Blank Check with Griffin & David - Gemini Man

Episode Date: October 20, 2019

On the week of its release in October of 2019, Griffin and David discussed Gemini Man. Together they examine the performances of old and young Will Smith, Ang Lee's second attempt shooting at the high frame rate of 120 fps and in 3D and a young Benedict Wong. 

You've made a podcast out of another podcast. That's kind of funny, right? Oh, God. I'm just happy we're talking about this movie now. So we recorded this episode. Back to back with Joker. Right. If you're listening to this, it's been a week since our Joker episode came out.

We're doing these at the same time. But it's been about seven minutes since our Joker episode ended. And here's what's changed. All of us are breathing again. I'm sitting back in my seat. This could be unsettling or a difficult movie but it's

very much not that. Ben just switched the lights. Your first line when the movie ended was you went oh Ang he's so gentle. He's such a softie. In a great way. Let's.

Where he's like, what if some, like, right? Like, imagine the Hollywood pitch is like a guy, like talking to Jerry Bruckheimer. Yes. What if you're the crack assassin? You shoot people. They dead. Ha. And then you're getting old. Suddenly there's a guy.

He's over your shoulder. You're getting weary. But right. Best shot you've ever seen. Who's a guy. He's over your shoulder. You're getting weary. But right. Who is this guy? He seems to know everything you know. Right? He's chasing you. You turn around. It's you. A younger you. They cloned you.

And now you have to fight you. And Ang Lee comes in and he's like, and my pitch is, what if they became friends? What if the way to defeat him was friendship? What if a man haunted by his father decides to become the father to the son who is him? What if this man defeats him

with his greatest weakness, conscience? Everyone hates this movie. Yeah. Fuck them. Good movie. It's getting... Bastard. It's getting... Yeah. I. Fuck them. Good movie. It's getting lambasted. It's getting, yeah,

I don't know. What can we say? It's getting buttered and fried. Getting folded like laundry. It is. In the words

of the great Mike Mitchell, Oh boy. It is getting folded like laundry. Yes. And I think the three of us

are going to be three of the only outliers kind of saying, this is kind of interesting. Yes. And I think the three of us are going to be three of the only outliers kind of saying this is kind of interesting. Right. This, of course, is Blank Check. It's a podcast about filmography. Directors with mass success early on in their careers give a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion projects they want. Sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby. I'm Griffin and I forgot to say that part.

I'm David Sims. And this is a thing we love. We love to see it, which is a director we've covered in the past comes out with a new talkie. We get to take a little stroll down memory lane, revisit one of the old miniseries. And resume our ongoing dialogue about this filmmaker and their career. Yeah. And so our old buddy Ang Lee, one of our very close personal friends. A filmmaker that I always liked.

Mm-hmm. But then, like, we did the miniseries on him. And I really came to appreciate everything he's brought to his career. All kinds, you know, all this, you know. I really, really fell for Ang Lee when we did it. And here's the thing. We saw this movie yesterday.

We went to a press screening. Very graciously, you extended a plus one to me, friend of the podcast, Jordan Hoffman extended a plus one to producer Ben, aka the Benducer, aka the Poet Laureate, aka the Hodge, aka Mr. Hodge, aka Mr. Positive, aka the Keeper, aka the Tiebreaker, aka the Commish, aka the Booker, aka the Fart Detective, aka the Meat Lover. So you got to see as

the director intended. Ditch Benny. Yeah, we saw it I think essentially as he intended, right? Do you know anything more on this? I'll get to this in a second. Excuse me. I just have to mention that he graduated to certain titles over the course of his career, such as Kylo Ben, producer Ben Kenobi, Ben Night Shyamalan, Ben's Eight, Say Bennything,

dot, dot, dot, Ailey Ben's with a dollar sign, Warhaz, Purdue Urbane, Ben 19, The Fennel Maker. Then I believe after that, he would have moved on to Robohaz. Then I think you probably after that got something. I think in between, you got a Benglish and you got a Mr. Bencredible.

Then of course, it's you drink Ben Hosley and that's underlined italicized put in a bracket here because we're coming back to Angley. But of course, we've moved on since then. So then you have Beetle Vape Juice. Yeah. You have the Hazlade. Yep.

You have. Ante. But that was the Hazlade. Right. Did we ever come up with one for Michael Mann? I think we talked about this. We did. Didn't we?

Public Benemies. There we go. Great. Thank you. Book closed. Right, right didn't we? Public enemies. There we go. Great. Thank you. Book closed. Right, right, right, right, right. We essentially saw this exactly as the filmmaker intended. Okay.

I believe there is one format arguably superior to what we saw last night, which is 4K. 4K, right? We saw it, I believe, in 2K. Is that accurate? Right. Yeah. That is the only difference. 4K laser projection, 3D plus, 120 frames per second, is only screening in China.

That's so crazy. It is not screening anywhere within the continent of North America. Is there a theater in Taiwan maybe? I believe there are five. There's a few theaters in China. I think there are five theaters in Asia that are screening the film in 4K, IMAX laser projection, 3D, 120. Right. Otherwise, we essentially saw as he intended. Yeah.

The only difference was resolution. Right, right. This film is going to get a wider release in closer approximations of what Ang Lee intended. Than Billy Lynn. In that I believe most people will be able to, with little hassle, see this film at least in 60 frames per second 3D. Right. It's fairly wide in that presentation.

Right. And in the 120 Dolby Vision. It's about one per major city. Yeah, maybe a couple tops. Right. I feel like it's only in those AMCs that have the Dolby Vision theaters pretty much. I think there might be a couple outside, but that's the main bulk of them. That's the best list to consult.

I know people on the Reddit have tried to put together an ongoing thread with a master list. If you're looking to see this movie, I would consult that because I could not even imagine what it would be like to watch this film not in the format intended. We were just talking about this. Yeah. Kind of intrigued to do that. I will go do it and I will later pitch to you an idea based around that for Talking to Walk 29.

Yeah, maybe that's the move. I mean, JD's been blowing us up as well with his John Wick rampage he wants to go on about critics lambasting high frame rates. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Can I tell you what my pitch is here so we can float this? Sure.

And maybe people get excited about it? Sure. Tell me your pitch. I pitch Talking the Walk 2019 is us walking to three different screenings of Gemini Man in three different formats in one day with our buddy J.D. Amato. No, I'm not.

No. Wait, we have to see the movie three times? Correct. Griffin, what the fuck? I don't want to do that. Well, it's a good thing I just floated on mic and now people are going to tell you to do it. Griffin, we're very overworked on this podcast.

I'm over it. We have too much to do. I'm very aware. That would eat up an entire day. I'm very aware. How about this? But one could argue it's the sequel to the biggest podcasting event of 2018.

And I am worried about letting people down. And I've been burning them in that hole trying to come up with something that feels epic enough. Griffin, you need to relax. Can't we just do the episode, but this time we'll walk around in Prospect Park? Can't we just make it easier? Like, that is hard enough for me. But I'll do that. No, no, no.

I'm not seeing three. I'm going to be very clear. There's no way I'm seeing that film three times. But would you walk around and do another episode? Yeah, sure. Whatever. Whatever. So you have two versions that you can vote on.

My version is we kind of just do that same episode again, but we'll revisit some bits, but we'll be walking around. Okay. I want to offer a qualifier onto each pitch. Okay. Oh, wait. You want to add on to it? I'm going to take a pass on each pitch. He's adding on, folks. a qualifier onto each pitch. Okay? Oh, wait. You want to add on to it? I'm going to take a pass on each pitch.

He's adding on, folks. Taking a pass on each pitch. Pass one, pitch one. Yeah, yeah. Instead of having to... Pass one, pitch one. Pass one, pitch one. Instead of having to go physically see Gemini Man...

Yeah, because I already saw it in the frame rate anyway. They won 20. I'm more. I'm interested in seeing it in 24. I'm not at all interested in seeing it in six. Gonna bring a laptop and put it on the seat next to you? Exactly. Here's my pitch. We pirate Gemini Man.

No, here's a joke. Document the crime. Jokes aside, deadly serious, retired bit. No chaos. Pitch one, pass one. We watch Billy Lynn three times in three different formats from the comfort of a home. Why does it have to be three? Because it's one standard, one 3D, one high frame rate.

That's how the fucking combo pack is structured. Okay, so that's fine. So let me move on to pitch two, pass one. one high frame rate. That's how the fucking combo pack is structured. Okay, so that's fine. So let me move on to pitch two past one. Can we do it simultaneously? Can we watch all three versions at once? If we set up three screens? Yeah, that'd be cool.

That I'm fine with because it's time that I'm worried about. But technologically, we'd need three TVs or something. I'm worried about time over here. Ignite the TVs! Suddenly I'm hosting a podcast with christopher nolan well maybe you are having existential dread around time um uh here's a pitch to pass one we just take a walk and it's very fun it's us we're the four friends i would just strenuously argue except it's a 12-hour walk because it's a 12-hour day crossover and Connor Ratliff joins us. No, no, no. Considering how strenuously we are behind on our Patreon, the last thing I want to do is eat up another whole day.

We are very behind and very stressed out. We're doing all right. We're fine. Yeah. Right now, we're here to talk about. Or give us your own pitches. Okay. Talkin' the Walk 2019 will happen in some capacity in November.

This episode's coming out in October. Sure. Please give us ideas. Yes. Email the show, blankcheckpodcast at gmail.com. I'll tell you what our idea was supposed to be, and it was foiled by the release of Gemini Man. Our idea was we thought enough theaters would get converted with the full technology that we would be able to do a screening of Billy Lynn

because so many people failed to see it as intended. And these guys really worked on trying to make that happen. We were emailing for months. We were trying to organize a screening that we would have hosted and maybe would have tried. At the same time, I was talking to Paramount and I was like, sort of like, let me know,

like whenever you have an idea of, you know, how widespread the one 20 is going to be. Cause I think we all had this concept of like, right. Will Smith, it's an action. They'll have to spread the one 20.

Right. And I think it's just too big and ask for theaters. They topped it out at 60 in most places. And so in six, the 60, I think you only need one. Yeah. Right. It's like you need this sort of like double system. It's a dual laser thing.

Which is just crazy. Right. So that was our big swing. That's what we've been planning on doing for the last year. And also had been circling around maybe being able to talk to Ang Lee in some capacity. Which didn't work for a number of scheduling things. Who knows these things might happen one day. Talking about 2020.

Perfect vision. 2020 we're going to be able to pull off of scheduling things. Who knows these things might happen one day? Talking to Walk 2020. Perfect vision. 2020, we're going to be able to pull off all these things. Writing checks that are asses. Can't cash. But the point is, we were very optimistic that we'd be able to make one of those two things work, if not both of them. And now we're opening up to fan suggestions of what Talking to Walk 2019 should be. Right.

