is like really enjoyable. Um, and so.
01:32:11
Speaker
that is technically, you know, cultural IP fracking, but like, feels a little different, right? And it does something so different than the two hour, like the two hour very buttoned up movie, where this feels like with so much more like energy and it's kind of silliness than the movie has. The fall guy though, right? Technically IP fracking, no one yeah remembers the other one. Yeah. Yeah.
01:32:34
Speaker
I will say I was on the radio and the radio show host remembered it, which made me again, it's nice to feel young when you're an Irish film and critic, it like the generational divide where they're like, yeah, that was the Lee majors TV show. It's like, yeah, I had that in my notes. I didn't think you guys would get that one. And they were like, we have the theme song here, ready to go down and we're ready to cue you out. yeah that's great yeah yeah um Obviously like a big hit in Ireland. We love our Lee majors. We only had one TV channel to be fair for most of our history. Um, but yeah, like there, there is, I think there isn't obviously a difference there. Cause you could argue that Oppenheimer is technically that because it's an adaptation of a book, which is the American Prometheus. But yeah, like it's wild that like Apple are like quietly consistently the best of like the streaming service.
01:33:18
Speaker
Where like every, I think we talked about this before, every like show on Apple has a reason to exist. Or even something I don't like, like with apologies to Nick C, for example, the the movie where Jason Momoa is like a blind man in a world of blind people who has to protect the two orphans who can see, if you will. Like, no, you don't need to apologize to Nick. You don't need to apologize to Nick. Yeah. That's a dumb promise. That's all right.
01:33:42
Speaker
I don't get it. like i'm I'm not like, I see what this is. I'm not like, that's an itch I need scratched, but I'm watching it. It's very clear that like, look, the writer clearly has put a lot of thought into this. This is something somebody cared about, something somebody nurtured and loved and fed. And like, was like, I need to get this vision out into the world. I'm like, but everything on Apple is like that. Where like, obviously things like slow horses is like that. We talked about like severance is a quiet breakout, but because Apple Apple doesn't generally have IP. Like the one thing it doesn't have is a big IP library on like say, Disney plus on like, say, you know, HBO, unlike even say universal, like Apple don't have a big pool of IP to draw from. So they are taking these risks and being like, let's hire creators to make these shows. And now they've just announced that actually, you know what, we're not going to make as many of them anymore because nobody's watching them, ah which is like a lot of money on sugar and no one's talking about sugar, except the weirdos who are like, damn sugar got weird in the back half.
01:34:36
Speaker
Yeah, like there's this one podcast, The Rewind, where they just keep talking about sugar. They're they're saying they're sugar pilled, I believe, is what they're calling it. Yeah, sugar pill. but Yeah. ah Got a little sweet tooth. Yeah. By the way, sugar, it not a great show, but ah as you said, another fun show, a highly fun show. Yeah. rough and like but Yeah. Any show me its where you could get halfway into it and be like, I think the main character might be a werewolf.
01:35:04
Speaker
and And it's a plausible, it is not a werewolf show at all. And you being able to be like, I think the main character might be a werewolf and that's like a solid theory. and That's a good show in my book. Yeah. And if the show did turn out that he was a werewolf, he'd be like, I think they landed the plane. Like it's great. but yeah but It's like, is he a robot? Is he a vampire? Is he a werewolf? Is he in a coma? Like they're watching sugar and there are so many possibilities to explain what is happening. And it's so delightful. And it, you know, not great. I've got to be honest, like not a perfect show, not going to be my top 10 shows of the year, but I am glad that it exists. And I had great fun watching it, which is what more do you want from that sort of television to show? You know, yeah absolutely. Uh, Jack, have you, have you watched anything before we get on over to the little supper chats?
01:35:49
Speaker
Uh, a few things like I caught up on, um, caught up on, uh, I don't know if we've talked about the a fallout show. Uh, we probably talked about that a couple of weeks ago, but you know, yeah, I loved the fallout show.
Use of Real Locations in Film
01:36:02
Speaker
Uh, uh, just the other night, you know, I have, uh, both Nick and Jesse Schwab, uh, staying with me here in Milwaukee to do the animal well doc. And we ran out of things to watch. And so I said, F it let's watch madam web. And we had a great time watching madam web. Um, no.
01:36:19
Speaker
Not the worst thing I've ever seen. I'm going to put that out there. A lot of things filmed on a location, I will say. Not terrible. A diner? It feels like you wanted a diner to film this. Well done. Yeah. And you probably had a taxi cab. The diner feels like it was a real taxi cab. It's not a good movie, but it's a fine watch. It was a fine watch. I enjoyed watching it more than Deadpool Wolverine is what I will say, mostly because it was shorter.
01:36:48
Speaker
Dakota Johnson figuring out how to open a can of Pepsi. Like it's, it's possibly like the most perfect product placement I've ever seen because what you really want. Yeah. What you really want is a moment where your character is handed something that like a sponsor, presumably paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for you to include in the movie and go, what the fuck is this? I want a fucking beer. Like that is exactly the vibe you want when you paid to have Pepsi product placement in movies. Pepsi got their money's worth because Pepsi killed the main villain. Like nothing else matters. If you pay so much that your products can be responsible for defeating the bad guy, you win in my book. yeah um
01:37:26
Speaker
ah By the way as a little ah plug ah to our discord here at second wind over in the rewind Channel in our second wind discord. I have shared a link to my lovely summer blockbuster spreadsheet If you would like to dig through it I've been kind of updating it as you talk about house the dragon because I don't care about Game of Thrones um what ah Which of us is truly the poor for that check ah Fair. I, okay. ah Here's something. Here's a weird one. I don't, this won't be a big field of of discussion, but I watched, I went to to be the other day because I love to be as a channel is great. You know, yeah a million movies on it. I went to to be the other day and I was just going to, you know, find a movie to watch and stick it on in the background. And lo and behold, there was a to be original. And I didn't know to be did original movies, a to be original movie called Oh no.
01:38:20
Speaker
No, go, go. Uh, called spread. Is this what you were thinking? No. Okay. No, no. I was thinking of Joe dirt too, but that's a crackle original. Sorry. Huge difference. Wow. To confuse to be in crackle. They're entirely different brands. Sorry. Go ahead there. No, no. So spread is the to be original comedy about someone unwittingly getting a job at a Playboy type porno magazine and having to balance whether or not they like having a job versus working for a place that they feel kind of uncomfortable. Harvey Keitel is in it. That poor man should not be in it. He is far too. Wow. The big two.
01:39:05
Speaker
Deidre Deidre is in it. man You get Deidre. But I want and I watch the whole thing because I in general do not stop watching movies unless I have a visceral reaction to them. um but So I watch the whole thing. And here is the crazy part is it was a perfectly fine and incredibly low budget like little romantic comedy movie.
01:39:28
Speaker
And I know like those movies don't exist on large scales anymore. And part of me was really rooting for this movie because it's like, oh, if Tubi is going to make ah silly little rom coms with dildo jokes in them, I'm kind of down with that.
