Blank Check with Griffin & David - Avatar: Fire and Ash

Episode Date: December 21, 2025

We went back to Pandora and we all fell in love with a very special lady. She’s a bit prickly. A bit unconventional. But boy, is she something! Join us as we chat Avatar: Fire and Ash, aka VARANG: THE AWAKENING, the third installment in Big Jim’s Sully family saga. Yes, this movie’s a bit messier than the previous ones. Yes, it repeats many of the same beats as The Way of Water. No, we do not care. We are too distracted by our new Na’vi queen. Listen to Big Jim drop Big Lore on The Town with Matt Belloni (Part 1 - Part 2) If you're in the area check out Nitehawk Trivia  Watch the Anaconda Trailer to have 3 Bad Minutes Sign up for Check Book, the Blank Check newsletter featuring even more “real nerdy shit” to feed your pop culture obsession. Dossier excerpts, film biz AND burger reports, and even more exclusive content you won’t want to miss out on. Join our Patreon for franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter, Instagram, Threads and Facebook!  Buy some real nerdy merch Connect with other Blankies on our Reddit or Discord For anything else, check out BlankCheckPod.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Blank Jack with Griffin and David Black Jack with Griffin and David Don't know what to say You're to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show with blank check Your podcast has no dominion here Now imagine

When you hear me say that Imagine I'm the hottest fucking creature to ever exist. I am so turned on right now. You are the hottest creature to ever because it's Griffin Newman. No. Can I say it? David is warm today. He's cozy.

He's been cuddly. He's been warm. That's so funny because I'm like, I've got to get out of here in a two and a half hours. David's hearing a crying baby in the hallway and it's triggering 20 things in him. And I am coming off a Thanksgiving week of travel and stress that is, uh, A blood-curdling tale that I cannot share. Yeah. Why?

Why? I don't know. I have family and I love them. But it's a great question. They should come to you. Traveling to see family caused you stress? Especially if you want to drive three small children of Boston on Thanksgiving weekend, be my guest. I love to come back.

What was your travel day back? Saturday. Okay. Not as bad as Sunday. That's when I came back from New England and it was a fucking nightmare. Yeah, I think Ben has you beat, David. No, he doesn't. Yes, he doesn't.

No, he doesn't. Because you don't know what happened to me. Do you know what happened to Ben? No, what happened to Ben? Compare your stories. Did you get shot with a gun and die? I'm still here. So I'm pretty sure I have you beat, but go right ahead.

Please. Ben and David have both taken out dual. Yep. No, I want to hear it. I want to hear it. Flaming sabers. I want to hear it. Okay, so I went up to my in-law.

Yes, you did. Up in New England. New England. Yeah. And I brought my cat, my lovely cat, my 17-year-old cat, pig. On the ride home, unfortunately, about an hour and a half in, pig peed on me. She peed in her case, on my leg.

Yeah. And then the ride all in all took seven hours. Yeah. Long drive. So it was a nice, long ride of soaked and pee. I don't think you're going to win this battle today. I have you beat so fucking bad. You're about to run out of here, blushing.

Were you shot with a gun into you guys? Friday night. Oh my God. David is bleeding. Friday night. So the night before we have to travel, right? So one of my twins starts barfing in the middle of the night. Get him up.

He throws up, you know, throws up, you know, 50 times. Then the other one starts barking. I'm holding the other one barfing. Why did you still go? No, no, no. Friday night, we're there. Oh. We're there.

It's the day after Thanksgiving. It's the day after Thanksgiving. I'm not in my home. I'm in someone else's home. No. Guess what's happening while the second child is barfing? And it's really, it's, I'm not like, it sucks when a baby. he's barfing because they hate it and I don't know what's going on

and you feel really bad for them. Can I take a guess? Yeah. Your oldest child starts barking? Nope. Does someone start shitting? Nope. Well, I mean, probably. Does Ben's cat pig pee on you? No, I start barfing. You start barfing? And it was this moment where my wife is in the bathroom with me. Again, not our bathroom. My poor cousin's bathroom

that we're staying, you know, with them. And I'm like, I think you got to get out of here for a sec. You just, yeah. And she's like, what? I'm like holding a barking, baby. I'm holding one of them. She's holding the other. Yeah. And she's like, okay, I throw up a bunch. Then she goes, and she's like, I'm so sorry. And I'm like, it's okay.

Not my first rodeo. And then I drove back. Can we get the next morning, my stomach seizing up, no coffee, no food through five and a half hours of, like, traffic from Boston to New York. You did take a power of change clothes. Ben's like, my cat peed on me, which God bless, that sounds annoying. It sucked. I mean, I did get to pull over and change and wet my leg off. I was just driving like...

I mean, people have said to me, like, wait, like, how did you drive? And I'm like, I don't know. I just went into like, you know, fugue state. Can I ask a couple follow-up logistic question? Like, fucking, what is Varang do to... You know, I go into Varang brain. Yes, we do.

The world's biggest pin on the board about Verang. We're going to get back to Verang and we're going to talk about Varang so much. But I just want to clarify, you're holding a baby. Let's say, rock steady. I always forget which is supposed to be witch, but I think I was holding be bop. I bought them big plush, bebop and rock steady heads,

and each one is picked one naturally. Oh, so they picked their own idea. I believe I was holding bbop. That's the progressive way to raise children is you let them self-identify as a B-Bop or a rock steady. They're turtle villain of choice. Okay, so you're holding B-Bop. Yeah, I think so.

Your wife is holding rock-steady. That's right. They are vomiting onto your bodies? Sure. I mean, you know, it's baby vomit, so, yeah. On to their bodies. You got the little, like, towel on the shoulder or whatever. We got, like, whatever you can get.

We have just paper towels. Then you start feeling sick. This was really rough, by the way. It was very traumatic. You start feeling sick. Do you hand Bebop to Forky? No, how could I? She had a baby.

So where are you puking into a toilet? A toilet. So you walk to the bathroom holding Bebop. I was sitting in there already, luckily, because, you know, they were already sort of gross. So we kind of needed to be in. And where's the boss baby during all of this? Boss baby, thank the Lord, was sleeping with her cousins upstairs. Fun.

Because she saw that her cousins all sleep in a room. together. Do we need to codename the cousins as well? And was like, I want to sleep with them. And we were like, you sure? Like, you know, you won't be near us. You're going to be upstairs. And she was like, yes. And thank God she made that decision. That's so independent of her. I'm so proud of her. It was awesome. We were proud of her too. I was feeling so great until around one in the morning. How many cousins are there? So I have two cousins in Boston. My lovely cousins who I love so much. And I grew up with. And between all of us, there's eight children. We all have eight kids. So they, you know,

one has three, one has two. And I have three. Okay. So Huey, so Huey, Louis is like one Chippendale. The crazy thing is that I drove back. But it was just one of those things where it was like, we have to get home. But you weren't caked in the vomit. This was the next day? I had showered. It's true.

I worry about you, buddy. Is this like a food poisoning scenario? Initially, I thought it was. But then a couple days later, my daughter barfed so it was like, now this is just like a bug, you know? Do you know what it sounds like to me? Yeah. But at least she did that in my home where I have laundry and services. Yeah, you felt safe.

Yes. Do you know what it sounds like to me? It sounds like your whole family came down with a brutal case of Avatar fever. So true. As I was throwing up, I was like, I can't wait to see Varang, David Thuleus guy. Is Joel David Morgan to be back?

Your vomit has no dominion here. So David, I'm going to put down whatever the fuck that weapon is that you reference. You're going to need to kneel. I texted some other parents. Yeah, it's all right. You're Taruk Maktow. You are Turok Maktou.

I was just like, this is like Mastir parent nonsense. This is like a story that will be told when they're far older. Versus like the usual like, oh, you got a stomach bug and it sucked. No, it's the saga of the Sully family. These stories will be passed down from clan to clan,

generation and generation. These are important. Yeah. Dare I say it because we're rounded out the year and I'm committed to the retirement of this. Totemic story. I was doing a totemite sign. Marie, I'm calling the shot.

2026, Totemic retired. Are there any others? Are you just retiring it because mean people on the Reddit called you out on it? Excuse me. Nothing mean has ever been said on the Reddit. I never read it and it doesn't live in my head. It's definitely not affected my emotions ever.

No. I checked my head recently. No tenants. Empty. Landlords opening pockets, moths flying out. It's weirdly unoccupied, and yet I am receiving rent.

It's the opposite of living in my head rent free. What's this podcast called? This podcast is called Blank Check with Griffin, David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies and vomit. Sometimes. Directors who have massive success

early on in their careers. For example, making the Terminator Terminator 2, Titanic, Avatar. Titanic is a really fun way. Avatar. Way of Wattar.

Also true lies in the abyss. They did include true lies in the original Avatar trailer. No, no. Oh, yes. They really, well, because they were like, we need to remind people how many things he made that they liked

because everyone has their knives out, Benoit Blanc style for this fucking movie. Arguably the most successful filmmaker of all time. Certainly relative to how few movies he has actually made. That's the thing. You might have the Spielbergs of the world who put up more quantity. But Cameron's per game average is pretty high.

He's also currently the only person with three of the ten highest-grossing films of all time, if not three of the five? He's three of the ten. I can look it up. I mean, he for over a decade held the record of the highest grossing film in history and then dethroned himself.

We've re-dened that over the years. Big Jim Cameron, the deepest director alive, has returned and graced us with another installment of the Avatar saga, the ongoing story of the Sully clan, Avatar, Fire, and Ash. He has three of the top five. Okay, yeah.

Avatar, Avatar, Wavewater, and Titanic are all in the top five, along with your two other favorite films, Avengers Endgame, and Nayshaw 2. Did you see Nayshaw 2, Griffin? I tried to watch Nayshaw 1. I was told that you shouldn't do that by people who saw Nesha 2. Where they were like, I think you can skip it. Like, I think you can just go right into Nesha 2. I was struggling, and I'm not even saying this in, like, a pejorative, quantitative way.

I was just like, this is just, this is something I don't understand. Yeah, which is, I think, sometimes a humbling and useful experience for people to have of like, right, I cannot touch every piece of culture. I've heard my little cousin, the off-reference George's younger sister, is obsessed with Nizsha too, which makes sense because she's got big Nizsha. Because it's a little girl who has like a stick or something? It's a, is a boy. I haven't seen a film. It is a boy, but it's just seen a little cartoon of a person. it's a little demon they try to teach to be good

oh well wait a second this sounds kind of cute it yeah I don't know maybe I gotta give another goat look here's the important part yeah fire and ash in this economy both in one movie it's a popular mythologic character

yes well we've got this film what's it called avatar fire and ash avatar colon fire and ash it is James Cameron's 10th movie that's crazy

12 if you include the two docs, I guess. Okay. Yeah. But we're, I mean, I guess he discounts, uh, piranha two, the spawning. Well, then he's down to nine. Yeah. Why doesn't he count that? Because he says he got fired off of it.

Because he says he got fired and like, I wasn't fucking making it. Does the new Billy Eilish one count? Are we covering the Billy Elish movie? I think we're going to cover it. I think we have to. That might be some real Patreon shit. I think that's some Patreon shit. What is this project?

He directed a, like a tour documentary, like a concert movie for Billy Eilish that's coming out next year. David, I must correct you. He co-directed. With Billy Eilish. Yeah. Who's also in the editing room with him. She's, like, learning on the job.

Yeah. And his editing room is 10 feet, 10 miles down. He's really into Billy Eilish. But not in a creepy way, I don't think. Just because his kids like Billy Eilish or whatever. Okay. Let me just finish. Let me just say, we did a series many years ago, early in our shows run called Podinator

Nader to Judgment cast that ended with Avatar. Three years ago, we... were able to return to Pandora to talk about Avatar, Way of Water, a movie that, as you coined the term on this film, owns bones. Sure does.

As I recently said on Letterbox, makes me cum buckets. Ew. You said that before seeing Fire and Ash? Yeah. Because that's the sexiest of the three in my opinion. It is the sexiest and the halliest. I don't think that's disputable.

Yeah. This movie certainly fuck. the box the most. Yeah. I saw the Waywater re-release, whatever it was, two months ago. That movie has only grown for me in the last three years. Basically think it's perfect now. Yeah, I re-listened to our episode this weekend.

Yeah. And I was like, what am I complaining about? There was some still processing stuff. Let's call it out in advance. All four of us, I think, loved this movie, had a great fucking time watching it. Absolutely. Yeah. But also, you saw it slightly earlier in the day.

Marie Barty, Party, Party, Barty, Salinas. Producer Ben Hosley. Three of us saw it together, walked out. We're like, thumbs up. Also, how the fuck are we going to talk about this thing? These movies are hard to process on one viewing. For how much everyone likes to say, they're so simple. It's just Fern Gully in space.

There's so much going on. That is such an original, clever, achingly funny thought. I am achingly funny fun. You guys aching right now? I am actually. My funny bones. Yeah. this is a tough movie to talk about

I walked out of it I'm like I think that's I think Way of Water is the best now even though when we recorded a Way of Water episode I was like the first one's better but this one rules now I'm like Way of Water is clearly obviously way of water is just one of those

like take me there any day of the week I love it so much and this feels like third in a competition between three golden movies and yet I'm like am I going to watch this 10 more times and think it's perfect There are silly things in this movie that I'm like, I can say and be like, yeah, that was dumb. That was silly.

There's stuff in it. There's things that feel like minor missteps. It also feels like the messiest of the three of them in a way that for me, I'm like, it's overflowing with ideas. Yeah. They're not always organized perfectly. I think I said this maybe on our trap episode. Some, like, it happens a lot with Avatar or with Jamelon where people. Here's the disclaimer.

We're going to point to the sign. How do you think these movies are good? They are objectively bad. And I'm like, you're wrong. Yeah, we're not. Like, here's the thing. With these movies, I don't care. I don't care that like certain threads are complicated or plot hole.

Whatever. Like, I do not care. The entire movie, I was sitting right by Griffin Newman. I saw you lean forward in your seat. Like 20 times. That was me. I was not with you guys, but that was me. I had my hands gas, like, clashed to my face, my mouth.

a gape. I was just, I was enjoying it. If you don't like these movies, you should just fucking not listen this episode because we're gonna talk about everything we like about these cells. Okay, let's all stop getting mad at imaginary people guys.

That's why I'm getting that out of the way so we can stop like straw man. This is my thing. It's just like, what you guys are talking about, I'm just like, I'm in Pandora. I'm so happy to be here. I'm in Pandora. Fucking, when they go to the fucking

E. Falko base, where it's just a bunch of grumpy humans, even then I'm like, ah, it's nice to be here. They're like digital fucking water on. They're weird phones. Everyone, do they have social media on the, on the fucking army base? So many questions. The implication of Giovanni Ribisi's character.

The son of the chairman. That he's a nipple? I mean, he had that energy. Who's his dad? Who is his dad? Are we going to meet his dad in the fourth way? Oh, God, who is his dad? That line gets thrown out.

I'm like, oh my God, who the fuck are they going to cast? Ben, what did you want to say? I just felt like I wanted to reach out the whole time. Yeah. Well, that's what he's trying to get you to do. Yeah, I want to reach out and touch Varrang. Wait a second. It is astounding how good this movie looks,

and it is astounding that James Cameron, after, you know, hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars of R&D, groundbreaking technology, combined with disciplined, focused, heartfelt storytelling has finally cracked the code on creating the hottest creature that could ever fucking...

She's so fucking hot! The hottest mean Navi. Vareng rules my fucking world. It's one of the things. So first she has to learn about capitalism and then she'd learn it quick. She would love it. She would love it. I know.

I know. That was sort of my joke. But it's so funny that like the two Avatar movies came out and they have romance and sex in them, you know, but it's blue aliens and everyone's like a little like chuckling at it. My main complaint about Way of Water was that there wasn't enough romance. It's a lot of face stroking and I see you. It's a lot of family stuff. And I'm like, okay.

Well, I finally don't mean. But you learn about people being like, I'm horny for Navi. And you're like, oh, okay, that's insane, but okay. And then you watch this one and you're like, well, now we're all horny for Navi. I get it. Now, excuse me, I came correct for this episode.

I did purchase the World of Avatar visual exploration because I want to try to get some of this terminology correct. But I feel like there's a moment in the movie because this movie really explores new territory in terms of pony braid fucking. Yes. both consensual and non-consensual. Yeah, I was wondering, is it considered assault

if you forcefully combine your braid with someone else's? Look, if we're just going to be jumping all over the place, so in the His Dark Materials series, you know, those, they have, everyone has their demon, which is like a little animal. I've never read it. Okay, well, in His Dark Materials, in the world that they're largely set in,

humans, souls, or whatever, sort of, it's the best way to describe it as their souls is animated as a creature that lives alongside them. they can talk to, right? It's called your demon. And nobody is allowed to touch anyone else's. And there's a moment late in the first book when suddenly the kids, like, people start grabbing their demons and it's like such a deep violation. And you're so in the book, you're reading this and you're like, you know, you can't believe this. And that's what her doing the braid

assault felt like, where it's like, you're not supposed to do that. That's like against natural Navi law, right? It's like you can't just be, you You know, U.S. being into people. And the most fascinating thing is that Corch is like, I think I like this a lot. Well, wow. We ain't encampus anymore. It's a potent mix.