But here's the point. As you were saying. Right. talking the talk 2019 should be. Right. Here's the point. As you were saying. Right.

There is this weird thing where I feel like we get biased because when I have friends who try to get me into sports, they go like, but Griffin, you love stories. You love narrative. Sure. Sure. And the whole thing is the game is whatever. It's about that you're following people for an entire season. Right. And you're tracking them and you're watching the growth and they're moving from team to team, the history of the team and the management, all this.

It's all the narratives you carry to the game so that every point, every move, every whatever has larger story meaning, right? Yeah. And I now feel that way about any director we cover where I get so much more emotionally invested in any movie they make, in any career move they make. Whether or not I like it, whether or not it's what I want them to be doing. I feel that way too. I feel like I'm like, this is my hometown team. Ang Lee's the Yankees. I'm fucking here for it.

I relate to it and with bands even. Where it's like I've been going and listening to like later Bob dylan albums artists i love and like all this 80s stuff and it's just like i i love seeing the different fluxes and ups and downs of all these careers so we spend months at a time being completist about someone in their work yeah which you start to really think about their life you know because we're doing it all i love it because we're doing it of course yeah we're starting to personality. Because we're doing it in order. Of course. Yeah. We're starting to get into their head a little bit and try to figure out their moves and recognize the themes and all those things. So we're bringing a lot to the

table. And we like this movie a lot more than most people. Right. And I suspect that's a lot of it. Right. But I also suspect a big part of it is you and I did both see Billy Lynn in high frame rate. Yes. Most people did not. Most critics even did not get to see it in high frame rate. Yes. Most people did not. Most critics even did not get to see it in

high frame rate. I suppose not. I feel like it was not widely screened. It was the New York Film Festival screen which you went to right?

That's right. That's right. It was high frame rate. It was high frame rate and then I saw it again like a month later or whatever at the Sony Picture Room

in 24. But I feel like a lot of the press screenings were not. Yeah. And I also saw The Hobbit in high. Right. But I feel like a lot of the press screenings were not. Yeah. And I also saw The Hobbit in high frame rate. 48.

I saw Hobbits 2 and 3, I think, in the 48. Because the press screenings were in 48. Really? Yeah. 2 definitely was. 2 and 3 were barely released in high frame. 3, I can't remember. 3, they might have finally spared us. 2, 100% was released in high frame. Three, I can't remember. Three, they might have finally spared us.

Two, 100% was in the high frame rate. Yeah. I do think you watch this movie differently if you have seen a Hobbit, a Lin, and then a Gemini Man. I think that's true. Because you're watching the advancement of a medium. Yes. And while I question the long-term viability of this, for the first time watching Gemini Man, I go, he's done about 60% of the problem solving

purely from a technical level. Sure. And I see larger samples of what one could do with this format and why it is potentially valuable to certain filmmakers. Now, here's one take I have. Yeah. James Cameron is making the avatars. Yeah.

Now, I don't know that this is official, but he definitely always talked about wanting to shoot them in a high frame rate. Maybe not 120, but a high frame rate. 480, right. No, yes, he keeps on sort of threatening a high frame rate. One billion! Keeps on threatening a high frame rate,

and because so much of the film is motion capture, I think he has a lot more flexibility in terms of making those decisions in post. And it's interesting to think of the narrative of this when you go from The Hobbit, universal derision. Billy Lynn, largely derided, but also this sort of curio anyway because who the fuck saw that?

Sure. This, mostly derision, but as some people will be sort of like, well, they're starting to fix some of the bugs here. Matt Patches, Emma Stefanski, friends of the show. Good people.

Great people. Good people. Good people. Imagine Avatar 2 comes out. It's basically an animated film anyway. It's in the frame rate. Can you imagine a world when then Feige is like, Marvel movies will now be in high frame rate.

Yeah. And then things start to sort of like progress. I'm not saying that's going to happen because I do feel like there's this built-in hostility that may just be impossible to overcome. But it feels like 1% possible in a way it hadn't before. This is a scenario that I think is incredibly likely, okay? Right.

Zemeckis, for years, would not put down his fucking mocap toys, right? And people were like, Bob, we don't like these movies. They look weird. Stop it. Pick up a camera. Right? And he finally was like, fuck it.

I'm taking a flight, right? I'm getting allied. I'm welcoming you to Marwen. We're going to Marwen. Right. But Marwen is- He's officially confirmed as being lost in Marwen, right? He is lost to Marwen. Right. But Marwen is – He's officially confirmed as being lost in Marwen, right? He is lost in Marwen.

They've sent like drones in and they won't return. Yeah, and we are now unwelcome to Marwen. No one's welcome there. They banned us. City Limits has our faces stapled to trees. Right. But everyone was like, why is he fucking sticking to this? And he would always

say this thing of like you don't understand I have an obligation the power position I am in to do all this field testing

to workshop these tools for a future generation of filmmakers I'm taking all the hits I'm making all the mistakes so future filmmakers have these tools

and people were like go fly a kite. What the fuck? This is creepy. It will never work. And now every fucking movie uses motion capture. I know Zemeckis wasn't the first, but he does deserve a lot of credit for getting a lot of the kinks out of the system by so stubbornly making fucking five movies in a row with this weird, creepy technology, right? And Ung Lee did an amazing

amazing fucking interview with the Guardian that's an incredible piece that everyone should read just like him it's very sweet it's very emotional sort of vulnerable I believe the headline is I know I'm gonna get beaten up but I can't stop

I need to do this it would be funny if it was like he's like just tortured right where he's like I can't stop. I need to do this. It would be funny if it was like he's like just tortured right where he's like I can't the frame rate demons like they're in my brain. But he in it A

essentially directly says Hulk was my blank check. It was the one movie where they literally gave me anything I wanted to do. I had no oversight. They thought if you can do

Crashing Tiger maybe you can do anything. Anything I asked for any amount of money I got. Right. And I felt like I betrayed the audience because I just thought about making an Ang Lee film and I didn't think about the contract. You sign with an audience when you are making an event film, when you are promising them popcorn. And so for Life of Pi, he very consciously went into it saying, I need to make something that pleases audiences.

And it did. People liked 3D. It made a tremendous amount of money. And he won his second Oscar. And now he has gone into the weird Zemeckis field of, no, I'm 100% in on this technology thing. And I'm going to fucking solve this. And in the Guardian article, he keeps on saying that same thing Zemeckis used to say, which is, I need to figure this out for future filmmakers. I'm old. I hope I get to keep making movies for another decade or two.

But it's more about me using my clout at this position to figure this shit out so that other people have it because I really believe there's something here that is important to add to the toolbox of cinema. Not that all movies should be this way. It's very similar to his approach to 3D.

I think he feels a lot of regret about the fact that 3D was so misused so widely that it was sort of killed. And that he takes 3D very seriously. In the Guardian article, he keeps on going into conversations about Z-axis in a very J.D. Amato way and then saying to the journalist, like, I'm sorry. You don't care about any of it. This is not something you have spent months thinking about. He keeps on positioning mugs on tables, and he's very scientific about the way the human eyes work and how we perceive images,

and that's his whole thing with high frame rate. There is a little bit of a sense of loss that we have this filmmaker who is sort of one of the most elegant, primal storytellers, who is a great actor's director, who is great with text, getting a little bit lost in the weeds with this technology. Yeah.

But there's something kind of thrilling and very classically blank checky about this narrative. And there is nothing more classically blank checky than the narrative of James Cameron when everyone assumes he's about to fail, doing the thing that everyone tells him is the worst possible idea and making it work wildly. So there is that 1% chance that James Cameron's like, here we go. It's 320 frames per second. Everyone sees it's like, here we go, it's 320 frames per second, everyone sees it, and they go, Jesus Christ, it works, James Cameron's a

genius, and every Marvel movie gets a limited release and high frame rate, and it becomes something like that. It becomes the new 3D or whatever, the new off-chart. It becomes a format. Yeah, exactly. A way you can see a movie. Right. Because the thing I kept thinking about Gemini Man is, much like with 3D, a lot of the best uses of 3D on a technical level after the 3D boom were weird things like Fim Vendor's Peanut.

Right. And Jackass 3D. Right. You know? And the Scorsese Rolling Stones documentary. Right. And watching this last night, I was like, I would love to see someone make a fucking concert movie in high frame rate 3D. Because a lot of the

places where this gets... Has no one done anything like that? I don't believe so. I mean, sports are often... Obviously, yes. And that was the big threat always with 3D TVs was when you get to 3D sports, it's going to blow people's minds. And the technology never worked well enough to get there.

ESPN was broadcasting 3D for like a month. That was such a stupid concept because sports are very communal and like it's just not something where everyone's like, let's all sit down put on our glasses and not move. Sports are very much like everyone's around and getting up and getting down. But there was always this threat

of like, they're working on the technology and 10 years from now there might be a TV where no one's wearing glasses and different people can be sitting on a couch. That's the thing that Cameron's also threatening with the avatars. I'm going to figure out glasses-less 3D. Essentially holograms, which is very vaporwave. Right.

Totally. But I think the key to that is there being enough revenue from traditional 3D that it funds the development to get to that point. And when people stopped paying to see 3D movies in theaters and 3D TV sales totally crashed and I bought the last one ever. Legendary moment for you. It just like went out the window, right? But look, if anyone's going to do it, it's Cameron. And there's no question that he's going to throw something crazy out with Avatar.

I would think so. He has to. Right. Well, maybe it's just, you know, a seed bearer. Can I ask to someone who doesn't know a lot about stuff? Yeah.

So you saw this with us, but you had not seen Billy Lynn. No. Yeah. But was there an older jump like this in film history? This is like the one thing that has weirdly stayed pretty fixed. Because you have like the jump from like silent to sound.

You have the jump from black and white to color. J.D. kind of talked about this on our Billy Lynn episode that you guys should listen to if you haven't. Best podcast of all time. Where like 24 was kind of just a number that got arrived at, but then it was the number. I mean, originally it used to be slightly different, which is why when you watch old silent films, often they feel sped up or whatever then it was the number. I mean, originally, it used to be slightly different, which is why when you watch old silent films, often they feel sped up

or whatever because it was shot slightly differently. But 24 was based around a song that people would learn, the projectionist, when it was actually crank projection,

so there was a rhythm they could memorize to keep the projection going out with their hands. I mean, it's that arbitrary, right? Right. But it is this weird thing that contributes to the dream state of cinema. Yeah, it's the look that we recognize.