01:39:43
Speaker
and so i To be fair, it is not great. ah The budget, ah the lack of budget shows through every aspect, but if you can deal with micro-budget filmmaking, it's fine. It's a fine little rom-com. I feel like we should launch a new podcast called To Be Fair. That's just your To Be recommendation. And it's something that's like kind of lukewarm. It's nothing you can like yeah recommend. But to be fair, there's worse ways to spend 90 minutes than Harvey Keitel's spread. By the way, that's the episode in two weeks. Go to 2B and we'll just find some 2B recommendations and it'll be called 2B Fair. but
01:40:19
Speaker
ah i'm writing that i be a danceer and top with and feeling feeling but when to be green light a movie it still do or die um but anyway ah and Uh, that's really good.
Olympic Event Controversies
01:40:34
Speaker
Uh, vintage to be, um, I never seen a couple other movies, but they, uh, I think they have to do with super chats later. So I'm going to save them for super chat talk. Right. Let's, let's, let's jump on some of these super jets. I'm not sure what tangents here. Uh, thank you everyone who's, who's submitted super chats throughout the episode. Uh, greatly appreciate it obviously your memberships, your patronage, your super chats to help keep the lights on.
01:40:54
Speaker
help us ah make dumb things, like to be fair, which may or may not become a thing. It's very possible. Jack wrote it down. So it's possible it becomes a thing. I think that's a great idea for a little podcast. Yeah. Q&A, thank you so much for the $2 don't know. Darren, congrats on Ireland's three gold medals so far. Have you guys been watching Olympics at all? In the Olympic field? No. I've been watching a little bit.
01:41:14
Speaker
I'll watch a little s Simone Biles just literally flip through the air like a goddamn superhero. I think it's exciting. like I'll see the cool people who do gun shooting and just looks like the coolest people who ever existed. yeah The guy who looked like he just wandering off the street, picked up the gun cold and just won a gold medal. The girl looks like a Netflix movie villain. Yes. The second I saw her, I was like, Kojima is going to get her inside his soul sucking machine. The next morning Kojima retweets the picture and I'm like, guarantee next time she's in Tokyo. I mean, she's literally.
01:41:47
Speaker
No, no, she said no, no, no. I'm sorry. The Olympics aren't in Tokyo. The Olympics are in Paris. But she said Korean, isn't she? She's what? Korean? South Korean, right? said rescue him Yeah.
01:41:59
Speaker
Like I've been catching the memes of the gymnast who is sponsored by the concept of Parmesan cheese. Love it. Yeah. And all those photo shoots that she does with them, which are all her like publicity photos involve a row. Company just cheese. That's great. Thank Erica. I mean, listen, the big news, the big Olympic news is ah the the best. If you're going to lose at the Olympics, the best way to lose is because you Dick is too big. I love that. I love that for him. yeah Yeah. What a humble way to lose.
01:42:27
Speaker
but really if You guys know about like they did do this, the sanding, they did swim in the sand. Um, and then you had that joke. It was the American swimmer who was micro dosing a Coli or joke that he was micro dosing a Coli to prepare for swimming in the sand. But like, these do you remember the, do you guys, are you guys following this whole big news story where like they were going to do the swimming in the sand, which is one of the filthiest rivers in the world?
01:42:47
Speaker
And the mayor of Paris was like, look, we can clean this up and I will prove it. I will swim in the Seine on a given day and I will prove how clean the water is. Which led to, I believe, and a website organized by like, because of course the French don't do anything by half measures, a website where it was like, where do you live along the Seine? And at what time would you need to take a poop in order to make sure that the mayor of Paris was swimming in your feces? beautiful At which point the mayor of Paris was like, I need to rearrange this swim.
01:43:14
Speaker
Also, again, that is literally the premise of that shark movie under Paris. that yeah netflix a few shark yeah The mayor of of Paris is like, we're going to hold the Olympic race in the sand. And everyone's like, and they're like, no there are so many sharks down there. You should not do it. like It'll be fine. And then they're swimming and she's like, oh, there's a ton of sharks. That was a bad idea.
01:43:34
Speaker
So you mean not only could they have called it like shark dish? Was it John Belize's shark to tree hump? They could also call it swimming with sharks and it would have been just as apt. It would have been great. It would have been great. What a film. Snake in the Garden with a two euro. Don't know. Thank you so much. Snake, have you seen kneecap yet? Not out here till the weekend. It sounds like this is an Irish movie.
01:43:53
Speaker
It is indeed a film. Oh, yes, it's it's playing ah in the in the Indies, in the art house theaters here in Milwaukee. It's come to Milwaukee. It's playing at the downer. I have Ovid. Oh, shit. Don't come to Milwaukee. Why are you doing this if you have Covid? Oh, that's what I love. I love goofing. The only thing I love more than sleeping during Covid is goofing during Covid. But yeah, so kneecap is yeah, um I've seen it. It's releasing in Ireland this week. Really? It's releasing the States before it released in Ireland. It's pretty good. It's like, it's really charming. It's got a nice visual energy to it. It is obviously the story, the story in inverted commas about the foundation of the Irish hip hop, like band kneecap.
01:44:34
Speaker
Um, starring Michael Fassbender, which is just a wonderful get for them. I am so happy for them. It is incredibly charming. It's incredibly irreverent. It's incredibly goofy. It maybe doesn't quite support the mythic weight that it puts on it, where it's a movie by the band kneecap about the band kneecap about how they single-handedly save the Irish language and culture. And I'm like, I feel like you don't get to do that in the movie that you make about yourselves, but you are just about charming enough that I'll let it go this once.
01:45:01
Speaker
They absolutely do. If Prince can make purple rain, kneecap can make kneecap. Fair. Fair. I feel like they might not be on the same level. Prince and kneecap might not be on the same level of hospital for significance. It's fun, it's irreverent. It has a nice visual energy to it, and it's a very easy watch, to be fair. I had a good time with it. There you go. Great. Michael Vossman. What a great guy. There you go. Pure Pyro with a two euro dono. Thank you so much. How was Dick Tracy? Also, thoughts on Scarface.
01:45:29
Speaker
and Dick Tracy was the last movie we watched during our... twenty he's a good cop are That's the theme song of the 60s Dick Tracy show. It is literally the only line in the theme song is Dick Tracy, he's a good cop. And it sounds like they recorded it once in like a not soundproof room whatsoever. And they're like, we're just going to keep going.
01:45:54
Speaker
Good enough. Yeah, it was it was the last movie we did for our monthly movie night with our ah ah Phoenix Tier Patreon pals. We watched it last week. We talked about it a little bit at the beginning. just I thought it was the light. That is a movie that is just oozing with style to make a lot of sense. And it is, again, one of those... but like We were talking about the 90s where it's like, why are we nostalgic for the 30s? I mean, I guess maybe that's just... We're always nostalgic for 60 years before.