He sounds like Foghorn Leger. It is kind of what he sounds like. I say, I say. You did this in our last through the Avatar episode. This is an episode. We're going to talk about Avatar Fire National. We're just going to talk about that because there's lots to talk about. It's still processing thoughts for a movie that made us all sheer.

The Stephen Lang character. of Miles Quarge. One of the greatest. Is one of the great characters in movies. A fascinating art. I thought he was so much fun in the original film. I love him.

In the original film, you're like, great. He's doing what he's being asked. He's being a hard as nails, evil general guy, and he's serving it up perfectly. Tendorly chewing the scenery. Exactly. Skillfully.

And then Cameron announces he's going to be the villain for all of them. He's Darth Vader. And I immediately went, is that a little uninspired? That's a little silly, right? Like, We're going to bring this guy back to life, and it's all going to be him. And they're like, no, no, no, no.

The implications of avatar technology is that you could be a soldier who lived to kill Navi, dies at their hand, and then one day is reborn in the body of your enemy. But with the human hatred of Navi coded in, what would that be like? And I think these two sequels, Way of Water and Fire and Ash, explore, that is the thread they explore, that is the most fascinating to me. Yep. is like, and it's like, yeah, okay, you can, you know, people will be like, oh, no, come on, it's obvious.

Like, he starts out villain, he becomes sort of an anti-hero, you know, he has this dark version of the Jake Sully journey, but it's weirder than that. It's so interesting. It's so much weirder. When people fucking knock these movies for being broad and simplistic and, like, hitting these tropes of a thousand stories they've heard before, it's like, that's the foundation. And then on top of that, James Cameron does the weird. shit in the world.

There is stuff in this movie that is so strange. And Colonel Miles Quorich, it's the opposite of the great Norm McDonald joke about Adolf Hitler. The more I learn about this guy, the more I like him. Miles Quarich? Yeah.

Norm McDonald's Adolf Hitler joke is. I've been reading about this Hitler felon, I've got to tell you, the more I read about him, the less I like him. But Quartz, I'm just like, I'm not saying, I'm not saying I support all of his actions. Sure, you do not, in fact, have to hand it to him. But I am fascinated by everything going on in this guy.

Well, it is, it is interesting because we get the kind, in this movie, we get the, like, inverse of the Jake and Niteri love story. But, like, dark-sighted. Like, he's brought over, he's brought closer to Navi culture, but by someone who's rejected it. Yeah. What also amuses me is that there are the other grunts who also became Avatar in Navi, and they're just like, yeah, I just want to, like, wear sunglasses and, like, drink beer. They have no interest in engaging with the culture. Yes. But can we just shoot him?

Isn't our job to shoot Jake Sully? In a minute. It's like the guy's like, Jesus fucking crazy. I'm trying to find the name of it because they throw it out in this when they discover that in saving his life, they have now given Spider his own connection port in the back of his head. Yeah, yeah, sure. And there's a term they throw out when they find it. Oh, for what it's called?

Yes. What's the braid called? an avatar? Yes, but specifically the little squishy part. It's called Sahelu, Sahelu, Sahelu. But is there another term they used there? They called it a Q? What else they call? I don't know. Wait, so Spider gets

a little braid? You didn't notice his braid? No, I know he got the braid, but I thought he got the braid as part of Grace. Yes, yeah. You said he got the braid because he saved. No, but in saving him, Spider was gifted. Yes. Oh, I thought you meant because Spider's

saves Quora at the end of the movie. No, no, no, no. So I was like, I didn't connect that at all. Sorry. It's such a cool, like, world-building-y kind of thing where mushroom spores... Yeah, right, right, right. ...go inside and are able to then rework his biology. It's like a fungusy thing of some sort. But I kind of like how it's not even that preposterous.

Like, it is a thing that could maybe be real. Because Curie is Teen God. Yeah. The fucking mother tree impregnating. in the dead avatar body of Dr. Grace Augustine. Any questions? Planted the seed. Yeah, it's sort of it.

Her avatar body was the seed bearer, and she is the seed that was born. Yeah, it's an Anakin Skywalker situation. Like, her mom is the force. Yes. You know, it's like, you know, the force in Star Wars is very similar to AWA, and then it's like, well, what is it?

It's like, well, it's an energy thing that's basically just all consciousness, right? and Awa is sort of what I like about Awa What I like We're hearing a lot of things about Awa And I got to say the more I read about her The more I like her Is that yes, she's there

She's their Gaya goddess And you can think about it however you want But the way the scientists talk about her In the first movie where they're like It's just everyone's memories Getting plugged in to a natural network That then is like this collective Of all their memories

But also in this movie you see that She's got a big fucking head In the sky That's a representation of her great thing. Can we just walk through all of the, like, major developments in this movie? We see AWA has a big

white head. Spider can breathe. Well, spider is converted. He becomes basically the first hybrid. Yeah. By being saved by God. Well, it's kind of like, the first evolutionary leap that gets made happens in the first Avatar movie, which is like they grow these

unnatural Navi bodies. Host bodies. And those, you know, can get integrated, right? Like, Jake gets You can do a short-term stint. Spider is now the next stage where it's like, now we can actually bring a human to fucking Pandora and integrate them.

Well, there's another thing, too. There's a step in between, which is the half-breeds. You have Jake Sully fully converts. That's what I was saying. And then he's fathering children. Right. Mutant children with five fingers on your hands. The sky people, the pink people.

Did they say pink people in any of the previous movies? Because I didn't remember that. I don't know. I need to re-watch them all. every day for the rest of my life. Yeah, do they say pink people? That was kind of a new one. Kind of like toasters and Battlestar Galactic.

I love fake slurs. Yeah. I just like that there's been this ticking time bomb within a teary. Oh, but it's in the second one. It's just after her son dies, she can go full, wrong kid died. Yeah.

And after her son's dead, she's like, why do I have to fucking look at Spider all the time? I tolerated this. Trump's got to reelected. Now she feels comfortable saying, the words again. I'm sorry. Okay, so you wanted to talk about major revelations in fire and ash.

Right. Yes. There are bad Navi. Yes. Outcast clans. Who don't believe in AWA. That was what I liked. Yeah. I initially was worried that they would just kind of be like, where our thing is this. And it's like, no, no, no, these are Navi who have left the sort of Navi way. They're not like I liked this. They were.

They got smited, kind of. Yeah, they got really screwed. Hey, they got reasons to be grumpy. Yeah. They got fired. Maybe move away from the volcano? That's just my point in a like my only thing in avatar

is like why doesn't everyone live in the cove? I'm like this is a great place to live. Looks nice. It's really really nice but I feel

like most people they haven't developed the like the fins and the gills and the water skills. So they just don't have they're not really they can't really like

get into the water shit as much as the Metcalfe. You're right. You're right. David. This episode is brought to you by Mooby the global film

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That's Mubi.com slash blank check for a whole month of great cinema for free. There you go. Okay, another major development, drugs. Drugs. Sure. What do we think the substance is? Ayahuasca. Some kind, I agree.

It's like they're finding some natural herb or whatever. This is the headline for this movie, and I hope no one listening to this has yet to see the film. I hope you're not learning this from the podcast. But Quartz gets stoned and fuck. Corridge does So our She blows shit up his nose And then fucks his pony braid

Hard These are all things that happen And one assumes also fucks Is dick hard Although we don't see And let me say this Drugs and pony braid fucking

What's a potent What my first text to David After we got out of the film Because David saw it before us Was Quorich Fox Corch Fox All caps In Tarabang

And you said All caps And does space drugs He does do space drugs. I mean, I know technically Pandoran drugs, but... And does space drugs. She, like, blows Navi cocaine

up his nose from a distance, like, out of a dark... Wolf of Wall Street style. I thought that was going to be a dildo. Yeah, right. You thought that she was going to introduce pegging. It might get there. It might get there. Right. And I was like, right, got to save something

for Avatar. Yeah, he's got two more moves to go. At least. What are some other things? So, Fire and Ash, it's a... It's a straight sequel to way of water in a way the way of water is not to Avatar, right? It is very much part two of a two-part story. It's in a lot of the same environments.

It's got mostly the same ensemble. What I think has become very clear, and he's basically copped to this as well, is... This was one movie. Yes. That he broke into two. Right. Avatar comes out in 2009.

2010, Avatar 2 and 3 are announced, originally announced for 2014 and 2015. And that's when they came out. So this movie is coming out fully 10 years after the original announced release date, right? Then 2013 delayed, but fourth film added. 2016 delays fifth film added. In that time, he establishes a writer's room.

They start breaking story. He's got this whole notion of, I want these to tell a larger saga, but I also want the films to have their own inherent concerns. What's become clear with distance is what was originally supposed to be the second film in his plan trilogy got so unwieldy that it became two films. It's the Georgia-Hartland. It was planned to be his third film, broke into two. So, Wavewater and Fire and Ash are the middle chapter.

It's a two-part middle chapter. He is now once again threatening us with who knows if I'll actually make the other tale. I'm retired. Who knows exactly? I don't know. I'm not thinking about Avatar 4. Am I thinking about stacks of cash? Maybe. Wavewater definitely ended with a lot of like, here we go.

Like there's stuff we're going to jump right back into. This movie does not have like crazy dangling threads, but it also does not feel like a resolution at all. Which I think will will drive. some people crazy. I think so too. I think it's not quite a, right, it's not quite a definitive enough conclusion maybe. I went in expecting like, Jake's gonna die. There will be some kind of capper here. He's also threatened. Four and five are really different, really weird, and people won't believe, like, how much of a left turn. It's just, you know how George Lucas would talk about his experimental movie? But they talk, it's just cells. You know, we're just going to watch cells.

They have tongues and mouths. it is so crazy they have tongues in cars you know like I was like right they'll be and then I was watching this movie while they're still grappling with the death of their son

and I immediately was like no Jake's not dying Neatiri's not that's not what this is and instead the big thing that happens in this movie is like like Jake and Neatiri

and Loat and uh Kyrie and all spider well the get dog you know they all make these sort of evolutionary like leaps in their thinking, Spider being

kind of crucial to all of them. This movie is really about Spider in a way that I maybe should have seen coming because he is the character where you're like, why are they doing this? And then you're like, right, I guess they're doing this because this is sort of the crux of it. You don't put them on the table for no reason.

There's intense. You're not just, I mean, the last line of this movie, do you guys remember what it is? Something like we welcome you, Spider. No, that's like the second last line. And then he swings off. is spider saying no shit because they're like spider

well you are now one of the people and he goes no shit and it says avatar fire and acted directed by James Cameron. James Cameron could die tomorrow or could decide to go make other movies and that could be the last word in avatar is spider

is humans joining the Navi fold and their reaction to be whoa no shit whoa I'm fucking the Navi now one of the people how do we feel about Spider's performance? We're going to get to it.

Let's put a pin in that. I think way of water. That was me putting a pin in it. Look, we've been early Avatar defenders, right? Yeah, I love that. People were fucking clowning an Avatar before it came out. Then it obviously has this massive success, like a huge kind of like Oscar upswing.

People, I think, kind of forget how much it was seen going into that night as this is probably going to sweep. As a possible favorite. Yes. Yes. It was kind of 50-fif. Just David Goliath narrative with, of course, his ex-wife, Catherine Bigelow, also covered on the show. Best friend? He said, Guillermo D'Oro and Catherine Bigelow are two best director friends.

It's really great of him to say. I mean, I really think that he mostly lives in New Zealand who doesn't hang out with people. What do you mean? He builds models like Guillermo's house with Steven Spielberg and J.J. Abrams. They all hang out. James Cameron did this two-part interview on the town that is incredible. Every single thing he says in it casually is like, 17 new volumes

of lore just dropped. There's an incredible moment you talking about like James Cameron could die tomorrow right?

And Bellany is saying like so now now you're saying you might not do four and five is the Hiroshima movie happening and he went look we don't

have a script for that that just came up in interview so people assume that's what's next. I got like five things in development. I don't even know

what the next thing's going to be you know I'd love to make other avatar movies but look also like I'm 70 you know

I don't who knows how many movies I have left in me. And then in the most James Cameron's statement of all time, he goes like, I mean, best case scenario, what? I only have 30 or 40 years left in me. That's a good case scenario, my friend. You know, like Martin Scorsese does these interviews where he's like, look, I'm in my 80s.

Maybe I only make one or two more films. James Cameron's like, I'm in my 70s. You know, maybe I don't make it past 110. I might only have seven giant films. That take five years at the economy of an entire country. I mean, James has to me. The kind of guy that he might know something, we don't. I hear him say that, and I believe it.

Yeah. I love that interview so much. There's so much good shit. Just some other tidbits. When he's introduced, Matt Bellany is like, you know, filmmaker, writer, producer, technologist, futurist. Is there anything I'm missing? And then James Cameron, like, really casually is like,

Deep Sea Explorer. He said that there's a semi-regular hang in which Guillermo del Toro, Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams and himself build old school model kits. And that Guillermo sometimes flies to Japan to pick up materials because they have the best shit. He said he and J.J. went together

and shipped a truck full of model kits back. And he said, but you've got to come correct. You need to know what you're doing. We don't let noobs in. And Belny's like, what are you? you build? And he was like, I'm mostly like rebuilt the Aurora creature from the Black Lagoon because I'm familiar with that one.

I have experience with that kid. Dude, it's just throwing up my hands up. But when he says this 30, 40 years thing. Can't they go hunt humans for sport or something? Like, why don't they? Like, you know what I mean? They're rich famous people. I love that they're so dorky. They're just like, me, he says this 30, 40 years thing. And he's like, look, I like went vegan. That added another 10 years.

Power positive thinking. You know, he's also like, I'm a assuming, like, the technology's going to, like, catch up, you know? Oh, there's also the crazy part where he talks about his friendship with Elon Musk, where, like, that got, there were so many things that got pulled out as clickbait headlines from that interview that sound really shitty. But then when you actually listen to it and you hear him explain himself, it's, like, the most rational shit in the world. I'm like, oh, yeah, I get it. So, like, him being friends with Elon Musk was not something that I knew. but apparently

I know Elon way back from the Marse Society in the late 90s Right He's like I've been talking to this guy for 30 years All the weirds For rich people who are like Do we need to fund space ourselves And he's basically like

I've known him forever I basically disagree with everything He thinks and does now But for better or worse This guy like controls the levers of power And there needs to be like positive influences In his ear He's just like I

We mostly mostly just talked about space shit. And I'm like, okay, cool. I get that. And he's like, I got to give him credit. Like, he basically saved the space program. Also, he's done a lot of other horrible shit. And then he talks about the AI stuff, which has been like click baited.

Everything he says is really rational, which is just like, I don't trust these people to use it responsibly. There's no way we're going to be able to stop them. So, like, what I'm fighting for is how to like self-enforce regulations now to cut it off at the past. And he breaks it into two things. Let's get back to Avatar. Okay, okay, okay.

Well, let's get back. Segway, I hope that this is in front of every screening of the film. You guys had it, too. Yes. We would never use generative AI. We had the Cameron intro where he says that this is not, none of this is AI. All of Avatar, Fire and Ash, is made by humans. Now, he's talked about not being opposed to some AI stuff to, like, help along.

Yeah, let's veer us off the subject. No, I'm just saying, like, I was closed this look quickly. difference between generative creative AI and AI that's used to... This is something people all yell about. I know, but just to represent his thoughts here, which I am wary of all AI, it all fucking freaks me out. We're all a little wary. I'm worried that the entire, like, planet is going to collapse. And especially coming from the guy who, like, created the fucking Terminator mythology,

when, like, these quotes were coming out that seemed like, well, let's, like, fuck around with AI a little bit. He was, like, AI is basically not this catch-all term for, couple different things, and he was like basically like automated like actual independent intelligence is SkyNet. And if we open that Pandora's box were fucked, the second that like

a missile system is connected to a computer, society's over. Like it's game over, right? He was like, there's generative AI, which like is now the thing that everyone's trying to use to cut corners. And he basically was just like, the film industry's collapsing.

These movies are getting too expensive. and they're performing less and less, but also it's harder to convince an audience to go unless you're selling them on that level of spectacle. I think we need to find a way to integrate these things into our systems to use them to help bring costs down because few filmmakers are given the freedom and the budgets that I have.

And Bellany was like, isn't that putting people out of work? And he's like same number of artists getting it done in half the time. And his argument is, I need to be on the forefront of this to ensure that that's the way it's used, rather than how a lot of studios and tech companies want to use it, which is replacing people. It's all a fucking slippery slope that no one knows how it's going to settle. But he very much now is like, audiences don't believe shit they see on screen anymore,

and everyone thinks that everything must just be like mysterious, magical AI. And so he's like, these are all performance-driven, actors in the volume, not manipulated, not animated. And done by hand. My problem with that video was just a bit of a spoiler. Four? Avatar Fire Nass, the movie was about to see. It had clips from the movie in it. Yeah.