Right. And I understand the immediate revulsion to what Ang Lee's doing here because he's essentially saying, let's remove all the dreamy aspects. Let's make it look like a window. And when he talks about it, that's his whole selling point. Film doesn't look like real life. Wouldn't it be great if it looked like real life? If you could remove the window in a way, right? Like you can just, it just

feels like if you put your hand through the screen, I mean, of course, it's a land of giants because there are close-ups, but apart from that, yes. To which I by and large go, I like the dreaminess of cinema. Yeah. I like the way motion's captured and not to mention, for over a century, people have learned their

crafts in the cinematic arts based around the perception of vision for 24 frames per second. Right. The way that costumes are made, the way that people learn to act, the way that lighting is executed, the way that sets are painted. All these things go out the window. We've gone over this. Billy Lynn just restating a little bit. It's really worth listening to as an episode.

Yes. One of our better ones. We're never going to relive it. Talking about 2019 is going to be a disaster. Well, like, I mean, obviously film is still a thing, but like film to digital, like I feel like there was like I kind of picked up on some of that kind of like noise. Now the key is. This feels like a moment where people are super resistant. Yes.

To the tech. Because the key is that most of the jump from film to digital was also accompanied with, we have figured out how to make video. What's the word I'm looking for? I'm sorry. Replicate the image quality of 24 frames per second. We train video to sort of fake 24 frames per second. It's a thing. People bring up motion smoothing.

Again, this is something JD talks about a little bit, like how this looks like motion smoothing on your TV, quote unquote. But motion smoothing is actually trying to look like this. Motion smoothing is like a computerized sort of cheat to sort of try and mimic the look of a very high frame rate. It's taking every frame and it's just multiplying it four times. And it's like the computer is sort of trying to get you there. Right.

Yeah. The difference is with this it is actually that the camera itself is capturing four times as much visual information. Right. It's not pulling that shit out of Five for 120. Yeah that's so. Five times. Fucking insane. It's wild. Wild

stuff. Now we were outside the theater. I said to you Ben get ready because the moment when it starts you're going to be totally thrown off by how weird it looks. Because we both experienced, and I experienced it with JD, the feeling when Billy Lynn started and everyone in the theater goes, ugh.

Everyone sort of went like, huh? It's the opening shot when he rolls over in bed and grabs his cell phone. Everyone goes like, ugh. And this movie immediately doesn't have that. Even if you don't find it visually appealing, there was a noticeable lack of ugh in the theater,

which I swear was audible at Billy Lynn's meetings. I do not know a person who saw it in high frame rate and didn't experience that. And those are all people who are there because they really want to be there

and they're reacting. Because that movie made a fucking $4. Yeah. You made a bold prediction dollars yeah yeah uh you made a bold prediction before the movie he did that you were not gonna be repeated to me freaked out by high frame rate because you thought it was going to make sense to you that it was going to be how the world feels to you all the time because i'm a person with add and i just sort of felt like i'm

like oh yeah so i'll just focus on everything all at the same time at once yeah i do that constantly anyway right and the idea is that's what's unnatural about high frame rate is it does more on everything all at the same time at once. Yeah. I do that constantly anyway. Right. And the idea is that's what's unnatural about high frame rate is it does more closely replicate the way your eye works. Right. Yeah. But that's not how you're trained to absorb any filmed material. Right. Of any sort.

And animation fakes it and video fakes it. You know, there's a reason why when people criticize Billy Lynn, Gemini Man or The Hobbit and High Frame Rate, they go, oh, it looks like a soap opera. Right. It looks like, you know, it looks like behind-the-scenes footage. It looks like home video because those are rare examples of things that never tried to replicate frame rate. Right. Because even most of classical TV was shot on film. Right.

You know? Yeah. Most of classical TV was shot on film. Right. You know? Yeah. And when you watch like Playhouse 60s and they're shot on video and they're high frame rate, people are weirded out by them. Yeah.

But most classic sitcoms were shot on film. And, you know, soap operas were not. News broadcasts were not. Behind the scenes footage of movies we know where things look more fake were not. Sports were not. And sports have been broadcast in higher frame rates for a while now. And the other big shift is video games often are in higher frame rates now. It's an optional setting. But most people with gaming computers are watching fucking crazy frames.

I was getting some of the shocks in this one. That's the whole thing. Yeah, exactly. You want the continuous action. And I believe that's the argument in Gemini Man. It's like, look, the action is as clean as possible. Right.

Right, you know. But the blurring is a thing we're trained into now. For better or worse, it's a thing we're trained into. And when you remove the blurring, something in your head kind of goes,

that looks cheap. I mean, and they also have the problem that they try to get around but that's unavoidable is that if Stuntman is on screen in high frame rate, it's Stuntman is on screen in high frame rate

it's easier to spot him. Yes. What are you going to do about that? I mean there's nothing you can do about that especially in a movie that's so loaded with stunts.

Here's what this movie does. Yeah. Will Smith plays the two main characters. Yes he does. He is a very good physical actor who much like Tom Cruise

likes to do a lot of stuff. And for most of the sequences in which he is doing something that he could not physically do or safely do, he is doing motion capture for a digital stuntman. Right. So something like the big motorcycle chase in this film, which is the big set piece,

is really Will Smith doing it on a green screen stage with a bunch of trackersers and they're filming his face and placing it onto a digital stunt person that is recorded off of his movement. But, you know, the body shape is a little different. Totally. You can kind of tell. That's all. It's not a huge complaint. I don't really care.

And here's the biggest tell that I noticed in that sequence, which otherwise is pretty compelling and is one of the moments where the movie makes an argument for like, here's something unlike anything you've ever seen in a movie before. Right? Right, right. They make it seem like it's these long, continuous oners running super high speed through the streets of, where are they at that point? Columbia. Yeah. Let me find the exact city. Cartania.

Right, but. Cartagena. It almost feels like the the exact city. Cartania. Right. Cartagena. It almost feels like the motorcycle chase from Tintin. I love the motorcycle chase. Yeah. Right. Where it's like here's this eight-minute, unbroken, limited cuts. 100%.

All about choreography, city streets. But you can kind of start to tell the city streets are CGI and the people on them are CGI and the Will Smiths are CGI double. And here's one of the big reasons for that. Right. and the people on them are CGI, and the Will Smiths are CGI double. And here's one of the big reasons for that. When you get into CGI effects with a high frame rate, you are now having to produce five times as much information in a completely fictional generated model. And a lot of how CG effects have come so far in the last 10 or 15 years is they've created computer programs that can simulate

certain things without them needing to do it frame by frame. Yeah. So, and Pixar uses this and special effects houses use this.

If you have a digital character doing stunts in a movie, you no longer have to animate the ripples of their clothes moving through space frame by frame, which is really fucking labor intensive.

Right, right. It can simulate, oh, if the body's doing this and you put a shirt on them and the shirt is this material that you pre-established, it'll ripple in that-intensive. It can simulate, oh, if the body is doing this, and you put a shirt on them, and the shirt is this material that you pre-established, it will ripple in that kind of way. It's like an algorithm. It's an algorithm.

They build them, and these people trade them, and they use them, and it works for all these sorts of things. But now suddenly that algorithm is being tested to generate five times as many clothing ripples per second. That's like some Doctor Strange shit right there. Right. So the tell where I immediately David's doing the hands.

The tell where I immediately was like, oh, this bicycle sequence is all CGI is the way their jackets are moving look fucking bizarre. It's just weird.

It looks like Doctor Strange's cape or whatever. It just looks super animated. It's a very helpful cape. It's a very helpful cape. Might have helped out in some of these Gemini Man situations. A great movie, friend.

But so shit like that is weird. And the problem is, it's literally a matter of time and money and human resources to be able to animate that much clothing that fast. Fucking impossible. We don't have the manpower. We don't have the computer power. No one has the budget, you know?

Stuff like that gets tripped up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But. Kind of a fun movie. Also have this kind of breathless fucking motorcycle sequence. I agree. Where even if you know it's unreal. I'm kind of into it.

He's showing you something you've never seen in a movie before. Yeah. You know what jumped out for me? What? This movie. 3D. There's that moment with like the water, you know, jumped out for me what this movie 3D there's that the moment with like the water

you know sort of all the wet 3D splashing on the screen really really great yeah I'm trying to think of other it's like real 3D moments

it throws you off though with like the axis kind of when you're cause they're it's like the camera's going into the water and sort of looking up

and down that stuff's great I think water is always great for 3D movies. It's why I wish Kral had been shot in 3D. It's kind of interesting for 120. Like, just looks like you're not used to it looking. Well, there's so much. There's certain environments that really pop in the.

There is so much movement in water where even when it is still. Yeah, right, right, right, right. There is so much movement happening that a camera cannot capture. Right. In the same way, and this is the whole thing with actors with iFrame, where we, I think, agreed most of the performances in Billy Lynn don't come off very well. They just don't know how to

deal with a camera. And Ung Lee, in the Guardian piece, talks about Joe Alwyn being someone who he pulled out of obscurity, who had no screen experience, and he trained him for this format. And that performance works in that movie. And then you watch people. And he says, right,

unfortunately I put all my effort on that. Right. I couldn't work with all the other actors. I couldn't work with all the background people. You see people in the distance and you can tell they're having a fake conversation. Things that we called out in our episode and we took full responsibility for.

No connection there, but I'm just saying he is a man who lives with his mistakes. Right, right. Pretty hard. And people like Vindy Zorgas, movie star, and Steve Martin who have learned tricks. A solid movie star. Yeah.

My second favorite movie star. Sure. Who have learned tricks over decades and how to work with a camera. Suddenly those tricks totally betrayed them. Right. And this is a movie where I feel like he really figured out how to get good performances out of all the actors. There are moments, there are small scenes where I'm like, this person's a little hammy. Yeah.

It's a little, but Will Smith is one of our great close-up actors. He is. That's true. That's true. And that's a big fucking... Nice face.

Even now. Ooh, a beautiful face. I mean, there's a scene in this movie where he brags about how good he looks now. Yeah.

And it's an earned brag. He ain't lying. Yeah, it's not a humble brag. It's a brag. Well, retired now. Yeah. And it's an earned brag. He ain't lying. Yeah. It's not a humble brag. It's a brag. Well, retired bit. Yeah. But he, aside from being a very handsome man and a very compelling man to watch, innately

charismatic performer. Sure. Right? Yeah. He has become so good. I think somewhat to the detriment of his career as he tried to move away from the jokey, wise ass 90s persona that made him America's favorite movie star, of course he decided to move away from that

and has gotten more into playing the sort of haunted, tortured... Yeah, he's done a lot of haunt. He's done a lot of haunt. What else has he done recently apart from Suicide? I Am Legend, Suicide Squad, Collateral Beauty. Well, I Am Legend is a while ago at this point, but yes, Collateral Beauty, sure. But I'm saying I Am Legend is kind of the beginning of the haunt. It is a bit of a haunted

beginning and one of his best performances it's I think maybe the best what's the competent Ali is a great performance yeah very different sort of vibe what

what else would be the competition he is extraordinary obviously one of the most haunted performances of all time right the genie in Aladdin oh well we were haunted by the genie must haunting performances performances of all time. Bright? The Genie in Aladdin.