01:46:18
Speaker
um but But it's also the wrong lesson. Like it's it's that thing we joked about where like movie studios learn the wrong lesson, where Batman is the biggest grossing movie of the year. And they're like, the logical brain there is like, people want more superhero movies. It's been a while since we did Superman. We can start a new wave of comic book movies and like executives are like,
01:46:37
Speaker
1930s pulp heroes. yeah he is a good cop isn't he is a good guy know it was a it was a wonderful watch it's i'm actually like that is like my next planned like have people over movie night for my house because i have the bluray ah what a delightful what a delightful picture Scarface, I've never had much love for only like I've seen it. I enjoyed it. But then, you know, when you go to film school or go to college in general, everyone likes Scarface a little too much. So, yeah yeah you know, you pull back a little bit. I also watched on train wreck where that's like, please don't have a Scarface poster on the wall. please You know, I when I was in whatever middle school or high school when I really started getting into movies and I was like, all right, all the all the old classic crime movies, I watched it again. I was like, this is pretty good. It just to me, it was never nearly as good as not even like your good fellows and and godfathers and everything, but never as good as like Casino or Carlito's Way or, you know, sort of that that even that level. So um
01:47:41
Speaker
and and And by the time I saw like Miller's crossing was already out. So I was like, Oh fuck this Cohen's got it. Nevermind. Yeah. Yeah. Um, even as far as like the Parma movies go, like it's no untouchables. Yeah. Yeah. Or like, you know, add our carrier or whatever. Like, I like it a lot. I think it's incredibly charming. As you said, there is that certain weird shadow where people not, not that they like it too much, but they like it too intensely is the thing where like it's, it's, it's not like, it's not the amount of love, but it's the force with which that love manifests itself in conversation that makes you go, I like it. Yeah. I am.
01:48:16
Speaker
Yeah, I do talk about who is a little too much into Fight Club and you're like, this is a good movie. We should not do a fight club. Yeah. we we We should not start a cocaine empire in Miami in the 1980s. That's i'd like the push it to the limit montage is one of the great moments in America. is because um really Uh, Lamslaughter, uh, welcome to the tip jar. Thank you so much, Lamslaughter.
Endorsement of Films and Directors
01:48:42
Speaker
And then cleverly dope with a $5 dono. Here are some more, uh, here with some more movie propaganda. If you're reading this, please watch Steve McQueen's Widows, one of the best movies of the 2010s. I loved Widows. I thought it was great. as It is sort of a shame to me that this, uh,
01:48:57
Speaker
that this movie wasn't bigger because it has just an incredible cast. It is like a very tight thriller. Um, I just, I just, I really liked it. Gorgeous representation of Chicago. Um, yeah. and Well, let that, that scene where that great shot of the, from the outside of Colin Farrell's car, when they're driving from one side of the other and you feel like the literal gentrification of the city, you can, you can feel it.
01:49:20
Speaker
It's incredible. Like it's very, it reminds me a lot of say gone girl, where it's, it is this kind of like pulpy, like source material, but it's incredibly well-directed. It's got this incredible performance through it. It's just such a delight. It's kind of movie where you would used to get like 10 of these a year in the nineties and now you get it. And it's just, it's incredible. And like the performance in Nerf Daniel Kalua in this is amazing. Not to single out like one individual performer among a cast that is just generally fantastic. But that scene with like the long take and the beat boxing and the spinning camera in the gym, like it's incredible. It's just an incredible used a little Denny, but it starts Robert Duval. Is that not enough for you? No, Denny, though. No, Denny. Racist, shotgun wielding Duval. Like what more do you want? I think we've been pretty clear about this. Oh, wait, tell me boy. It was originally was originally called speaking of Denny.
01:50:16
Speaker
but I forget well how I went down this rabbit hole the other day. We talked about this a little bit on on the podcast yesterday. ah What I did, I went down ah a rabbit hole, kind of looking at the origins of Tommy boy, which is, you know, a much beloved movie. Chris Farley and Chris Farley. Yeah. Chris Farley. again bridge denham wisconsin And then he's in him. The original script, the screenplay for that was called ah Billy the third, a midwestern.
01:50:46
Speaker
And apparently, apparently it was a script that was so bad, that was so terrible. ah the the the one The person who ended up directing the movie originally passed on it. he was He was someone who worked for SNL, passed on the movie because he had too many notes on the script. The studio then took it to every other single working director in Hollywood who all passed on it, only to go back to the original SNL director to say, fine, what are your notes? Um, the movie essentially had to be completely rewritten from the bottom up. Uh, and of course it is Tommy boy, which is a phenomenal piece of work. But, uh, Billy the third, a midwestern was the original script. And I think that is delightful.
01:51:36
Speaker
but ah sovereign um your odono think he's much sovereign watched rebel moons directors cut yesterday for my sins and opinion on that whole rrated quote true version thing ne netflix poll think it is very silly when a director has full control over a movie at every step and then it is very manipulative to be like here is finally my true vision What are we doings I mean, again, my mind to this, it's probably very similar to what happens with other studios where it's just as nice for a studio to have something like an initially released that is PG-13 and audience friendly. I honestly don't mind. Like I, you know, I don't love these movies. I haven't, I haven't watched the second one yet, which is probably not a great endorsement of it. a
01:52:14
Speaker
that's the second because I love the fact that two the four of them have different names, but if you're a casual person wandering through Netflix, you assume they are four different movies, not two different versions of two different movies, yeah which is a a wonderful marketing touch. But yeah, I'm generally, I'm just like, yeah, just I, i can again, it's the Napoleon thing with Joaquin Phoenix, where it's like, I can understand Apple being like, yeah, you, you initially released this version. You're not Martin Scorsese. You don't get to set the terms and say you want, a three hour, like complete creative freedom or rated whatever. Um, I get, you know, I, I am more sympathetic than a lot of people seem to be about this because I understand that like Netflix are a studio to a certain extent. And just because they're not initially releasing in theaters doesn't mean that they're not operating according to similar constraints.
01:53:01
Speaker
And I'm not saying that they coerced him, but I, you know, it is like a, we would like a PG 13 version and then afterwards you can do an orated one. You know, it's just such a bad, it's such ah a bad movie to begin with. It's, I don't, I don't understand the, I don't understand how, I don't understand how Zach Snyder can think his movies are good in general, but that's a very different topic. But I don't think how he is, how he is genuinely thinking, if only I could get more bloods and tits into this, then it salvages it. Fix everything. This will fix everything in the YouTube chat real quick is I linked to ah clips from the podcast inside of you, ah which is hosted by the guy who used to play Lex, Lex Luther on small. Yeah. Yeah. Michael Rustam. Isn't it? It's Michael. yeah ah with The director of Tommy boy, Peter Segal or Segal ah talking about his time with Tommy boy, which is where I discovered this information. Watch both interviews. Lovely. I saw someone say fat guy in a little coat.
01:53:56
Speaker
Which was apparently, Fat Guy and a Little Coat was a bit that ah that Chris Farley and David Spade would just do around the SNL offices. And there's a great little story in there about um ah that bit in particular. So watch those after you're done here. There you go.
01:54:13
Speaker
And then tune into my podcast, Dena Heeze, where it's me and Brian Dena. He's sitting down and talking about the movie Den of Thieves every week. Oh, nice. Are you in a den? I'm not sure. Brian Dena, he might be dead. So I don't know. He is dead. He absolutely is dead. Because that's the only thing that would prevent that podcast from happening. That is the only barrier to entry. We'll call him a friend of the show. I feel like he would have been a friend of the show.
01:54:38
Speaker
If he had not passed away and was aware that the show existed, he would probably be a friend of the show. Absolutely a friend of the show. Red Door for the fight. I don't know. Thank you so much. At least we got some use out of watching terrible 2000s comic book.
Modern Films as Advertisements
01:54:51
Speaker
Was it one of those things like we watched Electra and we were like, listen, this is going to pay off. How is it going to pay off? Oh, she's going to show up for like five minutes in a movie in like 20 years, but it's going to pay off. Like, are any events of this movie going to be going to be referenced? No, no, no. It's just going to be the character. He's got to kind of reference her relationship with Ben Affleck. But other than that, no.