I was like, get the fuck out of here. Because it was like side by side. Yeah, which I appreciate showing like, these would be actors. Right, right. Yeah, my dumb ass was like, oh, are they from way of water? Like, I didn't even block that they were. This is giving me, you know,

this is tipping my hat on like emotional conversations that are coming up. Can we slash should we attempt to like do the plot? But it's, I'm like, I know I'm going to be forgetting 50%. I wish I had a synopsis, a deeper

synopsis in front of me, but the film hasn't come out yet when we're recording this episode, so that hasn't really been done up. So we can try, but the movie, it's a bit different from the, I thought, I worried it would be like a way of water of the true, like, first chunk is getting everyone's bearings,

big action sequence, we move to another place. And that's kind of what the first chunk of this movie is. We're getting our bearings. The big battle from Way of Water happened. The son died. Everyone's feeling bad. Let's go in this airship with David Thulis and go and I was like, oh, and they're going to like go to the fireplace and then are we going to like meet the fire people, learn their culture? You know, is it going to be the same? But that's not what they do.

Already a couple big points that are like coming up here, right? And talking about our audience is going like struggle with this a little more than the last one. And there were all the naysayers last time being like, who fucking gives a shit about Avatar anymore? It's been too long. It being that long, I think really did help that movie. Yeah. That it felt like... It was new. It was exciting.

Living through 15 years of all these fucking franchises getting milk to death, and this is the one that we've actually, like, haven't seen in a while. You know, the entire basic fucking

Marvel Cinematic Universe happens between the first and second Avatar, save for the first two movies, three. And so, yeah, that was helpful. It also is,

like, Way of Water acknowledges the time jump. Things have changed a lot. The opening of the film is like, catching you up with the new status quo. I had fucking kids. Also, there's spider. Also, there's scary.

There's a lot for you to understand. And we're forgetting the first flight. Well, well, we did. We did experience. A Cirque de Soleil, show about the first Turkmato, the first person. Yeah. A narrative I remember in great detail.

Certainly. But I remember your review of Way of Water where you were like, it's an avatar movie. And we're like, David, that doesn't describe it. And then I saw it and I was like, he has basically turned this into a genre. and it is following the kind of like story structure of how an avatar movie works.

Yes, and then in the last act when everything is on the board and suddenly is all activated at the same time, you're just like, whoa, like I didn't, yeah. And this one... Does not really have that in the same way. No, but it is just spinning a lot of different plates and then when you're in the final act,

I think I expected like, okay, we'll have another big battle. Yeah. And it'll be super exciting. And there is a big battle, and it is super exciting. But it's more that you're just kind of like, I cannot believe how many characters,

how many, like, big functional characters with arcs we are flitting between right now and that I have the grounding for it. Not just like, what's up with Spider? What's up with fucking Kate Winslet? What's up with her daughter? What's up with Paiacan? What is up with Paiacan?

And why has Zoran not appointed him to his cabinet? He's got a part of the transition team. Piacon should be operating at all levels of life. Yes. My new, my Rivers Commissioner, will be, and he rises from me. Let me throw this out. Can we put him in charge of transportation?

Sure. If you grab Pyakon's fin, it feels like you get where you're going fast. Just imagine him in like a labor negotiation. He just rises from the sea. The first movie, it's like the central emotional arc that resolves itself is like Jake Sully's like exploration of identity, right? And finding himself and like waking up at the end, his eyes opening in the new avatar body.

He is fully in a V now, right? The second movie has the kind of self-contained emotional arc of like Jake Sully needing to figure out what kind of fucking father he is, right? It is the self-reflexive movie of what Cameron's talked about, this very personal thing of him realizing, like, maybe it's time for me stop being an asshole and, like, intimidating everyone as my love language to get what I want. And is this movie of a kind of like an emotional maturation?

This movie opens with Loweck in the narration position. Why did he do that? I mean, I know you don't have the, that was one thing that I didn't love. It's like, why are we? I like it. of me was like, is Jake going to die? I like it as a change of perspective because I also think this movie is less hinged

on Jake's internal journey. It's spread out a little bit more. And I also think there's the transference happening, especially with the death of... When the sun dies... I always forget the other son's name. Netaiim? You feel so embarrassed. It's like I'm at a

party. And how are your sons... I think, yeah. Loak, yeah. And then Loak is the other son. Locke is the living son And then Spider and Curie I will I mean in the In the second movie

The older son is the summer I was like I don't care about this character And then he dies and I was like all right This is one of those perfect examples Because he's just like the good kid I think way of water grows on second third Plus viewings is the first time you're watching You're like what's with this extra kid

And once you know he's like doomed for death And he's kind of a cautionary tale And that he's mostly there to like Inform Loak's journey I think it's like representative of the story now moving into like Loak being in this position of pressure of you are the inheritor of all of this. You are the oldest. Jake's trying to fucking chill out to some degree while also trying to keep his family safe and the clan safe, you know,

that he's putting more and more on his son while trying to be emotionally in tune with what he's going through. And so it helps to get that perspective a little bit, but it also makes you think, is this really going to be like a Loak movie? And as you said, it's like 15 fucking characters. A lot of that characters have arcs that are pretty complete in this movie. Like, you know, they'll have a start and end. But you can't say there's like a key overriding, emotional, self-contained story to this movie.

Spider's the closest. Spider's the closest. But it spider is also throughout it, so guileless, down to no ship. His last line in the film, which is the last line spoken in the episode. Avatar series. Down to also

when Jake Sully is like about to murder him saying no shit. He says no shit. Yeah. When Jake Sully's about to murder him, his adopt

father, he's like, yeah, but I get it, man. I guess you gotta do it. That was fucking crazy. That seems incredible and I started crying. But I'm just saying, it's more about how people

are reacting to Spider versus Spider himself who, you know, it's water off a duck's back with him like you're saying. Like he's usually just kind of okay, this is the situation, I guess.

Yes. Spiders become this hot potato, the biological son of Khorch, who is dead, but now his consciousness has, of course, been reanimated within an avatar body, which is a pretty potent max. And there's the whole interesting kind of like paternal tension of how much he does or does not want to identify as this kid's father, because it's like, I'm literally not your father, but I'm also like a body. with the backup hard drive of the man who fathered you and him weaponizing how much he does or doesn't care. Sometimes it becomes his weakness. Sometimes he uses it like a political football. And then the Sully clan, which have taken him in and are increasingly becoming wary of like is treating him like a son putting not only our family but our species in danger. Right. The the jump initially it's like, right, is this kid target on our back and why are we? And then the,

jump becomes like, oh, should he even be alive now that he's this hybrid? Is he the thing, right, that they backwards invent a human Navi sort of breathing system out? But even before that, I mean, we're just immediately picking up the threads of the last one.

He's got a lot of rules. One of my favorite moments in Way of Water is at the end where Quorich is holding Kiri, or is it Lohak at knife point? Quarich is holding the little girl at knife point at the end of the story. He's on Tukit knife point, and Natiri takes

spider. And it's this moment where she's saying, like, I swear to God, I will fucking kill him. Yeah, and Quarch. Testing, like, you do care about him as much as you want to say he's not your son. But what's scary about that moment is Natiri is so feral and so protective that you cannot tell

if it is a bluff, or if she actually truly is ready to murder what is, like, ostensibly an adoptive son of hers. Yes, absolutely. A member of their family. To prioritize her biological children. Right. And this movie is like immediately in the fallout of that of like something was revealed in that moment about her feelings which then shakes up this whole thing we've already alluded to and she is sad

because her son did just die right of like her little morning veil me too I'm never going to prioritize a human above a v does that speak to an inherent like disgust with the notion that you are with someone who was originally a human and thus your biological children are partially human and this whole kind of like internal struggle in her, which she is so, she is really knocked down in focus and way of water. And I like how much this movie brings her back up to kind of the main story. Yeah, and I was just, I was just so there for her to have in the binding of Isaac moment. Yes.

We're jumping all around. Everyone's fighting for Spider and what he represents. And in a moment where they are struggling, he's losing oxygen. They need to get him a new mask. They need to get him to a lab. That's not what I was talking about. But yes, sure. He almost dies, and Kiri connects to what is not the mother tree,

but like the mother root underwater. Yeah, the mother coral, mother reef. I don't know. And basically figures out how to do a successful version and a much smaller scale of what they tried to do, what they'd successfully do with Jake's body at the end of the first movie. No, no, no, no, no, wait, whoa, okay, okay. She merges him with A. Yeah, that's not what they did with Jake's body.

What they do with Jake's body... Is fully transfer. They transfer. Yeah, is they just used... Yeah. What she does with spiders completely crazy She creates a hybrid

Right She puts like a bit of fucking You know Magic pod in his mouth And then he right He evolves into a new creature It's nonsense It almost feels though

More like it's nature based Not tapping into AWAP Right it's not It's not neural It's like right It's physical It's biologi's Neuroly connecting

And then using the environment No she doesn't really connect The floppy things Yeah she sees like The AWA paw Float on by and she's like, fuck. She's, she can't connect to Awa, Griffin. I'm pretty sure she's being rejected.

There's a firewall. There's a firewall. There's a firewall. She's being rejected. Fire and ash. And then she comes up with this alternative idea. Right. Yes. And she doesn't know how she came up with it. It's sort of an expedited version aided by her of just like natural adaption to an

environment. But it creates this like incredibly loaded notion of, oh my God, if humans can adapt to live here comfortably without the aid of technology, then there's nothing stopping. They don't need a fucking avatar body. They don't need vehicles. They don't need to wage complicated war.

Sorry, just completely unrelated to anything, but this is just kind of crazy. The NBR list came out and Hamnet isn't in their top 10 films of the year. Interesting is Fire and Ash in there. Yes. I think it is.

That is interesting. Yeah. And Spider was nominated for Best Supporting Actor? Best Supporting Spider. Okay. And the matriarch was nominated for Best Supporting Tulkoon? Yes.

I have some questions about the matriarch. Ask away. Well, okay. When did she get her piercings? What are they made at us? She goes to Williamsburg, like anybody else. She attends a semester with the news school. No, it's just like,

so a thing that happens in the way of water is we meet the, the Tulkoon, and we learn of their pacifist ways. Pyakon the Outkast Tolkien, he kills nothing. and that and that you know that the humans are now they've moved on from Unobtanium and there's getting goo out of the Tulcum

Emily Radikowski what was that? What? They call the brain juice Amrata do they now? Is that what they call it? It's with an A though.

And it's like, and it's his like Kiwi accent or whatever that guy scores B is that his name? I came up with that joke while I was watching the movie and I was like I'll probably get like a two from the board. Instead you got a huh?

And, you know, so Paya Khan, in the triumphant thing in way of water, Paya Khan helps defeat these evil whalers, right? In the words of the great Scott Gardiner, podcast the ride, he chops Scoresby's arm off like a fucking samurai blade. It's so true. And then in this one, instead of the whale, the Tulkoon being like, thank you. That was actually a good call. These guys are really fucking us up.

They're like, okay, first thing. first, Pia Khan. You are so banished. You should not have done that. It is not allowed. And it's like, see, I told you guys, Pia Khan's good and they were like, first of all, we can't believe you're talking to Paiacan.

We're still not over that. Second of all, Paiacan, slow the fuck down. Go away. And then like, Scoresby's just like, all right, well, my strategy won't change at all. I guess I'll just continue to attack these guys. We're the robot arm now. Yeah.

So that's the kind of stuff that I think people might see this movie and be like, is it recycling? Or is it, like, kind of hitting the same beats a little bit? I think especially the big final set piece, even though there's so much more that is new going on narratively in terms of the actual action, the big final battle in this is basically combining

the big final battle from the first movie and the big final battle from the second movie happening simultaneously. Which is cool. And there's repeated imagery. And then he gets into whole new shit. Then it gets trippy. Well, the one thing I thought is,

in the final sequence that felt new was when they were on that in the magnet field thing and they're all kind of tumbling around. So that showed up with the eclipse. There's like, yeah, there's like an eclipse and then it feels there's an Aurora Burialis. I almost thought that was an extension of AWA.

Was I wrong? I don't think they really set that up. Or they did and I forgot. Like, or it's in wave water. They're like, oh, this fucking magnet thing. I remember them saying in this movie is that they had to do the hunt as fast as possible for the,

the bad guys had to get the Tolcunz as fast as possible because they couldn't get into the vortex. Right. These movies are not nuanced, but they are incredibly dense and it is hard to absorb on one viewing, especially when it's three hours and 15 minutes long and every scene, like, introduces 15 new ideas

that it asks you to download really quickly. I think they also, though, have to go because all the younglings are in one place. It's the, like, it's like the cat, what'd they call it? like the calf something. It's like a big spawning thing with all the whales gathered, the toucun. I love that you call it a convention. Well, they're like fundamentally pacifists and they're freaked out by the fact that like

Paiacan defended himself, right? Right. I guess they're just being like Democrats. They're bunch of Paiacons. And they're like, you are not a Democrat anymore. Can we like reach across the aisle and have a sensible conversation? Can't we return to normalcy? And Paiacons, like, no fucking way.

And it's also the, what, the Mechayana, who are the water tribe? Am I getting their name right? You know, have also struggled with this feeling that, like, Jake Sully, being Tariq Mektoe, being more of a warrior, being an ex-friend. He brought the fight to them,

and they were not super down with that. I really love that Cliff Curtis performance. He just always looks like he wants to tell Jake to go away, but he can. Tonawari. Yeah. Great character. No, you're right.

If I don't respect you. You know, there's that vibe to it. And it's also, and it's the weird and congruity that is addressed in this movie a lot of, like, Jake's the only Navi that carries a weapon. He's a fucking Marine. Because he is a Marine,

and he's never quite, and I learned something. I was rifling around on the Avatar Wikipedia, which is, of course. Do you guys know about the three laws of Awa? Please give them to me. Is it that all energy is only borrowed? It's sort of like that, but no. It's like, so, so, because I was learning about the three laws of Awa because Varang, our big new character in the film, played by Una Chaplin, the leader of the ash people.

Ayah, yi, yi. Hachimachi. Does not obey the three laws of Awa. And they are, you shall not set stone upon stone. You shall, neither shall you use the turning wheel, nor use the metals of the ground. Now, I've never thought about this, but it makes sense. Because you watch Avatar and you're like, you know, it's like, the Navier are quote unquote primitives. right? They don't have technology

and you're kind of like, is this supposed to be some sort of thing of like the humans are more advanced than them? It's like, no, no, no, no. They don't do it because they don't want to fuck up their planet. So they're like, we're not going to, and we know about wheels. We're not stupid.

Their vehicles are coexisting. We coexist with flying and running and swimming things. We don't need to have wheels. We don't need to have vehicles. We know about mining. We don't want to do that because that fucks with the planet and you can't, you know, fix it. We want to use what the planet already gives to us,

not pull things out of it. And you shall not set stone upon stone is, you know, you can't build anything that's not already kind of organically there. So, like, you want to build something in a tree, that's fine. Yeah. But you can't go around building buildings.

Also, did you see that new high-rise they're building next to the mother tree? It has a gym. It's got, like, washer-dry or in-unit. Oh, boy. And like, I just like that thinking of like, right, it's like the Navi live in this, you know, which is set out all the way back in the first movie in this coexistence with Pandora, but I like thinking about it is like, it's a philosophy. It's not just like an advancement level or whatever. No, and it's a, it's a connection with a consciousness. You know, it's like this movie physicalizes and literalizes a god that is also a representation of nature, but also the collective memory of the history of their species. and that, right, the coexistence

with the creatures, the pony braid connections, is this like sense of communication. And it's this James Cameron, utopian vision of like, what if we had never missed with our planet? You know what I mean? We just left it. And of course, drawing from indigenous people.

Of course. As always. But sometimes you worry like, oh, is he fetishizing or romanticizing these things? But this movie hit me every time that Varang, at all or like, no, give me the guns. Where you're like, no, man, this is fucked up.

It doesn't look right. Yeah. But it's also this interesting tension of Jake. Now, when she, the drugs. That looks all right to me. Good. I'll take all that you got. We're all giving a big thumbs up.

Please give it to me. It's what's interesting about Jake that not only is he someone who like uses those kinds of weapons, but he has the psychology of a Marine. It is weird. He's trained like a Marine and they all have this uneasy relationship with him where they're like, even when it's effective. are we, like, letting something dangerous into our culture now? Are we, like, opening doors we can't close again?

Right. Which extends to, you know. Now, maybe she's got reason to be mad. Maybe a volcano blew up her family. Possibly. And then no one came to their aid. Well, maybe someone should have come to her aid. I mean, none of the other tribes.

I mean, that's part of the bitterness. The other tribes didn't show up. Aywa didn't hear her. Yeah. To be fair, Ewa was on a call. Is that right? With Delta trying to get a refund. Interesting.

And where do you think that landed below or above the Amrata joke? Below. Firmly below. Subterranean. I think I could have maybe found a different specific that would have made it work. I think Delta was not the right choice. Avatar 4 mole Navi? Subterranean?