Well, we were haunted by the Genie. Exactly. Most haunting performances. Yeah, but yeah, Bright I haven't seen. I'm assuming he's a little haunted in that one. Did like an elf, you know, kill his mom or something. Yeah, that's my like that. And Seven Pounds is definitely haunted. Well, he's haunted.

Do not touch the jellyfish. He's haunted because his partner kind of helped him or like he thinks his partner was involved with his shooting that happened to him. And it's like an orc. It's an orc, yeah. Right. It's the first orc cop

and he's his partner and he doesn't love it but he's putting up with it and I've seen this movie. Oh, I'm aware. Oh, I am aware. And I know it not good. Yeah, it not good.

It not good. Sorry. But you own the whole full line of Funko Pops. Because Bright got eight Funko Pops and The Tick got one. Wow. Excuse me. Can I say something quickly about Will Smith? Yeah.

Anyway, the thing I was going to say about Will Smith. Yeah. The thing that makes him such a powerful close-up actor, and I feel like this is a thing he's worked on. It's a thing that McConaughey has also become very strong at. Yeah.

I think it's a thing with guys who are become big movie stars young and can feel sometimes like am I just coasting on charisma? I want to get more meat. Right. Right.

Those two guys know how to just fucking fill up. They have to fill up their face with emotion. Right. And then hold all of it at bay. Because this is a movie where Will Smith is almost always seemingly on the verge of tears. And is always holding them back.

Yeah, yeah. And it is one of the most compelling things to watch an actor do is to see that much emotion behind their eyes and to watch the restraint of them trying to hold back that emotion from ending up on screen right and it's a thing that makes you lean and pay more attention to performance because you're not feeling like oh this person is pulling out all the bells and whistles to get my attention it makes you lean in and go like what are they holding back and why right so i think that's one of the reasons he got so attracted to the haunted thing because it's an interesting experiment. And if you are as skilled, if you have the sort of emotional access

that Will Smith does, and he's able to marry that with his fucking control of the camera and his stillness, which comes in very handy for a high frame rate film. Because to have a long closeup of Will Smith, tears slowly welling in his eyes, but never quite hitting, where he is maintaining a perfect stillness without feeling stagnant, that is the greatest sort of tool Ang Lee could have at his disposal for this film.

And to multiply him— I mean, he's an improvement on Joe Alwyn. No offense to Joe, who's fine in Billy Lynn. I think Joe Alwyn— But that's another movie that's obsessed with its star's face. And I also think it's a movie where he's trying to get that performance out of him.

I know, he's always fucking, him in close up. Right, sort of wobbly eyed. Right, right. Yeah.

But that's Will Smith, he's got like a real five tool player, you know, sort of magician of an actor. To mix metaphors. Okay. So that makes a huge difference.

Yeah. And the whole supporting cast, people like Benedict Wong, we love to see him. Benedict Wong's a guy where even when he goes big, he feels very natural. I only complain about Benedict Wong

in this movie. The second he showed up on screen. Uh-huh. The second. Which is what? Like half an hour? Probably. He's Will's old friend. He shows up on screen. The second. Which is what? Like half an hour? Probably. He's Will's old friend.

He shows up on a fucking biplane? Yeah, that's right. That's right. Which is another classic 90s movie guy thing. This movie was so written in 1995. I believe it was written in 97. The second he showed up, I was like, fuck. This character's written for me to really like him and then he's going to die.

Because it's just like there's no actors in the movie really. The fifth guy is... Small cast. The fifth lead is played by Douglas Hodge, who's like a British Shakespeare actor. And I'm like, if that's the fifth most important guy, I don't think Winstead's dying.

I know Willis is technically playing. I mean, Will is technically playing like a couple characters. One and two on the call. Right, but like, I'm like, you know, Clive Owen, he's the villain, so he's sort of removed from this equation.

Benny ain't gonna make it. Well, he's the color. He's the color. He's the colorful character. And, you know, in your third act, in all these 90s movies, your third act twists when it's gonna get real,

you know, it's time to get serious after sort of towing the line. That's when the funny guy dies. He feels like the type of character that John Gabrus on this show described being his dream role, which is the guy who's kind of gone too deep undercover. Like he's gone too into the island life. The guy where it's like, you know, Dennehy plays him or whatever. And it's like, look, you could just about buy that. This guy at one point was like a crack military operative. Yeah.

Like 20 years where his life was way too intense. Now, like wears Hawaiian shirts and lives in the Cayman Islands and drinks like pina coladas. Everything's a joke to him. Exactly. Right. He's constant party.

He's blue from tailspin. But then they can have that moment. Yes. Where he goes like, and he's friend, Benedict Wong, to be clear, friends with the toucan.

There's multiple toucans. And that's the thing with Benedict Wong. But you can have that moment where he's like, I know. He's a lot of fun. You know, a little bit of gravitas.

He's a lot of personality. Benedict Wong, A, he never feels like he's reaching for a moment. Big Benny. And B, one time blank check attendee. Bong,

bong, bong. Yes. Yeah. One time. That's true. One time blank check attendee. Bong, bong, bong. Yes. Yeah, one-time, that's true. One-time blank check attendee, that's right. But yes, another actor who is naturalistic enough that he fits within this film. There's a scene where Will Smith meets with a Russian operative

who is giving a very broad Yakov Smirnoff-esque performance. Yeah. Who's that guy? That guy is in a lot of stuff. Let me look him up here. His name is Jakob Smirnoff. His name is Ilya Volokh. He stops one step short of literally saying, in my country.

That seems really weird because he's like, hey, Will Smith, you're good. You shoot at the man. His blood goes everywhere. I've watched a recent thing that happened to you. What a country! How do you know that? And he's like, who knows?

And never touched Sean again. Yeah. What's that scene about? He had been in the theater with us watching the first hour of Gemini Man. And he's like, it's time for me to go in screen now. Right.

And we were like, this guy is not real. It's like when the Electric Mayhem reads the script for the Muppet movie and he's like pretty great ending but do you know what that is

is it's like 120 frames per second like 24 frames per second that would be a subtle and nuanced piece of Russian acting but with 120 he's like

ah yes and he's like doing a Russian dance and he has a big furry hat on I'm saying it increases the Russian-ness I spent the day

shooting before immediately wrapping and coming to the screening of Gemini Man. Retired bit. And I the entire time kept on thinking, oh, wow, I would be so terrible in this format. Like I would have no idea how to act in this format. And I try to be pretty subdued. But I was like watching it even before this guy came on screen and then he came on screen and I was like, the best I could possibly

achieve is this guy, who I'm sure in any other format looks like a totally fun performance and in this you're like you fucking phony piece of shit. Which is the Billy Lynn problem, where you're like I can see the lines you have memorized I can read your brain you know? And this movie

I think he just held him down and he focused on it and he trained his actors properly and he cast well and all of that sort of works now the weird thing is this is all in service of this movie that is like this unmade screenplay from nearly 30 years ago

right yes 20 years ago now 20 plus I believe the initial concept was 97 tony scott who's a classic um brockheimer collaborator right um and i don't mean to say that word in a loaded way no but when you say brockheimer collaborator uh no uh tony scott it's a brockheimer sympathizer um with Harrison Ford, I believe, was the initial pitch for this movie. That was their idea.

And it was like, what if you had the president from Air Force One in an action sequence with Indiana Jones? They were like, what if you got a guy who's been a star for 30 decades and you have him fighting the early stage of his career? Han Solo or whatever. Exactly. People loved it. Exactly right. Millions of dollars were handed out immediately. The script was bought.

It was developed. Touchstone goes to work trying to figure it out on a technological level, and they go, this is fucking impossible. It looks goofy as shit. Yes, they could never get it right. Curtis Hanson was attached at one point.

Joe Carnahan was attached at one point. Joe and Carnahan. Some of the actors they mentioned. It's all actors, like Will Smith, that have had definitive arcs to their careers, where there was a younger version of them that we'd all remember. Mel Gibson, Clint Eastwood, Arnie, Sly Stallone, Sean Connery, right? Like, all of these are just, like, so obvious. As Ang Lee put it, he said,

it needs to be someone who we have watched grow up and have witnessed as a star in three different decades. But the thing that they did with Will Smith that is not true of any of these guys is they picked a guy who looked younger when he was younger. But it's not that big of a thing. Because Will Smith has aged magically. Like imagine Sean Connery, just not even now, but like untouchables. Fighting James Bond. Fighting James Bond. It's not.

No. No. It's at least a very different movie. Yeah. And even, I mean, Clint and Harrison Ford both got weathered. They're men who took their age and grew into sort of seniority. Clint and Harrison Ford aren't like, you know, running on a cyber treadmill in zero gravity and eating ostrich eggs or whatever it is Will Smith does, right? He probably like sleeps in a cryogenic chamber.

So Ang Lee posts Billy Lynn sort of back, you know, on his heels. Sure. Is looking for something to make. The landscape has changed. No one's going to necessarily give him a giant budget to do whatever he wants in the same way. Sure. Because people only want to make retired

bit movies. It's one weekend and I love it. Good. And Bruckheimer, who has lost his Disney deal, after that being his home for decades and decades, is trying to find his new place, has carried that script with him, makes the big swing. Ang Lee, do you want to do this and he immediately recognizes the sort of

philosophical implications of the premise and a man facing his own past facing his own past like you know reckoning with his own growth of a conscience over you know the years of his life and what he said also is that he loves wondering about his own obsolescence. Right. You know and like Ang Lee is this director who is wondering about that himself but is also making movies that are very futuristic.

You know use all this fancy technology. He said he also loved the meta element of any movie star is always in competition with their history. Right.

Right. Right. Which is a fun element. If you get to legend status you're not fighting with your contemporaries you're fighting with your with their history. Right, right, right. Which is a fun element. If you get to legend status, you're not fighting with your contemporaries. You're fighting with your legacy and trying to maintain it or grow up on it.

It's like, what are the four movies that are going to be at the top of your IMDb page or remembered for? And you hope that they weren't all in your past, that you might still have one. Right, right. That it's not all from like 95 to 98 or whatever. Right.