01:55:08
Speaker
If we're being cynical about it, like that is the the net benefit here. is like it Somebody, you know not me, but somebody watched that movie and was like, I need to go home on a Disney Plus watch Electra tonight. like that is That is the selling point of this. and like I do wonder if that is a you know a large part of the what I call spreadsheet movies. and you know You can argue like the Lego movie is an example of it done well. like you They don't have to be bad.
01:55:31
Speaker
you know, no way home is like a passable example of this you know space jam. The new legacy is awful. The flash is awful. Deadpool and Wolverine is you know not for me, but like these things that are like, look at all the cool shit we own and it's designed to go. Well, it's also, you know, it's not a movie. It's advertisement for the streaming service where like you go home and now you can watch Electra because now Electra is on Disney plus for whatever reason, like Is that like, is that a genuine selling point for these movies at a corporate level where it's like, we can convince people to watch the two Tim story, fantastic for movies because they've seen Chris Evans and Deadpool and Wolverine. So like that, that's the thing with this year, the two most successful again, as I'm streaming, who knows what the numbers actually are. But according to like paradigm, Linux and according to Nielsen, according to outside observers, the two most successful star Wars movies on Disney plus,
01:56:24
Speaker
were attack of the clones and revenge of the Sith. And that was driven by the re-release of Phantom Menace after people went out to see Phantom Menace. And now obviously we don't know for a fact they did it, but around the time of the release of Phantom Menace, there was a huge surge of people watching attack of the clones and people watching revenge of the Sith.
01:56:41
Speaker
So like there is this sense of, if you remind people of this just instinctively, you will get them to go back and like spend more time on the service. And that's what you want because if they're spending more time in the service, they're going to stay subscribed to it. So maybe that's a factor. I don't know how big a factor it is, but maybe it's a factor. I should have, that was Willow in the movie so that they'd have to put Willow at that point.
01:57:00
Speaker
So they could bring the show back. Yeah. Or release it on, you know, VHS for me. Um, I think, I do think that is probably one of the things that helped kind of okay. The budget is like, Oh yeah. Well, you know, like we're staying we're within the family now. And so we're okay with that. I think there is a nostalgia thing to okay in the budget. The, ah ah my forever issue is just the way in which they handled it had nothing to do with the story at large, where it's like, if they would have used that as a commentary for like the awkward years of the superhero movie of like, yeah, we didn't really know what we were doing then, if they would have used it as a commentary to help propel a stronger focused story forward, sure, but they were just there.
01:57:45
Speaker
I love blade. I love blade and blade blade. I wish that like when blade appears in this movie, he repeats the line. Some motherfuckers trying to ice skate uphill. Like he knows that his cat, that's his catchphrase as opposed to something that he said one time. And it was cool. Like yeah why not just have him say something from Wesley's nights, his Twitter feed. Cause that's where the, like some other focus, I was trying to ice skate uphill. It's famously something that he said while he was getting blazed in his Winnie and David Escorta was like, okay, it's in the script. Like, yeah. And he was a little iy about putting it in the script. He's like, I don't know if that makes sense. And David Escorta said, no, this is in the movie. Trust me. Also, it's very upsetting that the sword he uses is in blades sword, right? Like yeah for anyone else, like he used like a little machete. That was very, very upsetting.
01:58:29
Speaker
if That's the wrong blade. If you will, we will be delved into our Disney Plus series Harrington film. Blackblade or what's his name? No, not Blackblade. That's right. Oh, my God. Blackblade. Let's see what's going on here. Well, I mean, keep in mind that that was a Martin Lawrence movie. Black Knight wasn't back in the like 1999. Yeah. Yeah. but Like but part of me is also like at at There was a time where Marvel was so successful, like they were so high on their own laurels that they could have conceivably released like a late July movie just called The Black Knight starring Kid Arrington and like just done it as a piss take of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight and been like, look at how much money we make. And nobody knew who this character was. Nobody's going to remember who this character is in two months, but it's going to make a billion dollars. and At least Eternal was shot on places.
01:59:23
Speaker
Yeah, they used sunlight and Kevin Feige was like, what is going on i' kind with the camera? The Disney board called me into them immediately and we're like, shut this down. That is actually the story he tells. I had to convince like the other managers that this was cool. It's like we live in a dumb timeline. ah Proud hand with five Australian dollars. Thank you so much. Counterpoint for Picard. They wanted to bring back those who didn't watch one and two. I didn't watch the first two and I loved that Picard season.
01:59:54
Speaker
I did not care for the third season of the card. And it's probably best to leave to that to be diplomatic. I didn't really care for the second season of card. Like Marty, you edited my reviews at the escapist. You you know, my feelings about the second season of Star Trek Picard, which was written by the same people who wrote the third season of Star Trek Picard. And is, I would argue of a similar quality because it was produced by a similar people operating on a similar basis with similar impulses driving them.
02:00:17
Speaker
Um, and the difference between the two is that one of them stars people that you recognize. Um, but sorry, i I said that I was like, I'm going to leave it at that. And I should have left of that. I apologize. Um, but yeah, animated series. You seem to like it at lower. down I like lower decks. I like, i I'm wildly charmed by lower decks. Like I find lower decks, incredibly charming in places. Cause it is nostalgia. It's pure nostalgia, but it doesn't pretend that it's like, it doesn't expect me to cry earnest tears at that thing that I recognized. It's just like, Hey, isn't it weird living in the Star Trek universe? And even then I say like, you know,
02:00:47
Speaker
just the lower deck show is still not like one of my top five Star Trek shows. And there have only been what, nine Star Trek shows. So that's where we are. line Am I right? I don't know anything. let say not Yeah. call it's called that This is my editor. This is, this is, this is my editor speaking right here. Yep. Deep Space Nine, the next generation are the top two easily. and there a show Good call. Yeah. someone knows that SBS guru with a five-year-old don't know. Thank you so much. At least they gave the gambit a character and something to do on instead of being a horrific CGI Nick Cage. That is true. Yeah, I don't know if they gave him a character, but he did have something to do and he did say lines unlike Nick Cage in The Flash.
02:01:24
Speaker
Yeah. And he was physically on the corpse. Yeah. But yeah, that's my my, my, my zoom out hype, my, my zoom out big level question for you. Is that actually any better? They are essentially the same thing.
02:01:41
Speaker
Gambit is not a character in Deadpool Wolverine. He is a caricature of a story that we've heard about a failed production. there the He has no motivations. He has you know he is wearing ah you know an outfit ah reminiscent of the comic books or the or the animated series. he has He is nothing but a ah headline from a gossip magazine. That is his character in that movie. They're essentially the same. so i I apologize, but I heartily disagree with that statement. All people are going to remember that you said that about the gambit. My gambit, not very good. I do like that. It's better than mine. It's better than mine. I fine i can never remember which name is the first name is. I don't remember. I believe the yeah the kids call them CT. I mean, like the thing is though, you could have inserted
02:02:34
Speaker
anybody in there. Like you could have put do gray Scott in there, for example, and it would have served like there is nothing really that specific about the character. And it's like, if I want to see what Channing Tate's gambit is like, um if like, I like if gambit, if he deserves a shot,
02:02:50
Speaker
that shot should be his own movie in which he has his own character in which he has a clear arc in which the viewpoint of that character is clearly expressed rather than, as you said, a collection of like iconography that I remember and can point out and go, Oh, I know where that's from. I know what's that's referencing. And like, that is the weird thing where it's like,
02:03:08
Speaker
he The inside basefulness of this, and I think it's a great point you raised, Jack, just it's it's insane that it's like, it used to be that you could just go and see a movie and you didn't even have to see the previous movie in the franchise. You could just jump in and follow it straight away. It was designed to be accessible, right? And now, you know, you now, you know, eventually you have to see all the movies in the franchise and you know, okay, that's grand. See the previous movies in the series. Then it's like, you have to see all the other connected into you know comic book movies. We have to see like the Thor movies and the Captain America movies to understand the Iron Man movies or whatever.