Oh, sick. Isn't that it's fun? Because, you know, they've now done all the elements, if you think about it. Like, if you think of the originals as the kind of Earth Avatar, the tree people. And we've met the water people and the fire people. And then David Thulis and his gang seemed to be the sort of air people. I wish we spent more time with them.

I would love to hang out more with the sky wind traders. I would, you know what I like? Those jellyfish they got that like flop in the air. But I found it interesting how they even talk about their politics of like we're neutral because we're benefiting from trading with both sides of this war. Well, and they're just very grounding. He has to stick out.

Yeah, yeah, you're right. And past history. I don't want to fuck with whatever. And they're transporers. You know. Right, they've got to move through territories so they don't want anyone mad at them. Right.

And that's again, what Ferang is like, she doesn't play by any of those rules. Now, let's make it clear. Are people different from the sky people? Well, yeah, sky people are humans. Who came from the sky. You don't like that. And ruined everything.

They're bad. One of the most incredible things about this franchise is how firmly anti-human it is. Someone in this movie says, like, kill all the humans. And you're like, yes, finally, someone's a rational person speak. It is teaching the audience,

every single member of the audience to innately root against your species. And the couple of good human allies are like exceptions to the rule, small roles. It's not like we're getting a ton of norm spellman. No, they're all like Martin Freeman and Black Panther level. Like, yeah, 15th on the call sheet. The only good human is like a full on species traitor.

I surrender my body and give myself over to you permanently. It's just like I cannot think of another series like this that demonizes all of humanity. in a way where like there are so many other ecologically based this is the harm of the humans or you know

this is the harm we're inflicting upon animals or the planet or nature that comes to some resolution of like we've learned a difficult lesson here today thank you mumbles the dancing penguin for teaching us that we need to protect you know the oceans and these movies do not offer humans

like any path for redemption no they're getting burnt they gotta go they got to go They're getting murked as hell. They got to fucking... And the more they're there, the worst they're making this. They suck.

Yeah. And the city that they've built, you know, that's in the way of water and it's here, it sucks. Yeah, it sucks. It's really cool to go there.

Like, this, like, industrial, like, soulless, no trees, no, you know, like, but, uh,

yeah, it's a bummer. Is it, is it still called Hell's Gate? No, I think Hell's gate is what they call the first one. Mm-hmm. Let me look for this up.

A fascinating moment for me in that. this film. And these movies just have all these little... Bridgehead is the name of the city in this, yes. It looks like something you'd see off the turnpike. Yeah, it's very like New Jersey refineries. Yeah. These little things where I'm like,

wait a second, I want to hear about that for 10 hours. I want to read about this shit. When Jake Sully is captured and put in like a fucking orange prison jumpsuit inside a glass, like Hannibal Lecter box on display, like a freak show.

on route to being executed. And he is surrounded by all these fucking humans with their, like, stupid smart devices. Filming him on the screens. And you realize, like, oh, like, to these people is Jake Sully, like, Edward Snowden? He's like, fucking Benedict Arnold. This narrative, we're not covering of,

he's reported on the news. There's a news cry on that says terrorist captured. Right. He's not like a terrorist, but he's like the ultimate traitor to them. And everyone's cheering as if it's like, we got bin Laden finally it's a thing I think about this yeah

it's a thing that the movies can't really get into because it's just too big a kettle of fish right because I think about Avatar one as like you know having so much of a rock in it you know like the destruction of home tree and all that and just about like the RDA

and all of it's like it's this foolish over extension like what are they doing they've gone all the way over there and the mining for resources and they're and it's like they're obviously but like so in one sense I'm like are there not people on earth who are like can we fucking get out of Pandora

it's a quagmire like all we keep doing we sent Ety Falco there now where's my nurse Jackie I don't get you know like and instead this is presenting this narrative of like no no no no the propaganda over there has worked

people want their Tulkungu they want their own optaneum and like Jake Sully is persona non grata on earth well there's like a race trade a species trader a couple lines about how like earth is like really

Earth is just strip mind. There's the sequence of the whole... If you want to like continue the human race, we have to look for other... It's the same shit that happened in history, though, with colonialism, right? We justified, you know, we fucking need our sugar, okay? Because we got to put sugar in our tea. Right. It's a taste better.

I get that as the sugar is tasty, but that as the more old fat. But like when I was thinking about like modern reactions, like, you know, two things like the Middle East wars, where like, you know, You know, there's no thing where some soldier, you know, and where America's been like, yes, we, I would think that of Earth as being like, fucking Pandora, like, who knows what goes on over there. There has been strong speculation that when Cameron's like four and five or swore they're going to surprise people, that what he's alluding to is that there is a stronger element of Earth in those.

Hey, I'd be interested to know what's going on. Now, the interesting thing to circle back to, of course, there was the whole opening he shot for the original film that is quite bad. Yeah, that sucks. That's like a shitty dystopian. As a drunk getting recruited shit and put it back in for the special edition. Right.

Because that stuff kind of feels like it's not canon because it wasn't in the theatrical version, but also so much time has passed in universe at this point, you can do whatever. But I am, I would be very curious to hear what Earth's relationship is to the idea of whatever we're fucking doing on Pandora. If the idea is to like terraform it,

to adapt to it, if it's just about using those resources ourselves, if it's just a thing about supercharging the economy. You know, I mean, the unobtainium, which everyone used to mock and now basically never gets referenced in these movies anymore, was the idea of like, right, the most precious mineral, right? But the Amrata is like, this cures all diseases. This is like the magical potion, and one vial of this is worth like a billion dollars.

But that's disconnected from the idea of can we move here, which spider really opens up. And Cameron was talking about this a lot on the town and this kind of, you know, versus all these other big tech moguls who are talking about like when he says that he's been involved in the Mars project since the 90s and whatever. And he's like, so you're one of these guys who's like believing in colonizing? And he's like, no, I believe we've got to fucking save Earth. We're never going to find a planet that's better for us. Like there's nothing we've discovered that is like 1% as hospitable as what we have right now

and we're fucking ruining it, you know? And I think that's so much of what Avatar is about, that it's like imagining a fantasia of a dominant species that not only appreciates the planet they were given, but lives in perfect tandem with it. Yes, and we're coming along and we're being like, can you move your tree? Right.

It's on our shit. And we're like, hear us out. We're really good at ruining planets. It is crazy they've been in movie three, fucking Jermaine climate by this point it's like the whale

these are like living you know conscious and they're like can he be yes go away we need

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There's this sense in this movie, like you say, of, like Parker Selfridge, the great Giovanni Rubisi. Nepo Baby. Nepo Baby, son of the chairman. Maybe has different designs than say E.D. Falco's character does. I mean, Falko's kind of there to be like, we need to, you know, quell the resistance

and we need to, you know, like, she's a lot more... Right. And Parker is a little more like, well, wait a second. If Spider can do this, maybe we need to focus on that, you know, like... So it's not right. There's not one plan. It almost reads to me as if there was a large corporate effort to extract

the elements that they can monetize from this planet which they built a kind of war around, right? Much like what has happened many, many times. To get the military involved to, like, create a reason for a crisis for a need to explore, even this notion of, right, there were sort of the three tracks of like scientific exploration and outreach, a militarization, and, like, a mining for pure capitalist reasons.

And now those three things have gotten, like, tangled and disconnected simultaneously, where they exist in opposite tracks, but they can't, like, completely separate themselves from each other. And it feels like there's, like, now this kind of, like, propaganda-induced blood vendetta that exists within the military of, like, their savages, we have to stop them, which is a direct byproduct of the self-defense and the escalation of their war. the natural citizens of this planet that is now at odds

with the corporations being like, can we just get more of the fucking goo? Stop making this so messy. I'd like some of that goo. I'll just say it. Apparently makes it live forever or whatever. I don't want to be immortal. No, it would suck.

But, you know, they could be kind of immortal by just becoming Navi. Well, and that's maybe something Parker is realizing. Are there couches, though, like, In the afterlife? Great question. What is the vibe? They were all just kind of standing around.

They're all just standing around. Oh, like, when you connect it. Oh, you're like, after an hour, you're like, can I just sit down somewhere? I got to sit on the ground? It's the ending of it. It's everyone you've ever known is waiting for you. It's not standing of Titanic.

It is the ending up to you're right. No shit. I don't want to stand the whole time. Yeah. It'd be funny if Kate Winslet, you know, embraced Leo in the afterlife or whatever. And he was like, welcome the afterlife. And she said, no shit.

It's kind of... What'd you do with the jewel? I dropped to the ocean. No shit! I was surprised they killed her off in this. Who? Hey, Winslet.

Yes. Her character is Ronald? Renal. How fucking cool was it, though, that she, like... She's like, I'm gonna get birth this baby. She's getting birth. Natiri is helping deliver the baby at one point, Niterer is like,

hold on, sorry. And then shoot the fucking arrow. Got a fucking... Boop, boom, okay. Back to a push. That moment of, like, she's gotten the thing shot into her chest. She's like,

fucking 800 months pregnant, right? She, like, claws her way back up onto land. It goes to Nateria, and it's like, I'm dying. And Nateri's like, don't say that, you're not. And she's like, I'm dying. And Niteri's like, okay, you're right. Let's deliver this baby. Like, there's this incredibly intense sequence of, like,

there is no chance you're making it out of this alive. The priority is just get the child out of you. It was so cute. Yeah. Is that our first? Go ahead. No, the child's name is. Preele.

Johnny Carson? Preele. What? Is that the first what? Baby that we've seen? Yeah, because I know there's like sort of creepy AI art about... No, we see babies.

No, we see babies, especially when they're doing the like the fast forward and the beginning of way of water and they talk about them expanding. You see his children being born. I think you see babies as well in the university.

But you know what we didn't see? What? We did see in this movie? The little otters. Yeah, I love those otters. They're cool. And they're like the squid guys too. Oh, the fucking.

Squid guys. When they Cameron Diaz, the counselor, those fucking subpods. When the squid are just beaking people to death, you know, that was. But they also fuck the windshields until they crack. The squid, sorry, the crab ships. Yeah, the crab box. Yeah. Are the sort of torpedoy squid ones in there, too?

I felt like that was a new ship. I couldn't quite remember. I love all the looks of those ships. I love the look of fucking. everything. Here's the other James Cameron magic. Marie you watched the two things on Disney Plus, right? I, you know, had them

on. They're like two-forty minute making of things. It's like a two-part what's it called fire and water. That is good, but you also wish it was like 18 hours long. And it feels like it mostly exists because of James Cameron's sudden prioritizing

of conveying to people that these movies are not made with AI, of like really explaining the process and pulling back the curtain more than he had previously. But the big thing with these movies and why they like look better than anything else is not just the amount of money and the amount of time

he's given, but James Cameron just has that insane. We are going to spend as much time as it takes to figure out the internal logic of how every single thing works. There is nothing on screen where you're like, that's cool and you feel like that was the beginning

end of the process. It's like if a creature's created, you can just tell in these fucking movies that someone spent nine months figuring out the biology. I mean, those squid looked so fucking real. And the function of these creatures where he talks about this, where he's like, I will not let there be a design element

just because it looks interesting. There has to be an argument for why that species has evolved to need that in order to survive. And I feel like all the military vehicles are the same thing where you're like, oh, fuck, it works like that. And he's the best

at this shit where he just visually teaches you how something works and then sets it up so that it could come back later and you have the shorthand in your head. That's where these movies are fucking complex. It is why he like goes blunt

and uses kind of shorthand and cliches and tropes in certain areas because it's like some of the stuff I'm going to have to fucking teach you is so complicated that I need to like clear the path in certain areas in order to download all this other fucking shit into your brain.

which will result in your final 40 minutes where you're like, I'm maintaining 15 narrative threads and understanding like 40 different species and how the ecology works and how all this technology works and the movie doesn't have to slow down and explain itself then.

Right, right. I mean, no wonder these things cost like $1 billion to bake in totality or whatever. And take a decade. Yes, and take forever. Right. Whole languages had to be thought up and all this stuff.

And it's like, on the one hand, it's in service of a world that, like, 99% of viewers will never get beyond, like, the first foot of, right? Like, they'll never go deeper. Maybe superfans will eventually be handed Bibles and encyclopedias that they can read. I mean, I got this fucking book here, but even I'm like... There'll be more. I wanted, like, a definitive 800-page volume where I could just, like... I wanted Encyclopedia Britannica, and it's the thing that people will throw out against these movies where they're like,

But does anyone fucking care about Avatar? Like no one talks about this shit and there's no fucking like fan fiction and there's none of this fucking shit.

There is but yeah. Right. I mean I write it and it's about brang so you can read it. It's not as culturally omnipresent as the things we know.

Yeah. Right? That like dominate the tip of pop culture. Certainly the things that are as successful as the Avatar franchise is. But what is interesting is that yes,

it's like all this work is done under the hood to basically service a thing that it seems like a majority of the audience goes like, yeah, they're fun to look at without doing the, like,

I want to read all the backstory. The other thing that strikes me is that a universe like Star Wars or even Star Trek or what are some other big Nerd? Well, let's put that one aside for a second.

Let's think of those things, Lord of the Rings. Well, let's put that one aside. But let's know Star Wars. Okay. Yes, George Lucas wrote down a bunch of weird shit. Yeah. But that's a, you know,

he started with this and they just started to add shit on to it, you know. And Star Trek was the same. We're like, as they develop it, they're like, well, it's, okay, so what would the wider world of this look like? Game of Thrones, even he probably

added as he went along, he had more maybe a holistic idea, but like for Cameron to like, no, no, no, we're going to start with a whole functioning thing, and then we'll build a story. Well, it's what to me speaks to a larger issue and how we like engage with pop culture

and this idea of like how fandom has kind of poisoned everything and our sense of cultural purchase and weight is connected to the intensity of the fandom of like Star Wars is this thing that became basically

a world and of itself and bordering on like a religion and a thing that people will study and people have been trying to reverse engineer that kind of shit for decades which often distracts from like actual storytelling which is the number one thing. Right you don't want to get

lost in your world building. Right. James Cameron is just like, the world building is like whatever. It's like means to an end. I care about all this deeply, but it's all in service of making this story work for the three hours you're sitting there. And people, like, it's the thing that happens every time a fucking avatar movie comes out where they're like, that looks dumb. Then they go see it and they're like leaning forward in their seat. And then six months later, they're like, that sucked. It was dumb, right? It looks dumb in my memory.

I mean, I just saw an interview with him where he was talking about Titanic. And the guy was, whoever, it was like, you just wanted to go to the Titanic, right? And he's like, yeah, yeah. I mean, and then I was like, I guess I could set a story on the Titanic. And I guess I was like, Romeo and Juliet. And like, he admitted, like, 90% I just wanted

the fucking technology to visit the Titanic. Pandora's like a fucking thing he started noodling with when he was 16. Where he's like, what's the coolest fucking planet that could ever exist? So, yeah. So, you know, he's the first to admit. his stories are elemental and basic.

I saw, and I don't know if it was on the town or if it was CBS Sunday morning or whatever, but another James Cameron interview where he was like, yeah, my biggest insecurity is a filmmaker is that I'm not as, like, strong of a writer. And so I try and really focus on the visual showmanship and like those sorts of elements to try and mask what I think are my weaknesses.

And the communication of larger story ideas and more like primal emotions. I mean, these movies in so many ways, like, I was like, what is the closest analog to what he's doing now? Because it doesn't, it's not really fair to compare it to what else is happening in, like, Blockbuster Cinema or TV or anything.

And it's like, he's making, like, insane original sci-fi versions of, like, what used to be the biblical epic. Sure, in a way. Right, like, a Cecil B. Demil movie. And these very, like, broad, huge sweeping emotions, statements about, like, humanity in the nature of existence, except rather than riffing on.

the things that we've all known and lived with forever, he's like pulling from all these different myths and then building his own mythology and then still getting back to stories of like, yeah, but it's about like what it means to be a dad. Well, I mean, a lot of people pointed out, Way of Water is about him moving his family to New Zealand to make Avatar one.

Right, and his children being like, can you chill the fuck out? What the fuck, man? You don't know how to talk to us as people. Right. And the first and third movies are both about, you know, when you have that like... pony braid so good it makes you go crazy the two movies

mirror themselves in that way where they're like we all know this guy and we know what his deal is and he knows who he is but what if a pony braid is so fucking good that you actually lose your mind can I bring something up that we haven't really talked about and this was something that I brought up to you guys after we stopped watching the movie that was on my mind

is that between way of water and fire and ash coming out John He did die. But I mean, he was very involved, obviously. He died very recently. And these two movies were basically captured together. It's been more of an extended post-production process with the footage that was mostly done in 2020. John Landau, to be clear, has been Karen's producer since Titanic. Was a Fox executive. Right. And then became his number two guy Light Storm Entertainment. And you basically just always would hear like, well, Jim's a, you know,

Jim can be a little tough to handle and John's really good at kind of finesseing and, you know, helping him explain things to people with money and things like that, you know. Interesting to me, because I know you watch the ILM Disney Plus series recently. It feels like such an inverse

of the George Lucas Rick McCallum dynamic. Right. Where you're like, George is this like very offspoken? And then he has an attack dog. I think there should be subalba. And McCallum's like, if I don't see 50 subobas! Yeah.