But it's too bad that James Avery, the dad from Fresh Prince, is dead. Because I believe he died a few years ago. Uncle Phil and Shredder. Yes. Because what if he was like the,

you know, the boss in this? The Clive Owen part. Yeah. Right? Like literally you had the Fresh Prince guy. And he had such gravitas too.

Yeah. Clive Owen is kind of a weird choice. We'll get to that in a second. He is a weird choice. Why is he in this? Because I want to do five minutes on Clive Owen is kind of a weird choice at this point, but we'll get to that in a second. He is a weird choice. Why is he? We'll get to it. I want to do five minutes on Clive Owen's weirdness in this. Yeah. But can I make this point first?

Ungley said, that thing really struck me. I want to work with a big movie star. I like the idea of a movie star giving a performance because he loves fucking with people, right? This Ungley thing where he's like so direct and cutting with actors and he's like, you're bad at this. I want to get this out of you, right?

That he liked the idea of the experiment of working with an actor. He's so into building up a sense memory, pulling on elements from people's actual past, the way he worked with the kid from Life of Pi to get the different stages and the different ages and all that sort of stuff, right? That he wanted to work with someone like that and he said, there are only two people this movie could possibly work with. And it was Will Smith

and Tom Cruise. And Tom Cruise is the other one. I, I look, I quite enjoyed Gemini Man. It has its faults.

I think Will Smith's pretty good in it. I think he's excellent. The idea of it with Tom Cruise is just sort of like dynamite. Kind of next level. Yes.

Because he also has remained boyish enough where although time has taken its toll and you can tell he's a distinctly different age if this movie was

Tom Cruise in fallout mode and the mask comes off and it's fucking top ground all the right moves Tom Cruise I would have given it a standing ovation

I mean if they could pull that off and again who knows what Ang Lee said in his characteristic honesty was there were only two people who could pull it off Tom Cruise and Will what only said in his characteristic honesty was there were only two people who could pull it off tom cruise and will smith and tom cruise was unavailable so i

asked will smith i love most directors usually be like so i went to will yeah and uh and i thought will was better for it and angley is like yeah tom wasn't uh down so uh how about will i told will he would be adequate well didn't we didn't with Will Smith and watch Old Fresh Princes and be like, you have to be bad like in this. Right. He was like, a bad performance. When you were young,

you were not good at acting. Watch this. You are displaying too much emotion. And there is something kind of striking to the fact that I just love that idea. The performance of Junior is a little more wooden. Yes. Which also reads as uncertain. The performance of Junior is kind of

incredible. Is that crazy to say? No, it largely works. I would say it sort of works. I mean, look, the entire final scene is a wash. Sure. And there are moments Don't know what's up with that final scene.

We'll talk about it. We'll give that another sidebar along with Clive-O. There are moments where something weird's going on. But by and large, it works as a performance, and it works as a piece of technology. I think in like the pivotal scenes, of which there are only a couple.

And you missed one of the big ones. You went to the bathroom during one of the big ones. I won't say which one. You're going to body slam me for this. I'm going to body slam you. He's, he's, I, I believe that this is a person which is a tough sell yeah it's a real tough sell yeah yeah and and once again i know he's i mean i believe that he's sort of he's kind

of a half person because he's been so stunted in his growth but yeah but the thing that belies his artificiality more often is the clothing than it is his skin. Yeah. Than it is his face. There are moments where the human face is so fucking complicated in terms of the muscles, the amount,

and the amount that any movement of your mouth affects your entire face. Right. And Will Smith is strong enough and comfortable and confident enough as an actor on screen that he is able to sit in that sort of stillness and in high frame rate allowing Lee to capture all of his micro expressions. Right.

It's much more difficult to animate that level of micro expression. Right. And it's much more difficult to in unforgiving high frame rate properly apply every single muscle that is affected by a quiver of your lip. Because it also changes the way your eye is positioned and the tension around your jaw and all that sort of shit. There are moments like that where I just went, something's like 2% off

and I can't tell what it is. There are moments where it is 100% credible. I will say light, definitely. Darkness, it helps. Most of the film is bathed in darkness. This film does not have a lot of, it seems to live off of natural lighting. A lot of it is natural lighting exteriors or night scenes where because of the high frame rate,

they're able to get away with lower lighting and you're able to see a lot in the dark. Unlike Maleficent 2, Mistress of Evil, a film I just saw. Would you, let me just say, off mic predicting is the best picture winner. Yeah, of course. Best picture this year is being judged by to what extent

a mistress of evil is present. How many mistresses that could be qualified as evil are in one film? That film has a lot, a lot of action in the dark that is literally impossible to see. And, of course, I'm sure it was just, you know, cost-saving.

Yeah. Right? You know, like, that's all that was. And you can't see it, and it sucks. The dark scenes in this, partly because of the frame rate, you can see them pretty great. There is a scene where they are escaping at dawn, the very beginning of dawn. And a little bit of light's coming in, but it's largely still night, and they're escaping on a pier trying to get to a boat. Right.

And I thought, wow, I have never seen this time of day captured accurately on camera because it has literally been impossible to do up until this point. That's the worst time. Right, right. Yeah. And, and when you are around that time, it's a weird time when people are not usually awake. There is a weird magical feeling. There is.

I'm up this late or I've woken up this early. When you like wake up at four 30 in the morning to get a cab for the airport or something like that. And you're outside and you're like, Oh, you know, this is, what is this? The thing where Bigley describes as they haven't finished writing the matrix yet. Right, exactly. Right, right. And I was like, oh, what is this? The thing Birbiglia describes as they haven't finished writing The Matrix yet.

Yeah, right. Exactly. Right, right. And I was like, wow, this is the only time a movie has been able to capture this quality of light. Right. And it's because of this technology. In the same way that you're watching things like Glass have a quality on screen that they never have had before. Yeah.

Where it doesn't just look like this is a reflection. You can see the actual. Is this at all interesting in 24? I don't know in 24 I feel like it's just a regular ass I guess we're going to have to see it two more times one time one we already saw it in 120

one time three screens Jesus Christ it's too bad it's not going to be on DVD right away it might as well be because it's not going to be a hit probably not he said the big thing he wanted to do was Billy Lynn Too bad it's not going to be on DVD right away. It might as well be. Because, like, it's not going to be a hit. No, unfortunately not. Probably not. No.

Now, he said the big thing he wanted to do was Billy Lynn. He had his whole sort of thematic reasoning for why it was this high frame rate. Yeah. It's PTSD. It's putting you in the state of someone who's having an extended panic attack, right? Yeah. And this movie doesn't have that same sort of thematic connection between the material and the media. Yeah.

For him, it was the experiment of what does action look like? Is action better suited for this form? Action has always been more like dance in film. Right, right. Because you're faking motions in a way that will be captured on screen in a way that looks like fighting but is not. And it's very specific, very choreographed. It's a reason why...

Someone was saying, Chris Evans has an extensive dance background. It's one of the reasons he's so good at Captain America. Because he can learn the moves. Because he thinks about it like dance. Same with Channing Tatum. You know? Yeah, I knew that about Channing.

Yeah. There are a lot of guys like that who have become action stars, where it's specifically... Because it's not that they're good at fighting. It's that they understand the stunt guy can come in and go,

it's this step, this step, heel turn, heel turn, catch, drop, throw, whatever.

Right. Fights aren't real? We're going to have to talk about this later. Okay. But that was the thing he said he wanted to try to solve.

Okay. I think when they're in hand-to-hand combat, it looks really fake in this movie. They have sort of some cheats, I feel like, to try and get around it, right? Yes. I think there are other examples of action that look good.

I think when people are fighting fist-to-fist, it looks fake. They usually do it in darkness. Yeah. But you can kind of tell that the hits aren't connecting. And you can kind of see the choreography and the moves and people anticipating and all that sort of stuff. Right. I think things like the vehicle shit works well. Yes.

Vehicle shit's pretty great. Stuff that's really striking is like the explosions and gunfire. Yeah. Yeah. And fire itself. When things are on fire and they're burning and you're seeing the speed of fire.

Yeah. Which fire always looks crazy slowed down on film. But yeah, the gunfire is very visceral in this movie. And that's one of the best sort of tech reel showcase moments is when they're hiding out in that abandoned store and the barrage of bullets come through and all the bottles explode

and it goes into slow motion. And it's like the sprinkles of the glass in 3D and slow motion reaching out to you. It going into slow motion in general was just sort of like,'m like right there are higher levels of detail available to us in this utter like detail but there are things where like juniors like doing parkour and like doing like back flips climbing up a building and that shit looks great yeah anytime they're in a vehicle it looks fucking crazy you know there's a part where a plane flies by the lens and you and I just both laugh.

That was nuts. Like giddy enjoyment. Well, I'll say this. And they pull that trick like three times because they know how fucking wild it is. They do it with the train too.

The opening is him trying to pull off an assassination on a train. The parkour comment made me think, normally when I watch parkour movies, I'm like,

I could do that. But this is like, this is very much like, what? How can anyone do this? Yeah. Yeah, that's true.

That's true. Cause usually when you're watching a movie, you're like, yeah, well it's a stunt. Right. And this, you're like,

I know this is a stunt, but how? That was fast. He jumped up over that wall. That crazy jump that, you know, parkour people do where it's like a, sort of like a 270 degree jump.

Sure. It's crazy. Back to Gemini Man. Okay. So we're not going to talk about the pod gemini man because it's irrelevant let's talk about a little i want to speed around it like i'm gonna do it right now cool he's an old assassin he's 51 first 30 minutes are just old assassin assassin trying to get out of the game he works for the government he's the best there ever was he's will smith he's haunted he does a job that he successfully executes a guy but on a very fast moving train that you see with no motion blur which is crazy and uh you know it's kind of it's a little too close for comfort close comfort so he decides to retire he's checking in with some of his old friends who got out of the game we're

living it up on yachts smoking cigars ben and kwang on a biplane. Right, all that. Then he learns that the guy he shot maybe wasn't a bad guy at all. Maybe he was a patsy. Will's essentially been sort of like taunted into this or whatever, tricked into doing this. There's some great lingo too of like sort of spy.

Oh, AMF? Yeah. AMF, remember that? What's that? Adios, motherfucker. What they call killing someone. I still like the name of where they go. I'm going to burn, yeah. Yeah, yeah. You're burned. I love all the lingo and they sort of even maybe get into the tech a little bit with

the private company, but I just wanted to point that out. And they're DIA? Is that the organization? DIA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Defense Intelligence Agency, right? Isn't that it? Anyway.

So as he learns that, uh-oh. They keep talking about this Gemini. There's this Project Gemini, and it's run by Clive Owen. He's telling the DIA people, like, I'm going to handle this. I'm sending in Gemini, like, whatever, right? And Will Smith's friends start dying. His buddy, some spotter, dead. Right.