02:03:37
Speaker
And now it's gotten to the stage where in order to understand the Deadpool movie, you only need to have to have seen all the Deadpool movies, all the Marvel movies, all the Fox movies. You also, as you said, need to refresh the Wikipedia page listed on made Fox X-Men projects. Like it's, it's so weird. It's just like where we are as a culture. It's very strange. Yeah. Way three onset controversy. and and what Which like further that get from the internet.
02:04:04
Speaker
yeah Like for ah for the vast majority of us who like in general watch YouTube videos and discussions and like you know like movies we have access to all that information and probably know it to be very very fair, but I It should not be a prerequisite to enjoying jokes in a movie Also, God really is not a much like just Not like I'm defending. This sounds like I'm like, gonorrhea is not a joke guys. I just mean it's not funny when your punch line is. Marty stands up and like just Eric just expands it and you walk over to a white wall set and you're like gonorrhea kids we've had some jests today.
02:04:44
Speaker
We've had some goofs and spoofs. That's right. Like I I as a like as someone who just enjoys comedy, the the jokes were also paced incredibly horribly. The montage of visiting all of the different Wolverines in the different universes. OK, oh, we get comics accurate Wolverine. That's OK. We have a very funny joke. And then we get like 18 different iconic Wolverine covers as remade is yeah different. And then i get hamry we get Henry. get Henry Cavill. And it's just like that joke goes on for so long. It is not funny anymore. Give it like the rules of three. No, fuck it. The rules of 15 minutes because we have a montage to do. I don't like about this movie.
02:05:37
Speaker
ah Too much TV with a $5 don't know. Thank you so much when Logan stabs the antimatter. I guess spoilers for the end but oh when look just ask the antimatter power source it grabs dead pool My friend goes quote the power of one the power of two the power of many that was a that was an acolyte thing, right? That's what the witches said an acolyte. Yeah Guardians the galaxy had a great ending as well. I really like the ending of Guardians the galaxy yeah Yeah. Yeah. You know, because the first time and like what's all when the guardians of the galaxy like tied to their big action ending to the overarching theme of the entire story, the thing we've been building to the entire time. Or do you mean when we got to see Hugh Jackman as a very muscular skinny man with very nice abs, which yes, he looks fantastic. Just let him, just let him.
02:06:24
Speaker
Get out of shape. Don't make him do this. Don't make him dehydrate himself. Don't make him do that. What are we doing? And he didn't even get to do a musical number. That's the thing that really disappoints me. We're celebrating having Hugh Jackman back and it's like, give him a billion dollar musical number. Have one of the Wolverines bust out the song in a bar. Yeah. Yeah.
02:06:47
Speaker
Do it over the credits, like have the closing of credits be like, ah I am Wolverine from like the Oscars in 2009, whenever it was, he did it, you know? Yeah. Okay. Last gripe for a Wolverine Logan. Here's my light. No, no, this is it right. Coming up ah when he puts, that I'm not the most negative on the movie. When he puts on the Logan mask, I think it looks dumb.
02:07:07
Speaker
I think it looked really bad. I did not like it. I did not like it. One bit. I thought that looked really stupid. I just think there are certain things that work and I think the color, the yellow is totally fine. I think the mask just at least that mask does not work. and Maybe it's the CG thing, but maybe there's just something in comics. I also thought Gambit looked a little silly.
02:07:25
Speaker
And I like how his character looks and in X-Men, animated series. Some things work well in comics because they're designed in such a way. some And they also generally work well in animation because they're designed in particular ways. And live action is different things. Like the thing about the Wolverine costume that really galls me. Well, two things. First of all, sorry, I hate that we're like harping on about this. Two things that really gall me. First thing is,
02:07:48
Speaker
they build an entire arc around the costume, right? The entire like Wolverine's relationship to the costume is pretty much the essence of his character. Aside from he's kind of like the one from Logan, but he's not technically the one from Logan. So don't get upset nerds. Um, but like there's a whole thing of like, what does the costume represent? Right? So does the costume represent his shame? Does he wear that costume as a reminder that he failed Charles, in which case his arc is beginning ashamed and wearing the costume at the end, taking off the costume and feeling like freed of the shame that he has. Or is his arc, Oh my God, I'm not worthy of the costume. I'm not worthy of Charles. I'm not worthy of the X-Men. In which case he starts not wearing the costume and ends wearing the costume. And the movie is like, we just rather he wore the costume all the time. So there's just no, like no clear like what the costume is. It is both his guilt and shame and something he is very proud of, which is not how these, that is not how storytelling works. And the other thing with the costume very quickly is like it's yellow.
02:08:46
Speaker
but it's also just body armor. It's, it's, it's like, it's a, an average superhero costume. It's like the post 9 11 body armor. They just painted it colors. Like it is so strange that it's like people are like, this is like comics, accurate Wolverine. It's like, it's just like Christopher Nolan's Batman with a paint job. Like it's, it's an iron man costume. It has like the detailing is like just a body armor kind of thing, as opposed to a superhero costume, like the superhero costumes in first class.
02:09:16
Speaker
look more like superhero costumes than this, but sorry, yeah that is my rant. I apologize. no It's okay. It's okay. We're going to get through this. I like that costume. I like that costume i also liked the, um, I really liked the okra costume. Like this, the small cameo he has in the Brown and black, like looks much better. I know that's a CGI costume, but because it's not body armor, it's like a jumpsuit. It just looks better on him. and Um, that was like, was that like X-Men, uh, evolutions costume, I think.
02:09:42
Speaker
And that was, uh, John Byrne. I think like in they explicitly shout out John Byrne when they're talking about it. It's when he fights the Hulk. Um, but yeah, okay it's the Brown. It's like, literally when he's fighting that one did look very nice. Yeah. I agreed. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, he started out. He was introduced as a Hulk villain. Like Wolverine began as a Hulk. No, no. In the movie he fought the Hulk. I don't remember. Oh, it's like one second. It's like, once it's currentlyly hard fights okay. Yeah.
02:10:06
Speaker
like in a forest or something. Okay. I was doing way too long montage of just recreating montage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You had the one where he didn't have the hands, the one where he was crucified. Okay. Yeah. The short one. So the age of apocalypse, the short one. And that's right. Like Jim is a Jim Lee, Mark Sylvester, Chris Claremont nineties one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In the alley. There you go. Yeah. Uh, Joe Chappelle with the $2 don't know. Thank you so much message redacted. Uh, thanks Joe.