He's like, if you don't bring the visual effects, budget down $50,000 in the next hour, I will murder you. And then John Lando is, by everyone's account, the, like, ultimate fucking mensch, but also was really into the sort of, like, maintaining of the ecosystem of the avatar world and the sort of quality control of all the other stuff that came out of it. I was really struck by just thematically, and I know that these movies were, like, written before he passed away. And largely filmed, yeah.

But how much of the processing of grief, of, like, losing a brother is part of the text of the movie. I think it's a great example of like the story maybe didn't change much at all, but the emotions of the person telling the story affected the way in which it was told. It just feels like there's a different tone to this. It feels like a slightly more serious and haunted movie, even though it has certainly tons of avatar silliness in it. I mean, this is another thing.

He was also the Titan subversible imploded, and we all know James Cameron felt really bad for those guys. And he was very, very compassionate about that every time he was interviewed on CNN. He was like, I heard they blew up and I like it. That guy's a fucking Parker Selfridge. Yeah, I know. I was just thinking about how he's kind of Parker Selfridge. Yeah, yeah. Stockton Rush.

His name sounds like fucking Parker Selfridge. But this is another thing he explained very well on the town is that, like, these movies, basically, he gets to just capture everything with the actors. this point there's so little footage using live action actors playing themselves right spider is really the primary one and then you'll occasionally cut to scenes with Edie Falco as sergeant

nurse Jackie and what have you but so the majority of the film is like shot like a black box like performance rehearsal space in this weird wireframe grid and he just gets the performances he wants and then he's like

all of the like filmmaking decision I make later in the computer. The only thing I care about when I'm with the actors is the performances and communicating the characters and then I get to, with that data, figure out the shot composition,

where the cuts are, how I'm lighting them, how I'm rendering the environment. And so it's like, narratively everything is captured years before. And then the very long process is how do you actually get it visualized on screen? Actors, though, get dunked.

Go on. And I'm wondering, though, if they ever have to hold their breath for a period of time. K. Wednesday, that broke the record. Oh, really? Did you... No, I know.

I'm hearing this for the first time. I do think... I do think... This never came up at all. But, I mean, this was the thing that was so expensive. I think I made myself sick on the last episode

by trying to hold my breath. Oh, yeah. That sounds right. That's because you were throwing a tantrum because we wouldn't get you a toy. Yeah. I'm just standing there holding your breath. Weird, David. That feels like... My daughter has not pulled the

holding her breath. I think of that as such a classic like kids book thing, right? And I'm like, I've never seen a kid actually do that because it's such an insane thing to do. Can we get a quick side tangent that has made me really happy? What's that? You have started talking about

how you have gotten into the system of being able to communicate with your daughter via toy. Okay, sure. Especially in the like efforts to like sleep schedules. Keep room bed. If she fills up a sticker

church, she gets it to like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yada, you know, bribery. Right. And that you now are keeping, like, active tabs on the entire line of Spidey and his amazing friends and Iron Man and his awesome friends toys. Why is there not a swarm toy? Do you know this, that he texts about this, that he knows every fucking figure that exists in these lines

and any character she asks about, he gets so stressed. You must love this, Griffin. It makes me so happy. And he's clearly, he doesn't ask me for advice that much because he clearly takes some pride and that he's able to figure these things out himself. But then that makes me proud when he's like, so I had to find a different thing figure in a compatible scale

because they technically haven't made him. Like a three and a half inch thing, four inch, whatever it was. Ironman and his awesome friends is, you know, the new Spidey. I don't understand how the dinosaurs factor into this. That's a season five thing. Well, that's in Spidey. That's season three. It's just so funny how... Because I did buy my nephew a Lego set that has like Dinosaurs.

and Spidey. It's just the cracked-out Disney Plus fucking boardroom where they're just like, okay, so the kids love Spidey. But, you know, how many times can Spidey save the day? What else do they love dinosaurs? And someone's just like, what if they just turned into dinosaurs? How? Figure it out.

Season three is them turning into dinosaurs. You know, they were doing some of this in the comics too recently, even before the kid show. Whoever the guy is who, like, sat up after, I'm sure, Verang blew, like, fucking Navi dust up his nose and said, Venomsaurus Rex, is that anything? They handed him like a national medal of honor.

You haven't lived until you've seen Electro turn into a velociraptor, which is like an episode. There's also a pirate ship season. They just were truly like, what else do kids like? Pirate ships, dinosaurs. There's, I don't know, there's glowing. Trains, trucks? They haven't done trains.

Cowboys. There's a lot of good vehicles. They should do cowboys. They sort of haven't made Swarm as a toy yet. No, so now, Swarm is one of the villains in the iron. Oh, and that's a newer series. Just had its first season. The only toys they've released so far are Iron Man,

main cast, Iron Heart, Iron Hulk, and Ultron. Okay. And my daughter really wants a swarm doll. So if anyone wants to make a swarm doll, that'd be great. There's also, of course, absorbing man. And, you know, they've got some other guys. I'll ping my folks at Hasbro. I'll see what they're there.

I'm sure it's all, you know, in the works. It's all in the assembly line. What's up? Have you talked to your daughter about Red Hulk? It's a good question. I haven't. I think she would just kind of be like, Hulk is green.

Because, you know, the Iron Man show has Iron Hulk. Yes, Iron Man Show has Iron Hulk. So Spidey Show has Natural Biological Hulk. Hulk, as my daughter calls him. And then Iron Man has Amadeus Chow, Iron Hulk, who wears a Mech Hulk suit. Cool. And I think it's just, again, my daughter just gets it, where she's just like, Iron Hulk. I get it. He's like Hulk.

I get it. Yeah, well, Red Hulk. He's like Hulk, but he's red and he's president. Well, but the presidents were it because. He's not going to get the president thing. I don't think Liv Tyler or Cherry Blossom plots are really going to move her either. And if I'm just like, he just needs his pills. He's 80 years old.

It's just a shame you haven't let her watch Brave New World yet. Because when you talk about having trouble getting her to fall asleep at night, I know it's often her asking you questions of like, will they ever resolve the plot lines of 2008's The Incredible Hulk? When are we going to get follow up on the leader, Samuel Stearns? Yeah, right, right. It would be so funny if they drop the Doomsday trailer and it's like the first shot

is Red Hulk. Like that they're just like, we're not giving up on this. No. Can I want up you? The funniest thing would be if the Doomsday trailer opens with Ty Borella's Doc Samson. If they're like, we're not done with Incredible Hulk characters. Litigating everyone from that movie. Thank God we got some Red Hulk talking.

How do you think he's doing right now? And let's quickly just salute our president up there. I haven't seen a single piece of media with Red Hulk in it. Well, there's only the One. My only, well...

It's a limited canon. So far. Hey, look. Well, I haven't seen it. And, uh... You don't want to see it after the, uh, claim? Was it on the NBR? Yeah, it's made the 10, right?

Who got best supporting Red Hulk this year? Can you believe 2025 has been so long? Yeah. The Brave New World came up this year. I believe it was January. Was it not? I think it was February. I think he came up, President's Day weekend.

It is so... I think it did. I think you're right. It is, it is so. And then we salute crazy. We went to Texas this year. Not me. Oh, yeah, we did.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We saw that Michael Bay Parkour documentary that still has gotten. It's where we discovered certain grill master. Yeah. Well, you discovered what had already existed.

He discovered that's the truth. Time immemorial. Also crazy, I went to fucking Santa Barbara this year and saw Horizon American Saga, Chapter 2. movie that may never come out. Ah, what do you mean? Red Hulk is on that. He'll, he'll liberate it for us. We ran into Bilgarbari, the great

Belgarberry, past and future guests after the screening and was, I was talking to him and we were both like, yeah, everything we hear makes it really feel like it might truly never be seen. He's a tough son of a bitch that, Kevin Costner, you know? He just might, uh...

He's, he is his own greatest champion, his own worst enemy. Exactly. That pancake eating motherfucker. Isn't he in a deep sea, diving era right now? He's not so much deep sea as he is treasure hunting.

Doesn't he also have like a Disney Plus special called like A Very American Christmas? I mean, who fucking knows? Isn't there some... I'm currently Googling James Cameron Kevin Costner to see if they've ever talked about each other because I feel like they have so many common interests.

That feels like magnets turn to opposite sides that would repel across the room. Well, they both worked on the, you know, relief for the Gulf, Mexico oil spill. They have shared interest. I don't think those two guys... I don't think there is a room with enough oxygen

to maintain both of those guys at the same time. The funniest paycheck gig Kossner could take to try to get the money to, like, figure out his... Like, what, like, dumb-ass franchise does he have to parachute into to, like, start collecting, you know, to, like, to stabilize. I got the answer for you, my friend.

Composite Hulk. Are you familiar with Composite Holt? What the fuck is half? is this real? Of course. Does that make him a half president? All I know about Red Hulk is that he's president. Like what, what else is this?

Well, it's actually, it's kind of the big twist of the movie, which of course the trailer's revealed right away because they're really worried. Right. Because no one would go see the movie. That's the thing in the movies created. In the comics, it's just like, oh, you know Red Hulk who turns out in a twist to be the father of the military. General who hates Hulk and is

the father of his... When Red Hulk was introduced it was just like, Who is Red Hulk? Was the big mystery, and it was like, Hulk's out and he's red, and he's smashing people. Who could he be? Turned out he was Thunderball Ross. The guy who hates the Hulk the most. He also had a gun. And whose daughter loves the Hulk the most. And in this movie, he gets elected president

and he keeps taking these pills. And they're like, what are those pills for? He's the president. He's like, we got to work out of a trade deal with Japan. Where are my pills? And he was like, why do you need these pills? I just need him for no reason. And it turns out the pills are the only thing that are stopping him from rulking out and the pills can only be prescribed by Samuel Stearns, who's Tim Blake Nelson with a fucking scrotum head.

Yeah, he's got like a brain. I had to look that up for whatever episode. Was that the Buster Scruggs episode you guys talk about? The leader. Spoiler Marie, but Brave New World ends with him in jail. He's on the raft. He goes to jail. Wouldn't that be great?

Thank you. Very half-heartedly clapping. I can think of another strangely hued president who I'd love to see in the raft. Oh, yeah? Donald Jason. It's not like William Howard Taft or something. No.

I said strangely hued. Oh, huge. I thought you said huge too. I thought you said huge too. I was like, I mean, I guess Donald Trump's got that. In the words of Tiger Weiger, the orange. Bafoon. So we got Amrata. What was the other joke?

I don't even remember the other one, but it was no good. The problem is, I came in loaded. It was the Delta Airlines being in the ball. It was a bad one. And by the way, never forget. Never forget that joke. Many laughs were lost when I tried and failed to land that joke. There's going to be a Reddit thread that's like,

is anyone else picking up on how, like, Griffin's just, like, lost the sauce. Oh, I... Someone needs to write it. Much like James Cameron's sometimes giving you blunt dialogue because he's got larger story design to play, I came in with too many perfect big brain takes on Avatar that my funny bone is just on shore leave today. I mean, I think we do take this film in this franchise very seriously.

That's how Orkins work. If your brain grows, other bones disappear. Sometimes you've got to leave a bone on the bench for a little while. Ooh, new paranormal activity movie in the works. Oh, congratulations. David. I get to complete my franchise. This play is apparently very cool.

I know. I guess I got to check out the play. I'm sure it'll come to New York. There's a paranormal activity play. Chicago? It's in Chicago currently, but I think it's got good reviews. Eva Anderson loved it.

I've only ever seen one horror play, and it was that one Tatiana was in that we saw it together. Oh, yes. Why am I already forgetting the name of that player? Oh, what was it called? It was called, like, the old gray house. I saw a horror show once on Broadway.

It was called Susical, the Musical. A person's a person. That wasn't bad. No matter how small. Get me open. Wait, why? What's your beef with Seusical? That thing's sloppy as hell.

Susical from the, I just saw Ragtime, which is the same composer. Yeah, and that's very similar shows. You know, the scariest thing I ever saw. I think, like, movie play, whatever, was the woman in black, which is a long-winning thriller. Yeah, that is a very, on the West End. Very famous horror play. Yes. And it was one of those.

Maybe I was just a teenager and I was more impressionable or whatever. but, like, it was one of those things where I could not believe how scary. Apparently, like, Paranormal activity has, like, very good, unshoey stage magic shit like that where you're like, I can't believe... I am way more...

I'm watching a paranormal activity live in front of me. I am way more interested in that than I am in, like, the stranger things, like, where it's, like, just, like, a lot of... Well, the Stranger Things show, I think is just right. It's, like, big. People like it. Right? It's, like, good.

I think it's okay. Again, it's the stagecraft is so impressive. People are saying it's good? Stranger Things is one of those I mean obviously as I've said I watched it three times every time Barb died and I stopped watching I tried three times with that show

I got to Barb dying and for what and didn't keep watching because I found it boring but it sort of makes it seem like I just couldn't get over the death of Barb you were just like really into watching her die you rewatched her dies every time she dies I throw my remote it's like Trump like fast forwarding through the dialogue

scenes and kickboxer, you just have a super cut of just Barb dying over and over again. I'm still a little of Stranger Things unicorn. Well, I basically am too apart from Barb. I've never even made it that far. Right, but I mean, it's one of those... I tried. I didn't finish the first episode. As this new season is dropping, it really feels like this is just an

emperor has no clothes thing. Where everyone is just kind of like, I guess I'll watch it because I watch the rest of it, so I guess I should finish. But I'm not detecting a lot of people being like, can you believe what happened on Stranger Things? And instead, I'm seeing a lot of people going, like,

they're just, like, finding the fucking guy in the upside down again. It's also, like, the most expensive TV show of all time. The TV show is, like, four movies. It has the most complicated release hours. Yes. Right. The end of it's going into theaters first. Millie Bobby Brown changed her name.

Yeah, she's Millie Bobby Bon Joffi. Sorry. It's so fun to say. That is one of those things where I'm like... Our world is really good. Everyone's like, well, she got married too young. Like, and I'm like, what do you mean? I mean, she's been a celebrity forever. How old could she be?

She's 21! She's a baby! It is one of those things where every time I check her age, I think my brain is glitches. She was truly 11 when she played 11 or whatever her is. Drake was texting her or whatever. The other one is Kaya Gerber, where I'm just like... She's the one who's Cindy Crawford's daughter? Yes.

And she's like 23, and I feel like she has been in seven, five-year-long relationship. You think that because she has the name of a baby. Gerber! Yeah. So you think she's a baby. Baby. The Kaya Gerber baby. That's the issue. What's she in? Have I seen her? Yeah. Well, of course she played Chevy Chase's girlfriend in Saturday night, a character that somehow had more dialogue in screen time than Gilder Radner and Lorraine Newman. I saw. Jane Curtin combined. She's in bottoms. She's in bottoms. And I saw Max Miguel, a friend of the show.

Uh-huh. She's in Shell. I saw his movie Shell, which she has like a big scene in. I mean, she's a smaller part. I don't remember her in Babylon, but sure she can be a... Well, she played Starlit. Oh, of course. So she's probably one of those scenes with all those stars. But she's dated Awesome Butler. And if you think about an L.A. Senate of a city of stars. Pete Davidson.

Oh, you shine. Isn't she dating a Lewis Pullman? Well, the rumor now is that she has... No. Is this been debunked? She's dating some other random guy, but it was fake news that she was dating Richard Gere's son. People thought she was dating Homer Gere. Cindy Crawford and Richard Gere were married. It was kind of a sliding-doors interst relationship.

Yeah, but I don't think. But apparently it's not happening. I don't think that's real. So, Fire and Dash. We haven't even talked that much about Vering. One thing I will say about Vering. A character I loved, and I was very excited to meet the Ash people. She's merely a player on the board.

She is, I suppose, the closest thing to the biggest villain in this movie. They're pushing her very hard. But she's one of many characters. The main marketing image, the poster, is her face. Like, first movie was Nateri face. second movie was Kiry face, third movie is Varang faced. Oh, on the poster, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, and she's the cleanest kind of new marketing hook the movie has.

Which makes sense, and she rocks, but I did a lot of people walking out of the screening with me were like, I could have used even more of her. Oh, well, me too. And I understood that. And it is, again, this thing of like, if this is the last Avatar movie, which I don't think it is. But then that's a little disappointing, you know, that this is all we got. But obviously, if she's just another element in the world that we get to play around with more, then that's okay.

Yeah, I don't know. Right. But there's a good hefty amount of her, and she's very interesting. So fucking high on these movies, especially since the public goes Benoit Blanc on them every single time. And they're knives out. And I feel like James Cameron always has this, like, on the eve of release, like, I don't know if people even want these. Maybe I'll just go home kind of thing. And some of that I sometimes wonder if it's like very savvy renegotiation with the Walt Disney Corporation,

especially because it basically was like they fully greenlit two and three, but four and five have kind of been like half greenlit for a while. And some work has been done on them, but they haven't done like the major expenditures on them yet. And four wouldn't be for another five years. I mean, it's going to be at least that. I think the last they said was maybe 29 and 32. That's what I have, 29 and 31.