His guy, some guy on a boat, dead. Right. Benedict Wong alive for a while. Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who's been sort of monitoring him. As a mom. Yes. He burns her.

He does burn her. Toast. She's toast. She's toast. She doesn't give her a notice. She gets sucked up into it. But essentially, because Will Smith knows too too much he is chased by a younger version of himself who is cloned and grown by clive owen but probably doesn't enter until minute 40

like this sort of enters it like kind of the second big set piece but yeah end of act one yeah and um and now he has to do battle with him and that's the plot of the movie yes there's no deeper conspiracy no this conspiracy is very shallow. This is not like some Jack Ryan movie where it all turns out it leads to the secretary of defense. And there's like 14 boardrooms. It's very simple. Clive Owen did the bad thing. He tried to cover it up.

He built this death squad kind of off books. There was a classic Ang Lee kind of economy to it. Where it feels like what he doesn't want is the standard rote version of this movie that is filled with quippy one-liners and is also filled with boring expository talk. Yeah, right, right, right. So the movie just kind of gets from place to place. It's not a short movie. It's two hours even basically, but it's pretty repudo. There is a weird amount of sort of silence and stillness for a movie of this ilk that is not weird for a film within the Ang Lee

oeuvre, even if otherwise this movie is not totally of a piece with his other films. But it feels like he just sort of, much like the way Seamus talked about the Hulk script, that he just sort of chop, chop, chop all the stuff that feels kind of boilerplate blockbuster-y out of it.

Right, right. Because it is a feels kind of boilerplate blockbuster-y out of it. Right, right. Because it is a weirdly kind of dour movie. Yeah. It's not self-serious, but it's pretty dry. It's dry and like it has these scenes like the sort of early Will Smith flirting with Mary Elizabeth Winstead scenes where it feels like one, Will Smith is being restrained, right? He's not being allowed to sort of slip into full kind of like

the guy we know and they're not doing full meet cute rat-a-tat screen writing right right right and it's like he's kind of flirty but they don't want to get into yeah genuine sexy right and they don't want their relationship to really be too

romantic at all pretty asexual film it's and a pretty a romantic kind of about a vol cell like kind of yeah does he have sex ever there's a whole thing where he's like you're definitely a virgin to the younger will smith and he also makes it clear he's never had a long-term girlfriend when mary elizabeth wins to ask him if he's ever had a long-term relationship, he says, do you count? And he has known her for two days. Right. And they have been on the run from assassins not having sex. Is the, you know, eventual implication supposed to be like maybe he just never had any sex?

I think he has probably had sex a couple of times. That is my guess. I think we should interview Ang Lee and Will Smith together and ask them these questions. How many times? How long are we talking? Between times? Do you know I truly had a,

it was either I could go to the screen tomorrow night or do a phone interview with Ang Lee. Wait, really? You didn't say that. Yeah. Okay. But I was like, I want to see the movie and maybe if I go see the movie,

I can find another time. Yeah, right. No point talking. Okay. But I was like, I want to see the movie, and maybe if I go see the movie, I can find another time. Yeah, right. No point talking to him. But I had sort of gotten an offer to maybe interview him, which I thought we could parlay into Talking the Walk 2019, which, of course, is now going to be the biggest disaster of the year in podcasting. But yes, I wish I could have asked him, has Will Smith's character ever gotten strange? And I would have worded it that way. Correct. That's an appropriate way. Has he ever dipped his wick? has Will Smith's character ever gotten strange? And I would have worded it that way. Correct. That's an appropriate way.

Has he ever dipped his wig? Yeah, that's not so good. You don't think I would... I mean, look, he's made some very sexy movies. The Ice Storm. Hulk. Like, even Ang Lee movies that are sexy, like, let's caution. It's like, oh god caution it's like oh god

it's so fucking weighty yeah that's the weird thing with this movie is you feel like he took a script that was pretty conventional and aside from

an interesting premise it's pretty perfunctory in how the story actually plays out sure and paired it down and down and down

and down to the simplest elements so he could use as a vehicle for the things he wanted to experiment with technologically. It is certainly not as a piece of work on the page at the level of his best films. No. I would put this at the lower end of his films. Totally. Mostly because he's made a lot of good films.

He's made a lot of good films. But I just don't think it's bad. I don't either. I think it's kind of a Gentleman's Six. I think it's kind of inching to a Gentleman's Seven. I think it's in that zone. I think it might be a Seven. I think as a movie itself, it's a Gentleman's Six.

Sure. And I think with the added boon of the moments where the technology really sings, it hits Sevens. Yeah. You know? Most people are saying it's a 2. And some people are walking out after the first 30 minutes despite being critics who are paid to sit and watch the movie. Oh, whatever. I mean, they

if he's, I don't know. I can't speak to whether the person who walked out I know that was reviewing it. Sure, that's fair. I don't know. But, uh, what was I going to say? Uh, Gemini Man. Gemini Man. A lot of Gemini Man. A lot of Gemini. Gemini program.

Clive Owen has cloned Will Smith to say, and I like that this is not overwrought, but the implication that Will Smith had sort of a hard-ass military father. There's just, I think, just the one flashback, basically. Which is also one of, visually, the most impressive moments of the film. Very interesting moment, visually. Where he's underwater, having been attacked. And then, right, you cut to this weird dream.

No, no, it's all just a dream. He's not underwater when this is happening. But the light starts going blue, red, blue, red. And he transforms to the younger version of himself. And his father reaches out from above the water. And then it turns out, like, that's his alarm flashing. Right, but yeah, it's cool. the younger version of himself and his father reaches out for above the water. And then it turns out like that's his alarm flashing. Right. Right.

But yeah, it's cool. It's cool. It's also a moment where you go like the thing that I still think sort of bumps the most with high frame rate is editing. Yeah. There's something about the clarity of the image where every time it cuts, it feels like, whoa,

why did the image out of my window just change? And so the movie works best when it is in sustained oners, when it uses camera moves above cuts, or if it's working close-ups, if it's holding on those close-ups for a long time. Sometimes

the camera moves are so noticeable, though. There's this one where he's in profile and the camera moves around look at his face and i don't know you just right you just really feel the movement yeah totally it's so weird it's so weird it's so weird the thing but that's why i'm like you could do this with a concert film you know i look i you could pick material that's more stage bound i mean they're especially a movie like this what you wanted to see this so badly in regular? Yeah.

Like, let him take his swings. Yeah. I don't know. Let this be like a fucking interesting, like, experiment in cinematic history. Right. And maybe it pays out in dividends for someone else 10 years down the line, or maybe James Cameron makes it work, or whatever. You know? If he does...

Look, he's not an old man, but he's an older man. If he does this for like the rest of his life and kind of gets like sucked up in it. Like, you know, I could see where it could be eventually become a bit of a distraction. Right. And look,

he keeps kind of sort of trying to solve this problem. I hope he doesn't because his last two films have had the two weakest screenplays of his entire career. And it feels like it is because he is prioritizing the other stuff. A little bit. A little bit of a bummer. Yeah. I think Billy Lynn is oftentimes an aggressively bad screenplay. I think it's a bad screenplay.

I think this one just veers kind of bland. Yeah, exactly. Right. Now, Clive Owen is weird in this movie because it's this thing. He's a weird actor. He's a very weird actor. The thing about Clive Owen, because people pegged him as the James Bond that never was. And so then his rep became just like, well, you know, he's a cool British guy.

And maybe because he didn't get James Bond, he'll end up having a weirder, more varied career as a leading man. Right. And in fact, he's ended up being one of those guys who is like box office poison as a lead. And he has started some great films and he started some terrible films, but all of them bomb. Yeah. What's his highest grossing film? As a lead, probably King Arthur by default, but it lost the entire like earnings of a nation. You know?

And like Children of Men did 30, which was a big, big failure. Good movie though. A perfect film. I don't know. I think it's a perfect film. I know a lot of people agree with you. I think it's a perfect film. Could you call,

no, you couldn't call Sin City a lead, even though he's one of like three leads. Yeah, I'd say he's a lead of a third of that movie and that's the closest and that's kind of the only one that connects.

The only film you can really call him the lead of that third of that movie and that's the closest and that's kind of the only one that connects. The only film you can really call him the lead of that was a genuine big hit is Inside Man and he's the second lead to Denzel. Right? I mean he's certainly above the title, big character there's no question. Yeah. But not really the lead. He's the second

lead to Denzel and Jodie is promoted above him. Here are some of his flops. Duplicity, good movie. Derailed, bad movie. Children of Men, good movie. Closer, I think a terrible movie but people like it. Oscar nomination though. The International, I've never seen. Some people speak up for that one. Last Sidney Pollack?

No, that's your thinking of the interpreter. Oh, that's the Tom Twyker movie, right? The one with the Guggenheim, the Gug chase. I always get that confused with the interpreter. Yeah, no, I know. Which is right. Okay. What else have we got here? Right, that's him and Naomi Watts.

We've got like, yeah. What's it called? Shoot Em Up? Shoot Em Up. Beyond Borders. Yeah. We're getting into the real, you know, less than $1 million gross. What's the final profit?

Not the final profit. Final gross on King Arthur. 51. Wow? 51. Wow. 51. But 203 worldwide. I think they escaped with their hides on that one. I think that movie...

It cost $100. I think it cost more than $100. Yeah. But even though... Whatever. Like, it's not... Not a hit. The story I remember hearing about that movie is there was one wall of one set that cost

a million dollars in the castle. I remember it being such a cruddy looking movie. Yeah, it's a really boring looking film. Yeah. Anyway, what was I going to say? But he's in that zone that I feel like you and I tend to love. When a guy

who was supposed to be a star, was supposed to be the lead, has sort of failed by conventional standards and gets to move into character roles. And very often, sometimes, they find a second life and find a greater comfort suddenly playing the heavy, or the mentor, or the color, or whatever.

And this is sort of the second time he's doing it after Valerian. Valerian, he's very similar to this. He is kind of an obvious villain. The company man. Yeah. He telegraphs as the bad guy from the beginning.

Don't you fucking. But he's not a physical threat. Here's the thing about Clive Owen. Yeah. As we sort of, you know, unfortunately point out that he's had a lot of flops. Yeah. He also made the Nick. And he's not.

It's not like he's not even the best thing about the Nick, but he's good. Yeah. And the Nick rules. Yeah. And that thing aired for two seasons. It's really interesting piece of art that has been a little bit forgotten, but I feel like has its fans.