02:10:35
Speaker
You know, even though you had a low reduction lamb slaughter back with a five pound don't know. Thank you so much. Went to see kinds of kindness. Saturday evening, eight people walked out. I thought it was great, but I'd prime myself with the lobster before. I love kinds of kindness so much like it it's again that summer movie. that movie Yeah.
02:10:54
Speaker
I will say one of my favorite experiences going to see bones and all, which is like, if this is not a spoiler. It's the first five minutes of the movie, but it's a movie about cannibalism. And like beforehand, when they did the introduction of it, like the people who are hosting the screening were like, look, we want you to be aware. This is a very intense movie. You may feel a bit uncomfortable. What happens? I'm kind of incredibly like, so there's a sequence in the first two minutes where, um, the actor, I can't remember her name, but she basically it's a Russell Taylor Russell, but she liked somebody's finger and she eats the finger off.
02:11:21
Speaker
And it's very graphic and it's very something, right? And it's deep over. Yeah. And again, this is not spoilers first two minutes of the movie, but like this old woman with like the heaviest fur coat, you can imagine stands up in the middle of the cinema and like makes a show of her disgust with the movie, putting her thing on while standing up and looking round at the audience as if to judge us and like forcing her way out, not in like a bashful kind of, Oh, excuse me, excuse me. I'm sorry. Kind of way. Just in like a make way. I want the entire cinema to recognize my disgust at the filth.
02:11:51
Speaker
that they have on screen here. It was one of the most incredible movie going experiences of my life. Beautiful. Good heavens. Falls on a fainting couch. ah George Lucas with a two year old. Oh, no. Thank you so much. I watched Men in Black a million times. What a movie. I thought those were fun summer blockbusters, too. Yeah. Again, it got franchise to hell. But yeah, the time travel one is on the radio with the Josh Brolin. Josh Brolin, who plays a great Tommy Lee Jones? Like, yeah. Holy moly. Yeah.
02:12:18
Speaker
Yeah. ah Agreed. Men in black lost to hold on. It's in my notes. Uh, the lost world. And in fact, for summer blockbusters, men in black was number two to the lost world. and be honest i'm like i don't think That's a hot take. I don't think it's a hot take that lost world, not Spielberg's greatest movie. Um,
Listener Questions on TV Series
02:12:35
Speaker
that's it. It does have one of the greatest cuts in the history of cinema, which is the cutting the start from like, yeah, yeah with the screen with the Jeff Goldblum. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
02:12:43
Speaker
Uh, RW with a $5 dono, thank you so much. Hey guys, love listening to the rewind and this is my first donation. Question, what do you guys feel about the TV series The Expanse? In my opinion, one of the best series. RW, have I got a gift for you? I'm putting it right here.
02:12:59
Speaker
You two did a little interview podcast back at the escapist with one of the creators, right? With Ty Frank? Yeah, I put the link there to that video. You can watch that an hour long chat with Ty Frank. One of the two original authors of Leviathan Down, which is the book that the series is based off of. Wonderful chat, wonderful interview. We spent most of that chat, I believe, talking just about Logan's run, which was the greatest thing in the world.
02:13:28
Speaker
This is why we are not professional interviewers, Jack. It's like, we sent them on the press junket and it's like, we sent them on the Deadpool Wolverine and they mostly ended up talking about like the Adam Project. We just sat down and we're like, yeah, the Adam Project. that That's pretty good, right? You want to talk about the Adam Project? yeah Yeah, nobody talks about the Adam Project.
02:13:44
Speaker
It's, you know, one of those, one of those shows that, ah you know, kind of has has a bit of a Rocky star to find its footing. It has some ah fantastic episodes and fantastic seasons. And then unfortunately an incredibly rushed ending as they had to like smoosh an entire book into like two episodes. Showing like been canceled right ahead to like switch networks it went over to Amazon at one point yeah yeah yeah and Amazon were like don't worry a business daddy go and take care of you and then it was immediate It was like business daddy has decided that he has other priorities yeah um daddy ga it would have been a great belt there <unk>ny his gambit make him a belter oh moa walking on those in but it's kind of Like what is the there's like a belter language yeah kind of does sound cajun yeah yeah yeah
02:14:34
Speaker
yeah is that got to invest two most expensive tv shows ever made it's It's highs are like some of the highest highs of of ah TV of the last 10 years. I would say really. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Really. fine i show Yeah. Nichols B. i've Been in the green gang for five months. Thank you so much. Bloodcots are no joke. Jack, take your thinners.
02:14:55
Speaker
Well, yes. Yeah. I'm, I'm not worried about actual blood clots. Um, uh, so I don't have blood thinners. I just have a very, very hurt foot. Uh, it is currently elevated. I don't like it. Elevated under my desk here is very hard to be elevated. So I'm going to move to the couch and then we're going to get you to a couch. I haven't got an ankle properly now.
02:15:15
Speaker
yeah Fucking son of a bitch, someone get him out of here. Yes, yes, I freaked with a five pound dono. Thank you so much. My cinema isn't accessible, so my summer blockbuster is the big dude with little glasses and a bow and arrow. Loved Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
02:15:32
Speaker
Give a guy a set of glasses. I haven't seen it yet, but that's Alan. rickxton who's Yeah, there we go. Yeah. Oh yeah. exactly but And Henry Cavill fighting Nazis in, uh, in Africa.
Movie Parodies and Influences
02:15:45
Speaker
Is that a Matthew Vaughn?
02:15:47
Speaker
ah guy rich matthew and I think rey richcha like yeah that's the thing. Like it's weird that the two of them have kind of like replaced each other where it used to be in my mind, where like Guy Ritchie was the knockoff. Sorry. Where I wouldn't say it's Matthew Vaughn was the knockoff guy, Richie. And now Guy Ritchie is the knockoff. matthew you ah um But yeah, like it's Bab's kind of the guy from um ah strange new worlds. And the guy from Dune is in it and he's great. He's like, I think he's a world champion. Is it a jiu-jitsu champion? He's very good.
02:16:17
Speaker
it's It's a very interesting movie. yeah It's yeah yeah you know based off of supposedly true stories. ah The Henry Cavill character is rumored to be what the original James Bond, ah yeah the original James Bond was based off of. And kind of Christopher Lee, Christopher Lee.
02:16:36
Speaker
the The movie itself feels, and I, you know, this sounds, okay, the movie is fine. It is a perfectly adequate, I'm gonna say C plus B minus action movie. You see buff dudes murdering Nazis. Everybody's happy. But it feels like ah the TV appropriate cut of Inglourious Basterds.
02:16:58
Speaker
it ah with padded extra padding for time where it's just feels like really dry watered down and glorious bastards at the end of the day. So. fine. yeah Perfectly fine and adequate. Listen, if ah if they're not going to make, it's not going to be the Wolfenstein game. ah wow I'll watch this and I'll just have a controller. Just watch overlord. and Overlord is really good. Oh my God. zo it ah Red dwarf to red dwarf for the $2 don't know. Thank you so much. I cannot wait till Oppenheimer to electric bugaloo. It's going to happen. New sequel.
02:17:33
Speaker
Up and high mist, I think they would call it. Oh, thank you so much for the don't know who put insert a good ease nuts joke here. No such thing. That's an oxymoron. There's no such thing as a good deal. Let's just, I'm not these nuts. We're not talking about these nuts. We're not these nuts. We're better than that. No, we're not better than that. Hold on. Are you suggesting that the podcast needs a de-notification?