Okay. But who knows? I mean, Michelle Yo still hasn't shown up. Yeah. And supposedly James Cameron filmed her. Right. Playing a scientist or something. Well, and like David Thuleus, who has a very small part in this, who's

intriguing, and you were like, I want to know more about these people. Cameron was like, this is a slow burn character. He's only got a little bit in this one. He's got a big arc in four or five. You know? And like, to me, I'm like, I don't think you bring David Thulis to the volume just to do this. I have to imagine he's captured other Thulis stuff that he's just sitting on unrendered.

It's actually tough to capture Thulis. It is. He's very slippery. You know, you're trying to, like, throw a net on him, and he's like... All right, so my wallet, guys. Before I had Ridge, I had this crusty, leather, brick falling apart. Just this big sort of wedge I would put into my pocket all uneven. credit cards, it's got

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Order online at 1,800 Contacts.com or download the free 1,800 Contacts app today. Okay. Right, forang. Yeah. A moment I really love is when she first uses

the fire launcher. I can't think of the proper name of the weapon. Flamethrower? Thank you. Flamethrower. And then she immediately is like, this is incredible, I need to fuck. Yes.

You're right. It's not just, because first she, you know, she's like, I want the thunder, you know, bring the thunder essentially. Show me how to use the guns. She uses the gun. She likes that.

But then when she gets handed, that flame thrower, she's like, okay, okay. I feel about them how, I guess, like, normal people, or, like, you know, when I say normal, like, in a derogatory way, feel about, like, the Joker and Harley Quinn. Yeah. Yes. We're like, like, I do feel like Horace and Fereng are now officially my Joker and Harley Quinn. Yeah.

Yeah. Any time they show them, like, being giddy with each other, like, there was a moment where he was, like, holding her as she was, like, shooting. something and she was like smiling and i was like we i love their love i also think there's something it's such a basic concept but the second he teased the idea of like the next movie's going to have bad nevi you're like holy shit i've seen fucking six hours of these guys being so principled and so severe and so disciplined and you're telling me there's one who likes to fuck shit up and just watching vering like do crazy shit and then laugh

is pretty intoxicated. The tribe, the whole tribe's design, the paint. Really scary. They all look the way my father describes like any alternative teenager. Like growing up in the East Village and he'd be like, oh, he'd go to St. Mark's and there's the kid with the thing through the nose and the stuff all over his face. That's how he described, like, any punk kid who walked by. And I'd be like, he has like an earring.

No, no, no, he's got all the stuff. Does he know about Ben's earring? he does. When you think about Quarich, I think he likes it. You know, Quarich's job is to kill Jake Sully. Every time he meets Jake Sully,

he thinks about killing him maybe, but then Jake Sully's like, I got him this time, right? Potent argue. I like every time he's like... Potent hostage. And instead, they have like a weird meeting of the minds,

te-da-tete. And then he's like, I'll see you. you again. And so then he's like, I don't know, maybe I'll just climb a volcano until I meet her. And then she's like, mind if I blow drugs in your face and like cut a line across your chest? And he's like, don't mind it all. Like, he's just, he's more open to things than Jake Sully was in some ways. Let's dig into this. Okay. So he's down. Part of his like hatred of Jake Sully, obviously, is that he views him as a traitor, right? But also it's that like he can

actually relate to Jake Sully more than he can any of the Navee. Right. Right. Jake is the only guy who's sort of like him. Opposite side, right? It's that like similar like marine training.

There's a similar psychology to them. It's established in Quirch's backstory. You know, he's got that crazy scar in the first movie. And it's like he landed on this planet and these creatures all almost fucking killed him. And now he's like, I hate this fucking place.

This whole planet's dangerous, right? And Varang has a little bit of this like, we were left to like almost die. And now we hate. this whole fucking thing. And both of them sort of feel like they're like living on borrowed time

to a certain degree. Like their existences are like affronts to God which they then like empower themselves and like feeling as like a sense of identity. Especially when

Corch has literally died and been reborn. And there's this like sadistic part of them that is the thing that Cordge actually doesn't relate to anyone else. That he gets like

such a clear kind of like what is always felt like a somewhat sexually charged pleasure from the violence without it being overstated. And like, as you said, he's got all these other grunts who just like wear fucking like Oakley's. Yeah, they love them.

And go like, I love guns. And Varang is like, Gons. And he's like, yeah, you get it. They match each other's freak. Right, right. It's like, but like, Quartz doesn't want, Quartz is just like, I'm a normal red-blooded American. And they were like, Quartz, there's so much going on

under the hood. And it's what drives him so crazy about Jake Sully is like Jake Sully is activated a freak that he doesn't want to even have to think about. And Vering is like a healthier version of him feeling like there's a safe space to freak out. I am so curious about Spider's mom. Yes.

There's the one scene where Quarch talks about her a little bit. That she was in the battle at the end of the first movie. She was like a copter pilot. Right, sure. And is killed. Right. Right. I'm like, what was her deal?

Was she also like... I don't know. It's hard to reconcile because the quarry in the first movie is not horny at all. He's only horny for blowing up home tree. You know, like, and he's... It's not in that character, which is fine. They hadn't gotten there yet.

The notion that he's having... That he's already had any sort of pre-existing physicalized relationship with someone else who is on that planet and is serving the same mission. Isn't that, like, frowned upon? Because I'm assuming if he's like the commander of everyone on base, then she'd be his subordinate. So, like, what the fuck?

I don't know. I don't know. Maybe she was his superior. Potent, dynamic. Power dynamic. I do kind of appreciate that they don't, like, do the fucking Spider-Man 3, like, cut in an actress who wasn't there in the first movie. Yeah, no, that would suck.

I loved the moment in this movie where he and Spider are having that conversation when Spider's been captured and brought back to the base, and he's telling, you know, Quartz is telling him about his mom. and it was like, you know, you have me and her and you're, you're a fighter or whatever. And then for a moment, you're like, oh, are they really bonding? Because Spider asks for his dog tag. And I'm like, oh, this is... This is like a next level kind of relationship.

Oh, okay. So they're going to like develop, but then he just... No, Spider's being smart. No, Spider just uses the dog tag as like as a fucking screwdriver to escape. The story, like, Quarich kind of gets it in a way. in that he goes to Vareng, meets her on her terms, get some hot Navi Poon-Tang, and, like, really locks in with those guys.

And, of course, I just love the whole dynamic of cards at the first, you know, initially being, yeah, I'll go get Jake Sully for you. And by this movie, he's like, these are 50 Ash Navi. They hang out with me now. They're going to make camper. And he Falco's like, what is going on?

They brought their tents here? Like, what the fuck? He's like, don't worry about it. I gave them all for. free passes. But whenever he sees Jake, Jake is like, dude, you can live on this planet and tap into the magic of it in a way that others can't. You're a Navi now.

Yeah. There's a whole world for you to understand. If you want to understand, Quarch is like, no, thank you. You know, like, he can't quite do it. And Spider does do it. He loves a Navi woman. Well, that's what I'm saying. So there's some movement, but the fundamental thing, I almost thought he was going to die at the

into this movie. Instead, he just, once again, it's like, oh, fuck, and, like, jumps off a thing, and we'll see him later. We think that Varang is going to, like, catch him. She's going to, like, fly... I ain't worried about Clark. She ain't dead. It is one of the things that would make this film the most frustrating if they don't

make four and five, is he has, like, a Disney villain falls off a cliff into a cloud thing, where you kept waiting for them to cut to, like, him landing on something, or Varang catching him in the way that the last movie does where you think he's maybe left for dead, and then Spider pulls him up onto the rock.

And instead, this movie just leaves him as, like, a complete, like, dot, dot, dot. Ben, I like what's happening on your computer screen right now. I thought, but my point was just that I thought Quarich might die just in this sort of, like, he never fucking quite got it. You know what I mean? Like, at the end of the day, the planet would betray him in some way and it would be, like, if you'd only kind of, like, really listen to your Navi site. Now, maybe that's his ultimate arc.

I think his ultimate arc is that he gives up on being an RDA guy. Right. And Cameron's already made it clear that he will always be the dominant villain of this franchise. Right. But that moment where it almost feels like they're going to do a fucking Last Jedi, like maybe we have to team up together moment, where they're both feeling a kind of parental protection towards Spider. And their fight almost kills Spider and they both have to like work together to save him in a moment. Which is interesting. But then, and then right, my point about Spider is just spider does care about. about Pandora much more than his dad. He's sort of intrigued by his dad maybe, but much more intrigued by Pandora

by being part of his people. He gets it. He, like, locks in. Now, does Jack Champion's performance always convey this? So Natiri has this early scene where she's just like... No, no, I want to get... I'm building up to this, okay?

Natiri has this early scene where she's just like, we got to fucking drop him. Enough. He's gone. He is, like, a danger. And this is even before he becomes, like, a hybrid, right? And then Jake later in the movie is, like, you were fucking right. And it hurts me to say it, but you're right. Like, nothing good will come of him existing.

Even after Spider saves him. Yes. Right. And he's like, I consider him my son. And yet. Well, I guess Jermaine Clements also saves him too. A lot of people save him. Sure.

And he, like, takes Spider out to the woods. And it is this, like, incredibly bizarre mice and men. scene where he's like, where are we going? He's like, just keep walking. And then he, like, brings him to a rock and makes him kneel down and you see Spider process it and he takes out his blade and he's like ready to murder him. He's going to do it. It's the binding of Isaac.

Spider has this acknowledgement of like, I get where you're coming from. Right. I am an abomination. Right. And Jake is admitting how much he loves him. So here's the thing. It doesn't totally work for me. I think you said this when we walked out of the theater, Marie.

you were like, the arc of these movies is kind of mirroring my relationship to Spider, which is like, increasingly I'm like, fuck, do I kind of care about this guy? Yeah. And he's not great in this, but I was sort of like, I'm acclimating to him more. And then this is the scene, which I do think is dramatically so interesting. And I think Worthington crushes, where I'm watching it and I'm like, he's just not totally stepping up to the stakes of this scene. And anytime they ask him to do anything a little more. complicated. It feels a little, my mean joke after the movie was like, isn't this James Cameron, the guy who notoriously will yell at people for hours until something is perfect? And this is like the performance that made the final cut in the film. And I think you look at like Edward Furlong and Terminator 2, who can be like wooden and odd and is obviously like very green in that movie, but has like such a distinct energy and vibe and charisma and conveys,

like the most important things that character needs to. And sometimes Spider just feels a little bit like a placeholder performance of an idea. There's an innocence to him that sort of helped that scene for me, the binding of a six, you know, the scene where he's going to sacrifice him. Because he's such a sweetie, I guess, and you're sort of like, you do feel for him. The stuff with Kiri, I think, is when he's the best, the monkey boy stuff. Right.

It's so crazy. just Sigourney Weaver in this fucking shirtless teenager. And he's like 12 when they shot these. He's older than that, but yeah, yeah, yeah. That was this big thing where he was, the productions got shut down

during the lockdown. And Cameron had to write this letter to like the New Zealand government and he's like, this kid's body is changing every hour. Puberty is like running like a bullet train through this fucking kid. If I don't get footage in the next two months,

everything we've shot so far will be thrown out. And we're back to square. one. And I noticed there are sequences in this movie where Spider looks entirely CGI in a way that made me think it must have been stuff they couldn't reshoot. It's possible.

And it was part of why they maybe had to get like two and three done together because there's maybe a time jump happening four and five. Because Jack Champion's showing up in other movies now and he looks different. And I also feel like I have liked him more in the stuff I have seen him in recently. These are still

performances that were shot like largely five years ago. Yeah. But, like, that scene still moved me. I thought, you know, Natiri and Jake, you know, like their realizations emotionally clicked for me, so I was moved. I agree.

Even despite just like, oh, shit, I guess so. Okay. Kill me, Daddy. Right. I also think in certain ways, and I'm saying that to Quarich. You raise some good points. Blade to his neck.

In certain ways, it helps the movie that he's a little annoying because the whole thing is like, you can't like him too much. Right, he needs to be kind of a pain in the ass. But I just think anytime it becomes like a slightly more complicated emotional dynamic, it has a little bit of like Clint Eastwood working with young actors feeling. Where I'm not even like really throwing him under the bus as much as I'm just like, I don't know if he was really helped to get. where he needed to go. Maybe not entirely. Yeah. Which is okay.

Should we talk about whale stuff? Yeah, I was about to say. Because that's, like, I feel like another whole little separate storyline that we haven't really touched upon. So Pyocon is like AOC and the rest of the Toccoons are like a bunch of fucking Chuck Schumer.

He goes to try to... Yeah, I did notice their glasses were at the bottom of the eight of the yard's glasses. Below all five of their eyes. He goes to try to find his lost clan. and there's the one he finds whose eyes have been gouged out. Oh, my God, she's been blinded.

She's got harpoons and shit in her. It was so sad. This is the kind of stuff that really upsets me. And kind of reintroduces us, like, see, this is like the savagery. This is why we, like, need to fight. We need to defend ourselves. We cannot be passive. We also kind of need to talk a bit about Loak's arc in that the movie opens with him

talking about how, you know, he's, grieving his brother and all of the guilt that he feels, he feels like it was his fault. And he's dealing with some, did the wrong kid die, sort of, right. And there is like that classic dynamic of like the young son wanting to impress the father,

Jake Sully not really wanting to view him as an equal. You know, you're still, you know, you're not ready for this yet. You're not allowed to touch guns. You're not allowed to do this. You need to stay safe. And he's like, no, I want to, you know, I've got to do this.

But he, like, really. sort of finds his voice through his advocacy for Pia Khan. Yes. I also, I think that speaks to like the very personal thing Cameron's working through in these movies. A certain type of very extreme, very successful person who doesn't really know how to help guide children to be anything other than what he is. Like, this is how I've succeeded and how I function.

And all of my guidance I provide for you is through that prism. And the second movie is so much Jake Sully being like, do I need to, like, chill the fuck out? And so I think he's struggling with knowing how to guide Loak in this. Because he's like, I don't know if, like, telling you what has worked for me is the best advice. Well, it's also like his first son really responded to Jake's parenting method, which was treating him like he was part of the army. And his first son, like, locked right in and was clearly good at it or whatever. And Loak's just not good of following orders. And maybe he has some ADHD, you know, he's always forgetting his comm.

necklace you know what I mean like he just needs a slightly alternative kind of like approach and Jake's kind of like I just what about be a Marine doesn't like translate for you you know he's just not the best low ox like building a gaming PC and he's like what what are you going to do with this what is the career that comes out and like meanwhile materia is like gazing off in the distance and going like yeah she's upset right she's not totally there for him either. Curie's, like, plugging into everything and then, like, having seizures.

Tuk is the easy one. Yeah, Tuk's pretty chill. It's just, it's nice. She didn't get a lot to do this. Well, you know what? They gave Tuk one thing to do, which is when Keri has to plug into Ewa to get Awa going. And then Spider joins in,

you know, to help. And you're like, and then Tuk's like, you know what? I'm going to fucking throw my bite on there. I didn't realize that Tuk is, I guess she's the girl in life of Chuck, who he dances with at the school dance. I wanted to shoot that scene including the

son. I wanted to write a letter of an apology to Zach Braff when I saw that fucking scene.

I, and I was relatively into the first act of life of Chuck. Yeah. Oh, I was very

into the first act. You know, I was like, that's interesting. I think the first act is a masterpiece. I think that movie is 30 minutes

long. That makes my 10. It was very, and I was like, oh, I want to see where this goes. And they were like, it's going here.

Yeah. Yeah. It's going here. And I was like, well, now I'm very upset what an odd like oh what won the Toronto

audience choice awards then it like sits on the shelf for nine months and then it comes up and people are like what the fuck is it if they were smoking that those gooey kind of movies will translate and it's a gooey movie it's all I can say I don't know what came second

let's see the I'm sure what people thought was gonna Emilia Perez And then Anora was the second runner up Now Anora obviously Is the best movie of those three But I guess it's the spikiest

You know and like Remember Amelia Perez Talk about a hallucination I swear to God Someone must have like fucking plugged their brain Into the back of my head Without permission

Just the six months Of only Oscar voters being like This the best movie I've ever seen Everyone else being like You, what? What are you talking about? Are you talking? Yes.

It really opened my eyes. To what? What did this movie communicate to you? Yeah. It would be hard if this happened to you. If what happened. Explain. That's the craziest thing about that movie is people were like, it really made me understand the issues.

And you were like, what? Issues. And then anyone involved with. anything related to the issues. It's like, it understands something about any of the issue. I want to punch this movie.

Transgender issue. Not, it's not on the level. She smells like cigars and guacamole. What? Her daughter sings at her. What I was going to say is I think, you know, Amelia Perez exists to get

Zoe Saldania and Oscar because they were going to, they were never going to give it to her for playing nature. Watching this movie, I was just like, and was talking to our friend, Mal, about this. But I'm like, yeah, in my mind, I've just shifted it over to like, of course, Academy Award winner, Zoe Saldania, who won her Oscar for playing Natiri. I'm fine with her having an Oscar on a shelf. I love her and I will just never think about the performance that she won it for again.