I don't know. Chief among them, James Newman and Antonio Dauphin. My mother and brother. I think it's their favorite TV show of all time. It's a great show. So it's not like he's completely

blown it, but he has made a lot of bad movies. It's a weird career and you kind of would love to see him kill it in a role like this. You would love to see Clive Owen show up as the villain and be like, this is where he fits into the studio landscape sort of have

more of in this have more of like the closer energy yeah that weird bristling aggressive energy he has in that movie right like and in this he's a I don't know he's kind of jerk yeah well this is a bad guy look this guy's no good I know

he used a person but I like a person I like bad guys sometimes this guy's just a jerk yeah this guy's just like listen I know. He used a person to make a person. I like bad guys sometimes. This guy's just a jerk. Yeah, this guy's just like, listen, we'll have to fucking do it because, you know, we had to have the army of no parents or whatever. This is one of the worst justifications for a bad guy. Jesus. This performance just kind of doesn't register aside from one nice moment at the end. But I think he's kind of stuck between two takes on the character one of them is

the idea is that he is raised junior as his son yeah this isn't just an experiment right he's got his maybe army of clones junior is a little more like uh boba fett to jango fett like the special clone you're adopted i'm your father left off at the doorstep i've raised you they have photos of the two of them fishing together. They would spend every birthday together. This is really his dad. Right. And there's a version of this movie where the performance is, here's a really fucked up guy, but you forefront the dad.

This guy actually loves his son. This is Pinocchio and he's, yeah. Justifying this morally fucked up thing he did. And you play the warmth of that and it creates an interesting contrast. Or the other version is you do the weird bristly energy. Yes. Right. And you go total like what the fuck is up with this guy?

Why does he make me so uncomfortable? And instead he kind of plays it like the new CEO who's in charge of Coca-Cola this week. Yeah, right. It's just nothing. Yeah. It's just nothing. He's got one great moment at the end when it's sort of the two Will Smiths facing off with him. Yeah, that scene is just kind of interesting.

And he tries to transition between the two being an asshole to old Will Smith and being mentory to his son. And there's one where he just doesn't pause between the two sentences. Oh, you're right. It's fine. And you're like, that could have been the whole performance maybe i kind of chuckled at that yeah when and we're i'm gonna reveal there's a third clone i kind of i had at one point i'm like i hope he cloned himself and okay i thought it was gonna be the biggest reveal in the movie is that there's this super villain he looks like night monkey yeah he's like a dude in all black jumpsuit with a full mask

and doing crazy backflips and and he's unmasked and it turns out yes it's another will smith right and it's an even like less with will smith with no morals or feelings he's like season four feel pain right exactly um the season where will went to the dark side. Exactly. Which, fine. I'm sorry. That's the whole Clive Owen thing is, what if we could take someone with all of your skills and attributes and remove all of the pain? Yeah. Your father, the darkness. And no parents to worry about their sons and daughters going off to war. He has this whole argument of like—

But also, you had a drone. Essentially, he's making drones. You had a shitty dad. And part of Clive Owen's argument is, I've been a great father to this boy. I've raised him well. That's what he tries to argue. Yes. I gave him a better life than you had.

Right. So that's all fine. Uh-huh. But I really wanted, as you said, I thought it might be a young Clive Owen. That's what I thought. Which would be kind of spooky and weird. Yeah. I really wanted it to be a young Benedict Wong.

Was denied. Well, you want as much Wong as you can get. Damn. That would have it to be a young Benedict Wong was denied. Well, you want as much Wong as you can get. Damn, that would have been good too, David. But, you know, there's I mean, look, let me just say it.

Two Wongs would make a right. Young Pope. Young Wong. He just took your joke threw it out the window and it caught on fire with his joke. Let me say this. Imagine if HBO was like,

we're proud to announce our sequel to The Young Pope. The Young Wong. It's The Young Wong. We got Benedict Wong with $200 million worth of de-aging technology. He looks like he looked in sunshine. And you're like, okay. It wasn't. Okay.

Absolutely not. Oh, boy. There not. Oh, boy. There's something creepy, though. And what I thought going in was that this movie was going to be, the young Will Smith was just going to be a killing machine and you'd have to stop him. Sociopath. So the thing that really took me by surprise in this movie,

apart from the fact that it looks bananas. Most of the movie is him reaching out to this kid trying to make a connection. Obviously, you have that initial moment, kind like in Looper or a lot of these movies where he sees him and he can't pull the trigger, right? He's so designed, but he sees this boy who looks like him, can't pull the trigger. Fine. But then instead of then getting over it and having to fight this evil kid, he just reaches out to him as a human, bridges a massive divide.

The movie becomes Will Smith, older Will Smith, trying to build bridges to reach the kid emotionally because he understands how wounded and scared he is. And he understands, like, what killing will do to a man, you know, as it's done to him over all the years. What's that thing he says at the end

with Clive Owen? I mean, he doesn't say, you don't want those nightmares. You don't want that haunting. You don't want those ghosts. That's what he says. Young Will Smith is about to shoot Clive Owen in the face out of retaliation.

Yeah. And he says, don't do this. Trust me. You're going to lose a part of yourself. You can't get back. You don't want those ghosts. And then he shoots Clive Owen himself.

Right. And that's the point, which is, I'm not saying this guy should stay alive. I'm just saying, you don't want to be the guy who pulled the trigger on your own father. I understand how these things reverberate.

Yes. Yeah. And that's where the Ang Lee stuff comes in. Now, when you reveal that there's a third Will Smith, it does make me kind of miss the potential of a finale in which they are fighting against an army of Will Smiths. That's the other thing. It's like, once I the other thing is like, once I got past the, like,

is this going to be young? Cause there's this wild set piece where you see like a fake military operation that where these training, the Gemini soldiers. So, right. I mean, you could have been there setting up an army of Will Smiths.

But then also, then, then you've just made attack of the clones. Cause then you could just have a scene where Will Smith visits the fucking Camino people. And they're like, and here are the baby Will Smiths eating their breakfast. And here is teenage Will Smith. You know, like, right? Here's another thing you could do.

Fucking burly brawl. So you're just saying, like, take every sort of big attempted action movie made to sort of clear this like impossible gap. I think you make that the final big set piece of the movie is like when they're like the tank and here's a gunner and he's wearing a mask. Who is this? You have a whole squad of people around him. Right. And after the first guy is unmasked, then everyone else unmasked.

And it's like, here's 50 Will Smiths. What? It's copy pasted. You've done all the work. You built the thing. But then you need to like nuke them or something. Like, I mean, how do you stop an army of Will Smiths? Here's what I want.

You get a bunch of bees. I want. I forgot about the bees. I want. Oh, yeah. A big plot point in the movie is they know they're the same person because they're both allergic to bees. Because they're not just. Look, this is a stupid 90s action movie. I't care about it it's fine yeah but i feel like if you

are deathly allergic to bees you don't get to work for like no black ops it's just kryptonite yeah you can't have that easy a kryptonite the world is full of bees kryptonite that exists in the air at all times um what else we have to say about gemini Man anything? I mean so we talked to Clive on well the final scene oh boy so this movie I like the action sequences I really love Mary Elizabeth Winstead

as a screen presence in general and we're always rooting for her and doesn't have a ton to do in this movie but she's a solid kind of reliable player. And it is one of those things where if someone gives a successful performance and high frame rate,

it kind of shows you how... It can be done. ...grounded and honest their acting is. Good call. You know what I'm saying? I do. Because the phoniness rises right up to the top. Right.

And she's someone who has played big and has played small and played in multiple genres. Right. You know, but she's got the real fucking goods right uh yeah she's great uh doesn't have a ton to do very solid in this film right nice that she is not sexualized agree i mean there's the one scene where she has to undress the strip search scene sure um but i feel like they play that salacious. No, they

don't play it salaciously and also and also that's just like a fun set set piece. Sure. Where when the junior is doing that she's like, okay, you know, like she's acting like she's being put upon and then later, of course, turns out he was totally right to try and find

a bug on her. It was in her tooth. Cool spy move by her. Yeah. That was fun. I like that. That's my favorite part. That whole catacombs fight. Yeah.

Where they're all kind of doing spy tricks to each other. The grenade, the trip wire, the thing in the water, right? All that. Yeah. Well, and there's also that great payoff where like Will Smith is like, you don't get it. You're me. They cloned you. Your whole life is a lie.

Why else do you think they sent me? They sent you to kill me. And Junior's like, because I'm the best. And Will Smith's holding a gun to his head and he says, clearly not. Clearly you are not the best. Which is just such a successful... It's a good Will Smith line. Will Smith line. Yes. But here's a key distinction.

This movie is not using de-aging. De-aging technology as we know it is photographing the actor on camera. Yeah. Taking the footage and digitally augmenting it. You know, it's like doing Photoshop. Well, what are they doing here? Okay. You know, it's like doing Photoshop.

Well, what are they doing here? What they are doing is they built a completely realistic looking digital 20-year-old Will Smith that is being puppeteered in the same way that Andy Serkis puppeteers Smeagol. Okay. And there is a big difference because one is Will Smith on set. Sure. With shoe polish in his hair. Yeah, with the dots on his face and all that. Right. It's what Sam Jackson did.

It's what all the Marvel movies do. It's what the Irishmen do. And then someone goes in and digitally erases the wrinkles and tightens up. Right. And that's sometimes why it looks a little wonky because you're like, oh, their posture is still this. Yeah, it's still the person at that age. This is like Planet of the Apes or Lord of the Rings or any of those things where they're just building essentially a digital character and having it puppeteered by someone's motion capture acting. Right. And it is very successful by and large.

It's especially successful because you know what Will Smith looked like at that age. Sure. And the performance comes across. Right. There are moments where it bumps like at that age. Sure. And the performance comes across. Right. There are moments where it bumps, like we talked about. I wonder if some of those are smoothed over in lower frame rate,

or if it works better in high frame rate. I don't know. We'll talk about it in Talkin' the Walk 2020. Okay. But. But there's this final scene. That is. After all the action is settled.

Uh-huh. And this scene is a calamity. It's the last scene of the movie. It's a 15-car pilot. So it's especially calamitous. Yes. If this scene was somewhere else in the movie, it would be bad. Yeah. As the last scene of the movie is a 15 car calamitous yes if this scene was somewhere else in the movie it would be bad yeah as the last scene of the movie it's kind of inexplicable i leaned over to you and said did they shoot this two weeks ago because it feels like a desperate last second like swing to try to put a super happy ending on the movie and also

the technology looks super unfinished it's's also just bizarre. Yes. Because it's like, it's bizarre. He suddenly looks like a render from. He doesn't look good. Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. You have this scene where the guy's like, you know, the, the, the, the handlers like, I'm sorry that all happened. I looked into it and there's no more clones.