02:18:01
Speaker
I don't even know what to do. Water hazard gave us $10. I don't even know if I want to read it after what you did. Just rude. Also, those are great looking nuts and I'm very hungry. and Eric put up actual nuts not like gross like good-looking protein filled nuts Water has a worth $10 don't know. Thanks so much hot D season 2 should have kept pushing its format like with the time skips or two-part finale Rather than replicate Game of Thrones would have been fun to put all the Damon stuff into a singular spooky episode I agree that would have been a very cool one-off don't start show anything else and just be like here was my month at the spooky hotel and here's what happened
02:18:37
Speaker
boy did They should do like a Mike Flanagan thing where it's just like day one and day 20. That would be great. Yeah. yeah That would be great. Josh Knowles with a $2 don't know. Darren, have you ever seen the stop motion filled Mad God? That's the Phil Tippett movie that he spent like decades trying to make.
02:18:56
Speaker
And they made it like a poker face, but I have not. It is on my list of movies to see. I'm not watching. I've heard nothing but but things. yeah Yeah. Like, which is very explicitly like, you're like, we what does Ryan Johnson know? But yeah, um it's, it's, I, it's on my list to see. I have not seen everybody enjoy seeing it right about it. Yeah.
02:19:13
Speaker
uh just the technical marvels and also like just like deeply unsettling visual in like a really good way like get in the mood to be like i want something to get under my skin and i'm gonna feel like i need to take a hot shower after yeah um good stuff yeah uh svs guru with a five euro don't know thank you so much have any of you seen the parody movies by german filmmaker billy her big namely shoe of mantu and trom shift paroed one not No, the only foreign parody movies I've seen, or not American parod parody movies, not English, are the OSS 117. You know, those, like the Bond parodies. The ones that they made before they won the Oscar, the one that Michael Devanis is liking. And John Duchardin made before they were like, let us win the best picture, Oscar. They're actually really funny that the two of them I've seen they're like star to the murder fra Austin Powers. Yeah, I don't know. they they horn They're like they're like if you ask the French to make Austin Powers, you're going to get something incredibly horny, a baby. um I think i I saw I saw one of those parodies, but it was parodies nuts.
02:20:21
Speaker
Oh, oh, they're doing Star Trek. Can we ban enough of us from the podcast that there's no podcast anymore? That it's just like, this is like the ship of Theseus. No podcast because all of us have been banned at some point. ah We need to end soon so we can get launched so I could piss. Yeah. And you have COVID. And I have COVID. Rex Elias with a five dollar don't know. Thank you so much, Darren. I fully support your feelings on Picard. Season three was terrible.
02:20:51
Speaker
like you I mean, I obviously I'm glad people enjoy it. I'm like, I'm not. If somebody enjoys it and I don't, who is the winner here? The person who enjoyed it. Like I take no joy in not liking things, but also at the same time, I can't pretend that I do like something I don't. Um, but yeah, no, I did. There were moments where it felt like I just could not to Jack's thing. It's like, it was like a trying to understand what it is that people are responding to in it because I know that they are. And I know that feeling is genuine and I think it's great, but I just, I can't, I can't get there myself and I try and I can't get the angle on it. So yeah, that unfortunately such as life.
02:21:25
Speaker
And with every one of these conversations, if you liked something and we didn't, you're very happy. There's no yes, like, yeah, we are not telling you anything. Yeah, exactly. SPS Guru with a 10 euro.
Discussion on Ryan Reynolds Movies
02:21:37
Speaker
No, no, thank you so much. SPS Guru. Adam Project was like the ah was like all of Ryan Reynolds, non Deadpool movies, tepid and mediocre. Also, the last up ah upload by the escapist was a month ago. Do you think they've finally given up? Well, they did. They let go of their video.
02:21:51
Speaker
Uh, so don't, I don't know if the escapist, what their future video points are. Wish them the best. that to them and Absolutely. Uh, yeah. Ryan Reynolds. Uh, what's, what's your favorite Ryan Reynolds movie under your head? A Mississippi grind. Oh, that's a good one. That was a quick golf, the draw, but Mississippi grind and adventure land is probably second. too Oh, oh my God. Adventureland is probably mine. Yeah. Where he plays the two. I'm like, i I'm going to quickly move tactically and take the two good ones and put like Marty and Jack in an awkward sight situation. I don't know if it's good, but I watched it a bunch on DVD, smoking aces.
02:22:26
Speaker
Oh, I don't think it's good. No, Joe Carnahan. Is that a Joe Carnahan? No, Smoke and Aces is good. Smoke and Aces is... I haven't seen it in like 15 years, but I enjoy it. It's about all like the hitmen... Yeah, it's kind of like a crazy deep ass like Jason Bateman, Common, Alicia Keys. No, no, Smoke and Aces is very good. I remember really being into that. A great Chris Pine performance, so very weird. He plays like a hillbilly assassin, Chris Pine. Yeah, yeah. I remember how Chris Pine used to do that.
02:22:50
Speaker
Yeah, like yeah he's also in Wanted as well. He's on Parks and Rec. Like, remember when before Chris Pine? No, sorry. No, Chris Pine. Yeah. it Chris Pine still does that. Good for Chris Pine. Yeah, he was great in Dungeon and Dragons. He was. My favorite Ryan Reynolds movie is Two Guys a Girl and a Pizza Place. Good call. That's a TV show, isn't it? He cheated. Nathan Fillion, who's a girl?
02:23:16
Speaker
It was not Nathan Fillion, he was not the other guy, but he I believe he had a a part in it. And um not Tia Leone, but someone who was very similar to Tia Leone. This is David Duchovny. Was it Dharma of Dharma and Greg? It was not Dharma of Dharma and Greg, it was like a tinier Dharma.
02:23:37
Speaker
Oh, a little Dharma. It was level the initiative from last. Namaste. Biscuits and BDQ with a $10 don't know. Thank you so much. Here's the mending broken lower limbs. My wife just broke her ankle last week. Oh no. It's going around. this the Mine is luckily not broken. Just very, very sprained. Yeah.
02:24:02
Speaker
ah There you go. Everyone will get better. Just put on ice and elevate. elevate ah Proud hand with five Australian dollars. Thank you so much. I might love picards i might love Picard season, and I apologize, but how do we get Darren to talk about Star Trek more? I have to know his thoughts on Next Generation Deep Space Nine. I i feel like Darren's talked about. so oh First off, go back and watch that one that one stream with you guys. so Oh, yeah, with myself, Nick, playing like the Star Trek strategy game. It was literally just a video game. yeah i got here It was just us ah lovingly talking about our favorite Star Trek episodes. ah the The answer is anytime we have space to talk about ah next year, perhaps what we can do, we can put like on the back burner. I have not seen ah more than a handful of episodes of deep space nine. And so perhaps we can do like, um
02:24:53
Speaker
a whole deep space nine thing, because i that's the good one. And I'm probably now as an adult, ready to take that in. I wasn't ready ah right after next gen because they are very different shows. And as a next gen fan going into deep space nine, it's like, this isn't super happy positive time. and So like but like, why is this entire show a Holocaust metaphor? Yes, exactly.
02:25:18
Speaker
My, a lot of people have always asked, when are we going to get Darren and Yahtzee in a conversation? And one of my, I know the two things you guys overlap on are Trek and Doctor Who. And so I feel like if there's some, like maybe in the fall, when I'm, when I'm on, when I'm going to Japan, we'll see if Yahtzee's schedule comes up and he can just join you guys. Can you just talk about that?