Man to a woman. Navi, too man. Hey. There's a lot more. Interesting dynamics at play in the Avatar universe, I would say. That really did feel like a mass hallucination. Fully. Do you remember this? It was at Nighthawk movie trivia.

We should thank, of course. Oh, my God. Yes. That was cool. Yeah. Shea Thelmore and Kevin Cecil, who run the Nighthawk trivia and are the fucking best. And the Nighthawk trivia, if you're ever in New York, if you live in New York, if you live in any neighboring area, if you're ever visiting twice a month, they run the best movie trivia night. and they let us host once and people said it was easy

David your round was real hard my round was a little too hard I do apologize for that I think I I overestmated people's interest in my in my topic well I did the same I thought that mine was easy as well

and this was really good I thought thank you I thought mine was like a classic like trivia I did for those who don't know I did a round of Penny Marshall trivia you know to our next mini series Yeah, but it really did kind of hammer the point home that we probably should cover her because people are sleeping on this one.

Let me be clear. It's interesting filmography. It's a long-running bit to say that she's coming next. And that bit's over. She's coming next. But that bit is not rooted in the idea that we would never cover her. No, it's rooted in a dumb Reddit joke you made that means Marie and I so angry at you. No, you're forgetting that it predates that by so many years.

I am. It was the first time Ben and I went on the best show. Oh, see, I don't listen to, no offense to our great friend, Tom Charleston. I don't listen to the best show. This was like eight years ago. And I forget what prompted me to make it, but Sharpling was doing his antagonistic bit. What? Tom Tallul?

And was like, tell people what's coming next. And I just like, I picked Penny Marshall. And that was early enough in the run of the show when the idea of doing Penny Marshall next would have seemed crazy in terms of just like how many people we still had to get to. and then I have revived it into a Reddit bit that drove you crazy. But Penny Marshall will be a good series. Sure. We'll do her some time.

I don't know. And especially because every time we cover a female filmmaker, people are... People are really normal about it. The Reddit gets more normal. One can say it's kind of a potent... Whatever. You got this, David.

You got this. I don't. I'm landing. Sadly landing. What we're saying? Oh, Trivianite. Kevin did a question, like a round one question, which is a sense that will be supposed to be general knowledge, easier round.

like over the summer. Uh-huh. I got it right. Less than four months after the Academy Award ceremony that was named the movie with these four character names and it was Amelia Perez

and most of the room got it wrong and he was like, I correctly gauged that this is the last possible moment you could have made this a question that anyone could have gotten right. Rita Castro, Jesse Del Monte,

Gustavo Brunne. I'm just naming other characters. Yeah, I think it was Rita that Amelia Perez clearly was not one of the list of things but it was Rita that I got it from but yeah that was

it's really funny because Jack earlier's made many films I like a tremendous amount and he also made Amelia Perez and just quickly if I can just lead our whole audience and sing along Amelia this works right if you just start the song into the mic and assume that everyone else is going to join you

remember the Delta a joke. Do you remember the thing at the Oscars? Yeah, remember when she, when the lady was like talking about butterflies or something? I thought that was a good bit and I thought that was going to redeem the deck of it. Oh, I don't remember. Was this something one of the winners did? When they won the best song, they tried to leave

the whole audience and singing along. And they put the audience and they were like, we don't fucking know the words. Even we think the songs are bad in this and we voted for you. Right. And she's the lady who did the nice rat song in Rattahooey. It's Camille. And she did the fucking song from the

S&L French Teenagers sketches. Oh, that's fun. All her other songs are good. I own several of her albums. I listen to them. Several. And now quickly,

if our listeners would just join me and singing, Emil! Avatar Fire and Ash. Fire and Ash. This film, you know,

it's getting rolled out by Disney with all I feel the appropriate fanfare. It was screened for the awards voters, which is why I saw it early. It's why you guys saw it pretty early. Like, it's not like way of

Water where we saw it, like, week of release. It's the Christmas movie, right? I mean, like, what's it's going up against fucking Marty Supreme Anaconda. Jesus Christ. Wait, Anaconda's coming out this year? Yeah, it comes a Christmas day. It is one of the strangest Christmas programming decisions.

I haven't even seen a trailer for it. Well, you can watch the trailer if you want to have three bad minutes in your life. Marie, I know you love it when eyelines don't match, right? That's my favorite thing in the world. get ready for that happening in a $60 million $60 million sony picture. Does anyone do like a weird Cajun accent? No. They should be. That already

sounds better. No, the premise is so fucking convoluted. It's like they go to the jungle to remake Anaconda. Yeah, go for it. You know that like the story of the kids who like remade Raiders the Lost Arc Shop for Shot? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this movie is about four nerdy kids who grew up

remaking Anaconda in their backyard. So John Voight's performance exists in the world. Yes. In this movie, they're the biggest fans of Anaconda. And as children, they made a home video remake of Anaconda. Of course, four childhood best friends, Jack Black, Paul Red, Steve Zon, and Tundee, and Newton. And they were kids in the 90s? What?

Yes. Sure. And they're like, you know what we should do? We should go to the real jungle where they shot Anaconda and remake it again with the better production values. Ben is. like diagonal in his chair right now. And then it's like almost a tropic thunder thing where they get too deep and the snakes are real

and they were like, we thought we were making a movie but now the snakes are actually trying to kill us. You know what movie's wacky? What? This is Luis Liosa's Anaconda. Yeah. That movie's crazy. Have you ever seen Anacondas?

No. I never searched for the blood orchids. It is a great title. It is a great title and they should use that more. Yeah. Fantastic for Search for the Waterkin Everything about that trailer I was struggling to understand

what the concept of the movie was over how loud I was sighing at every single reveal in the trailer It's the least excited I could possibly be for a saving Silverman rate team Oh God, this year we got really into saving Silverman That's a great movie we should screen it I need to watch it first

Yeah you do it's so good David You should do that over the holiday break Yeah let's just flash back in a decade of dreams to earlier this year when I said saving Silverman's pretty good and you defiantly said saving Silverman is not good. I was

it was truly like you were like as we all know like toxic fumes should be breathed and I was like wait I thought we all agreed 20 years ago that was bad. Orlik has seen it like three times now. Yes. I'm successfully silverman people and by the way so many people like big strong

men came up to me tears in their eyes and we're like Griffin by the way, you're right about saving Silverman. You're brave to say it. Yeah. I've been waiting for someone to say it in your position with your power. And I feel like, have you seen Song Song Blue yet? No, I hear everyone is basically like, the first half's pretty charming and you're like,

huh, why didn't this like go to Tiff? Why didn't this? And then the second half is like incredibly depressing and maudlin and kind of lost everybody. I have a screener. I guess I could watch it. Well, you should double feature it with saving Silverman. Why? Because they both are about

Neil Diamond cover bands. You don't know how much saving Survement is in saving I also don't care about Neil Diamond. We're almost done. Look, I got so much more to say. You don't need to care about Neil Diamond.

I am just waiting for the day. Do you have more to say about Avatar? Yeah. Let's do that. We barely talked about Bring. Griff, we're getting closer to I have to go time. So, all right, what do you want to talk about

with Avatar? Fire and Ash. Not saving Silverman, which we can take. until 2026. It's not going anywhere. Can I ask you right now? Yes. Will you commit to watching Savings Silverman at some

point? Absolutely. In the calendar year of 2020. I'll fucking watch it right now. Hey, let's... Hey, this is the workspace. Let's see if it's on... Some raunchy things happen in that movie. Fuck, I'm going to have to rent it. Can we... Stinks. If we do a screening of Saving Silverman, you will consider it. If we can get a 35-0 later... I'm happy to watch

Saving Silverman tomorrow on Apple. If we do a screening, could we do it of a movie I like or at least care about a little bit? Yes, we can. But maybe, I mean, first, can I watch Savings Silverman just to see what I think of it? You're going to love it. I'm not opposed to a screening, I'm just saying.

Amanda Pete plays the Vering of Savings. I'm aware. Amanda Pete is the most varying coded character that has existed in a pre-fire and Ash world. Largely considered a somewhat sexist portrayal of a character at the time. Well, I would argue the film is almost kind of a satirical take on the inherent misogyny of the sex comedy of the late 90s and early

2000s. It's twisting it to such a gnarled kind of like... Did all the big, strong people say that to you too? Yeah, many, many smart people. Richard Brody said that to me. He hugged me really, really tight, whispered into my ear, you get it. Was Richard Brody at your avatar screening, David? I'm not sure if Richard was there. I mean, I just saw him

at the critic circle, of course, and he was as lovely as ever. Did you have a nice day? For me, it's now that I'm not the chair anymore, I'm just back to counting. I'm always like, I can't wait. I'm so excited for the counting. And then I forget that it's like, there is no break for the counter.

Because I'm just like, doing math. And then like the category is over. And I'm like, okay, I have to start like prepping the next category. But it's always fun. It's so,

it's so cool to see how it develops and all that. I did hear that, can I say about like people getting vote, like performances getting votes? Uh, sure. Maybe. What do you want to say?

But Una Chaplin as Varang got some supporting actresses. She got some votes. Not enough, in my opinion, but... Here's a genuine thing for me. I love the world of these movies. Good to know. Be weird if you didn't. I just...

I love everything happening within them. I am endlessly fascinated by anything else he wants to tell us. And I am somewhat... Look, he has put enough of it out there that I think... Way of Water won some people over who were more skeptical to the first movie. I don't think this movie will convert

any new viewers. No. At this point it's basically like, did you like way of water? You'll probably buy by this. Have you never been into Avatar? This will not win you over at all. Right.

Ben and I were talking to the great Bob Marshall last night who we ran into. And he was like saying, like, have you guys seen Fire and Ash? We're like, yeah, that rules. And he was like, really? I thought it was a mess. And I was like, what do you think of the first two?

And he's like, I've never gotten them. And I'm like, yeah, this one is admittedly, more of a mess than the first two. But to me, it's like they open the doors to the fucking all you can eat buffet and we're just like, how much avatar do you want to put on your plate? And I don't care if all the like

items on the plate aren't totally meshing together because I'm like, I'll just eat a little mac and cheese and then I'll have a slice of pizza and then I'll have an egg roll. I like all of these individuals. That's some soft serve ice cream.

Why not? Absolutely. That sounds great. I like everything they make at this restaurant. And if you don't like this restaurant, you don't like the decor, you don't like the music they play. Like, at this point, it's your fault for going through the door?

It's the rainforests cafe, actually. It really is. It's like, do you want to go into the world of the rainforests cafe? I do. Some might find it cheesy. Yes. Some might find a little over the top. Not me?

Do you think they're going to have Varing at a Disney park? Or is she to... I'm sure the... Great question, Marie. Well, so they don't... This was one of the areas that John Lando really took the lead on in terms of, like, maintaining the integrity of Avatar in the parks, right? And the idea is that it's like you are a human tourist visiting Pandora.

And mostly the people you interact with are like Norm Spellman-esque kind of Grace Augustine. Yeah, the other human scientists. Exactly. Yeah, it'd be too fucked up for you to try to go into Pandora. And his big thing is like, we don't want walk around Navi because that will like destroy the magic of the thing. You like are not going to be able to get the scale right. Like someone walking on stilts. They won't be able to animate.

It will, like, diffuse it. So you don't really see NVE other than inside the rides. And you're mostly dealing with, like, the ecology of it. They announced that they're doing an expansion to Disneyland. At Disney World, it is basically the first movie and, like, send around the floating mountains and, like, the mother tree. And at Disneyland, apparently, it's going to be more way of water. And the big question is, will you be able to see and or touch Pyocon?

I would like to. Which is what I really want. But they have more representation. of the animals and the tech and the floor and fauna and then it's like the rides will have within those controlled environments

but like Jake Sully's not there Natera's not there Vareg's not there which is a shame because if Varrang were there no it's not a shame because then you would never leave Disney I would be leaving a griffin-shaped hole

in the door of our fucking office you would try to move in there I would be arrested running on foot to Orlando is spider there they could have they could fucking have spider that's a good question i think their big thing is like we we don't want to do anything that clashes with the narratives of the movies especially because they're ongoing so you're dealing with like original characters here and it's more just like

the world of pandora but i mean i'd love to meet spider and just be like what is your deal i don't know man we're annoyed by him but like if we met him we'd probably be like Oh, you're sweet. I thought he was good in freaky tales, and it was one of those things, my favorite movie to invoke that doesn't exist. But I was just like, who's this guy? Why does he look familiar?

And it's like a five years old rejection. I mean, he's in Scream 6. And he's totally fine in it. Yeah. Is there anything else we want to talk about with Avatar? I mean, did we talk enough about Pia Khan on trial? He was up? We did the Chuck Schumer joke like three times.

I feel like we're all just worried. But the answer is, there's much we haven't talked about because we only saw it once and I'm like you know just kind of like casting around for like we hit all the big things perhaps my favorite moment in the movie is

I think it's the matriarch just goes ham and this is where people are like oh the movie just repeats all the same shit from the end of the second one and it's like oh she like flops on top of one of the boats the big boat though the biggest boat she's the biggest whole coon

and you're like oh it's the same beat and then she's like I'm not done flopping and she flops like 10 times. She just keeps fucking destroying them. I'm very in favor of Toakun smashing things. It's just good. Eat Scoresby? They sort of

drag him down to the depths. Like they grab him in their mouths and go all the way down. They stopped and rush him. The injured ones. Yeah, the blind one gets to revenge. My hope is that Scoresby comes back in the next movie and he's got like a robotic lower body. Yeah, right. He's like, you can't kill me. I'm just like off a face.

E.E. Falco did die, right? And I was a little, I was either disappointed that she didn't get much of a death scene or a little baffled if she had survived. She says abandoned ship, but then you see the whole thing kind of blowing up and I was kind of like, I don't think she made it. But I don't know. That was one thing where I was kind of like, kind of rooting for an Edie Falco going, you know, sip in her coffee while everything blows up around her, you know. But like that and the quorich just like falling into. to a cloud thing, makes me wonder if Cameron's like, if I make four and five, they're still alive. And if not, I, like, didn't want to leave them unresolved, so I left their death kind of ambiguous, where it's, like, maybe they just didn't make it. I'm trying to think, like,

and I think the action sequence I loved the most was the first big one with the airships just because of, like, that was new and different and cool. I mean, I like the big final sequence plenty, but you know what I mean? And the airships to our earlier point are, like, these giant fucking flying jellyfish squids that are being used

as like the balloons and hot air balloons with woven baskets underneath. She like shot at like a fire arrow into them and it blows up and they're like skidding down the balloons and stuff. Just some random stuff. I love the like the bone sculptures in the ash world.

That was in 28 years later. They have the big emotional finds is just there. Bone temple. Where CCH pounders. I think they're in both. You got to tell Kiri what she is and they explain. to her that it's like,

it's the best for understanding you're a god. To go back to your earlier thing where you said it was... Nice to C.C.C.H. Browner. Love it. Like Anakin Skywalker. Anakin Skywalker, of course,

I subscribe to the theory that he is a baby conjured by Darth Plagis. The wise. No, if we're talking seriously. Oh, yeah, of course. No, I feel like that is that Darth Plagis

made the force make him. Right. Versus the narrative he is told, which is like, the force just like created a baby. No, that they were right. There was some nefarious. But here it's almost like,

there is a slight, kind of Jesus element of like God has decided he needs a physical form to be able to interact on the ground with people. And then it's like AWAC couldn't revive grace but could do that. And there's this recurring thing of like the seizure thing from the previous

movie of every time she tries to connect, there's a firewall, there's a blockage and then you have the moment where we said her siblings come and like protect her. And then as it's happening, you have this like it almost feels like the dream child from the end of 2001. That's exactly what it looked like. Where there's this like big white

like sort of like structure and then it slowly starts rotating and you realize it's ahead and AWAA is going to look at you and maybe talk to you and you get to like three quarter profile and then they get pushed out of it. But this notion of AWA having like any kind of physical representation felt very enticing to me. The idea that AWA is someone you could have like a traditional conversation with, even if it is, dare I say it, just an avatar she is creating. Yeah, just a representation of... Consciousness can be absorbed by other people.

Yeah, of how to reckon with God. But at the end, like, they have found this way to plug in to the great consciousness, the collective of everyone they've lost. I think they've always had that. I think it's more that we're seeing that. Like, that's what plugging into the Tree of Souls is. And it's...

But, of course, now Spider can do it too. No shit. I was satisfied that Jake and... That the family was together. That there wasn't some bigger hammer blow, no, more sacrifices. I mean, yes, we lose Kate Winslet and maybe her daughter

died, right? Or son? No. A son. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's the kids who fuck with low walk in the previous movie. Yeah, there were some more secondary characters that died in the battle. If there is a main story concern in this movie, it's the idea of

like the principle of if you're willing to surrender your family than, like, what morality, like, what are your values as a human being, right? Like, the idea of killing Spider as, like, a strategic chess move to, like, protect your king is like, yeah, but if you kill your son.