Will Smith's like, sounds good. I'll see you later. Like, which is, you're just like, what? Like, I mean, people were killed, Benedict Wong,

he got blown up. It's already a kind of tone deaf scene, but it takes place in a bar, and you're like, okay, whatever, let him leave the bar. Right,

right, right. And then we cut to a university campus. Right. Where they have been earlier in the film. Okay. Mary Elizabeth Wynne says, taking them there to do a DNA test to prove

that in fact, because she believed oh, maybe he had a son that he didn't know about. And this is where she makes a startling discovery. He's not like you, he is you. And so we cut forward six months later or so and Junior is now enrolled at this

university. Yeah, like Gemini University. And they're just like sitting on the lawn, making small talk, and Junior comes strolling onto the quad, basked in sunlight, carrying books, big man on campus, making jokes,

and everything about it is fucking weird. It's so weird. He looks terrible. Yes. It is completely unconvincing. The dialogue is wooden as fuck. It's very much like, like Mary Elizabeth Winstead is like,

you should do the humanities. And Will Smith's like, no, no, you should do engineering or whatever. It becomes like father knows best. Yeah, it's so weird. And it's not just that it is weird that the film has a happy ending because there are happy endings in this film

that could have been somewhat sold. It's that the ending has everyone suddenly acting out of character in that they are weirdly happy. Like everyone is upbeat, not just in a better place in their life. And yeah, it's super fucking unconcerting and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. It is weird how weird it looks

and how weirdly off it is tonally. I think it was shot late. I think it was shot late. I think it must have been. It has to have been. There's no question. Everything about it is wrong. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, that's okay though. I feel like we're going to have more to say about this. I feel like JD is writing some sort of manifesto right now. I kind of want to see it again. Yeah. I like Ang Lee. We want to see it again. Yeah. I like Ang Lee. We got to see it standard frame rate

and we have to know. We got to David we got to know. But we should see the like the Cobble Hill cinema like the worst theater in Brooklyn.

But I think we should take I think you should take a last more Seth's advice here. You're saying I ought to know. You ought to know. Should we play the box office game? Yes.

And Ben, under this, please play Alanis Morissette's You Ought to Know. This is the first time that our box office game has been scored. I'll definitely do that, and that's not a copyright infringement. So the box office hasn't happened yet. We're recording this a couple days before the movie comes out. It's the only big release of them. Not true. Oh, what's the other one?

Adam's Family, the most anticipated movie of the fall. And there's one other release? Jexy! Yep. That's a good name for a movie, because I'm immediately, like, gross. That sounds like a bad-sounding word. Well, it's a great pitch. What if her but horny?

That's it? Yep. Jexy! Remember the movie Her that won best screenplay? Yeah. What if instead the phone acts crazy because, you know, girlfriends are crazy? Jexy! All right, you're right.

So Adam's family will get, what, $20 million or whatever? I think it's going to have a soft $20. It feels like no one knows that movie is happening. No. Who is it? It's United Artists, right? MGM, who doesn't have an animation division. Here's the history of this movie.

Chris Melendari, or whatever his name is, who runs Illumination, gets the rights for Adam's family. And is like, I got it. We're going to do Adam's family. We're going to court Tim Burton, and go, you get to make another 3D stop motion film. A thing he should not be doing. Right? But the deal

almost happens. And it is broken on Variety, and immediately all parties deny it, and the movie never comes to fruition. And Deadline has spent years saying,

we swear to God that scoop was right, and the movie just fell apart. Okay. But then, they were trying to make it without Burton in CGI, and then they sort of gave up interest. And then MGM, who I think had a stake in the MS Family TV show and the original movies

co-produced with Paramount maybe, said, oh, we got an idea. Remember Sausage Party, that animated movie that was somehow made for like no money? Yeah. Let's hire those guys and have them do it in the same cheapo way, even though we don't have an animation department. It looks really cruddy.

So you know how Sausage Party was made for so little money? I would assume that it's some sort of massive labor violation. Correct. Thank you. So I don't want to know the stories about how Ham's family was made

and it looks really bad and they've already made two ham's family movies and their master would you say that this situation seems a little ooky to you uh seriously ooky yeah okay altogether spooky yep all right i think gemini man will you know i think it can inch to like 25 so you think it's gonna open at number one no my friend oh right uh retired bit is going to open at number one? No. F*** my friend. Oh, right. Retired Bit is going to be, I assume, you know, somewhere in the sort of 45 range, right? And Ben, can you please bleep out the first time he said the name of the movie? Sorry for making more work for you. I forgot that we retired the bit about the very successful film

that is certainly going to stay at number one. You could say we not only retired the bit, we canceled him. So I'm going to say it's going to be retired bit number one. Gemini Man sneaking number two right over Adam's Family number three with Abominable at number four and Downton Abbey at number five. Okay, here's my prediction. I think retired bit. It's probably going to have a pretty good hold.

Because I keep on hearing from people who are like, I guess I got to see this and be part of the conversation. There's such a morbid curiosity. So a pretty good hold would be more what, like in the high, the 50s. I think it's going to be mid 50s. Okay. It's pretty good. It's been doing really good, strong weekday business. Yeah, it has.

Oh boy. It made like 10 million on Monday. Ben and I saw morning screening, literally the earliest screening we could see. People were there. And it was like 60% full at 10.30am. It's crazy. Crazy, right? Yeah. So I think it's going to do like 52 or something.

Then I think Adam's family is going to probably do like 20 or 21. And then I think Gemini Man is unfortunately going to do like 17 or 18 it's possible it could be a thing where like the balloon

the air just gets out of the balloon I think you're going to see a bit of an Ad Astra no Ad Astra overperformed its tracking Gemini Man is tracking at 30

but I'm talking about the number Ad Astra was projected to perform at like 14 or 15 and then it did like 18 or 19

and I think that's what Gemini Man's going to do, which will be below its tracking. I'm just talking about the number, the pure number itself. No, I think it'll be higher than that because the frame rate, it just adds money.

Okay. Well, agree, disagree. That's the tension of this episode is that I'm making a different projection. What incredible tension. Retired bit at 52. Yeah. Adam's family at a soft 21. Right. Yep. bit at 52. Yeah. Adam's family at a soft

21. Right. Yep. Gemini Man. Just imagine who won best actor Olivia Colman and the Oscar

goes to Joaquin Phoenix for retired bit. Oh boy. I think I think Abominable is going to take a big hit from Adam's family this weekend. So I think Downton's going to jump up to number four. That's my other big prediction.

I've gone out on a limb. I'm trying to create some tension. I don't know. We like this movie and no one else likes it. And everyone's going to say we're in the bag. Matt Singer liked it. Yes. Angie Han liked it.

There are people out there. There are dozens of us to use the internet. You already mentioned Stefanski and Patches. Right. Right. A legion of brilliant people. Uh-huh. Yeah.

100%. But look, I got to say, you know, we had so many listeners who enjoyed taking the walk last year. Yeah. Right? And talking that walk. And would message us, and this is why we want to try to do a screen this year, and say,

I feel so frustrated that I didn't see that movie when I had the chance. I didn't know. I didn't get it. Is there any way that movie ever comes back? It's ever viewable. In that framework. We try to make it happen.

Yeah. I promise you this. If other people take the high frame rate ball and roll with it and Cameron converts enough screens, we will not stop trying

to find a way to screen Billy Lynn in 120 in New York City. Right? We're going to keep that torch aflame for as long as we can.

But if you're curious about that and you're into some real nerdy shit, which most people on this podcast are, you owe it to yourself to go see this in the best format you can. Whether or not you like it, it's kind of important.

You know? I agree with that. What else are you going to do? Like, go be a person and have fun? Yeah. No one who listens to this show knows how to do that. So, crack open a can of liquid death and stroll your way down to the cinema and pay, I don't know, $47. That's the other problem.

I don't know what the pricing difference is. I think it's like a 3D movie, but I'm not sure. And go see Gemini Man. My big takeaway from this what I said walking out of the theater is I feel like he solved 60% of the technology problems and I was not expecting him to make this big of a leap which is both an achievement but also kind of an argument

against like Aang just make a regular movie because if you're going to just keep making movies to figure out how to make one of these movies at a certain point what the fuck are we all doing here you're great at making normal films what's frustrating is it feels like he's probably one movie away from making the thing sing. That's your argument. And my argument is maybe.

They're maybe not going to let him do this ever again. That's another argument. My fear is that he will have now spent two movies in a row working with technology and go, great, so I'm going to make another Ang Lee drama. And they'll go, sorry, that's not an option anymore. Do you want to direct Solomon Grundy? And maybe he will. Maybe he will.

And it can be released on a Thursday. I don't know. As long as they start production on a Monday. David's holding up his arms. Am I going to top that? A shrug? I don't know. I got to go see Hadestown. Oh, congratulations. Thank you. That's am I going to top that? A shrug? I don't know. I got to go see Hadestown. Oh, congratulations.

Thank you. That's what I got to go do. Any final thoughts, Ben? I can't wait to see Hadestown. Not from you, from Ben. The voice of the people. That's true. I'd say I second your...

Substances? Would they help hurt with this one? Whoa. You saw pretty dry, although you were chain smoking outside the theater that's true I was very dry though yeah it might enhance if you take mushrooms it would be kind of an interesting experience

I a couple times tapped David and pointed over to you and you were sitting with your mouth engaged and it was genuine it was like when we saw Turok the first play there were visual moments where you were just kind of like whoa this is fucking nuts. Yeah. No, I was like,

I was locking in and kind of having that like, this is trippy. Whether or not you like it, it's trippy and you owe yourself the experience. It's trippy, trippy, trippy. And I say that especially as

a nerd who doesn't like trucks and needs movies to provide my trips. This is a cinematic trip. Cool. We're done. But be careful with mushrooms. Okay. This is a cinematic trip. Cool. We're done. But be careful with mushrooms. Okay. Thank you all for listening.

Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Andrew for Gudo for our social media. Yes. Thanks to Lane Montgomery for our theme song.

Jump on Pat Reynolds for artwork. Thanks, Pat. Head over to the Patreon. We just released our Whisper of the Heart episode we just released Ant-Man and the Wasp

we are about to release Ant-Man and the Wasp tomorrow Ant-Man and the Wasp that's a fun one that's a good one sure big and small and what more is there to say it's us just saying that for two hours on Big and Small please give us your five

dollars. And next week we get back to Miyazaki. We're rounding it out. Next week's Ponyo? Yeah, with Shirley. One of your all-time best movie friends? Hell yeah. Shirley Lee. Yes. The Triumphant Return. Yep. On to talk

Ponyo. Alright, we're done. Come on. Thank you. And as always, I'm still here. Richard T. Bain, what, you're not happy to see me? It's a good event for you.