02:25:36
Speaker
Love it. Fantastic. Love it. There we go. And then pure pyro. ah Two Euro don't know. Thank you so much. Final don't know. I ironically love the Phantom. Billy Zane. Yeah. To quote Jason Muse in one of the Silent Bob movies, word bitch, fennem like a motherfucker.
02:25:54
Speaker
I believe that might've been. I think it's a bomb and phantoms. all so and nu yeah and alic one um and plan your the bomb and phantoms yo yeah yeah um cine I love the Phantom. I think it's a a fantastic little time capsule of when they were still figuring out how to do these types of movies.
02:26:14
Speaker
I also like i think he's great oh ah while I'm not a fan of either of those movies, I think it's notable how much of Batman begins comes from the shadow. Like if you watch the shadow and then watch Christopher Nolan's Batman begins, it's very obvious that Nolan watched the shadow was like, this is a terrible movie. Nobody's going to remember it in five years, but I think I can use some of it. counterpoint yeah what What if I did all this again, but it was good. And it's like, that is a, that is a great strategy to do that. but
02:26:45
Speaker
Um, and so then a final one, $2 fungus finder. Can we use the word autumn instead of fall? I'm probably not going to change. It's probably more accurate, but I'm probably Americans, but though it's an American thing. I think you guys call it the fall. We call it all. um no and I'm not against the pants and trousers. Yeah, exactly. Shops and stores. Lifts and lorries.
02:27:07
Speaker
No, no lifts and elevators. oh garage yeah ah trunks and larries yeah it's also the The name of my, uh, EDM band is called trunks and boots, trunks outs and trunks and partss and trunks and boots. That's beautiful. That's great guys. We did it. We got to the end of the show.
02:27:27
Speaker
We didn't stack. what What should folks check out on your neck of the woods? And you, one of these days, either Thursday or Friday, um I don't know if it'll be with Marty or with someone else. We are going to stream more Elden ring DLC. That is a thing that is going to happen this week. Cause you all have been asking for it. um You should check out ah Let's see here. Tomorrow is Wednesday.
Upcoming Projects and Episode Wrap-up
02:27:50
Speaker
We are getting the edited version of Yahtzee tries up tomorrow um in kind of the normal fully ramblymatic spots on Saturday is the season ah one finale of adventure is nigh remastered.
02:28:04
Speaker
um we're then and Right up next week, we're season two remastered. It's happening. We are working on our Blu-rays of all of the seasons. So you can have physical media in case YouTube decides to implode now that Google has been officially deemed a monopoly. ah but So those are all the things. c Incredible. Wow. What do you have going on?
02:28:28
Speaker
Uh, yes. And literally this morning, uh, we released a kind of a special episode of the backdrop just because the cake crusader dropped last week. And I really enjoyed it. Uh, yeah, it it was a really, I'm really proud of it. It came together over the weekend, did it very quickly. Um, it's one of those things that is like longer than it needs to be because I didn't have as much time to edit it as I should have. But I think it's a, I'm quite proud of, I think it turned out relatively well. So please check that out. If you are at all interested, it's a discussion of the show and what the show does and doesn't do its relationship to previous Batman media and lots and lots of terrible Batman related puns. So it is something for Apple.
02:28:59
Speaker
um other than that yeah I mean, I do weekly columns here as well. So in Fridays, Sundays, and Mondays, you can catch me. So yeah. like our pat dollar tier And then every couple of weeks we make one free. We made one this weekend free, a great one I'm posting right here. So anyone can and read this one. Very proud of that one. ah Darren went super long on Jonathan Hickman's X-Men run.
02:29:20
Speaker
i said It was five years old. this july Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how it really um ah took a lot of really major swings and was like a massively successful kind of reinvention of how to tell an X-Men story that sadly he didn't get the finish finish. But um yeah, I do have a feeling like you said that in times going to tell people are going to look back on this and be like, Oh, this was like amazingly influential. Yeah.
02:29:46
Speaker
yeah Same thing that happened with Morrison's, where like the immediate reaction is, what is this trash get it out of the way? Can we bring in Chuck Austin and have him fix it? And then gradually over time, like people will slowly worm in references to it. And before you know it, all of a sudden, Quentin Quire and Cassandra Nova is appearing in a gigantic like billion dollar summer blockbuster.
02:30:04
Speaker
you know yeah Exactly. Oh, you know what? Another thing to plug. I don't know if we have been doing a good job of plugging it is um I will be at PAX West myself and Jesse Galina are doing a panel discussion ah dungeon ah dungeon master help desk where we will help answer all of your dungeon mastering questions on July 1st July 1st at 5 p.m. at first.
02:30:31
Speaker
that said yeah September 1st. Next month, not not last month. Sunday, September 1st. Next month, not last month. The end of summer, nothing um not mid-summer. The end of summer. You've got Blockbuster fever. That's your problem, Jack. September 1st. at 7 p.m. September 1st at 7 p.m. Jesse gle and I are doing are doing a panel at PAX West. So we'll also just be at PAX West to check out all of the neat stuff. We're still figuring out how many of us are going as a team. But at very least, Jesse and I will be there to talk about dungeon mastering. So if you're going to PAX West, to say hi. There you go. Easy.
02:31:10
Speaker
Uh, great. Yeah. And then, uh, yeah, all the regular stuff from us. Uh, no more streams. Uh, the rest of today, tomorrow, obviously you'll have the edited Yahtzee tries as well as fire link in the evening. The aforementioned Jesse Galena will be joining Casey and I, uh, Thursday we'll have the devil may cry stream at the normal time, 7 PM central, uh, Friday at 4 PM central, uh, Jamaite and Jess hoops.
02:31:31
Speaker
we'll be possibly wrapping up their Beyond Good and Evil stream possibly maybe this is part two of three but getting close to it so tune in for that and like Jack mentioned there'll be some some Elden Ring one of the days we'll figure that out and a new design delve on Friday as well probably Friday maybe Friday only friday yeah because Thursday I think you're gonna have to get folks to the airport that's whatever that's one of the ones true that's true everyone's leaving so yeah we'll figure it out we'll try to like give people a little bit a little bit Uh, yeah, thank you all so much for tuning in. And again, apologies for going long. We're we're going to rain it in at some point. probably just This is how long we're going. I mean, it is once every other week. So it's like we could do an hour and 15 minute episode every week or a little bit longer.
02:32:13
Speaker
and Also, we might in two weeks, the episode might be a little earlier because yeah darre you have a hard out. at a certain point So we might go out earlier that day. And then then I will literally disappear an hour into us. Yes, I will have a hard out. I think we'll actually have a real hard out because I believe at one or two p.m. that afternoon is going to be the games come up. So we'll figure it out. We'll get them to push that back. It'll be grounded. Push it back.
02:32:39
Speaker
yeah we we We had the guy from The Expanse on the show. I mean, come on. it's and That's not the show anymore. That was the old show. That was the old show. That was like two shows ago. yeah um So for Darren and Jack and ah Eric behind the scenes, this was Marty. Thank you all so much for tuning into the Rewind episode number three. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your afternoon slash evenings and we'll see you all next time. Bye, everyone. Take care. Bye, guys.