Then you're just, you're going to live with that forever, and you're disobeying a what? You're going against all this natural order, like, and that's what Nateria realizes, which I really like. I think she plays that really well. A germane Clement, it's a recycling of Dillie Brow's arc.

Yeah. Nice to see Dillie Brow. I'm always happy to see him, literally show up on screen, collect a check. Residuals. But, you know, like, but Dr. Wayne Clement having the moral moment. But he's funny and, like,

he played the jailbreak well. Like, that was cute. Still incredibly funny to imagine Mark Mare and having to play those same scenes. So you're like Jake Sully, huh? We have the whole, like, Jake writing. Oh, to Rick McTow.

And then bringing together all of the clans, which I, like, did wit. I did kind of want to. first one. It's fascinating because it's like, that is the thing that's almost a carbon copy. Yeah. And Loak is narrating it and the narration seems almost identical where it's like he got on like Turok and then he like went from like clan to clan.

The evolution of course is now they get the Tulkoon too. Right. Did I miss that he kind of was like, I'm not Turok Macto anymore in the last one or something? That was a big thing in the last. He's like, I'm not taking out. Right? He like heads over. I forget what the other term is.

Because they're getting on and off those things like Honda Civics. You know, like after the first movie's like, you're bonded to your guy. And then this one, everyone's like, is there a random bird I can plug into a flyer? We covered this in the way of water episode. But basically he was holding two positions. Like one was the West Studi position of basically like the chief of the tribe, right? And then the other one was like Turok Maktow, which is maybe closer to being like the Pope. Yeah, that's like an honorable, right, to all Navi, yes.

Right. And there's like a wilder. responsibility and power that comes from, that's almost dangerous. And he, like, hands over the chief title to someone else, steps down from Turok Mektoe, and is like, no one should be Turok Mektoe, right? Right, it's too, too scary, too bloody. But it does, that is the one area in the film where I'm just like, really, you're, like, going to pull this move and then just sort of be like, yeah, and then,

you know, he'll do all the same stuff. They yada yada some stuff in the movie, which I don't love, but that's okay. But, you know, someone said some version of that, like, why didn't we say? you. And I'm like, I don't know, man. It's a three hour, 20 minute movie with like 30 characters, and they're all doing things, and you just have to make choices at a certain

point as to what's going to be in the movie. They've been publishing all these, like, a comics miniseries, uh, dark horse, that are all basically things that Cameron cut out of the script. Uh, right. Like, they're not just like assigning writers to come up with like expanded universe shit. Like Cameron's

like, this was like a 30 page chunk that I just didn't have room for, so all like handed over to, comics writer and go like, do you want to get 12 issues out of this? There's so much stuff that I'm not going to read that. Maybe I will. Maybe I will. Maybe I will. Maybe they'll be another video game. They made a Avatar the game. There's one now. Frontiers of Pandora. It's fucking rat as hell.

Should I play? Is it? Yeah. What are you doing that? I was messaging you doing it. It was the most actively I got into a game in the last couple. Okay. I do remember this. It's so crazy how these things come out and God knows this must cost a fortune to make. It's like a fucking AAA game that seems to have done. just like, yeah, right. It was neither like a colossal flop nor like a total success. And there's still, they just did like a major

DLC update. You fly around and shit? They've done like season past like every six months there's a new fucking major story arc. Let's get the bundle. So Ben sent a bundle of McFarland toys. Excuse me. That's not his name. His name is

Todd. T-Dog Mac. Including a Vareng. You can get obviously you can get Quartz, you can get Jake, but the Vareng has like her default face, she's going like this. But she's also got one that's kind of like this. So you can swap her head out to have her be a little more nice, I guess. Yeah. Also, can we call up Ray Zelensky quickly before this package arrives? I want to use his Ray to like fucking embiggin that Vering action figure, if you know what I'm saying. And so Ray Zalinski. Oh my God. That took me. That was that was a

I'm a real throwback. And also honey, I blew up the kids. Right, right. So you want his, his ray from the second film that made things. And then what do you do with the big toy? Well, I think Griffin's going to do something. No, excuse me.

Oh, no. Oh, okay. I will merely dump my cap. Oh, okay. Go, my lady. And respectfully keep a distance. I do think Avatar 4 should have the first Navi Lady short king

human boy sex relationship. Hold on one second. Let me just email my manager quickly. You know what I mean? Like this nine foot tall woman walks in with a

five foot eight guy. It's slower. I'm just trying to transcribe this quickly. Isn't that but isn't that what's happening with Kiri and Spider? A little bit. They have a kiss.

They do have a little kiss. Oh, sweet. Of course, Carrie isn't full height yet. So she's still kind of like Spider- size. And Sikorni's so fucking good news. She's fantastic. I nominated her for way of water. She's great in this one too. I was

just kind of like, there's nothing like this performance. No, and in the last one it was so shocking because for years he was so mum on how he was bringing her back and then it's like she's playing a teenager. What are you talking about? And then there was the sort of like novelty factor of holy shit, this is a good performance. In this you just kind of like take it. Like you accept it. And then every, like, 30 minutes, I'd be like, right, that's like

Sigourney Weaver playing a child. And she says in that, you know, a little preamble video that about no AI, like, she's like, yeah, because of this, I can play a teenager. And you're like, yeah, that's what this is for for, like, crazy swings like this. Like, this weird technology is for this. It's

this is what I said when we walked out of the theater. It's what I put in my leverbox log. It is easily the best avatar film I've seen in the last three years. It's so true. And that's, that's, that's, that's, my ultimate takeaway. If you like Avatar movies, it's the best

one of 2025 and better than anything that was released in 24 or 23. It's a movie where I thought I might watch it and be like that's great and I'm glad James made these. And maybe it's time for him to make something else I don't know. Instead I watched and I was like

I think I need Avatar 4 announced like pretty soon. Like I think I need him to be back in the lap. I was getting itchy. Yeah. I think I need a couple more of these. I'm worried. Versus the, hey, if James Cameron wants my old joke of like, wants to make Avatar movies than I want to see him. Now I'm like, James, I think

I want you to make more. I don't think I want you to use your powers to melt my face with Hiroshima. Like, no. Beyond that, I'm also like, James, you sure you can wrap this up in two more? Yeah, right. Feel free to like stretch out. Doing a taffy sort of sign.

We're recording this pretty early. Yeah, the box office situation is that I assume this will be the number one film. Well, you're forgetting it's going up against the second weekend of Ella McKay, which is kind of an interesting Disney cannibalizing the Avatar franchise by putting it in the direct pathway of a buzz south. I think Ella McKay will open to 6 to 700 mil,

but is going to be very front-loaded. And then drop. Yeah. Look, come on. It's going to be like Demon Slayer. Like the day one is going to be like 50%. Friday, huge that it starts to drop. I mean, it's one of those things where it was,

was a flat fall, as we've been joking, you and I in our text threads and all that, but... It's largely a byproduct of just... Just not enough product. ...scheduling from the studio. Yes. And, like, fucking wicked crushed, Zutopia Crush. Yeah. Five Nights of Freddy's, too, which I'm sure is

utter dog shit. He's about to just, like, easily make a bunch of money on top of those two. Ella McKay, of course, is swinging in. What is maddening is that, like, we had, like, eight weeks that were really dire, but they were Dyer because a couple big things moved off

the schedule, including respect to Ben, Mortal Kombat 2, which they moved because it was testing so fucking well that they were like, this should be in the summer. Yeah, yeah, totally. And also it makes sense as a summer movie, like, dumb fun, yeah. Right, and obviously, fucking demon slayer and a conjuring

crush, but then there was this like real fucking conjuring movie, it's so bad. Fallow period. Yeah. I contend there's no movie that flopped where you're like... Why that flopped? And then things like Predator Badlands would, like, do all right.

Do all right. Yeah, you know. Right. And, like, now you see me is doing all right. But it feels really stupid that, like, they kind of scrunched Zootopia, Wicked, and Avatar pretty close together. You just want those, like, holiday legs. I mean, it makes, you know, it makes so much money. But everyone was, like, wringing their hands and you're like, hey, there's, like, three movies that are guaranteed to make a combined $5 billion coming. Have you seen Predator Badlands? Yeah, I enjoyed it.

I really liked it. Yeah. It's totally good fun. I saw it this week. It was, like, the first movie. I've seen in a while that gave me some of the like avatar vibes. I was about to say the exact same thing.

Like jokes aside, it is the only movie I have seen since Way of Water, in between Way of Water and Fire Nash, that scratch some of the itches of what I like about the Avatar movies. And I like it's like world building. It's literal building of its like physical

world. Yeah, the plant's fucking rule. I like all that stuff. But yeah, I mean, the first movie opened to 70 and people were like, not a great start. Highest gross movie of all time. The last movie opened to like 130 and people were like, that's not that great. And a post-end game reality

ended up, people forget that it is still the highest grossing film post-pandemic. It made more money than Barbie, No Way Home. I mean, Avatar and like end game. Truly. Like for how much credit Top Gun, Barbie, Oppenheimer, and No Way Home get for saving

the box office, Wavewater outgrossed all of them. And now there's $684 million domestic. Right. Now people are like, I guess Fire and Ash is going to open to $150, but is that good enough? Like the bar keeps getting raised. I would

not be surprised if there's a bit of a dip on this one, but I also... I think it'll open a little lower and it'll have good legs and it probably will make the least of the three Avatar movies. That will still be a tremendous amount of money. All right, so here's the question. Is it going to make more or less than Zootopia, too?

Well, Zootopia's making this sort of bewildering amount of money in China. Yes. That's hard to gauge. But isn't Avatar also big in China? Also very popular there. Yeah. So we'll see. I don't know.

To W2? Yeah. Great time. You had a good time. Yeah, I had a great time. Love that. I've yet to see it. I saw it with my daughter.

Humbolded break. It's the first, first run movie I've seen with her, I think. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Because I've only taken into Jeebly movies and Toy Story. Wow. I don't know where this ends up exactly.

I'm curious to see what the larger public response to this is, but also like the public's response to Avatar as a general thing is so weird and tortured. Yeah. We all had a really good time. I'm very excited to see this movie multiple more times.

You're going to go to 40X, I assume. Yeah, almost definitely. I liked the Miley song. Every time we dream, we dream. I don't think I really sat with it. I think I'll need to listen to that again. I sat. Yeah.

I was seated. Yeah, and then, right, next week is Marty Supreme and hopefully that'll hit and an Anaconda, I assume, will be a smash. But Avatar's just going to have that fucking magic holiday corridor. It'll have really nothing troubling it until that bone temple. The thing that really fucking boggles my brain, and I said this, Ben's rubbing his hands in one of our group texts the other day is I just like, do not understand why they're releasing the fucking SpongeBob movie at Christmas and they didn't put that thing in fucking October.

Well, I'll tell you that my daughter covered her eyes at the trailer for that. Too scary. Ooh. She didn't like the pirate. She doesn't like. There's the ghostly pirates. The Flying Dutchman. Yeah. And then the Cat in the Hat trailer came on, and I was like, oh, boy, she's going to love this.

And instead she was kind of like, okay. Well, I got great news for her. She can look forward to seeing that trailer for the next 18 months because that movie keeps getting pushback. It does keep getting pushed back. They keep having to record new intros with Bill Hater looking more suicidal. Guys, I cannot wait to show you the first look at my new film. Trailer of this movie. I'm the Cat in the Hat.

Have you seen this clip, right? Yeah, they played it in front of it. My trailer is in front of... He looks like he has been captured in, like, the Balkan War. I didn't act... They didn't have, like, real-life Bill Hater. Yeah. I just saw it on YouTube.

It's worth watching. And he's like, guys, I'm literally so excited. The cat has a striped hat, and he'll show you worlds. You could never imagine. The trailers I got in front of Zootopia, too, were goat. The movie about a goat that wants to play basketball. Yeah, Steph Curry's movie, yeah. And then...

Yeah. Cat in the Hat. Spongebob. SpongeBob, Big Guy, Pants. Okay. I was telling Ben, my little cousin George, off reference on the show, could not be more excited for Goat. And usually when I see him, his question is like,

what's the next couple Marvel movies coming out? And now the last three times I've seen him, it's just been... So Goat's coming out soon, right? Is he going to be a sports kid? He is a sports kid. So, of course, he's excited for Goat. He's like a fucking really good baseball player. Oh, right.

You were talking about this on our recent episode. I didn't put that together that that was George, because I was like, isn't that kid like five? George has varied interests. He's a very well-balanced. How old is he now? He just turned 10. Oh, my God.

Yeah. Practically a grown-out. Yeah. And he's a slugger. Good for him. Nice. So we're not going to play the box office game. No, we did that already.

I mean, I would say... And I think we should just address that part of why we were recording at the time that we're recording this episode, Griffin booked a job. And so we just had to kind of get that in before... I have to travel. out of the country it is a thing that when it manifests I think will be like a fun

kind of surprise cameo thing for our listeners and for anyone who is not familiar with this podcast they'll just be like that guy with three lines but it will be fun and I will not say anything further about it

it's draft day too it's draft day too it's back Costa got a $40 million check for it this time he draft Griffin at drafting an American What? I'm quarterback.

And he gets thrown into an asylum. I'm really trying to win cousin George's respect. He watched draft day because he's like really into fantasy football. Sure. And also he loves Black Panther. And I was like, I was in a movie with Black Panther,

which is like a pretty limited list of movies, sadly. Right? And he watched it and I was like, what do you think? And he was like, I never would have made those choices. Unreal unrealistic trade. He truly was just like. He gives away three first round picks.

It's insane. He was like, he could not stop scoffing. He was like, I do not understand what that guy's doing. This is our last episode of 2055, right? I forgot that next week, well, next week is dark. Annual dark week. But then the week after is when you will hear us question if a thing is on. Remember that, Ben?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Bradley Cooper says this thing on. We will discuss to kick off the new year. But this is the end of our decade of dreams. A perfect way to end it with Jimmy C and Varang and all of her friends.

Old friends, Jake Sully, new friends, Varang. It's a great way to kickstart our second decade of dreams. And yes, the next proper mini-series coming up is Lynn Ramsey, as we have already announced,

but repeating here, which I'm very excited about, one of my favorite phone makers, and then Peter Rear after that because it's a short series, Lynn Ramsey. But the first two episodes of the year, before we get to Lynn Ramsey will be

Bradley Cooper's is this thing on and Park Chan books no other choice. One of my absolute favorite movies of 2025 and one of my absolute least favorite films of 2025. And I'll keep you all in suspense. I saw Li Binghung just today

waiting in the lobby of Criterion. Boy, is he handsome. Did you see him? I did not. He is one of those guys who looks like he does in the movies. He was shiny. Yeah. Yeah. And His hair was perfect, and he had a glass jacket on. I just, like, can't believe that he's also Guima. He's, look, he's in so many cool things.

He's Storm Shadow. Yeah, exactly. I mean, God bless him. What a year. What a year. What a year. Hey, thank you all. Yeah.

For riding with us, our clan. This podcast is a fortress. It really is. It really is. It's so true. Whether we like it or not, it's become a fortress. And we live inside of it. That's right.

I keep trying to bring down Home Tree, but it just won't come down. We keep getting reanimated and new Avatar bodies behind these microphones. We joke. We love doing this show. It's an absurd privilege that this has somehow become a thing that we get to spend our lives doing. Absolutely. And now, Ben and I get a month off from this job. You owe me so much for booking a job.

Okay, okay. Slow your old. We still got two episodes to record. I don't get a month off. What do you mean? Social media never sleep for a real time, baby. This is true. The grind.

The verang memes. The memes. Yeah. I hope they released some sort of fun, new filter. Yeah. Or, you know. Can we, can we, let me just call this out. I just want to create a fan art challenge to our listeners.

Please feel free. No AI. but whether Photoshop or any kind of tactile visual art by hand sculpture, I'm putting out a call for artistic representations

of me being a proper gentleman to Varene. Taking Frank to... Nope. No. Okay, I take it back. Maintaining a safe distance. I'll let you interpret it

how you want, but nothing untoward is happening. Yeah. Because she would wear you like a jacket. If you try to. anything. Would I want to see that?

Yes, I'm not asking you to depict that. Respectful. To be clear, don't depict that. What I want is me just maintaining a safe distance and the little tip of the cap. I'm seeing here, Varang is now the new environmental secretary. Jesus, she's an interesting choice.

I really want Maverick thinker. Pat Reynolds to Photoshop me as Verang for this episode art. But is that, I feel bad asking for that. No, I think, I think you've earned that right.

Ben, of course, a spider again, a thing that makes him happy? I love that. He better be. Yeah. And then I feel like you or Jake Sully and I'm in a interior?

Sure. But I feel like you often end up the lady. I do. I feel like maybe we should switch it so you're quoritch. That's a pretty potent idea. Potent Photoshop. All right.

Bye. Thank you all for listening. Please remember to review and subscribe. And see you in 2026. And as always, I think you have to admit. A pretty potent podcast You're right

You're not wrong Oh I thought you were gonna end with No shit Oh no shit No shit No shit No shit